Dessert, durian and danger

yesterday, marlon's colombian colleague paula hosted a dessert party at her flat in clementi. it was a smallish affair, just marlon's teammates from work, but very united colors of benetton: at the table were an indian, korean, colombian, japanese, colombian-canadian (paula's adorable 18 month-old son, daniel) and of course us pinoys. 

we decided to make something very pinoy and not too difficult: turon! actually, my mom taught me how to make leche flan like the day before i left for singapore, but i can barely remember what to do. besides, i haven't been able to find those oval aluminum dishes that we use for leche flan back home. 

so after lunch, marlon and i set up a two-man turon production line in front of the tv, and wrapped up those bananas while watching a couple of episodes of ranma.

first, i scored the lumpia wrapper down the middle to make two turons with one sheet.

then some brown sugar...

... and cinnamon sugar. would have used plain cinnamon, but cinnamon sugar was all we had. besides, you don't really expect anyone to complain about too much sugar at a dessert party.

then half a slice of ordinary yellow banana. haven't been able to find saba bananas here, which are best for cooking. for ordinary fried bananas, i found that green ones hold up better than yellow ones.

after a couple of test folds and test fries, the perfect pillow shape emerged. my years of gift-wrapping skills certainly helped; the ones marlon did turned out to be a bit messy. 

and this is what we carted over to paula's place. it's the first time i've actually made a filipino dish since moving here.

the spread included quite a few japanese desserts care of mayu, marlon's boss. there were rice crackers and japanese pancakes with red bean, plus this dessert that looked like fishballs --  except that they were sticky rice balls coated with a thick soy-sauce-and-sugar mixture that practically glued my jaws together. 

paula revealed the full extent of her foodie-ness with cheese fondue, a couple of wines, sweet guava pastries, and the real star of the show: empanada made by her mom. it seems colombian empanada is just like our own, except that the shell is thinner and is deep fried -- close to ilocos empanada, but without the orange colour and consumed with a hit of lemon juice, not vinegar. paula's mom also made rebajo, or beer sweetened with soda pop. really, really good stuff. lastly, paula served her favorite colombian caramels, tiny thumb-height cups of caramel so milky and rich that three of us couldn't even finish one cup. 

we had to walk off all that sugar, so after the gathering broke up, marlon and i joined paula, her mother and her son for a quick stroll around the bukit batok nature reserve. formerly a stone quarry, it had been turned into a nice little nature park with a hiking trail, small lake, some wildlife, and the apparent danger of a smelly, smelly death.

"there are even cliffs around here!" enthused paula. "singapore has cliffs?" i said disbelievingly. "okay, there is a cliff," she amended.

whereupon we saw it. presenting: the cliff of singapore!

as triumph the insult dog would say, i kid! i kid! it's actually kind of pretty. see?

little daniel was getting restless, so paula released him from his stroller and off he went with a delighted "wheeee!". here he is in full frolic mode.

happy babies are cute babies!

this is what marlon calls an "are you sure we're in singapore?" shot.

but when i stopped to think about it, we were strolling in a pocket jungle carefully slotted into a neighborhood of high-rises. where else could we be but singapore?