My first Singaporean cookies

I made my first batch of cookies in Singapore! And yes, I will probably continue to get excited the first time I do every very normal thing, only this time in Singapore. Anyway, the cookies were really just to have a snack for Andrew to take to work; while we were in the hotel, we bought granola bars that he ate for work-day snacks. They were good but I never like how very sweet store-bought granola bars are, so I prefer making my own for snacks.

Except then I made batch of granola on Sunday (first batch of granola in Singapore!) and used most of my newly bought (first big shopping trip for groceries in Singapore!) granola-bar-type ingredients for the actual granola. But I did have an interesting new sugar (black sugar, which seems way more exciting than brown sugar although it is in fact a similar colour to treacle sugar, muscovado sugar, and other dark brown sugars), an interesting new flour (very fine, pale yellow-ish whole-wheat flour; I’m not sure if it actually is whole-wheat), and some baking staples like eggs and baking soda (and here is another set of parentheses, just so I can say I have managed to fit five sets into one two-sentence paragraph).

So I made up some sugar-laden cookies, meaning I could just as well have bought more sugary granola bars for work snacks. But I’m glad I didn’t because, much to my surprise, the cookies made with all the new-to-me ingredients, eyeballed measurements and some unusual elements turned out to be some pretty decent peanut cookies. I’m glad I paid attention when I made them; I will definitely make them again, although this time for a treat instead of a snack.

For now, though, off to go get some more granola bar ingredients. After I sort out a little kitchen disaster I just had (first kitchen disaster in Singapore!)

Whole-wheat olive oil peanut cookies

Makes about 18

I’ve listed alternative options for things like the fine whole-wheat flour and black sugar, which should all work perfectly well. You could also substitute the peanut butter with any other nut butter, and the olive oil with vegetable oil, but then you'd have to give the cookies a new name. Add-ins could work well – chocolate chips, dried fruit, other nuts – although I liked the simplicity.

1 c fine whole-wheat flour (or use cake flour)

¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ c toasted sweet peanuts (another new-to-me ingredient; alternatively, use raw peanuts or very lightly salted roasted peanuts)

¼ c olive oil

¼ c peanut butter

½ c black sugar (or any other dark, moist sugar such as treacle, muscovado, demerara, etc.)

¼ c caster sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 175 C and grease a cookie sheet with a little olive oil.

In a medium bowl, sift and mix flour, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the centre and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk olive oil, peanut butter, sugars, egg and vanilla extract until well blended and frothy. Pour into the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes together into a firm dough.

Break off slightly-larger-than-walnut-sized chunks of dough and roll them into balls. Place the balls spaced about three centimetres apart on the cookie sheet and press each ball to flatten into a disk. 

Slide the cookies into the oven and bake for 8 to 12 minutes - less if you want softer cookies, more if you'd prefer them a little crisp. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes before lifting onto a wire rack to cool to room temperature.

These cookies kept well in a sealed container for one and a half days and then they were gone, so I have no further information on how long they might keep.

And now: eating AND cooking in Singapore!

Living in a hotel and being forced to eat out every night is not really a hardship, especially not when you’re doing so in Singapore where there is sure to be yet another hawker centre, food court, cafe or restaurant around every corner, all of them offering a bewildering array of dishes to choose from. But, as evidenced by this site and my former life as a caterer and chef, I like to cook. What with the crazy few days before leaving South Africa and nearly three weeks in a hotel, I hadn’t cooked a thing for about a month. The closest I came was making peanut butter and apricot jam sandwiches on the floor in our hotel room for Andrew to take to work. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches are delicious, but a three-year-old can make them with eyes closed (maybe; perhaps I should get my sister-in-law to do an experiment with my three-year-old niece). Which is to say, my daily sandwich-making hardly provided me with any sense of culinary achievement.

The walk home from the shops, along a canal

However! Buying random, unfamiliar vegetables, packages, bottles and jarred things and trying to figure out what to do with them in order to end up with an edible dinner – now that does provide me with a sense of achievement, even more so if the dinner is not just edible but actually good. We moved into our flat – called a condo here – over the weekend, and before we’d even unpacked anything, we’d been to our local grocery shop and stocked up on some familiar staples, and a whole lot of other things that seemed like they might be good and weren’t too expensive (in case they weren’t good).

Inaugural dinner, much more average than the word "inaugural" implies

After weeks of eating out we both just wanted vegetables, so I roasted a big tray, tossed it in a spicy peanut sauce (that possibly contained cuttlefish; I think I accidentally bought cuttlefish-laced chilli sauce but didn’t tell Andrew and he didn’t seem to mind) and called it dinner. It was edible, but not great; it appears Chinese green carrots and white radishes are perhaps not best when roasted (although, please do correct me if I'm wrong).

Dinner number two - much better!

But I was not discouraged, and dinner number two fared much, much better. We managed to find proper whole-wheat spaghetti, to my delight, and tossed the hot, cooked spaghetti with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, Chinese spinach, crushed garlic, lime juice, soy sauce and olive oil. I topped the pasta with enormous toasted pumpkin seeds, and voila – dinner. So good. The kind of thing I would’ve made back in Cape Town, but using lots of local ingredients (that is, as local as things can be when not much is grown on this small island).

Biggest pumpkin seeds I've ever seen

Mushroom spaghetti with spinach and lime

Serves 3 or 4

Most of the ingredients here can be easily substituted. For example, you could use normal spaghetti, or a different shape pasta; use sunflower seeds instead of pumpkin; replace the mushrooms with any other variety of mushrooms you can find; use English spinach or rocket instead of Chinese spinach; and while the lime juice is lovely, lemon will also work. Reduce the garlic if you’re not used to too much.

150g shiitake mushrooms

180g enoki mushrooms

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Large bunch of Chinese spinach

Juice of 3 tiny limes, or 1 average lime

75g pumpkin seeds

4 tbsp olive oil

Salt

250g whole-wheat pasta

4 tbsp soy sauce

Pepper

First do your prep: slice the mushrooms, crush the garlic, cut the spinach up into bite-size pieces, squeeze the lemon juice and toast the pumpkin seeds in a hot oven till golden – watch them, they burn quickly.

Once your prep is done, place a large pot filled three-quarters of the way up with water, a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt over high heat to bring to the boil.

Meanwhile, place a large, heavy-bottomed pan over high heat, pour about a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan, and add the shiitake mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms until dark golden; add the enoki mushrooms and sauté for a few more minutes (skip this step if only using larger mushrooms; the enoki mushrooms should be cooked much less since they’re so small and frail). Remove the pan from the heat and lower the heat to medium.

Your pasta water should be boiling by now – add the spaghetti.

Return the mushroom pan to the heat, adding the spinach and garlic. Sauté for a few minutes until the spinach has wilted. Scoop a few spoonfuls of pasta water into the pan and add the lime juice, soy sauce, another two tablespoons of olive oil and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Give it a good stir and turn the heat as low as it can go.

When the pasta is cooked, drain thoroughly and add to the mushroom pan. Turn the heat up to high and toss the pasta quickly until most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat and taste – you might need to add a bit of soy sauce or salt, or some more lime juice or pepper. If you do add more liquid, return it to the heat for another minute or two; otherwise, remove from the heat and scrape into a serving dish.

Top with the toasted pumpkin seeds and serve.