roti gluay

This is my first dessert / snack yet from David Thompson's Thai Street Food. I picked an easy one to start with, sweet banana roti.

san churro churros for two

A recent article in the New York Times, talked about a form of dieting, whereby you imagine eating the food before you eat it. They call it the Imagine Diet (link here while it lasts). The Imagine Diet works this way: before you want to eat that chocolate truffle you're really dying to eat, first you would imagine devouring one chocolate truffle after another, imagining the smell, the texture in your mouth. This apparently will take the edge of that craving and therefore make you not want to eat it as much. So, theoretically, instead of eating three choco truffles, you'd end up having just one.

This mental dieting is probably something that I should have put into practice before I went to San Churro. For the sake of my companions, more than for myself.

crème caramel

My older sister and I love virtually all food shows, one particular show is called Food Safari on the SBS network. It's a show on food from different cultures. The recipe for this crème caramel is from the Portuguese episode. I love it for its straightforward-no-messing-about method, just a really-easy-to-make dessert.

A few do's and don'ts:

• Do use medium-large size eggs (500-600g per dozen), I used extra large eggs and ended up with too much custard mixture even after filling up 6 of my decent sized mugs and had to pour them down the drain.
• Don't put too much caramel at the bottom of the ramekin, otherwise it won't melt during the baking process. As long as it thinly covers the bottom of the ramekin, that's all you need.
• Do use an oven-proof cups or mugs if you don't have any ramekins. I used cups & mugs of different sizes and to me that actually makes it more rustic and homelike.
• After I happily finished the crème caramel, I had left-over hardened caramel stuck on the bottom of my cups, I used the microwave to heat it up until it's liquid again, poured it onto aluminium foil and threw it away.