The Sugar Bar

Even though there’s exactly 15 days to it, the Lunar New Year sure goes by too quickly. I wish it’d have stayed longer for it passed us by in a flash and left us with severe post-CNY blues and an emptiness that is not unlike that experienced right on Boxing Day. Nevertheless, the wheel continues to turn and life is getting busy once again. Work is piling, things need to be done, our schedules resume and the pace of life continues to quicken. Faster and faster we go! But I hope all of you have had a lovely rest, a wonderful reunion with families (I have finally had mine after 4 years) and snacked up good on the CNY treats.

It was such a joy (but so not a peaceful affair) getting the house ready for CNY: buying new year flowers (peonies oh I adore them! cherry blossoms, orchids, etc.), biscuits and CNY snacks, mandarin oranges, nian gao cakes, red packets and lanterns, etc.

I haven’t many CNY clicks to share with you all but here’s a few taken at one of my favourite places of all time here in Singapore – a teahouse in the Chinatown/Neil Road area. When there was a little bit of calm after the first few days of CNY, I took my family to a teahouse for a bit of peace, quiet and a Chinese tea appreciation. Just resting on the edges of Chinatown (where the new year bustle goes on strong and vibrant) we’re sat in a quiet teahouse, sitting around barefoot, sipping tea and eating little sweets and tea eggs. That’s blissful.

Going through the Duxton area, taking a stroll in the shadowy corridors of preserved shophouses, we come to Tea Chapter.

We were sat at probably the most expensive table in the teahouse, known as the Queen’s Seat, though the picture doesn’t accurately reflect that. The seat across this one is rightfully where the Queen sat when she visited many years ago. And guess who sat in that chair? Mama Diva.

We ordered tea eggs, tea jellies, a fermented oolong 大紅袍 (Big Red Robe) which was apparently a descendent leaf from the original surviving tea leaf bush. The story goes that this tea bush (out of four) had been cloaked in red robes (the colour red is very auspicious for the Chinese) sent by the emperor of the Ming dynasty because its tea had cured an illness of the Empress Dowager. Hence, it came highly recommended for the CNY period. And something else caught our sweet teeth fancy which went perfectly with the oolong….dragon balls.

Don’t be mistaken, they’re definitely not some preserved appendage of a mythical creature but they are tang yuan (Chinese glutinous rice balls) filled with black sesame or peanut paste, then coated in a fine sugar, crushed peanut and tea leaves mixture. Wonderful. The star of my day. I loved that fresh flavour of tea leaves in my mouth and this way of eating tang yuan was novel.

The day was just exquisite. A balance of sweet, savoury, umami all melded together by a tea of quiet elegance. The Tea Chapter definitely is one page I’ll be stuck at for a long time and for many more times to come, just like a chapter of a good book.

You haven’t seen me around on here much because I’ve been physically, mentally and emotionally absorbed back into college life. The past week I’ve been all over the place, gathering myself and attending orientation briefings. By the end of it, I found myself too knackered to even lift a finger. I spent all weekend blobbing around, feeling utterly lazy and sluggish. The thought of pulling out bakeware, whisk and ingredients was unfathomable! The irony of it all is that I was and am still terribly active on Twitter. So you know that if all else fails, I’m reachable via @sugarbardiva. Twitter whore. Yea go ahead and accuse me of being one, I willingly accept such a label. You won’t even spot a tinge of colour on my cheeks, I blush not at the truth.

Anyway it goes without saying that despite my busy schedule, I’ve been sticking to some good eats (when I can and when the timetable allows it). And recently I’ve become quite fascinated with this Asian dessert known as Snow Ice. It’s very similar to ice kacang which is shaved ice doused with colourful syrups over a bowl of ingredients like sweetened atap seed, red beans, sweet corn and various jellies. Ice kacang can be found at any hawker dessert stall here and make a great to-share family dessert. So ubiquitous is it island-wide that it is proof how essential ice is to our culture in order to beat the humidity and monstrous equatorial heat!

Snow Ice is a little bit trickier but not impossible to find on this sunny island and, in my humble opinion, is as, if not more, enjoyable as its ice kacang cousin. What’s the difference however? The flavour is blended into the ice itself and not doused over plain shaved ice. One interesting feature also is that the ice is shaved into a soft flowing organic-looking mountain with a texture that resembles Cadbury’s Flake chocolate. Flakey, creamy, soft and milky to the taste. Depending on what flavour you’ve ordered, the accompanying toppings create a cocktail of refreshing iced flavours in your mouth. I love it much.

Snow Ice vaguely reminds me of kakigori too but its huge variety of flavours, local and slightly more continental ones, and its unique towering shape make it a tad bit more novel. A couple weeks ago I even had one which was chendol flavoured (yes! the one with that seductive dark brown gula malacca syrup and pandan green worm jellies!). I’m glad to say I’ve got my family on the Snow Ice wagon now. We’re all converts. I mean, if there’s more ice to eat, no one can say no to that right?

In the meantime, I’ve gotta bury my nose back in the books with only the thought of more Snow Ice and pudding to get me through.

(Dear Mr Sandman, I do hope to have lovely sweet dreams of Snow Ice tonight. If I could selfishly request for a dream about a bath of Snow Ice, where I could happily eat my way through bathtime. Or if we’re getting morbid, even a quicksand of Snow Ice would be a stickily enjoyable way to die I reckon. Thanks.Bye.)

I am experiencing one mega-normous phase of purple. And right before that, I was on a seriously crazed obsessive hunt for murasaki imo 紫芋 or a substitute for it. We spent a little more on the real imported thing from Japan but they were so delicious we ate them steamed before I could figure out what I could use it for that would do it justice. The hunt for purple sweet potatoes went on forever (you might’ve noticed me wailing away about it on Twitter). For all that wailing, I very unexpectedly stumbled upon two large, stop. ‘large’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, but you get the idea. These two sweet potatoes were huge and they were PURPLE! In addition to that, they were on sale. It was like I’d shook hands with the Queen except I hadn’t, I’d merely scored a sad root vegetable which was utterly covered in dirt.

Of course I had many ideas for my sweet potatoes especially since they were rather difficult to find in this region for some reason. However, time has been a very strained factor in the past few weeks what with all the menu planning for birthday dinners, Christmas dinner, work, planning in-between shopping trips, meeting up with the best girl to find out more about her wedding plans, yada yada. Finding time to stay home and buzz around the kitchen (for my own leisure that is) has been a luxury I am ashamed to say I have not had. So I had to think up something fairly quick, straightforward, using few ingredients (I really wasn’t keen on running around the island searching for things and lugging them home like a sweaty Santa) yet delicious beyond words.

Ondeh ondeh is surely one of my favourite Malay or Nyonya sweets. They are fragrant and terribly easy to pop in your mouth. Of course therein lies the danger of ondeh ondeh, relegating it to the top of the Evil Charts (popcorn chicken, salted nuts, cheesy nachos, etc.). The original ondeh ondeh, or at least the one you find out in the shops, are coloured green from a bit of colouring and pandan juice (which is naturally a dark thick shade of green). If regular orange sweet potatoes are used with no additional food colouring, they turn out a nice shade of orange or sometimes a light pastel yellow. Whichever way they come, they’re always delicious. And why? A little bit of mochi mochi goodness on the outside flavoured with crunchy but juicy bits of grated fresh coconut, the flavour made a little more interesting with a touch of salt in the coconut, a chestnut-y flavour to the skin and a climactic burst of molten gula malacca or palm sugar which has such a taste and fragrance it’ll leave you reeling.

Convinced? A word of advise, don’t bother doing the ladylike thing and nibbling into it. Do away with all that table etiquette and Western niceties, dive in and use your fingers. With a nice expert flick of a wrist, toss it into your mouth and bite/chomp down determinedly on the ondeh ondeh ball. Experience the explosion of senses to the max.

This is a type of dish I’ve learnt where its recipe is sorta handed down from generation to generation, picked up from friends and family. As my mother says, there is really no recipe to things like this! Hence, I haven’t got an exact ondeh ondeh recipe. You kinda feel the dough and its consistency as you go along. The measurements here are a recording of my own ondeh ondeh. They are purely a GUIDE and how yours turns out will depend on the wetness of your sweet potatoes, etc. You can alter the amount of flour or water according to how soft (wet) or chewy and stretchy you like your ondeh ondeh skin to be.

Because this seems like a feel-it-up-yourself type of recipe, I’ve added pictures I took during the process of making the dough balls. So if you did feel like trying your hand at ondeh ondeh, you can compare what yours looks like to mine! Happy days in the kitchen y’all.

Ingredients

1 large purple sweet potato (420g mashed)
about 250g glutinous rice flour, sifted
2-3 tbs fresh pandan juice
enough warm water, for loosening dough (I used about 1 cup)
200g gula malacca (palm sugar)
freshly grated white coconut, no husks

A few things to note:
• I recommend using bare hands to combine and knead the dough so you can tell how wet or dry your dough is. If it is dry and difficult to combine into a ball, keep adding water but slowly and cautiously.
• dough that is too wet will result in a softer ondeh ondeh skin, meaning it’s less mochi mochi or chewy
• remove from boiling water once it floats to the top as the longer it stays dancing in the water after it is cooked, the softer and less firm it will be (sorta like ravioli – think al dente).
• if you are living in Singapore and like me, found it ridiculously difficult to find freshly grated coconut, you can find it at a coconut stall in Geylang Serai market. It’s at treasure trove of Asian vegetables, spices, preserved dried salted fish, local (and halal) butchers, etc. Or if you just wanna go DIY, instructions here. If you simply wanna do the touristy thing, go down and check out the range of bananas they’ve got: ranging from teeny weensy ones the size of a swollen thumb to humongasaurus-rex types slightly larger than my forearm!

Cut up gula melacca into small pieces and set aside for later.

Pound the pandan leaves

To prepare the pandan juice, you gotta do it the old school way. Get a huge bunch of pandan (or screwpine) leaves, give them a good wash and remove any sand or dirt that may be lingering near the roots and between the folds of its leaves. Snip off the ends which joins the bunch together then snip up the leaves into 2 inch pieces. In a pestle and mortar (if you use a food processor I won’t judge you), pound the leaves into as bitty as you can. You can do them in batches. When its pounched down well, remove from pestle and squeeze with your hands or in a muslin cloth to extract its dark green juices. This is what you’ll need to add to the ondeh dough.

Small batch ready to be squeezed for its juice

Use a muslin cloth if you’re worried about mess and have weak hands. If you’ve sensitive skin like me, the pandan juice might cause a mild itch. Set aside the juice for later.

Steam sweet potatoes (you may use the orange ones as well which would give you orange ondeh ondeh) in their skins. When cooked through, remove from the steamer and place in a large bowl. Peel off its skin and discard. Using a fork or potato masher, mash the potatoes until fine. Add a little warm water if your potatoes are rather dry and need the extra moisture to mash a little smoother.

Now add the sifted glutinous rice flour and pandan juice to the mix. Mix a little with a fork then using your hands, bring the dough together. Add water in the process to combine the dough if it is much too dry. My sweet potatoes were a dry sort and so I ended up using a little over a cup of warm water. How much you use will depend on the moistness of your sweet potatoes.

Form the dough into a ball and begin kneading. If it has a rather mouldable consistency and smooth to touch, you’re there.

Pull little pieces of dough and roll into 1 inch thick balls. Using your thumb or index finger, press down into the middle of the ball to form a hole. Be careful not to press all the way through. Place a little bit of gula malacca into the hole and pull up the sides of the dough to seal. Do not overfill them as this might cause the ondeh ondeh balls to explode when cooking. Roll the dough ball into a nice round and set aside. Repeat process until all the dough is used or you may keep leftover dough in the fridge for use the next day.

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Once the water is bubbling nicely, add your ondeh balls to the water and let it cook. It will start to dance in the water when it is nearly done. When it floats up to the surface, remove from the water straightaway. Place on a cold plate to cool slightly.

When you are waiting for the dough balls to cook, place grated coconut on a long flat dish. Add a pinch of salt and lightly toss it together to mix. When dough balls are cooked and cooled just slightly for about a minute, add them to the coconut and lightly toss about to coat them.

Then serve with additional grated coconut if you like. I place them on top of a pandan leaf which has been washed and patted dry to infuse a little more flavour into the ondeh ondeh on its last stretch before being devoured.