Tian Tian Chicken Rice

My favourite quick lunch at Maxwell Market on a busy day (provided you go after 2.30pm) - the chicken is tender, the rice is fragrant, and it always makes me happy eating it.

Chicken Rice

I had some friends over for dinner recently, and since I had a couple of chickens in the freezer, decided to cook chicken rice. It wasn't the prettiest, but I was really pleased with how it turned out. This was done by stuffing ginger and garlic pieces into a whole chicken, and then boiling it for half an hour with some salt. I fried shallots, ginger and garlic pieces with dry rice, and then cooked it with the chicken stock in the rice cooker.

This was the result:

No chicken rice is complete without chilli - garlic, ginger and large red chillies blended with salt, sugar, lime juice and rice vinegar. Pretty good stuff!

The rice came out smelling and tasting great : )

Saturday afternoon eating

The husband and I spent the whole of Saturday afternoon eating. Our first stop was Margaret Drive hawker centre. It's a bit strange to go to Queenstown now, especially with the former town centre being so quiet and having lots of open spaces around, but it has a great laid-back feel. If only parking wasn't so difficult. We went there because (A), we wanted a cheap lunch; (B) we were in the area anyway and (C) I was craving chicken rice. The husband initially wanted to go to Holland V. I managed to talk him out of it, having just left the area with no less than 5 cars waiting for my parking lot at 10.30am.

I love the chicken rice shop on the second storey at stall no. 02-548. It's always crowded on weekends.

Practically everyone else sitting around us ordered the steamed chicken. Being too smart for my own good, I decided to order the roast chicken. This set cost me $4.50.

The roast chicken meat was good, but slightly dry. I should have gone for the steamed chicken instead.

The rice was really good. Soft, fluffy, and tasty, and not too oily.

The poor husband decided to deviate from the plan, and went to order beef brisket hor fun from a nearby shop (which shall remain unnamed). The beef was good, but the rice noodles were pathetically limp and tasteless. It was like eating flour strips.
After that, it was off to Sushi Tei at the old Big Splash to join my sister and her family for their lunch. We had a few more things to eat....the niece had a california hand roll.

The nephew had a sukiyaki set, which he ate about a third of. The husband and I helped to polish off the rest.

The husband ordered edamame. Would have been better with beer instead of tea.

The niece had tempura and dobin mushi (not pictured).

The husband and I shared a sashimi salad. I love Sushi Tei's sashimi salad. The raw seafood (consisting of sake, maguro, ika, tako and akagai) is always fresh, and they're generous with it too.

A closer look at all the sashimi off cuts.

Salmon skin. Goes with mayonnaise and lemon.

We mucked around for an hour playing minigolf, after which it was time for dessert. The nephew ordered a mango mochi.

The husband and I shared this durian with gula melaka dessert...it came on top of shaved ice....

...And we also shared an almond cream.

I didn't manage to take pictures at the family dinner we had soon after with my inlaws, consisting of braised duck, char siew, roast pork, steamed chicken, beef rendang, mee siam, mee goreng, with potong ice cream after.