Chow Time (Wanton Mee, Rojak, Satay Tarik, French Toast) @ Amoy Street Food Centre

Years have passed since i last stepped into this huge, two levels hawker centre. At least not during the daytime since i vaguely remember using the toilet of this food centre one night for an urgent expulsion.

It was scary without the usual busy lunch crowds!! 

Coming back, i was pretty disappointed with some stalls which i used to think were really fantastic! Was it my luck? Was there a change in the person preparing the food? Hm.... as with many questions in life, a BIG question mark. 

Tai Seng Noodle House

In Singapore, when you see a long queue, it usually means a few things.

Good Food

Value for Money

Promotions (buy 1 plate, get 1 plate free etc)

Psychological (i see people queue, i queue too!)

All the Above

For Tai Seng, i believe it is the "Value for Money". The portion was really big!!! For S$3 a plate, i got a good spread of Char Siew, five or six fried dumplings and around eight dumplings in the soup!!

Noodles were Q and made a delightful eggy bite! 

Not sure if it's the same for you, but a good fried dumpling must have a crunchy skin! Like the one in Tai Seng!!

The soup was so nice lor (both sister and mum heavily suspected it's MSG)!!

My usual weird standard when ordering wonton noodles is that i will not eat the usually tasteless soup wontons (dumplings). But the wontons here tasted really smooth and flavourful with the tiny chunks of meat within them.

The only aversion i had was on the Char Siew. They were so tasteless, the vegetarian Char Siew i ate HERE were a million times better!!

Rojak@ Tai Sun Coffee

A side business of an otherwise normal coffee stall.

 

Lightly burnt yet crispy/crunchy ingredients mixed in a thick gravy of prawn paste and a sprinkling of aromatic crushed peanuts. One of the better rojaks i had. If only my sister had included the century egg.

Wak Ju & Family

My sister recommended the Satay Tarik here when i first ate in this food centre. 

Basically, instead of the normal sticks of satay, bowl of gravy, cucumbers and ketupat (rice) displayed separately, this stall improvished by dumping all of them together.

Save the trouble of dipping the sticks of satay into the gravy, bite, using the stick and stabbing the cucumber/ketupat into the gravy etc etc, i guess.

I can only say it used to be so fantastic i think about it every now and then.

That fantasy is smashed as of yesterday.

No complain about the cucumbers, ketupat and gravy, it's the satay. They used to barbeque the satay and prepare the dish when you ordered.

Nowadays, they prepare well in advance. And you get meat that are hard, dry and almost devoid of taste.

Kaya French Toast @ Ah Seng Coffee

French Toasts with a spread of home made Kaya (coconut) jam between them and a spoonful of Kaya by the side for an extreme Kaya indulgence!!

So far, i have not been disappointed with the toast offerings from this stall. My mom tried to torture the stall owner (a chap called Ah Seng) to give his secret recipe but his mouth was sealed with glue!

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Location

7, Maxwell Road. Walking distance from Tanjong Pagar MRT Station.

Additional Information

Spread over two floors, you have a hundred over choices for lunch. 

If you want to really try the food in this hawker centre, please come during week days and during lunchtime.

Too early, stalls are not open. Too late (like after 2pm), the stalls are in the midst of tidying, cleaning and closing. The main target is the office crowd during lunch. 

Typical of Singapore, tables and chairs with umbrella, newspaper and the notorious tissue paper packet were "reserved".

If you wait patiently and your group is small (especially when you are alone), it is not difficult to find seats.

Prelude for Spring Festival 2010 (Chinese New Year)

For residents in Chinese-dominated countries, cities, towns, places, it is quite obvious that a big festival is coming!! The red red gold gold decorations, the big big statues of the God of Fortune with the unmistakable music floating in the air.

Chinese New Year (also known as Spring Festival) is approaching!!

Fast and furious!!!!!

As with any Chinese family, my family is currently busy with spring cleaning, a major time-consuming task that takes ages to complete!! The big overhaul of the cluttered store-room, the laundry for the heavy curtains and so much more!!!

Don't get me started on the preparation of food stuff!!

For the customary new year's eve dinner, one of the rare occasions that you will see everyone of us in the family seated around a table and actually dining together, there will be piles upon piles, plates upon plates of food!!!

And for visitors, there will be a massive accumulation of sweets, preserved fruits, festive biscuits, bak kwa and occasionally, steamboat!!!! It's better to have more than less! If there are remainder 15 days after CNY (which means Chinese New Year), they shall worm their way into our stomachs!

For all Chinese, it's basically a fattening season!

I wish everyone of you a Happy Chinese New Year, in advance. I am including a picture of a god of fortune (made of crystals) below and pray that it will bring all kinds of good luck (think 4D, TOTO, Big Sweep) to all of us in the Year of Ox!!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Hor Fun (河粉) @ Hiap Hoe Coffee House, Yishun

The names of Chinese dishes can be so misleading. In this instance, there's nothing fun about hor fun; it's purely a dialect term for thick flat rice noodle.

I used to think that any hor fun is good, so long it comes from a tze char stall in a coffee shop. C'mon, how bad can it be for such a simple dish? Coming from a person who sucks big time in cooking!

Of course that was the ancient thought i had when i was in my teens. Years passed and my standard of hor fun has impressed marginally (fortunately).

At least for now, i understand that a good dish of hor fun must have the legendary wok hei flavour; essentially the essence of a well used wok coupled with fierce fire and vigourous stir frying by an established chef.

In particular (for me), a flavourful corn starch sauce fused with fresh ingredients like prawns, sotongs (squids), vegetables and pork is the determinant of how much i enjoy a dish of hor fun. Yes, not so much on the noodles!

The last two paragraphs described one of my favourite tze char stalls for hor fun; Beng Tin Hng at Hiap Hoe Coffee House in Yishun Block 747.

This tze char stall is quite popular with Yishunians and their Sin Chow Bee Hoon is actually to die for. Shall blog about it again!!

Ciao~~~~

Off Peak Car (OPC)

I am not ashamed to tell people i drive a red-plate car (which is synonymous with off peak car) for the following reasons:

1) I use my own piggy bank money to pay for the instalments (though my parents paid the hefty downpayment)

2) I survive quite comfortably without the need to be tied down by excessive motor debts

3) Driving a black plate (normal car scheme) means i will spend more on fuel, carpark and ERP charges, not to mention the higher road tax.

4) It can be really stressful when driving to and fro from work, especially with jams being more and more common nowadays!!

5) Time spent driving on the roads can be better used for watching video, playing games or reading newspapers/books on the public transport like trains and buses.

Two weeks back, the old off peak scheme deterred me from driving on Saturday or eves of five public holidays in Singapore, until after 3pm.

That's two weeks ago.

Thanks to some higher beings in the gahmen (singlish for government), OPC owners are given an option to pay a slightly higher road tax to start driving their heavily-mocked red-plate cars on Saturday and eves of the five public holidays!!

And the best thing, i am the beneficiary of such scheme!!

Total damage?

S$121

($100 is the hefty service fee and $21 for the increased road tax).

Japanese Sweets @ Nippon-Ya (ION Orchard)

I bought a few tins of sweets as Christmas gifts from this newly opened Japanese sweets shop in Ion Ochard. I was attracted due to its retro packaging (nice mh) but was surprised by the marvelous taste!!

The first suck:

it was not overly sweet.

The second suck:

it had a certain fragrance, like a very mild perfume.

The third suck:

for flavours like rose, there were rose petals encapsulated within the sweet!!

These were totally beyond my expectations. The orignal natural notion that all sweets were super sugar laden was thrown out the moment i had these sweets swirling in my mouth.

For these particular tins of sweets, I have tried Strawberry Milk, Rose Drops and Lavender. Other flavours are available and i will try them in due course. The most popular flavour (according to the service personnel) is the wine flavour.

At S$5.30 for one tin weighing 85 grams, they were not cheap but it beats travelling to Japan every time you crave one. And i am pretty confident i will be back soon to purchase other made-in-japan products like mochi, bread, pudding, jelly etc etc!!

Location

Ion Orchard (next to Orchard MRT Station), B4-13 or

The Central (above Clark Quay MRT Station), B1-39.

Divine Vegetarian Family Restaurant (添欣素食园) @ Hougang, Singapore

Every month without fail, there will be two days that staunch semi- staunch (since staunch Buddhists are supposed to go on a non-meat diet at all times) Buddhists in Singapore have no meat in their meals; one is the 1st day of the lunar month and the second being the 15th day of the lunar month.

Today, it is the 15th of the lunar month (which means there will be a full moon!) and I was coerced to have a vegetarian breakfast with my family. For a person like me who adores meat and has not had vegetarian food for a long time, it’s a FML situation!!!

Okay, not really… since I don’t really mind any food, so long it is tasty by my standard. Yes, my standard, not yours!!! :P

Going on, my elder sister brought me to this popular restaurant located in Hougang, by the name of Divine Vegetarian Family Restaurant. By divine, i deduce that either the food is damn good or I am going to the heavenly realm AFTER eating the food.

Famous for its full vegetarian menu and the wide variety of vegetarian food selection, you can select from the mixed vegetables rice stall and the tze-char stall which whips up hor-fun, fishball noodles, kway chap, mee goreng, tom yam soup and even a freaky nice & crispy roti prata!!

Here’s what we had.

Mine

This is what I chose; a self-selected bee hoon with vegetarian char siew, vegetarian sweet and sour pork and a vegetables-based spring roll!!

Although the char siew was good, nothing beats the one my mom cooked!! Okay, maybe the char siew made in one of the Buddhist temples located in Sembawang can beat my mom’s version.

The spring roll was filled with the fragrance of mushrooms and turnips. And the ‘skin’ was fried just right; crispy and not oily.

My Sister

She ordered fishball noodles!

One amazing thing about this dish was the generous serving of vegetarian pork lard!! It’s amazing how alike they were! The taste was not too bad but I will prefer the real thing anytime!

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Location

Block 356, Hougang Avenue 7, #01-803.

Additional Information

Be prepared for crowds if you visit this restaurant during the 1st and 15th of the lunar month!!

Contrary to its name, the correct setting is coffee shop, not restaurant. Hence, don’t expect air-conditioning and cushy, leather seats!!!

Nothing is perfect in his imperfect world, judging from my mom's selection of stir-fried pumpkins, lady fingers which were really "ugh".

Be Your Own Judge.

Rubee's Currency

Seriously, Rubee deserves to have his face on the currency. I am not going to be ambitious here, a US $1 is what i am thinking for.

A picture has been meticulously selected for its honourable placing on the note; white hair, aged look, eyebrows sprouting out and no smile.

Perfect!

Cheese Fan (大理乳扇) @ Yunnan, China

Whenever i was recollecting my first trip to China, one particular delicacy never failed to activate my salivary glands.

This delicious snack originated from the minority Bai tribe in Dali, a place in Yunnan and is called "乳扇"; so named because it is made of milk and resembles a bamboo-made folding fan. 

When you are in a foreign place and realise a lot of shops are selling a specific kind of food, the chance is high that it is the local delicacy. That's exactly what happened when i was touring the old town of Dali! I sourced around and finally found one stall that proudly proclaimed to be the best!

"Toasted" over a pot of charcoal, the strips of cheese were smeared with rose sugar and wrapped round a bamboo stick.

In that cool March weather of roughly 10-15 degrees celcius, the slightly-charred melty cheese proved to be a warming factor and the fragrant rose sugar left a superb aftertaste that made you crave for more of it!!!!

If not for the limited time (as usual), i would have bought a few sticks for snacking in the cold night!

*Note*

I tried this same snack in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan.

Disappointing!! The taste was just not right!!!

Crabs - The Best Way to Cook Them

What's the best way to cook a crab?

From my previous makan (food) postings, it may imply that crabs in butter are my favourite but i beg to differ. My favourite style of cooking a crab is.............

Steamed.

Mundane? Definitely.

Common? No doubt about that.

So? I still think steamed is the best way of cooking a crab! Tear away the hardy shell (which can take a while depending on your skills; i prefer to use my metal teeth), and you will find meat that is so sweet, so delicious that you wouldn't mind the fishy smell stuck to your fingers!! 

As with any seafood, freshness is the key to its taste. In a way, sauces and spices can enhance the flavour. However, in order to savour its pure sweetness and salty flavour, seafood is best eaten steamed.

Argumentative i know. 

Want to have the true taste? Eat it raw. At least that's what i have heard before. Well, face it. To each his/her own!!!

*meixin, please help me thank your mom again for the bag of steamed crabs!!!!*