Ham, cheese and strawberry pizza

Dr Oetker has been providing me moments of fun with making pizza since their frozen pizzas provide a pretty good base. What I liked about their crust was that they weren't too thick and also not overly thin. This meant minimal fillers and still a base which was firm enough to heap a bunch of toppings without having to worry if that crust was able to hold the weight. I happened upon some sliced strawberries in Cold Storage going for $2 a pack. That pack contained enough cut strawberries to quite generously top 2 regular sized pizzas so I grabbed one with some shaven breakfast ham, scrounged my supply of shredded mozzarella and parmesan......and this was the result.

The good toppings to use for this are their mozzarella and the quad formaggi since they contain mostly only cheese. This one was made from a mozzarella sprinkled with the above mentioned shredded cheese, carpeted with sliced breakfast ham and then laid over with the strawberries. Scattered more cheese over the top and it was ready to go into the over.

The lesson learnt from this time round was that, the strawberries lose their moisture by oozing out their juices, so the idea would be to to keep them closer to the centre or they'll drip over the edges of the crust. Not so different from pineapples - adding some sweetness and tangy flavour to the salty cheese and ham.

Generic food court beef noodles

The so dubbed Hainanese beef noodle has become ubiquitous everywhere. Meaning almost every food court sees a stall that sells them and I'm sure most people don't really think of them as a Hainanese dish anymore. It's just generic food court beef noodles which uses mass produced ingredients and can be whipped up to serve the masses in short order with relatively little sophistication in the course of preparation. For $4.50 as a set, this beef noodle from the food court at Century Square (2 Tampines Central 5, S529509) was actually something I had little complains about apart from the fact that the sauce was uninspiringly flat and the beef balls tasted of flour fillers. Still, it beat numerous others of a similar kind and the notable thing about this dry beef noodle was that the gravy didn't have the starchy lumps that are commonly in other unnamed places.

Some pizzas from Mondo Mio

Mondo Mio (Riverside View #01-02A, 30 Robertson Quay, S238251, tel:67362503), an Italian restaurant just out of the courtyard at Robertson Quay does a very regular array of the usual Italian stuff. They also provide delivery of their pizzas down to Wine Connection. One can actually request for a menu from Wine Connection as a drinking customer with a phone number to reach Mondo Mio for orders.

Speaking of which, the pizzas were pretty decent. The parma ham and rocket was reasonably tasty and their Mondo Mio flavour which featured prosciutto, mushroom and a very nicely done egg was pretty awesome. The awesome part came mostly from the runny egg. I'm considering a visit for pasta. I spied gnocchi on their menu and their prices looked pretty affordable as Italian places go.

Kazu Sumiyaki 2008

The reason for this visit to Kazu (5 Koek Road, #04-05 Cuppage Plaza, tel: 6734 2492) apart from the great grills was the attempt to get some more of their seasonal items from their menu for the winter harvest before it goes away soon. Primarily it would be their creamy ankimo (angler fish liver) which I enjoyed. I'm sure a lot been said in this blog about most of the regular items that we tend to order from our previous visits, so the pictures will be doing the majority of the telling. Despite that, I find myself discovering new things every time we visit. One of the discoveries was that the owner and chef was apparently a star of a certain Japanese drama serial before turning his chef skills of 13 years into use in this restaurant. 

What we also noticed from the regular items, was that the fatty pork with apple have gotten larger pieces of apple in the skewers and a more flavourful apple sauce over the top. Which was a good thing. The lamb chops were still as tender, oily and full of flavour from the charcoal grill. Chicken hearts were as chewy and well salted as I remember them and the hot, tender foie gras skewers were still dripping with heart clogging oil. Oh, did I mention too that Kazu also has oysters and they're still filled with briny juices in each bite, sweet potato's as sweet and fragrant and I remembered them with that awesome butter melt and the crunchy prawn and scallops in pork belly that hasn't disappointed yet even once.

uni tofu with ikura

ankimo

asparagus in pork belly

kurobuta pork

avocado in pork belly

halibut

chicken with mentaiko

chicken hearts

chicken skins

foie gras

fatty pork with apple

shishamo tempura

oysters in bacon

cheese hotate

lamb chop

sweet potato

australian wagyu tongue

scallop and prawn in bacon

...and finally, the score cup

Some items were apparently new on the menu and the choices are still dizzying. Previously a salmon tofu with ikura has become a uni tofu with ikura. I thought that the salmon rendition was more flavourful in comparison with the current uni version which didn't quite carry the flavour of the sea urchin across. This was especially so when paired up with those ikuras that were firm and bursting with flavour. We also had a tasty avocado wrapped in pork belly that held up pretty good on it's own, some pretty good grilled halibut and chicken skewers with a generous portion of mentaiko. The cheese hotate didn't turn up as cheesy as much as it was creamy and it probably would have been great if it was served hot rather than lukewarm. In spite of their fairly hefty prices, this joint still places the smile of satisfaction on my lips when I leave and that's a good thing.

Moondarra's honey and pistachio cream cheese

I bought these sweet cheese from Marketplace some time back and had almost forgotten about them after leaving them in the fridge. These were flavoured cream cheese and this particular one was pistachio and honey. The flavour was sweet from the honey, however there were very little of the pistachio. The nuts were mostly bits at the base of the cheese. While you could actually tell was that there were bits of the nuts in the cheese, there wasn't pistachio aroma, so I guess it might not have made much of a difference if it were another nut. This was basically a honey scented sweet cream cheese with soft bits of nuts.

More eats from Isetan....and a crab

Ok, I've been guilty of lurking around Orchard on Saturday again because of the Japanese fairs. And some other appointments that I have in that area. It's the last weekend of this particular fair and I wanted to drop by Isetan for some of the winter goodies before it's over. The only thing I ended up buying was more of the shio ramen. I realized that it's a good idea to go at the end of the fair because that's when stocks have to be cleared and offers get better. The ramen which I had purchased were going at 1 free packet for every 3 that was purchased. Here's lunch and some pre-dinner snacking. Also, I saw a very big crab there. It looks cold, angry and lonely....

Lunch...




After having tried the umaki tamago from Botan, I decided to grab these chilled and takeaway version from the supermarket in Isetan. These were cut in big slices. The toppings were teriyaki unagi encased in tamago and were much larger than the vinegar-ed rice bottom. That made it a challenge to pick them up with chopsticks. Flavours of the eggs and eel were much less compared to the warm and freshly made ones.

You might also have noticed that I liked the otoro sushi quite a bit to be eating them again. The batch from today looked fattier and indeed tasted more flavourful than the ones which I had last week. In fact, I enjoyed them so much that I got a second round of them later in the day. The swordfish sashimi wasn't too bad as well.

Before dinner...

pumpkin croquette

This ice cream was strangely shaped like a jester's cap. The light pink side is actually sakuramochi flavour. There're some chewy bits which was supposed to be the mochi. Of the sakura, I didn't quite detect. The yellow side of the jester's cap is pumpkin. Flavour was more light rather than rich for the pumpkin.