Saturday 26 December 2009

Sakae @ Orchard Central

Christmas is a wonderful time to spend with friends and family to enjoy a feast while at the same time admiring the Christmas decoration and lighting along Orchard area. This year there are a lot of interesting design Christmas Tree in or outside the shopping mall of Orchard road. Today we are going to have our dinner at the newly open Sakae outlet at Orchard Central. As usual this outlet brings out an fresh and bright outlook which brighten up the whole dinning atmosphere.

From the menu, we order Root Beer which to our surprised comes in glass bottle form which is almost obsolete compare to the usual can drinks that we used to see nowsaday. Seeing this drink serves in glass bottle really brings back some of our childhood memories....... And before we went back, Rey also grab another new "Froggy Cushion" from Sakae which he used it as his supporting pillow......

For the starter, we had Asari Miso Soup which is just nice and cosy for the raining weather outside. The soup is nice and full of flavour while the Clams are just nicely cooked which brings out it's sweetness.

These Renkon Chips (lotus root chips) is one of Rey's favourite. But the chip that served in this outlet seems to be a bit different from the other outlets. As you can see from the photo, the chips seems to be a bit soggy, and it doesn't taste light and crispy from those that we had tried before. I think it is either being soak in the oil for too long or the quality of the lotus root is different.

Although Ebiko Sushi is not a must in our list, we will still pick it up on and off whenever we find that it is fresh from the conveyor belt. I am sure you will get to fall in love with those tiny, bouncy and juicy egg roe that is served on top of the wrapped sushi rice.

The Potato Salad at Sakae is always one of my desire choice whenever I feel like having some cold Salad dish. The mashed potato is smooth and tasty with some addition of carrot cubes. It is served together with some salad green as well as some crispy deep-fried "Salmon Skin" if I am not wrong.

Lastly, we sure can't go without Rey's favourite Ebi Tempura, but today we have ordered the Tempura Moriawse instead of all prawns. Tempura Moriawse consists of a mixture of Prawns, Imitation Crabstick, Mushroom, Capsicum and etc. The combination of the mix vegetables will varies from time to time depend on the availability. Posted by Picasa


Fish And Watercress Soup

Watercress is widely used in either Asian or Western cuisine. Mostly in Asian countries, we used it to boil soup with different ingredients like chicken or pork ribs. It sometime refer to as a cooling soup for heaty weather. Whereas in Western cuisine, Watercress is usually eaten raw or appears as a garnish, in salads or on sandwiches. This is a great vegetables that is loaded with iron, calcium, folic acid and vitamins A.

No matter which method you prefer to consumed this leafy vegetables. Today, I am going to share with you another way of cooking watercress soup with Fish instead of the common ingredients we used to add like "Chicken or Pork ribs". I am sure you will like this new way of preparing your usual watercress soup.

Ingredients: (serves 2 -4)
500g of Fish Fillet
1 Bunch of Watercress
2 Slices of Ginger
4 Red Dates
Some Wolfberries
800ml Water

Method:
1. Cut off the stem portion of the watercress, rinse it well and reserve it for the boiling soup.
2. As for the leaves portion, removed those wilted leaves, rinse a few times to get rid of the soild and dirts then set aside for later use.
3. Clean and cut the fish fillet into big portion, marinate it with some cornstarch and light soy sauce and set aside in the fridge.
4. Cut the tailbone into halves, fry it with 1/2 teaspoon of oil and ginger slices till fragrant.
5. Pour in water and sprinkle some salt, bring to boil together with the watercress stem and red dates, then lower the heat and continue to simmer for another 20 minutes.
6. When done, strained the soup, add in the watercress leaves and boil briefly.
7. Lastly add in the marinated fish fillet and wolfberries, cook until done.
8. Season with salt and pepper serve hot with rice.

Note:
~ I bought the tail portion of sea bass from the wet market, and I ask the fishmonger to separate the tailbone and fillet for me.
~ For this soup, try to get a bunch of young watercress because of the short cooking time.

I have tried cooking a few version of the watercress soup in this blog before and this is indeed a new taste that you might want to try it out. It is full of Nutrition by adding fish and vegetable in a one pot soup. And I am sure this will add to your collection of making a new watercress soup than the usual one. Posted by Picasa



Friday 25 December 2009

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.  Posted by Picasa



Sunday 20 December 2009

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. Posted by Picasa

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.


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