Have a really great dish to serve and yet don’t want to leave it too boring with plain white rice? Or even if plain white rice is all that you need but you’re thinking of spicing it up just a tiny bit anyway? That sort of thinking always leads you to trod down another path, to veer off the main motorway. I really wanted to make something new and pretty unique so I had a little look online, just to make sure my idea was kinda like ‘oh-I’m-such-a-genius-cool’. But sometimes that path (which I was chatting on about earlier) is pretty well-trodden since loads of people might have done it before you. (I look on enviously when others make these amazing things like Jasmine Tea Rice and Green Tea Broth,etc.) So what happened was I told myself to shut my jealous trap and just try this. It never hurt anyone to trod down a paved out pathway anyway so really, what was I on about?

Really. The stress of my exams which begin on Monday is getting to me.

My Mum used to mix a raw egg into hot steamed rice for added flavour to serve with the spread of Chinese dishes she made. The egg just mixes in once you break the yoke, slowly cooking as you go and the smell that wafts up as you mix the rice is simply gorgeous. When she goes Japanese, she makes sure to flavour the rice with black sesames or something else that’s pretty damn good too. I’m a plain white rice girl that needs her rice cooked just al dente. Not too soft and yet not too hard and dry. Mostly because I love saving this gorgeous naked rice for soaking up all the gravy off the plates of oriental glory or I dunk them (this gets very messy and my parents hate it when I do this because I just look like a right twat and nothing like the elegant eater I usually am — which they have spent ages training their daughters to be) in soup and slurp it all up. I love the smell of cooked rice but there’s also nothing quite like the smell of flavoured rice or rice fried with loads of other goodies.

For a quick lunch, I never think to have rice because it feels wrong to not pair rice with a hearty dish. And that would be too heavy a meal for the day. An onigiri or temarizushi would be a good idea too but I’ll save that for some cool Japanese guy to prepare it for me someday. On the other hand, plain white rice with a fried egg also seems pretty sad to me. So this was a great recipe to have around and it takes less than 20minutes to prepare. Woop for joy, guys. This recipe gives you a very fragrant and lightly flavoured rice that borders on the sweet side of things and the almonds give it another dimension of nuttiness and near buttery taste. It’s so light and yet is flavourful enough to have on its own. I paired this with a fried egg for greater ease in preparation and simply because I’m saving my awesome Wild Alaskan salmon steaks (which BLIMEY, cost me a fortune and are right now, sitting quietly in the freezer like good dogs) for an awesome meal I’ve got all planned out.

This recipe has been inspired by one I found on the net. It doesn’t use green tea sprinkles or nuts but I thought the addition would make it more flavourful. For a prettier bowl of rice, Mum likes to add shredded seaweed and sesame seeds. It’s definitely a good touch. I’ve served this pretty much naked with almonds as the golden touch and cooking sprinkles to deepen the green tea flavour. This makes 2 servings of green tea laced sweet rice and will go very well with marinated fish or seafood in my opinion.

Green Tea Rice with Almonds
Ingredients

1/2 cup white rice (I’ve used basmati)
300ml brewed sencha
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tbs sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp green tea cooking sprinkles
4 tbs of chopped toasted almonds

Rice and tea go in the pan to boil. After it reaches the boil, lower heat and let it simmer till all the water is absorbed. Then add the vinegar, sugar and salt. Stir well. Add the green tea sprinkles and chopped toasted almonds, mixing to coat all the rice nicely with the green tea.
Garnish with whatever comes to mind and serve with your choice of meats or vegetables.

Itadakimasu!

If you’re Chinese, Korean or Japanese, you’ll definitely have had tofu as a kid in loads of stuff and told it was good for you. Or at least, that’s what I think. Tofu for me, since childhood, has been a roller-coaster journey — a very tricky bumpy love-hate relationship. It was only until I’d just about hit teenagehood that I started liking tofu and bean curd and soybean milk. Not only is the soybean extremely good for your bones and skin, it apparently has loads of other health benefits too. The humble soybean became one of my favourites, along with the green mung bean and red bean. Black beans were still slightly dodgy for me. Shame isn’t it? They’re such cute little things.

Anyhow, tofu is great in soup or whipped with eggs into a steamed egg dish, or fried with pork and mushrooms, and this list will just keep going on forever. My mum is a genius with tofu. Using an egg tofu which usually comes in a plastic tube, she fries it in a tomato sauce with minced pork and potatoes. It’s just about the best comfort food I’ve ever had since primary school. I remember the times after house practise, just struggling to get home with books and a heavy school bag. Sweaty and grimey. All you really needed then was food. Like awesome, hearty food best prepared by who else than your mum? A bowl of fresh steamed-to-perfection rice and among other dishes, a plate of that tofu minced pork glory and oh bless my Mum’s heart!

Here’s a quick to throw together salad that’s great as a light lunch or an appetizer. I love this because it’s so easy and you hardly need fancy pants ingredients to pull this off. One word of caution, however, if you’re not a garlic fan you can cut out the garlic clove or use garlic flakes instead. If you’re not too bothered like me, you can stick with having the world’s best garlic breath afterwards like I do now. It’s really not that bad. I merely exaggerate.

This recipe is perfect for 2 servings.

Tofu Salad with Oriental Sesame Dressing
Ingredients

1 1/2 cup silken/firm tofu (that’s about half a packet), cubed
1/4 cup shredded carrots
a good mix of watercress, baby spinach leaves
2 stalks of spring onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 1/2 tbs sesame oil
2 tbs dark soy sauce
white sesame seeds, for garnish

This is easy as heck. In a bowl, take 3/4 of prepared salad leaves, 1/2 of spring onions, carrots, garlic and tofu. Toss it with the soy sauce and sesame oil. If you want this dish to stay firm and not go all sloshy and sloppy, make sure to use extra firm tofu. I prefer the texture of silken tofu, commonly used for steamed dishes and soups, so I chose that over an easier-to-handle firm tofu. When all of the ingredients in the bowl are nicely mixed up, serve onto plates or into bowls with the rest of the salad leaves as a base. Garnish with rest of the spring onions and a good pinch of sesame seeds.

Before I round this up, check out what I bought yesterday at Topshop (you’d be silly to think that’s all I bought)! Yes! Strawberry Sour Ribbons. Although Topshop’s had their SWEETSHOP since ages ago, the only thing I ever get from it is Mint Poppets. But at (nearly) a pound for every thing available, it’s honestly hard to resist adding a little bag of sugary treats to your overall purchase. A very sneaky marketing move seeing as most girls find it difficult to say no to sugar, especially if it’s coated in pretty, shiny sugar crystals. After deliberating between the Flying Saucers (oh these guys are as good as freak) and Strawberry Sour Ribbons, I settled on the latter. Call me sentimental but the first time I had these in a Pick & Mix was in primary school.

Sugar and spice and everything nice. That was my motto back then I reckon (might still be, who knows). I used to grab a pick&mix with the pals after school and then pop ‘em whilst catching up with everyone as we waited for our buses home at the bus stop just outside the pick&mix shop. Of course we all had our hidden agendas. The pick&mix was our weapon to look cool and cute, and to calm the nerves! Give them hands something to do! This all happened while we waited for our crushes to get to the bus stop after school. Awww. Weren’t we so cute then? The strawberry ribbons were always the first to get thrown into my pick&mix bag and the last to get eaten. Save the last for best is what I say. But honestly, it was just too much of hassle to eat them and look cute at the same time lest I get sugar all over my face in front of my crush.

It’s great to see sweets that mean so much to you now and again. Brings back some amusing and ridiculous times. The bag of ribbons is laying there on my desk. I reckon I’m going to have a guilty pick at it later tonight and have a good laugh about the olde dayes! Jokes!

It’s quite difficult to find that perfect cheesecake since quite a lot of people are rather anal or picky about their cheese. When it comes to cheesecake, I’m even more fussy. What I mean by that really is that I love to eat it, that’s a given. But that I always associate really good cheesecake with one that’s been made for me by someone else because I cannot be bothered to bake a cheesecake. That’s just that. It’s (in that warped head of mine) too much of a faff in my opinion to bake cheese when you can just have it as it is. Cheese, neat. Straight out of the fridge, oh yeah. Now we’re talking. But cheese cooked is so amazing too - savoury or sweet. Nevertheless, somehow I still can’t bring myself to be bothered to bake a cheesecake.

Whilst hopping through the foodblogs I usually visit, I came across Cafe Johnsonia’s Frozen Mascarpone Cheesecake, so that really got my tastebuds into craving mode. Not one to fuss around with cheesecakes, I couldn’t be bothered to work on this Chocolate Mascarpone Fruit & Nut Cheesecake shizzle from good ol’ Delia so I decided to mash-up little bits and pieces to create my very own non-bake, why-not-use-the-freezer cheesecake. Take laziness to the maximum without forfeiting the taste factor. I admit frozen/non-bake cheesecakes hardly ever look as impressive as baked cheesecakes but Hans and I were very pleased when we were tucking into our very own slices. Tasty, rich yet light. Coupled with a raspberry coulis and you’re well on your way to a sugary cloud 9 heaven. Also, I find baked ones very heavy and filling whereas this was creamy but not too overwhelming that you couldn’t fit in another healthy slice.

Thumbs up and a big pat on my back; one too on Hans’s. Cheers to Anna for doing the taste-testing of the respective bowls of ingredients. Although I now have a bright red spot of raspberry coulis on my duvet cover (looks suspiciously like blood…geeez), it was so worth it! This coulis is absolutely gorgeous. If you don’t know what that is, it simply is a posh way of saying raspberry sauce. Quick to prepare, great colour and delicious; use it for just about any other raspberry-requiring dessert. For a cheesecake? Spot on!

I was a little pretentious with the presentation. But it was a pretty day today. Very very warm. And I was surprised to see so many bluebells growing out in the garden so I picked one, washed and dried it, then popped it atop my cheesecake for added prettiness. How adorable.

Chocolate Non-bake Cheesecake with Raspberry Coulis
Ingredients

For the crust:
1 tube of ginger nut biscuits, crushed into crumbs
3 tbs sugar
5 tbs butter, melted

For the filling:
8 oz cream cheese
8 oz mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup double cream
1/3 cup caster sugar
120g plain chocolate, melted (you can increase the amount, or use dark chocolate if you’re going for an uber chocolatey cake)

For the coulis:
1/3 cup caster sugar
3 tbs water
2 1/2 cups raspberries

Bash up all the biscuits. Add sugar and melted butter. Using a fork, toss and coat in butter until all of it is covered. Press into bottom of a springform pan and use the back of a spoon to flatten and even it out. Place in freezer for the crust to bind about 15min.

Using a wooden spoon, beat together the cream cheese, mascarpone and sugar. Over a bain-marie, melt the chocolate and be careful not to burn. In a separate bowl, using a metal whisk, whip the double cream until it can hold its shape. Do not overwhip. Add the chocolate once it’s cool enough to the cheese mixture. Finally, the double cream. Give it a good stir.

Remove crust from freezer. Pour the cheese mixture into the pan and smooth out. Cover with clingwrap, making sure the clingwrap touches the surface of the cheese and up the sides of the cakepan. Place in freezer 40-50min. Remove and place in fridge. Serve whenever after by using a warmed knife to slice.

The coulis is really simple. Over a medium fire, cook the sugar and water. Stir continuously for about 5min. It’ll start to thicken and caramelize but be careful not to let it burn. Add the berries and keep stirring. Lower fire if it bubbles too much. Break up the berries, leaving some relatively whole just so it looks better unless you want it to be as smooth as possible. Cook until it thickens. Leave to cool. Then serve by spooning loads over your cheesecake.

The Inspiration

I like to read, especially in the bath or even when I’m showering. I line all my shower/bath products in a line and read them all from left to right, then around them and from top to bottom. It might seem like a weird habit to me but I’m sure loads of you out there do the very same, only maybe in a slightly varied away - like the ever-favourite newspaper-on-toilet combo. The advent of Spring meant the purchase of new make-up, shower creams, hand soaps, etc. for the season and as I was doing my habitual shower-reading, I was caught by the fact that I surround myself with mountains of products made with some sort of food product, extract or essence. And the most probable reason why I’m so attracted to these products is because they sound yummy and smell yummy. Right now, you’re definitely going ‘duh’ - that’s a marketing strategy. However, with the rising popularity of products that claim the use of dubious pearl powder, satin extract and so forth, we are constantly enticed ultimately to products that gravitate towards what we love best — food.

Here are a few of my own examples: My Origins Youthopia face cream comprises (prepare yourself) bitter orange, chamomile, myrtle leaf water, apricot kernel oil, grape seed oil, castor seed oil and shea butter, rhodiola or ginseng root, cardamom, thyme, nutmeg, soy bean, wheat bran extract, sunflower seed extract, aloe vera, sweet almond seed extract among a whole long list of others. My Molton Brown Body Lotion is made with a bamboo and wild indigo extract, incorporating lemon as well. One of my hair conditioners uses jojoba oil and macadamia nut oil. A favourite face scrub of mine is famous for its use of fruit enzymes, one specific one being papaya. Even our kitchen surface cleaner uses lime, orange and coconut.

Not alone, I’m certain, am I in this plight - drawn to such products. Fact is, all beauty products somehow or another capitalize on food because it’s what is natural, has a lot of (sex) appeal and yes, food is good for you! We are never going to stop pampering ourselves. The rise of the new woman, the bourgeois woman, the modern day woman, etc. have all taught us that. On a more superficial level, we are kiwi birds with an eye for shiny things. Even if the relation of prettiness and indulgence to the female is a social construct, somehow a carefully crafted design to fence in and define the woman as the Other of the masculine, how on earth can we ever abstain from what we love best?

The Story

At some point of our lives, I’m certain we have played with our food. Turning our food into some sort of externally nourishing product (since you eat food and it provides nutrients internally) comes under that category too. I remember the times when my sister was very into homemade face masks. You should have seen those slimey, gooey concoctions she made with raw egg and fruit, etc. It was…at best, an acquired ‘taste’. I soon took after her. We are after all bonded by blood.

Wanting all my life to be tall, I drank quite a lot of milk. Hated it at first because of its acidity but OREOs made it all better. One day, that chubby little girl, after being praised by her aunt for having beautiful hands, thought to herself ‘if I have beautiful hands, I want to keep them beautiful forever and ever’. She resolved herself to that because everytime her mother picked up her hands to play with her fingers (it was a daily mother-daughter moment) she’d notice how her mother’s own hands were starting to wrinkle at the knuckles. So tiny Diva got out a wash basin, filled it up with the last of the milk in the fridge, sprinkled some ground cinnamon into the basin for added fragrance and dove both hands into the cold milk.

She let out a tiny squeal. The milk was a tad too cold for them delicate hands. But she thought, ‘if this could keep my hands beautiful forever, then I will want to soak them in it for a long long…long time to keep them that way.’ Smooth, white and milky. So she stood in front of the basin for about 5minutes, wondering how long was long enough when her father walked in on her. He stopped, stared. Then turned around, stopped. And then turned back a 180degrees and said, ‘I’m sorry. What are you doing?’ in a bemused yet slightly irritated manner (Daddy was a milk-fanatic and drank a glass every evening. Something about pffft, bones and calcium.) Now, the little girl had used up all of the milk but in the most wasteful way her father could think up - for soaking her hands?! What on earth?

I suppose really, the men simply don’t get it.

And The Point?

As you can see, the links between cosmetics/beauty products and food are intriguing. It seems almost instinctive to make that link. Women are more often that not the targeted consumer of just about anything. No wonder our favourite past-time is shopping. And because we are beginning to have such great purchasing power, all sorts of products are carefully marketed. Sneaky as it is (you know, all the shizzle about capitalism and consumerism), I am unashamed to be an almost ‘pious’ slave to the beauty industry that has taken on a temple-like magnitude - or for that matter, the food industry. All that rambling aside, I’d really like to see what everyone out there obsesses about. With thumbs up from Farida of azcookbook and Celine of Black.Salt, I’m putting this challenge out there for anyone and everyone!

The Challenge

How This Works:

1) Pick a cosmetic/beauty/body-hand-skincare,etc. product that has either a name that is food-related (eg. Vanilla Butter Dynamite, Raspberry Rhubarb Splash) or has food-related ingredients (eg. orange extract, ginger root).

2) Using the combination of flavours of the product as best as you can, create a dish inspired by the product and give it any funky name you like.

3) Post about it on your blog (why that product, how you were inspired, were the results good, etc.) with a picture of the product and your masterpiece; if possible, add the Beauty & The Feast challenge picture as well so people know what this is all about.

4) Send in your entries to diva@sugarbar.org using this format below:

Subject line: Beauty & The Feast Challenge I
Your name:
Blog:
Blog URL:
City/Country:
Event post link:
Product name:
Dish name:
*Include the picture that you’ve uploaded for your post in this email as an attachment as well. This shouldn’t be too large so we can keep my downloading time to a minimum.

5) The closing date for all entries will be 2 June 2008 (Monday); after which, all entries will be posted up on le blog. The girlies and I will then look through all entries and choose the top 3 winners of the challenge.

The Prizes:

Here comes the bit that is rather cool, in my opinion.

Top Prize: Lancôme Virtuôse Mascara in Noir sensual (2ml tube) & DIVINE Chocolate Slab (dark/milk chocolate)

2nd Prize: Rouge Dior Crème de Gloss Sample Packet (with 4 shades and lipbrush) & DIVINE Chocolate Slab (dark/milk chocolate)

3rd Prize: Haribo Sweets & DIVINE Chocolate Slab (dark/milk chocolate)

I’ve blogged about these chocolates before and if possible, I will attempt to source the more rare flavours (mint, fruit & nut, orange, hazelnut, coffee if that is what the winners want). The prizes, although not as amazing as I can usually afford, are my little thank-you-for-participating treats!

So blog about this, tell your friends and get loads of people to take part in this event. I’m quite certain it’ll be so much fun to see all the photos and what everyone comes up with. Till then, let’s get our creative juices on the roll.