Teochew Dinner at Ah Hoi Restaurant ( Chinatown area )

It has been a very long time since I had Teochew food hence decided to arrange a dinner gathering with other friends who are keen on Teochew food.

 

 

We visited the Ah Hoi Restaurant which is in the Chinatown area. Forgot the actual name of the street :(

 

 

It is an old school restaurant which has been around for at least 30 years. It has a retro feel with the restaurant layout and even the dishes they use.

 

 

We ordered a selection of dishes to share: 

 

Cold Pig Shank with jelly fish at the bottom. The top layer had a nice chewy texture and the meat was tender. Jelly fish was also very nice.

Assorted fried items which consists of spring roll, prawn roll and another meat roll which not sure what it was. The outstanding item is the prawn ball which was made themselves.

Oyster Porridge. I did not try it but my friends said it was delicious.

Braised Goose meat. It was normal nothing really outstanding.

Steamed Pomfret Teochew style. It is steamed with black mushroom, tomato, preserved plum. This was quite delicious as the fish meat was delicious.

Fish maw and crab meat soup. Serve 4 persons. This was yummy with a lot of fish maw and crab meat in it.

Last but not least was the star of the night which is the yam paste with ginko nuts. The version made here is very traditional and you have to mix it well before enjoying it. This is rich but smooth on palate. Recommend to order half way through dinner as have to wait a while since they only prepare upon order.

 

The dishes in general were all very good and it is an interesting place if you want traditional Teochew food in a retro setting. 

Lunch at Jing

It has been a very busy year and realised that have not posted any article in a while.

Recently, I visited Jing at 1 Fullerton for their lunch buffet which I was quite impressed and will write about it in a separate article.

 

Today, we decided to come and try their A La Carte selection which are shown below: 

Crispy Fish Skin which is crispy and quite addictive.

The meat which is to accompany the clay pot rice. The rice is served in a clay pot. They will add in the sauce into the rice and mix it before serving. The leftover bits of rice on the base of the clay pot can be served as a soup. I really loved the clay pot rice :)

Hot and Sour seafood soup. It is served piping hot and there is a good balance of the hot and sour flavours. Though people who do not like vinegar may not fancy it too much.

Deep fried drumstick mushroom. I ordered this dish by accident as thought it was a chicken drumstick with mushroom that is deep fried. The dish was quite nice as it was crunchy on the outside and quite juicy inside.

Champagne Spare Ribs. My favourite dish during lunch. The pork was very tender and the sauce that coated the meat had sweetness but it was not cloying sweet.

Spinach cooked with three types of egg.

Steamed Red Snapper Fillet with mushroom and preserved vegetable. Quite an interesting combination and the fish was quite a generous portion and it is boneless :)



Three different dessert: Mango Sago accompanied with a scoop of ice cream, mango pudding and an avocado puree with a walnut ice cream. The best dessert was the mango sago with ice cream.

The whole experience was good and service was also quite attentive. I would recommend this place for a business lunch if you are in the area.  

Food photos from Beijing



I just realised that I have not written any article for almost 1.5 years!  

 

Recently I visited my friend in Beijing.

It was my first visit to Beijing and managed to visit the Forbidden City as well as the Summer Palace and the Bird Nest Stadium among a number of attraction.

 

The below is some of the dishes that I had during my stay over there.

One thing observed about the style of cooking in Beijing is that they are used a lot of oil to cook and the seasoning is more heavy.

 

My friend was joking that I should enjoy the food without looking at the amount of oil.   

 

Stirred fried pork with mushroom ( Quite nice though oily)

Meat Dumpling. When we ordered we expect like a serving of 6 pieces and we got a shock when we were served the above. Taste wise it was rather bland as the skin was too thick though the pork filling was not bad.





Stirred fried beef. My friend told me the beef was very tender. Again it was oily.





Hot and Sour soup. Not really nice.



Though the dishes above and an additional plate of noodles stirred fried with pork were mix in review with some nicer than others, the price for the entire meal above was about 130 yuan which is about 20 plus Singapore dollar for 3 people. 

 

For dinner, my friend brought me to a restaurant which is supposed to be famous for the Peking Duck .

 



 

Entrance to the restaurant

Open concept Kitchen area specially for Peking Duck preparation. You can see in the background, the open flame which is by burning specially selected wood.

Condiment to go along with the Peking Duck. Some are the usual items though there is a couple of interesting additional items.

Roast Pork. Nice presentation and the roast pork skin was very crispy and the meat was juicy. Yummy :)

Long Jing tea that is been brewed

Roast pork together with the skin to go along with the Peking Duck. The skin is usual but the biscuit at the top is more unusual. It is like a sesame biscuit which is hollow in the centre.

Peking duck been served. As can see there is a layer of meat together with the crispy skin.

Complimentary dessert which is Strawberry.

 

The Peking duck was excellent though I think the duck is a bit smaller than the ones you can get in Singapore. We were too full from lunch hence ordered less for dinner.

New favourite grape variety :)

Recently I have the good fortunate to try a whole range of Riesling from around the world and found that it is a style of wine that I liked generally.

Riesling is one of the interesting white grape variety which can produce extraordinary wines in every style from the bone dry to the super sweet style of wines. Riesling is like a Sauvignon Blanc which expresses the different flavours when planted on different soils and produce distinctively different wine styles depending on the climate where it is grown.

German Riesling are the most famous. There is different level of clasification on the level of sweetness for German Riesling:

The most dry style ( least sweet) will be the Troken. In increasing order of sweetness will be Kabinett, Spatlese ( Late Harvest), Auslese, Goldkaspel ( Gold Capsule), BA ( Beerenauslese ) ,Eiswein ( Ice Wine) and most sweet will be TBA( TrokenBeerenauslese).

Auslese is considered as very good quality and sweet. BA, Eiswein and TBA are dessert wines with the TBA as been the rarest of them all. If anyone has tried a TBA do let me know how is tastes like.

A lot of the New Zealand and Australian Riesling been made are more of the off dry style. This means that there is the acidity which is well balanced against a sweeetness in the body with a good finish. Actually riesling goes very well with almost all types of food.

For Alsace Riesling, the ones that I have tried are more of the drier style which means that it is not sweet and what you get is a lot of minerality. I still prefer the sweeter style of Riesling.

Currently, one of my favourite Riesling excluding the German Riesling Spatlese and Auslese is the Mount Brown Riesling 2010 from New Zealand Waipara Valley. It is a light bodied wine which has good acidity balanced with sweetness hence making it a very refreshing wine by itself or with food.

Lunch at Jin Shan at Marina Bay Sand

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Jin Shan at Marina Bay Sand. It is located on the 1st floor at the hotel. We decided to order their Peking Duck as well as a selection of dim sum and main dishes to try out.

Trio of seafood dumpling with different toppings. Unlike the versions that I had tried at other places, where the skin is quite hard, this version skin was delicate and gently encompass the fillings.

Peking Duck, One of the best that I had. The skin is so crispy and was excellent with the crepe. The sauce which accompanied the duck skin was full of flavour.

My mum absolutely loved it as it was oozing with the char siew and gravy.

The meat and pumpkin from the pumpkin soup which was lovely in flavour. Meat though was almost tasteless as all the flavours are in the soup.

Stewed Chicken Feet and in the background it is the salted egg yolk prawns. The chicken feet was very tender but it was a tad not salty enough. For the Salted egg yolk prawn, it was delicious. the saltness of the salted egg yolk did not over power the natural flavour of the prawn.

Prawn paste chicken. The prawn paste was evident and it was juicy. It is good but not outstanding.

Long Beans fried with mince pork. It is fried with a Sizchuan style. The flavour is outstanding and go perfectly with a steaming bowl of rice. The slight down point is that the long beans were a bit soggy and not crunchy. 

Coffee flavoured pork chop. It is a well balance dish with the coffee flavour evident but not over-powering unlike how it is prepared at other places.

In general, the dishes were good with a few stand out dishes such as the Char siew Pau and Peking Duck. Price though is on the higher price point. Budget should be about $50 to $60 a person ordering dishes that are not fresh seafood. Service in general was quite good though quite a few staffs are more comfortable conversing in Chinese.

Boon Tong Kee at Bong Keng ( New place to have yummy chicken rice)

Recently I have moved place to another area of Singapore hence a new journey to explore the food in the area. One of my current favourite food haunt is the Boon Tong Kee Chicken Rice near my place. It is usually full during the weekend lunch and dinner crowd.

We decided to order a selection of their dishes as well as their famous chicken rice. I totally loved the rice as it is fragrant and light on the palate.



Famous white steamed chicken. The chicken meat is tender and the gravy goes perfect with it. Together with their chilli sauce and black sauce, totally awesome.



Stirred fried Kang Kong with sambal. Nothing outstanding.

Fried Prawn Roll. I quite liked it.

One of my favourite dish. Stirred fried pork liver in claypot. The pork liver has a lovely texture and the sauce goes well with the rice. :)

Beancurd with crabmeat.

Recently, we have went by a couple of times and one of the dish that I would highly recommend is the seafood bee hoon. Really dish and full of flavour.

This is a nice place to go for some home Zi Char dishes as well as for their famous chicken.

Personel sentiments of Election 2011

This year election in Singapore has been one of the most anticipated elections in many many years. There has been a higher caliber of candidates from the various opposition parties and coupled with the introduction of a new PAP team which has been perceived as more of an elite group and not able to appreciate the ground sentiment.

In addition, the ground sentiment is that the government in the past few years has not paid heed to the various grievances such as cost of housing, public transportation, in flux of foreign workers and inflation in Singapore
This has made this election much more of a closer call and I would dare say it could be the benchmark of the upcoming few elections as the Generation Y voters will play a more significant role in the votes casting.

This is the first election in which social media such as facebook, Twitter and YouTube plays more of a significant role and it allows more people to view the speeches provided by the various candidates. I have been very impressed by the eloquences and energy of some of the new opposition candidates.

The opposition parties also brought up a lot of ideas. The below are some of the proposals and areas which I am impressed and the government should consider looking into it.

1. Pegging minister/members of parliament pay against a multiplier of the median pay in Singapore rather than GDP. GDP is an overall number and is not reflective of the ground situation. A Median pay will be more representative of the ground sentiments and will drive the MPs to look into ways to improve the overall pay of Singaporeans. I do not fully subscribe to PAP idea of paying top dollars for MPs. We must reward the MPs for their sacrifice to be in parliament but if they are going into parliament for the pay then it defeats the core principle of an MP. An MP is a representative of the people on the ground and should serve the people.
the current perception is that the people are tax to give high pay to the MPs.

2. Public Transportation, the proposal to de-privatize the public buses and MRT. Though the concept of privatizing these crucial infrastructure is to lead to more competition and lower prices. However the opposite took place as transport keep on increasing prices as they are run as private business and are accountable to their shareholders. These key infrastructures should be run more as a public service. When average Singaporeans are finding transport cost is increasing and when you hear SMRT profits is running in the hundred of million, it is quite mind boggling.

3. Using other means of measuring Singapore Growth, GDP is only one aspect but it may not be the best and the opposition had proposed a couple of other means which may be more reflective of the society.

In my opinion, the government in the last few years has project an image of arrogance as they do not seem to take the ground sentiment seriously. It also seems to be less caring as they are always looking at GDP numbers and other hard numbers which are not reflective on the ground.

In spite of that, the government in general has managed to keep the country growing and our strength of our dollar is very strong. At least in my case, the candidate had delivered what he promised in the last election.
Also some of the proposals raised by the opposition is also not realistic such as the idea of free education and health care, who will bear this burden. Now we will be able to do it as our budget is plentiful but in the long run how will it be possible to sustain. The idea of moving our of manufacturing and fully focus on service is not viable. Manufacturing is one of the core of the economy and hires a large amount of people. Getting rid of it will cause a lot of lose of jobs. Manufacturing is an area which is less volatile to cyclic downturns unlike service industry.
Now the key issue for all Singaporeans is whether would you want to vote for a change in the system and it is a step into the unknown or you would rather keep to the present situation and hope the government understand that we are not always looking at hard facts but want them to engage us and appreciate what the ground is feeling.

We only hope that we will not end up in a situation where we will spend all our time debating issues without any actions while the world overtakes us.

We will know on the 7th of May 2011, how things will develop.