Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

A mild aïoli made entirely with natural ingredients,
topped with fresh rosemary and some basil
Photo © J E Nilsson for CMC, 2009

I grew up in Singapore with the assumption that good cooking based on fresh and natural ingredients was something that would never change. I assumed that there would always be someone there who took fresh fruits and newly harvested vegetables, flipping fishes, and fresh meat into their pots and pans to serve well cooked dishes at affordable prices.

The hawker centre concept in Singapore to me was equivalent to well-made home cooked food at very modest prices. For perhaps $1-2 USD you could sit down at a table and have a dish that would have taken hours of preparation to make yourself. Granted, the table was not your own and sometimes a bit wobbly and more often than not you would be seated outdoors, but that was a small price to pay compared to the returns of a local delicacy from the hands of someone who loved doing what they knew best.

Even simple things such as your daily coffee and tea from a coffee shop in Singapore rivals the choices of the mega coffee chain Starbucks, coming in a variety of servings such as kopi, kopi-O, kopi-si etc and teh, teh-O, teh-si, teh tarik etc. This philosophy and lifestyle towards affordable food made with fresh raw ingredients and a passion for a select dish, reflects what I think is quality of life in a modest setting.

Today however, Singapore is seeing the commercialisation and franchising of the hawker centre concept, Food Republic is one such concept where recipes are standardized and foods pre-processed before serving. It’s a concept that is a far cry from the traditional food hawkers I grew up with, even though they equip the interior of these franchise outlets with old style kopitiam (breakfast coffee house) furniture and tea cups. These days, the real food hawkers’ fare can be found in for example, Bangkok, Thailand where food hawkers cook along the streets right next to the wet markets.
Continue reading “On quality of life” →

Cuneesi al liquore by Dulcioliva. Liquor flavoured chocolates from Italy.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, 2009.

I’m a chocoholic. As far as I can recall, I’ve always preferred chocolates over candy, and when given the choice between coffee or tea to breakfast, I would inevitably find myself asking if there was any hot chocolate on the menu.

At home, I keep boxes of plain cocoa powder for that morning cuppa and a stash of chocolates in the food cabinet for just when I need a quick chocolate fix!

Taking notes, with Benny Eriksson, owner of “Beriksson Import and Chocolate”, Sweden.

So imagine one of my wildest fantasies come true when I met Benny Eriksson at the recent foodfair Passion för Mat in Gothenburg a few weeks ago, who introduced me to his line of imported Italian made chocolates!

My eyes went wide with delight when I found myself in front of a little chocolate buffé at Benny’s exhibition stall, with assorted chocolates from Guido Castagna, Muzzi, Gardini and my absolute favourite (after all the sampling) – the Cuneesi al liquore from Dulcioliva!

Bite into a truffled Cuneesi al liquore (shown in the first picture above) and you’ll find yourself immediately taken by the soft consistency of the chocolate ganache found in the middle of the chocolate shelled conconction that melts in your mouth. The taste of this sweeter, liquored ganache is then complemented by the bitter dark chocolate shell on the outside of the confection.

What you’ll end up experiencing is a wonderful chocolate symphony that signals a celebration of sorts.
Continue reading “Cuneesi al liquore by Dulcioliva, the perfect chocolates for Easter!” →

Pâté served with homemade Cumberland sauce, pickled cucumbers “cornichons” and a slice of orange.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, 2009.

Just a few days ago while shopping, I ran into some really nice looking pâté, and I felt that was just the thing for an Easter lunch. After stopping by the delicatessen counter and checking out their version of Cumberland sauce, I found it was nothing like what I wanted out of a Cumberland sauce, so I decided to go home and make our own.

It is not very expensive and surprisingly easy to make. If you haven’t tried this before, you will find that it will only take a few minutes from start to finish. Here is what I used:

1 lemon
1 orange
1 jar of redcurrant jelly
1 glass of port
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 table spoon grounded ginger

Port table-setting: the ingredients to the Cumberland sauce.

Some good port to give the Cumberland sauce its personality, lemon, orange, ginger and redcurrant jelly. I used two wine glasses filled with redcurrant jelly in this recipe. Chocolate mints (in the foreground) and some rich purple tulips (flowers of the season) to complement the Easter season and brighten up the kitchen while cooking!

Preparation of orange and lemon rinds

Peel off the absolute outer part of the rind – the zest – on the orange and the lemon. You will not need much of this. Avoid cutting into the white inner layer, the pith, since this is unpleasantly bitter. Slice finely and cook for 5 minutes to soften up and clean away anything funny that might be on the peel. Discard the water.

This is the only tricky part. Here I needed to be very careful not to cut too deep into the peel as I only wanted the outer, colorful layer of the rind, the zest.

Lemon and orange zests, sliced thin.

This is much more than you will need, just take a few spoons of this after it is boiled.

Continue reading “My favorite homemade Cumberland sauce” →

Salmon served with teriyaki sauce. On the side are rice, lettuce and tomatoes.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, 2009.

This is not much of a recipe, it’s more like a reminder that there are such simple and easily cooked dishes that combine luxury with a superb health aspect, such as this salmon plate that basically dribbles with heart friendly Omega 3 fat.

A butterfly fillet is a straight cut from a salmon fillet. You either buy them ready or cut the un-skinned thick fillet crosswise in about 3-4 cm (1-1.5 inch) wide slices. Then take each of these slices and make a cut down to (but not through) the skin. Fold out and you’re done.

Regarding how to fillet and tidy up a salmon, there are tons of short films available on Youtube. Since I have grown up in an Asian tradition where you take care of and use almost everything of your raw ingredients, I found myself noting how much of the salmon gets thrown away during the filleting process. Few videos for example, recommend keeping the salmon head and cooking with it.

While traditional Indian Fish Head Curry doesn’t use salmon head, my recent dining at an Indian restaurant in Gothenburg, where they served salmon curry indicated that perhaps salmon head could be used in that dish. Salmon skin is also often stripped and thrown away. In Japanese cooking, salmon skin is fried to a crisp and eaten in sushi rolls. The taste is fantastic! I would personally hate to think that one starts out with a healthy 40 lbs (20 kg) salmon and end up with maybe less than 5 kg worth of salmon fillet left to eat.

Of course there are different schools of thought in cooking, one of which is where you tidy up everything before you cook, and the other philosophy is that you cook as much as possible and tidy things up when or immediately before you eat. If you’re looking at a hypothetical dichotomy in schools of thought, then the results of the first method would produce close to industrially processed foods which could end up quite sterile and tasteless once you’ve de-boned, de-fatted and de-skinned everything, and the second would produce more home style home cooking that uses bones and skin etc. to produce thick broth bases that could be further used in the cooking process. And as one could expect, the latter school of thought produces food that are infinitely much more flavourful. Continue reading “Salmon butterfly fillet and some on the philosophy of cooking styles in general” →

A homemade hearts waffle topped with blueberries, raspberries, vanilla ice-cream and generous whipped cream!
Photo © J E Nilsson for CMC, 2009

In Sweden, which might be the most secular nation on earth, the Annunciation is still celebrated the 25th of March every year by eating waffles.

The waffle day is however named as it is in Sweden due to a misunderstanding of the word Vår Fru, meaning Our Lady or in French, Notre Dame all referring to the Virgin Mary, but sounding like the word waffle or våffla in Swedish, albeit after some phonetical twists. So technically, waffles day in Sweden is a celebration of the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, with the news of Mary’s conception of Jesus. This happy revelation happened exactly nine months before the holy child Jesus was born on the night to the 25th of December, which we celebrate as Christmas.

Historically Sweden was pagan until the twelfth century. With the founding of modern Sweden some four hundred years later, the Swedes left Catholicism in favour for Protestantism. Religion wise it went pretty much downhill from then on however most feasts are still happily celebrated. The 16th century was also the first time that western people were allowed to read and hear the gospel in their own languages. Up until then, the Bible had been only available in Latin, so just maybe, the misunderstanding of the “Vår fru” dates back, all the way to that time too.

Today in Sweden, the celebration of waffles day is mostly concerned with how to make them as sinfully delightful as possible. Here are our suggestions:

A waffle topped with fresh blueberries, raspberries, whipped cream and a light dusting of icing sugar.