tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-123741872024-03-19T15:40:37.143+08:00Only Slightly Pretentious Food"There's <i>always</i> room for dessert," he saidColinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00823213477578592583noreply@blogger.comBlogger600125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-82119967902326632162014-09-14T21:41:00.002+08:002014-09-14T21:44:21.598+08:00Recipe: Kaeng Hung Leh/ Burmese- Thai Pork Curry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been on a curries kick lately! This dish was inspired by a meal we had at Pok Pok in Portland, I was so impressed by the mellow, yet deep and savoury taste of the pork curry we had there. I looked up the Pok Pok Cookbook (seriously, what did we do before the internet) by star chef Andy Ricker and found this recipe for Kaeng Hung Leh. This is a Northern Thai curry, from where Thailand and Burma meet and hence, it has the influences of both. Unlike a Malaysian curry, it does not have candlenut (in Pok Pok, I remember the curries being distinctly thinner than those we are used to), nor tomato or coconut milk. Instead it has a lot more 'assam' flavours, lemongrass, galangal, shrimp paste and tumeric. <br />
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This dish is famous and popular in Chiang Mai, where it is eaten with sticky rice and jackfruit salad. I can't wait to visit and try different version of this complex dish. We are quite lucky to have most of the ingredients easily at hand and even pre-prepared. I cannot imagine the resourceful cooks who take on making this in the US, where you have to go to a specialty grocer, buy ingredients online, or fry shallots by hand. <br />
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(1) Curry Paste <br />
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1 ounce thinly sliced lemongrass (tender parts only), from about 4 stalks<br />
1 teaspoon (0.25 ounces/6 grams) kosher salt<br />
1 (0.5-ounce/14-gram) piece peeled fresh or frozen galangal, thinly sliced against the grain<br />
0.25 ounces/7 grams stemmed dried Mexican puya chilies (about 4), soaked in hot tap water until fully soft, about 15 minutes<br />
1.5 ounces/45 grams peeled Asian shallots, thinly sliced against the grain<br />
1 1/2 teaspoons Kapi Kung, shrimp paste <br />
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I couldn't decide whether Kapi Kung was the dried, block of belachan or the sticky, black hei chu (which goes into assam laksa). Let me know if you know! I rather leant toward the latter, given the assam flavours in this dish, but I used belachan anyway, since that is the most common. <br />
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The recipe also says to pound all the ingredients in a mortar and pestle but honestly, we live in the moden age. I blitzed it all in a Magimix until it reached a fairly soft and smooth curry paste. I doubled the recipe, which hopefully will make me two batches of curry, without having to make the rempah again. <br />
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(2) Curry<br />
2 tablespoons/30 milliliters vegetable oil<br />
1 ounce/30 grams peeled Asian shallots, thinly sliced with the grain (about 1/4 cup)<br />
1 1/2 teaspoons mild Indian curry powder<br />
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder<br />
1 pound/450 grams skinless pork belly, cut into approximately 1 1/2-inch chunks<br />
1 pound/450 grams boneless pork shoulder, cut into approximately 1 1/2 inch chunks<br />
3 tablespoons/45 milliliters Thai fish sauce<br />
2 tablespoons/30 milliliters Thai black soy sauce<br />
1 1/2 tablespoons/22.5 milliliters liquid from Thai pickled ginger (straight from the jar)<br />
1 1/2 ounces/45 grams palm sugar, coarsely chopped<br />
6 tablespoons/80 milliliters Naam Makham (Tamarind water)<br />
2 cups/500 milliliters water<br />
1 (1-ounce/30-gram) piece peeled ginger, cut into long (about 1 1/2-inch/4-centimeter), thin (about 1/8-inch/0.3-centimeter) matchsticks (about 1/4 cup)<br />
1 1/2 ounces/45 grams separated and peeled pickled garlic cloves (about 30 small cloves)<br />
4 ounces/115 grams long beans, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch lengths (about 2 cups)<br />
6 tablespoons Hom Daeng Jiaw (Fried Shallots)<br />
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Heat the oil in a medium pot over medium-low heat until it shimmers. Then add half the paste, breaking it up and stirring, till it turns a slightly duller shade of red, 2 to 3 minutes. Cook the shallots, then add the curry powder and tumeric, then add the pork, stir to coat and cook for awhile till the pork has a chance to absorb the flavour. <br />
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Stir in the fish sauce, black soy sauce and pickled garlic liquid, then add the palm sugar. Increase the heat slightly to bring the liquid to a simmer, cook until the palm sugar has more or less completely dissolved, then stir in the tamarind water along with the 2 cups of water. Increase the heat to high, let the liquid come to a strong simmer, then immediately decrease the heat to low and cover (or partially cover, if your lid doesn’t let any steam escape), adjusting the heat to maintain a steady simmer. <br />
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Cook for 45 minutes, stir in the ginger, then remove the lid and cook at a steady simmer until the pork shoulder is very tender but not falling apart and the liquid has thickened slightly, about 45 minutes more. The curry should still be fairly soupy (not gravy-like and dry) with a layer of reddish liquid fat near the surface. <br />
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I didn't understand what pickled garlic cloves were- I guess I really should have visited a Thai supermarket before making this, so the curry had to stand while I figured out how to procure some. The curry is a complex balance of sweet, salty and sour flavors, with sweetness taking the lead, it really gave me a better appreciation for how interesting Thai and less specifically, South East Asian cooking can be. There are so many ingredients that you need! No wonder a proper South East Asian kitchen has to be so fully stocked with packets and wrapped bits and bobs of everything.<br />
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The curry keeps in the refrigerator for 5 days and the taste matures best over a day. Serve over warm white rice with fried shallots. I garnished with some sliced garlic matchsticks and fresh basil leaves. </div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-24436951068215218812014-08-15T11:51:00.004+08:002014-08-15T11:54:34.414+08:00Review: San Francisco and Portland: State Bird Provisions, Frances, Pok Pok and The Screen Door<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We ate really well in San Francisco. On our first day, we went to James Beard restaurant, <strong>State Bird Provisions</strong>. This was designated by Bon Appetit magazine as the Best New Restaurant in America, and our friend managed to get seats for us to try it. The meal is dim sum style, composed of 20 tiny shareable, small dishes and rotating menus of really interesting, local and fresh ingredients. <br />
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The place is tiny and chock full of tables, the total capacity is only about 20 people. From each corner you would see trolleys of dishes being pushed around, with a running commentary "Here we have chili spiced yuba with a parsley almond pesto, for $6," you might hear as a tray of dishes is set down on your table. "Those are veal-sweetbread polpette with blackened fig, also $6, and the bowl—that's whipped Haas avocado. We top it with this seafood salsa, which tonight is mussels, clams, scallops, calamari, and shrimp... that's probably my favorite tonight. It goes for $9." <br />
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It is one of the more free-styling food places I have been to and the energy and enthusiasiam of the place is infectious. The dishes tend to gravitate back to the same styles, burrata on fried bread (delicious), a lot of savoury and deep-fried foods like octopus, squid, corn balls and a copious use of pork belly and greens. I felt the food was alright, not mind-blowing but carefully prepared and fresh, but the concept and the crowd made it new. The price point was also incredible, we paid just $40 a person. <br />
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After dinner, our group drove to <strong>Smitten Ice Cream</strong>- a place that gained fame as a travelling truck with nitrogen-frozen ice cream. (This was back in the day, when it was really revolutionary to pour dry ice straight into a KitchenAid). I’m not a ice cream fan, especially on a freezing cold SF night, but the vanilla was absolutely smooth and very tasty. One of the selling points of nitrogen is that the crystals formed in the ice-cream are really small and therefore the overall taste is unfailingly smooth, instead of icy and this is true, I could not taste a single crystal in the ice cream, it was as if the whole thing was just made of magically, monotonously cold cream.<br />
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The next day, on a friend’s recommendation, I hopped onto OpenTable (great site) and scored a 5pm reservation for <strong>Frances</strong>, in the Castro. 5pm is a ridiculously early time for dinner, but it was the only available table for the entire week. When we arrived, I realized this is because the restaurant isn’t large at all, probably 30 seats in an L-shape, with cosy seats, a quiet environment and a peaceful, simple, pared-down presentation. I was quite sure the food would be spectacular, as they had clearly focused away from the décor.<br />
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As it turned out, this was probably my favourite meal of the whole trip. The menu changes daily and the all-male, metro-sexually groomed and “lovely, darling” wait staff were attentive and brought us hot water with a slice of lemon and crusty warm bread, without even being prompted. <br />
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I looked at the menu and was floored for what to order, everything was sourced locally and sounded amazing, for example, the bouchees were Monterey Bay Calamari, Roasted Garbanzo, Tomato and Summer Squash, Smoke Bacon Beignets with Maple Chive Crème Fraiche, Baked Cherry Stone Clams cooked with Fennel, Bacon, Kale and White Corn, Panisse Frites and Chickpea Fritters with Preserved Lemon and Olive Aioli and Charred Spring Onion and Sour Cream Dip with Nigella Seed Lavash, for $7 each. I mean, really? <br />
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And those weren’t even the Appetizers ($10 each), Entrees ($18-28 each) and Sides of Ricotta Gnocchi with Iacopy English Peas and Meyer Lemon or Baked Eggplant with Burrata and Roasted Early Girl Tomatoes for $8 each.<br />
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I challenge you to find me a top-end, beautiful, clean restaurant in Singapore that serves entrees that are not pasta for $28 each. Let alone one that does it with such a deep knowledge and dedication to the differences between local produce. In the end, we had the calamari, the Chilled Corn Soup with Sungold Cherry Tomato Puree and Cornmeal Crisps, which was smooth, cold and absolutely spectacular, and the Lucinato Kale Salad, Pecorino, Summer Stone Fruit, Spring Onion and Toasted Almond. With every bite of the salad, I tasted fresh white peach, toasted nut, caramelized onion and that crisp, dark green bitterness of kale, it was a really beautiful salad and one that inspired me to recreate my version <a href="http://epicurative.blogspot.sg/2013/11/recipe-red-kale-salad-and-warm-brussel.html">here</a>.<br />
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We had the Sonoma Duck Breast and Cassoulet of Butter beans, Summer Squash, Ancho Chipotle and Point Reyes Mozzerella, all of them bursting with flavour and summery vegetables. For dessert, make sure you have their ‘Lumberjack’ cake, they say that this is made fresh to the season with fruit, but it is no fruit cake, more like a well-baked, yet moist date cake with thin slices of Fuji apple, peach and coconut with a scoop of Maple Ice Cream. Really sublime stuff, I finished the whole plate before poor Z. could even look up.<br />
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The drive from SF up to Portland, was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever taken- the long straight roads, yellow dried fields and blue cloudless horizons of California, turning into swaths of everglades, green broad lakes and sunset hills resting atop clouds. <br />
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The charm of Portland, is that it melds the goodwill of a little town, where cars stop for bikes and pedestrians, with fairly cosmopolitan food and enterprise. Unlike in SF, where the immigration officers and all the other Asians will give you disingenuous looks, in Portland, you will frequently be the only Asian in the restaurant. This is like the Real America. Where men have beards and where there aren’t really many airports and when you show up with a bundt cake, they cut the whole thing into 6 equal chunks to serve (after a big meal). The America where there are deer by the roads and most people haven’t really stayed skinny.<br />
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On our first cold, peach-coloured evening in Portland, we went to <strong>Noble Rot</strong>, a restaurant where the main highlight is their rooftop vegetable garden and high deck overlooking the skyline of Portland. The food concentrates on vegetables, we had a colourful rooftop salad, with rhubarb vinegrette, quinao dumplings with fresh spring vegetables (carrots and asparagus) and steak.<br />
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The food was fresh, competent but not terribly adventurous, the vegetables were very clean and tastey but they did not taste of sunshine, the way vegetables taste in Tuscany. On the way back, we walked past <strong>Le Pigeon</strong>, which is one of the most famous places in Portland, but whose long lines had turned us off an early reservation. The food there is very modern American, in that it stretches to ingredients like rabbit and dill.<br />
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Portland has a variety of food trucks and stalls, these are really hit and miss, I had some wonderful snacks like caramel popcorn, and also some that tasted a bit mothy. My overall impression of the food trucks, particularly the ethnic food (read: Asian/African) is that they were really greasy and I wasn’t really attracted to patronise any, except maybe the burger vans. T<br />
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he next day, we went to <strong>Pok Pok</strong>, which serves Northern Thai food.To be clear, if you live in Asia and within budget flying distance of Chiang Mai or even Bangkok, there is no real need to go to Pok Pok, either in Portland or it’s sister café in NYC. (It seems all Portland successes make it to NYC, like Stumptown). But if you are in the continential USA, then Pok Pok is excellent- from their sharp and sweet drinking vinegars, to the delicious stewed pork and crispy fish that we had, it took me straight back to the strong flavours of the Northern border of Thailand with Burma. <br />
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It really hit the spot, in a little luau shack no less, with atypical indifferent Asian service and I was amazed that Portland had a clientele that could appreciate this. The restaurant also had a white cook, which I know is a politically incorrect observation, but increased my curiousity as to how they were so dedicated to their craft (and again, acceptable, as Singapore has this awful penchant for authenticity in their restaurants, from Chinese to Italian to Indian.<br />
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After a while, I was down to one meal a day (a frequent condition when I’m in the US and my body has just ceased to digest any more food). This we used for <strong>The Screen Door</strong>, a Southern restaurant – unfortunately, with only two people, we could not order much more than their buttermilk-fried chicken, okra and deep fried cornbread. While it was really good (and packed), I felt that the saltiness of their food, left the flavour somewhat blunted. I couldn’t really taste the nuance of the spices, through the heavy crispiness and saltiness of the oil and pepper. </div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-82187175616837407772014-08-15T09:24:00.003+08:002014-08-15T09:34:40.888+08:00Review and Recipe: Sunday Folks and Waffles of Insane Greatness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've gone a tad crazy about waffles. Granted, these have always been a favourite of mine but in the last couple weeks I've had way too many for my own good. <br />
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It all started with the wholewheat bacon and cheese waffles at Nassim Hill. The crispy exterior and the soft, savoury insides. Oh yum. Then, I was alerted to the opening of Sunday Folks at Chip Bee Gardens in Holland Village. This is an offshoot of Creamier at Toa Payoh, an ice cream store. Sunday Folks concentrates primarily on desserts and the soft-serve ice cream is offered as a side and only in 6 main flavours. <br />
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The store is sited next to Phoon Huat in Chip Bee Gardens and during the two times that I visited, it was packed. Packed with young people, spending their parents' money and looking so very chic doing it. I was amazed at the long floppy hair, hiked up behind their pant-waistband boxers and stylish striped shoes that I saw the young men wearing! What a difference to when I was that age and all the boys thought rolling out the door in slippers and bermudas was absolutely alright for a date. <br />
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The store is doing a brisk trade and that is becuase their waffles are really good- thick, wheaty and crisp. The ice cream, particularly the gula melaka sea salt caramel and the vanilla madagascar bean, is very good. The pistachio though, rubbed me the wrong way, with its slightly tannic after-taste. There aren't that many cakes, usually just three or four to choose from, but the cake skew toward the Japanese mode of matcha swiss rolls and strawberry cakes. <br />
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If you are free after dinner, I would most definitely visit for a sweet pick-me-up, but good luck getting a table, or hearing your conversation! <br />
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Having contemplated Nassim Hill's waffles, I somehow found myself the proud owner of a waffle machine, which I am now intending to upgrade to an industrial waffle machine. The one I have is a Cuisinepro a waffle plate, as opposed to the Waring waffle machines that are invertible. However, in my testing recipes, I have been really satisfied with the speed and the crispness of the waffles I've made. I shortlisted 6 waffle recipes and compared them. It seems what gives waffles the rise and crisp, is one of three things, cornflour, beaten egg white or the use of yeast (and therefore a resting time). <br />
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I have tried two of the six recipes- of course the two that didn't require resting, both were spectacular but the second one trumped the first one, especially when made with a half proportion of rye flour, for a healthier and crispier exterior. It's also very quick and simple to make as it doesn't require a resting period. <br />
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<u>Waffle recipe</u><br />
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3 tablespoons sugar<br />
2 eggs, separate yolks and whites and set aside<br />
500ml milk<br />
180g flour (1 and a half cups)<br />
60g corn starch (half cup)<br />
1 tablespoon baking powder<br />
Half teaspoon salt<br />
113g butter (half cup), melted<br />
Half teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)<br />
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1. Sift the flour, corn starch, baking powder and salt, then set aside.<br />
2. Combine butter, egg yolks and milk and beat well. <br />
3. Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites until risen and frothy, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar and continue to beat till the egg white is stiff and foamy. <br />
4. Add the butter mixture to the dry ingredients then stir to combine. Don’t stir them too vigorously. We want the mixture to still be lumpy. Gently fold in the egg whites and add the vanilla essence.<br />
5. Once the batter is combined, lightly grease your waffle maker, preheat it, and cook according to manufacturer’s instructions.<br />
6. Dress your waffles with honey and butter, some fruit or ice cream. <br />
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Sunday Folks<br />
44 Jalan Mera Saga, Chip Bee Gardens<br />
Singapore 278116<br />
Opening hours: 12pm- 10pm daily, closed Monday</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-86342085764201628242014-08-13T15:13:00.000+08:002014-08-13T15:13:41.100+08:00Recipe: A vintage buttercream chidlren's birthday cake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the last few years, I feel like I've been swamped by fondant cakes. Fondant cakes are beautiful and often, they are the only canvas on which you can craft something really fancy. They are also extremely time-consuming, difficult to store and honestly, unpleasant to eat.<br />
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I don't understand in particular, why more children's cakes aren't regular buttercream. To me, buttercream is a real throwback ingredient but good quality buttercream is so tasty and luxurious.<br />
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This is one of the cakes we did recently for a one-year old. Since she is too young to remember the birthday, we suggested to her mummy that they choose something simple, tasty and delicious. We were so happy that they chose this buttercream pink cake and we made a delicious, moist blueberry layered cake with lemon curd and raspberry buttercream.<br />
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The siding on the cake are thin, individual pieces of fondant that have been crafted separately and then adhered to the cake right before collection and serving. The matching cupcakes have the same blueberry lemon crumb and are dusted with feminine sprinkles.<br />
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We were told the cake was so much enjoyed that it was all eaten up and that to the host's horror, one little boy even ran up to the cake and took a big lick out of the side! </div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-52976680151893135012014-08-10T22:01:00.005+08:002014-08-10T22:03:51.767+08:00Review: Bangkok Eats: Issaya Siamese Club, NAHM, Sri Bua at the Kempenski Hotel and Soi Polo Fried Chicken<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I always think the most fun cities in Asia have to be Bangkok and Hong Kong- the buzz just makes me feel more alive. That and the food. Food is everywhere! I had a quick pitstop in Bangkok but I made the most of it, I think. I wanted to explore some new places this time and I think I did because I didn't eat a single beef noodle or pad thai while I was there. I almost didn't eat any mango sticky rice or Tub Tim Krub (red ruby dessert). Amazing, no?<br />
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The first night, I caught up with an old work friend at Issaya Siamese Club. I had heard a lot about this place, that specialized in Northern Thai cuisine and because I really liked Pok Pok in Portland, I thought I might like this too. I was hoping, secretly, to find the Burmese Pork Belly curry that I liked so much, but sadly, they didn't have it.<br />
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What they did have though, was a lovely Massaman Lamb curry and their curries had that sort of deep, mellow flavour of the North. Absolutely delicious. We also had a lobster that had been halved, made into an otak (fish paste) and then stuffed back into its shell and steamed. We had a pomelo salad, served in an overturned flower pot. <br />
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The only slightly sour note of the meal was the dish that looked like cabbage and turds. They were dry and kind of hard, I'm not sure what they even were! The desserts were fairly simple and also, I thought, not the strong point, coconut mochi in the a fresh coconut, but the mochi skin was thick and unrefined and a series of slightly artificial tasting ice cream flavours. The best dessert, I felt, was one that was reminescent of a street vendor dessert. On a banana leaf, they spread dried coconut, passionfruit puree and popped rice, as well as a thin shell of chocolate and sponge cake rolls filled with cream- very simple but tasty.<br />
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The next day, I went to NAHM, which is the David Thompson restaurant in Metropolitan. I had never remembered it as being particularly hip but it is now impossible to get a reservation (for dinner). I have to admit that I went in particular for lunch, because it was so hard to get a reservation and I had very low expectations. <br />
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However, the food surprised me, it was absolutely fantastic! Even Z. who does not eat to live, thought it was refreshing and different, because of the freshness of the ingredients used. We had a blue swimmer crab curry, which was mellow, with hints of spice and wonderful fresh crab and some vegetable dishes, just brimming with flavour and juiciness. Even the simple egg omellete, which was the cheapest thing on the item, was steamed and then smoked in a banana leaf pan, it had a tamago-like texture and yet a lovely savoury depth to the taste.<br />
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I walked out the restaurant impressed and very satisfied. We did not opt for the set meal, which seemed like also a good option, for our ala carte meal, we paid about SGD$40 a person. Not cheap by Thai standards, but not expensive for a special occasion, for a white tablecloth restaurant and for a really fulfilling meal. <br />
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At dinner, we went to Sri Bua at the Kempenski Hotel, which is an offshoot of a similar restaurant in Europe Kin Kiin. This was a long set dinner, served over 7 courses and my overall feeling was that it was pricey and unfulfilling for the amount they charged, even though there was nothing poor, (but also nothing memorable) about the food, which was simply beautifully presented.<br />
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There was cornettes, meringues and crackers, with a lot of dessicated kaffir and coconut, however, some of the dishes struck a slightly sour note where the proportions were not right and overall, the small plates meant that most of it was served cold which was great as an experimental and intellectual talking point, but not necessarily for the quality of the cooking.<br />
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I checked out the website after getting home and the photography of the food is simply beautiful. The dark lighting in most of the Thai restaurants made food photography rather difficult and unflattering.<br />
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The following day, we too a quick cab ride to the It was a public holiday, so the roads were absolutely empty- a real revelation. We went to Soi Polo Fried Chicken, a place that I've written about before. The fried chicken here is so good, it's raised three generations of children for the lady proprietor. Get it with an extra helping of fried garlic slices and sticky rice, along with their amazing green papaya salad and the grilled pork neck.</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-88140854214346774982014-08-10T21:34:00.000+08:002014-08-10T21:34:32.661+08:00Recipe: Chocolate Prune Cake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I keep coming back to this recipe for a beautiful chocolate cake that is moist, delicious and somewhat healthy. I first tasted it when it was baked for a cookbook project and I've been making it again and again since. <br />
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You can make it neat, which is actually the way I like it best, but you can also top it with a rich chocolate ganache (this is just half cream and half dark chocolate). I chose to frost only the top, to keep it simple and rustic.<br />
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The recipe is <a href="http://epicurative.blogspot.sg/2011/09/recipe-prune-cake.html">here</a> in a previous post.<br />
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-43368136789610573682014-08-04T09:40:00.001+08:002014-08-06T09:03:42.370+08:00Recipe: The Obamas White House Flaky Nectarine Pie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I must admit, I was drawn to this recipe becuase I thought Barack Obama must know his pies! This pie recipe was from the White House chef, whom Obama thanked with his now-infamous quip that there might be "crack" in his pies. I tried it over this weekend and came to the conclusion that while the crust was lovely, the filling with nectarines is a bit too liquid and wet. I much prefer a thicker Sour Cherry Pie. The aesthetics of this pie though, are just beautiful and the crust, because of the copious addition of butter, is pretty heavenly and flakey, as advertised. <br />
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Ingredients: <br />
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20 tbsp (21⁄2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed<br />
7 tbsp heavy cream<br />
3 tbsp rendered lard (or use more butter)<br />
33⁄4 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for rolling the dough 3 tsp. granulated sugar<br />
11⁄4 tsp salt<br />
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8 cups (about 7) ripe nectarines, unpeeled, pitted, and cut into 1-inch chunks <br />
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice<br />
1⁄2 cup granulated sugar<br />
1⁄4 cup packed light brown sugar<br />
1⁄8 tsp salt<br />
4 tbsp cornstarch<br />
1 tbsp brandy<br />
1 tsp vanilla extract<br />
1 egg white, beaten, at room temperature<br />
11⁄2 tsp granulated sugar<br />
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In a mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, cream, and lard until smooth. In another bowl, thoroughly mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter and beat until the mixture comes together like a fairly wet dough. Add the remaining flour and mix until the dough just begins to come together. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and gently knead it into a smooth ball. Divide the dough in half, wrap each piece tightly in plastic wrap, and flatten into disks. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight (or up to 3 days).<br />
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In a large bowl, toss together the nectarines and lemon juice. Add the sugars and the salt, and gently mix to combine without mashing the nectarine chunks. Set aside to macerate for about 30 minutes. Return the nectarines to the bowl and add the cornstarch, mixing until it has completely dissolved. Stir in the brandy and vanilla. <br />
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Assembly and Baking: <br />
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1. On a lightly floured surface, roll out both disks of dough to a 1/4-inch thickness and fold in half. Then re-roll to rounds about 12 inches in diameter and 3/16 inch thick (about the thickness of two quarters). This will create the layers of flakiness in your pie dough. Transfer one round of dough to a black steel or Pyrex 9-inch pie pan, and trim the edges so they are even with the rim of the pie pan. Place the second round on a flat baking sheet and put it in the freezer. This will become the top of the pie.<br />
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2. Freeze the dough in the pie pan for 1 hour. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 425°F. Remove the pie pan from the freezer and line the dough with aluminum foil. Fill with baking beads, dried beans, or uncooked rice. Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool. When cool, preheat the oven again to 350°F.<br />
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3. Pour the nectarine filling into the pre-baked pie shell. Use a pastry brush to moisten the edges of the bottom pie crust with some of the egg white. Remove the top dough from the freezer and place over the fruit. Press down around the edges with your fingers to seal and tuck any excess dough under the edges. With a paring knife, cut 12 slits in the center of the raw dough, barely piercing it, to create air vents. Then, brush the top dough with the remaining egg white and sprinkle with Demerara or granulated sugar.<br />
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4. Bake on an aluminum-foil-covered rimmed 11-by-17-inch baking sheet on the center rack until the pie is deeply golden and you can see the thick juices bubbling through the vent, for 1 hour. Let cool before serving.</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-46514556459805371672014-07-28T13:40:00.002+08:002014-08-06T09:04:01.220+08:00Recipe: Gaeng Keow Wan Gai (Thai Green Chicken Curry)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Thai Green Chicken Curry must be a comfort food. It's not my favourite dish- in terms of curries, I'm much more a massaman red duck curry with lychees-kinda eater. However, green chicken curry is so easy to make and so good over white rice (an indulgence these days), that I think everyone should know this recipe.<br />
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We harvested a basil patch over the weekend and wound up with a large bag of Thai basil, so I was motivated to make this, one of the dishes that uses a good amount of Thai basil and also Pad Krapow Moo, stir fried minced pork (or sliced long beans, for a healthier alternative) with Thai basil over rice, usually topped with a fried egg.<br />
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This curry is also easily stored for a simple one dish meal. The essence is the green curry paste, or rempah, as we would say in South East Asia, which in Thailand is called Nam Prik. If you cannot be bothered to make your own, you can get a packet version- I would recommend the Blue Elephant sauce packs. (There are some curries for which you have to make the Nam Prik yourself, this I feel is not one of those).<br />
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The Nam Prik has all the hallmarks of South East Asian cookig- kaffir lime, galangal and lemongrass, as well as a very Thai ingredient of cilantro root, which is supposed to be very healthy and helps to lower cholestrol. Combine the coriander seeds, cumin and peppercorn in a mortar and pound well. Pound hot chillies and salt together, then add the remaining ingredients except the belachan. Add the cumin mixture and the belachan and mix well. Modern chefs might use a food processor or a thermomix to grind the whole lot until smooth and fine.<br />
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15 large fresh green chillies<br />
3 shallots, sliced<br />
9 cloves garlic<br />
1 tsp finely sliced fresh galangal<br />
1 tbsp sliced fresh lemon grass<br />
1/2 tsp finely grated kaffir lime rind<br />
1 tsp chopped coriander root<br />
5 white peppercorn<br />
1 tbsp roasted coriander seeds<br />
1 tsp roasted cumin seeds<br />
1 tsp sea salt<br />
1 tsp shrimp paste (belachan)<br />
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400ml coconut milk</div>
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100ml water</div>
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500 grams chicken meat - either thighs or breast meat</div>
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2 egg plants</div>
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1 box cherry tomatoes</div>
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3 tsp fish sauce</div>
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a handful of Thai basil<br />
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From there, the process is easy. Heat some vegetable oil in a pan, fry the rempah until aromatic and add half the coconut milk, while continuing to fry. Add the remaining coconut milk and water, then turn up the heat and cook with the chicken, egg plant and tomatoes until cooked through. </div>
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I use regular egg plant instead of Thai egg plant in my green curry chicken because I'm not a fan of the see and pulp -filled Thai eggplant, and I like my curries fairly mild, if you like yours thicker and spicier, feel free to add less coconut milk or more chillies. </div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-80560540763247900802014-06-02T14:27:00.003+08:002014-06-02T14:27:34.786+08:00Review: The Tippling Club<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I did not realize that the Tippling Club had moved from Dempsey Hill to Tanjong Pagar until recently. I had never been to the old Tippling Club at Dempsey despite a lot of rave reviews. Not being a fan of molecular gastronomy nor expensive cocktails, it seemed to me a place that I might enjoy, once and never return to, so I never got around to the opportunity, even though it had placed in the Asian Miele guide within the top 20 restuarants and was also part of the top 50 restaurants in Asia. C. had been once and was unimpressed with the experience, which additionally coloured my view. <br />
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I finally had the chance when I was invited there for lunch and was pleasantly surprised. I definitely had my reservations- that this would be an expensive and unfulfilling lunch filled with sauces and espumas and marshmallows, lots of unpleasant or gooey mouthfeel and a hungry belly at the end of it. I was proven wrong, in fact, it was a most inventive, delicious meal and I am thinking about going back and introducing some friends to the experience. <br />
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The old space was 42 seats around a curved counter, but the new Tippling club offers bar seats as well as regular table seats, in front of the kitchen. The service is excellent and knowledgeable and the chefs work silently in the background. The restuarant is in a lovely, quiet spot along Tanjong Pagar road and natural sunlight filters into the space, lighting the quirky, green decor. <br />
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I was initially a little shocked at the prices, 12 courses $160/$260 with wine, 28 courses $265/$415 with wine) and even those of the set lunch (2 courses $42, 3 courses $57) and pre-theatre menu (6-8pm, 3 courses, $70). The set lunch and pre-theatre menu consist same items except the latter comes with a glass of wine. The dishes are all described in a very ad-hoc modernist way, like 'black soil. snail espuma' and so it makes you feel like you are getting very little for the money, but that's not true, as we were treated to three innovative amuse-bouche before our set lunch began and then a selection of petit fours after, which filled us up and I felt, made the experience and price worthwhile, at least for the 2 and 3 course set lunch. <br />
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I wished that I had been there at dinner to experience the drinks- which I've heard come as bubbling martinis or as purple cough syrup in brown glass bottles, with medical labels! <br />
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Our three amuse bouche were an interpretation of the local curry chicken in the form of curry foam topped with crispy rice; three bell peppers in a squid-ink tempura, with a sesame, soy, wasabi dip and theatrical metal tweezers to pick them up with and a test-tube of clear, cold tomato essence soup with a pipette straw of basil extract. <br />
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We tried the tomato tart, the smoked eel and the Kohada, which was served as a sushi, three really beautiful dishes. I had the most 'boring' starter, the pea ham soup with 62 degree egg. <br />
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Most of us had the risotto with charred tomato, burrata and basil and the roasted barramundi with milk, braised parsley root and garlic soup. <br />
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I was blown away by the attention to detail and the preparation of the food, from the thin, drying of the meats to the solid jellies made of tomato, the long, slow cooking and the playful presentation. Despite this, the food retained the fullness of their taste and freshness. <br />
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The show-stopper was the additional dessert that we added on, the Cassis and Violet souffle, with a yoghurt, white chocolate mini magnum that was simply out of this world. Although I didn't like the very artificial looking violet sugar sprinkled on the top of the souffle, it was wonderfully light and risen and I was amazed that they had baked it in a glass, double-bowled cup. The magnum combination of yoghurt and white chocolate was just brilliant. <br />
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There was nary a sour note, if I had to pick one, it would be that the grains of the risotto were too tough and it had so much rice that we ran out of ingredients to eat it with. The tomato tart (roll) and the dessert of souffle were the best things, I felt. After the meal, we were given petit fours, an apple doughnut, a chewey nut meringue and a tie-dyed, liquid filled chocolate sweet, that sated our sweet appetite. <br />
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I notice that the appetizers and mains also rotate very often, so that going there should always be an inventive, novel and special experience. While this is a good place for a date, I think it is fun to go in a bigger group to be able to appreciate the diversity and creativity of the dishes and becuase these experiences are more fun when shared and discussed. <br />
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Tippling Club<br />
38 Tanjong Pagar Road, Singapore 088461<br />
T: 6475 2217<br />
Lunch: M-F, 12-3pm<br />
Dinner: M-Sat, 6-11pm<br />
Bar: M-Sat, 12pm-12am</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-34933980280408289752014-06-02T14:15:00.000+08:002014-06-02T14:15:20.304+08:00Review: Diamond Kitchen for Makansutra Dinner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Diamond Kitchen is an air-conditioned <i>zi char</i> place opened by two young businessmen, at Laguna Park, at the base of a large condominium complex in East Coast. Don't go expecting atmosphere, as it is along the stretch of shops with a tuition center and childcare, with a very similar space. The ceilings are clapboard, gussied up with the tackiest of chandeliers and there is a mock white brick fireplace in the center, stuffed full of tablecloths and toilet paper rolls.<br />
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We were, in any case, there for the food, as part of the Makansutra Dinner outings. These BYO dinners are arranged for a fixed sum, in this case, our 10 course dinner, very reminiscent of a Chinese banquet wedding, was $50. I did a rough calculation on smaller portions of the dishes and you could have paid slightly less, about $40 a head for an ample dinner for 4 people.<br />
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The first item on the menu for the night was the appetizer, San Lau Chicken. This is an interesting take on a cold dish, which is usually the first platter in a Chinese banquet. The cold, jellied drunken chicken is shredded and mixed into julienned celery, radish and <i>mu er</i>, wood ear mushrooms. I really liked this dish, it tasted of deep sesame and retained a good crunch. One of the dinner guests commented that the skin had been left on the chicken, which made for some fatty bits which they felt should have been omitted. Dinner had taken a fair while to get started and service was slow and inadequate but as far as food goes, so far, so good. </div>
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The second dish was a Superior Chicken Soup, which came in a robust black pot. It was full of soft chicken pieces, red dates and Chinese dried mushrooms. The soup was piping hot and very strong and flavourful. Definitely one of the favourites of the night.<br />
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The next dish was the Steamed Sea Bass Hong Kong style. I had read that the managers of the restaurant are so particular that they go personally to select their fish at the fisheries early in the morning. The sea bass was really large and it was impressively cooked, flaky and fresh, however, the taste was slightly bitter and muddied, it didn't have that sweet taste of fish flesh that you hope for. The sauce and condiments were suitably sharp and tasty. <br />
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One of my favourites was the Beancurd in golden pumpkin sauce, I really liked how the beancurd was fried, with a good give in the skin and creamy soft on the inside. The pumpkin sauce though, could use some work. I tasted no pumpkin at all and if I had been blindfolded, it would have simply been a starchy, sweet and smooth soup.<br />
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The Salted Egg Sotong had really good flavour, but I wish that they would have used a larger sotong, these sotong seemed to have shrivelled into small bits and the coating, while flavourful, was hard. I was disappointed not to have the live steamed prawns that I had seen online, they are thrown into a wooden bucket with hot coals and seem to be the highlight of this restaurant.<br />
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The next dish was Champagne Pork Ribs, I was hoping for large, bone-in pieces of pork rib but no luck there! These were small, narrow nibbles of pork ribs but they were very tasty. They had been well marinated and fried to a soft but chewy texture. I am told that Champagne is a partial misnomer, most of the pork ribs are marinated in Seven-Up to get that springy, turgid texture. If I were to compare these and the pork ribs at Ming Kee seafood in Macpherson, I like Ming Kee's coffee ribs about as much as I like these ones, but Ming Kee had large, satisfying pieces, which is nice to have in pork ribs!<br />
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The Sweet Potato leaf in Claypot was quite unremarkable, it was fairly spicy is all I remember. The Kam Heong Crab is also one of the highlights of this restaurant. I had never had Kam Heong before and the spicy, dark red paste reminded me of Sichuanese <i>ma la </i>and has the same effect of making your mouth a little numb. The sauce is made from dried prawns, or<i> hae bee, </i>curry powder, birds eyes chilllies, oyster sauce, soy sauce, shallots and curry leaves, basically a mish-mesh of South East Asian flavours. I don't know that I like it, it is really overpowering. The sauce is used for chicken, lala, crab. I've always prefered my crabs plain steamed with ginger, so I'm not a good judge of sauces, but this is closer to a dry black pepper crab than the very wet chilli crab.<br />
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I enjoyed the Bee Hoon with Clam in superior stock but some of the clams were slightly sandy. I felt that could have been more attention paid to this, but the soup was very tasty. Again, I read that they boil over 10kg of clams to get this stock and it certainly had a good briney kick of clam flavour. I don't usually like Chinese desserts and I'm not a fan of yam <i>ornee</i> (paste) at all, so I was quite surprised that I really liked their Yuan Yang Yam Paste. I suspect this is not because it was that unusual, but because the dessert was drenched in coconut milk!<br />
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The yam paste is not savoury and cooked in lard, which I always find an odd combination, rather the yam and sweet potato had been steamed and with coconut milk added, making it a lighter and more refreshing end to a heavy meal. </div>
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All in all, this was a very enjoyable meal with the unusual setting and good company. I am not sure it's a place I would have come out to on my own, nor that I would have found it by myself, within the condo complex. I think it would be booked solid during weekends as there is ample parking, local food at a decent price and must benefit off the large residential hinterland in this area. The staff looked very harried and I really salute the two young people for running a full restaurant with such a wide menu, not an easy ask at all. It's definitely something to be supported, if Singapore's local cuisine is to prosper and progress. </div>
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The restaurant's prices are reasonable and I was sorry to not get to try some of their other dishes like the sweet and sour pork ribs. Their pork dishes, for example are $12/18/24 for the small, medium and large portions, as are their tofu dishes and the sweet and sour pork rice or pork rib rice, costs $6 per plate. Definitely worth a try if you are wanting a meal in the East Coast over the weekdays or are thinking of a family treat over a weekend. </div>
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Diamond Kitchen</div>
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5000F Marine Parade Road</div>
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Ground Floor Laguna Park, (parking costs $1)</div>
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Singapore 449289</div>
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64480629</div>
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Reservation@DiamondKitchen.com.sg</div>
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http://www.diamondkitchen.com.sg/</div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-35442641771935622592014-05-16T23:36:00.002+08:002014-05-16T23:36:17.093+08:00Recipe: Vanilla Browned Butter Raspberry Jam Madeleines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have a new discovery, Natalie Eng's gorgeous food blog <a href="http://www.engnatalie.com/journal/2014/3/23/vanilla-browned-butter-madeleines">here.</a> She is a Singapore who splits her time between Singapore and Paris and has apprenticed at some of the top Parisien restaurants. Her cookery is mostly baking, but she has also included some food recipes as well. Her blog is just gastronomy to the eyes, I couldn't believe that she was barely 19 years old and had such a beautiful eye for photography. What a gift. <br />
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I sent her blog to some of my friends who are themselves gifted bakers and we all ooh-ed and aah-ed over her talent and beautiful bakes. I've been inspired by several of the items that she has blogged about and when I looked at the recipes, I was even more in love. She weighs everything and has helpfully laid out all the ingredients by weight and all the notes you need to achieve a good result. I love that her batch size is small and well-controlled. <br />
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This was the first of her recipes that I undertook to try. I have never made Madeleines but her pictures were so beautiful and moorish that it spurred me to borrow some madeleine pans at once! Browned butter is clarified butter or ghee, basically you heat butter until it starts to show brown flecks, then you skim off those charred and bitter bits and what is left is a golden, hazlenut- smelling concoction that smells divine. It is a great way to spice up your baking. <br />
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I love that this recipe uses honey and indeed, her tips, which included wiping the pan after brushing with melted butter and baking at slightly higher heat, did result in great, risen madeleines, although I felt the texture was a bit dense. I wished I had mini Madeleine trays as I think the smaller size helps with both the rising and the bite-size portion control. <br />
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I sandwiched my madeleine batter with a little spoonful of raspberry jam, I felt it cut through the butteriness of the batter and gave it a bit of a surprise. These were just delightful to eat warm, with a crisp skin and a soft interior, straight out of the oven. I baked these with K (this recipe is very simple and suitable for kids, especially if you have already made and refrigerated the batter) and the two girls chowed their way through the madeleines and the crumbs.<br />
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Since then, I have had a piping bag of madelaine batter in my fridge, as it is such a versatile thing to have lying around. I make the batter and then rest it in the piping bag, I think I could also freeze the batter for sudden desserts. I will definitely be returning to Natalie E's blog for more inspiration to bake and more deliciousness. <br />
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Vanilla Browned Butter Madeleines:<br />
(adapted from the Le Meurice)<br />
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90 grams browned butter <br />
15 grams honey, I used the best quality I had<br />
70 grams eggs <br />
25 grams milk <br />
65 grams sugar<br />
5 grams vanilla bean paste <br />
100 grams T45 flour, I used regular all-purpose flour<br />
4 grams baking powder <br />
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Directions:<br />
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1. Make a browned butter and strain out the burnt fats using a muslin cloth. Add in the honey and stir to melt it. Set aside to cool slightly.<br />
2. Whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla paste and sugar together.<br />
3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.<br />
4. Add the dry ingredients into your egg mixture and mix gently till well combined and then add in your browned butter. Mix till just homogenous. Cling wrap upon contact and leave in the fridge to chill for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours.<br />
5. Preheat your oven to 230C without ventilation. Grease your madeleine molds lightly and wipe down with a kitchen paper to remove any excess oil. Fill each mold with 6g of batter and bake for 2 minutes or till the humps have appeared. Open the door, rotate the tray and let some steam out, and finish the baking in the last minute.<br />
6. Unmold immediately and serve warm with a cup of tea and an assortment of jams.<br />
7. Note: if you're using normal madeleine sized molds, fill them with 25g of batter and bake at 210C.<br />
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-69188514904667231242014-05-11T22:11:00.001+08:002014-06-02T14:28:43.619+08:00Review: Cicheti, an Italian restaurant in Kandahar Street<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The blogspace has been lighting up of late with posts about Cicheti, an Italian restaurant located in a shophouse in Kandahar Street. The restaurant is very new- which in Singapore means 3 reviews as opposed to 90 on HungryGoWhere, with a paid-for-by-the-restaurant photo gallery and booking hotline. I jest.<br />
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Does it seem to you that Singapore is just filled with Italian restaurants? Many of whom do well enough to bring their entire families over? And yet, very few of them stand out as having food that is hot to the table, home-made, consistent and not overpriced?<br />
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If that's your impression too, then we are in sync. I am hard-pressed to name my favourite Italian place in Singapore, this for a cuisine that seems to be one of Singapore's favourites. People are always asking me, so what is the best Italian restaurant in Singapore? And honestly, I can't name a favourite. I can name some good ones, should you be willing to pay and I can name you some that I pop into once in awhile if I have a craving for pasta, but something that tastes like Tuscan sunshine or a rustic Italian kitchen? Maybe it's like saying you can buy a Vespa but you can't have the riding-a-Vespa-with-your-scarf-trailing-down-cobblestone-Florence lifestyle.<br />
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I think with Cicheti though, I've found one that I will go back to and bring friends to for a good meal and a long conversation and that's saying something. Sited near the corner of Kandahar and Baghdad Street, the whole area echoes gently at night of the kind of character and energy that you find in only a few places in Singapore. I'm a little partial to this area as you can tell, but how can you not be, when you are up the road from the best Nasi Padang and sarabat Teh Tarik in Kampong Glam, from little industrial hole-in-the-walls serving everything from old-school Singaporean pastries to Vietnamese noodles and tripping over teenagers smoking shisa on the five-foot way, in the shadow of the giant Golden mosque.<br />
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The shophouse itself is nothing special and neither is the restaurant's decor, if you didn't know this is where it was, you would walk past completely. I like Baghdad Street because it's a fairly quiet street, fronting a chain-link fenced empty lot. There is little street parking so you would be well warned to find a multi-storey carpark and walk a couple short streets.<br />
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When you enter Cichetti, the first thing you see is the glassed up work space of the pizza chef, which includes the stone pizza oven suspended from the ceiling. The shape of their oven is like a cement Hershey's Kiss, kind of organic and modern at the same time. The restaurant is a mish-mesh of textures from the map-stencilled floor, to the tiled walls, some with faux drawers. The tables are rough-hewn dark wood with industrial metal-backed chairs. The restaurant seats 20 below and up to 30 (but comfortably probably 20) upstairs, it has 3 or 4 little outdoor lover seats (read: non-airconditioned) and a rooftop patio.<br />
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It is an ideal place for a date or a dinner party (upstairs), intimate and casual but stylish. There were, I noticed a lot of groups of young and professional women. It is not the place to bring your 70 year-old father, unless there is a nice table upstairs available. This being a narrow shophouse, it gets a little hot when the bulbs have been burning too long and the door is left open.<br />
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The service is unusually sweet and lovely. Never, in Singapore, have I been greeted as we sat, by a waiter who introduced himself cheerfully, nor welcome knowledgably with specials. At least, not at this price point. The waitstaff asked the two young-ish children at the next table how they found the food. I recognized the manager for the restaurant who told us that he had come to join his friend, who was the owner-operator of the restaurant. I guess time will tell but for now, I think this is a place with a lot of heart and where the food still tastes really small batch home-made and with the right balance of time on the stove and fresh herbs.<br />
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I say for now because I notice from earlier reviews, that the corkage has been re-priced from $35 to $45 (which is pretty punitive for a place with $20 pizzas) and the cost to book a 20 seat party on the second floor is $3000 on a weekday and $4000-5000 minimum spend on Friday, Saturday, excluding drinks. The reason, the manager explained, was that they would shut down their typical 30 seat takings although even he was hard-pressed to explain how their arranged menu would encompass $200 worth of food per person at $20 a pizza or $25 a pasta. This being Singapore, they are already full for some private functions.<br />
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The menu makes the bold claim of being intriguing yet accessible, which is an interesting assertion for Italian food- not comforting, familiar, and the like. The restaurant still has specials on trial, like their excellent octopus and T-bone steak and they plan to revamp their menu in July, dropping out some less popular items and putting in items like uni pasta (which did originate from Italy). The interesting thing is, the men behind the counter were all young and they were all local. The only Italians, were the couple of tables of middle-aged ones with their families. The restaurant was booked through the Friday night and there were still odd couples streaming in at 8.30pm and 9pm.<br />
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Cicheti is typically small-plate snacks or sides at <i>bacari</i> in Italy, a sort of Italian izakaya, if you will. Oddly enough, the restaurant isn't really snacks at all but maybe the new trend, which runs through my next couple of reviews, is that eating holes are trying to get you to drink more, so the food just accompanies your higher-margin drinks? The one-page landscape menu is very condensed into Appetizers, Pizzas, Pastas, Mains and Desserts, with perhaps 8 choices of each, something that I really appreciate (I hate pages and pages of pastas, a sure sign they are going to taste the same).<br />
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To start, we had the burratina cheese with grilled pear and parma ham. The burrata was light, fresh, cold and just excellent. It used to be that unless you went to Oso, you couldn't have a good burrata (and they would cost $50, airflown). But I find that both Cichetti and Burlamacco (on Telok Ayer Street) have very good burrata too. The combination with grilled pear was both unusual and very tasty, the parma was a little pale and weak for my taste.<br />
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We also had the calamari and the special, grilled octopus with haricot, and just to make it healthy, the mesclun salad, which was not very interesting but well executed with very sweet bi-coloured corn and a good size for one or to be shared. Depending on how you like your calamari, you will either like their home-made breaded coating, or like me, find it slightly thick on the tongue (I admit it gave it more texture and depth). The grilled octopus was wonderful, turgid, charred and lemony, which made a good contrast with the thickness of the beans. I appreciated that they used a large, fat octopus and not a small or thin tentacle.<br />
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Our mains were the meatball tagliatelle, the seafood cioppino and the baked sea-salt encrusted sea bass. The pasta was hearty and had a good depth to it, although as always the case with meatball pasta, it didn't have an overwhelming number of meatballs. The seafood bisque was excellent, it tasted fresh, from the mussels to the fish to the tomatoes- this is always my fear with ordering cioppino. This had almost a lobster bisque quality and we sopped up the soup with the bread. I had my doubts about the sea bass, I tend to be prejudiced that fish is expensive, salt crusts are a fancy way to disguise stale meat, like thick sauces, and I've had incredible salt crust baked fish in Portrugese coast, hauled out of the seaside, that would be monumentally hard to beat.<br />
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The presentation of the sea bass, in a plain Japanese department-store metal tray, also doesn't really reassure, but the fish was succulent, juicy and fresh. There was no bitterness to the fish, it was sweet, lemony and meaty. At $38, this was a fairly large fish which formed most of the main course for 3 people, so I felt it was an acceptable price and far less than dedicated seafood restaurants would charge for a fish this size.<br />
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We didn't try any of their pizzas but I watched the process and product of the oven and it looked good, with a thin crust and a good char. The four cheese pizza and plain magharita pizza are meant to be the best. These are also the more basic flavours so hopefully there will be some interesting variations on the menu soon.<br />
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The desserts were probably the weakest point of the whole meal, the salty molten chocolate cake is their best-seller and it is very good, a balance of sweet and savoury that takes away from the rich guilt of chocolate. They gave us a complimentary tester dessert which was a meringue covered in a nutty almond crust, drizzled over with a thick chocolate. Their chocolate needed to be a bit thinner but this we really enjoyed, especially crunching through the generous nut exterior.<br />
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The last dessert, which was the tiramisu, was poor- weak cream-filled marscapone in which I could barely taste any cheese and a soggy tasteless sponge that dripped watery coffee. Tiramisu is supposed to pack a punch and this one felt more unfulfiliing than a limp handshake. I felt like making one for them, because it is such a hallmark of an Italian restaurant and really, not a difficult thing to make!<br />
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The waiter's response to an earlier diner's diss of the tiramisu was very cute though, she said "well, it depends on your perspective, everyone likes different things". To me, that was telling of the positive service, particularly that the manager later acknowledged the sales numbers show the same and they are working hard on upgrading their dessert selection.<br />
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Cicheti<br />
52 Kandahar Street<br />
+65 62925012<br />
www.cicheti.com</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-45966271307240341722014-05-11T21:39:00.003+08:002014-05-16T23:40:01.168+08:00Review: Muchachos, Burritos in Singapore<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The odd thing is that people always ask me, what kind of food is your favourite? What is your favourite thing to make? But no one ever asks me, what do you not eat?<br />
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And that list is surprisingly long. Capsicums, frogs, sea snails, barnacles and ark clams, mint, durian, chillies (though not curries), sesame sweets, chinese almond and bean desserts and pastes, some fried foods. There are also genres of food that I avoid entirely and amongst those are <i>hokkien</i> food (yes, sorry, no offense meant) and Mexican food. </div>
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I blame my prejudice against Mexican food partly on my own dislikes for chillies, capsicum and bean pastes, all of which feature fairly prominently in Mexican dishes, and also on a poor introduction via Tex-Mex in California and New Mexico. I don't dislike it entirely and having gone to school in California, I have eaten my fair share but I rarely seek it out. Of course, since coming back to Singapore, the concentration of very commercial Mexican options has done nothing to improve my impression.<br />
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In this particular case, thankfully, I was not in charge of choosing an eatery and the majority picked a new place called Muchachos along Keong Siak Road. I've been coming to Keong Siak Road over the years and always point it out to tourists as a street where you can eat your way through modern asian cuisine at Ember, old-school charred roast meats and wanton mee at Foong Kee, excellent frog porridge, prawn mee and zi char, nouveau Australian barbeque at Burnt Ends, tapas and cocktails at Jason Atherton's Esquina and Keong Siak Snacks. And this all set in an evocative Chinatown hill of Indian temples and shophouses in the shadow of old red-lanturned brothels. </div>
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Upon first sight, this place looks like a cake outlet, a dark clean counter with a glass display showing the variety of fillings. It is pretty spartan and very tidy. Yet, this place is the real deal. Their burritos are soft and supple and both the pork and beef fillings are succulent, flavourful and well-seasoned. The owner meant to replicate the dive-bar Mexican joints in the Mission and it really does remind me of those tastes. It is very tasty and very satisfying- most of the women that I was with opted for a bowl, which is basically all the fillings without a wrap (what's the point, loves?) or else basically a meat-enhanced salad and one had a quesadilla, which is a toasted, filled wrap. I might be used to fuller qusadillas but they looked a little skimpy, so I would stick with the burritos, which were so hefty that some of us shared it two to one. </div>
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You pick your burrito size, choice of protein, fillings, salsa and sauce- I like the pulled pork (carnitas) and beef (carne asado) the best. The guacamole (made with fresh California Haas avocadoes) and rice were excellent and the pico de gallo and salsa verde salsas are fresh. The hot sauce surprisingly, wasn't that hot, which is fine by me but would probably bother most people. For $12, which I initially thought was expensive, I was at least pleasantly surprised by the size and I was full till dinner on less than one burrito. The production line issues that I had heard about online were not a problem the day we were there but we were early at 12 noon, in half an hour the entire (small) lot had filled up and the few counter and sidebar seats were all taken.<br />
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I wish it were closer to my office so that I could pop by once in awhile for lunch, or ask a friend. Definitely a place worth checking out, especially if you're near the area or in the mood for a little taste of .<br />
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Muchachos</div>
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22 Keong Siak Road</div>
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+65 62200458</div>
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Mon-Thurs, 12 noon - 10pm, Fri-Sat, 12 noon - 2am. Closed Sundays. </div>
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<i>* All photo credit to Muchachos Facebook page and Melissa H for Yelp. </i></div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-45306219787188148212014-04-24T00:00:00.004+08:002014-04-24T11:27:41.616+08:00Review: Smokehouse by Kuriya<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm not usually one for buffets, although Z. is and I greeted his finding of this excellent buffet with some scepticism. All-you-can-eat and a meat place, especially with a non-descript name like Smokehouse? Sounded like a recipe for gastro-reflux or worse a re-run of teenage memories at Seoul Garden. Since then, I've had to eat my words and my public service announcement is to blog about this place before their attractive weekday offer ends at the end of this month. <br />
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This place is opened by Kuriya and from what I discovered online, it is meant to be a pay-as-you-go place to experience Japanese meats. The idea is that you pay a cover charge for the salad bar and side dishes, which are not insubstantial, as it runs the gamut of a very tasty chicken soup and miso soup, to kim chi, pickles, daikon, mesclun salad and toppings like tomatoes, corn and edamame, as well as garlic and white sushi rice. You then choose your meats by the 100grams, from an Isetan-like counter and pay for those. You can also choose and pay for beers and desserts.<br />
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The supermarket-like greeting area of the restaurant is fascinating, varied products from Japan like packaged cakes, salad dressings, and all manner of foodstuffs that make it really fun to browse or at least peruse all that's on offer.<br />
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You can then DIY a BBQ at their Korean BBQ tables, atop fresh red-hot charcoal buckets. These sticks of black charcoal greet you in a glass-fronted display when you arrive at Smokehouse, there is something really evocative and primative about that. This is juxtaposed against the Japanese supermarket meat counter and then the whole concept is laid out in a stick person diagram similar to those at petrol kiosks, that I found simultaneously very Japanese and very Singaporean.<br />
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I guess the good people behind Ichiban Boshi were trying to do for meats what they had done for fish in the form of takeaway sashimi and sushi. I'm not sure if it will take off and I heard that they had some teething issues, including a few days when the whole restaurant was shut for technical issues. This might have something to do with why they are now running a promotion for an all-you-can-eat on their meat counter, for $60 at weekday dinners and $23 at weekday lunches, but without wagyu meats. On weekends when they presumably don't have a problem with crowds at Great World, this same deal costs twice as much ($120 for dinners).<br />
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For $60, it really is great value, as long as you can prevent yourself from stuffy your face of oily, rich wagyu. It sounds rather unbelievable but you can really go up to the counter, which looks an awful lot like the Meida-Ya or Isetan meat counter and pile up your cooking platter with 10 slices of thick Japanese wagyu rib-eye, 10 slices of fresh marbled Japanese wagyu short ribs, 10 slices of premium beef tongue, 10 large cubes of wagyu beef tenderloin , 10 steaks of dry-aged USDA prime rib, 10 slices of kurabuta pork and just for good measure the enoki, shitake and king mushrooms please. It is slightly mad- you don't even want to waste your time on the Australian and USDA beef, because you should concentrate on the Japanese wagyu.<br />
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Far from being stale and cheap, the cuts of meat are fresh and red, they look beautiful, like Japanese supermarket cuts and nothing like our wet market beef or even the dark purplish hue you sometimes see off frozen beef at Hubers or Indoguna, before they have been aired. They list out the provinance of each type of meat and cut and you can have anything from thin slivers of shabu-shabu to thick steaks. This is clearly, not the kind of place for vegetarians, pescetarians (although there is a prawn, fish and scallop offering, it did not look as great as the meat selection) or young children.<br />
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We really enjoyed ourselves, though the second time I went back, I ate with more restraint! You should definitely try it before the promotion runs out, as I'm not sure it will be maintained afterward when it goes back to a 100 gram pricing. I guess it has been so popular already that they plan to rescind it at the end of the month.<br />
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Smoke House Charcoal BBQ<br />
#01-37 Great World City, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, Singapore 237994. Tel:+65 62352185.<br />
Opening Hours: Lunch 12pm – 3pm, 6pm – 10pm Daily (Last orders 2:30pm and 9:45pm)</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-86919581359822704122014-04-23T23:08:00.000+08:002014-04-24T09:22:30.332+08:00Review: Teppei<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If there is one place where people take photos of their food, or rather photos of themselves receiving their food, it must be Teppei. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you must have heard of this little hole-in-the-wall where people queue for hours for food, in Tanjong Pagar.<br />
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I myself walked by this place for months, always ogling the crowd and only belatedly kicked myself for not making a reservation earlier for their $60 dinner omakase. By the time I tried it, it was a choice of $50, $60 or $80 dinner omakase, that had wagyu beef and sushi as the margin-inflating extras.<br />
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As with all places that you go to with high expectations, it was inevitable that it should disappoint at dinner. But at lunch, where I had queued just a few days before, it was indeed a triumph to get a seat and I felt richly rewarded by the barra charashi that I'd seen online again and again.<br />
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Let's be clear, there is definitely a strategy for eating at Teppei. Lunch opens at 12 noon. The queue begins at 11am. There will be enough people in the queue, by 11.45am, to seat both the first and second seating. However, there is a lull at about 12.45pm when the whole of the first seating will have left. My observation after a few times, is that if you begin queing between 11.45-12 noon you can get into those slots. You will most definitely get there if you are in a group of one or two people, in fact, people who go alone get to the head of the queue all the time. If you have four people, you are out of your mind.<br />
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They won't seat you before your whole party arrives. And should you miss that 12.45pm slot well, then you will be waiting a long time. I think they do about 4 turns every lunchtime, at approximately $50 per two heads, that's 18 seats multipled by 4, and then $25, which is $1800 and an additional 50% takeaway, or $2700 revenue for each lunchtime. Which although substantial, actually isn't much for how hard the chefs work, and how many extra hands they hire. You'll see what I mean when you go.<br />
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The cheerful obliging man behind the counter is Yamashita Teppei, who hails from Fukuoka, Japan. The dishes at lunchtime are largely tempura priced at $16-19 and the barra chirashi at $16 which is a very decent mound of sashimi served in sauce atop a bowl of Japanese rice. There is a new special everyday, the day we were there, it was yellowtail sashimi and what we discovered after a few goes is that you can customize your barra chirashi (realized this because one barra chirashi is rather small and leaves you wanting). You can get an upsized barra chirashi, or one with tempura for $24.<br />
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Given the limited lunch menu, and the appetizers which you pick from table tubs- I believe it was hijiki seaweed, a small pot of oden and stir fried shredded pickled radish, the service is fast, efficient and hot. It is always really hot inside this place, but inside, the cool mix of ikura and chunks of salmon, tuna and scallops, topped with a yuzu ponzu and pea sprouts, is refreshing against the warm rice and the world is good. The chefs are buzzing and although everything is served out of plastic bags and packets, this place has a dive-bar type atmosphere that makes it kind of hip.<br />
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I have to admit that going in for dinner, was not without reservations. Haha, a good pun since reservations are what indeed you will need, the place is booked solid for most of the year and opens again in September for October-December reservations. I had seen pictures from my friends and between the rough thick sashimi, the random skewers and the slightly wobbly food texture, I had my doubts, but when offered a chance two 6.30pm seats late in the day by a absentee friend, I felt I couldn't turn it down just the way I suppose Singaporeans queue for Hello Kitty, or Taylor Swift tickets. Just because it's rare!<br />
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I don't know if there were really 22 courses, I didn't count but it's true that there were many many small plates. I felt a bit cheated that many of them were poked on satay sticks, like one broad bean, one thin sliver of Japanese tomato, one leaf of 'ice vegetable' that was handed to us by the assistant and one crispy orange little crab, also shoved onto a satay stick. The sushi was handed to you, in individual metal spoons. Those were 'courses'. One broad bean is not a course. Not in my book anyway.<br />
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There were also little itty-bitty saucers of again, sauteed dragon's beard vegetable, oden and three sad-looking char-grilled edamame (tasted the same as non-grilled edamame). There was an unappetizing, small salad that was served at room temperature, symptomatic of the lack of refinement in the food, just stuff served out at a breakneck pace. A plate of four or five roughly-hewn sashimi, salmon, salmon belly, tuna , hamachi (yellowtail) and swordfish. A deep-fried tiny fish with a slice of lemon. A slice of meaty fish tempura, with a slice of lemon. A bowl of ten littleneck clams, served in soup with a lemon. The clams were sandy. There was a small saucer of what the chef and assistants told us were Dinosaur. "But what is it really, is a clam or a barnacle", as that's what the gnarly footed shape looked like. It's Dinosaur, they said blankly. For the record, when you break off the shell, it evinces a small red flesh, similar to a crab leg, though not as chewy as a sea snail.<br />
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Everything tasted, a little briney. The fish tasted a little briney, the crab, the dinosaur, even the ice vegetable tasted briney. It just didn't taste fresh and the mouthfeel wasn't right, it wasn't turgid and distinct. For $80, I feel that I can get a full sushi/sashimi meal, at a decent if mid-range place like Hakumai at International Plaza or even Akashi, so it didn't feel like a steal and I walked out feeling slightly moorish in the mouth, like when you've binged on over-oiled yet slightly tasteless supermarket sashimi.<br />
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The buzz at dinner, was quite different from lunch, when the air was cooler (but still smelly on the clothes) and you ate with a line of people outside. At dinner, the area is deserted (it is Tanjong Pagar, after all) and the restaurant just seemed to get hotter and hotter as the two hours wore on. The shirts stuck to our backs and it became actually a bit unpleasant, especially as you could see the chefs busily preparing the next courses for the next seating at 8.30pm.<br />
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The best courses, I felt, were the Negitoro handroll. It came wrapped in a crisp seaweed with flavourful soft negitoro, wrapped with crispy tempura bits. The tenkasu really made the roll. I also liked the uni scallop sushi, the shabu chutoro, the chawamushi (pretty regular but tasted of milk and sweet potato at the base) and the slice of wagyu beef fried with crispy garlic and scallions.<br />
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By the time we came to the mains I wasn't so much full as I was, tired and confused from the array of little tastes and dishes. The choices are Fried Rice with Sunny Side Egg (spicy), Sashimi Rice, Soba(hot or cold), Udon (hot or cold). I was hoping the sashimi rice might be the same as the lunch's barra chirashi, but it was instead, four metal spoons, containing four kinds of small sushi. I had the hot udon, which was plentiful with pink-rimmed fishcake and wakame. Dessert was the choice of a scoop of Yuzu, Green Tea, Sesame, Calpis or Salted Caramel ice cream.<br />
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All in all, it is a decent amount of food, if not a lot of food, for $80, but I think the sweet spot in pricing is probably $60. It isn't very good quality and I dare say the standards have dropped as the restaurant has become really busy (I've personally experienced this even with the takeaway at lunch), but for an experience with friends, I would definitely still go for lunch, though probably not for dinner. I didn't manage very good photos at night because of the low light but there are many reviews online that have lovely pictures that make the food look very appetizing like <a href="http://www.pinkypiggu.com/2013/12/teppei-japanese-restaurant-orchid-hotel.html">here</a> at PinkyPiggu and <a href="http://www.sgfoodonfoot.com/2013/11/teppei-orchid-hotel.html">here</a> at SGFoodonFoot.<br />
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Teppei Japanese Restaurant<br />
Orchid Hotel<br />
1 Tras Link<br />
Singapore 078867<br />
Tel: +65 62227363<br />
Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/teppeirestaurant">https://www.facebook.com/teppeirestaurant</a><br />
Lunch: Mon-Fri 11.45am-3pm / Sat 12.15pm-3pm / Not available on Sundays<br />
Dinner: 1st seating 6.30pm-8.20pm / 2nd seating 8.40pm-11pm / Closed at 11pm everyday and on selected Sundays</div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-16428310663859967852014-04-23T21:55:00.003+08:002014-04-23T21:56:32.067+08:00Review: Nassim Hill Bistro and Bakery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was introduced to this place by a friend and even though I live fairly close by, I had never even associated the building with a bakery. This is a bakery-bistro-bar (in the morning, lunchtime and at night) that is sited at the back of the old Tanglin Post Office, behind Swiss Butchery and in what used to be the Friven headquarters.<br />
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The building is a hodge-podge of businesses that doesn't really make sense to me. Even the entrance, is either from the drop off, where these days, all the obscenely expensive super cars get to park, or else in the basement carpark via the cargo lift that I presume is used to transport furniture up to Domicil on the top floor. It seems very hard to fathom that it could be home to a good food outlet or bakery.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_kjxz3gXRXzAKFGzttB64b5UgLaT8c70NOxKqQTOxpR3tlsaugSvm0cmqA2_t8C_YqXzyb5T2ic3YLP1RmY8eAmS5KOPPoB6YXiVA-qC3kdIMtlMD2oGhoe4iMJm3j94ul1B/s1600/532411_476819242346159_568874714_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_kjxz3gXRXzAKFGzttB64b5UgLaT8c70NOxKqQTOxpR3tlsaugSvm0cmqA2_t8C_YqXzyb5T2ic3YLP1RmY8eAmS5KOPPoB6YXiVA-qC3kdIMtlMD2oGhoe4iMJm3j94ul1B/s1600/532411_476819242346159_568874714_n.jpg" height="160" width="320" /></a></div>
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Odd though it is, this place is absolutely fantastic. This casual place is by the same group, Imaginings Pte Ltd, that owns KPO. I'm glad I didn't know that before I went, because I would have had the impression that it was slick or overpriced. The interesting thing about this place is that it doesn't really have much character, cement screed industrial floors, regular dark brown wood ones, the servers were yellow beer-sponsored tee-shirts- you know, it's just regular. It has random touches like a huge marble counter and stained glass panes, which are as inconguent as they are quirky.<br />
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But the food is excellent and consistent. The eggs are rich and nicely scrambled, the pancakes are fluffy, the banana foster french toast is thick and the fish and chips ($23) have a wonderful, crisp beer batter which puts it in at least the top three if not the best that I've had in Singapore. The steak and eggs, or spanish eggs are very good, as are the sandwiches- ham and emmenthal cheese sandwich on walnut cranberry bread is particularly delicious and the hot rueben on Austrian beer bread was warm, juicy and massive. Everything comes with a side of salad, fries and a large variety basket of warmly, freshly baked bread, which is quite a luxury. They bake all their bread daily and I am told that it is baked and bought in by the artisan baker at Killiney.<br />
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Over the Easter weekend, they had specials of potato rosti with smoked salmon, sweet potato has, waffles and ricotta hotcakes- it was great to find a full menu that actually draws you in!<br />
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There isn't any service charge (granted, service is a little hectic when the place is full as it can get at weekend lunch) and the meals are priced at $15-18 for eggs, $18 for sandwiches and $17 for salads. The helpings are probably the most generous of any brunch place that I can think of. I like that there is ample choice with five pages of brunch, sandwiches, salads and pastas and also that the layout of the place is spacious and if you go in the morning for breakfast, fairly empty and peaceful.<br />
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Nassim Hill Bakery Bistro Bar<br />
56 Tanglin Road #01-03 Tanglin Post Office, Singapore 247964<br />
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Tel: +65 6835 1128<br />
Opening Hours: 8:00am – 12:00am (Closed Mon), </div>
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Breakfast & brunch: 8am – 5pm, Lunch: 11am – 5pm, Dinner: 5pm – 10:30pm<br />
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<i>All pictures courtesy of Nassim Hill Bakery's page. For more tantalising photos, check out gninethree's review in pictures <a href="http://gninethree.com/2012/08/19/nassim-hill-bakery-bistro-bar/">here</a>.</i></div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-26870331845989604662014-04-23T18:25:00.005+08:002014-04-23T21:19:06.129+08:00Review: GAEST Sandwich Shop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I always laugh a little inside, when people say, "you haven't been updating your blog these days, you haven't been eating out izzzit". Oh, if only that were true, I would have to resort to many days of salads to try to keep the bulge down (this is my second day of pure salads, so excuse me if the post is a little grouchy, I get really grumpy and start craving tiramisu and pizza by about Day 2). <br />
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Actually, we have been eating, making our way through the names slowly but surely. It's just that I've been trying to find inspiration to write about what we've been eating and many times I am just not that inspired, because the place isn't that differentiated. Also, I find that with the new trend of hip, casual places, the menus have become a bit more, dare I say, disjunct and sparse, such that it seems disingenously less than a full review to write that I found this place, that only serves, 7 kinds of burritos and 4 flavours of San Pelligrino sodas. <br />
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I could tell you about Assembly's great coffee and their 7 brunch items, but 4 of those were scrambled eggs done different ways. It would be the stuff of a Facebook post, but not necessarily a review.<br />
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GAEST or 'guest' in English, is a place that has opened in the Tanjong Pagar district, in the buzzing district of Mc Callum Street, just a couple of spots away from the lovely SPR MKT. This place is tiny, so a strike against it for me is the kitchen or sandwich preparation area, which is merely a bar extension of their coffee counter. They are a brand new clean-cut Scandinavian place, although personally, I didn't really see anything particularly Scandinavian except that the sandwich features potato and the decor is light wood and IKEA-rised lights (but isn't everything in Singapore these days?). <br />
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This unit was last a coffee shop and sits at the foot of the boutique apartment block, the Clift. There are only three tables indoor where the door is left open and the rest of the seats are outdoor or for takeaway. As I mentioned, the day I was there, the staff were busy and noisily chopping the roast pork and bread on the tiny counter, so I was a little underwhelmed. I was told that they make their bread daily and their roast pork, at their homes, which is real committment. <br />
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What I liked about it were the friendly owners and the bread- the sourdough bread had a proper sour kick to it and I couldn't stop eating the crust, it was so sharply delicious. That being said, the sandwiches, while more bespoke, are pretty small, a little dry and at $15, not terribly good value, as they are much smaller than those at Nassim Hill Bistro or just around the corner at Cedele or the Sandwich Shop. <br />
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We tried the potato sandwich, the roast pork sandwich and the chicken sandwich. I make roast pork crackling and smoked pulled pork at home, so I was not taken with what it was, but I liked the use of more varied ingredients, like pea tendrils, hazelnuts, sliced apples and rye crunch in the sandwiches. I could not taste the cranberries that were meant to come in the pork sandwich, but it was indeed the best of the three, with the chicken being the plainest. The salad, which was a heaping of mixed vegetables and citrus fruit seemed a much better deal, so I will try that next if we return. We were the only Asian table there, I guess not many consider a sandwich and coffee for below $20 a good deal- but the place looks like they are doing good business nonetheless! <br />
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GAEST<br />
21 Mc Callum Street #01-01<br />
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The Clift, Singapore 069047</div>
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Singapore 66340922<br />
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<em>Photos from GAEST's Facebook page</em></div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-48626022871694212182014-03-09T14:28:00.001+08:002014-03-09T14:29:09.837+08:00Giveaway: Naturai Personal Salad Maker NSM1501 from Mayer!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Exciting news! We are giving away a Naturai Personal Salad Maker from Mayer, model number NSM1501, a handy device that helps you to prepare a whole range of thin and thick sliced and shredded vegetables.<br />
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It comes with 6 shredding cones, for everything from crinkle-cut french fries, to hard cheese, fine shredding, coarse shredding, thin and thick slices. These can be used to quickly prepare salads that include vegetables, cheese, meats or roots. I can imagine that this is great for popiah, Chinese New Year pen cai or yu sheng. It is also easy to clean and safe for (older) children to use.<br />
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This item is worth $120 and is a stock piece sponsored by Mayer, meaning that the box does not look perfect and it has been opened for testing (by myself, once) but is unused and otherwise brand-new. Mayer provides a one year warranty for their products. I've attached the spex sheet <a href="http://mayer.dyndns.biz:9120/manuals/New/Naturai%20Personal%20salad%20Maker%20NSM150I.pdf">here</a>.<br />
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To win, all you have to do is leave a comment or link to your favourite salad recipe or current favourite place to dine out in Singapore . We will close for entries on the 31st of March. The item is for self-collection, in Singapore only. </div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-22278809406237039292014-03-09T10:33:00.001+08:002014-03-11T14:47:04.144+08:00Review: Morsels Restaurant At Mayo Street<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We had been meaning to try Morsels at Mayo Street for a very long time and this Friday, we decided to take a spontaneous trip there. Much has been written about this place and so I'm just going to concentrate on the food. The location is a lovely old shophouse, one side has been fitted out to be a steel kitchen and wood bar and the other casual tables with mismatched furniture and comfortable barstools at the counter. The general feel of the place is casual and unpretentious, much like their earnest and friendly co-owners, Brian and Petrina, who are behind the kitchen. A staff of perhaps 10 buzzes around the galley kitchen and bar, preparing and serving dishes, not quite with the masculine velocity of Burnt Ends, but definitely with purposeful and unintrusive confidence. </div>
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We decided to leave our selection of small plates to the chefs and just sit back and soak in the night. We wound up tasting about 12 plates, cycling through half the specials and menu-featured small plates. To start, we had the limegrass mojito and a Hokkaido scallop cerviche with compressed plums and tobiko with home-made tortilla chips to start. The menu is based on small plates, Western concepts with Asian-inspired ingredients and this seems to be working really well. I was very encouraged to see that there was a great mix of demographics and age in the restaurant, and despite the slightly smoggy day and difficult Little India evening traffic and parking. Too often, restaurants in Singapore are not equally supported and attract a clientele that is either highly specific, or aligned to the chef/owner's ethnicity - rather like how Travis Masiero's Luke's is always white and Willin Low's Relish is always well, Asian, so I was especially happy to see that this wasn't the case here. </div>
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Of the first three plates, I really enjoyed the home-made tortilla chips- just the right combination of crispness and puff, basically the kind of flaky pastry that would taste good with just about any dip. I felt the cerviche was a little too sweet with the plums, I would have liked to taste more sharpness, to contrast with the smooth mellowness of the scallop and more tobiko for crunch. I also really enjoyed the hamachi, with green manzanilla olives, shaved baby radish, radish sprouts, buckwheat, argula and heirloom tomatoes. Their yuzu ginger dressing tasted of juniper berries and softened black pepper- it was complex and really tickled your palette. This was one of my favourite dishes. Another was the third plate, also on the specials, the mesclun with compressed green apple, jamon, candied pumpkin seeds and creamy burrata, served with a simple salt-and-pepper toasted crostini and with a raspberry-balsalmic reserve. Simple and delicious. </div>
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The next dish was the littleneck clams, cooked in a miso broth and with home-made kim chi. Despite Z's protestations that he could taste the butter in the broth, I liked it, it was rich with a good kick and I appreciated the clean and opened clams, with the spice of the kim chi just making the dish outstanding and different. The fifth dish was the pork pasta, served with what tasted like a green curry and sour cream sauce. This was probably my least favourite dish, the pork was a bit stiff and mixing the sour cream in actually made the dish very heavy, if filling. </div>
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These were the first of the pasta dishes, the sixth was a black squid ink risotto, with octopus that had been poached for three hours in dashi, then grilled, sliced and basted again with dashi. This was drizzled over by salted egg yolk and topped with ikura. This dish is actually really in sync with what Morsels is about, the use of unlikely ingredients like the salted egg sauce, which was delicious and the octopus which was sweet, soft and charred. I also appreciate the little touches like the microgreens, the Japanese fish roe and sour plums and the edible flowers that garnished the plates. In some restaurants I feel that the cooking doesn't live up to the garnishes, but here I felt the attention to detail and the quality of food preparation did.<br />
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This was also the point at which I started to feel quite full and would have been happy to move to desserts, but the guys I was eating with were still able to eat and we hadn't yet moved on to the meats. The seventh dish was a nori pasta with Alaskan Ling Cod, topped with ikura. This is a special item, as opposed to a regular menu item. The chef told us that a new menu is currently in the works, so that is definitely a reason to return. This was my second not-favourite dish of the night, while decently executed, the fish wasn't flaky the way you expect cod to be, it was still a little turgid and too solid (as you can see I suspect, from enlarging the side of the fish in the photo below). The pasta was flavourful- the seaweed pesto is made by mixing nori with basil, pinenuts, sesame and olive oil in the regular combination but somehow the pasta was a little stiff and the taste of the nori also came out slightly bland, I think I would have preferred something saltier like Chinese black olive. </div>
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The eighth dish was a grilled pork cheek. I think you can see from the photo below how marbled and well-seared it was. This was very good, but so marbled that it crossed the line from flavourful into fatty. I would probably have used a pork cheek jowl with paradoxically a little less fat, marinated it with rum and raisins to give a sweetness and served it with a sharp mustard to cut through it. But I'm splitting hairs here, it has to be good enough to inspire you, which it was and most, if not everyone, would have found it just fine the way it was. </div>
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The prettiest dish to me, was the ninth dish of braised beef short rib. This was grilled and then curiously, it was sous-vided at 78 degrees for part of the duration of our meal. I didn't understand how it was so tender- having sous vided meat, I know that it can't be done in such a short period of time, but it hadn't appeared to be pre-cooked. Part of the magic I guess! It was then removed from the sous vide and braised in a pan, basted and glazed with the gravy and sat atop a bed of purple Okinawan sweet potato. It had never occurred to me to use sweet potato for such a purpose, let alone a purple one and I could see from it's vivid colour that it had also been sous-vided and not cooked or roasted. </div>
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That's a lot of trouble to go through for the visual appeal of a dish and this was beautiful and delicious to boot, with the meat cutting well under a knife. The meat was supple, yet soft and flavourful. It was totally finished by the guys. There were other meat dishes on the menu which we didn't get around to because we were already full and it was getting late. We'd stayed at the restaurant almost two and a half hours and I was quite amazed for for a small place, they had the dedication and gumption to go with such a diverse menu, which required serving multiple small plates at each table. </div>
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For dessert, we had the Morsels Signature Milo Tira-miso ($12 for a small and $16 for a large jar) and a Bluberry and Apple Jam Cheesecake, which was on the list of specials. Both were served in mason jars and were very good. The first was a tirmiso-like dessert, where the chef used miso shiro in the dessert to make a savoury-sweet tiramisu and had milo on the top instead of cocoa. It was excellent and not sweet but I have to say that it wasn't hugely different from a regular tiramisu, except it was more mellow and yes, savoury. Not as savoury as I expected when I ordered it, which I guess is good, although I would have been interested to taste miso. The cheesecake was more conventional but with a gorgeous almond, macadamia nut topping that impressed even our dessert-loving trio.<br />
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One criticism I've heard about Morsels, is that while the food is good and unique, people felt they weren't full after an expensive meal. The dishes ranged in price depending on the cost of the ingredients. The hamachi was $15 but the Burrata was $25. It depends on how many dishes you order, we were all very full but you would perhaps spend $100/person at dinner before drinks, so it may not be the most suitable place for a family. That being said, I don't think the prices of places like Esquina or Artichoke are any lower. I thought the fascinating mix of Brian and Petrina, his more free-wheeling ways and her clear discipline and attention to detail, which is required to keep time and bring so many plates out hot to the tables, is really something unusual for the Singapore food scene and in a way, cannot be done outside of a small, intimate place and at this sort of price point. I really liked that the place was warm and friendly, as opposed to coldly commercial, which can be the case at a lot of the celebrity-chef offshoot restaurants and that the food was inventive and well-executed, I would definitely bring friends for a good night out.<br />
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Morsels<br />
35 Mayo Street<br />
Tel: 63966302<br />
Dinners only, 6-10pm Tuesday-Saturday</div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-31338390012573173782014-02-10T11:42:00.002+08:002014-09-14T21:43:56.531+08:00What to bring (and not to bring) your dinner host<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Since we are just at the beginning of a new year, I am going to list some lovely and not-so-lovely gifts to bring to the hopefully, delicious dinners you will be having this year. As someone who hosts a lot, I usually say don’t bring anything and I really mean it. Friendship isn't about material exchange, and an invitation does not come with an obligation to give anything, except your company, time and appetite. If I wanted a contribution, I would ask specifically. That being said, I have received a wide assortment of good and also useless gifts over the years, so in hope of spreading the joy and considerate gifting, here are the Do’s and Don’ts of bringing a gift. I've deliberately avoided any brands or specific homeware gift shopping, as I think that what constitutes a beautiful piece, can be fairly subjective.<br />
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<strong>Cutlery. </strong>Cooks are notoriously finicky about the cutlery with which they eat off and their taste in these will, over the years, become as personal as their taste in clothes. You would never buy bedlinen for someone else would you (or would you, mother-in-laws?) and unless this is your best friend and even then, you should probably not venture to buy crockery or cutlery for someone who cooks, because by sheer repetition, they would never use everyday stuff that they didn’t absolutely love. I had a family friend who is a frequent guest, give me an Ikea cutlery set for Christmas once and even though I love Ikea in general, I was a little taken aback at how the gift was the antithesis to how I think of food. Maybe, I thought in horror, they think my cooking is pretty Ikea-like.<br />
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<strong>Kitchen equipment.</strong> I have an entire cupboard full of gag gifts and unused kitchen equipment. This runs the gamut from small cheese knives, glass pepper and salt shakers, colourful nesting baking bowls, silicon bakeware (rubbish), aprons, measuring cups that say rude, alcoholic slogans. I have wine glass charms up the wazoo and I have never used a single one. I swear the Insert-Action-and-Stay-Calm movement was a boon to manufacturers of useless merchandise and napkins. <br />
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Unless they have specified to you what they would like to receive eg. “a grey Cuisineart medium spatula”, or you’ve spent a lot of time in their kitchen observing their habits, you can never tell what someone will find irrelevant or deeply impractical. In most places, I also find that apartments have very limited storage space, which most cooks and bakers will have no problem filling up with their own little-used gadgetry. In recent years, clearing out unused equipment has a discipline I actually enjoy, unless something really gets used in my kitchen, I just don’t have the space and bandwidth to keep cleaning it. <br />
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<strong>A cookbook.</strong> Why, people, why? Unless you, a fellow cook, have roadtested the recipes yourself or have found something that you empirically find of great quality, what I don’t want most, is another cookbook. In this day of the internet, I don’t even need to read cookbooks. And, I am deeply suspicious of pretty, girly cookbooks. Most of them have recipes that don’t stand up to the test in terms of actual texture and quality, or are blatently missing ingredients and steps. <br />
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I understand that people who give me cookbooks are trying to inspire me. But please understand that I feel very bad throwing them away, particularly because I know people have gone out of their way to search for something for me. And then I also feel bad having rows of books that I’ve never more than flipped through, usually within the five minutes of having received them. <br />
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<strong>Wine and beer.</strong> Unless we are talking about a particularly special bottle like an organic wine you picked up from a trip, or a tasty Burgundy magnum or a 1982 Petit Cheval (in which case, yes please), don’t bring more wine and beer. I have nothing against people bringing any wine, or beer, that they are intending to consume, but if you had to stop at a supermarket for a $17 bottle of table wine on the way over, then well, don’t. <br />
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I know it’s the perfect throwaway, big-party gift but first, the food you are going to consume is more than $17, second, no one is going to drink it and then, when everyone has left, I will have no place to store it. If you have to bring it, then please bring a red, so I can make some pasta sauce.<br />
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<strong>A small portion.</strong> If this is a pot-luck and you are ‘contributing’, make sure you know how many people are attending. I really appreciate when someone brings a starter or a dessert, but I appreciate it more if the salad comes washed and with dressing and the dessert comes plated, rather than in a dessert soup tureen that involves warming and preparing bowls and spoons. One reason I’ve stopped asking people to bring anything, is because I’ve had guests bring half a baguette, or a bag of supermarket greens, or a small packet of cherry tomatoes for 12 people. At which point, I just gave up.<br />
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<strong>Honey.</strong> I understand the itch to buy artisanal honey. I really do. I can’t walk past a farmers market myself, without getting attracted to some beautiful pot of golden honey. And this is why, I have five giant jars of honey in my fridge. I have more honey then I am ever or should ever consume in three years. <br />
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<strong>Truffle anything</strong>. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone likes truffle. In anything more than small and infrequent doses, it can start to smell a bit rancid. For someone who is not a cook, gifting them this means they have to cook something and truffle oil goes bad, really quickly. I also feel that manufacturers have been quick to leverage on the truffle trend, many truffle products are actually not infused but flavoured with chemical truffle, to taste like the real thing, but with a remarkably strong but monotone flavour.<br />
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<strong>Chocolates and ice cream.</strong> It is a probably an assumption to expect that cooks and bakers like to eat store-bought chocolate. Some do, most really don’t. Who can afford to eat pieces of chocolate every day? As popular as chocolate are as a gift, it’s more likely that it will simply build up in their fridge or get re-gifted. If you really want to buy them a chocolate treat, gift them a bag of Valrhona couverture or dark cocoa, to use in their next baking experiment. <br />
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<strong>Tea and posh spices.</strong> You don’t want to see my tea drawer. You really don’t. It overflows with tins and packets and teabags, oh, the variety of stuff I have. I guess they intend it for other guests but so far, no guest has actually requested tea and I guess they wouldn’t at dinner. I've been given so much tea, I’ve researched dying my hair with it, on multiple occasions. I have Irish Breakfast (I don’t even know what that is), and Orange Pekoe and Oolong of several different varieties. And I don’t even drink caffeinated tea.<br />
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Also, there is a finite number of spices that I or any cook uses, cinnamon, five-spice, paprika, very rarely nutmeg. Anything else is just going to go bad, or clutter up shelves in hardened, beached-up little jars. And the answer is no, I'm probably never going to even get close to making the Pakistani Tandoor Kelaki Chicken with Moorish Spices. <br />
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<strong>Nuts.</strong> Unless your host is fanatic about nuts and all kinds of nuts, most people will have a personal preference in nuts and dried fruit. Neither one of the two keep well in our climate and I can tell you from personal experience that once packed together, mixed nuts and fruit develop a musty, oxidised and undifferentiated taste that is quite unpleasant. <br />
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If you have to bring nuts (and who brings a little packet of mixed nuts anyway, I'm not a zoo monkey), avoid mixed nuts and bring them a bag of raw almonds or cashews that they can choose to eat whole, cook into their food, or use to bake with.<br />
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<u>Do’s:</u><br />
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<strong>Gift vouchers to grocery or food stores.</strong> Cooks and hosts consume a lot of ingredients and some foods, like beef, butter and milk, are more expensive than ever. It doesn’t take any imagination or creativity at all, but a gift voucher to the local supermarket or specialty butcher will always be appreciated and goes to the heart of gratitude as a guest.<br />
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<strong>An (unopened) bottle of multi-vits.</strong> Cooks are not always the most healthy of people, a good dose of Vit C or multi-vitamins is both a generous and a thoughtful gift and certainly never hurt anyone. Tell them to take one every time they are in the kitchen. <br />
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<strong>A luxurious dish-washing soup.</strong> The thing about cooks and bakers- they wash a lot of dishes. I don’t always run the dishwasher because it isn’t energy efficient, especially if I’m just baking a cake. Also, many baking implements need to be washed by hand or require soaking. I use regular dish soup in my kitchen, but a gift of a biodegradable, environment-friendly soap with a great scent, like a Seventh Generation or Method, or Murchison-Hume, which comes in a beautiful big refillable brown glass bottle, if you are feeling really generous? I wouldn’t say no to that! <br />
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For those who have children, a $5 bottle of Kirei-Kirei, by Lion Corp, makes a really thoughtful gift, the foamy soap is wonderful for children as it gently but effectively lifts colouring from your hands and nails. If you want to give an adult gift of soap, maybe consider Fresh soaps, which come in hefty big pieces and gentle french-milled fragrances like Verbana and Mangosteen, wrapped in paisley paper. <br />
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<strong>Fresh mint or a pot of herbs.</strong> If you are confident that your host will use them, the ability to boil a pot of fresh mint tea, or to cut and preserve some herbs for your next gift, is a wonderful luxury. I received a giant pot of rosemary once, which is still a gift that keeps giving. If you decide to be this creative, make sure it’s a bigger pot and that your host doesn’t have to grow it themselves, nursery pots are $10 for a knee high shrub as opposed to $4.50 for a cup-sized pot in the grocery. <br />
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<strong>A box of fruits.</strong> This is always welcome. Four golden kiwis? Done. A box of Australian peaches? Lovely. A bag of thin-skinned grapes? Practical. Fruits are healthy, universally enjoyed and appreciated. They can be shared between families, or eaten in place of a meal, or juiced the next day.<br />
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<strong>A sharp pair of kitchen scissors or shears.</strong> Every kitchen could always use another pair and these are relatively inexpensive, maybe $10 on sale in kitchen shops like TOTT or your regular hardware or Japanese dollar store. In Chinese tradition, you are not meant to give sharp objects to friends as it symbolises that your relationship will be severed, ask them to give you a dollar back!<br />
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<strong>Olive oil and balsamic vinegar.</strong> Again, only if you have observed that they do cook with these. I don’t mean the extra-special, tiny little bottle of French cold-pressed olive oil, although that is good too. Just a regular bottle of olive oil or balsamic vinegar, to replenish their kitchen stock, would always be a thoughtful gift and gets eventually used by most people. Nowadays, there are these whimsical websites where you can send time-lapsed gifts, a box of in-season CSA produce, a bottle of seasoned olive oil from an adopted tree in Italy at <a href="http://www.nudoadopt.com/italia.php">Nudo</a>. </div>
Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-71055549710220670822014-02-10T00:14:00.000+08:002014-02-20T22:32:45.493+08:00Allergies, Egg-free and milk-free cakes and cupcakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One thing that I have noticed lately, and I'm not sure if that's because I've become more sensitive to food issues and sources, is the increase in allergies to food. A few years ago, I had an incident of edema, which is basically a severe reaction, in my case, where your face swells up and becomes inflamed. I looked like Will Smith in the movie Hitch! It took two days for the swelling to fade and it was a truly scary experience, which came coupled with fierce cold and allergy type reactions of sneezing, swelling and difficulty breathing. </div>
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Even though I lived with a roommate in college, with serious enough allergies to warrant an epipen, I've never been fully sympathetic to how much of a wake-up call it can be, until I experienced it myself. I was fortunate that this was an isolated incident and that I was able to quickly get some antihistemine, but it did make me much more careful, if not outright cautious, about items I ate and biodegradable cleaners in the kitchen. (The doctor's prognosis was that it would have to be something I had ingested or something in the kitchen that may have entered the food, because of the speed of the reaction). </div>
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Given that the reaction was very early in the day, my own guess is that it would have been something chemical, or a derivative of, something in processed or canned foods, which I don't often eat, but which may have been in the brunch we had just had. More then before, eating and living healthy and doing so in a pared-down and organic fashion, became my new year resolution. </div>
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The most interesting part of that experience was the nonchalence of the doctor- he told me that he sees twenty cases of allergies a month and 2 or 3 of edema, but both have been on the rise! (While I understood his reassurance, I felt his diffidence, as someone of the medical practice, was misplaced). </div>
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Indeed, it seems commonplace nowadays for children in particular to have allergies, and to fairly ordinary ingredients, like egg, milk and other dairy, rather than something like nuts or seafood. Imagine my horror last year, when out of just my own friends, five of their children have had serious allergies to egg. These symptoms started when they were babies, at less than a year old. One grew out of the allergy, but the rest have not and may never. How can so many children be allergic to egg, or milk? </div>
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Do I want to know the answer? I have my suspicions, which are in-line with my deep suspicion about the media myths about the milk industry, and the cleanliness of the physical and clinical process of rearing and innoculating chickens and cows, but whether we just look away, is not the point of my post. </div>
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One of my enduring interests has become finding biodegradable cleaning products that actually work effectively and are better for you, and I've done the same with regard to food and recipes. Removing ingredients from recipes, is actually much more tricky than merely awareness toward food safety. For a long while, I used to find it frustrating when people would say glibly oh, can you not put in alcohol, or only use raisins, because these are often there for a reason. </div>
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Why bother destroying a perfectly good recipe, I would silently wonder to myself- it is difficult to find substitutes for all of these ingredients, egg and egg white in particular, is the structure that holds up cake and frosting. And if you take away egg, or try to take gluten out of flour, you wind up just adding more sugar or thickened rice, which is neither healthy nor delicious, and quite honestly, is pretty unrewarding to bake. I don't like doing that and I also wanted to enjoy the requests for egg-free, milk-free, gluten-free, butter-free, so I've looked through many books and many recipes to find recipes that I actually think can square this circle. </div>
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Because can you imagine being a child and never having any ice-cream, cake or a milkshake? And how you feel when other kids eat without having to ask, or only being able to eat entirely artificial things like bread with condensed milk and sprinkles (yes, true story)? I actually think it's better for children not to need milk, meat and sugar and I would never contravene parents who steer their children away from any or all of that, especially if that means they eat a diet rich in greens and unprocessed grains but it is a little sad to never have cake, because life needs to be a treat, now and again. </div>
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We've just made a cake for a 1 year-old, with one of my favourite names- Luke! The cake is egg-free, milk-free and butter-free chocolate cake, with is deep, luscious and because we use a high-cocoa-content dark chocolate, not sweet. The layers of cake are sandwiched with a dark chocolate frosting, which is also egg-free and milk-free (it does have a smidgeon of butter, but I suspect it can be made without). It is so smooth, rich and amazingly good! The cake is then frosted with a salted caramel buttercream, made in a rather non-traditional way (the traditional way being with whipped egg white). I think it looks so cheerful and I hope he had a wonderful celebration. </div>
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In recognition of children that have such allergies, we did a particularly special bake this weekend which was egg-free and milk-free cupcakes. The cupcakes that are both egg and milk-free will be frosted with the chocolate frosting, which the egg-free (but not milk-free) cupcakes with the salted caramel buttercream. I was pretty happy with the results, they looked so happy, tall cupcakes and tall frosting. Hopefully they went down well with the kids, some of the parents sent lovely messages to say that they tasted great with no egg and milk, which was great to hear! </div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-64994352423452882542014-02-09T23:28:00.000+08:002014-02-09T23:28:18.727+08:00Recipe: Strawberry Victoria Sponge Cake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Strawberry cake is something simple that I really enjoy, I guess I have fond childhood memories of good strawberry shortcake. We are particularly lucky in Asia, soft Japanese sponge, light chantilly cream and sweet Japanese strawberries. This is definitely one dessert that I have spent too many calories on! </div>
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We had a friend request a Victorian sponge for her birthday- something simple but pretty rare! I remember making Victorian sponge when I first started baking and honestly, I'm not sure why I stopped, it is such a great cake, slightly firmer than a full chiffon sponge, but light and fluffy. At her request, the layers were brushed with a strawberry compote and then layered with a strawberry-raspberry cream before it was piped with a smooth, white cream, which you can appreciate when it was sliced open.</div>
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Recipe:<br /><br />225g butter<br />225g sugar<br />4 eggs<br />1/2 tsp vanilla extract<br />225g self-raising flour<br />1 tbs milk<br />1/2 tsp salt<br /><br />Bake at 180C for 30-40 mins until light and risen. The secret to a wonderful cake is to adequately cream the butter and sugar and also to use the best ingredients possible, a Madagascan vanilla essence or even a vanilla pod. </div>
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In case you were wondering, this is what we made with the other half of the layered cake, a raspberry buttercream, rainbow sprinkle cake. Not bad for a Saturday morning's bake!</div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-14578676707678311532013-12-31T11:58:00.001+08:002013-12-31T12:19:44.142+08:00Thank you and Orange Sugee Cake for Chinese New Year sale!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We hope you all had the most wonderful Christmas and New Year! We definitely had a big season of baking this year. As you know, in previous years, we have always put some of our own Christmas and seasonal baking up for sale. As home bakers, we are very fastidious about the quality and consistency with which we bake. As a person who appreciates and writes about food, I have become increasingly concerned about the safety, quality and source of our ingredients, whether they are single origin, whether they are produced by people who similarly care about the taste and nutrition of what we are eating. </div>
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I think it is fair to say that I have become more particular and also more careful about how much and what I consume, because it's one of the only ways to moderate against my love for food generally. Where possible, we try to cut out the sugar levels, salt levels and artificial flavourings that otherwise make dessert particularly unsustainable and heavy instead of light and delicious. </div>
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We really believe that baking should be about fun but also about really great ingredients, good recipes, freshness, dedication and being <em>special </em>to the occasion. We believe in simple product that tastes and looks good. With the increasing price of ingredients and inflation in Singapore, you know this is not an easy task and one thing that we found really helpful was to buy direct from suppliers. </div>
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This enabled us to get quality French butters (if you bake, you know how much yellow artificial colouring seeps out of many commercial butters), Madagascan vanilla pods, Portugese pears, rum, fruit and nuts, fresh black cherries and so on. Buying in bulk is efficient, but only if you can bake all of it, so we started to put up some of our baking, for sale, to make up the numbers. </div>
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In truth, it has also allowed us to better enjoy the process of baking our Christmas cakes for the festive season and I can't tell you how good the warm aromas of rum, fruit, nuts and vanilla, smell. We spent the weekends baking the Christmas fruit that had been soaked for over three months in rum. </div>
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Even the glace cherries become a tan-gold colour after all the soaking, so being the traditionalist that I am, I chopped and soaked another batch of green and red glace cherries and candied peel. It is hugely therapeutic, the weighing out the butter, sugar, flour, toasting the nuts and folding the batter and citrus peel into a rich, moist crumb, and building up a stack of honey-brown, brandy-brushed cakes. </div>
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This year, we made more changes to try to get our friends to try different products that we ourselves enjoy. All the products we offered were items that we love too and which we have for Christmas, especially the sour cherry pie. This pie is absolutely superb, and I am quite picky about pies. The crust is an American all-butter crust into which we add pistachios for a nice crunch and flavour. The filling consists of two kinds of cherries, the prunus avium is the sweet, black cherry, while the prunus cerasus is the sour cherry. <br />
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The red morello sour cherry is less sweet, firmer and is one of the superfoods, the black cherries have to be freshly pitted, fruit by fruit. Yes, you heard me right, imagine sitting there, pitting your way through a couple hundred cherries- it is absolutely a labour of love (and wayy tedious) but we believe it really makes a huge difference to the texture and bite of the filling. Then there is pleating the lattice, while the dough is in between various states of being frozen and chilled, trust me, you do not want to make this pie yourself. </div>
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Another really fun addition this year, was to have specific cake and pie boxes, in a sturdy kraft cardboard. Apart from making really beautiful product, we also wanted to have a proper packaging that was, like our mantra about baking, simple, straightforward, evergreen and effective. We had our packaging stickers made like a picture on an old chalkboard door and we called our efforts 'Monk's Hill Bakery', which seemed fitting, given it was where we first baked together and shared laughs. </div>
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Monk's Hill is actually a really old place in Singapore and we liked this reference to our local history. It is the stretch of green, hilly, windy, and now very urban space, which borders Cairnhill and Clemenceau Avenue North, which turns into the back of Paragon, and Newton where Newton Hawker Center is. It was named for the old Chinese cemetary that sat on the hill that now leads upward to Anglo Chinese School, but the monastery and school that bore the same name, have long since ceased to exist. </div>
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In the evenings, as you walk up the quiet and green lanes, flanked by the old black and white colonial flats and townhouses, sometimes it's misty and you can imagine what you would have been like- a really beautiful, contemplative place. </div>
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One of the old products we decided to put on the menu this year, was our Caramelized Pumpkin Pie. This is no wishy-washy, gently smooth pumpkin pie- the addition of caramel, port and spices to the traditional recipe adds a lot of punch and a deep jazzy depth that is smooth but strong in each mouthful. It contrasts really well with the decorative border of freshly whipped cream and it's one of my sentimental, seasonal favourites. </div>
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Although Christmas is just over, we are already thinking of new products to offer next Christmas and at different points across the year. Over the last year, we have been making celebration cakes, customized children's birthday cakes, seasonal cakes like our Triple Lemon Bluberry stacked cake and our many flavours of Macarons, when we can and when the ingredients are in season. Our hope is that by agglomerating all our bakes into Monk's Hill Bakery, we will have a more coherant way to manage the custom orders and seasonal bakes that we do- feel free to email us at <a href="mailto:monkshillbakery@yahoo.com">monkshillbakery@yahoo.com</a> anytime, if you have a custom cake in mind. </div>
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The truth is, these pictures make the entire process look beautiful and festive, don't they? They were taken by our dear friend Melvin. He should really be a professional but he has too many talents to make this his main line of work. He was generous enough to give us some of his time and he really makes the cakes and pies look out-of-this-world good. There were so many people who have really made our baking experience fun and fulfilling, so we would really like to thank you all for your support. It made Christmas special to meet each and every one of you and we hope the eating was as good for you, as it was for us. </div>
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In the background of the picture, you can kind of see the batter for this cake and you can see how inlaid with pear it is. These are pears that have been seared with brandy, which causes the caramelisation of the cake itself, in the foreground. It is an absolutely intoxicating cake, with a rich, dense crumb and smooth fruit finish, true to it's provenance, it goes really well with port. <br />
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We've tried this cake with all kinds of different fruit and pears, and it is only the Portugese Rocha Pear which makes it sublime. We love Portugal, it's beautiful towns, rich agrarian produce, sea-side fresh food, with their sharp flavours of cilantro, fresh octopus, chorizo and crates of farm citrus and we are happy to support their exports, especially to Singapore. This season for Rocha Pears was really short, so it caused us some anxiety to be doing these cakes for Christmas, but it all worked out well in the end and we hope to keep it on as a seasonal offering .</div>
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This last cake is one, and the only one, we will be offering for Chinese New Year. This is because CNY this year, falls rather close to the end-of-year festivities. This cake is our Orange Sugee Cake and comes topped with an organic flaked almond icing drizzle. I particularly like our version of sugee cake because it is not as dense, oily and yet dry, as the regular Eurasian version. The texture is lighter and more aerated, with fresh orange zest that really brightens up each slice. </div>
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It goes wonderfully with tea for your New Year guests, so if you would like to have some, please drop us a line to order at <a href="mailto:monkshillbakery@yahoo.com">monkshillbakery@yahoo.com</a> with your contact details. Each cake costs $50 and comes as a boxed 6 inch square. The cakes will be ready for self-collection on the 25th of January, the Saturday before Chinese New Year and visiting begins. </div>
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Have a wonderful and blessed New Year, we wish you good health, good luck and good eating!</div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-74979437137746214452013-12-30T09:15:00.000+08:002013-12-30T17:24:52.759+08:00An Ombre Children's Birthday Cake, Redux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's nice to ring in the New Year with a sweet little cake for a barely one-year old. This is one we made for P's daughter, D on her first birthday and while she won't remember it, it's a bit metaphorical of how a New Year has all the potential in the world. <br />
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D's mum, clever woman that she is, requested a non-fondant, delicious cake, so we made a blueberry lemon cake and started stacking it with buttercream and home-made lemon curd. This kind of cake, is rather a labour of love, it has to be made fresh, whole and is just beautiful inside and out. When you slice through those even layers of cream, curd and cake... ooh, it gives me shivers just thinking about it. </div>
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This is the cake all beautifully stacked and ready to go. It was very even, before the frosting was even applied, always a good sign and just studded through with blueberries. It was crumb coated and then the ombre buttercream was carefully swirled on. </div>
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As they say, practice makes perfect when it comes to colouring and frosting. I think I learnt a lot from my previous ombre cakes and I love how this turned out, with the waves of colour graduating upward. We put the sprinkles on, the fondant ducks and that's it- as fresh and clean as a cake can be. </div>
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Happy Birthday little D! We hope you and your family enjoyed your cake and we wish you all the blessings in the world. </div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12374187.post-86061475796313816902013-12-29T22:45:00.001+08:002013-12-29T22:45:17.329+08:00A Quick and Easy Christmas Meal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For those of you who are on the hook for Christmas meals and New Year's, here are some really simple dishes to throw together. I really enjoy making these because they practically cook themselves and leave you plenty of time to get the dishes done before hand, as well as be out of the kitchen and enjoying the company of guests. <br />
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I'm not going to go into desserts, as there are ample recipes that we've done over the year and unless you insist on a creme brulee or souffle of some kind (wow, you really are masochistic!), most desserts can be, indeed have to be, prepared beforehand and at the most, warmed up before serving. There are also some like eclairs, or cake or trifle which are served cold. We did a dark fruit trifle of blackberry, strawberry and cherries this year, primarily because I had a round of pound cake, some cherries and strawberries left after making a previous stacked cake. <br />
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For a vegetable and a change from a cold salad, I like to make this simple dish of roasted brussel sprouts and corn. I had shown this salad in an earlier post but it is a very good one for large crowds particularly. It is both healthy and easy to make- I assemble the four ingredients ahead of time, bacon, which I slice and freeze for use, corn kernels which I slice off the cob, store in a tupperware and which can also be frozen, the brussel sprouts which I wash and slice before, storing in a zip lock and the cilantro, which can be chopped and put in a bowl or zip lock. <br />
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Assembly is simplicity itself, I just line a oven tray in foil and pour the brussel sprouts, corn and bacon in, give it a toss and roast it in an 180C oven for 20 minutes. When it comes out, allow it to cool and toss in the cilantro. The wonderful thing about this recipe is that it can be assembled pretty much anytime before your dinner and it can also be roasted before the dinner, as it does not need to be served hot. It also doesn't require any oil or butter (you can add these but it tastes just fine without them.<br />
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Another easy veg is a sliced potato and caramelized onion cake, as adapted from Jamie Oliver. You simply slice the baby potatoes and par boil them, which takes very little time when they are so thin. Arrange them in a dish, sandwich two layers of potatoes with the caramelized onions and toss them into the oven (at the same time with the brussel sprouts if you wish) and they come out golden brown. The only part that requires a bit more work is the caramelized onions but these can be done ahead of time, stored in tupperware and frozen for ease of use. Simply slice three red onions, cook them in a saucepan, add two tablespoons of white sugar when they soften and then three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and continue to cook until they are limp. <br />
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If this is too much work for you, simply line another roasting tray, spread the quartered, uncooked potatoes with some cauliflower florets, drizzle with oil, herbs and sprinkle with salt and roast together with the brussel sprouts. I love recipes that can all be cooked together, it saves energy and time to be able to roast both together in the oven and I often even add a third tray on top, of thinly sliced bread for bruschetta! <br />
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The other part that is really easy to do is a quick carbohydrate, instead of doing a pasta, which requires you to boil pasta right before guests arrive- there is little way to prepare a pasta in advance, I have taken to doing a rice pilaf or a rice dish with basmati rice, enriched with some veg and protein. This is my Christmas take on a salmon kedgeree- you might think that dry-frying is a very Asian technique but apparently (judging by the recipes of Nigella and just about everyone who has a kedgeree something), it isn't. <br />
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What I do is fry a tablespoon of minced ginger, garlic and shallots in a little oil (I use a little sesame oil for the effect) and then add 3 cups of washed and drained basmati rice. Fry the rice and then add a cup of diced white onion. Continue to fry till the rice is fairly dry, then push it all into a rice cooker and steam the rice till cooked. Halfway through the steaming, I open the lid and stir in a teaspoon of parika, a handful of peas, cranberries, fried shallots and chopped dill. It smells just heavenly!<br />
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Again, this recipe is so simple and the steaming process means both that it can be done ahead of time and it will keep warm. I smoke my salmon piece on a cedar plank but you can just roast it in the oven, or poach it, anything that you prefer. In this instance, I flaked the salmon over the rice but you can also just serve it as a large piece of salmon lying atop the rice. The juices from the salmon seep into the rice and the whole thing is just potently delicious. It is a dish that is equally acceptable to older people, as well as to younger children, which suits parties. <br />
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The last thing we do is make a meat, now this can be seafood, if that your preference, or a bird, or lamb leg or a steak or a traditional roast. My vote would actually be for a traditional roast, becuase it is the easiest to do, simply marinade, sear, roast in the oven and then pull out and carve before or as the guests arrive. It's just one piece of meat and it has to rest, which gives you ample time to get ready and mingle with your guests. <br />
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It's also hard to mess up a roast, if you start with a quality piece of meat and it doesn't require too much fussing about or stuffing, just the oven or BBQ grill doing it's work. In our house though, it was steaks and lobsers this year, hot, crusty and juicy soft off the smoker. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh7nRDMbEdruJPWlDfbGUCc6ngYNWNLX2hFLu4IC0l-kbfrG18kFopnZ8tFBnSKzsMkXEQW4D1lsgRvL9l5tyecmFArDrvkL251rsnjv0PV2eaygFbZR1C0jtoJUQTZAyEC3CW/s1600/1480589_10202583144875909_1656092483_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh7nRDMbEdruJPWlDfbGUCc6ngYNWNLX2hFLu4IC0l-kbfrG18kFopnZ8tFBnSKzsMkXEQW4D1lsgRvL9l5tyecmFArDrvkL251rsnjv0PV2eaygFbZR1C0jtoJUQTZAyEC3CW/s320/1480589_10202583144875909_1656092483_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Bon appetit!</div>
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Weylinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041463887766528249noreply@blogger.com0