Imagination – The Mac Show, A 4-Day Extravaganza at Ngee Ann City

29 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

Imagination – The Mac Show, A 4-Day Extravaganza at Ngee Ann City

ishop by Club 21 will celebrate its third anniversary with a thrilling 4-day extravaganza called Imagination – The Mac Show at Takashimaya Square (B2), Ngee Ann City, from 30 October to 2 November 2008.

ishop, Asia’s largest Apple Premium Reseller, will proudly present the latest über-cool Apple products for professionals and home users at the event. Apple guest speakers will give a preview of upcoming creative solutions that educate and entertain. And visitors stand to gain from fantastic deals as well as be entertained by a host of performances.

Imagination – The Mac Show also promises to be a sensory experience. Make Studios, in collaboration with composer/sound engineer Victor Low (The Observatory), will present Art of the T – Mosaic Voice. This multi-media, interactive installation blends digital music with T-shirt graphic imagery, coming alive via a touch-screen user interface. All featured T-shirts, from cult design collectives, are available for sale on-site.

Other programme highlights are the 6th Asia-Pacific Yoyo Championship Finals, DJ Battle, DJ Nado, DJ Graduation, BBoys (dance), Soul Divas (dance) and Electrico (band).

For those who want an inside track on the latest developments and hottest products from Apple — with unlimited fun and entertainment at the same time, Imagination – The Mac Show is an event not to be missed.

Imagination – The Mac Show
Takashimaya Square (B2), Ngee Ann City
30 October to 2 November 2008

ishop by Club 21 is located at Orchard Cineleisure #03-04/5/6. Tel: 6622 8988. Website: ishop.club21.bz

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That strange smell

23 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

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A few weeks ago, my mom gave me one of her AMC pot to cook in. Its one of those stainless steel pot that can do amazing stuff if you keep it in good condition. It can cook vege just by putting the said vege in it, sprinkle a few drops of water and close the lid. Put it on top of the fire and watch the indicator reached a certain point and your food is cooked.

So that day, she came over and pass it to me. She tied the lid to the pot with a string to keep it from falling out. I took the pot and put it in the cupboard.

Fast forward to this week. Everytime I opened the cupboard, there is a strange smell coming from it. I searched for the source of the smell but there isn’t any thing inside the cupboard except empty pots and pans, or so I thought.

Just now, I took out the AMC pot to use to steam some sweet potatoes. Imagine to my surprise I found that the pot was not empty. My mom had made some coriander pork inside and she didn’t tell me when she pass it to me.

The cooked pork was in the pot all along for the past few weeks. The thing about the AMC pot is that the lid is quite secure so very little smell leaked out most of the time.

Well, I threw away the few weeks old pork and cleaned the pot. Now its as good as new. The mystery of the strange smell has been solved, I hope.

Miding

23 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

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Miding plant

My mom was in Kuching for my grandma’s birthday over the weekend. Since she is there, I had an inspiration to have this particular dish made from the Miding plant.

I think this particular plant only grows in Sarawak hence its quite hard to get it in other countries like Singapore or even West Malaysia.

The wild miding grows by the roadside or in the jungle. In the morning, the natives would go around plucking them to bundle them up to be sold in the market. I think its quite a hard work considering that you have to pluck a lot to make one bundle. And each bundle below sells only like RM2 or so.

Miding bundle

Natural packaging

The miding packaging is also quite interesting. They would pluck these big leaves from the plants in the jungle and just bundle it up with a string. It looks like a big burrito.

When you open it up, it looks quite neat and clean.

The best way to eat it is to cook with sambal belacan. My aunt had prepared two type of it for me to try. One with blue ginger and the other without. I wonder which one taste better.

I actually forgotten what miding tasted like. Its supposed to be better tasting than kangkong belacan. I shall try it tonight as the miding plant cannot be kept that long after plucking.

More pics later when I cooked it.

Update: This is the cooked miding with sambal belacan. Taste good, but I think I put a bit too much belacan coz a bit too salty.

How to choose a mattress.

19 Oct 2008 - Under Asides By Mandrake

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This is very informative.

300 Japanese soldiers died at Raffles Hotel!

15 Oct 2008 - Under Asides By Mandrake

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This was not taught in the history books.

Chinese style pork ribs

14 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

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This was today’s dinner.

I came across this recipe for pork ribs over the weekend and decided to try it out today. The steps are pretty simple to follow and the result turns out to be quite good. Personally, I think there are still room for improvement but overall, it was well received by everyone.

The original recipe was for 300g of prime pork ribs, I used 400g so I just add a dash more of the sauces.

Ingredients

300 grammes baby back ribs
2 tablespoons of corn flour

Marinate

1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon chinese cooking wine
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
liberal dashes of white pepper powder
1 teaspoon of corn flour

Mix the sauces together and marinate the pork ribs for around 6 hours.
The original recipe calls for the ribs to be fried in 300ml of oil. I am not a fan of frying at home so I used the stir fried method instead.

I poured some oil in a pan and let it heat up. After coating the ribs with 2 tablespoons of corn flour, I put the ribs into the pan and let it sit there cooking for about 10mins. Stir once in a while so that the pork can cook evenly. Dish up and its ready to serve.

As an improvement, I will let it cook for another 5mins next time. Although the meat was evenly cooked, I want to let the meat slide off the ribs nicely the next time. This time, everything was tender, juicy and full of flavour.

Accompanying this dish was black bean soup which had been simmering for more than 4 hours. Another dish was steamed sea bass below.

Die Die Must Buy

13 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

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I came across this shop called “Die die must buy” in the heartland recently. It opened among the neighbourhood shops selling dirt cheap stuff like cookies and household items. They have a motto that if you can find things being sold cheaper than them elsewhere, they will willing give you a refund if you show them the receipt.

I think the shop is operated by some Filipinos as they were blasting those music, even as early as 830am in the morning.

I went in to take a look today as I was looking for some household stuff. Turns out they stocked quite a bit of cookies and crackers and their price are indeed cheap. Cheaper than Sheng Song or those hypermarts. Although the shop is small, you can easily get a few items just by walking in.

I bought a few boxes of Arnotts Tam Tam biscuits. These are made in Malaysia and not Australia, so its cheaper.

The ice Pokka green tea cost $0.50 a can and is a steal when you consider that its $1.30 in the coffeeshop and hawker center a few steps away.

Hainanese Heritage

5 Oct 2008 - Under General By Mandrake

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I am of Hainanese heritage. My grandfather came over from Hainan Island in China when he was young - around the turn of the last century. Hainanese is also one of the dialect groups in Singapore

There are generally some common beliefs about Hainanese men. Here are some of them, although I am not sure how much is true.

1) Hainanese men are good cooks.
Well, I can’t say for the rest of the Hainanese men, but I for one know my way around the kitchen. I won’t get worried or become lost when following recipes. I can cook relatively well without worrying about adding too much or too little salt when the recipe calls for “salt to taste”. I also know how to cook the perennial favourite Hainanese chicken rice. However, the local recipe didn’t come from Hainan Island, but is a modification of the original one from Hainan Island. The famous Singapore Sling was also created by a Hainanese.

Actually, I remember discussing this topic with some of my friends who are also Hainanese. They say the reason why Hainanese men can cook so well is because most of them ventured out from the little island of Hai Nan. And since during that period, they travel by boat and ships, these men were hired as cooks on the ships. When they settled down in South East Asia like Singapore and Malaysia, they started their own restaurants and coffee shops. As they grow old and settled down, they passed their knowledge to their sons and daughters who are also Hainanese, and hence you have more percentage of cooks who are Hainanese.

2) Hainanese people (men probably) have distinct head shape.
I was told that Hainanese people, usually men, have high forehead and it’s super round. I am not sure how true it is, but those Hainanese uncles I know do indeed have that feature. You can go around your estate and check them out.

Also another distinctive fact about the head shape is that the back of our head are rather flat as well. There was a discussion about these in one of the posts I wrote a while back here. Miche said that its probably due to the way the baby was put to bed which created the shape. Anyone beg to differ?

3) Hainanese dialect is hard to learn
Well, I would say if you are exposed to it long enough, you probably can speak any dialect rather well. I have forgotten most of my spoken Hainanese dialect ever since my grandfather passed away. He was the one whom I spoke the most to when I was a little boy, I could even argue with him in that dialect. Nowadays, I can only understand when its spoken to me and I still need some clarification sometimes.

I was also told that the bad words in Hainanese actually sound quite nice. I only know one though since I barely speak the dialect.

Beef stew

2 Oct 2008 - Under Food, Recipe By Mandrake

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XT’s mom passed me this recipe which she had been using for more than 30 years. She told me stories of how she would feed the two of them sitting at the entrance to the kitchen.

Anyway, here is what I cooked today. Its not totally the same but almost there.

These are the raw ingredients

Carrot, onions and garlic

Beef chuck

Beef chuck is actually the cheapest cut of beef that you can get at the supermarket. Its also one of the best cut for cooking stew. Thats probably because it won’t disintegrate so easily after being in the crock pot for more than 4 hours.

I fried the onions, carrot and garlic in a pan till the onions are semi-translucent. Then I added in the beef and also some secret ingredient which I am not going to mention here. I can’t due to NDA. You would have to experiment it yourself.

After stirring for a few mins, put these in the crock pot and add water till it covers the beef nicely. You can also add broth or stock if you want. I added some dark and light sauce for the taste.

Let the crock pot simmer the beef for more than 4 hours. I let it simmer for about 6 hours this time so the beef is quite tender when its served.

Delicious beef stew

After simmering for more than 6 hours, the beef just falls off when you put it in your mouth. Its not tough and goes down quite easily. Goes well with drinks such as beer.

Oven Fried Chicken

30 Sep 2008 - Under Food, General, Recipe By Mandrake

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Personally I like to eat fried stuff, but I do not like to fry it at home. Firstly, its the oil, makes the entire kitchen oily. Secondly, I have no use for the extra oil, maybe except to keep it aside to cook.

I came across some value chicken thighs when I was grocery shopping the other day. Having come across an oven fried chicken recipe from Photograzing, I decided to try it out. Its pretty simple actually.

I deboned the chicken thighs in the morning. Then soaked the thighs in cold water which had salt dissolved to it. You can add two table spoon of salt for this, but I only added 1. I will tell you the reason why.

Let it sit soaking in the fridge till evening.

In the evening, turn on the oven till 200C. Put in two tablespoons of butter onto the pan and let it melt. The recipe actually requires unsalted butter but I only have salted ones. Thats why I added less salt in the water mixture in the morning.

Pat dry the chicken thighs and dredge it thru a flour mixture of salt and pepper. You can add in any spices you want at this stage. Lay the chicken pieces skin down in the pan and let it cook between 40 - 50 mins. Then turn it over for another 20-30mins. Once thats done, your chicken is ready.

Chicken simmering in butter.