Dark ginger orange stollen – a variation of the Swedish julbröd or vörtbröd.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012
Stollens are one of my favourite festive foods at year end, together with the British inherited version of dark brandied fruitcake / fruit pudding mainly because I find so exotic and comforting at the same time, the blend of flavours from the butter, the spices and dried fruits.
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Fruitcake, to be soaked at will with any liquor of choice.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
Even before this Advent weekend in Sweden, the long winter nights in the Nordic sphere had already beckoned people to put up their Christmas lights by the window, soon to be complemented by shiny tinsel Christmas decorations indoors. Out in the streets, Christmas lights adorn walkways and street lamps in anticipation for the Swedish Christmas markets to open their doors or rather, unfold their outdoor stalls.
As traditional Christmas food comes in numerous dishes, I thought I’d begin this festive season early with items I liked most. In perfect keeping with my preference for desserts, desserts before mains, desserts instead of mains, I thought I’d begin the culinary festivities with a fruitcake.
Though I seem to like all sorts of fruitcake, from light to dark, crumbly to sticky puddings, in the past several years I’ve come to settle on the preference for a lighter textured fruitcake, sans liquor soaked. But preferences differ and the majority of friends and family who stop by over Christmas seem to love either brandy or cognac soaked versions of the traditional Anglo-Saxon rich, dark fruitcake. What I’ve made here is a variation of the Swedish korinter tårta that is less dense compared to the English fruitcake or Christmas fruit pudding and where the liquor is added prior to baking so that the alcohol burns off and what is left is the taste of the liquor per se.
Continue reading “The beckoning of the Nordic Advent”
At Casa Bofarull, Los Caracoles Barcelona, Spain.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
If you hear that this restaurant is a challenge to find, that would be an accurate observation, especially if you don’t turn at just that left exit along La Rambla that leads you minutes down the lane to the restaurant, when walking from Plaça de Catalunya towards Rambla del Mar, but instead navigate from within the Gothic quarters of the city, or elsewhere.
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At W Singapore, Sentosa Cove.
W Hotels Worldwide are known for their luxurious interiors.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
Having grown up in Singapore, I’ve had the opportunity to observe Sentosa transform from a relatively quiet and exotic city getaway with accessible beaches that you could drive up to, park and picnic if you so wished, to one filled with attractions today such as Universal Studios alongside Resorts World that have both locals and visitors gather by the hundreds over the weekends for some fun.
This time my curiosity was piqued about the American W Hotels Worldwide’s newly opened W Singapore hotel and residences located at Sentosa Cove. A place targeted as part of the Singapore government’s efforts at building exclusive residential areas, this one in particular being currently the only seaside marina residential area in Singapore.
Continue reading “The tranquil at W Singapore, Sentosa Cove, Singapore”
Durian Cake.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012
Part of my culinary adventures is to combine bits and pieces of knowledge and inspirations picked up from one context and transfer that to a different context, in anticipation of the results. Besides which, I didn’t think I could get away being back in Singapore without cooking or baking with the family.
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At Catalunya Singapore, The Fullerton Pavilion at Collyer Quay, Singapore.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012
If it were not for a kind Samaritan I met along the way who pointed out directions to the Fullerton Pavilion in Singapore, I would have taken much more time before landing at the day’s lunch venue – Catalunya Singapore.
Coming in from the scorch of the mid-day tropical sun, it took a few seconds for the eyes to adjust to the dimmer interior of the bar and restaurant, though the line of sight didn’t need to venture farther than the reception to find a touch of Gaudí’s influence in the gleaming white broken mosaic pieces that clung to the columns of the dining interior. This influence of Gaudí would also continue, as I found, through the dining experience in the shapes and motifs of the plates and utensils on the table. Not two steps into the place, I was surrounded by individuals who spoke Catalan and Spanish, déjà vu and I felt right back in Barcelona again, and felt right at home.
Continue reading “Catalunya Singapore, a touch of Barcelona, Spain at the waterfront”
In celebration of the autumn equinox in Chinese tradition in Sweden, mooncakes. In the background, crème caramel.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
This weekend marked the mid-autumn festival celebrated most notably by the Chinese and Vietnamese cultures in Asia, in conjunction with the autumnal equinox and autumn harvests. Associated with the full moon, what makes part of this festival fun is the varieties of mooncake available as culinary adventure.
I read and viewed with interest, CNN’s story on the modern Mooncake by Ramy Inocencio, where I couldn’t help but notice how the three featured modern mooncakes were in themselves, a result of a fusion of culinary cultures, from using sweet white wine with custard to incorporating salty Itailan parma ham with sweetened nuts in another version of the hand moulded mooncakes.
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Lemon custard polenta cupcakes.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012
Polenta is etymologically Latin for the hulled and crushed grain of barley meal. It is today the English borrowing of the Italian word to refer to coarse ground cornmeal had been eaten as porridge or gruel since the times of the Roman Empire, before it was generally introduced in Europe in the 16th century. Because of its accessibility and easy preparation, polenta had mostly been conceived as peasant food through history and up until the 1940s to 1950s, it was still considered “poor man’s fodder” even in Sweden, prepared through boiling in water and eaten with a little salt, anchovies or herring.
For anyone with an adventurous mindset, I would like to share my take on a rustic version of the Eurasian Almond Sugee Cake, made with unblanched almonds, topped with almond-vanilla icing.
My vesion of the Eurasian almond pastel de sémola de rústica, served with the grated zest of a lime atop the almond-vanilla icing glaze.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
As a little Eurasian girl growing up in Singapore, I can remember Almond Sugee / Semolina Cake from a very early age. In my family it was also my father who carried the Eurasian heritage forward and who had baked the cake in the family well before I was born.
My grandmother, Dorothy Yap, and me in 1978.
To all appearances this cake might well have a long history stemming from Medieval Europe where we can find numerous variations of similar semolina cakes today. Some googling around, shows that in the Middle Eastern countries, they have variations of Revani (an orange semolina cake), Namoura (without eggs) and Basboosa (with coconut and yoghurt). In south Europe, Italy has its own variations of torta di semolino made with lemon or orange, and from India to Southeast-Asia, there are variations of the sugee / sooji cake made with essence of rose or rose syrup poured over the cake after baking and cooling.
The recipes also vary with regards to the use of semolina, with some recipes using pure semolina flour and others calling for a mix of semolina and plain flour.
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Dorothy Cordeiro, my grandmother. Photo from the late 1990s.
For some reason, history is hard to hold on to in Singapore. The pace of life is fast, the landscape continuously sculpted by new and evolving technologies. It somehow seems like everything new is immediately better than anything old.
The Eurasian community in Singapore is small and memories are fading fast, which is one among many reasons why I have put some effort into reconstructing my own grandmother’s, Dorothy Cordeiro’s recipe of the Eurasian Almond Sugee Cake.
While my grandmother managed to cut a svelte figure throughout her life, I have the fondest memory ever from my earliest childhood of her mother (my great-grandmother) being one of the rotundest women I have ever seen. So, go easy on this cake, if you get to try it!
The aroma of my grandmother’s cake was so tantalizing that my grandfather Aloysius, could hardly wait for them to cool before stealing a few slices for his own cup of afternoon tea, to be enjoyed in the company of his chirping caged birds.
The Eurasian Almond Sugee Cake from a recipe by Dorothy Cordeiro.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
In my earlier blog post on “Blueberry Muffins Intellectual Property“, I have mentioned that the secret to good cooking is not only knowing the recipe but knowing how to put it together. Therefore, no two individuals will produce the same result even with a shared recipe.
I have personally stood beside master chefs, recipe in hand, observing and absorbing as much information I could and still ended up with something different once at home. Then I have seen other chefs recreating dishes from memory, from entirely different raw produce, but still getting very close.
So with this said, in keeping with the belief that recipes are meant to be shared, if not evolve, here is as close as I can get it, Dorothy Cordeiro’s traditional Eurasian Almond Sugee Cake.
Continue reading “Sémola bizcocho de almendras – the Eurasian Almond Sugee Cake”