sorry, i'm unable to phonetically spell out the name of this cake in the romanised form i'd learnt in college. it's only been 3 years but i've long forgotten it. talk about short-term memory. anyway, i'll make a bold attempt to explain the 4 really weird sounding words. if you break them up individually and literally, they are "water", "steam", "egg", and "cake". get it?
it's one of my "fun" projects this week, scanning the web for "oriental" recipes on "non-oriental" websites. this dessert is apparently a favourite among the cantonese speakers hence the cantonese name. it's not baked but steamed instead, as with most chinese cakes. didn't know what to expect but the pictures posted on the website were fairly attractive. so i tried it and i wasn't disappointed. the cake turned out really soft and spongy and once i popped a slice in my mouth, the familiarity just hit home through my taste buds down my esophagus to a very welcoming and deprived stomach.
this is what my family calls "goy nng kueh" in hokkien (literally, "chicken egg cake"). it's usually used for praying purposes along with it's darker cousin the "huat guay" (a.k.a. "prosperous kueh"). you see them with a dot of red food colouring sold pretty often in the markets. one my favourite aunts make these delicious things by hand (?!) but i'd chickened out and opted for the trusty mixer. (no serena williams' arms thank you very much!) should have taken another photo to show you guys how spongy it was, but the cake didn't last long between hao-e and i. it was gone in less than 10 hours - hao-e ate it for supper and breakfast!
last night we had a most scrumptious bbq dinner at the original swizzle inn . much much much better than the dinner we had some days back with O and K at the branch in warwick. woo.... i had the char-grilled prime rib and the much famed rum swizzle, while hao-e had the margarita shrimp and strawberry daiquiri. blogging about it brings back nice memories. heh. Oh! C and i found some fresh watercress at the marketplace yesterday. so today's lunch we had watercress soup. i've been yearning for some light clear vegetable soup for some time... especially after a discussion with HL about the lack of vege variety here, and how she spotted kailan on the island! KAILAN !!! how did they manage to get their hands on kailan ?! i was joking with HL that one of the chefs must have secretly brought over some seeds and planted some in his back garden. or else why doesn't kailan appear in the vege aisle of the marketplace as well?! oh, and i bought some canned longan, jackfrui...
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