Zhou's Kitchen @ Far East Square

This year Mother's Day celebration as usual was organised by my brother at Zhou's Kitchen, Far East Square branch. As most of us are working and also to avoid the weekend crowds we decided to settle the dinner on Friday night.

Zhou's Kitchen provide casual Chinese dining concept and it has about four branches located in different parts of Singapore such as Square 2(novena), Anchorpoint and Jurong Point. Besides serving a tempting variety of A-La Carte dishes, there are set meals offering value and convenience too.

For today we are having their A-La Carte Dinner Buffet which cost about $29.80++ per Adult where you can pick your choice from "Cold Cuts and Appetizers", "Meat", "Seafood", "Vegetables", "Rice/Noodle" and "Dessert".

For Appetizers we have Century Egg and Cucumber cubes - 青瓜皮蛋 which is light and refreshing. Salad Prawns with Mixed Fruits in Thousand Island sauce and Deep-fried Fritter were rather kind of average standard. While "Fujian style Meat Roll that comes in 5 thin slices was kind of to our liking with it special ingredients.

Talk about their soup, it was rather disappointing. The 2nd soup shown in the above photo supposed to be their limited one serving dish known as "Braised Shark's Fin Broth with Crab Stick and Shredded Chicken - 红烧蟹柳鸡丝翅" but it ends up to be just like a normal bowl of diluted soup with some shredded chicken which mum hint to the waitress on her dismay. On the other hand we all agreed that the normal "Braised Beancurd Broth with Diced Seafood - 海鲜豆腐羹" taste even much better than the Shark's Fin broth.

For the Meat dishes, each of us select our favourite items such as "Pan-fried Beef Tenderloin with Black Pepper - 黑椒牛柳烧" which is fragrant and tender to taste, "Pi Pa Duck - 琵琶鸭" where the meat is soft and goes well with the topping sauce but their "Deep-fried Pork Ribs With Chef's Special Sauce - 京都排骨" is quiet a disappointment due to the presentation and the sauce taste so sour and the pork ribs are so tough. "Sweet and Sour Pork - 咕噜肉" on the other hand was much better with it's tasty sauce and overall combination, so end up we have two serving plates of that instead. As you can see from the photo, their "Deep-fried Chicken with Prawn Paste - 虾酱鸡" was just like some deep-fried chicken strips instead nothing fancy.

Beijing Roast Duck - 京式片皮鸭 is also one of the Limited to 2 Slices per Person items on the list. This dish is kind of different from the usual Peking Duck that use the outer crispy duck skin to wrap with the pancake wrapper. Rey enjoy himself on serving us this dish by assemble the spring onion, cucumber and sweet sauce with the duck and wrapper while we are busying with other dishes.

On the Seafood list, we tried their "Chilli Crab A-La Tung Lok - 辣椒螃蟹" other than the presentable look the taste wise was rather average or not suitable for our liking. The Chilli Crab sauce was too sour rather than those usual hot and spicy chilli crab sauce that we have patronised from some of the famous crab restaurant. "Poached Live Prawns - 白灼虾" was rather better with its look, taste and freshness. "Deep-fried Prawns with Crispy Oats - 香酥麦片虾" and Sauteed Shrimp with Long Bean in Sambal Sauce are another two prawn dishes that we ordered too.

We also tried two of their fish dishes such as "Thai Style Soon Hock Fish - 泰式炸笋壳鱼" and "Steamed Red Tilapia in Black Bean Sauce - 豉汁酱蒸红鱼". I also ordered brother's favourite "Stewed Ee-fu Noodles - 干烧伊面" and mum's favourite "Fried Rice with Chicken and Salted Fish - 咸鱼鸡粒炒饭".

Finally, the moment that I am waiting for is here. Dessert menu/items is always one of the main thing I look for when I scan through the menu. So when it comes to the end of the meal, I will always reserved extra space for my favourite dessert. Today we are having "Chilled Herbal Jelly With Honey - 龟苓膏", "Sweetened Almond Cream with White Fungus - 雪耳白果杏仁露", "Sesame Cream - 芝麻糊", "Glutinous Rice Balls with Peanut Crumbs - 擂沙汤丸" and lastly "Ice Cream Puff - 雪糕酥点".

5 Minutes Tofu Dish

Tofu is always one of the best and versatile ingredient found in the kitchen pantry. Since Tofu has very little flavor or smell on its own, you can use it to create all kinds of sweet and savory dishes range from starter, soup, main course and dessert or even in cake and pastry. Today we are going to prepare a less than 5 minutes dish using Tofu and Pork Mince with Bean Paste (肉酱) as the main ingredients.

This is a very simple and yet presentable dish that doesn’t even require any cooking time but perhaps just a few seconds to a minute of re-heating in the microwave before serving. As you know Tofu is rather tasteless so by adding Pork Mince with Bean Paste (肉酱) to it, it actually acts as a seasoning to this dish too. In order to make this dish look and taste even better, I also add in some shimeji mushroom and "century egg - 皮蛋" in it.

Ingredients:
1 Box of Silken Tofu
3 Tablespoon of Pork Mince Paste(肉酱)
1 Century Egg(皮蛋), cut into small cubes
1 Packet of Shimeji Mushroom, optional

Garnish:
Some Spring Onion
Some Chilli

Method:
1. Remove the tofu from the packaging and place it on a big serving plate and try to pad dry both side with some kitchen paper towel.
2. Cut/plug the individual stalk off from the bunch of shimeji mushroom, and give it a quick 30 second stir in a lightly oil saucepan.
3. Removed and arrange on the side of the tofu.
4. Spread the pork mince paste on top of the tofu and scatter the century eggs all over it.
5. Before serving, reheat the tofu in microwave for 30 second to a minute high depending on the voltage of your microwave.
6. To serve, top with some chopped spring onion and chiili as garnish.


So you see, this is a very quick and easy dish that can be served in about 5 minutes time. And if you don't prefer to do any extra washing after stir-frying the mushroom then perhaps you can replace the mushroom by some shredded lettuce, which can blend well with the bean paste too.

Arteastiq Tea Lounge by MARXX

Talking about Mother's Day which falls on this coming Sunday, 09 May. What's on your mind to celebrate or pamper your mum for the time and thoughts that she has spent on you. No matter what is your budget like, I am sure she will appreciate the thought that count. So why not taking this opportunity to pamper mum with some refreshing English Floral-Tea and unique tea-snacks while some time off during your shopping trip.


Arteastiq is a very new tea lounge located inside a furniture boutique called Marxx at the Mandarin Gallery. The place was furnished with colourful designer chairs and sofa that brighten up the area. You can also enjoy good view of orchard road from the tall glass window.

There are a wide range of Tea Menu from English floral teas such as French Rose or Earl Grey to Chinese and Japanese and fruit teas like Pomelo, Lychee or etc. Beside these they also served alcoholic teas such as Cointreau Menta Lemongrass or Choya Pear Tea which is only available after 5pm.

Since both mum and I love floral tea, we ordered both our set from the English Floral Tea menu. The one that I had above is the Earl Grey with Lavender Tea which black tea that is blend with a light scent of Lavender that smooth my mood of the day. Each set of tea served with a complementary snack that varies from set to set which could be dried cranberries or sweet wafer biscuits or etc. Both our floral tea set are comes with almond wafers which mum enjoy so much and yet at a reasonable price of S$6.90 each set.

Mum prefer something light so she order her favourite French Rose Tea which is light and refreshing. The romantic rose scent really add extra fragrance to the atmosphere too. Each tea set is served on a gold-handled wooden tray, with unique design tea pots and cups. Like eg. Mum's rose tea set was served with a rose print tea cup and plate which add extra presentation point to the set.

Along with the tea sets we also ordered one of the recommendation Teasers item known as "Trinity" which offers a taste of three items in smaller servings. Our picks are: Knight Without Armour (crab salad served with volvant), Lust (chilled drunken sakura chicken with wolfberries) and Hot Naked Top (spicy jumbo top shell with chilled mango achar) which cost S$8.90 for any three items. Out of the 3 items mum loves the spicy top shell because it taste great with it's Q texture and the combination of sweet and sour mango achar.

Overall this is a great afternoon tea session for everyone of us. Even my little boy who don't drink tea enjoy the atmosphere and cosy environment of this little cafe that located at a corner of this unique furniture boutique. Em... perhaps next round I shall try some of their cold tea and wagyu beef which we missed out today. So if your mum loves afternoon tea, why not give this a try and let her experience another way of tea-time rather than the usual normal "coffee-break".