I’ve been baking apple crumble, pineapple galette and not forgetting my favourite black sesame cookies.

My pineapple galette

I know. It's not well decorated and pretty at all.

Sliced pineapple galette

The spiced pineapple galette is an interesting take on the Chinese New Year old favourite- the pineapple tart. This pineapple galette ensures that the fresh pineapple are sliced in generous portions so that the flavours come through more so than its heavily sweetened cousin. The crust recipe is a sweet shortbread recipe which turned out well. This is really good to eat especially when it’s warm. However, the only bad thing about this is that it is not as ready-to-eat as compared to pineapple tarts.

Sesame cookies

I love sesame

I’ve also tried baking the black sesame cookies with my new cookie cutter that I bought at the class. I’m such a big fan of sesame that most of my friends can attest to that. the sesame cookie bakes really fast so one needs to be extra careful not to burn them. I wasn’t too careful during the baking of my first batch and they browned a little more than I wanted them to. Overall, this is definitely a nicely Asian styled shortbread cookie perfect for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Among the stuff the three of my baked goodies, the most popular was actually the apple crumble. The crumble bits were really good and I used a mixture of granny smiths and Washington apples.

Dad loved this one a lot and had no complaints about it at all.

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One day I went to Inagiku (稲ぎ), Fairmount Singapore, for lunch. this is the first time I’ve been there after its renovation. It looks so much more spacious and I really like its zen-like touch to this space. We went specially to eat the tempura because they just flew in this Japanese chef for two weeks. We were ushered to a counter seat where we see the Japanese tempura chef and his assistant at work.

Tempura is always seen as the poorer cousin of Japanese cuisine amongst the sushi and sashimi. When in fact, a good tempura is not all that easy to make. I've read that the art of tempura lies in the batter, the quality of the cooking oil and the freshness of the ingredients.

I'm not a tempura expert and I don't know if the quality of cooking oil makes such a big difference (especially if you use fresh oil and say an average oil. What I know is that the batter needs to be light and fluffy which many places do not achieve. And people usually think that when you deep-fry something like that, freshness wouldn't matter as much because it will be mask when it is fried. I beg to differ. The freshness of the ingredients at Inagiku really makes the whole difference. Try it and you will know the difference.

The special set lunch included a fresh salad in a tangy, citrus sauce, a small platter of sashimi, 2 prawn tempuras, a selection of 4 vegetable tempura which you can choose from a range of 8, 2 more tempura mains, and a small bowl of ten don and miso soup. It was a very filling lunch!

My usual favourites for tempura is actually the prawn. However, my favourites from the day's lunch is the unique combination of tempura of squid stuffed with cod roe wrapped with a shiso leave. That really redefines tempura for me.

The vegetable tempura were fantastic too. I've heard that they fly in the ingredients from Japan and from the counter seat, I could see that they were indeed very fresh!

I can't wait to go back to Inagiku for its sashimi and sushi. I'm sushi-depraved. After my Japan trip, I realised I couldn't phantom eating at most causal Japanese restaurants because they just don't make the mark. I rather save up and splurge on good Japanese food.

Sashimi

Prawn and white fish tempura


Mix of vegetable tempura


My favourite! Shiso leave wrapped over squid with cod roe



Simplicity at its best- Ten don from Inagiku

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Inagiku (稲ぎ)
Fairmount Singapore
80 Bras Basah Road
Singapore 189560
Tel:6431 6156