What do you do with leftover mandarin oranges after the Chinese New Year? Put them to good use in a nice dessert cake such as this very delicious mandarin orange and cheese cake slices. But if you are too lazy to make your own mandarin orange in syrup (like I was), fret not. You can easily buy a can of it off the supermarket shelf anywhere in Singapore. It’s available at all times of the year too, which means you can make this cake at any time of the year as you please!
Pang Susie, or Pang Susi, is an Eurasian snack that’s popularly consumed during the Easter or Christmas seasons. It is a very interesting snack with its dough made of mashed sweet potato, as well as with a spiced meat filling that’s a combination of sweet and savoury flavours.
This is a childhood snack of mine – the Teochew soft cake, or what one would call ‘neng go’ (soft cake) in Teochew. These ‘cakes’ can be commonly found in local bakeries and traditional Teochew pastry shops, available throughout the year as a snack.
The osthmanthus flower is a small, yellow (or white) flower that grows on small shrubs or trees and has a strong and sweet fragrance, which is why it is very popularly used as a flavour of tea as a dried flower. Many people also believe that the flower has medicinal uses, especially when it comes to the complexion and detoxification of the body.
The smell of fish maw in the kitchen was very strong as I was boiling this ingredient in preparation of making this soup the night before. It smells like Chinese New Year; smells like how the kitchen and the entire house always smells like when my mum prepares the dishes before the reunion dinner. It smells very familiar, and very good.
