Showing posts with label Pasta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pasta. Show all posts

Friday 4 April 2014

[With Recipes] The New Bosch MaxxiMUM Kitchen Machine and MaxoMixx Hand Blender

BOSCH Master Gourmet Launch
Last Saturday, together with ShiTing (lobsterpaints.com) and a few fellow bloggers I attended the Bosch Master Gourmet Launch featuring their new MaxxiMUM Kitchen Machine and MaxoMixx Hand Blender held at My Private Chef. Indeed it was a fun event with recipes demonstration session by Chef Stephan Zoisl as well a a hands-on session for participants.

The purpose of this launch is to introduce the latest premium kitchen machines from BOSCH which serves as an essential tool for those who cook and bake as an intergral part of their lives. And in this post I would be sharing some details on these new machines as well as the demonstrated recipes shared by Chef Stephan.

Monday 23 December 2013

One-For-One Main Menu Item @ Erwin's Gastrobar, Marina Bay Link Mall

[Erwin's Gastrobar] Fish Fingers
Festive season is always a great time to catch up with some old friends whom we seldom get a chance to meet during the year. So last week I managed to meet up with one of my girlfriend who work around Marina Bay Financial Centre area and we had a great lunch over at Erwin’s Gastrobar which is located on the ground level of Marina Bay Link Mall.

[Entertainer App] One-For-One Deal
While sourcing our lunch venue using the Entertainer App, I managed to find a good 1-for-1 deal at Erwin’s Gastrobar which is just a few minutes walk from her office.

Friday 20 July 2012

Antoinette at Palais Renaissance

I am sure the brand name "Antoinette" sound familiar to those who love cakes, pastries or French food. Following the success of Antoinette’s first three outlets (Penhas Road, Mandarin Galley and Scarlet Hotel), Owner-Chef Pang Kok Keong unveils Le Jardin d’Antoinette which is also one of their largest outlet at Palais Renaissance.

Last Saturday I was invited to a lunch tasting at their new outlet, located at Palais Renaissance together with Celes (Celestial Delish), Derrick (SG Food on Foot) and ShiTing (Lobsterpaints).

After some self introductions between Chef Pang and us, we started to look around at their cake and pastry counters while taking some photos. Below are some of the pastries and cakes which are available at Antoinette.

Array of Cakes available

Array of Assorted Macarons on display

Pastry Section: with Danish Puffs, Brownies, Muffins and etc

The Main Dining Area designed after Versaille’s expansive outdoor garden which is a unique round shaped dining space decorated with vintage furniture featuring floral accents such as flower print upholstered seats. The outskirt of the dining area is also surrounded with hanging vines as well as floral arrangements. Furthermore there is also a special elevated gazebo sits at the centre of the dining area too.

{Soup} We started with their new Classic French Onion Soup (S$16.50) which is prepared using caramelised onions in a rich chicken and veal broth accompanied by cheese toasts made from Antoinette’s signature 24-hour baguette. To perfect it, the soup is topped with a cheesy crust which resemble "cover" and it is made using parmesan and gruyère cheese.

On the 1st try, the soup taste a bit sour but when you dig in more, it actually release a hit of sweetness from the caramelised onions and it goes well with that crispy cheese crust.


{Entrées} Next we had the Tartine de Nicoise (S$26.00) which is an open face levain sandwich hide beneath some butter lettuce, French beans, tomatoes, olives, anchovy, a three-minute egg and some seared tuna.

According to Chef Pang, these Levain Bread (sourdough) are made from their own kitchen in Antonietta and the process for making this bread is quite tedious and it takes up to 16 days to cultivate the yeast from scratch plus another 2 more days to proof the bread before baking. So when having this dish, we must really appreciate each and every bits of its ingredients especially the Levain Bread which has a unique flavour and texture.

{Main Course} During the tasting, we tried 3 main courses and first to serve was Confit de Poitrine de Porc (S$36.00) is a traditional French confit of pork belly that is first cured in a mixture of sea salt, brown sugar and aromatics before it is cooked and covered in duck fat at 90 degrees Celsius for 12 hours.

The dish was plated with 5 pieces (about 2 cm each) of thick, tender and fragrant pork belly together with decent amount of garlic mash (which you might thought is mashed potato), seasonal vegetables and mustard sauce. Although I am a "pork belly" lover but I find this dish a bit on the salty side unless you are having it with some water or wine to balance the taste.

{Main Course} Next we had Bouchées aux fruits de mer (S$30.00) which is a luxurious seafood medley that consists of scallops, prawns, squid and mussels sautéed with white wine and cream. It is then served in a puff pastry case which resemble "vol au vents" but it is made with a unique reverse folding method which results in a flakier and crispier crust.

I love their fresh and seafood and taste of the sauce is is not overpowering to the whole dish but on the down side, me and ShiTing find that our scallop is kind of overcooked which makes it chewy and difficult to bite.

{Main Course} For the last main course Chef Pang brought in Prawn crumble pasta (S$26.00) which is an aglio olio-style pasta dish featuring spaghettini tossed with parsley pesto instead of basil and sprinkled with their homemade anchovy crumble.

During the introduction, Chef Pang mentioned to us that those crumble was made using Antoinette’s pain de mie loaf as well as a kalamata olives and Spanish anchovies tapenade. No wonder when all mixed together it has such a unique taste which you might mistook the breadcrumb with grated cheese.

{Dessert} For the dessert, Chef Pang shared with us 4 of his new 2012 collection which you could read more on the post below. Above we shows  Chloe (S$9.00 per slice) which is a combination of refreshing and fragrant yuzu cremeux with white chocolate vanilla mousse on a light sponge cake and almond sable.

This is one of the lighter taste cake which we concluded out of the 4 that we had tired so if you prefer something light and refreshing perhaps this would be great hit for you.

{Dessert} Forbidden Fruit (S$9.00 per slice) has a delicate layered creation that features granny smith apples in various incarnations including green apple mousse, vanilla caramel apple and green apple jelly, complemented with maple cremeux on a financier cake.

On 1st bite you will feel hint of sourish taste perhaps from the apple jelly but when you slowly savory it with a cup of tea, you will fell in love with it because of it sweet, fragrant and sour combination. I guess this is similar to feeling of "falling in love" taste.

{Dessert} Kyoto (S$9.00 per slice) is a Japanese matcha crowd-pleaser with green tea mascarpone mousse, chestnut cremeux, almond crumble and a green tea finger sponge. It has a very fragrant matcha aroma and after taste which we all loved. A "must try" for matcha lover.

{Dessert} I personally love this Tarte Exotique (S$8.50 per slice) which I think I can conquered two at one time. It has an almond base with a luscious gula melaka cremeux, finger sponge and light coconut mousse crowned with a delicate fruit coulis sphere. Because I love almond base tarts and as well as the unique aroma from the Gula Melaka, I highly recommend this dessert which I am sure you will love it as much as we do.  

Just to share there is a private dining room which is perfect for groups of 8 - 10 pax to hold function such as Formal Dining, Gathering, Birthday or etc.

Antoinette at Palais Renaissance
390 Orchard Road, Palais Renaissance,
B1-08/09/10C,
Reservations No.: +65 6735 6392

Operating Hours:
11.00am to 10.00pm daily (last order 9.30pm)


Lastly I would like to thank Hsian Ming (from Sixth Sense Communications and PR Consultancy Pte Ltd) and Chef Pang (Antoinette at Palais Renaissance) for this tasting invitation. For more photos of this tasting, you can click on Cuisine Paradise Facebook page HERE.

Friday 25 May 2012

Hearty Meal With The Family @ Swensen's

Swensen's, a household name in Singapore has bought many memories to me and my family over the years. I remember during my school days, I used to visit Swensen's with my classmates to enjoy their ice-creams and food during weekends gathering where we often share the "Huge" Earthquake ice-cream together.

Recently, Swensen's has just revamped their menu with new and exciting treats such as Spiced King Prawns and Chips, Laksa Aglio Olio with King Prawns, Crabmeat Fried Rice and etc. Here we have ordered the "Laksa Aglio Olio with King Prawns" shown above as I am curious with this East And West fusion taste. The al dente pasta is infused with Laksa flavored pesto, chilli padi and served with succulent king prawns which gives us a Wow!

{S$5.00 Top Up} With additional $5.00 top-up to any Main Course, we can enjoy additional soup of day which I always look forward to, a complimentary hot/cold beverage plus a scoop of ice-cream of our choice to end the meal.

For starter we order Ocean Crunch Salad with served with fresh greens topped with fish bites, calamari, breaded shrimps and refreshing pineapple BBQ dressing.

This Black Pepper Seafood Pasta is one of my mum's favourite pasta from Swensen's. She loves the taste and fragrant of their black pepper sauce which is not too spicy, salty or neither overpowering the overall taste of the dish. I would recommend this if you are a fan of black pepper sauce.

Although Chicken Baked Rice is always on my ordering list, but that day I have a craving of trying their Beef Stroganoff Baked Rice which served in chunky beef slices that saute in onion and brown sauce. Although the sauce is a bit too rich and salty towards my liking but overall it still quiet a good try. 

My boy's Fish Nuggets with Star Munchy And Sweetcorn kid's meal set which he often order serve with either cold Milo or Apple juice. A plus point for kid's meal is although it is deep-fried but for the few occasions that we ordered it is always nicely done without drip/trace of oil on the nuggets or munchy.

*Note:
All photos in this post is taken with my iphone as this is a leisure family meal.

Saturday 19 December 2009

The Pasta Shop By Sakae

The Pasta Shop at Wheelock Place branch is one of the sister company own by the popular sushi chain restaurant - Sakae Sushi. Since we are at Orchard area doing our last minutes Christmas Gifts shopping, we decided to pop-in and to try some of their chef recommended items.

As readers of my blogs, you will know that I simply love all kinds of soup. So whenever I visit any restaurant, I will sure order one of their soup. For today, I ordered their Clam Chowder soup which cost around S$7.90 per bowl. The texture of the soup was great and i not over powder by the taste of the clam chowder. And the bread sticks goes just well with the soup so I guess this is worth trying :)

We ordered two plates of pasta dish, one is the TPS Carbonara served in Wafu cream sauce with crispy bacon and sunny-side up egg. The taste of the sauce was great, it was slightly infused with the fragrance of the bacon and left it with a kind of smokey taste. The sunny-side up egg is so nicely done that it adds extra points to the dish as well as the overall appearance.

Rey choose this "Japanese Style - Braised Five Flower Pork Burger" from the menu list because he was aiming at the fries and bread......... While I was eying on the "Braised Pork Belly". When the manager placed the burger on the table, we will so shock. The burger was "HUGE", it was about 1.5 times or slightly bigger than the usual fast food burger that we use to have. The homemade bread was soft and nice, but we still find that the braised pork can be more soften as in and full of that special favour that melt in the mouth.

There are really too many selection to choose from the menu, so after much thinking and selecting, we settle for this chef recommendation of the Japanese Style Tsuyu Cream Sauce with Sea Urchin, Salmon Roe and Squid topped with extra shredded nori sheet. The waitress was very kind and thoughtful that she actually let us know before confirming our order that the 3 main ingredients are all RAW. Personally, this is our very first time trying out Sea Urchin(also known as Uni), and the most challenging part is we have to eat this raw........ But at least, we took the courage to try it out and it has a very strong aroma and taste which might not be acceptable by most people.

As for refreshing, we ordered a cup of coffee and this Yuzu Ice Blended. Yuzu (柚子) has an aromatic zest that is used for garnishing some dishes or bakes while its juice is commonly used as a seasoning, somewhat like the way the lemon is used in other cuisines. This Yuzu Ice Blended has a very refreshing and fragrance taste that can "washed" away the grease of those creamy pasta and pork belly that we consumed :p And they also topped this drink with some fresh cut Aloe Vera to enhance the texture.Posted by Picasa

If love western pasta, you might wish to give this Japanese-style pasta shop a visit and try out their way of preparing these mouth-watering pasta dishes.


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