Lunch at Crystal Jade Palace

Last month, my friend and I decided we need to reward ourself after a hard week at work and it so happen to be pay day therefore we decided to go for a dim sum lunch at Crystal Jade Palace at Ngee Ann City level 4.

We decided to order the appetizer roast pork first while we ponder our choice of dim sum. The roast pork which is shown below was excellent. The skin was very crispy and the meat below was very tender. In addition, with the mustard sauce giving it the burning sensation which gives the roast pork extra flavour.

We decided to order some typical dim sum items and two small dishes to try out. The dishes in general arrive quite quickly. All the items arrive about the same time.

The first dish was the shark fin dumpling shown above. As can be seen above, it is a huge dumpling filled with stuff and cooked in a clear soup. The dumpling was filled with fish maw, shark fin and some oher stuff. It was quite good and quite filling.

The next one is the char siew pao. This was good as expected but nothing outstanding about it. The filling was juicy and the skin of the pao was fluffy.

The next dish is the mango and prawn deep fried roll. This was a disappointment. The sesame seeds which was coated on the skin was too much as a result , the flavour of the dish instead of being the mango and prawn filling was overpowered by the taste of the sesame seeds. My opinion is that the sesame seeds was supposed to complement the main filling.

The prawn cheong fun came next. This item was quite good as it was wrapped with sufficicent prawns and the skin was very smooth. The sauce which was applied over the dish complements well with the fillings. A typical Hong Kong standard prawn cheong fun.

The above was the siew mai. It was another dish which was very satisfying. It was wrapped with the right proportion of pork and prawn so as to achieve a great flavour and the right texture for the dish.

The following two dishes came about the same time. The first one was the deep fried fish in sweet and sour sauce. The other dish was the deep fried pig intestine. Firstly, the fish was excellent. The fish was deep fried in a way in which the fish meat was able to maintain its mositure in the interior but the outside was very crispy. The sweet and sour sauce was also well prepared. It was not too sweet and it complements well with the fish.

The deep fried pig intestine is more of an acquired taste. I guess when some people hear about it, they will not even to try it. It is really very good to eat and if you like crispy dishes, you will definetly like this dish. It is deep fried to a crisp and it still is quite soft in the inside.

After the meal, my friend decided to try one of the more unusual desert items. He ordered the pear in Ginseng soup. He told me that it was very smoothing and that is a faint taste of the pears and lemon which were used to complement the flavour. It was a refreshing desert.

It was really good to be ablle to meet up with friends and talk about anything but work and have an enjoyable lunch. It would have been even better if it was not so expensive! Hehehe

Opinion on the awarding of the EPL player and team of the year award

The result of the EPL annual end of season is shown below:

PFA Player and Young Player of the Year 2007 - Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)

PFA Premier League Team of the Year 2007 - Edwin van der Sar, Gary Neville, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra (all Man Utd); Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo (all Man Utd) & Steven Gerrard (Liverpool); Didier Drogba (Chelsea) & Dimitar Berbatov (Tottenham)

With regard to these awards I have a few opinions. Firstly, I wonder why is this award given before the end of the season since these awards are supposed to encapsulate the best overall consistent performance for the season.

Secondly, from my understanding these voting are carried out in the month of January by the PFA Representative. If that is the case, how accurate would the assessment be at that time if you are talking about the whole season. You would only be voting for the players which have been performing well up to that stage of the season. A more accurate gauge would be if the voting exercise were carried out in April or May instead and the award ceremony in late May or June.

With regard to the player of the year and the young player of the year, I guess that there is not much of a complaint as Ronaldo has been by far the most exciting player to watch this season. He has shown maturity in his player and there are more end products following his fanciful trickery. He also seem to have gain an upper body strength which was not apparent when he first arrived in Manu.

With regard to the team of the year, I felt that there are too many players from the same team and if you noticed all the players are from the big teams of England.

For the centre back position, I think that Jamie Carragher would have been more appropriate than Rio. Jamie has been a pillar at the back for Liverpool for the last two seasons. He may not be as skillful but his reading of the game and his commitment is plain for all to see.

For the left back position, I feel that Matthew Taylor would have been a more worthy contender as he has been quite solid at the back and when he go forward to attack, no defence should leave him unmarked as he has one of the most lethal left foot in the league. His goals inadvertently are spectacular in nature.

For the goal keeper position, I feel that there are a few other keeper that could have been in that position. Players for example Shay Given and Tim Howard would have been potential players if there were in the bigger clubs.

For midfield, the only one I disagree with would be the addition of Gerrard. He has not been that outstanding in the middle of the part as he has been played out right for some parts of the season. I felt that Fabregas is more deserving a place in the centre of midfield as he has at times carried Arsenal in the absence of Henry this season.

Anyway that is about slightly more than a month left in the season. It will be a nail-biting end of the season for the title. So far it has been one great ride and long may it continue!!

Opinion on this season EPL title race

This season in the EPL it has been quite a fascinating season. During the pre-season, there were talks that this was going to be the tightest race for the title ever. The reason being that Manu were going to be stronger after last season experience, Chelsea with the addition of Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko, Arsenal who made it to the final of last season champion league and Liverpool with the addition of a few quality players. The other teams like Tottenham, West Ham, Blackburn, Bolton also added some quality players and were expected to pull a few upsets over the big four. That was during pre-seaon.

Now currently, West Ham after sleeping for 3 quarter of the season is showing signs of picking up to avoid relegation instead of a place in Europe. Arsenal and Liverpool have fallen by quite a distance in the title race. For Arsenal case, they lost a number of key players to long term injury and were counting too much on the youth team to maintain a run. For Liverpool, their early season away form killed any chance to mount a title run. Tottenham for the players that they have are also too inconsistent to do anything for a title race.

For Manu and Chelsea, it has been a great season for both teams they went on long runs of been unbeaten in the competition that they were involved and even in April, Manu is still in contention for three of the competition and Chelsea having won the league cup is also still in contention for the three competition that are still ongoing. Both teams have approached their matches with different mentality. For Manu, they approach a game with the more gung ho approach of trying to win their opponent by scoring as many goals as possible. Chelsea' approach is the more pragmatic approach of trying to score a goal then seat back and prepare to score the next goal on a rapid counter-attack. This could explain on the goal differences between the two teams.

After such a long time, where both Manu and Chelsea were taking turns to win their respective games, the first team to fumble in the final track is Manu with the disappointing lost to Portsmouth yesterday. Actually Chelsea in the last few games have not been impressive but they grind out result where as Manu's football has been breath-taking and great to watch.

However if we are considering the efficiently of winning matches, Chelsea will win hands down. Manu to win a game has to use a high intensity style of play and the whole team must be playing at a high standard to get the win. Chelsea on the other hand counts a lot on set play as well as quick counter to win matches as they can relied on a strong defence. As a result their approach did not required a that high intensity style of play which characteristic of Manu play. This is especially crucial towards the end of season when there is fixture congestion. The difference between Manu lost to Portsmouth and Chelsea win against Tottenham is that Manu players made mistake at the bad which allow Portsmouth to take full advantage whereas Chelsea managed to score from a long shot and then the defence was able to hold out. Manu looked tired in tired in the second half.

Moving forward the last one month plus will be exciting times for both clubs, Manu have to make sure they win all their games to be champion and Chelsea on the other hand need to win all and hope Manu slip up on another game other than the Chelsea vs Manu game. I think it will go down to the wire. The involvement in the other competition could prove crucial in who will eventually be crowned champion. Will it be the cavalier approach by Manu or the more controlled style of play of Chelsea that will prevail?

A change of cooking style (Thai )

This is another backdated article which should have been profiled somewhere in February. Like the saying goes better late than never!

This was a visit to the Rama Thai Sharkfin Restaurant which is located near the Tanjong Pagar MRT station. People tell me that the shark fin is their speciality item and the been hoon fried with crab was supposed to be excellent.

The above photo is the entrance to the restaurant. We noticed that all the customer that went for their meal that had ordered the shark fin soup. Guess must be good. :)

Therefore we ordered the shark fin soup and a few dishes as shown below.

The first dish to arrive is the shark fin soup. It comes together with a bowl of bean sprout and coriander leaves. This is the Thai style of preparation of shark fin. You will place the bean spout into the boiling hot soup to let it absorb the flavour and the coriander leaves are added to enhance the flavour. The soup was really very good and the quantity of shark fin was substantial. There were also crab meat and black mushroom in the soup. The bowl was quite big and if you are a small eater, this bowl would have filled you up.

The next dish was the fish cooked in Thai style. For this dish, personally I did not find anything special about the dish, the sause that was used as a bit too sour for my liking.

The above was the deep fried chicken. This on the other hand was very good and more than offset my disappointment with the Thai style fish. The chicken was marinated with a special type of flavouring which enhance the taste. The skin was very crispy and the interior still is able to be tender and juicy. This was really very good!!

The last dish was the bee hoon fried with prawns as we did not like to eat crab. What made this dish very good is the taste of the bee hoon which was flavoured richly with the prawn as well as the garlic at the base of the plate. The taste was heavenly. However the prawns were a bit tough mainly I guess due to the size of the prawn.

It was quite a change to try a different cooking style. Next I will be profiling this cafe where we had curry rice. Hope it doesn't take me months to write again.