green gem of a salad

Whenever I am at the supermarket, I just can't walk away from a ripe avocado. They are hard to come by and I am not one to plan a week ahead what I'm going to cook. I simply can't resist that elusive ripe avocado often surrounded by hard, green and inedible fellow friends, even if I'm not sure when I am going to use it. This salad was a result of one of those black gems I picked up at a neighbourhood supermarket. I adore this salad. It's deeply green, almost like an emerald gem. Green salads always hit a soft spot for me. French beans & edamame, asparagus & spinach... This particular combination is uncomplicated as it is made for each other.

Perfect for a weekday night dinner. Hardly any clean-up needed. And it contains 2 of my favourite salad ingredients: avocado and rocket salad. The creaminess of the avocado is balanced perfectly with the peppery, almost spicy rocket leaves. Squeeze a wedge of lemon juice, add a generous lug of extra virgin olive oil, crack some black pepper and sea salt over. Tart and salty, creamy and peppery. Wonderful tastes and textures culminating together in a bowl. Lovely with toasted baguette and a glass of crisp white. We had tomato salsa as well, which complemented perfectly.

Taste of Paradise?

I don't usually write bad reviews as a post but this one deserves an entry of its own. Last night, I dragged D to try out the food at Taste Paradise at Mosque Street. The restaurant came with quite a reputation - Strait's Times Top 50 restaurants, a young 27 year old restaurant owner, raving reviews from several bloggers like Umami, Dim Sum Dolly and Skinny Epicurean, etc. It's supposed to be modern Chinese in the class of New Majestic, Jade and company. In the class of Yong Bing Ngen and Sam Leong? Far from it. They got a long, long way to go - if they ever reach there.

We were sorely disappointed by the service, the food and the overall experience. I must say I was excited at first - foie gras, wasabi prawns, softshell crabs at reasonable prices. The hostess at the door was pleasant and trying hard to please. An entrance with a bridge-like gateway with dry ice? Okay, cheesy, but we were there for the food. We ordered 2 appertisers (foie gras & wasabi prawns and softshell crab & pork rolls), 2 mains (cod with special chef's sauce & lamb rack), and their famed fried carrot cake. I specifically requested to have the carrot cake after our main course. So far so good. The carrot cake arrived in 3 minutes. The appertisers arrived 2 minutes later. Hmm.. a little to fast? But okay, what the heck, we were hungry. We dug in expectantly. "The best fried carrot cake in Singapore?" Its decent. Its no way near the best. The appertisers were almost passable - the pork roll was measily, the softshell crab came unadorned, quite like your typical conveyor belt sushi types. Foie gras and prawns were ordinary. Okay, so it is cheaper than the other places. Okay, the waitress didn't get my instructions right about the carrot cake. Okay, it is a Chinese restaurant so all the food gets served at once. Okay, they put all the food in the centre of the table although I indicated who was eating what.

There was one thing the wait staff got right though which was that I told the waitress to hold on to main course till we were done with our appertisers. That she did do. Our main course came at room temperature. To me, that was the worst part of the whole meal. Nevermind the other grouses. To eat at a supposedly fine dining restaurant and to be served cold food was just unacceptable to me. This is no cze cha and not cze cha prices. Just utterly disappointing. I don't need to mention how the mains went - I'm sure you can guess.

I felt shortchanged. I ate cold and mediocre food and paid a hundred dollars for it. I didn't even want to take any pictures, which of course I normally do. I didn't want dessert, which is very rare. Taste Paradise came with high reputation but did not come even close to meeting expectations.

gula melaka heaven

Oozy black gold. The best chendol I have ever encountered. Move aside weak imitations of Singapore and Penang. Shaved ice, thicky syrupy gula melaka, with an almost honey-like consistency. Rich creamy santan (coconut milk) and huge, tender sweetened red beans. No fanciful green wormy jellies in my chendol. No thank you. Just straighforward stuff here. Excellent to have on a hot, hot Melaccan day. Especially good too if you have just been rather disappointed by the touristy merchandise on sale everywhere along Jonker Street. This stall is a gem - loved by locals and visitors alike. Worth the calories from the sugar and coconut milk. Give me more please.

chicken & balls

 

I always wondered how people could eat mushed up rice? Wasn't rice balls made for kids who were difficult at the dinner table? (I'm not referring to Zach & Hana here as they were too stuffed with the ham & cheese sandwiches they had on the roadtrip. Not forgetting the ton or so of wang wang rice crackers, cheesels, jelly gummy babies, chocolate mlik they put away as well.) Or, maybe rice balls were made for workers on the run? I mean, who wants mushy rice on purpose?

I kinda like my rice grains separate and fluffy. After having these in Malacca, I must say they are not too bad. I expected oily; they had just a hint of ginger-pandan flavoured oil on them. Not at all oily. I expected mushy; surprisingly enough they were not all that mushy. I quite like it actually. They were served golf ball-sized unlike those in Singapore which are more tennis ball-sized. You could actually pop an entire one into your mouth if you were really hungry. But, by doing that, you won't actually get to enjoy eating the chicken and chilli at the same time. (Unless you could put all three into your mouth at the same time. And that would be quite a sight.)

 

The poached chicken (white chicken) was superb. We were quite sure it was kampong kinds (for the uninitiated, kampong chickens are free-range). The texture was a give away. It was firm and flavourful, unlike the squishy kinds we get here. The chilli sauce on the side had all the right combinations of sweet, spicy and sour. The tinge of kalamansi lime really gave it a nice kick.

Awesome stuff. 3/4 of a chicken, 20 rice balls, 5 drinks = RM40+.
Location of shop: Jonker Street vincinity, near bridge.

malaccan weekend

Last weekend, I went to Malacca for a short getaway with D and 2 of our close friends. Accompanying us were their children - zach and ohana. Zach is our godson and the trip was a wonderful opportunity for us to be a part of his life; and enjoy some great eats along the way. It was 2 days of fun in the sun with the kids and a tour of Malacca's well-known eats. Chendol, laksa, kampong chicken rice balls, rendang chicken noodle, Peranakan food, pineapple tarts... I also bought for myself several cookbooks on the trip. I'm particularly excited about a Penang guidebook and recipes for street eats. With the hae ko (fermented prawn paste aka rojak sauce)and gula melaka I lugged back, I can't wait to try out a few of my own renditions of street eats. Upcoming posts will be dedicated to the culinary delights of Malacca.

my dog

I don't usually blog about non-food stuff. I prefer to keep my blog purely foodie related. But, I couldn't resist sharing this photo with everyone. As you can see, scoobs is quite the foodie like me. She loves her milk and cookies, and ice cream, the occasional bitter durian... The only difference is that she gobbles everything up without chewing; I like to take my time and savour every morsel.

old fashioned buns

D and I chanced upon an old school-type of bakery along upper thomson road (where Romano's is) some weeks back. The kind of buns that you used to find in your non-airconditioned, non-renovated, non-fancy and no nonsense neighbourhood bakery. Nowadays, they are far and few in between, many of the neighbourhood bakeries have turned copycats, churning out floss and more floss. Gross! Be original for goodness sake!

 

Don't you just miss those pre-grossy-flossy days? Remember those butter creamed neon coloured rectangular single -portioned cakes? (where have those gone?) Or grandma's favourite heibi hiam (spicy dried shrimp) buns? Well this bakery doesn't have the neon coloured cakes but they have all the old fashioned bread types. Other than my fave heibi hiam, there's also coconut (orange in colour of course), peanut (not peanut butter), otak (spicy fish paste), hotdog (every childhood has memories of those), pineapple ( just like a pineapple tart but on a bun), anpan (redbean paste - and no ultraman's face please! ps. breadtalk's overpriced anpan has a silly ultraman's face painted on it)

For me, it's the independents. Not the empires. The old birds in the business. Now the wannabes. The old-fashioned bakeries who charge me 50 cents per bun. Not a dollar fifty. No gimmicks. No fanciful stuff. No grossy-flossy overladen with gooey lard pretending to be mayo. Bring back the heibi hiam. Unadulterated.

the K bug

Although I don't watch those soppy Korean serials or listen to those equally soppy Korean ballads, somehow the K-bug has bitten me. Not for some long-haired geeky K hunk, but for the Korean food. Since my last trip to Korea, I have vowed never to touch kimchi again after suffering on a 10 hour flight back to Singapore with a bad case of food poisoning. Although I must admit to nibbling the occasional kimchi pickle when it's placed in front of me, or slurping up a cup of instant noodles on Tiger airways (all that waiting in Vietnamese airports always make me raving hungry). Recently, my dad has been talking about that soppy but supposedly delectable serial which all aunties love. He dragged us to eat K bbq at Geylang some time back. I did talk about that in the blog's sidebar under 'recent misadventures'. You can kinda guess how that went.

So I went foodie surfing and found a listing of K food places apparently enjoyed by K expats. Among them is Manna Korean Restaurant. Craving for Bim Bi Bab (Stone bowl rice with beef and a whole lot of veg, a raw egg and chilli bean sauce...), D and I made our way down to Telok Ayer which was supposed to be the little seoul in Singapore with several K restaurants dotting the area. It was pretty authentic with the K ballads playing in the background and teenage K waitress who spoke little English serving us. They were quite stingy with the appertisers alerting us about 'limited free servings' when I asked for more kimchi. I'm not too sure what 'limited unlimited' means. We ordered a set of bulgogi beef rice set which came also with a small bowl of iced vemicelli-type of noodles. That didn't go too well with me - mustard and vinegar in ice water was too strange even for foodie-adventurous me.

We have also tried the K food at Crystal Jade. The verdict? Overall, Crystal Jade wins on ambience, service, the appertisers. The Bim Bi Bab at Manna was tastier (according to D at least). I liked Crystal Jade for an overall great experience. The ginseng chicken soup was superb as well. I think the bug has just bitten me again. It's time for more K mania.