YOLO // Have a great long weekend

YOLO - Yuzu, orange, lemon and olive oil

Nancy Silverton's Bagna Cauda

Every once in a while, you come across that recipe that makes you go, "OMG" to "OMG, this is soooo good I got to keep this a secret " to "OMG, I got to share this because it is too good!" Since it wasn't mine to begin with, I got to share this incredible recipe by Nancy Silverton with you. Have an awesome Monday, indeed.

The munckin - 21 months

I envy mothers with children who ...  Sleep through the night ... Can entertain themselves ... Are calm-natured ... Are good being on their own ... Put up little resistance at any given time ... Stay in their strollers when they go out for walks ... Are good and fast eaters.

But I can't imagine loving my kid more if he were less intense and spirited. There is so much more to love when he has such a big personality.

Baking an orange olive oil cake // A touchpoint map

• De-stress with Food network before heading to work on a Saturday morning
• Get inspired by uber perky TV host
• Spend a productive morning in the office
• Buy remaining ingredients including 5 oranges though you only need two because the supermarket sells them in a bundle of 5 (on hindsight, it was a good move to get more oranges)
• Lunch
• Bake
• Initiate taste-test with the Mister and Munckin
• Critique "It's quite dry..." said the Mister
• Get into problem-solving mode
• Slather raspberry preserves as Munckin clamours for more "Mama... Mama..." 
• Use the opportunity to teach him about patience
• Friends arrive, serve minicakes. Munckin polishes off one on his own.
• Thank your lucky stars for kinder-than-thou friends  
• Smother your kid's chubby-cheeks with all the love you can muster

Recipe courtesy of Melissa d'Arabian 

Improvisations from the original recipe for mum's birthday lunch:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour, instead of 1 1/4 cups
• 1/2 cup sugar, instead of 3/4 cup sugar
• 3, instead of 2, eggs
• Juice and zest of 1 orange (about 4 tablespoons juice, 2 tablespoon zest)

A recipe to have and hold xx

Penang Seafood Restaurant, 76 Geylang Lorong 25A

Between work and family time, there really isn't any motivation to sit down and blog properly about meals. However, I thought it would be doing Penang Seafood Restaurant serious injustice if I procrastinated any further.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fog on your monitor is not a technical error. Do not wipe your screens.

The salted egg yolk squid is, by far, the best salted-egg-yolk-something I have ever had! That's some tall order, I realise.

The chewy calamari bears a light breaded coating that poses little resistance to the creamy, slightly spicy salted egg yolk sauce. This dish absolutely calls out to the calamari-loving dork in me.

It seemed as if we each had a favourite that afternoon and KW loved the samba lala that was a saucy, slurpy treat if you are into that suck-on-shell kind of thing. 

The prawn paste chicken was marvellous too. Thickish unctuous batter encasing juicy insides. I have no idea how some people featured on Sunday Times under the Hot Bod section "eat only fried food once a week" - I can't live without at least one serving of something deep-fried everyday.  

For my selectively health-conscious and fish-loving dad, the Assam fish head was gloriously piquant and satisfying. That meant the rest of us didn't have to hear him complain about it for the upcoming weeks. Double bonus.  

The only dish we would not order again is the Neptune fish maw. Goopy, starchy and slimy, it was not fantastic. I am personally not a fan of fish maw to begin with but I didn't hear anyone call out for it either. 

Just in case you are wondering where the "Penang" in Penang Seafood Restaurant is...

The Assam laksa and Penang prawn mee are both very competently done. 

Another goopy, starchy and slimy dish but far less offensive was the san lor hor fun. My mum ordered this for Russell, who inherited kway-teow-loving genes from me.

However, if you are pressed for stomach space, skip this and order the Penang char kway teow instead.

KW and I had a quick chat over this Penang char kway teow - he think the one we had in Penang was better and I thought, Maybe but the plate we had in front of us was absolutely delicious and I wouldn't drive across the causeway with this around. A serious contender for one of the best Penang char kway teows around.

My mum's "birthday cake" - a lovely lemon cream meringue tart from Carpenter & Cook.

On board for Pantone's Color of the Year - Radiant Orchid. Heehee...

Silk, SICC

KW's grandmother's birthday dinner at Silk is a memory worth visiting over and over again, and thankfully, I have KW's cousin Shiyi to thank for these pictures. 

A festive celebration calls for animal sacrifice. Two hogs for the family, no less.

We got to take home the hacked up hog (can you tell I'm super dupes excited about the latest Games of Throne?) and it was still awesome the next day. 

Although I don't have a picture of it, the steamed fish in Sichuan sauce bore handsome chunks of peppery puckery morsels that I couldn't stop picking on. 

My father-in-law managed to get hold of a couple of hugeass Alaskan crabs. The kitchen did them up two ways - one of which was steamed with egg whites and the other stir-fried with garlic and pepper. 

This, my friend, was crazy delicious. I have never had crab legs almost the size of Russell's forearms and they were incredibly sweet and succulent. 

Always the bridesmaid but never the bride... A plate of well-prepared crunchy broccoli paved the way for some atonements of our sins.

For carbs, we had truffle mee pok that KW's grandmother, who had stopped eating since the fish as she was full from the first 3 dishes, slurped it down lock, stock and barrel. 

Desserts-wise, my favourite deep-fried red bean pancake and steamed corn cake made for a lovely and sweet duo. 

A clandestine act at Ya Kun

Sharing both our childhood love - strawberry tart from Delifrance

I think I speak for 99% of the human race when I say I miss the weekend!