Seafood Mui Fan

 "Mui Fan" is one of the common local Zhi-Cha" (煮炒摊) dish found in either food center or coffee shop around Singapore. But sometime you can also spot this similar dish in some high-end Chinese restaurants where they added some premium ingredients such as scallop, abalone and etc.

Although I used to cook this dish often but it didn't came across my mind to do a recipe post on this until I was chatting with one of my blogger friend about this a few weeks back. So after the conversation, I thought getting this recipe up might be of some use for those reader who wish to try replicate this dish.

This is one of my favourite dish that I have learn from my late dad. He used to cook this for me whenever I am in a rush for work or coming back late for dinner. Often he will add in my favourite ingredients to make the egg sauce and spoon it over some pipping hot rice to create a hearty home cook meal. For this dish you can use whatever ingredients you prefer from seafood, meat or poultry to create different version according to your liking.

For this recipe I will use prawn, fishcake, crabmeat stick and bunch of choy sum(菜心).

Ingredients: (serves 2)
8-10 Medium Size Prawns
1 Large Fried Fish cake, cut into slices
4 Imitation Crabstick, cut into halves
1 Bunch of Choy Sum
1 Medium Rice Onion, cut into wedge
3 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
2 Eggs
2 Rice Bowl of Cooked Rice
100 ml Water
1 Tablespoon Cornstarch Solution

Method:
1. Wash, clean the prawns, removed the shell of the body(head retain), slit the back of the prawn and remove the dirty or vein.
2. Marinate prawns with some cornstarch, pepper and cooking wine. Set aside.
3. Trim and wash the choy sum and set aside to drain well.
4. Preheat the pan with 1/2 tablespoon of oil, saute the minced garlic and onion till fragrant, add in the marinated prawns.
5. Give it a quick stir for about 10 - 15 seconds, till it slightly changed colour, add in the choy sum and stir-fry for another 5 seconds.
6. Next add in the fish cake slices and crabstick, and give it another quick stir before add in the water.
7. When the water comes to boil again, crack in the eggs, gently give it a few stir to separate the egg then stir it the cornstarch water to thicken the sauce.
8. Off the heat, season it with some salt and pepper before spooning it on top of the rice.
9. Serve hot with some cut chilli in light soy sauce.

Note:
~ If you are not sure what is "Fish cake", refer to the picture above(2nd row, on the left). It usually come in either rectangle or oval shapes.
~ Mixed 1 Tablespoon Water with 1/2 Teaspoon Cornstarch

This will come in handy when you run out of idea on what to cook or when you are feeling too tired to do all the preparations or washing. All you need is to gather anything that you can find in your fridge to make into a sauce base to go with your rice. 

AZUR @ Crowne Plaza Hotel

Christmas Season is around the corner, and this is always a wonderful time for family members to get around together to have meal and at the same time update on each others latest progress. Since this weekend, Church service is at Indoor stadium, we decided to go for an High-Tea Buffet at Changi Airport, T3.

Azur is located on the 2nd level of the Lobby Lounge of the Crowne Plaza at Changi Airport Terminal 3. It has two show kitchens with chefs serving the best of the Eastern and Western international cuisines. The environment and layout is great for family gathering of food and chat.

The High-Tea Buffet starts from 12.30pm to 4.00pm. You can choose from finger foods like deep-fry fish fillet to spices chicken drumlets to Japanese Ramen. Or you might fancy some of their cold seafood like prawn, crayfish and mussels.

I am those who will always go for the dessert section in any buffet instead of the main eatery. I love to try out all kind of their special in-house dessert. Since now is festive season, they are having some Christmas Pudding and Pumpkin Logcake. Out of the local Singapore Kueh and dessert, we love the Durian Pengat(which is sort of like durian puree mixed with coconut milk and coconut sugar). This is sure a great dessert for the day for those Durian lover like us. Other than Durian Pengat, there is this Mango & Passion fruit gel/jelly that caught our attention. It has a very light and refreshing taste and Mum alone can take about 5 portions of this.

Since this is a High-Tea Buffet, you can see a lot of different kind of Nonya Kueh in the pictures. But personally I still perfect the western cakes and pudding, especially during this Christmas Season.

We also managed to take a few shots of these cute little Christmas Cookies and Gingerbread Man house. My son was so thrill when he saw all these cute goodies. I think this is really a good time for kids to enjoy with food and gifts.

Overall, the food served at Azur is of their standard and with Citibank Credit Card, you will still enjoy a 20% discount over the total bill.

Tomato Chicken Stew

Recently I saw this dish in one of my favourite TCS Channel 8, TV show known as "星期二特写之《家传菜7》". In this show, they actually shares about family tie and pass-down homecook food from older generation. I remember, about two years ago, I have a chance to chat with one of the producer who is interested to find out on what are the traditional pass-down homecook food that I would like to share with the viewer if I will to be invited on this show :) But too bad, at that time I am still a novice in cooking so I dare not agreed on their invitation.....

But in this particular series that I saw that day, I was very impressed by this simple and yet nutritious homecook dish that is shared by columnist, Ng Wai Choy on his beloved grandmother Tomato Chicken. Upon viewing that show, my memories on my late, grandmother also vividly appears in my version with all her lovely dishes for us. So I decided to give this dish a try since it only require very basic ingredients.

Ingredients: (serves 2 -3)
5 Pairs of Chicken Wings with Drumlets
5 Medium Size Tomato, cut into wedges
2 - 3 Medium Size Red Onion, cut into wedges
3 Cloves of Garlic, lightly crushed
1/2 to 1 Tablespoon of Oyster Sauce
100ml water

Method:
1. Clean and wash the chicken wings and separate the wings and drumlet.
2. Preheat the pan and saute the onion and garlic with 1/2 tablespoon of oil till fragrance, add in the tomato wedges and continue to saute till the tomato wedges are soften.(about 3 - 5 minutes)
3. Next add in the chicken pieces, and give it a quick stir, then follow by the oyster sauce.
4. Continue to simmer for about 1 minute, add in water, bring to boil, covered and continue to simmer on low heat for another 10 minutes or so until the chicken pieces are cooked through and soften.
5. Remove from heat and served with warm rice.

As you can see from the steps, this is a very simple to prepare homecook food that is full of nutritious and vibrant. The use of Red Onion in this recipe adds extra fragrance and sweetness to the dish. So don't wait any longer, grab some extra red and big tomato and onion during your next visit to the grocery stall and try out this super easy one-pot dish.

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.

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.