My adventures in East West fusion cooking…. the Kaya Brioche Bun

Kaya Pandan Brioche Buns

It had the makings of a pioneering culinary discovery, east meets west fusion cooking. Ladies and gentlemen I present the Kaya Pandan Brioche Bun. Could life get any sweeter? Middle son and me don’t think so.

Take one recipe for brioche, use the extracted pandan juice (see my pandan cake recipe to see how to extract the juice) from fresh pandan leaves to make the dough, and inject with Kaya jam ahead of cooking.

Ready to go in the oven

Kaya, and the Kaya bun are local Singaporean delights. Kaya is a jam made from egg yolks, coconut milk, and sugar and it looks a bit like lemon curd (for my UK readers).  We are big fans and have it spread on thick slices of white toast with plenty of butter. The perfect accompaniment to a morning cup of coffee.

Here’s what Wiki had to say…

Kaya, Serikaya or Srikaya (Malay: kaya; Indonesian: seri kaya; Tagalog: matamís sa báo, matamís na báo, or kalamay-hatì;Hokkien: 咖吔 ka-ia) is a food spread, a fruit curd made from a base of coconut milk, eggs and sugar. It is wildly popular in Southeast Asia, mainly in Malaysia and Singapore. The word kaya means rich in the Malay language and hence represents the texture of this popular food.

Always one to have a go, me and two toddlers created the very first (as far as I know) Kaya Pandan Brioche Buns in our humble kitchen. It was fun, albeit messy.

The taste test…

To be honest, and I must be, they were a little dry. I did wonder where the jam had disapeared to in some of the buns, until my husband pointed out he had seen toddler#2 ‘express’ some of the buns straight to the cooking tray bypassing their jam injection.

Lesson learnt, more jam and in all the buns. I do also think I need a different dough mix, perhaps Brioche and Kaya are not destined for one another. But….

Kaya Donuts (Doughnuts for us Brits)…now your talking!!

Black eyed bean and sausage one-pot (and meal plan)

Yes Will.I.Am and Fergie, tonight was a good night…kiddies ate all their dinner (eventually) AND I got to bed early, albeit in my son’s bed, and it was a more a case of dozing off balanced precariously on the side of his bed. Parenting eh, you gotta take it as it comes.

Inspired by the organic food row in NTUC Finest @Bukit Timah Plaza, I purchased some black eyed beans today and had the forethought to boil them in advance for a hearty one-pot dinner.  I also  cooked up a vat of tomato, garlic and onion sauce using one of my immense 1.5kg cans of tinned tomatoes.

Baby to scale! 1.5kg tin of tomatoes from GIANT

The kids literally got their hands dirty and enjoyed pulping up the whole tomatoes for the sauce. So into the giant pan went approximately 200g of pre-cooked (till tender) black eyed beans, 6 halved pan-fried sausages, and 5 or so big ladles of tomato sauce (seasoned with sea salt and dried oregano). Simmer for 5-10 minutes and serve sprinkled with a little fresh parsley for the adults! FYI, the best place to buy fresh parsley and mint is the wholesale fruit and veg market. I get two large handfuls of each for $1.

 

 

Best news is the remainder of the sauce is frozen in two more dinner portions for making spaghetti bolognese, and secret seven tomato sauce for pizza later this week. Life just got a little easier.

Meal plan for this week is…

Day one – Black eyed beans and sausage one pot
Day two – Saffron chicken – a la Ariana Bundy
Day three – Creamy chicken (use left over chicken), spinach and roasted squash pasta
Day four – Spaghetti Bolognese
Day five – Home-made Pizza (using home-made dough and my secret seven tomato pasta sauce for the base)

 

 

Toddlers Cook Food, Toddlers Eat Food!

I only recently started cooking with my kids – mainly as a way to entertain them in the afternoon when it is too hot in Singapore for them to play outside, or the baby is sleeping. We started with cupcakes and banana pancakes, and now they get involved with pretty much anything. The more blenders, choppers and mixers involved the better.

I have also found the more they help, the more different types of food they eat. There are other benefits to cooking with them;

• straight forward bonding time between them and me
• improving their dexterity as they scoop, pour, whisk, and mix
• learning about weights and measures and general literacy
• learning about foods, their names and what they do to help our bodies (or harm if too much is eaten!

 

I discovered much to my daughter’s delight that there is a Dora Little Cooks magazine (I bought it at  Villa Market@Tanglin Mall). We have cooked the Tuna and Sweet Potato Fishcakes which were really tasty and the kids ate them all up. I have previously served the kids canned tuna and sweetcorn and both were rejected outright. However, it seems this recipe gave them just the right treatment to be palatable! Click on the link above for the recipe.