The Leaning Tower of Kimchi Fried Rice, Great Balls of Potatoes and Brownies (the pastry, not the magical folks)

Posted on December 25, 2010 by Zareth

I was supposed to post this last week but somehow never around to it. I drafted, edited but somehow the entry was never to my liking. So I just let it stewed in the dark halls where incomplete stories lay in repose.

Anyway, I added more content to the original draft.

But first, we need to backtrack to last week.

In my previous post, I wrote about last Monday dessert, last Wednesday breakfast and dinner.

This will be about last Thursday’s and last Friday’s dinner.

I’ve always like fried rice and it’s a comfort food for me. Making fried rice is easy as the dish is very versatile. Just throw in any leftovers, add some oil and fry everything.

For such a simple dish, it’s also very easy to get it wrong.

The most important thing is leftovers.

Fresh ingredients are not completely banned. You can use fresh veggies and eggs (I hope your eggs are fresh) and any kind of meat (but I prefer to use Spam). But your rice strictly needs to be leftover.

I cannot stress that part. Your. Rice. Need. To. Be. Leftover. The first time I made fried rice, I made the rookie’s mistake of using freshly steamed rice.

I spent the next one hour suffocating on sticky, hard-to-swallow fried rice.

When you eat fried rice, you can feel the individual grains on your tongue. This texture is achieved by using steamed rice that has been left overnight in the refrigerator. This helps the rice to become dry and making it easier to separate the grains. Rice left in the refrigerator for two to three days is the best, although you don’t want to leave the rice in there for too long or you’ll have tough, crunchy rice grains.

You’re not eating fried rice cereals.

There’s a fine balance to strike, too much moisture or too little moisture in the rice can sink your dish

Anyway, I love fried rice and I love Korean cuisine and one of my favourite Korean dish is kimchi: the spicy, fermented vegetable dish.

So I decided to combine the two and had this for yesterday’s dinner:

The Leaning Tower of Kimchi Fried Rice. The tilt was accidental.

The kimchi fried rice tasted great, although I wanted it to have a more “kimchi” kick. I went over to the wikipedia site and it stated that using over-ripened kimchi is better than using fresh kimchi. Hmph, didn’t know that. Probably that’s why my fried rice didn’t have that intense kick I was going after. The drink of the meal was plain water.

I had a surplus of mashed potatoes after last Wednesday’s dinner so I decided to do something special to them for last Friday’s dinner:

Deep-fried mashed potatoes with pan-fried pork sausages seasoned with sea salt and black pepper. Drink of the meal was Ribena.

I haven’t had sausages in a long while and they went nicely with the deep fried potato balls. I don’t have a griller so pan-frying was the way to go. However I didn’t expect so much smoke and even with the exhaust fan on and the balcony window open, the smell of fried sausages still lingered in my apartment for a good few hours. But other than the smoky atmosphere, the sausages were a success. They were a bit dry, but still juicy nonetheless.

The deep-fried mashed potatoes, on the other hand… was a near disaster. Well, they did come out edible but I almost screwed it up right from the start.

I made the mistakes of putting the mashed potato balls in a bowl before leaving them in the freezer for two hours so they could set. After two hours, they potato balls did set, but instead of the perfect balls that I wanted, they set into a mass of unrecognizable shape.

According to the law of gravity, the potato balls at the top compressed the potato balls at the bottom. So while I still had some spherical potato balls at the top, I had to remake the potatoes balls once I got to the bottom of the bowl.

That was the first mistake.

The second mistake was the size of the balls. I decided to ignore the recipe and made my potato balls palm sized when it called for the balls to be golf ball sized. A minor error that resulted in a grave consequence. The batter that covered the potato balls was too thin due to the large size of the balls.

The third mistake was the temperature of the oil. As I don’t have a deep fryer, I used a large wok with a liberal amount of canola oil in it. The first batch of potato balls took a long time to cook because the oil was not hot enough and even after I removed them from the wok, some were slightly undercook. The second batch was just perfect (they are featured in the pictures above) while the last batch was almost burned.

This is my first time deep frying food and I’ve always thought it was easy since my grandma makes it look easy. But I’ve forgotten that she has years and years of experience. Controlling the heat, the amount of oil in the wok and the amount of time deep frying the oil is no easy task.

But overall, the potato balls tasted okay and at least it was not inedible. So my leftover mashed potatoes did not go to waste.

So that concludes last week entry.

I went to a Christmas Eve party last night at a friend’s place. It was a gathering of friends with food, drinks and presents (I mean, what’s Christmas without the gifts?). For the party, most of us brought food along to share. I brought my mashed potatoes, with some slight changes. I added a lot more Italian Parsley, five gloves of garlic and two large handful of Parmesan cheese. It gave the mashed potatoes some kick.

And being the chocoholic, I baked brownies from scratch, which means, instead of using those box brownies, I measured out every ingredients, hand mixed and baked them.

Unfortunately, that’s the only picture I took. The frosting didn’t really turn out what I wanted it to be, but I managed to spread it across most of the brownie.

It got rave reviews and I was asked for the recipe. I wanted to say it was just some age-old secret recipe handed from generation to generation but I decided to tell the truth. I got it off from the Internet. The brownies were really easy to bake and taste much, much better than store bought brownies.

All in all, last night dinner party was very enjoyable and although it was the first time spending Christmas Eve alone without my family, I still had fun.

After the dinner, the host gave out the presents from the secret Santas. I got the coolest present from my Secret Santa:

An old book with parts of the front cover torn off

But wait for it…

That’s right, people, Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage II. But the best thing about the book? It’s the 1987, first edition book. My very first Isaac Asimov book and I get a hardcover first edition. I mean, how fucking awesome is that?

This is the note from my Secret Santa:

It says:

Hey Zareth,

Since you knew that scifi about the names of god (referring to the Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke. I told this story to a couple of friends, so I kind of figured out my Secret Santa), I figured you’re a fan of old scifi. I hope you like this.

Guess who?

I do enjoy classic science fiction like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke but most of the stories I read were either from books I’ve borrowed from the libraries or from websites. So the fact that my very first science fiction book is this hardcover first edition makes it more awesome.

Thanks mate.

Merry Christmas everyone.

When old PC games were The Shit.

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Zareth

My cousin gave birth to her first child two nights ago. Congrats to both parents and child! Looking forward to see my first cousin once removed in person.

I realized now that I’m sort of a distant uncle. Wow, this feels weird, and it makes me feel older too. And every time when I feel older, I get nostalgic and start thinking about those days when I was a kid.

Talking about those kiddy days, I was browsing Reddit (a HIGHLY ADDICTIVE news aggregator site that I frequent almost 24/7) when I came across a thread submitted by a redditor. He posted a thread talking about this old game called Rodent’s Revenge. What’s that, you ask. Well, just see the picture below:

(Taken from some PC Gaming website link)

Nostalgia overload.

I used to play that game Every. Single. Time. I remember once when I was playing this game and my Dad passed by and saw me playing it. He watched for a while before asking me what exactly was I playing:

Dad: “What are you playing?”

7-year-old Me: “A mouse killing cats.”

Dad: “So… how do you do that?”

7-year-old Me: “You push the blocks around to form a square around the cats to trap them and then you push some more until they become cheese then you push again and you get the cheese!”

Now that I think about it, my explanation sounded a bit… odd. But still, it was an awesome, awesome game. My brother and I killed hours just by sitting in front of it and figuring how to kill the cats. The game looks deceptively simple but as you go to the next level, it gets harder and more complicated and you need to use more brainpower to play.

So when I saw this game again, I went to the link and downloaded the game and started reliving the old days. My housemate saw me playing it and I had the same conversation with her as I did with my Dad.

Here’s the wiki link explaining the game and for those who remembers the game, here’s the link to download the game.

Playing this game triggered some memories and I started reminiscing about the old PC games I used to play. So with the help of Google and Reddit, I hunted down those games. Below are a list of my favourite old PC games:

1) Chip’s Challenge

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Essentially a puzzle game, the aim of the game is to collect chips and advance to the next level. Wikipedia describes it better than I do. Another game where my brother and I spent hours and hours on it.

I like the boots in the game too. The boots are some cool stuff. Fire Boots, Sticky Boots, Ice Boots. Yep, cool shit, man.

2) Lode Runner – The Legend Returns

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Anyone born in the 80s or early 90s has got to play this game before. I mean, come on, this game is classic. You might have played a few of its many variations and it was available on Gameboy too (I know, I have the Gameboy version).

My brother and I were obsessed with this game for three reasons. 1) It kicked ass. 2) It seriously, seriously kicked ass. 3) When we discovered there were a two players option, its ass-kicking ability increased exponentially.

Besides that, my brother and I found out that we could actually make a Lode Runner game from scratch. All we needed to do was to use the materials provided (something like the Sims but way better in ass-kicking capabilities) and build a level ground up. We would plant golds and weapons for our gold hunters to collect, crazy monks to provide some comic relief and challenges and we would also build some incredible looking mazes. When we were really bored, we would create multiple levels with increasing difficulty. I won’t say that playing this game taught us game design and computer programming but shit, at least we learned something new.

One of our favourite past-time was to create a level filled with bombs. Basically we would plant bombs EVERYWHERE. The thing about Lode Runner is that when you ignite a bomb and it explodes, other bombs in its near explosive vicinity will be ignited and explode too, so thus creating a chain reaction. So basing our experience on that, we’ll create a bomb-infested level and start the bomb chain-reaction. Our aim was to see who survive the holocaust. Of course, we made it more fun by putting in the crazy monks and random booby traps and weapons (like the dizzy gas).

Good times.

Here’s the Wiki link explaining Lode Runner.

3) JezzBall

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Another time-killer. The aim of the game is the contain the balls in very small space and cover up at least 75% of the space. Wikipedia explains it better.

4) Pipe Mania

(Taken from Wikimedia)

My brother and I loved this game. I get a sense of adrenaline rush when I see the green goo slowly slicking out and I DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT PIPE!!!!! WHERE IS MY PIPE? WHERE IS MY PIPE??

Wiki link explaining the game.

5) SkiFree

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Classic game. No explanation need.

But if somehow, you have not played the game before, here’s the Wiki link explaining it.

I never learned how to beat the stupid monster though.

6) The Even More Incredible Machine

(Taken from Abandonia)

Although not one of my best favourites (was never the little Engineer), I enjoyed this game cause I get to build stupid and incredible stuffs, as long as it still complete the objective of the game. I can’t remember the objective of the game, I think it was to move a basketball.

Abandonia and Wiki explains it all.

7) King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

(Taken from Wikimedia)

This game was THE BEST! (Capitalized, highlighted bold, italics, exclamation mark). Our very first immersive game, my brother and I spent literally hours on the computer to the point where we do marathon gaming from Friday evening to Sunday morning (stopping for meals, baths, sleep and all-the-things-little-kids-have-to-do-because-of-parents).

Our parents didn’t mind us playing this game because, seriously, this game required you to THINK. You had to find the clues, use them and try to finish the story. The fact that every action you do have some sort of consequences on the plot also intrigued my brother and I. While we were free to explore the amazing fantasy world of King’s Quest VI (sort of), we were also driven to finish the game and see the end of the story.

The thing is that, it took us 7 years.

Yep, 7 years to finish the damn game. We started when we were around 7 or 8. And we didn’t finish it till we were 14. There were reasons why we took so long.

First, the game was complex. Well, sort of. Even with the guidebook that came with the CD-ROM, we still could not crack some of the riddles. Furthermore, the guidebook doesn’t tell everything but rather, provide hints and useful information.

Second, short attention span (kids).

Third, we were young and probably didn’t really know exactly how we were suppose to play the game. And no, our parents did not help us. They are not interested in computer games.

So for 7 long years, we tried umpteen times doing the same thing: get stuck in the middle of the game and end up restarting the game just to try some ‘theories’ of ours and see if we could complete the game and the story.

It didn’t work.

In the end, we gave up and there was a 2 year long hiatus (and also partly because we got sidetracked by Half-Life and Half-Life: Opposing Force, Civilization, Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge and Age of the Empires 2).

One day, I chance upon the King’s Quest CD and thought to myself: “I got to finish the game!” So I went onto the Internet, did a search for a King’s Quest VI walkthrough, printed it out, loaded the game and…. finished it within 3 hours.

Well, fuck, I felt incredibly relieved and stupid at the same time. My brother was also shell-shocked, we spent 7 years of our life figuring how to crack the game and we finally finished it in 3 hours. Okay, so we cheated, but what the hell can you do when you slave 7 years on something that was not showing any results?

But would I do it again? You bet I would. This game fucking rocks.

Here’s the Wiki link if you don’t know this game.

So that’s the list of my favourite old PC games. Those were good, good times.

Now I’m off to play Rodent’s Revenge.

___________________________________________________________________

I’ve always wanted to post this video but I keep forgetting. It’s a quirky video but you’ll enjoy it.

Blogging From Blackberry

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Zareth

I’m blogging this from my Blackberry Bold 9700. Downloaded the app for WordPress.

How awesome is this? I can blog on the go!

That’s all for today.

Yeah I’m just bragging bout my BB.

Took this pic with my BB.

The Most Qualified Singaporean Taxi Driver

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Zareth

I’ve just realized that I’ve been blogging non-stop the past few days.

And I have yet to post those way overdue entries from November and December.

I’ll get to it, I promise.

But now, I’ll like to talk about this blogger that I’ve been a fan of the past few months.

This post is long and contains a few big, bombastic words (I’m analyzing a blog and a blog entry). So gore-fest loving people, no gross pictures for now.

He is a scientist. He holds a PhD. from the University of Stanford and migrated to Singapore (he was originally from China) to work in a top scientific institution.

But due to certain circumstances, he was retrenched (or fired, however you want to look at it) from his position and despite sending out resumes to universities and numerous institutions in Singapore, he was unable to find a job.

I’m not sure why he does not want to get a job overseas like the U.S or the U.K or Europe or China. I think part of the reason why he stay put in Singapore is because he became a citizen. He did explained it somewhere in his blog but I can’t find the post citing his reasons (i.e. not enough time, I’m going to be late for a dinner with friends).

I can’t remember how I stumbled across his blog (I think it was through The Temasek Review) but it was like finding a diamond when I did.

I read his whole blog in one sitting.

What I drew me to his blog was his nuance observations on human behaviours and characteristics. As a taxi driver, he has to opportunity to meet people from all walks of life and I think I can say I learned more about psychology from him than I did from my lectures.

As an aspiring writer, it is my aim to be more observant on human interactions and Mr. Taxi Driver got it down.

Actually, I think that is why most blogs written by waiters, bartenders or anyone working in the F&B, hospitality and service industries are extremely interesting. Because of their daily interactions with people day after day, they are able to understand or have a better understanding of the human psyche.

The other reason why I was attracted to his blog was because I find it rather curious that a PhD. holder from a top American university was unable to find a job in Singapore.

Singapore has a very liberal immigration policy and likes to attract the brightest minds (or what the Government call Foreign Talents) from all over the world (we have one of the lowest birth rates in the developed world). The fact that Mr. Taxi Driver is of Chinese ethnicity, a doctorate holder from Stanford and a scientist (none of that liberal artsy-fartsy character) should be a great catch for most government or private institutions in Singapore.

Yet, he couldn’t get a job.

I decided to read his blog to find out more about his situation. His first few posts describe the situation of his job loss, his inability to find a new one that result in him getting a job as a taxi driver.

In those posts, he also writes about the uncertainties he and his family have to go through since he does not have any stable income. In Singapore, not having any stable income is almost as good as being poor. With our increasing high cost of living standards and stagnant wages, getting by is getting increasingly harder.

Although he does harp about his misfortunes, you get the sense that he is really trying to make the best of his situation.

But the entries I like best are the ones he writes about his interaction with his customers, his company and other taxi drivers.

That is when you discover his powers of observation (he is a scientist after all).

The first few entries can be rather long-winded. But as he wrote more, the writing tightens up, the prose becomes more clear and in fact, sometimes the ending can be totally bizarre and unexpected. It’s like reading mini-short stories again and again.

The mark of a good writer, in my opinion, is someone who can convey a clear message to the readers in the tightest, cleanest, clearest prose possible.

One recent entries demonstrate this:

He was a local Chinese at least in his mid fifties. He was thin, of medium height, and carelessly dressed in a short sleeved shirt and long pants that looked like it had been worn continuously for days and smelled of garlic-marinated chicken barbecued by cigarette smoke. He had been holding the hand of the lady since I saw them.

The sentence that I highlighted, I just love it. Just by reading the sentence, Mr. Taxi Driver managed to emasculate the essence of a character (or in his case, a customer) in a single sentence. You get the idea that his customer is not a savoury character, but neither is the customer a bad person. In other words, he is just a very real human being with flaws.

You can find the whole post here.

There are two stories in that one post. The first one is mentioned above (it is about prostitution) and the second is about another customer (this time, gambling). The second story is short but is extremely well written and has an unexpected twist.

So go visit Mr. Taxi Driver’s blog and enjoy his tales about his interaction with people from Singapore or who came to visit Singapore. In fact, if you want to learn more about the culture of Singapore and the Singaporean psyche, you should read his blog. You will at least learn something from it.

My dream is to flag down a taxi and discover that the driver is none other than Mr. Taxi Driver.

What a happy day it will be for me.

Unfortunately, with me being constantly broke, I can only take cabs under certain circumstances (like when my parents are paying the fare).

One day, one day.

_______________________________________

A Singapore Taxi Driver’s Blog

P.S. I’m just a great fan of Mr. Taxi Driver. I am not promoting his site. He doesn’t needs any promotion. He already has hundreds of fans following his blog.

P.S.S In case you think this is a fake site set up by some writer, I believe Mr. Taxi Driver blogged about his taxi license. Beside, if he was fake, the Singapore blogosphere would have exposed him by now.

P.S.S.S Mr. Taxi Driver has a book out now. Visit his blog for more information:

__________________________________________

Music time again!

Remember the time I blogged about JamLegend?

Well, thanks to my obsessive playing the past few days, I came across another band called Kill The Alarm.

I can’t believe that I have never heard about this band. As an example of their awesome music:

And they sound good live too.

And another song of theirs:

So what are you waiting for? Get addicted to JamLegend!

And while you’re at it, get addicted to Kill The Alarm.

The Tooth Does Hurt – NSFW.

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Zareth

If you are squeamish about blood or hate gross pictures, then I can say that this post is indeed not for you.

If you have a weak stomach, then this is definitely not for you.

If you faint at the sight of the thinest trace of blood, then this is SERIOUSLY not for you.

But if you can stomach the sickest of things and watch through Saw III while eating pepperoni pizza (like me), then this is for you!

You know, kids, it does not pays to wrestle with the Tooth Fairy. Not when he is a hulking 1.93m (6ft 4in), 120kg (260 lbs) giant, also known previously as The Rock.

(Taken from daymix.com)