Friday, November 26, 2010

Eastern Cafe at River Valley Road



The worst possible breakfast one can have on a public holiday... I should have just made my way to Beo Crescent Market or even Zion Food Market.

Carrot Cake - Lo Bak Go - more like a flour cake ... I did not taste any radish in it at all.

Half boiled egg overcooked

Teh had a bad after taste...

Overall FAIL!

FATBOYS - The Burger Bar @ The Foundry







Now this is what I call a good juicy well cooked burger ... and you don't have to pay an arm and a leg. Oh and my favorite mozzarella sticks! I had the Bushtucker Burger but with beef instead of pork: prices start from $15 I think.

Beef Patty, Bacon, Fried Egg, Emmenthel Cheese, Beets and Garlic Aioli on a Whole Wheat Bun.

I regret ordering other food from other places plus the mozzarella sticks ... was so full I just wanted to go home and sleep.

By the way, don't bother with the Mexican food .... the portions are small and it's expensive; also nothing to rave about.

Home Made Mee Hoon Kueh

Our first attempt at making Mee Hoon Kueh came out pretty decent, although we still have not perfected the stock... perhaps it is the type of ikan bilis (anchovies) we use, or maybe we just don't use enough of them that the stock doesn't seem rich enough; or maybe we should add in the mushroom stocks which I have been saving for the longest time for our next attempt. Not rich enough but still delicious.

I'm not sure about the entire recipe of the soup, but I will let Satellite handle that. Here's the recipe for making the dough, this dough will get chewier depending on how long you knead it.

250 g plain flour
1 egg
100 ml water
pinch of salt
1 tbsp cooking oil

Make the dough by placing all the ingredients together and knead for about 30 minutes. Create a ball with the dough and place it in a bowl, cover with a wet cloth and let it rest for 1 hour. There after you are ready to peel the little pieces off and throw it in the pot of broth whilst cooking your other ingredients.

After making this, I realized that down South, they have something similar to this but in cream soup. It's called chicken dumplings. Check out some Southern Chicken Dumpling recipes courtesy of About.com

Vietnamese Food

During my time at RIT, I grew to love eating Vietnamese food, especially in the winter time. Having a hot bowl of pho was what we were always looking for when the wind chill was ridiculous. For a person that usually waits for her food to get lukewarm, I used to wallop my pho within minutes of it reaching the table. Oh how I miss those days.

I was at Takashimaya with a colleague looking for things to buy for the destitute that we would visit that week in a home for our corporate responsibility program and we ran out of time to actually catch a good meal, since we started at the Daiso in ION. Further adding to that, having a meal at the ION foodcourt isn't the cheapest thing in the world; we also couldn't find what we were looking for at that Daiso (still prefer the IMM and Plaza Singapura Daiso as they have more variety) so with a hop and a skip we went over to Art Friend in Taka. Having not taken breakfast, after we finished up at Art Friend, I pestered my colleague to grab some food with me at the new food court (maybe not so new... I think about 1/2 year old).


The place is no longer as cluttered as before, but just as difficult to grab a seat. I saw Pho Hoa and I had been craving Vietnamese food for months ... so I went ahead and got me a bowl of Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn and Chả Giò. The pho came in a big bowl and was nice, although I've had nicer around town, but I can't complain. The accompanying garnishing was on the stingy side. The disappointment that I had was that they did not give the sweet sauce or the proper chilli sauce to go with the Pho, nor was there a selection of it at the stall itself; so I helped myself to some chilli padi. The Chả Giò wasn't as nice as I expected it to be... a bit on the soft side.

For a nice
Chả Giò recipe see Rasa Malaysia's Vietnamese Spring Roll recipe. You can also check out this Vietnamese Beef noodle soup recipe.

Chả Giò - A kind of spring roll (sometimes referred to as egg roll) – deep fried flour rolls filled with pork, yam, crab, shrimp, rice vermicelli, mushrooms ("wood ear" variety) and other ingredients. The spring roll goes by many names - as many people actually use (falsely) the word "spring roll" while referring to the fresh transparent rice paper rolls (discussed below as "Summer Rolls"), where the rice paper is dipped into water to soften and then rolled up with various ingredients. Traditionally these rolls are made with a rice paper wrapper but in recent years Vietnamese chefs outside of Vietnam have changed the recipe to use a wheat-flour-based wrapper.

Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn - Noodle soup with brisket, flank, tendon, fatty, and crunchy flank.

Ah, I just remembered before my experience at Pho Hoa, I did have vietnamese pho in a bowl. I don't exactly remember where I found this instant noodle, but it was a pretty good quick fix. Some may find this a bit on the salty side, but it warmed my tummy up on a cold rainy day in the office!

Tiong Bahru Market Raw Fish


Yum in my tum, woke up one morning starving from I guess too much beer and an empty stomach from the evening before. Decided to head to Tiong Bahru to do some marketing for my bbq so I ended up eating some nice raw fish. I didn't want to eat too much because I wanted to save my stomach for the heaps of food I would have for dinner.


The fish was nice, firm and sweet; perfect mixture of the sauce and nice amounts of garnishing. Love it! Simple and clean tastes.

Yumyums that Satellite makes

Coming home from work starving, Satellite was kind enough to whip up some great grub. We had fun poaching eggs for the first time but it didn't come out as perfect as we wanted.

Shown here, grilled asparagus sprinkled with cheese for a finishing, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes with poached eggs, toasted baguette and smoked salmon.

It was a quick fix for my hunger, much appreciated!

Birthday at Moi Lum


I used to pass by Moi Lum and really wanted to go in and try the place as they consider themselves affordable & casual chinese dining, and all the pictures outside the restaurant look yummy! Yes, I am a sucker for imagery. The restaurants been around since the 1920's and was actually once located at Murray Terrace next to another eatery I used to like to frequent that sold dumplings and stuff.

They have now moved a couple doors down to 38 Maxwell Road, Airview Building, #01-01.

We ordered the $298 set menu and finished 2 bottles of Prosecco and a bottle of delicious Shiraz; thanks Jian! One of the most favorite dishes that night for me was the sharksfin and the egg roll. Funny though, the famous crispy chicken didn't make the mark for me. I liked the sharksfin soup because it was not as thick and jalat as other places would make it, quite fragrant, but I don't think I saw or got to taste any fin in it.

Unfortunately, the plating wasn't nice so we didn't bother taking much photos. On another note though, the service was quite disappointing... they served us like they were rushing us out of the restaurant. If they had served us in an appropriately slow manner, we would have been able to drink all 5 bottles of wine I brought and perhaps even the 2 extra bottle of wines that Jian and Satellite's parents brought. We brought a lot cause there is no corkage!

Papa Rich


Well, it's decent but I find it costly.

I had the supposed nice to eat Char Kway Teow, however wasn't fascinated by it because it did not have enough "Wok Air". Am wondering if the standard of people's taste buds have dropped or have I just become more and more picky over the years.

Penang Assam Laksa was decent, but unfortunately they forgot to bring out the Har Ko and it would have been better with more mint.

The steamed chicken was nice, however the portion was too small for us hungry pigs. And the bean sprouts wouldn't be anything to rave about.

Another time I did try the Ipoh Hor Fun Soupand I found it pleasant, or perhaps it was a Sunday and I was craving some soupy comfort food... or maybe it is because one can't complain since Papa Rich took over the spot where one of the better Ipoh Hor Fun stalls used to reside at. Oh I miss the Ipoh Hor Fun and the Duck from that old corner store that Papa Rich has replaced.... Wonder if anyone knows where they have relocated.

For my Ipoh Hor Fun fix, I usually go to Funan Weng Ipoh Hor Fun located at Maxwell Road. Their Shui Kow is also very Yee Cheong Yuen Noodle Restaurant that has just gone down the drain with their quality over the years.

All this food talk is making me hungry ... the office is providing us with food today so hooray! And I can't wait for my trip to Malacca, maybe I should go find my camera and charge it so that I can take some pics myself also.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Japanese Ramen Lunch

Halloween lunch, 31st October 2010. Ramen. Instant ramen all the way from Japan.


Dracoholic took this picture of the box for me, post blog. It's a waste if we don't show off the package that took a plane here. The noodles, when dry, really didn't look like it would fill my tummy, but it was really filling! We only realised it after we took the noodles out of the soup & separated them into the bowls. Jian didn't even finish his portion!


My bowl! The prettiest of the three!

The soup turned blue-ish after I threw the purple cabbage in. Nevermind. It was Halloween after all. It did make the soup look a tad insipid (& the cabbage turned ugly afterwards, as you can see), but it was yummy nonetheless. The pickled red ginger came with the noodles. I felt it was a bit of a stingy amount, but perhaps it's just me. The yellow pickles & Kurobuta pork were two appropriate items that Dracoholic had in her fridge already.

I finished the whole bowl, but was very full after. Dracoholic wasted the most noodles. We should have just used 2 packets of noodles & split it into 3, but like I said, the noodles looked a right pathetic portion when dry. Poo.