Coffee, Toast & Soft Boiled Egg

Wednesday, 14 May 2010

Today I had a most disappointing breakfast, and this after I have had to fast since 9 pm last night. As part of a medical check-up for work-related insurance coverage, I was required to have a fasting blood test. So, at 9.30 am this morning I went to the authorised clinic on the 3rd Level of Suntec Tower 3, just above my office. After one failed attempt by a junior clinical technician to draw blood, I emerged for the clinic with a strip of plaster on each of my arms when a senior technician succeeded.

Then I went down to the the Old Town Cafe for breakfast. This cafe is just outside Tower 3, next to the entrance to the underground Promenade MRT station. Unlike a few other similar cafes like Killiney Coffee Shop and Ya Kun, this one has table service.

I asked for the "My Toast" set comprising a kaya toast, two soft-boiled eggs and a cup of white coffee (instead of the black coffee). You get your coffee first and have to wait a bit for the rest to come. I thought the eggs looked somewhat strange, not like the usual ones I usually have. On a closer look, I found a hard crescent of egg white. Seemed the eggs were cracked into the bowl and microwaved. Somehow, the eggs tasted off - I don't think microwaved "half-boiled" eggs are any good. I also didn't like the kaya (egg jam) toast, though it had a generous slice of butter. I like my toast, made from soft bread, to be crispy on the outside while still remaining soft inside, not dry like a biscuit throughout. Yucks, yucks.

The coffee tasted like instant coffee. Atested to by the conversation I had with the cashier when I paid the bill.

"X'cuse me, I thought the set is only $4.20, why I have to pay $5.20?'

"You change to white kopi, one lollol extra."

"Wah, your milk costs $1."

"No, not milk, special kopi."

"You mean you grind coffee beans, like Starbuck, to make white coffee?"

"No, no, you know, kopi."

"But coffee comes from coffee beans." Me agitated.

"No, kopi. Dis kopi." Cashier equally agitated, turned around, grabbed a bottle from a shelf, thrust it at me. Lo and behold a gold-labelled bottle of instant coffee. Ssssheh

I paid up and went, vowing not to return.

Vietnamese Roll & Coffee

 28 April 2010

 Yesterday, at 3.18 pm the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s second Integrated Resort (IR) was opened.  As with IRs, the main attraction is the casino.  Seeing an opportunity, I decided to walk to the IR as my lunch time exercise.  From my office you get there by going through the Promenade Station of the Circle Line and emerging at the junction  of Raffles Blvd and Temasek Ave.  Then I crossed the Helix, a pedestrian bridge, so called for obvious reason.  Though not fully completed, the IR is an impressive edifice to gambling. No doubt it will be a big success given the propensity for humans to take on Lady Luck. Took a peek in the shopping hall and came across things to come when the IR is fully completed. 

Back at Suntec City I decided to have a light lunch. So I bought a Vietnamese roll (not fried) and a dripped Vietnamese ice coffee.  The roll was refreshing with the taste coming mainly from the sauce. It was a sweetish brown concoction (which I couldn’t identify) with some crush peanut thrown in. The coffee was strong, packing a good coffee wallop despite the ice.  Not insipid like Starbuck.

Fish Ball Mee Pok

Saturday, 17 April 2010

We deviated from our Saturday morning routine.  Instead of going to the 10 o’clock novena service we went to the 9 am one.  May wanted to run an errand for her mother before the eye clinic at Camden Medical Centre closed.  So I suggested we go earlier and have brunch at a coffee shop recommended by her favourite boutique owner.

When we arrived at about 11.20 am, the coffee shop at 53 Upper East Coast Road was already crowded. Luckily we managed to get a table. We had came to this shop twice before. The first time it was so overcrowded we went away. It is really that popular.  The second time we went in the afternoon, past 3.30 pm and it was closed.  Now we know that opening time is between 7 am and 3.330 pm.  You may wonder why we bothered so much about this mee pok (132 Mee Pok Kueh Teow Mee).  Well, we do really like  our noodle, especially spaghetti, bak chor mee, mee pok/mee kia and wonton mee, not to mention mee siam mee rebus, mee goreng and char kuay teow. And the one at Upper East Coast Road has been well recommended.  So die die must try.

We ordered the $4 bowl of mee pok ta and waited and waited. We waited for more than half an hour before our mee came. That many customers ahead of us.   My bowl came with 3 fish balls, 2 halves of prawn, a few small slices of lean pork and some minced pork.  May had one fish ball less but one half of a prawn more.  One fish ball equals half a prawn?  The mee came with one small bowl of soup each.  To begin eating we proceed to mix in the sauce which was at the bottom of the bowl.  May mixed up everything in the bowl. I transferred the fish balls to bowl of soup, a thing I usually do. Don’t ask me why. 
The first slurp of mee brought a sting to our mouths.  Boy, was the sauce chilli hot. At the second slurp the unique taste of the sauce caught on. The sauce is different from those used in other mee poks, a unique taste we couldn’t identify.  The overall effect was a delicious though fiery bowl of mee pok.  Yum, yum. I had wondered to May whether the mee would be worth the wait.  Definitely, and perhaps a second visit.

JAPANESE SHRIMP CURRY

16 April 2010

It’s TGIF and I am into the third day of a valiant attempt to reduce my oft-criticised overhanging belly.  Today I walked down Suntec City, through CityLink Mall all the way to Raffles City, exited and went through Funan Digilife Mall to Victoria Street.  I thought I would check out an old coffee shop at Armenian Street, one of the places where I got my ‘char kueh teow’ fix.  Alas, the entire block of old shop houses had been demolished and in its place stands a spanking new grey uninteresting building partially occupied. 

At least, I discovered the exact location of the Peranakan Museum. Until then, I had a vague notion it was somewhere at Armenian Street. (Pssst ... I am half Peranakan.)

I decided to go back to office by way of Stamford Road. As I was walking pass Stamford House, there at the last shop before Capitol Building is the Curry Favor (sic) Japanese Kitchen. Years ago Ann and Joan introduced me to this restaurant specialising in Japanese curry.  I enjoy the sticky Japanese curry.  It reminds me of the sticky Hainanese curry you get with your Hainanese curry ‘pung’ (rice) which our family really like. I went in and ordered the shrimp curry, this being a Friday.  I prefer the fried breaded pork cutlet curry.

Overall, I thought the curry, though enjoyable, was not as good as when I first had it. But then nostalgia has a way of colouring things. The 5 shrimps were a disappointment. They were a bit mushy, so definitely not fresh. The crab potato salad (the white lump on the plate) was good, soft and tasty. Just a yum. 

One thing I know for sure, if I continue my walk, I will always have two constant companions - wet armpits.

INDIAN ROJAK

15 April 2010

This is the second day of my walking regime.  From Suntec City, in office attire, I walked across the overhead bridge over Nicholl Highway to Beach Road.  Then down Middle Road to Waterloo Street.  Unlike my first walk which was rather random but ended with me eating a $16 ramen.  I had a secondary mission this time round.  Striding along Waterloo Street I finally arrived at Block 262 where Nan Tai Eating House is. And my favourite Indian Rojak stall.  It had taken me some 20 minutes to reach here. So a refuelling stop was called for.

“Rojak’ is a Malay word for mixture.  Indian rojak is just that – a mixture of mostly deep-fried food items like shrimp fritter, coconut fritter, tofu, fish cake, fermented soybean (“tempe”), potato, re-expanded dried cuttlefish, and many others.  You choose what you want and the seller deep fries them again and serves them garnished with slices of cucumber and onion and a spicy sweet potato sauce as a dip

I chose my favourite bits – the shrimp fritter, tempe, tofu and cuttlefish.  To me, the most important part of the Indian rojak are the shrimp fritter and the sauce as they define how good a particular rojak is.  The great thing about the shrimp fritter at this stall is that it is mostly shrimp with just enough flour to hold the shrimps together.  More often than not, the shrimp fritter you find at other outlets is mostly flour.  The crucial ingredient in the sauce is the pureed sweet potato unlike the watery peanut sauce you find elsewhere.

After recharging, I walked back through Bras Basah Road and passed the ‘Flirting Point’ at the Singapore Arts Museum (SAM).  No one was around to flirt with though. The whole loop took an hour, 20 minutes to walk to the rojak point, 20 minutes to eat and 20 minutes to walk back.  Can I sustain the regime? If I don’t succumb to stinky armpits first.

Ramen

14 April 2010

Today I had a bowl of ramen for lunch.  I did not go out specifically to look for ramen.  Today I started on an exercise regime by spending my lunch hour on a brisk walk.  To improve by well-being May has been cajoling me to take up some walking. She seems to think that my belly is dangerously overhanging my belt. So I decided that my lunch time is ideal for the exercise.  I walked from my office at Tower Three Suntec City to Funan DigitalLife Mall, taking about 15 minutes. Arriving at the Mall I was greeted by a huge sign with tantalising pictures of bowls of ramen proclaiming that they can be had at Bishamon, #01-18 in the Mall. I went to check it out. It is next to Ya Kun and MacDonald. Until today I had not eaten any ramen for more than a year, so was easily tempted. I went in and ordered the Assari Miso Ramen.

A chef’s recommendations, the Assari Miso Ramen is made with pork and clam miso stock and comes with about 4 small slices of pork, a half of a boiled egg, and a few strips of clam.  I must say that the stock is really delicious though a mite oily.  The pork is tasty and tender. The egg is done just the way I like it – the yolk cooked but with the centre just a little runny thus rendering the white still soft and spongy.  I washed the whole thing down with hot green tea.  Yum, yum.

But I was out of pocket to the tune of S$16.20 (ramen $12.80, tea $1, service charge $1.38 and GST $1.06). Was it worth the money? Well, you can get a bowl of wanton mee with ‘char siew’ for $3.50 in a food court.  But then, I did enjoy the ramen. So what value enjoyment?

Christmas Turkey

14 April 2010

I was in the grip of ennui. Didn’t feel much like writing, let alone blog. The thing that really kept me stirred was exploration in the Web. Then I began watching “The Big Bang Theory” when my daughter Ann told me about it and I got my laughs. I am again energised. The other day May, in one of our casual conversations, mentioned that she really liked Joan’s Christmas turkey.

We spent last Christmas in Perth (Western Australia) with our daughters, Ann and Joan, who are working there. Christmas in Perth is the same as in Singapore, and, as I believe, elsewhere in the world. It has been hijacked into a holiday festivity. The true meaning of Christmas is vague except to those who really believe. Last Christmas was an intimate family only affair, just us and the dogs, Harry and Rosie. We had our usual Christmas Eve dinner. Joan baked a Christmas turkey.

The great thing about Joan’s turkey was that it was moist and succulent. Most turkey I had eaten had been dry. As Joan explained to me, the trick to a moist baked turkey is to stuff butter under the skin of the turkey and to bake it in a roasting bag, making sure that its inner temperature does not go over 175 degree C. The traditional turkey stuffing appears grey, looks and tastes somewhat weird. We never did like it. In its place Joan stuffed a cut apple, some onions and fresh sage. They added a pleasing and subtle fragrance to the turkey.

The best part was eating that turkey with whole cranberry sauce perked up with orange zest. Yum, yum.

PHO

May agreed to go with me to see “2012”, the doomsday movie. Surprisingly, this did not need a big effort at persuasion. So at lunch time, I went down to the Eng Wah cinemas on the 3rd floor of Suntec City Tower 3, my workplace, to book the tickets. While down there, I did a little a exploration and came across this Vietnamese restaurant – Pho Hoa Noodle Soup. It seems to be a chain with outlets in the USA, Malaysia, Philippines, Canada, China and Indonesia, so declares a decorative wall in the restaurant. I vaguely remember this chain. I think they had an outlet in Siglap, in the eastern part of Singapore, before the ascendant of Thai food and the decline of Vietnamese food in Singapore. Now, I have not had pho (pronounced ‘fur’) for a long time, not since returning in March from visiting Ann and Joan in Perth. I do really like this Vietnamese beef soup noodle. Without hesitation, I ordered a regular bowl with a mixture of flank beef and steak beef, after the waitress explained that the flank has some fat on it and I heard the fat calling me. The pho was really ‘cheng’ (‘clear’ in Chinese). There was no oil floating on the soup, like those I ate in California; neither were there beef flotsam. Nice and pleasant looking. It was served with the usual mint, bean sprout and lime that come with pho. On the whole the pho was good. The flank beef was not powdery and the steak beef was chewy but not tough. I made a mistake though, should have asked for the steak beef to be on the side. Then I would have had it pinkish, more to my taste. The soup clearly had a good stock, with a beefy aftertaste that went down well with the light sourness of the lime. Yum. The pho I had in Perth was better. Was it worth the $12.36 I paid for it after adding a service charge of 10% and7% GST? Nay. A bowl of equally good local beef kuay teow soup in a food court would have cost me only $5 at the most. For those who want their bowl of pho, you can find it at Pho Hoa Noodle Soup (Suntec), 3 Temasek Boulevard #03-027, actually Tower 3 on the 3rd Floor, above Carrefour.

FUNGHI POT PIE A LA KOONIE

Yesterday's dinner nearly didn't happen. One weekend morning last week, May and I just happened to be watching Rachael Ray on TV.  She was in Chicago visiting the local favourite eating joints and resaurants.  We were intrigued by a dish she tasted.  It looked like a mushroom pot pie with spaghetti sauce.  So I decide to to make a couple after we got all what we saw were the ingredients.

I needed two porcelain bowls. The pot pie we saw was baked in a bowl, not dish, one bowl for each diner. Alas, there was none in the house. Go and buy some. Easier said than done. No bowl that can be use for baking. Not even at Phoon Huat, the baking haven. Almost gave up. But then my resourceful wife found some at N2 Shopping Street ( that's Tampines Neighbourhood 2 Shopping Street; what's else?) right in front of our noses. But Phoon Huat did have prepared puff pastry sheets. Bought a pack.

Come Sunday, yesterday. All the ingredients were ready. May lightly stir fried about 120 grams of minced beef with chopped garlic and onions in a sauce pan. Poured in half a bottle of a 737 gram bottle of Prego spaghetti sauce ( given by May's friend Mary).

Placed two slices of real, not the processed kind, cheddar cheese at the bottom of each pie-pot.

      
       Halved the button mushrooms, about 5 to 8 medium sized ones for each pot, and dropped them into the pots.

Filled the pots with the spaghetti sauce. Covered the pots with the puff pastry.

 

Began pre-heating the oven to 220°C.  Temperature determined by looking at the baking instructions for the puff pastry sheets. No recipe; everything ‘agak agak’ (guessing, educatedly, be assured).

Poof ... all the lights went out. Tried to reset the earth-leakage circuit break. No joy. Switched off the mains to the oven and tried again. Lights on again. Switched on the oven, lights off. Conclusion – oven faulty. So now what to do with the unbaked funghi pot-pie a la Koonie?

Resourceful May to the rescue again. Use the turbo broiler, said she.

Voila, ready, top brown and crispy.

Turned over the pot and dropped the pie onto the dinner plate. Ready to be eaten with fresh cucumber. Let me say that getting the koonie pie onto the plate was quite a feat. The pot was smooth and oily and hot, and had no handle. Difficult to hold. Nearly made a mess of it.



I must say, for a concoction without a recipe, it was good. The funghi was succulent and earthy, the sauce was piquant and tangy (Prego is good) and you could still feel the crispiness of the crust despite the sauce. Yum, yum. Now to see to the oven.

CHENDOL

This afternoon I had a delicious bowl of chendol. After sending her mother home from church and lunch, May wanted to go to Katong Shopping Centre. She had to exchange her new bra for a larger one. Her favourite bra shop is in this shopping centre. She shooed me away from the shop and told me to go and have some dessert.

One of my favourite dessert place is this one, B1-66, in the basement of the shopping centre. Well, I don't know what's the name of the shop as it is in Mandarin. I have been to this shop many times since it opened several years ago. Mostly, I had eaten dessert pastes like 'chee mau woo' (black sesame seed paste, one of my favourite) and almond paste. Never the chendol. For no apparent reason, I ordered the chendol. Boy, was I glad. This chendol is the real McCoy. The chendol is the original light green type, made from sweet potato flour, not those plastiky, deep green you get now-a-days. It is so soft that when you use your tongue to press it against your palette it squishes out and leaves a pleasant mushy sweet taste. Then you feel the sweet, with a tinge of sourness, gula melaka (coconut sugar) gliding down the back your tongue. The soft but firm red beans were a pleasant complement. Yum, yum. Still, can't beat the one in Malacca.

SAUSAGE AND SALAD

Tonight I had dinner at home. I had sausage and salad. I didn't cook the dinner. Why sausage you may ask. Well, when I started out for novena this morning I had intended to have a home-grilled steak. Then I went to Borders to look for the last two books in a fantasy series. As I am prone to, I lost track of time when I am in a book shop. By the time I surfaced, it was past 5 pm. So I took the train back to Novena Square to get my car. There is a Cold Storage supermarket in Novena Square. So I went in to look for the steak, then I spotted the sausages in the delicatessen. They were so tempting and I succumbed, especially since I thought that maybe it was a bit late to prepare the steak.

I always have a fondness for sausages - English, German, Italian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Taiwanese. In fact, I think most countries have some sort of sausage. But maybe not India; never heard of an Indian sausage. I will Google to confirm sometime. My love affair with the sausage began back in the long gone days I was in the Singapore Armed Forces. I was sent to England for training and stayed for almost a year in a Royal Air Force officers' mess. Once a week, sausage and black mushrooms was a menu choice for breakfast in the dinning hall. After the first time, I had it whenever it was a choice. Those were the days, man.

So I bought two grilled sausage, a package of prepared salad and a carton of pure promegranate mangosteen juice from the Cold Storage. When dinner time came I heated the sausages in the microwave and ate them with the salad, chasing them down with the juice.

One of the sausages was a bratwurst, a spicy German pork sausage with sun-dried tomato; the other was a Mediterranean jumbo sausage, also pork, I think. Both the sausages were firm to the bite, grilled just right - cooked, not over done. The hint of sun- dried tomato in the bratwurst gave it that bit of oomph. The jumbo was just pepperish. And the salad was just a salad with crotons. Overall a satisfying meal. Yum. It had everything I need - protein, fat, carbohydrates, veggies and vitamins. Except something is missing - company. Sigh.

FOO CHOW FISH BALL

For the last couple of days I have been looking for a route to and from work driving through which I don't have to fork out $4.50 to $6.50 daily, depending on how early I leave home. I am quite peeved that I have to part with my hard earned money to enjoy the convenience of driving to work when I don't see the convenience at all, what with the very heavy traffic and sometimes jams. Today, I found one going through Nichol Highway where it will cost me just $0.50 to $2.50. This seems to be within my irritation threshold.

This route also gives me the choice to go by Old Airport Road. So this evening, I decided to go to the Old Airport Road foodcentre for dinner. Browsing around, I came to Stall 103 selling Foo Chow fishball. Unlike the normal fishball which is quite ubiquitous in all the foodcourts and foodcentres in Singapore, the Foo Chow fishball is somewhat of a rarity. Thinking it wise to have a light dinner since I had a heavy nasi lemak lunch, I ordered a bowl of the Foo Chow fishball. $3 gives you 4 fishballs and 3 meat dumplings.

The thing about the FooChow fishball is that its centre is filled with minced meat. When you bite into it, you cut to two textures - the spongy fish outer layer and the soft meat centre, like biting through a savoury centre-filled chocolate. For me, a good fishball has a bite. At your first first bite, there is resistance; a little more pressure then cuts through the little rascal. This particular Foo Chow has some bite but I think some flour has been added so that it is softer. The meat dumplings were good and the soup tasty with the added kelp. Overall, worth a go. There are also other balls, I mean normal fish balls and pork balls, at this stall to go with noodles.
Yum, yum.

COUSCOUS

Since my wife, May, left to visit our daughters in Perth, I have been having meals bought from or eaten in food courts, food centres, coffee shops and the occasional restaurants. No home cooked food. Sigh.

So I decided to throw up something simple for dinner tonight, it being a Sunday. Simple in the sense everything on a dinner plate. And what can be more simple than fish with couscous. I am not sure what couscous is really. When I Googled I understand it to be a specially prepared combination of semolina and flour. It doesn't matter though, as you can buy a box of it from a supermarket. We usually use San Remo couscous because it was the first one we found in a Cold Storage supermarket and it was not expensive. Since it was good, we have suck with it.
Our first encounter with couscous was way back in the 1990s when we were invited by an Israeli friend to dinner in his apartment in Singapore. His wife served couscous. We actually forgot about it until our daughter Ann served it during one of our visits to her and Joan in Perth a couple of years back. It was yummy. Since then we have been having it occasionally.

After mass today in the Church of the holy Trinity, I went to the nearby Fair Price supermarket and bought a piece of white snapper (locally known as 'ang go li') and a small pack of frozen mixed vegetables (green peas carrot, corn, beans). There was no need to buy the couscous as there was still an almost full box of it at home. Rubbed some salt and pepper on the fish and left it in the fridge.

When dinner time came, I prepared the couscous by mixing a half cup of it with equal part of hot water and left it to expand. In the meantime I pan fired the 'ang go li'. When the couscous became soft but still grainy, I tossed it up in the frying pan (the fish removed) with browned chopped shallot, left-over diced salami and a handful of boiled mix vegetables. Usually we also add almond flakes but I forgot to buy some and there was none left at home. May also likes some mint and raisins. I like raisins in the couscous too and got them ready but left them out and only remembered about it after eating everything up. Ah yah.

Here's my concoction.

If I may say so myself, it was an enjoyable and satisfying meal. Yum.

LEMPER UDANG

Some while ago my brother-in-law said over Sunday lunch that lately he had yet to come across a good lemper udang - one full of the spicy fried minced dried prawn. It struck me that I had not eaten one for a long while. So I set out to look for the best one (at least to me). Surprise, surprise, I found one I really like in, of all places, the canteen in the Novena church at Thompson Road.

May, my wife, and I go to the Novena on Saturdays. On that particular Saturday I had to go to the loo and went through canteen to get to it. Lo and behold, there it was, a basket full of fat lempers - in the the canteen not the loo. Here's what this delicious treat looks like.



Not only is it choked full of the spicy dried prawn, it is also streaked with the blue from the bunga telang (blue pea flower), a traditional nonya food colouring. It is good because the spicy dried prawn has just the right hot chilly taste with a tinge of sugar sweetness. The glutinous rice is tender and lemak (rich with coconut milk) but not mushy.

If you want to get it, you have to go to the canteen before 10.30 am as they disappear soon after. Trust me, several times I went after the 10 am novena, and they were gone. Now, I buy them ($1.10 each) as soon as I arrive for the 10 am novena. Yum.