skip to main |
skip to sidebar
During the National Day holiday, I attempted to cook KL Hokkien Mee as I managed to source for a recipe online. However, I tweaked the recipe alittle in order to suit my family's strange eating habits (e.g. no spice and certain seafood allowed).
So I bought some fat yet flat yellow noodles, fishcakes and two chicken bones from the wet market on the Saturday morning. I always enjoy going to the wet market to get some ingredients instead of the supermarket because their stuff are really fresh. It wasn't difficult to find the yellow noodles. One can get it from the soy beancurd store where they sell almost everything - from noodles to soy beancurd.
I cooked the chicken bones in a pot with two gloves of garlic and a big chunk of ginger and I boiled it for an hour. You can season it with salt after that.
Once it's done, I started my real cooking. I sauteed the fish cake slices and many pieces of mackerel fish meat into the wok for about ten minutes. Scoop it up and set it aside.
Then I sauteed the chopped garlic and pork slices for a couple of minutes before I pour one and a half bowl of chicken stock into the wok. When the stock is simmering, I pour the dark sauce seasoning which comprises of two tablespoons of soy sauce and three tablespoons of dark soy sauce. Let it simmer for a couple of minutes before putting vegetables in. Well, I put in Wong Bok vegetables instead of the cabbage as the former was available in my fridge. When the stock starts to boil again, I pour my noodles in and cover it for about 15 minutes. After that, I pour in the fish meat and the fish cakes slices into the wok and cover it again.
You can put in more dark sauce if you prefer your Hokkien noodles to be darker in colour.
This is my plate.
Somehow, when I ate the noodles, the vegetables dissolved without any reason so I reckoned that I will put in more vegetables in future. But overall, the noodles was really good. I guess the trick is the chicken broth. However, I need to put more broth into the noodles in order to prevent the noodles from absorbing the stock instantly.
Last Thursday's night, my brother bought an assortments of cream horns and a milk bread from Provence Bakery and Cafe at Holland Village. So I had them for my breakfast on the following morning. In fact, I only had a Chocolate Cream Horn as I dislike the taste of a milk bread due to the milky filling. Yikes!
The chocolate filling inside of the cream horn is actually custard chocolate and not really a chocolate cream. As a result, the bite of the filling is different from biting inside a cream bun.
But what I like most about the Provence Bakery and Cafe is the Choco and Cream Wassant which is the mini croissants. I like it so much! Perhaps, I can blog about it next time!
Last Sunday, Liverpool came over to our small island and played a friendly match against us at Kallang Stadium and what a good way to catch the game over a plate of good old English Beer Battered Fish and Chips!
I took the recipe from Jamie Oliver's cooking program which consists of lager beer (which I used Tiger Beer), egg and plain flour. As for the fish, I didn't use Haddock Cod fish which the English used to cook their fish and chips because it wasn't available at our supermarkets. Instead, I used the Red Snapper. However, by using the Red Snapper, the meat tend to be bigger after I deep-fried them as if they have expanded when they are swimming in the hot oil. As this was my first attempt cooking fish and chips, I was elated that the fish turned out to be quite good.
The fish was moist and flaky on the inside while the outside was crispy and crunchy due to the batter, whereas, the fries were slightly overcooked. Thus, the colour of the chips were a little too brown for anyone liking. My dad thought that I burned the fries or something. But overall, it was lovely.
Other than Fish and Chips, I cooked a plate of Fried Rice and some Chicken Wings as my dad, my bro and I enjoyed the game.
Anyway, the game was a boring one with Liverpool defeating Singapore 5-0.
Last Friday, I went to one of my fellow cell sisters, Cherie's 21st birthday party at her place. Earlier this month, she returned home from her nursing studies in Australia and since her birthday is round the corner, her parents held a surprise birthday celebration for her.
My other cell sisters and I were lost together while trying to find her place in the East. Fortunately, by God's grace, we managed to find her place at around 8.30pm. However, when we got there, some of the food were almost gone. These were the food that weren't depleted:
Appetizer
All the food were catered by Eatzi - a Halal Food Catering Establishment - thus all the food were halal for some of the invited Muslim friends. I believe these were not really 'pork' ham but turkey ham. I like the Spicy Turkey Ham on the top left corner of the plate.
Sotong Ball and Thai Fish Cake
Lemongrass Chicken
Chocolate Eclair
Those eclairs were a little soft when I got hold of them. I would prefer them to be cold and slightly hard.
However, one of the nicest food on that day was actually the Laksa (I didn't take any of those photos, sorry!) .
It was a cozy birthday celebration for our friend, Cherie who will be flying off to Australia again at the end of this month.
When I was a kid, one of my favourite biscuits was Ais Gem.
My mum felt that it was too sweet for her liking but to me, I love the colourful sweet icing on top of the biscuit. In fact, my favourite colour among all the colours is green. I will never fail to find the green ones and place it in my bowl immediately before anyone gets hold of it. :D
What is your favourite childhood biscuits?
4/07/09, Saturday - My cousin, Yi and I went shopping on a humid Saturday in a bustling town called Orchard Road. It has been a long time since I went shopping at the shopping arena and now, ION Orchard is almost open for business.
After hours of shopping, we went to have our dinner at Pastamania@Shaw Centre. The food eatery is located on the fifth level and there are smorgasbord of food eateries on the level, namely, KFC, Long John Silver and Subway. As a result of the unconventional food dinning, Pastamania doesn't sell pizza in this outlet and the serving doesn't come in the usual plates and other metal utensils. Instead, it comes with black plastic box which will house the pasta and plastic fork and spoon.
I had the Chicken Sausage Linguine (S$7.90). The sauce was creamy and slightly spicy.
Yi had Spicy Chicken Spaghetti (S$6.80). I used to love to eat this pasta but after a while, I had hop on to other things.
3/07/09, Friday - In the afternoon, I accompanied my brother to Chinatown as he needed to see his doctor for his usual check-up. He has some stomach problems which requires some help and I hope he will get well soon.
Since the clinic is a stone away from the famous Maxwell Food Centre, we went there to get some food after his consulation. As everyone knows, Maxwell Food Centre has all the fantastic food inside the food centre. As a result, I am often spoilt for choices whenever I am there for a meal.
I ordered the famous Fish Meat Noodles (S$4.00) from the famous Fish Soup stall (sorry, I forgot to write down the name of the stall). Fortunately, there wasn't a long queue and it didn't take long before it was my turn. However, when I returned home with the food, the noodles was too soft and was close to being soggy.
Next, I went to the stall next to it which sells the deep fried sweet potato balls. Speaking of that, I am always screaming in delight whenever I see this stall being open for business. I will never fail to buy a few sweet potato balls when the stall is open for business. I believe this stall is one of the last few stalls which sells deep fried stuff since food stalls are always emphasising on eating healthy.
I bought two flavours - a sweet potato ball ($0.40) and a pandan coconut sweet potato ball (S$0.50). The pandan coconut flavour was bursting with green-coloured dessicated coconut and it was great.
This is the innard shot of the pandan coconut sweet potato ball.
If I ever visit that food centre again, I will perhaps order the chicken rice or something else...
2/07/09, Thursday - A year ago, my friend, Ivy and I had a slightly unpleasant meal at Soup Spoon at Raffles City. Perhaps, it was the meal I had or the place which was packed almost every other day. I'm not sure. So we went back again and one year on, things had definitely changed.
The place was packed as usual and we had to stand besides a nearly empty table but with two people still chatting away and who were oblivious of our presence. However, the two people were gracious to leave the table for us to have our dinner.
This time round, I didn't order the Velvety Mushroom Stroganoff which obviously resembles a face mask after quite some time. Instead, I ordered a regular bowl of Beef Goulash (S$10.80) and since I ordered the SouperValue Combo Meal which consists of two sides, I chose a Chicken Tikka Wrap and a glass of Homemade Iced Lemon Tea which comes free with the meal.
The Beef Goulash was really nice and hearty. The beef cubes were soft and chewy. The staff asked me if I wanted a scoop of sour cream in my soup and I agreed. The combination between the tomato-based soup and the sour cream worked really well. There were even bits of potato, carrots, celery, celery and etc swimming in the soup. Yum. of course, I polished the soup off my bowl.
Ivy ordered a plate of Spicy Herby Cheesy Potato Wedges (S$3.60) as an additional dish for the both of us.
Well, other than the mushroom soup, I would definitely come back and try the rest of the soups, perhaps, another time.
30/06/09, Tuesday - My brother and I headed down to Botak Jones@Ang Mo Kio for a late lunch after a traumatic morning. The both of us thought of eating at Botak Jones since two years ago before he entered the national service. However, we didn't have the chance until today.
The place is not a restaurant. Instead it's a humble middle-sized stall situated in a coffeeshop. When we went there, the place wasn't packed at all. Perhaps, lunch time was over and people might have already migrated to somewhere else. So we took our time to look at the menu and see what we want to order. As the both of us weren't hungry at that point of time, we ordered The Botak Jones Burger Set and a Mini-Me Cajun Burger to share.
The Botak Jones Burger Set (S$8.50) comes with a choice of several side dish items. We choose Colesaw and a Cheese Potato. There is an additional charge of S$1 for two slices of cheese in your burger. Since we like the ozzy feeling of the cheese melting in our mouth, we don't mind the additional charge.
When the food arrived at our table, we were hoping for some fries but my brother told me that if we didnt order the set meal, there might be fries as our side dish. Oh well. The beef patty was pretty thick and juicy. The taste of the beef is definitely different from the usual fast food joint.
Here is another upclose angle of the burger.
Then the Mini-Me Cajun Burger (S$4.00) arrived at our table at the same time as the Botak Jones Burger Set. My brother loved the spicy taste of the Cajun Chicken. I think this burger isn't that bad.
However, the only bone I would pick is the cheese on the beef patty which wasn't melting and ozzy enough. Other than that, I think this meal is worth the money.
There are several outlets around the islandwide including this outlet at Ang Mo Kio. For more information, please check http://www.botakjones.com/locations_angmokio.html
29/06/09, Monday - After a meeting with my lecturer, I went back home to cook Tonkatsu for my family. Tonkatsu means breaded pork cutlet. The day before, my dad bought a huge pork fillet at least a few kg so my mum suggested that I fried some pork cutlets.
Well, I sliced the huge pork fillet into eight pork cutlets. Subsequently, I pounded them into an evenly thin slices. I marinated it with soy sauce and pepper.
Later, I dipped into rice flour (preferably plain flour), and then into beaten egg and lastly, panko which is the Japanese version of breadcrumbs. I bought the breadcrumbs from Fairprice Finest at Thomson Plaza but I believe the packet of breadcrumbs can be found in any supermarkets. Once it's done, I deep fried it into a pot of hot oil.
This is my first attempt in making Tonkatsu.
I guess I need to look after the meat because due to my slight neglience, there were some charred bits in the cutlet itself. I cut them into thin slices for easy consumption and placed on a bed of lettuce. I decided to use lettuce and tomato wedges as a vegetable and garnish respectively for absorption of the greasy pork cutlets.
22/06/09, Monday - On a breezy and sunny Monday morning, I prepared a classic local breakfast. I headed down to the market early in the morning to get some Chee Cheong Fun.
Since I have the remaining tubs of dark sweet sauce and sambal chilli in the fridge, I drizzled some dark sweet sauce on top of the steamy and soft Chee Cheong Fun and put a little sambal chilli by the side. It was yummy!
What a way to beat Monday's blues.
Today's dinner: Honey Baked Chicken Wings.
I realised there were some chicken wings in the fridge and there was a bottle of newly-bought honey in my home. Thus, I decided to make some Honey Baked Chicken Wings as I have not tried making any honey-based food. In the afternoon, I surfed the net for recipes for Honey Baked Chicken Wings and I managed to find one from allrecipes.com. This recipe which I selected is pretty fuss-free and easy to make.
Also, I baked some potatoes together with the chicken wings for about 45 minutes at 200 deg. I was so worried that the chicken wouldn't turn out golden brown or something and I went to check the chicken like almost every 10 minutes.
Meantime, I chopped up some garlic and mixed it with butter and basil leaves for some flavour enhancement. I spread it on these small square pieces of bread and shove it into the oven for about 15 minutes.
After an hour, this was my family's complete dinner.
Surprisingly, the chicken turned out to be good. Naturally, the honey flavour was there and I was elated. Fortunately, my food endeavor went well. As for the garlic bread, it tasted like croutons because the bread became hard instead of being softer. Anyhow, it was still good.
This is my plate.
My brother commented that my garlic bread didn't have the 'Omph' feeling to it while my dad enjoyed the chicken as much as I do.
16/06/09, Tuesday - Lunch: Macaroni and Ham Soup. I attempted to make a bowl of Macaroni and Ham Soup - one of Hong Kong's favourite breakfast meal - and it was a good attempt despite the fact the soup was a little bland.
I chopped up some garlic and onions, hams (of course!) and I had some mixed vegetables as my fibre. I fried the garlic and onions till golden brown then I threw in the shredded hams and mixed vegetables into the pot. I stirred about a few minutes before I pour some water into the pot and bring it to a boil for about 10 minutes. I added salt, pepper and sesame oil for taste and flavouring.
I think I might have overcooked the ham thus the soup was a little bland. Maybe the next time, I will boil the chicken bones as the soup base.
15/06/09, Monday - During noon time, my brother offered to drive me to Bishan to return my book to the library and at the same time, he wanted to buy a cake to celebrate his accomplishment in serving in the national army.
We walked around the Junction 8 Shopping Mall, checking out all cake shops in the mall before buying the cakes he wanted. Eventually, he chose Chocolate Banana Cake (S$18) from BreadTalk. The cake itself wasn't that fantastic compared to Awfully Chocolate's Chocolate Banana Cake and Secret Recipes' ones.
Then in the evening, we went to Sembawang Shopping Centre for a cup of coffee and also to fetch our dad from work. We went to Starbucks Coffee Joint for coffee because there was an on-going promotion where there will be complimentary coffee of the day with every cakes we order. However, there are only a certain assortments of cakes we can choose from. It was really a good deal. The both of us ordered Chocolate Fugdy Cakes (S$4.50).
The cake tasted good only when it is warm up. Yum. The promotion happens only if you get a copy of the Sembawang Shopping Mall Advertorial Papers from the Customer Service Counter and it ends on 5 July.
9/06/09, Tuesday - I met up with Christine for lunch at United Square Mall. It has been ages since we meet up and since she recently returned from New York City, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with her before she gets busy again with her piano teaching.
Though it was lunch hour when we there, the place was neither bustling with activity nor the eating places were packed. In fact, we managed to find a good eatery to have our lunch.
After lunch, Christine suggested that we have some coffee before we end our meet up. So we went over to Starbucks coffee joint which is within the mall's compound. There were students studying at the coffee joint despite the school holidays. Fortunately, we managed to find a good and comfy cushion seats.
I ordered a cup of freshly brew coffee (S$3.50) and Belgian Waffles (S$2.90) while Christine had some lemon drink.
Initially, I thought the waffles would come only one piece but little did I know, it comes with two pieces of the waffles and also it comes with butter and jam. They even heat up the waffles for you when you once ordered it. Thus, the butter will melt once you spread the butter on top of the warm waffles. Yum. If only, it comes with a chocolate fondue... :)
Many years ago, the bubble tea market was hot in demand and many bubble tea shops were sprouting everywhere and every corner of this island. Everywhere you turn, there was sure to be a bubble tea shop in that corner. At that point of time, there was even had a temporary bubble tea stall set up in my school. Then all of the sudden, the bubble tea market burst! Since then, the bubble tea market was a lonely one.
Astonishingly, the bubble tea franchise began to surface in the market a year back. First, there were enormous queue at Sweetalk! And now, there are queues at KOI Cafe, another popular bubble tea chain. A colleague of mine was telling me that the bubble tea at KOI Cafe was better than the rest of the bubble tea chains.
So today, I decided to try.
There wasn't any long queue at the newly-opened AMK outlet so I ordered Hazelnut Milk Tea (S) (S$2.40) without ice as I dislike drinks that are diluted.
In KOI Cafe, they actually give you a queue number for you to pick up your drinks. For once, I thought I was at the polyclinic.
Here is my half-drank Hazelnut Milk Tea. It wasn't that bad and since I get to choose the sugar intake of my drink, I would give a brownie point to KOI Cafe.
5/06/09, Friday - There are times as a food blogger when I would be so absorbed at what I do till I forgot that I brought a camera with me and realised that I was supposed to take food pictures. And this entry is one of them.
I had dinner buffet at KBox@Orchard Cineleisure with J1 and J2 on a Friday's night. The entire buffet dinner cost S$30++ but we ended up paying S$37 at the end of the day. The dinner buffet was held in a karaoke place so we can eat and sing at the same time. When I got there, I was briefed on what to do during the buffet. I was given a sticker sleeve and was supposed to peel it off and stick it on my top to certify that I had paid for the buffet. The buffet spread was a reasonable one consists of Japanese counter, Teppanyaki counter, Local food counter, Deep fried snacks counter and the dessert counter.
Because we were all hungry, we picked as many food as we can and bring it into our room.
This is my plate. Here were the Thai Tofu, Black Pepper Chicken, Fried Kai Lan which was hidden by the bed of Tom Yum Fried Rice.
Then there was the seafood platter, with Tuna Sushi, Raw Salmon, Prawns, Scallops and Green pea Pods.
I picked up some deep fried food such as the usual onion rings, potato wedges, sotong ball and deep fried salmon which was half-eaten by J2.
This is Jo a.k.a J1's plate which consists of fried noodles, cereal prawns, black pepper chicken and kai lan.
This is J2's plate which consists of almost all Japanese food.
Apart from those food, we had Teppanyaki which was not too bad because J2 had her favourite Japanese Pregnant Fish. We even had Chicken & Beef Satay, Grilled Dory Fish with Mushroom Sauce (was too salty for my liking) and Beef. Sorry, I forgot to take those lovely pictures as I was too caught up with singing. :/
After one and a half hour later, we went to have our desserts as the buffet ends at 10pm. I had Pulu Hitam. It was alright. I was hoping that the dessert would be thicker and the coconut milk was too diluted. I picked some cakes as well.
(L-R) Two Oreo Cheesecakes, Strawberry Chocolate Cake, Cream Puff, Green Tea Mochi and Red Bean Mochi.
The Green Tea Mochi was too bitter after taking one bite and the Oreo Cheesecakes were a little artifical in terms of the taste.
By the time the buffet ended, my stomach was so filled. That is the problem about eating buffet. Other than eating the buffet, we also celebrated J2's birthday and we had a crazy time belting out songs after songs!
2/05/09, Tuesday - I made some wantons (dumplings) that day with the marinated minced meat and the wanton skins given by Yi's mum. I chopped up a couple of garlic, red onions and mushrooms. Instead of using prawns, I threw some carrots into the mixture. I had a fun time wrapping those wantons like a parcel.
So for dinner that night, I whipped up wantons soup for me and brother. I used the Ikan Bilis (dried small fish) and garlic as my soup soup and the combination of the soup based and wantons was awesome. :)
30/05/09, Saturday - Over the last weekend, I attended Daniel & Annabelle's wedding - one of my dear friends - at the Traders Hotel. The interesting thing about their wedding was that it was held in the afternoon rather than the usual dinner which would eventually last till 11pm. So that day I didn't had a heavy breakfast, instead, I had a light one.
Their banquet hall was a pretty small and cosy one which holds about 20 plus tables. The other best thing about their wedding was that the ceremony was on time, thus, no time was wasted. Having saying that, the lunch came on time as well. :)
The first dish that arrived was Cold Dish Platter where the servers would walked in fashionably and cheesy way. The platter comprises of Roast Chicken, Salad Prawns, Sushi, Jellyfish and Duck. Sorry for the dim picture.
The second dish was Shark Fin and Mushroom Soup. Not sure if it's the real shark fins though.
The third dish was Prawns with Green Pea pods. My friend, He, who sat next to me, doesn't like pea pod so I ended up eating more pea pods.
The fourth dish was Spicy Crispy Chicken. When the server came and serve us the plates of chicken, I was in fact, eying on the one with chicken wing and chicken breast. But it was yummy!
The fifth dish was Mushroom and Spinach. Yet again, my friend, He, doesn't like the unappealing taste of spinach so I ended up eating more spinach. I felt like I was the Popeye the Sailor Man.
Well, my food photo taking ended at this point as the rest of the dishes that came later were almost the same as what I would usually ate at the wedding 8-course meal. And people were amused by my photo taking of all the food that were placed before me.
The wedding lunch ended around 4pm and the people, including myself, on the table had a last chat before we went back home and rest for the day. If you ask me, I think wedding lunch is a great idea.
So I bought some fat yet flat yellow noodles, fishcakes and two chicken bones from the wet market on the Saturday morning. I always enjoy going to the wet market to get some ingredients instead of the supermarket because their stuff are really fresh. It wasn't difficult to find the yellow noodles. One can get it from the soy beancurd store where they sell almost everything - from noodles to soy beancurd.
Somehow, when I ate the noodles, the vegetables dissolved without any reason so I reckoned that I will put in more vegetables in future. But overall, the noodles was really good. I guess the trick is the chicken broth. However, I need to put more broth into the noodles in order to prevent the noodles from absorbing the stock instantly.
