Banana Pancakes

"This song is meant to keep ya

From doing what you're supposed to

Like waking up too early

Maybe we can sleep in

I'll make you banana pancakes

Pretend like it's the weekend now."

Banana Pancakes, Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson's lyrics pretty much sums up the perfect kind of day to make banana pancakes: a lazy morning lie-in, a day dedicated to "you and me", a day for slowing down and taking your foot of the accelerator of life. I made banana pancakes on such a day.

I woke up to a nice long bank holiday weekend, one of those days where you turn around in bed and see your loved one lying next to you, and the sun rays are just peeking through the little gaps in the curtains, and everything seems perfect. No need to think about work for a good few days. My other half had had a long week at work and I thought it would be nice to make a lovely breakfast for him. I slipped out of bed quietly and went to see what was available in the cupboard.

I pulled out my big book of breakfasts, aptly called Breakfasts & Brunches, and flipped through the pages. This book, I think, was a real find. It was the one and only copy on the shelf of a popular bookstore in Singapore, and it seemed out of place being there, as though the bookstore happened to have it and did not know what to do with it but plonk it together with the other cookery books. Written by the Culinary Institute of America, the pages are filled with delectable breakfast dishes, from homely omelettes to full-on steak.

I turned to the section on pancakes and found what I was looking for: a recipe for banana pancakes. This one had an accompanying blueberry maple syrup which I sadly had to leave out as I didn't have any blueberries; as for the bananas I had plenty. I got busy mashing bananas, measuring out the ingredients and within the half hour had whipped up a nice big plate of pancakes, which I served to my other half (who was awake by now) topped with generous dollops of butter and syrup. So unhealthy, yet so perfect. Nothing beats eating banana pancakes in your pyjamas with your loved one and a nice cup of tea.

New beginnings...

I've talked for so long about this with friends and family (and anyone who had dared venture to ask!) and till then it has always seemed like a Plan. Now the time has come for this Plan to come to fruition and I can't believe that it is going to happen. How do I even describe what it feels like? A sharp turn on the road, or better yet, like being on a rollercoaster: you know that first bit after you've done that almighty climb and the rollercoaster's sort of teetering at the cusp, and you think "uh-oh" cos you know that in a matter of nano-seconds, your heart is going to lurch out into your stomach. It's the scary-exhilarated-anticipation kind of feeling.

It's taken quite a bit of courage for me to leave behind a good job with good pay in the corporate world and venture into the realm of cuisine, pretty much the unknown. But I guess it is true, if I don't do it now I will never know. I read something on a friend's FB page today, one of her thoughts of the day. It said that sometimes you just need courage to seize the moment, else you will in retrospect, wish that all you had was a little bit more courage.

I have read so much about the culinary world to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for it, but I still don't feel like I am equipped. So many "what ifs" still swimming in my head... I used to have a sense of adventure, but I think that has mellowed as I have grown older. I think it is the devil-may-care attitude that youth is so full of, and that was me...then. This is now. With age comes responsibility, obligations - you think more about the future and about raising a family, buying a house, retiring. And you think about whether you have the personal capacity to still go ahead with this despite not knowing what lies ahead. It is an adventure, and I'd like to think that all adventures test a person's mettle. I will be tested by fire (maybe literally, being in the kitchen!) but I pray that I emerge unscathed.

Class starts on Friday.

Is your goose cooked?

Christmas is over, and the fa-la-laas have come and gone all too soon. The 12 days of Christmas have seemed like one day and this has made me wish I had spent more of that holiday time doing just that: taking a holiday. We are all well too familiar with the whirlwind of activity that comes with the holiday season, (and more so for me as I was moving house this year) and how we are thrown into a frenzy when things go awry… I get quite concerned about that because that’s not what Christmas is all about. Hence to try not to get too caught up that I forget what it truly means, I tend to tiptoe rather gingerly into the festive period trying not to set off any “whirlwind mines”.

My undoing at Christmas is usually the roast. Actually, I’ve only cooked Christmas dinner three times, and during the first I cheated. I bought the roast ready-made. Two years ago, I scared the living daylights out of my guests when I emerged from the kitchen sweat-soaked and stressed. It was my first time making turkey, but thankfully and most mercifully, the turkey turned out well. This year I was in two minds. I debated with the other half on roast pork or goose. He won, and we had roast goose. It was also my first time making it. So I followed a Gordon Ramsay recipe on the internet, complete with sides, and made goose gravy using a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Christmas book. The goose was not perfect sadly. I had forgotten to baste my goose at the start and a whole hour had almost gone by before I remembered, resulting in the meat being a little dry in places. Otherwise, the bits that were still moist were actually rather good. Kudos Gordon! (I was so ready to let the recipe take the fall if it turned out adversely)

There are a couple of things I don’t do when preparing a roast for a dinner party, or any dish for any party for that matter. Firstly, I don’t normally like using a new recipe without first testing it out. Sounds so simple, but I can get quite caught up at the sight of an exciting recipe accompanied with the glossy pictures and I’m like “ooh I could do that too”. Experience has taught me that doing that is the fastest way to utterly destroy your mood and the rest of the evening. But sometimes, as with a goose or turkey, testing it can prove a bit difficult. Our goose had already cost us close to £50 and I wasn’t about to spend another £50 for trial-and-error. Maybe that’s why I stress out so much over the roast. Pork is more versatile. In fact I had tested out a roast pork recipe some weeks before to see if I fancied it more than goose. It was a crack(l)ing recipe to say the least (courtesy of Marcus Wareing) and I had been pleased with it. But the other half thought that I should be more adventurous and festive. Point taken.

The other no-no that I don’t do is to roast for the first time in an unfamiliar oven. New ovens leave a funny burnt rubber kind of smell and that gets absorbed into your roast. Worse still, the heat intensity varies in different ovens despite the same temperature and that could either spell success or cinder in the roast. Let’s just put it this way, an oven can be as temperamental as a woman with pms and I’m not being sexist here. It’s true. Again, experience has taught me to avoid this, and so despite that I was moving house this year, I insisted on staying put at the old place for Christmas dinner just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with possible tantrums the new oven could throw at me.

It’s a bit strange writing all this in hindsight, but better late than never. I guess if all goes a bit wrong, it’s a good idea then to have a great dessert at hand to cover all manner of cooking sins cos at the end of the day, that’s what really lingers on your tastebuds no?

Happy 2010 to all!