Udders

I know I’m slow to the game but I’ve made up for it by trying loads of flavours at two different outlets, one at the Lorong Kilat outlet just after our Spanish dinner at Don Quijote and another time the next night after dinner with parents. I think these are pretty much at the top of the list for ice cream in Singapore. The ice cream is incredibly smooth and rich, yet not cloying at all. I quite liked Kick S Cream Caramel as there was a tinge of salt in it that really kicked things up a notch. If they had a straight up salted caramel flavour, I’d be an instant fan.

The next night, we had a whole bunch of flavours. I remember Mum had Orange Choc Bitters, which was a very somehow transparent-tasting chocolate tinged with pleasingly bitter undertone of orange liquor. This was in contrast to Dad’s very rich chocolate flavour that was punchily chocolate. Those two were the highlights, which unfortunately aren’t quite captured in the photo. The rest of the flavours were nice too, just not memorable enough to make it here. They’ll have to wait till the next time I make a trip there.

Udders
87 Upper East Coast Road
Tel: 6448 8732

17 Lorong Kilat, #01-08 Kilat Court
Tel: 6466 1055

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July in Vietnam: The Fishing Village of Mui Ne

I moved on from Quy Nhon to Mui Ne, bypassing Nha Trang because I wasn’t up to much partying after Hue (I chose not to post about celebrating Canada Day because of that awful, awful hangover) and I heard the diving there wasn’t very much different from Hoi An (with which I wasn’t impressed, that’s a story for another day). Mui Ne didn’t disappoint. I arrived as dusk fell and the idyllic coconut-trees-swaying-in-the-wind setting immediately started working its charm.

Daytime augmented the coconut-tree charm and I soon found myself on the back of a motorcycle off to a nearby fishing village.

Early in the morning, fishing boats return from the night’s work and the flotilla waits in the shallows for the coracles to come out to unload the cargo.

The coracles are unique circular little fellas that are nimble enough to float on mere inches of water to bring in the catch.

By the time this tourist arrived, most of the activity was tapering off and people were starting to relax after sorting and selling their wares.

Many of them were still milling around the main bartering areas, leaving their little boats on the beach out of reach of the waves.

The highlight of this visit really was getting up close to these boats. I’d not seen them anywhere else in the world and was very intrigued by how they managed to get anywhere. I imagine myself just going round and round in circles if I had to captain one of these! These boats were really just waterproofed baskets, no wonder they were simply left unguarded all over the beach. If one goes missing, just weave a replacement, easy!

Coracles aside, there were other interesting things going on at the beach. There were bullock carts hauling fresh catch or selling breakfast treats.

There were baskets upon baskets of fish on sale, mainly small to medium ones.

And there were plenty of locals in the characteristic conical hats negotiating good prices for crates of silvery fish.

Some areas of the beach were strewn with open shells. Here, plenty of sorting had taken place earlier in the morning where I’m guessing workers went through thousands of scallops, extracting the meat to be dried for export.

Near the beach, fish were being salted and laid out to dry in the already fierce morning sun.

And off I went to my next adventure, admiring how the sun glinted off the sea in waves of silver as my motorbike whizzed past.

It was also a wonder how we got anywhere, considering that the bike’s speedometer needle didn’t move past zero! More to come next post.

Quick Eats: Sembawang Hills Hawker Centre

DC and I thought we’d do something a bit healthier and go for the HSBC treetop walk at Macritchie Reservoir. Before that we of course had to stop somewhere for sustenance. The Sembawang Hills hawker centre nearby did the trick. I did a very unwise thing and queued for the famous “inventor” fish soup where the owner had lots of little contraptions for serving his customers better. There was a curved dispenser so that we help ourselves to spoons hygienically and a coin sorter that helped him with his change. Needless to say, the queue was horribly long and DC said he’d go for the salted duck noodles instead. I persevered and got my fish soup with instant noodles (everyone else seemed to be ordering that too) and added some fish roe to it.

My verdict? It wasn’t worth the queue. While the fish was decent, there wasn’t a great deal of flavour and the noodles were a bit too soft for my taste. I could have done better cooking it myself at home.

DC was prescient enough to take this shot before he started. By the time I got back to the table with my fish noodles, most of the duck and noodles were gone! Still, I managed to wrangle some over from him. Oh my, the duck was very good! The salt had cured the duck somewhat and intensified the flavour of the duck, also giving it a firm, smooth texture. And the noodles! I’m not normally a fan of yellow noodles (sek mee) but this version was still very much firm to the bite. DC had to restrain me from buying my own set of duck noodles after the disappointing fish ones.

Next time we go to Macritchie I know what I’m having!

Fresh Fish Soup
#01-36

Ah Ee Traditional Hokkien Salted Duck
#01-28
590 Upper Thomson Road
Sembawang Hill Food Centre

Two Chefs Eating Place

Another night of eating adventures found us at Two Chefs Eating Place with Tricia and Mfluder. We’d heard good things about the butter pork ribs topped with a strange white powder and were intrigued. It was also a night where I left my trusty Canon S90 at home and had to use my trustier iPhone as a stand in instead. I apologise for the worse than normal photos. First up was the butter ribs. We weren’t sure what to make of it because it was deep fried pork ribs scented with curry leaves, as is usual for butter-anything, and topped with what appeared to be milk powder. While the pork was tender enough, I wasn’t sure about the flavours and whether it was worth raving about. It was a bit odd, but the sweet milky flavour was pleasing enough for DC. For me, it didn’t make the cut for a reorder.

What I liked far better was the spinach in three eggs sauce, which looked alarmingly like something not normally seen on a table (more like something seen after a long night’s boozing). No matter, the flavours mingled really well as the salted egg and century egg was minced quite finely and obviously left to stand for a while. One thing that could improved was that the vegetables could’ve been a lot less soggy. They were way too overcooked I felt, but the taste made up for it.

The mushroom tofu followed in the theme of gloopy. Again, taste belied looks and the smooth texture of the tofu won me over straightaway. This was a comforting dish that easily wins people over.

Following up on gloopy came the lemon shrimp with pork floss. It’s an interesting take on lemon chicken as the flavouring is exactly that, just that the fried bits were prawn. Tricia and I were trying to figure out exactly what was inside (fish? chicken?) till someone remembered that we ordered prawn! The lemony mayonnaise on top was a nice touch and the pork floss just gilded the lily. It was imaginative, though I’m not sure if this is something that really works. A possible reorder I think.

The last dish of note was fried chicken with garlic, I can’t remember the exact name of the dish but everyone at the table liked it. It was sweet and peppery and of course garlicky. They used spring chicken so it was tastier and very tender. It was everyone’s favourite dish of the evening. Now all I have to do is remember the name!

The last dish was black pepper crab. Too bad it wasn’t good enough to be featured. Lesson learned: only order what everyone else at the other tables have especially when it comes to crab.

My verdict? It’s experimental and has some winners, don’t expect every dish to be great.

Two Chefs Eating Place
Blk 116 Commonwealth Crescent
#01-129
Tel: 6472 5361

Ice Cream Round Up

It’s great that there’s plenty of good ice cream around, especially with so many local ice cream makers around. Tom’s Palette is one of the lesser known yet one of the better ones. I like their inventive flavours and sheer variety. Each time I go, there’s an interesting flavour to try out. Over the Chinese New Year period, they  not only had the usual “surprising” pineapple tart flavour, but also had stuff like tau sar piah flavour.

I also like their generous portions. In this picture there’s ba bao cha (eight treasure tea) sorbet and my favourite salted caramel cheesecake. The ba bao cha flavour wa a flavoured ice, nothing particularly special except it being served as sorbet. Now the salted caramel cheesecake is something else altogether: incredibly rich and cheesy, with bits of crumbled cookie base and the most luscious salty caramel flavour. Other flavours of note are the wasabi lime (a combination that works amazingly well, but not in too large a dose!) and passionfruit sake for the clean flavours.

Tom’s Palette
100 Beach Road #01-25
Shaw Leisure Gallery
Tel: 6296 5239

Galta Gelato at Parco Marina Bay is pretty decent too. The fridge is a funky cylindrical contraption with the ice cream laid out in a turn table of sorts.

The gelato is very smooth and drippy. The fior di latte (milk) flavour was a bit too sweet for my taste, a pity. On the other hand, the ciocolate flavour was intense and unctuous, very excellent stuff especially considering that I’m not a big fan of chocolate ice cream. Try the other flavours and let me know whether they’re good!

Galta Gelato Italiano Artigianale
P1-08 Parco Marina Bay

Last on the list is what DC think is the grandaddy of local ice cream: Daily Scoop. Their ice cream is always very smooth with the finest crystals, favourite flavours being coconut and butterscotch (I wonder what a combination of the two would be like!). We were delighted to find out that they served desserts and found that the brownie went amazingly well with the Salted Mr Brown. Somehow the salted creaminess worked a charm against the foil of warm chocolate. The butterscotch was buttery and caramelly and lovely with the brownie too, but far lovelier on its own. Bliss!

Daily Scoop
41 Sunset Way
Tel: 6463 3365

Dimsum Pigout

Four of us were out for lunch and we started off at Lao Beijing at Novena Square. It was all a disappointment except for the prawns in salted egg yolk sauce. Although slightly greasy, the lightly battered prawns were covered with very yummy salted egg sauce. I liked how they served it up fast enough that the prawn was still crisp and the savoury sauce coated just enough so as not to be cloying. Very well executed.

To make up for the disappointment of the non-prawn majority of our lunch, we went for what we thought was dessert at a nearby dimsum place. Who knew we just had to order the best of the best and in a blink, we’d over-ordered again. At least we had some lovely rose tea to wash it all down.

First up was the very excellently done carrot cake. It’s like an upmarket version of chai tow kway and it’s very good. The carrot cake is light, silky and well-browned and is nicely complemented with shacha chilli sauce. Very yummy.

I have a special spot in my tummy for salted egg yolk and more savoury than sweet desserts. Case in point is the star of the meal: salted egg yolk custard buns. It’s not quite the same as another favourite of mine, the lai wong bao (custard bun). Rather, it’s a variation with some salted egg yolks crumbled into the custard. The chef is masterful as it’s done just so the custard is still oozy. Salty, sweet and luscious goodness against the bland sweet bun is amazing.

I also quite liked the black sesame wobing. A twist on the classic red bean filling, I found the black sesame version just the right sweetness and also enjoyed very much the crisp pastry and very generous sprinkling of white sesame seeds on top. To our small consolation, DC informed us that this was baked, not fried hence having fewer calories. I suppose a saving of 10 calories in a meal of maybe 3,000 calories counts as something huh.

Lao Beijing
238 Thomson Road
#02-11 Velocity @ Novena Square
Tel: 6358 4466

Old Hong Kong Kitchen
10 Sinaran Drive
#02-80 Novena Square 2
Tel: 6397 7023

Bukit Timah’s BK Forture

Sis-in-law took the whole family to a coffee shop-style restaurant that supposedly had really good hamdan (salted egg) crabs. Since the focus of dinner was really the crab, we whizzed through the other dishes quickly. The cappuccino ribs scored full marks for imagination but didn’t do that well for taste. It was coffee ribs with cocoa powder and evaporated milk drizzled on top. The coffee part was nicely dark and bitter but the cocoa powder just didn’t do it for me.

The herbal chicken was supposed to be another signature dish but I felt that it wasn’t particularly special. Overcooked chicken with herbs: sure, it’s comfort food but I’m not going all the way out to that part of Bukit Timah for this dish.

They misnamed the fish. It should’ve been called assam curry fish instead of Thai-style fish. The taste was great as the fish was fresh, the curry spicy and the vegetables tender-crunchy. Bro insisted on taking this picture with the red snapper’s mouth gaping open. Too bad the camera couldn’t capture the steam and bubbles coming out of its mouth. It was horror-movie cool (that is, if you were a fish watching a horror movie).

Then came the piece de resistance! Now this is what I’d call a heart attack on a plate. As if the cholesterol in the crab isn’t enough, I don’t know how many (neither do I want to know how many) salted egg yolks were mashed up to make the savoury rich sauce. In fact, it was so rich that most of us gave up. Shockingly, no one fought over the last pieces, although Dad was very naughty and had some even though he had to go for a cholesterol test the next day. Only DC stuck it to the end, polishing up the last bits and impressing Mum on the way. All in all, it was very decent stuff though not quite as good as the first time I had crab done this way in KL. Still, barring going all the way up north, this definitely hits the spot.

BK Forture
887 Bukit Timah Road
Tel: 6469 5957