Pesto & Pasta

Decided to make some pesto for lunch during one of the public holidays. Using a Jamie Oliver recipe, we did a supermarket run the evening before. Here's the basil and lemon.

I roasted 100g of pine nuts in the oven.

We bought fresh pasta, since I didn't think the dehydrated one would taste as nice.

Blending the roasted pine nuts with basil leaves, salt and pepper, some lemon juice and lots of extra virgin olive oil.

Adding parmesan cheese to the blender before giving it a good run

Voila!

Our very satisfying lunch

Behind the table vs behind the counter

I've never waited on tables before.

As a die hard foodie, I've always regretted never working in a restaurant, whether as a kitchen hand, waitress or dishwasher. The closest experience was working in a kitchen during Easter Camp 2000 cooking round the clock for 300 hungry campers, but peeling potatoes and skinning chickens was more memorable for the fun with friends rather than the kitchen experience gained.

So I decided it was time to learn how a restaurant was run, and volunteered to waitress at a friend's restaurant last Saturday night for free. After donning a black apron, I had about one hour to memorise the menu, table numbers and reservation list for the night. My most memorable moment was waiting on the table of my old pri sch+sec sch+JC classmate who was celebrating her birthday at the very same restaurant that night by complete coincidence, which we both found extremely hilarious.

After being on my feet for 5 hours, I concluded on the following points:

1. It's much easier to be behind the table than behind the counter.

2. Being nice to the serving staff is very important. It can determine whether you eat food from the serving bench or food from the floor; and

3. Some people will eat your leftovers if you leave them on the plate!

Image source: http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/clients_keeping_them/index.html

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 : )

Aoki at Shaw Centre

I had been keen to try Aoki for some time, and was fortunate enough to have good friends who were willing to give me a birthday treat there one Saturday lunchtime. The place was absolutely packed but my wonderful foodie friend managed to wrangle us the private room, which was nice, but a little weird because 4 of us ended up sitting in one row. We all ordered the set lunch since it was the most economical option.

The amuse bouche: some jelly-like noodles which might have been made of yam, since the texture was very similar to konnyaku, with a soy ginger flavour. They were pretty chewy, and I quite enjoyed them. No idea what the white seeds sprinkled on top were.
All the set lunches came with a salad with a soy-sesame dressing. This was quite pretty, but nothing much to crow about - just a salad after all!

Above-mentioned foodie friend ordered the Nigiri Sushi Jyo Sen ($30), which had 7 types of sushi, kappa maki and tekka maki and miso soup. They had another nigiri sushi set that came with 9 pieces and chawanmushi, but that cost $50 which I personally thought was not quite worth the extra $20 (then again I didn't analyse what the extra 2 pieces would have been). The servings looked fairly substantial and I would have been quite keen to have ordered this, had I not been more interested in other things on the menu.

I ordered the chirashi sushi, described in the menu as a Mazechirashi - sushi rice served with mixed sashimi, miso soup, pickles and dessert ($35).

The pickles looked very pretty - radish, ginseng and no idea what else dyed blue!

The stuff in the main bowl was astounding though - there were bits of otoro (fatty tuna), ikura (salmon roe), ebi (prawn), shima aji (jack), awabi (abalone), uni (sea urchin) and if there were other bits of yummy fish/shellfish (on hindsight I think there was also tako, or octopus as well), they were unidentifiable but absolutely delicious as well. This was all mixed with sweet omelette and cucumber. The wasabi also had yuzu in it.

After uncovering all the tamago and cucumber, the seafood bits were more visible. It was throughly enjoyable because the seafood was so fresh, and it didn't matter that these were the ugly off-cuts that were not presentable for sushi or sashimi pieces!

The miso soup was extremely flavourful - more so than the normal tofu version - since prawn stock had been used.
We were so absolutely greedy and happy that we decided to order another lunch set to share. So greedy friend and I went for the Shokado bento ($38) consisting of sashimi, nimono (steamed vegetables) and tempura, served with rice and miso soup.

The sashimi was drop dead gorgeous - with otoro, maguro, an unidentifiable shellfish on the right, ama ebi, hotate and hamachi and another fish and another shellfish - it was an amazing feast for the eyes as well as the belly.

The tempura was fairly average - crispy, non-oily, but ultimately, just tempura after all! There were veggie and prawn bits.

The broiled fish in light soy - no idea what it was, but it was similar to sardines or sanma - came with a piece of daikon. This was also non-exciting compared to the sashimi - that's not to say it wasn't good, but it didn't really have the wow factor of the sashimi. The fish was sweet and fresh.

The rice was flavoured with mushrooms, so it was a fairly light subtle flavour. I would have preferred normal steamed white rice, although this wasn't too bad.

Dessert was yuzu ice cream, umeshu jelly and a salty caramel/peanut mochi, which came with a fresh hot cup of tea to end the meal with. If I knew enough about tea, I suppose it would have been nice to have known how this slightly more brownish tea was different from the ocha that was served earlier, but it didn't really matter to me. It was the perfect ending to a perfect meal.

At $35 for the Mazechirashi, this was definitely comparable to the chirashi sushi at Sushi Yoshida - the last time I was there was mid-2009 and they had a wonderful chirashi sushi set lunch then for $38. I've heard they've raised their prices since, but am not sure by how much. But parking's definitely easier at Shaw Centre than Devonshire Rd. In terms of value for money, I think Matsuo Sushi still wins hands down for a normal everyday Japanese lunch - they're a less upmarket joint, but $20 all in for a chirashi sushi set, including chawanmushi, is pretty hard to beat.

Aoki

1 Scotts Road #02-17

Shaw Centre

Tel: 6333 8015

Open Mondays to Saturdays for lunch (12.00 to 3.00pm) and dinner (6.30 to 11.00pm)

Tianjin: Yong He Dou Jiang 永和豆浆

Even though the hotels I've stayed in have a pretty substantial buffet breakfast, there's nothing quite like heading out to where the locals go. There's a tau huay chain in China called YongHe DouJiang that has really good beancurd stuff, and there's also lots of imitation YongHes as well. I have no idea which is the genuine or original one, but no complaints as long as the food is good. I was in Tianjin over consecutive weeks, and so managed to squeeze in a couple of visits within the month.



Ordering and paying before sitting down. The only menu in the shop is the one behind the cashier...in Chinese text only.

The spread from the first visit: sweet tau huay chwee (RMB3), salty tau huay (RMB5), you tiao (RMB3) and spring onion pancake/cong you bing (RMB6). The you tiau was real crispy and oily....the kind that turns your paper napkin yellow : )

I was most pleased with the salty beancurd. The first time I had ever tried it was in Sydney at a shop in Chinatown called Mother Chu's, or Zhu Mama. That cost me A$7 and was worth every dollar. This, at RMB5, was even better. It came with slices of black fungus, salted vegetable, dried shrimp and spring onions. Not only was the flavour good, the tau huay was absolutely smooth and moist and sufficiently firm.

After stirring it up some
Forgot how much these xiaolongbao cost. But the skin was a bit thick compared to the versions we get in Singapore.

Wanton soup on the second visit (this came after another serve of salty tau huay). This was reasonable although a bit salty (seems to be a problem with all Chinese food)

Egg and spring onion pancake - this was also very enjoyable, with a crispy outer crust and soft fluffy omelette.

Oktoberfest in Sg

This is rather delayed since it's now November, but the rest of the earlier posts are so muddled anyway that I think the chronological order probably doesn't matter.

My handful of regular readers will know that I happen to think I have the best mother in law in the world who can cook practically anything under the sun. Well dear readers, she has outdone herself once again with her Oktoberfest menu which she was suddenly inspired to create.

We walked into the inlaws' place on a Sunday evening, only to be greeted by this: a beautiful, gorgeous, roasted pork knuckle.

The smells, when we cut it up, were amazing. The aromas of hot moist roasted pork wafting through the air made it impossible not to drool - and the cracking was oh so crispy and the meat so absolutely moist and tender.

Sauerkraut with peppers

German potatoes cooked with bacon

Sorry for misquoting Biblical scripture, but two are indeed better than one

The MIL also had bratwurst, which was beautiful with Berenberg seeded mustard.

Our contribution: Dark Belgian beer.

Not pictured: Turkish pide, dukka, olive oil, seeded mustard and fat happy smiling faces.

Beijing: Made In China

I've changed jobs recently, and should no longer be going to China so often, although there's plenty of backlog for the China food posts which should make their appearance over the next few weeks. To give some context, it was France/Belgium in June, China (a few times) in July and August, and Portugal/Germany in September. And plenty of Singapore eating in between, which I simply have no time to sort out. But we will get there!

This particular trip to Beijing in July was a rather fruitful one as far as managing to get out and trying different places was concerned. There were the occasional official meals, but I somehow managed to dodge a couple and venture out on foodie expeditions to places that had been highly recommended by friends. One of these was Maison Boulud, and the other was Made in China in Hyatt Beijing near Wangfujing. These 2 places came highly recommended by the same friend whom I regard very respectfully and highly as a food guru (who specialises in buffets). She claimed that the Peking Duck at Made in China was the best in Beijing, even better than Da Dong. Now, I happen to be a real BIG fan of Da Dong, having gone there probably around 5 to 6 times this year - not all were documented since 2 or 3 of them were business meals and it would have been rather inappropriate to photograph the food with the people I was eating with. But the food has always been excellent. So I knew I had to try Made In China urgently since the clock on my then-job was running down rather quickly.

Made in China at the Hyatt Beijing is easily accessible via the Subway Line 1. We were staying at China World Hotel at Guomao, and simply hopped on the train and got off at Wangfujing Station. After a five minute walk through the Oriental Plaza Shopping Mall, we found ourselves seated at a small table near the entrance. My gut feel was that we weren't taken very seriously as customers, since such tables are usually occupied by the drivers of the diners, who are normally seated in private rooms. But it really didn't matter to us Singaporeans who were just after a good meal.
I felt that the prices at Made in China were rather high. The entrees were priced between RMB 45 to 55 (items like cold braised beef slices and pickled jellyfish), the vegetable dishes between RMB 58 to 88 (normal stir fried veggies were RMB 68), fish starting from RMB 150 and poultry around RMB 100. These were easily about double or a third more expensive than other decent restaurants in Beijing. Fried rice and noodle dishes were RMB 68 on average.
The appetisers were pretty standard, but of quite good quality. The peanuts were crunchy and nicely salted.
Twice-cooked crispy pork ribs with garlic (RMB 98). This was very yummy and was really good with steamed rice. The pork ribs were very tender, and the garlic was crispy too.

The ma po tofu (RMB 58) arrived shortly after that. Here's what it looked like to us....

And here's the same dish with the flash on. It was pretty good, with just the right amount of spice without being too tongue-numbing.

As good Singaporeans, we had to order a veggie dish. Kailan with garlic - not on the menu (too boring I guess), but they managed to get this done for us.

The condiments for the roast duck

After about 45 mins, our duck came!

Extremely careful slicing

The skin was rather fatty....I wasn't quite sure about it. But it turned out to be crispy and absolutely delicious, although it could have been done better with less fat.

The various cuts - fat, lean and in between.

Another shot with the pancakes

On the whole, the meal was very enjoyable but I felt Da Dong's roast duck and other dishes were just that little bit better. Still, Made In China was a good experience and I'm glad to have had the chance to eat there. The bill eventually came up to around RMB 460 (S$93) for 3 people, which was reasonable by Singaporean standards.

1/F, Grand Hyatt Beijing 1 Dongchang'anjie, Beijing

东长安街1号东方君悦大酒店1层

Subway: Wangfujing