Local Nonya Kueh

Nonya(Peranakan) Kueh is one of the famous tea-time snacks that are available throughout the day at most of the coffee shop stalls or food stalls at shopping area. Usually most of the kueh are made from grated coconut, coconut cream, rice flour and gula melaka. Sometime tapioca flour and green bean four are used to give the kueh a distinctive soft, pudding like but firm texture.

Above are some of my favourite Nonya such as(description starts from top down) :-

1. Kueh Salat - This is made of two layer whereby the cooked glutinous rice is at the base and topped with a layer of eggs and coconut milk custard. You can read more on one of my recipe Here.

2. Getuk Ubi - Is sort of "Mashed Steam Tapioca" that is topped with grated coconut that is infused with red sugar/gula melaka. There are two Steam Tapioca Kueh recipes which I would like to share with you at:-
~ Steam Tapioca Cake
~ Steam Ubi Kayu

3. Pulut inti - Blue Glutinous rice topped with caramelised grated coconut and wrapped in a cut banana leaf/plastic wrapper to resemble a square pyramid.

Are you familiar with these two??? Lapis Sagu(rainbow layer kueh) and Kueh Dadar(pancake wrapped with grated coconut) which I am you can get it at most of the stalls near you. I remember I used to love Lapis Sagu where I will peel it layer by layer before eating.

Siam Kitchen

Siam Kitchen is a modern restaurant that served causal Thia cuisine with several branches around different parts of Singapore such as Bugis, Jurong, Suntec, Causeway point and etc. Their menu range from Appetizers(Deep Fried Chicken in Pandan Leaf, Lemongrass Chicken Wings), Salad(Green Mango Salad), Savoury Thai Soups(Tom Yum, Thick Fish Maw Crabmeat Soup) and many others including dessert such as Fresh Mango Slices with Sweet Sticky Rice.

Green Curry - Chicken (Gang Keaw Wan) is Green Curry cooked with chicken, baby eggplant and sweet basil leaves. The portions of the ingredients seems generous with a lot of Thai green eggplants but the chicken pieces seems to be a little miserable less. And we also find that the curry sauce is kind of salty too.

Other than the Green Curry we also ordered the "Clear Seafood Tom Yum Soup" which is a clear sour soup which is flavored with fresh lemon grass and kaffir lime leaf that consists of fish, squid, prawn, tofu and etc.

Local Delights

What do you usually prefer to have for your breakfast or tea-snack? Here are some of the local traditional kueh that you can find is most hawker center or coffee shop stalls. Most traditional Chinese kueh are made of either Rice Flour or Glutinous Rice Flour that wrapped with either sweet or savoury fillings.

Fried Glutinous Rice - 糯米饭 is a kind of savoury dish where they stir-fry the cooked glutinous rice with some dark soy sauce and seasoning then served with extra garnished like peanuts, spring onion, dried shallot and chilli sauce. A good Glutinous Rice dish lies on the preparation of the rice as it cannot be overcooked or too mashy if not it will affect the texture of the end product.

Png Kueh - 饭桃 is best served after pan- fried together with drizzles of sweet dark soy sauce & chili sauce onto it. It is usually wrapped with glutinous rice, diced mushrooms, dried shrimps and roasted peanuts over a thin layer of pink colour rice flour wrapper. I love to eat this since young from the influence of my dad and I remember we only get to eat this during Chinese New Year or special occasion.

Soon Kueh - 笋粿 is a steamed Chinese dumpling that is made of rice flour skin and often stuffed with turnip strips and dried shrimps. This is also eaten with some sweet dark soy sauce and chili paste. There are a few types of Soon Kueh depending on their dialect group or fillings. The soon kueh that my mother-in-law made consists of dried mushroom, minced meat, turnip strips and dried shrimps and she also used steamed yam together with the rice flour to make the skin wrapped which maken it more tasty and fragrance.

Astons @ Sembawang Shopping Centre

What pops into your mind first when we talk about cheap and nice western food with with perhaps a restaurant serving standard. Maybe you will think of Astons, Botak Jones, UNO Beef House, Char-Grill Bar or some other place which is good and cheap.

Astons which is located at level of Sembawang Shopping Center has both indoor and outdoor dinning area. It was on a raining evening that we went and the crowds of about 20 people are queuing outside waiting for seats since it's only the indoor dinning area that is available.

We are asked to place order of our food while waiting for the next available seats and the waitress seems to be very impatient when we are looking through at the menu. Most of the customer in the queue felt so odd that it seems like we are being force to decide our order within less than 5 minutes time. And yet we have to stand there waiting for at least 20 t0 30 minutes before entering the resturant.

After about 45 minutes of waiting time, we finally managed to get our seats and settle down for dinner. While in the restaurants, we saw a few hiccups from the tables around us like:- the steak is over cooked rather than medium raw, chicken chop is not proper cooked through, food and drinks have being wrongly served to the customers and etc.

Finally about 5 minutes our food arrived, but unfortunately it's also a wrong ordered which does not belong to our tables. With hungry mood, we have to wait for another 10 minutes for our correct orders to be served. But this round they served the food without any cutlery and drinks, and for them to take the cutlery it takes another 5 minutes.

At the point I was kind of annoyed with their service and furthermore our medium raw sirloin steak has became over cooked steak instead. And our drinks only being served half way through our meals after a few reminder. Although the food look decent and presentable but the taste is not as good as what they have over at their East Coast branch a few months back. Still wonder how come there is such a long queue while inside most of the customers are complaining about the wrong orders .......