I know a secret down in uncle Tom's Palette......

Some of you might recognize where the title of this entry comes from. If you didn't, nevermind. It's really not important. Lol.

I've been down to Tom's Palette (100 Beach Road, #01-25 Shaw Leisure Gallery, tel: 6296 5239) two evenings in a row to check out their ice cream which turned out to be pretty good. There's a bunch of interesting flavors like lavender and tangy basil which reminds me of shampoo and cheap tomato pasta sauce. Lol. But honestly, some of the flavors are pretty good. I managed to try a couple of their creations like horlicks and hazelnut (separate flavors) which turned out for both to be pretty awesome in terms of their respective flavors. What that means is that the taste is pretty robust. There was also a chocolate stout and apple pie on the second visit. The former was an average chocolate with a hint of stout. Duh! The latter was a creamy one with bits of soft apple bolstered with crumbles. I wouldn't go as far as to label them orgasmic. Not even close, but they were pretty good. In fact, these guys could be just a notch ahead of Island Creamery.

From Tetsuya, with compliments....

I bought this jar of truffle salsa ($28) some time back from Culina and had fiddled with making food with them a couple of times. The salsa turned out to be pretty versatile and a tasty condiment. For someone who doesn't know much about cooking that is. It simply just works. Lol.


The first attempt at using Tetsuya's Truffle Salsa was the flavouring for pasta. One of the weekend lunches I made at home with ham steak and Gordon Ramsay's scrambled egg recipe, sans the chives. You can check out the link to see how the eggs were done. Not going to talk about them here. The cooked pasta was simply tossed with a couple of generous tea spoonfuls of the truffle salsa along with butter. That was all. Because there was just butter to grease the noodles, most of the taste will come from the salsa itself. That meant, mostly truffle flavour. Safe and easy to make. Take it from a person who doesn't do real cooking. If I can, so can you.


Pizza is one of those stuff that I do at home especially when the sun is particularly discouraging at my attempts to go outdoors. As some of you might already know, I like using Dr Oetker's and have been experimenting with a bunch of add ons with their frozen pizza ranging from seven cheeses to strawberries and ham.

I've decided to add the truffle salsa and see what I could come up with. Since this was by me for me, I was much more generous with the truffle than any other pizza shop out there. I got one of Dr Oetker's mozzarella ones and scraped some of the salsa over the top. After that, some grated parmesan and more mozzarella and an egg. And then, into the oven it went. I kinda like how it turned out. This was definitely much more heady with truffle flavour than any other pizza that I've had outside.

Ruby Poh Piah, Whampoa Food Centre

I had read that the poh piah from this stall (#01-53, Whampoa Drive Blk 90). That they were generous with the ingredients used for their stuffings. Tried it, I didn't think much of it at all. Found them pretty unexceptional. There wasn't any garlic. Beside the boiled turnip, the portions of the rest of the fillings were measly. I'm sure I can easily find elsewhere that makes better. Made one wonder if the reason for it being around for so long is only because it is the only poh piah stall in this food centre.

When Angels descend......online!

"It is said that a man should be wary of weeping angels, for wherever their teardrops fall, men drown."

Descent of Angels, Mitchel Scanlon

I await. Even though it's probably a very long wait.

Unagi bento lunch set from Matsuo

Because of the recent craving for unagi, I had made it a point to visit Matsuo Sushi for lunch at least once on a Tuesday, because their daily $15 lunch on that day features a unagi bento. I must have had excessive dreams of fatty oily eel in my head because the eel didn't quite turn out as fatty as I hoped it to be, but then again, I might have been rather unrealistic imagining them. It was however a better unagi than the deluxe hitsumabushi at Wakashachiya. I detect a slightly more fatty texture beneath the grilled skin of the eel. Does anyone know which place serves good unagi?

There was a little portion of sake (salmon) sashimi for the lunch set which turned out to be pretty good. The sliced salmon was oily that it left globules of their oil on the shoyu dip. And today's miso soup featured a prawn's head!

Porta Porta, Stanley Street

This sure took a long time. I've been caught up with wizards and snipers and centuries old alchemist being chased by the original 007 of Her Majesty's service that this entry was neglected. But I digress. Dinner at Porta Porta was a "sea catch" set ($40.50) and a couple of pasta and rice from the a la carte menu.


Porta Porta at Stanley Street (5 Stanley Street, tel : 6222 7461) turned out to be a slightly different experience than the one at Upper Changi. Mostly because I thought the food was a notch up at the Changi location. This was obvious especially for their still excellent prawn cream penne and their fish soup. But in spite of being lesser in flavour, the food was still enjoyable. Definitely room for improvement with the doneness of the pasta but I'm not complaining.

In spite of the differences, food here was generally good. Almost everything was bursting with flavour. From the fragrant aromas of garlic and tangy vinegar in the tomato bruchetta (this was really awesome by the way) to the richly flavoured fish bruchetta to the olive tapanade for the bread and the gravies that were used......every edible item with sauce sang.



The seafood risotto wasn't bad, but became one dimensional after a while.

The sea catch set I had mentioned earlier consisted of a fish (or baby squid) soup, bruchetta, squid ink ravioli with crab meat (or a vongole pasta), a calamari & prawn secondi followed by desserts. The ravioli was properly done and like everything else, flavoursome with the sauce. The tissue thin batter for the fried seafood wasn't as thin as the ones from the Changi outlet. Still, for anyone who's been to Tenshin and think that those tempura masters do the lightest and thinnest batter around - you haven't had the calamari here yet.


There was quite a lot of espresso flavour in their tiramisu. The rest wasn't much to write home about. We're pretty sure we'll be back again for their pasta.