Recipe: Tofu Sambal

Tofu is something that everyone in my house, with the exception of me, love. In fact, even my helper who is from India loves tofu. I  am the odd one out, so this recipe is actually an anomaly. It was actually made my by my helper, but I am putting it down here, in case I need to make it when she is no longer with us.

This recipe is a local one, which has been adapted from Chinese cooking, but Indianised to suit an Indian palate.

Tofu Sambal

Ingredients:

  • 2 packs of hard tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 red onions, chopped roughly
  • 1 onion, chopped finely lengthwise
  • 4-5 fresh red chillies (use more if you want it spicier)
  • 5 cloves of garlic
  • 1-inch piece of ginger
  • 2 tbsps oil
  • Salt to taste
  • Coriander leaves to garnish

Method:

  • Dry the tofu lightly and bake in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Keep aside.
  • In a blender, blend together the onions, garlic, ginger and red chillies into a fine paste and keep aside.
  • Heat oil in a pan and when warm, add the onions chopped lengthwise and let it become translucent.
  • Pour the blended chilli mixture and stir until the mixture becomes thick and the oil starts oozing out.
  • In the same blender, blend the tomatoes until it becomes a fine paste. You can also use tomato puree here instead. Add the tomato paste to the pan and let it cook well.
  • Now add the baked tofu into the pan and season to taste.
  • Let it all come to a nice rolling boil and switch off the flame.
  • Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with plain rice.

In My Hands Today…

February Flowers – Fan Wu

1814555Set in modern China, February Flowers tells the stories of two young women’s journeys to self-discovery and reconciliation with the past.

Seventeen-year-old Ming and twenty-four-year-old Yan have very little in common other than studying at the same college. Ming, idealistic and preoccupied, lives in her own world of books, music, and imagination. Yan, by contrast, is sexy but cynical, beautiful but wild, with no sense of home. When the two meet and become friends, Ming’s world is forever changed. But their differences in upbringing and ideology ultimately drive them apart, leaving each to face her dark secret alone.

Insightful, sophisticated, and rich with complex characters, February Flowers captures a society torn between tradition and modernity, dogma and freedom. It is a meditation on friendship, family, love, loss, and redemption and how a background shapes a life.

Poem: Books

Another poem on one of the loves of my life (other than my family) – books!

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Source

Books!

 

Open or closed, thick or thin,
I look upon them as my kin

My life is a paradox because I hate to open them
But, at the same time, I have to devour them as soon as I open them

Their smell intoxicates me as none other
In them, I can ask a question and find an answer

I love to have them everywhere
Even on a chair and under the stair

Parting with one is a sweet sorrow
Happy to have someone to bestow
But my heart breaks when parting with them though

Have you figured out who or what I am talking about?
What I am trying to say all in a way that is roundabout?

Why, this is all about books,
My love, my obsession, my life’s passbook

Books are your best friend, your silent pal
The ones who are there for you, part of your cabal!

 

 

In My Hands Today…

The Girl from The Savoy – Hazel Gaynor

26156468Sometimes life gives you cotton stockings. Sometimes it gives you a Chanel gown …

Dolly Lane is a dreamer; a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but her life has been fractured by the Great War. Memories of the soldier she loved, of secret shame and profound loss, by turns pull her back and spur her on to make a better life.

When she finds employment as a chambermaid at London’s grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly takes a step closer to the glittering lives of the Bright Young Things who thrive on champagne, jazz and rebellion. Right now, she must exist on the fringes of power, wealth and glamor—she must remain invisible and unimportant.

But her fortunes take an unexpected turn when she responds to a struggling songwriter’s advertisement for a ‘muse’ and finds herself thrust into London’s exhilarating theatre scene and into the lives of celebrated actress, Loretta May, and her brother, Perry. Loretta and Perry may have the life Dolly aspires to, but they too are searching for something.

Now, at the precipice of the life she has and the one she longs for, the girl from The Savoy must make difficult choices: between two men; between two classes, between everything she knows and everything she dreams of. A brighter future is tantalizingly close—but can a girl like Dolly ever truly leave her past behind?

2017 Week 34 Update

This week was a relatively short week with the long weekend as Singapore celebrated the feast of sacrifice or Hari Raya Haji as it is called here. We are now in September and counting down to the last few months of the year!

This weekend, we went out together as a family after a long time. I needed to buy a jacket for work and so decided to make an evening out of it. We went and shopped and then had dinner. It was an enjoyable evening.

I am looking to buy a fitness tracker and am quite confused about what to buy. I looked at the Fitbit Alta and the Flex but also like the Charge. Also, I want something which is discrete, by which I mean I don’t want to advertise the fact that I am using a fitness tracker. I used to have a Fitbit Pebble (is that the right name?) and used to clip it to my clothes or even into my pockets and nobody knew I had one. Is there one like that in the market now? Anyone with more information, please comment below so I can decide soon. My current fitness tracker is my phone and I am using the Argus app to track steps, water, movement etc. The only downside to this is that I have to make sure I am carrying my phone in my hand or in a pocket all the time and sometimes that becomes cumbersome, which is why I am looking for a new tracker.

Work-wise, I am reaching my three-month mark here and this should end the probation period. I still haven’t had any one-on-one with my manager, in spite to asking multiple times, so this is something I probably will have to give up on. Maybe when the time comes to do your annual goals, my manager will finally find time for me.

Something happened this week and I realised that this organisation was willing to spend hundreds of thousands on an event, even provide tickets which are worth thousands free of cost just to fill up seats, but would not spend a few few hundreds to allow staff to take taxis home after a 15-hour work day, because the time would not yet be 9 pm at that point (which is the official policy to  allow taxi claims)! So all the posturing about staff welfare, including having staff fun clubs is just that – posturing. They don’t put their money where their mouth is.

The other thing I am excited about is my parents coming to Singapore. I  just applied for their visa over the weekend and think it should be approved sometime this week. I have also sent my list of items to buy from Mumbai and am waiting for the goodies next month!

Have a wonderful September and an awesome week!