Chooks, grease and grains...

A $2 chicken rice was made known to me down at the Lobby Cafe at Toa Payoh Central. Seeing that it wasn't something that turned up to often, I gave it a go. The stall only does take away so one has to find their own spot to eat. Now this wasn't close to any of the better chicken rice which I've had but it also wasn't too shabby for the cost. Flavours were little thin on the rice but the stall was pretty generous with their chilli. The portions were a little too skimpy for me that I had to look for something else to fill me up. 

Which drove me to Mooi Kee (Blk 183, Toa Payoh Central) for another plate that turned out much more satisfying. This sure didn't look like the factory roasted variety of chicken and was much more tender and glisteningly greasy in a good way. The likewise greasy rice wasn't of the fluffy variety and sat heavily but it was still all good. Strangely, the chilli was mostly just salty.

Chuan Yang Ji Mutton Soup Steamboat, Balestier Road

The general rule of behaviour for broth in steamboats is that it tends to get better towards the end. The simple explanation behind that is due to the enrichment of the soup flavours from the "essence" of all the bits and ends of meats and vegetables that has been cooking in it. This results in the broth becoming more deeply flavoursome or "sweet". That's when it gets tasty. This however didn't quite turn out to be the case here at Chuang Yang Ji Mutton Steamboat (432 Balestier Road, #01-434 Public Mansion, tel: 90033244). And I didn't mean it in a bad way.


The broth in this steamboat was a milky looking concoction of a mutton based soup with herbs which restaurant had explained, takes around 6 hours of preparation. We were all requested to enjoy the soup right at the start before cooking anything to experience the flavour which turned out to be moderately light on the sweet herbs and balanced on the other end with the taste of mutton. I thought that this was quite enjoyable. The food menu was relatively simple; which consisted mostly of lamb (thin sliced meat, ribs, tendon, spare parts and mutton wanton), vegetable options for steamboat and some spicy Szechuan based dishes which we ordered a couple as starters.


There was a chilled saliva chicken and another dish that was described as mixed sliced meats, but the latter was basically thinly sliced beef and tripe. Both are dressed in some spicy and savoury sauces that includes chilli oil and neither was really numbing the palate. Apart from these side order options for the dishes, the only other spicy thing from the restaurant seems to be the dried chilli condiment which looked like a mixture of dried chilli flakes, sesame seed and salt which I used for the meats from the steamboat. It was initially spicy and quite aromatic, but progressively got quite salty that I had to ignore it in favour of eating without condiments instead.

I liked this place enough to seriously consider coming back another day. The next time, I'll probably do with less of the vegetables which made the soup much too sweet for my likings. I'll definitely forgo the mutton dumplings which had thick starchy skin, was filled with meat that I couldn't quite identify as lamb and had some chopped herb that I didn't personally enjoy. All in all, it was a pretty good steamboat and at this point of time, quite the unique place since I don't know of any other mutton hotpots around.

Lamb kebab from Charco's

This lamb kebab from Charco's was not bad but I didn't recall seeing any of those vertical spits of roasting meat down in the stall. It's about a dollar more than Sultan Kebab (which only has beef and chicken) but the fillings of meat were quite generous. What I liked about these kebabs was that there was actually cheese other than the sauces and they didn't pull the vegetable filler on us. The meat might have been a little dry but those sauces made up for the lack of "juices". We saw that there was a briyani option with the lamb too so something tells me I may be back.

Da Mario Pizzeria, Robertson Quay

An impromptu decision to head down to da Mario's (60 Robertson Quay, #01-10 The Quayside, tel: 6235 7623). The case with a place that got media attention was that it inadvertently got inside your head once in a while.

This restaurant turned out to be quite good. Nice food, reasonable pricing and attentive service. All checked. I was encouraged to seriously consider returning soon. I was also a little amused at seeing my name on the reservation tag on my table. We decided on some of the chef's creations since it was a likely indicator of how we'd like the place. We started with their insalata Mario, followed by a pizza that went by dolce vita, their capellini regina and a tiramisu.



I had intended go light for a starter and I didn't expect the salad to be a warm one. This was a bunch of sautéed button mushrooms, sliced garlic, black olives and sun dried tomatoes on a bed of semi wilted greens, cherry tomatoes and some mozzarella cheese. And a healthy sprinkle of black pepper. Turned out to be quite enjoyable. The portions were rather generous as well.



Pizza bianca excludes the use of tomato for the base. It's probably not so common here (still). Back on track, their dolce vita was one of a few pizza biancas available. I found myself liking this particular pie of theirs quite a bit. For starters the toppings of the spinach and Gorgonzola were more pronounced compared to a tomato based variety. I suppose I feel that tomato tends to murk the flavours a little. The crust wasn't the thinnest I've had, but I'm sure it's not about having the thinnest crust here.



The picture above was a half portion of the pasta. da Mario's cappelini regina was another rendition of crab meat pastas which seem to be everywhere lately. The crab they used came in small chunks instead of the finely minced ones. This was on top of button mushrooms, artichoke hearts and some spicy garlic/white wine sauce. The spiciness had a kick but wasn't overwhelming. Not detecting any sweetness from the crab though. It's probably difficult to tell with the heat. In the end I prefer this crab pasta over the one at La Strada.



To quell our curiosity on their tiramisu, we decided that we'd just have to try it. It was okay. Not something that I'll be looking forward to again. I found the sponge fingers a little dry. I've had better for sure. Like the one from Da Paolo.

Hajah Maimunah Restaurant, Jalan Pisang

An old friend of mine which I hadn't met up with for a while gave me a call one morning and pulled me down to the vicinity of Arab Street for an early lunch. I didn't have any idea where we would be going to until we reached the place (11 & 15 Jalan Pisang, S199078, tel : 62917248) and for a momentary couple of seconds, the place rang chimes of familiarity even though I was quite sure I haven't been there. And no, it wasn't from a strange dream that led to this déjà vu. Lol. It was YouTube and I remembered it from an episode of Anthony Bourdain in A Cook's Tour when he was here back in 03 and was eating nasi padang. And I believe that I sat on the table just next to the one that he did back then.

Even though nasi padang had been something that I've eaten since a child in one form or another, I've never really given much though to its origins until today when I was told that they originated from the people in the city of Padang in Sumatra. But I'm not going into that topic here.

tauhu telur

I haven't eaten tauhu telur that often. So I'm likening this to be one of the best ones I've had since it wasn't over fried into a shrivelled gnarly lump and the eggs that covered the bean curd weren't excessively chewy. This was better than the ones served in the Riverside Indonesian Restaurant or Sanur as I can recall.

mutton rendang

Their mutton rendang was quite good. Tender chunks of mutton in a nutty spicy gravy. While it might not have been an apple to apple comparison, I felt the rendang mutton here was much more note worthy than a certain beef rendang which many people claimed to be very good. This was more tender. Liked this rendition of the rendang better. Renditions aside, this topped the other hands down.

paru belado

Paru belado was something that I've become fond of over the years since I was introduced to it. The paru, or beef lungs can be found in Malay food stalls/restaurants are sometimes fried to death. The results are dry chewy pieces of lung jerky which can be a pain to eat. This rendition here was instead tender and chewy which I very much prefer over the dried and chewy ones.

begedil

Begedil - deep fried egg washed potato patties flavoured with pepper. Yummy!


I don't know the name of this dish, but it's not an otah. It's some fish with curried paste cooked in banana leaf and there was a little too much lemongrass in the curry paste than I liked. The fish too came with quite a bit of bones which made them tedious to eat.


The rice wasn't quite as fluffy as I thought from appearances but I was willing to overlooked that on the account of the gravies on the side. Had to exercise some restraint here since there was quite a number of tasty looking dishes to be had. I spied lemak siput sedut (small sea snails in coconut curry) in one of the troughs so that's something I'll be looking forward to the next time.

Tikka masala chilli linguine

This tasty home cooked pasta is actually much more simple to make than the name may suggest. Well, the tasty part was largely because of the sauce that was used.

By some chance, I've recently come across a jar of Sharwood's tikka masala gravy from the British food section at Carrefour. The deep earthy orange of the sauce beckoned my attention and guided my hands to pick up the jar to look at the ingredients. I decided to give it a try. So that's basically the sauce that is used.


I've had a pack of chilli linguine lying in storage for a while. To be honest, I bought them because they were more of a novelty to me than anything else and having tasted them during the cooking process without any sauces, I can tell you that the chilli flavor was actually barely discernable. A barest hint would be it. So since this wasn't going to really to add any spice or dimensions, I'll just use them as regular noodles.

The process for doing this is quite the usual for pasta with jarred sauces. I'll just summarize it into 3 simple steps.

1. The pasta is firstly cooked in boiling water with salt and then blanched in cold water.
2. Pour the jarred sauce into a pot and heat them up.
3. Move the pasta back into the pot with sauce and toss.

That is pretty much it for this. Nothing complicated. You can top this with ground parmesan if you like.

The optional item here are the bacon like bits of ham on the top.

What I did was to shred some ham. Any kind ham is good for this actually. Throw in some brandy butter to melt in a pre heated pan on a low fire. Add the ham. Both the butter and the ham have altogether enough oil to keep thing sizzling on low for quite a while. The bits of the ham should be browned and starting to curl when you remove them.

A point to note is, the usage of the brandy butter is just for the sugar. Not the brandy. I've done this a couple of times because I have a jar of them which I couldnt' find any other uses for. It can probably be substituted. The end result would be a sort of sweet and saltish bacon bits.