ABC Cooking Studio Singapore – Part 14

In the first 2 months of this year, I reduced the number of classes I initially intended to do because of the current situation. I also had to cancel all plans of travelling overseas even though I wanted very much to do some classes.

Nevertheless, here’s my review of the classes I did in January and February! I did mostly Bread and Cooking classes and I think now I actually like Cooking course more than Cake and Bread. I started off with liking Cake the most and for the past few months, Bread became my favourite. However I suspect that I like Cooking classes more right now because it has the most for me to learn from. I am still no expert, but for bread making I’ve acquired enough techniques hence now in every class there is not many new things to pick up. However, I still enjoy my bread classes very much, especially Bread Master classes where we get to learn totally different techniques compared to Basic and Riche classes.

On the other hand, there is still a lot for me to learn for Cooking since I am relatively new to cooking and every cooking classes would teach entirely new recipes and introduce new ingredients and techniques. It is satisfying to learn something new and to succeed at doing it at home when I try to recreate the dishes!

Hungry Bird rating

– Must learn! Recipe really good/ useful to recreate often
– Good, met expectations
– Ok… optional to learn
– Lower standard in taste than expected / looks better than it tastes/ not as good as store bought versions
– Waste of time

Regular Lessons

January Cake Master – Apple Pie

I love apple pie! My best memory of visiting Aomori Prefecture in Tohoku Japan was the apples. Aomori grown apples are known to be the best in Japan (and maybe in the world?) and even though I usually don’t like eating apples (the ones we find in commonly in Singapore), I loved the apples from Aomori. There was even an apple pie guide listing various apple pie cafes in the town. In Singapore, apple pie isn’t very commonly eaten (please don’t count in McDonald’s) and getting a really good one is even rarer. Nobody really talks about apple pies. So perhaps the only way to get a legit apple pie is to make it yourself!

For this lesson, the main learning point is on how to make puff pastry from scratch. In the Cake Basic course (old menu), we learnt how to make pâté sucrée and pâte brisée from scratch, using rubbing in cold butter method. (In the current Cake Basic course however, the above methods are no longer taught and they only offer a creaming of butter method in all their tart making classes, which is an express option but not as good.)

Making puff pastry is very different from pâté sucrée and pâte brisée because it involves laminating cold solid butter between layers of tart dough. This lamination method is similar to croissant or Danish pastry making which I’ve learnt in Bread Master class.

This puff pastry could also be used in other kinds of sweet pastries like in Mille-feuille (I love that too!), strudel.

For this apple pie, we also learnt to cook the pie filling from scratch with apples flavoured with rum and cinnamon and it was really good. The lesson took 4 hours in total and it was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it! I had my apple pie warm, served à la Mode with my favourite Häagen-Dazs Vanilla ice cream and it was perfect.

Hungry Bird rating: 5/5

January Bread Basic – Camembert Noix

This is one bread I was really looking forward to learning because camembert cheese in bread is always a good idea. This is a savoury bread with walnut dough, filled with camembert cheese and topped with butter and fleur de sel to bake. It was very similar to Graham Nuts and I like both of them.

Hungry Bird rating: 5/5

January Bread Basic – Berry Cream Cheese

I like cream cheese in bread but this one isn’t one of my favourites. The bread dough was really plain and the texture was kind of dry. The filling was just cream cheese and blueberry jam and overall it wasn’t very impressionable and definitely not as good as other cream cheese breads I’ve tried in the current bread menu like Cherry & Berry and Seigle Fruits. The unique point is the flower shape, achieved by baking it in brioche moulds.

Hungry Bird rating: 2.5/5

January Bread Basic – Veggie Brunch

This is one of the most basic breads in the current Bread Basic course, comprising of a plain bread dough with toppings on top. The shaping was also straight forward since the dough just had to be flattened for the toppings to be above, but I decided to attend this lesson since I think this would be something I would make at home often as it would serve as a satiating savoury meal.

Indeed it was as delicious as I imagined it to be, with savoury anchovy tomato paste and toppings of bacon, shimeji mushroom, broccoli and bell peppers. Mozzarella cheese was sprinkled onto the edges of the bread for aesthetic purpose but I guess if you want you could always place it over the toppings to make it look like typical mini pizzas.

Hungry Bird rating: 3.5/5

January Bread Master – Baguette

Baguette – the quintessential French bread that France is most famous for, alongside croissants. In Singapore I feel that baguette is often misrepresented because some local bakery chains sells baguette that deviates from the authentic texture. It should have a hard crust with chewy interior but because of said local bakery, some people expect baguettes to be soft and fluffy. This baguette at ABC Cooking is also modified to make it doable in a home kitchen and the most notable difference is the length – a standard French baguette should be 65cm long and 5cm wide. This length is obviously not achievable in a home oven where the oven tray is often 40cm by 30cm , so we made shorter baguettes, the size of a Batard but still possessing baguette features like the scoring.

The baking method of baguette is very different from most other breads done at ABC Cooking involves steps like a preheated tray and baking at super high temperature. There were a lot of new techniques learnt in this class and it is worthy of being a part of the Bread Master course.

My scoring is far from ideal and I hope it’ll get better with some practice. Aesthetics aside, the texture of this baguette is similar to the French baguettes I am familiar with and it is already good eaten plain with just good French butter and a touch of fleur de sel. In fact I eventually ate everything with just butter and salt! I love the slight crispy crust and chewy interior. This bread also freezes well. I kept one piece in the freezer and it was still good when thawed and toasted a week later.

Hungry Bird rating: 5/5

January Bread Riche – Blanc Noir and Croquant

When considering whether or not to tale up Bread Riche classes, this was one which caught my attention because the design looked so interesting. I could not imagine how this was made, with beautiful layers of black and white. The bread dough was also something different, kneaded with soy milk. The black dough had black cocoa powder added to it, the kind which is used in Oreo cookies. I was first introduced to this ingredient in the Halloween Cake baking class and it is very different from regular or dutch processed cocoa powder. The bread was actually just like plain bread, having no fillings in the dough or added in for baking. The sides were neatly trimmed off after assembling the layers together to make a side product – croquant. I’ve also never made or eaten something like this before and it was new to me.

I’m glad to say I love both the main products. The main bread was coated with maple syrup after baking and the bread was mostly plain but with the natural aroma of freshly baked homemade bread. I actually enjoy eating good old bread plain to appreciate the natural taste and this one was one of my favourites despite some others not liking how plain it was. The texture was soft and fluffy too which I appreciated.

The croquant was made of pieces of dough mixed with sugar and diced almonds to bake and the texture was chewy and denser with very slight crunch. I loved it too.

Hungry Bird rating: 5/5

February Bread Master – Fruit Danish

Without a doubt, the Fruit Danish is the most beautiful looking bread from ABC Cooking Studio! Just looking at it makes me happy. This lesson was 4 hours long but it was worth the experience. The process of making the pastry was basically the same as the Croissant lesson, but somehow I felt it was easier than my experience during the Croissant class. The Croissant lesson was my very first Bread Master lesson back then. Perhaps I feel different this time because I had gained experience.

There are of course many other shapes possible for Danish Pastry but we learnt 2 of the classic shapes. For the peach and pear filled variation, we used canned fruits and the pastry was baked with the custard assembled in. For the fresh fruit variant, the pastry was baked naked and the custard and berries were only assembled on later.

I would love to give this lesson a full score but the only drawback was the use of instant custard powder and I felt that ruined the perfection. The brand of instant custard used (Phoon Huat super instant custard powder) has a really artificial vanilla milk taste and it tastes nothing like what real custard tastes like. The pastry itself however, was really good. It was very light and flaky. It also helps that I could even keep it overnight, making it a practical bread to have. First I remove the fresh fruits and toasted the pastry in my oven toaster to restore the texture, before assembling the berries back on and it was as good as freshly baked. The canned fruits version was even earlier – It could be toasted together with the fruits. Even if it wasn’t kept overnight, I do recommend toasting it right before serving to maximize the crispiness because Danish pastry is best eaten crispy.

Hungry Bird rating: 4.9/5

February Bread Riche – Chocolate Loaf

Seeing loaves of bread makes me happy and I really like making loaves. This lesson for Riche class teaches a different shaping of chocolate marble bread. Back in the previous Bread Basic course, there was another Chocolate Marble loaf which has a simpler shaping technique. In this class we learnt a complicated way of braiding and rolling up to dough to achieve this effect.

The chocolate used for this bread was not chocolate chips or paste, but simply chopped milk chocolate couveture.

However, I felt that this bread did not really feel like a higher level than Bread Basic course breads because the dough was just plain bread dough without any fancier ingredients and it wasn’t really worth the price difference between Basic and Riche classes. The shaping was more complicated than usual Basic level breads, but even so, I felt that there wasn’t much to learn in terms of getting to know new ingredients and techniques related to the dough.

Texture wise, this bread was super soft and fluffy. It was cottony soft and stayed soft even the next day! Taste wise, it was just predictable and I would prefer if it could be more chocolatey.

Hungry Bird rating: 3.5/5

January Japanese Home Cooking – Sukiyaki

I was really looking forward to this class and I even bought my own Japanese cast iron irori nabe for this! Sukiyaki in Singapore is often misrepresented as a hotpot and often gets mistaken as a steamboat dish, but that is actually more like shabu-shabu. There are many styles of sukiyaki but this one taught at ABC was more like a dry stew and there is no soup broth to be drank (not like I expected it). For sukiyaki the beef is usually first pan seared with sugar and some shoyu liquid mixture before more liquid goes in and the beef is usually sliced thicker than shabu-shabu beef – which is paper thin and meant to be cooked by swiping it for seconds only in a clear broth.

Most of the lesson time was spent preparing the vegetables and learning some Japanese food preparation techniques like scoring the shiitake mushroom, and bundling up konnyaku noodles – which is actually unnecessary because you can actually buy konnyaku noodles which are already bundled up. The ingredients were cooked on a small frying pan individually and I plated it into my irori nabe purely for aesthetics purpose! Otherwise it could be served in a bowl.

We also cooked onsen tamago on the side, to replace raw egg that is often used in sukiyaki, since most of our locals eggs are not pasteurized and safe for raw consumption.

Another side dish is called sesame tofu, but it was more like a thick slurry with soy milk and white sesame paste and I found it pretty weird and isn’t something I would recommend.

But overall, I liked the main dish and it is very practical to cook at home as it is simple with minimal grease resulting from cooking!

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

January World Cuisine Cooking – New Year’s Luxury Italian Meal

This meal was supposed to be like a 3 course meal where the appetizer was salad with tuna tataki, main course was cream based pasta with porcini mushroom, some other mushrooms and bacon and the dessert was cassata inspired.

The tuna wasn’t seared, but was actually shallow fried after being battered and breaded with tempura flour batter and panko. It was pretty easy to do and I can foresee myself trying that at home. The pasta course was nothing super special but was definitely tasty. The star of the dish was of course the porcini mushroom which was very fragrant.

The dessert was cassata inspired but not really a cassata. It was primarily cream cheese, mixed with jam, walnuts and heavy cream and then shaped into a ball with cling wrap and sent to be frozen. It was topped with chopped pistachio and raspberries to serve. It looks complicated but actually is super easy and fool proof to prepare. It was basically frozen cream cheese but since I do like cream cheese, I quite enjoyed it.

Overall this menu was tasty, presentable and very east to whip up. It took around 60 minutes to be done with cooking and is more of a practical home cooked meal rather than professional restaurant cuisine.

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

January ABC Best Selection Cooking – Festival Dishes with 5 types of Kushikatsu

Kushi Katsu reminds me of Osaka, and it is probably the second most iconic Osaka local food behind only Takoyaki. I wasn’t a huge fan of Kushi Katsu during my various times in Osaka, but I do like to have it occasionally for novelty sake. I got to make 5 different skewers and it was battered with tempura flour and breaded with panko before deep frying, with exception of the Japanese fish cake skewer that was breaded with rice cracker instead, and the lotus root skewer which had half of it coated with black sesame.

The rice cracker used for the fish cake skewer here was like an adult version of wang wang biscuits but I found it rather weird. I think the proper one to be used would be senbei like the ones used to feed deers in Nara? This adult wang wang used was just another type of rice cracker available locally in Singapore and did not really taste or had texture similar to senbei.

Other than kushi katsu, this meal also consisted of Eho Maki, Matcha Black Bean Pancake and a meat ball soup.

Traditional Eho Maki was supposed to have 7 ingredients but we only had 4, including 2 types of sashimi. Eho Maki is supposed to be eaten as a whole long piece, auspicious for the new year, but for this meal we cut it up.

The meat ball soup was an express side soup and they used ready-made clear broth with chicken meat balls mixed with corn.

The dessert was dorayaki like in design but it was actually more like a regular pancake. The filling used instant custard which I dislike for the artificial milk and vanilla taste and I felt it would definitely taste nicer if real custard was use.

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

January Whole-meal Cooking – Japanese Meal for Anti-Aging

I’m usually not a fan of the Whole Meal Cooking course options but this one stood out to be because it looked flavourful. I honestly did not care for the health objectives of this meal because I don’t believe 1 meal can make a difference and it is not as if I would eat this everyday in order to see the results said objective. I chose to learn this only because it looked delicious but of course if it is healthy, it would be a bonus!

The objective of this meal was anti-ageing and they achieve this by including ingredients with astaxanthin and ingredients high in anti-oxidants. Basically most seafood with red pigments would contain astaxanthin and fresh vegetables would be high in anti-oxidants.

This meal is also really heavy and includes the following:

Macaroni Salad
Quick pickles
Salmon corn miso soup
Tofu chicken balls with lotus root, dou miao and onsen egg
Rice with mochi mugi barley
Café au lait pudding

The quick pickles was made from raw cabbage and radish because radish contains isothiocynate which can help the body eliminate waste. Radish has been long known to be good for detox so I guess this explains it! It was marinated with some vinegar sauce but overall I am no fan of pickles and I was struggling to finish it because I was full from all the other dishes.

I am a fan of macaroni salad and this is one of the main reasons why I was interested to attend. I do not see the link between this side dish and the health objective of the meal except for a single cherry tomato which has lycopene, but I enjoyed eating the macaroni salad and that’s all that matters.

For the main course, the chicken tofu patties also contained sakura ebi and leek. Eating mini dried shrimps means eating the shrimp shells and this is where most of the astaxanthin is present. The patties were first pan fried to brown on the outside and then simmer together with seared lotus root in a teriyaki flavour like sauce, which I believe had nothing to do with any health benefits but was purely for taste. It was all was served over a bed of dou miao with an onsen egg in the middle.

The superfood for this recipe was the mochi mugi barley in the rice but I personally felt the difference in taste and texture between having it and without is negligible so I would probably exclude it when I cook at home.

For the soup, cabbage, smoked salmon and corn was first sauteed before adding in instant dashi broth to boil and then mixed miso. It was my first time using smoked salmon for such purpose but the resulting soup was flavourful and filling and I liked how easy yet tasty it was. This is one item which is practical prepared at home.

The dessert of café au lait pudding was also really easy and I’ve done multiple of such puddings before in other ABC Cooking classes and it was delicious and strong with coffee taste.

The entire meal was super filling and is one of the most filling meals I’ve done so far at ABC Cooking. I would probably cook some of the dishes individually but probably not all together!

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

February Japanese Home Cooking – Shogayaki

The Japanese Home cooking class for February is another simple and quick meal to prepare but not any less delicious. This month it was Shogayaki – Japanese ginger pork. On the side we also learnt boiled spinach with dashi sauce, radish and abura-age miso soup and matcha Bavarian cream.

The star of the meal is of course the shogayaki. For this dish, pork loin is used and the quality of pork does matter. Pork found from regular supermarket would not taste good in this dish because the pork flavour would stand out, so higher quality pork is advisable. Canadian pork or Japanese pork are good choices. The recipe actually called for 3 pieces of 40g slices of pork loin, but somehow at the studio they provided one thicker slab of 120g pork per person instead. It was cooked like a pork steak instead of having several thinner strips like typical shogayaki cut would be. It was served on a bed of thinly shredded cabbage with radish sprouts and tomato. I do like the shogayaki but I would prefer if the correct cutting of pork loin was used instead of this steak like serving.

The side dish of boiled spinach was really easy too, simply being boiled, marinated with shoyu and then squeezed dry with a sushi mat. To serve, a sauce mixture with dashi was poured over. As this lesson was really simple with time to spare, we got to make dashi from scratch by soaking kelp and using bonito flakes.

The miso soup in this recipe also uses dashi made from scratch. The ingredients also took some effort to prepare – the abura age (fried tofu puff) had to be boiled to remove excess oil before adding into the dashi to for the soup. The radish also took time to soften. Overall it was really nice and better than miso soup made instantly for sure.

The dessert of Matcha Bavarian Cream looked delicious because I love matcha but sadly, instant custard powder was involved and it ruined the whole taste. I would totally boycott Phoon Haut Super Instant Custard Powder. I wouldn’t mind using custard powder if it could taste like real custard but this brand of custard powder just tastes too much like artificial milk and vanilla. Otherwise, this dessert was like a matcha mousse topped with chestnut and red bean and would’ve been something I really like.

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

February World Cuisine Cooking – Korean Health and Beauty Set

I’ve always wanted to learn how to make bibimbap. I know this is no where close to the actual real bibimbap but at least I sort of have an idea now! For this lesson a lot of time was spent on cutting vegetables as the main course consists of several types of veggies. This bibimbap was designed to have health objectives and some of the ingredients were modified and is really different from traditional bibimbap in Korea.

Moreover, it was not cooked on a stone or metal bowl for the rice to be scorched. The rice placed under the toppings kind of got quite soggy since some of the toppings like zucchini and onsen egg were quite wet. I would prefer it if the rice was drier or best with scorched texture. I felt that a fried egg or just a patsuerized egg yolk would have been a better idea as it would less wet. The meat in the bibimbap is a mixture of pork and beef but the pork was not obviously there when the bibimbap is all mixed up with gochujang.

I also learnt from this class that sesame oil is what makes Korean food Korean food. Almost every thing here is cooked or marinated with sesame oil!

The side dish of this menu is Pork Bossam which is a boiled pork dish eaten like how we typically eat Korean BBQ – wrapped with kimchi, Korean sauce mix and lettuce. I’ve not eaten Bossam before and honestly did not know what to expect. Pork collar was boiled for 50 minutes in beef stock broth with aromatic ingredients and then sliced up to serve. The result was pork that was very tender and flavourful and I am impressed. Using good quality pork is important of course! The kimchi served to us was fresh kimchi which could be found at Korean specialty stores. This kind of kimchi tastes different from aged kimchi commonly found at supermarkets and I think I like the fresh kimchi more!

The broth leftover from cooking the pork was re-purposed as the soup base for wakame soup. It was very flavourful and tastes a lot better than most of the side soups in other cooking classes at ABC.

For dessert, pat bingsu was made using a method which does not require a shaved ice machine! We first froze the milk and condensed milk mixture in a large tray, and then manually scraped the frozen milk to look like snow. It was then topped with red beans and matcha condensed milk sauce. While it was different from real pat bingsu (which was supposed to have snow texture and air like), this was an alternative method to make bingsu at home.

Overall I did enjoy the meal, but of course it is still not as good as the real Korean bibimbap. My favourite dish however was the pork bossam. I’m glad to be introduced to Korean ingredients and dishes I’ve never heard of prior to this, like the fresh kimchi and pork bossam, and also to learn about typical Korean cooking ingredients like sesame oil and gochujang.

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

Trial Lessons

January Seasonal Trial – Fortune Furry

In celebration of the year of the Rat, the trial class in January was mouse and hedgehog character buns. Last year a boar shape character bun was offered in January as well for the year of the boar. This was also available in several other studios overseas either as seasonal trial or one day lesson, and also available as take home DIY kit in Japan. However the difference across countries is the choice of fillings. While the original recipe had white chocolate filling, in ABC Cooking Singapore we had salted egg yolk custard filling. I’m glad that at least no instant custard powder was involved in the filling. The salted egg yolk custard filling tasted pretty much like the custard filling in dim sum Custard Bun (Liu Sha Bao), except that it was more like an overcooked version where the custard become dried up rather than lava like. I did not expect flowing lava like filling because the baking temperature of bread was high but I liked that the taste is nice and I can deal with having dried paste like salted egg yolk custard. Flavour aside, I also loved how cute the buns looked!

Hungry Bird rating: 4/5

February Seasonal Trial – Hanami in Luv

It is not sakura season yet but this sakura themed roll cake was offered as season trial in February and it was extended to the end of March. It was a chiffon roll cake, baked very thin and raspberry jam with cherry blossom syrup was sandwiched between 2 pieces of cake. The aesthetics was like Japanese roll cakes with a large center of cream and the cake coming around only once. The filling was yogurt mixed with cream. It was no doubt cute, but the cake was very average. However, it did cover the basic techniques of cake making and is a good cake to try for absolute beginners. Bakers with some experience would find this to be of no challenge.

Hungry Bird rating: 3.5/5

Home Cooking & Baking

Sukiyaki (Japanese Home Cooking)

I made sukiyaki at home just shortly after learning it at ABC. It was a challenge trying to find some of the ingredients at a nearby supermarket and I did not manage to get Japanese grilled tofu, so I had to grill tofu from another origin myself. It was not as good as Japanese origin tofu of course. I also replaced konnyaku noodles with sweet potato noodles and it worked fine. I would like the meal better if I could get good beef and I will definitely try it next time with wagyu.

Shogayaki (Japanese Home Cooking)

I also cooked this just days after attending the lesson and this time I finally located a Japanese butchery near my house. I wish I knew about this place earlier! It has good Japanese beef and pork at reasonable prices. There were more options for beef and less for pork – only kurobuta was available in belly and loin. Other parks like pork collar might have been sold out when I visited but I did not ask. For shogayaki, pork loin was required. However, the meat behind the display cabinet was all in shabu-shabu slices. Understandably shabu shabu meat is more sellable as most people would buy it for steamboat. But I was quick enough to realise this is a butchery and they cut the meat in store, so I asked the Japanese butcher if I could get thicker slices. He said OK and I told him I wanted it for shogayaki and I did not need to say more for him to understand what I needed! The thickness for shogayki cut should be 2 -3mm per slice, or you could tell your butcher 40g per slice.

I like shogayaki in slices like this much better than the steak cut version. I also changed the miso soup to clam and tofu as that was what I had at home and I cooked the dashi stock from scratch following the recipe exactly and it was delicious.

Shokupan (Bread Master)

This is the first time I did a Bread Master recipe at home! I used regular instant dry yeast for the bread and it actually turned out almost like how it did at the studio when Kodama yeast was used, sans the strong yeast smell. I did the Yudane method and it was rather easy to do at home. The bread also stayed soft even the next day without the need to freeze it. This recipe is definitely good.

Veggie Brunch (Bread Basic)

I made Veggie Brunch just shortly after learning it and indeed it was a practical recipe to have. It was easy to make and served as a satisfying lunch!

Rice Flour and Matcha Daifuku (Bread Basic)

This bread was from the old bread basic menu and when I learnt it back in April last year, I did not really like it as they made us salad beans as the filling. The recipe actually called for Kanoko beans, which are candied beans, but this was not easily available in Singapore. I decided to try using canned boiled adzuki beans instead, draining away as much liquid as I could, and it turned out fine! It was much better than the salad beans version for sure as that one was bland and tasteless. I also used regular local supermarket glutinous rice flour (Thailand origin) instead of shiratama-ko in both the bread dough and the gyuhi filling and it worked really well even though it is a fact that Thai glutinous rice and Japanese glutinous rice are not exactly the same type of grain.

Melon Pan (Bread Master)

Melon pan was the second Bread Master bread I made at home and that was only because I had all the ingredients I needed, except for Kodama yeast which I once again substituted with instant dry yeast. I think should have reduced the amount of instant dry yeast instead of follow the recipe’s amount for Kodama yeast as the yeast activity seems higher in my attempt at home than it did when Kodama yeast was used at the studio. The overall taste was similar to when I first did it last September with the cookie coating tasting delicious as I remembered it to. The matcha flavoured one tasted better on the same day, with the matcha tasting slightly oxidised the next day, but oxidised taste aside, I actually felt the overall texture of this bread (or rather, the cookie part) was better the next day. I felt the same way with the Melon Pan I did at the studio back then too. Generally, cookies always tastes better after aging, when the oil diffuses through the product and that is the best explanation I could think of right now to explain this phenomenon.