Bistecca alla Fiorentina Take 2

Our second (and self-declared last) bistecca of the trip at Trattoria Mario's - THE Florentine institution at the Mercato Centrale. They're open only for lunch and are horribly crowded, but their bistecca is fantastic- juicy, tender and thick. Not cheap at 35Euros but it's money spent happily.

Steak with truffles

Steak with black truffles shaved over, done medium rare. Juicy, fragrant and beautiful with a glass of red.

Il Cantastorie, Florence, Italy.

Bistecca alla Fiorentina

Grilled medium rare, seasoned only with pepper, salt and olive oil.

Ristorante Osteria Enoteca Sotto Le Fonti, Siena

Burrata with Truffles

The most amazing burrata ever - topped with shaved black truffles
La Scala, Trastevere, Rome

Lunch at Au Petit Salut

Au Petit Salut has a great set lunch for $36++, and we had a very nice lunch there one weekday afternoon - it was cool, cloudy and perfect for sitting outdoors.

They were pretty generous with the flow of bread, which was nice.
I had the escargot for my starter - the bread was excellent with the herb+garlic butter.
The snails were tender, but it's the sauce that makes or breaks the dish. This one had a bit too much tomato at the bottom, but nothing to complain about really.The husband had the pork and prune terrine. He probably thought it was undersized :) But he liked it - not too salty, and not too fatty. The husband had the beef stew that came with horseradish froth (which we thought was a bit too much). I thought this was a brilliant dish - the sauce was like a consomme, very light and drinkable. The beef cheeks were super tender as well. I liked this better than he did.
I had the bavette steak, which we found out, was something similar to skirt. He liked this more than I did. So being good Asian diners, we swopped plates eventually. The fries were super crispy.
His dessert was a lemon chocolate tart with yuzu sauce and a camomile honey sorbet, which cost an extra $4. All was good until I tried the sorbet...the only thought that went through my head was "YARDLEY".
I liked my cheese platter though. For a supplement of $6, I got comte and reblochon after having told the waiter that I did not want any goat or blue cheeses. This was a very happy ending to a very enjoyable meal.
Website: http://www.aupetitsalut.com/aps/aps-contact.php

Japanese Curry Recipe

We bought a couple of random packets of curry back from Tokyo to try cooking Japanese curry at home, and were pleasantly surprised to find out how easy it was. I feel kinda cheated all these years for spending all that money at restaurants eating karei rice, when it's so simple and cost-efficient to do it at home. This particular pack (House brand) that we bought from Tokyo was very flavourful. When we found it in Istean Scotts, we immediately stocked up on a few more packets. There are no instructions in English though, so there is a need to figure out how these things work. Chopped up carrots and potatoes - the Indonesian potatoes were great. Chuck is good for the recipe too - all you need is about 2 hours of stewing.
I fried one large chopped onion in a combination of butter and olive oil, before adding the beef, and then the carrots and potatoes.
After that, the mixture needs to stew for a couple of hours in some stock - I used chicken stock, which helped to add some flavour. The curry paste only goes in after the beef is tender, and not before - otherwise the likelihood of burning is much higher. It kinda looks like chocolate blocks.
This is what you get after throwing the curry paste (or rather, blocks) in - the paste has starch in it, so everything immediately thickens. More water can always be added.
We were cooking udon, so we got it ready in a separate pot.
Ugly, but really yummy.
Since I had a lot of curry, the next day I went to Isetan and bought pork katsus and rice from the supermarket cooked food counter, and instantly we had katsu curry rice. Cheap, fast and easy.

Old Chengdu Sichuan Cuisine Restaurant 老成都川菜馆

There were a couple of Sichuan restaurants near the office that I had wanted to try, and thanks to some very adventurous colleagues, I managed to score a lunch at one of them. The 2 restaurants are right outside the Chinatown MRT entrance at Pagoda St, and we chose the less upmarking-looking one of the two, on the right hand side facing the MRT Entrance.

We started the meal with an order of 凉粉, which came in full spicy glory. I thought this was pretty good, although a bit too spicy for my colleagues.
One of my favourite dishes - 土豆丝 which was supposed to be mildly spicy, but rated as extremely spicy by another colleague. There was also 花椒, in addition to the dried chillies, which was a pleasant surprise. Another winner, although I felt the potato shreds were sligtly overcooked.

We also had a salted egg tofu, which appeared rather soup-like. This was great on top of steamed rice.

Their 辣子鸡 was another winning dish - the little pieces of chicken deep fried to perfection.

We had yet another vegetable dish which I can't recall the name of, with lotus root, potato slices and mushrooms stir fried in a chilli paste.

The meal came up to around $20-25 per head. An excellent lunch to spice up the workday.

80/82 Pagoda St, 62226858

Ah Seng Braised Duck Rice at Serangoon Gardens

Ah Seng Braised Duck gets my vote for best braised duck in Singapore. I've never really been a fan of braised duck, but this one I could eat everyday. There's a super long queue during peak hours that starts about 1130, and they normally sell out in the afternoon.
This was a quarter duck, mostly breast meat. The duck meat is tender and moist, and the braising sauce goes really well on top of hot steamed rice.
Even their chilli sauce is fantastic.
Their duck wings are amazing as well - try to make the order in advance because these get sold out early.

49A Serangoon Garden Way#01-44 Serangoon Garden Market & Food Centre

Aoki - Possibly the best meal ever in Singapore

Someone very nice took us out to dinner at Aoki recently - and this gets my vote for my best meal ever, in Singapore. It was an amazing meal, and looking at the photos (which I do often) always makes me hungry.

We started with edamame

Which was great with sake - the first of 2 bottles. I have no idea what we drank but it was GOOD.
Gingko nuts in a seaweed basket that was edibleIka shiokara, or fermented squid. This was very strong tasting - nice in small quantities, but it wasn't something that I would order again.

This had to be the sweetest, juiciest, tastiest, freshest tomato on the entire island. Amazing dipped in a bit of salt.
Shiro ebi - white shrimp mixed with uni and caviar. DIVINE.
We got one sea urchin for each of us. To be eaten with a teaspoon. Died and went to heaven, and came straight back for the next course.When this plate was set in front of us, I couldn't believe my eyes.
Beautiful, beautiful black truffles shavings. Over a lot of white fish sashimi.
This was glorious - the truffles were very delicate in flavour, and I loved the truffle infused oil- not quite the standard truffle oil, I have no idea what it was. Then a serve of sashimi. We enjoyed the otoro and hotate. The ebi was super fresh and sweet as well.
View from my seatA fresh oyster with ponzu sauce - I had to pass this to the husband given my new-found allergy to raw oysters *sobs*
Grilled fish - I believe this was bream
Anago sushi - absolutely beautiful
The ikura was as good as ever, flavoured delicately with little specks of some leaf or fruit peel...some say it's yuzu but it looked to me like some shiso leaf thing.
This was the dish that made me weep with joy. I really didn't want to blog about this - after all, some special experiences must be kept private. This dish was so good I wanted to post a photo on facebook immediately, and yet was torn, since mass knowledge would cheapen the experience. Anyway - here it is. A grilled beef bowl, with truffles and a lightly poached egg on top of wonderfully sticky warm rice.

The beef wasn't even wagyu - it came from some less well-known prefecture, and was seared to medium perfection. It would have been brilliant even without the truffles.

After digging down a bit more, we found the poached egg. The combination of half-cooked egg, succulent beef and truffle on rice was unbelievable. I'm hungry just writing this out.

The trio of pineapple sorbet, green tea ice cream and I can't recall what the last one was - sesame? But the best was yet to come.

We headed next door for a cheese platter - this was the entire selection on the trolley and I did not recognise a single name. What eventually ended up on our tableWith Les Amis chocs to end the meal
And the most amazing madeline and chocolate coated frozen bananaPlus port and reisling.