Review: Petit Village

Two years ago, the Les Amis group was dealt a rather considerable blow when its executive chef, Justin Quek, decided to leave for greener pastures. Personally I think Les Amis is the most ridiculously overpriced restaurant in Singapore, but this isn't about them.

This is about Justin Quek's parting gift to the Singapore dining scene, an innocuous little restaurant in Liang Court called Petit Village. Billing itself as a salon de thé as well as a restaurant, Petit Village is meant to ape a quaint little Parisian cafe, where you can go to enjoy little tidbits of cheese and wine in addition to a hearty meal as you watch the world go by.

Like a little Parisian cafe, it is exceedingly difficult to find. It's hidden in an obscure corner of Daimaru, past counters selling sizzling skewered dog meat and shelves of indecipherable Japanese products. Had we not stopped to ask for directions we may never have located it.

It appears Justin has, at least, trained his staff well, and while they were not quite Les Amis standard, they were at least helpful, polite and didn't slop wine all over you.

In its quest for realism, Petit Village is a little over-realistic in terms of floor space: there is a chronic lack of it. It's very claustrophobic, with some painted walls and random Gallic (and galling) decorations.

The food, unfortunately, did little to correct this impression. All plat du jour dishes had been exhausted by dinner, which either meant they were so popular or that the restaurant had so few customers they couldn't be bothered to plan for dinner. Looking at the number of people in the restaurant, the latter was probably more likely.

The remaining dishes were sorely lacking in imagination and variety, with only poultry and fish to choose from. I decided to start with escargots ($10), since they're a fairly rare sight in Singapore. These weren't too spectacular (3/5), though I cannot now remember exactly what I thought was missing.

Considering the lack of main courses, the duck confit ($28) was the obvious, and only, choice. While this was better than average (3.5/5), I felt it still did not approach the sublime quality of melting in your mouth, and for that price there wasn't enough of it.

I see that, unusually, I did not have dessert. This either means that by that time, we were eager to go, or that there were hardly any desserts worth eating, which I suppose amounts to the same thing.

Petit Village (French)
177 River Valley Road
Basement 1, Liang Court Shopping Centre
Tel: 6338 3812
Location: 2/5
Ambience: 2/5
Service: 4/5
Food: 3/5
Overall: Not worth the effort it takes to find the place

Technorati Tags: Restaurant Reviews, French Food, Petit Village, Singapore

Review: Restaurant Ember

We went to Ember for sister's birthday dinner. Ember is a fairly new restaurant that has enjoyed a fair amount of success, due to the fact that the food is good and the prices are reasonable. Cuisine here is neither high-brow nor quotidian, meaning while you won't find a lot of truffle-infused this and that, you're not likely to get spaghetti bolognese either.

Ember is actually the official restaurant of Hotel 1929, one of the many boutique hotels that are springing up all over the place. As a result, Ember benefits from the chic, if somewhat retro decor the hotel employs.


Even Amelie eats here

The food here won't cost you an arm and a leg, so it's very popular with the younger crowd. I hear this is the venue of choice for many hen parties. Thankfully there were none in session at the time.



The problem with seeing foie gras on the menu is that then you're obliged to order it, just to see if it's any good. They give you a fair portion of pan-fried foie gras for $16, served along with caramelised apple and clove, sauced with a port and raspberry glaze. Some coarse sea salt has been sprinkled over the top, which marred my appreciation of it somewhat, the saltiness refusing to be banished by the tart sweetness of the apples and port. I was not really blown away by this effort (3.5/5), which is rare for me while eating liver, but for $16 it's pretty good value for money.



Though I was tempted to order the lamb cutlets ($30), which I remember as being very good, I decided to go with the char-grilled beef tenderloin with creamed spinach and truffle mash, in a port and madeira reduction ($34). As you can see, this came with some salt too, but since salt complements meat, I had no real problems with this. The meat itself revealed just a shade of dryness, but luckily there was sufficient sauce provided to obscure this fact. The mashed potatoes too could have used a bit more texture, being rather too creamy. But still, decently appetising (4/5).

I have it on good authority that the seafood Ember serves is excellent. As it was, everyone who ordered fish at the table had nothing but praise. The Chilean Sea Bass with ginger and soy broth, in particular, is supposed to be superb. A pity I'm not a fins and tails sort of person myself.



One of the things, I find, at being able to cook, is that you are always compelled to order something you know you can do, just to see if the restaurant does it better. Which is why I had to order the Warm Valrhona Chocolate Cake with vanilla bean ice cream ($11). I was actually contemplating the Trio of Creme Brulee, but the one of flavours was something like black sesame, which I thought I could do without.



Theirs was better (4.5/5), but it was a petite thing, and compromised by its lukewarm temperature, though that might have had something to do with my photo-taking. I hated the almond flakes their ice cream came with though, and as a dessert, it was somewhat spartan looking.

Ember is located in Kheong Saik Road, which is totally unnavigable to me without a taxi. Parking could be a problem, though with a bit of patience a surprising number of lots free themselves up. The neighbourhood leaves much to be desired though, there are a lot of dodgy looking lounges and what I suspect is a garbage dump nearby, because it certainly smelled like it. Apparently though, the restaurant is only a few minutes away from Exit H of the Outram Park MRT station.

Since the restaurant is owner-run, the standard of service is scrupulously higher than most other eateries. They also get by with fewer waiters than usual, which just goes to show that the more waiters there are, the more you get ignored. The rate at which the food arrived was disappointly slow though, there were interminable lags between courses that could hardly be sustained by table talk.

Restaurant Ember (modern European)
Hotel 1929
50 Keong Saik Road
Tel: 6347 1928
Email
Location: 1.5/5 (4/5 if you're taking the MRT, according to Jireh)
Service: 3.5/5 (-0.5 for slow service)
Ambience: 4.5/5
Food: 4/5
Overall: Worth the trip

Technorati Tags: Restaurant Reviews, Modern European Food, Restaurant Ember, Singapore

Recipe: Molten Chocolate Cakes

If I have one great failing in life, it is that I am not very good with desserts. I always leave them for my sister to take care of, because she's had tonnes more experience in home ec classes and all.

I feel my great fear of desserts, especially baked ones, stems from the fact that they are perhaps the most scientific branch of cookery, and I have very little patience with weights and measures, as Wen En can probably attest. Were I at Hogwarts I would probably fail Potions. This is why I have great respect for good bakers like her.

When you cook (or when I cook), there is a lot of leeway for adding or substituting ingredients. If you forgot to add something early into the cooking process, it usually doesn't matter, or you can always remedy it slightly later on. See what happens if you try that while baking. You end up with no butter in your butter cake (which Wen En now claims was supposed to be a lemon pound cake).

In baking, not only do you have to be very precise, you also have to be very quick. You can't be blasé about how much to beat your eggs, and you can't afford to dwaddle while your soufflé is collapsing. The time your dessert goes into the oven is perhaps the most nerve-wracking of all - the moment of truth: did you forget anything? Will it rise correctly? Will it explode?

Still, there are times when you just have no choice but try your hand at baking - especially when the dessert is a yummy Molten Chocolate Cake and when the recipe is this simple.

Ingredients (Serves 5)

112.5g bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
62.5g unsalted butter, cut into large pieces
2 large eggs
80g white granulated sugar
50g cake flour
Mixture of cocoa powder and icing sugar



Notes on Ingredients: Measurements are weird because the original recipe serves at least 20. You can bump up the chocolate and butter to the nearest gramme or five grammes if it's more convenient. Use the best chocolate you can find, it really does make a difference. Anything better than 55% would be good, as the bitterness also helps offset the sweetness of the cake. I didn't have cake flour handy so I used a mixture of half plain flour and half self-raising.



Preheat the oven to 180ºC and prepare six 3-inch ramekins. You can use souffle cups like these, or metal moulds, which are recommended as they conduct heat better. To do so, butter the insides of the ramekins liberally, then pop them in the freezer for five minutes.



Apply another generous layer of butter, then dust the insides with a mixture of cocoa powder and icing sugar, knocking out the excess. This double layer of butter and dusting will help your chocolate cake unmould easily. If you can't be bothered to mix cocoa and sugar, you could conceivably just use cocoa powder, or even Milo powder. I used powdered hot chocolate with no problems.



Melt the chocolate and butter in a metal bowl. The correct way to melt chocolate is to do so in a double-boiler, or in a metal bowl set over simmering water that functions as one. However, if you are supremely confident, or just very pressed for time, you can melt chocolate directly over an open fire. But please, please, for the love of God, be very careful and do not burn your chocolate.



Properly melted chocolate glistens and gleams and is one of the most beautiful things you can achieve on a stovetop. Wrongly melted chocolate, on the other hand, breaks the heart. Once your chocolate is melted, remove it from the heat to let it cool.



Place your eggs and sugar into the mixing bowl of an electric mixer.



Beat, at medium-high speed, until your eggs are pale and thick, about 10 minutes.



Reduce the speed, and gradually mix in the flour. Knock the bowl with a spoon to make sure no flour sticks to the sides.



Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture, and continue to beat until thick and glossy, about 5 minutes. Try not to make too much of a mess as you do this. You can also just add the batter to the melted chocolate and fold the two together, but doing it this way is less work.



Spoon the batter into your prepared ramekins, filling the ramekins only about 2/3 or 3/4, leaving room for the cake to rise. At this point, just cling-wrap them and chuck them in the freezer, where they can wait for practically ages before you decide to serve them. There is absolutely no necessity for you to tear yourself away from the dinner guests just to prepare dessert. Simply remove them from the chiller, and pop them into the oven, without the cling-wrap, naturally.

You can also do this last-minute and bake them in the preheated oven; there's a five minute difference in baking time.

Now for the moment of truth. Bake them in your oven until the cake is set around the edges and the top is dry, but the centre jiggles slightly when the cup is moved, about 15 - 16 minutes, depending on whether your batter was frozen solid and how big your mould is.

If you're baking them in bulk (5 - 10), this will cause your oven temperature to fall quite substantially, which means the cakes could take something like 30 minutes to bake. Metal moulds require less baking time, so this is something that requires some amount of judgement.

Remove them from the oven and turn the moulds onto prepared dessert plates. The cakes should unmould easily, allowing you to check if, for any reason, they are still too wet.



Dust some icing sugar over them and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and some fresh berries, if you have them.



The centre of the cakes should be deliciously runny and hot as you spoon into it, and you can congratulate yourself on an impressive dessert which practically came out of the freezer.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Molten Chocolate Cakes

Recipe: Roast Rack of Lamb

Roast Rack of Lamb, or Carré d’Agneau au Moutarde is a French favourite that is served in fancy restaurants all around the world. It is not all that difficult to prepare in the home kitchen, but unfortunately, because lamb is not a very popular meat in Singapore, it's hard to find good racks of lamb. Cold Storage sells them, but they are very tough and gritty. A better option is one of the many retail butchers that are springing up, like The Swiss Butchery, Huber's, Meat The Butcher, The Butcher etc If you find a good source, stick to it.

The lamb rack has to be Frenched. What does that mean? It means the excess fat has been trimmed and the bones have been scraped down to expose the ribs. Seriously. Thankfully, the author of a cookbook I read had a much better definition. "Frenched" basically means "get your butcher to do it". Life is far too short to be worrying about things like that.

Certain dishes are simply classics, and you will know this because all the recipes are more or less the same. Roast rack of lamb is one of them, as you will see here and here. Essential ingredients are Dijon mustard, breadcrumbs, rosemary, thyme and of course, lamb.

This particular recipe is courtesy of Anthony Bourdain, from his Les Halles Cookbook, with a few modifications.

Roast Rack of Lamb (Serves 4)

2 racks of lamb, Frenched
Salt and Pepper
2 Tbsp/28ml olive oil
2 Tbsp/28ml butter
1 Cup/225ml red wine
1 Cup/225ml lamb/beef/veal stock
1 garlic clove, slightly crushed
1 bouquet garni
5 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves
5 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary leaves
5 Tbsp/70g Dijon mustard
1 cup bread crumbs

Feel free to use more thyme, rosemary, mustard and breadcrumbs if you need to. More in this case is better.



First, your mise en place. I was only cooking for 3, and since my mother and sister have small appetites, I only needed one rack. On average, most people eat about 3 or 4 cutlets each though.



Bring your wine, stock, garlic and bouquet garni to boil in a small saucepan, then lower to a simmer. Simmer till the sauce is reduced by half.



Mix your rosemary, thyme and breadcrumbs in a dish wide enough to hold your lamb rack(s). You can add some chopped garlic to the breadcrumbs as well, or anything that catches your fancy. Not something stupid like soy sauce though.



Brown your lamb on all sides to get the flavours going, and caramelise the natural sugars in the lamb and to help the breadcrumbs adhere to the oily surface. No wait, oil reduces friction. Whatever. Once that's done, transfer your lamb to a baking tray. Discard the oil from your pan, and pour in some of the simmering sauce to deglaze the pan. Pour the deglazing liquid back into the rest of the sauce to impart a full-bodied lamb flavour to your sauce. The sauce, incidentally, should be almost half-reduced by this time, so make sure you remember to turn off the heat.



Turn your attention back to the lamb and slather on the mustard. Use a mild Dijon so you won't have to worry about overpowering your lamb. Try and cover everything to help the breadcrumbs stick.



Coat your lamb with the herb-breadcrumb mixture, packing the crumbs as tightly as possible onto the surface of the lamb. The tricky buggers have a habit of falling off after they're roasted, so try and pack in as much as possible. If you're using two racks, after you've coated them both with crumbs, place them on the baking tray, skin sides up, bones interlocking to aid heat circulation.

Pop your lamb(s) into a preheated 200C oven for 20 minutes for medium, give or take a minute or two. If you want it well done or rare, you're crazy, so figure the timing out for yourself. If you have a meat thermometer, by all means use it.



After 20 minutes, remove your lamb from the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes. This helps to redistribute the juices and prevents excessive moisture loss when you carve the lmb. Not too long though, or your lamb will get cold. You can then proceed to cut the rack into cutlets with a sharp knife, divide it onto plates and spoon the sauce over.



Serve with assorted vegetables and/or mashed potatoes if so inclined.

Sleepy now, look for updates over the weekend.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Roast Lamb Rack

Review: BROTH

BROTH stands for Bar Restaurant On The Hill - it's nice to know that slight pretentions still exist in this country. It's a renovated shophouse atop Duxton Hill, and one of the increasing number of Australian restaurants. Personally, I don't care much for Australian food, but it was to be a family dinner, and sister chose the venue.

Some restaurants impress you immediately, either with their appearance or with their service. Unfortunately, Broth was not one of these restaurants. The ambience here is decidedly backwater, with tables set up rather haphazardly, even spilling out onto the street facing the restaurant. The interior of the eatery itself is quite tight, perhaps a remnant of its shophouse architecture. The service was equally awkward, with the waiters not doing much to put us at ease.

Broth was offering a special menu that week - a Margaret River menu that was to be exclusively Australian and featured rather more exotic fare such as kangaroo, rabbit and quail. Under normal circumstances I would have been delighted by the prospect of trying new meats, but some of the methods employed in actually cooking the damned things seemed very dubious (quail pie?) That being said, the following review is probably not representative of the food there in general.

For starters, I had a rabbit rillette with camalised prunes and pickles ($17.90). Somewhat like a pate, but shredded to give it more texture. I was not really blown away by this attempt (3.5/5), and only ordered it because everything else seemed even less palatable.

Being the sort of person who needs to have meat on a fairly regular basis, I decided to try the kangaroo fillet with cabernet chutney and caramelised sweet potato ($29.90). This combination I found rather questionable - the bland sweet potato did no justice to the kangaroo meat, and I can't fathom the appeal of chutney. Again, I was less than impressed (3/5).

I find that Australian cuisine, being fairly new on the food scene, tries to compensate by being bold and exciting in its fusion approach to food. I suppose that could be partly attributed to Australia's multi-culturalism as well, but whatever the reason, I am, unfortunately, a bit of a purist, and have yet to come across fusion cuisine that I could appreciate wholeheartedly.

For dessert, I decided to be adventurous and try the Cabernet Merlot jelly with creme fraiche ($12.90). This proved to be most unwise, because the sour creme fraiche only over-emphasised the already astringent Merlot jelly (2/5).

Although it is true that the food came from the limited period Margaret River menu, it nonetheless did not entice me back - certainly not at those prices, at any rate.

BROTH (Australian)
21 Duxton Hill
Tel: 6323 3353
Location: 2/5
Ambience: 2.5/5
Service: 2/5
Food: 3/5
Overall: Only if you have an exceptional craving for Australian food

Technorati Tags: Restaurant Reviews, Australian Food, BROTH, Singapore