Dragon Year

Today is the 4th day of Chinese New Year. For those who didn't know, it actually goes on for 15 days. 15 days of celebration with food, food, food and more food!

I did a count for Mr. and this year his 8th consecutive Chinese New Year away from his family. Not too bad for me but this year I missed home a lot. Why? A sign of getting old??

Pineapple Tarts
I also managed to get more organised and made some Chinese New Year goodies and cooked a few dishes for Reunion Dinner. Finally had more than a week break during Christmas period and I started making my 1st batch of Pineapple Tarts using the late Mrs Leong's recipe.

Pineapple tarts is a must for me every Chinese New Year. Without fail I will make sure to make some for self consumption. Mr. love them. It's not hard to make but just very time consuming especially on the jam. I always cooked the jam the day before and fridge it before used.


Me granting fresh pineapple using a very antique tool which I bought back to Melbourne during my most recent trip home. Not too sure is it available in SG as it's from Malacca. Super handy tool and made granting a lot easier and fast! I used to had this process but not anymore :D


1st batch of pineapple tarts consist of 6 medium size pineapples and managed to end up with more than 140 of tarts. I shared most of it with friends and keeping about 30 tarts for self consumption.

I did a 2nd batch the weekend before Chinese New Year again for some friends which missed out on the 1st batch and more for self consumption. This time round, I used Little Teochew's recipe for the base.

In comparison, Mrs Leong's base is firmer not as sweet while Miss Teochew is more "melt in your mouth" texture. Both are as good and really depends on individual preference.

Kueh Bangkit
I tried my hand making Kueh Bangkit. I love them and haven't had them for years! Totally clueless who to make it, I went to late Mrs Leong cookbook for help again. I was having doubt how it will result. But never expect it will turn out to be hard as a rock...LOL


Me frying the flour for Kueh Bangkit. Did I fry it long enough? Maybe not. But I definitely made a mess. Flour all over the floor, stove and onto me. Dough was too wet and I ran out of flour. :((((
In the end, I left the mixture in the fridge. Fried more flour and continue the next day. Guess that's definitely a no-no :(((((


Kueh Bangkit which I bought in KL. I would love a wooden mould but doubt I will be able to hid it from the strict Australia customs. Not going to even try.




Raw Kueh Bangkit. It took me quite a while to get the hang of using the mould. The dough kept getting stuck.


Freshly cooked Kueh Bangkit. Nice color, smell really yummy but too hard to even bite into...LOL
Definitely going to try them again. I'm not going to give up on them but not too sure when I will succeed.

Peanut Cookies
I made these just before Chinese New Year. @eiin was very kind to share her mum's recipe and I can't resist not to give it a go. Although it's really fast and easy to make, I still went lazy and used pre-grounded peanut which I had in the pantry. One thing for sure, I will toast and ground my own peanut next time. I strongly believe it will improve the taste and smell.





Reunion Dinner
We invited some friends to have reunion dinner together.


Yu-Sang from Red Hot Wok. This was really yummy. When we first saw how big serve this dish was, we were all afraid half of it not only to be eaten. But we all surprised ourselves because more than 90% actually went into our tummy.


For dinner, we had Yu-Sang, Prawn in Spicy Pineapple Gravy, Roast Duck and Soy Sauce Chicken, Mushroom with Broccoli and Vegetarian Fried Vermicelli. Missing on the table was Chicken Herbal Soup.

I cooked 4 dishes in total and I think I managed well. Started cooking Chicken Herbal Soup the day before and let it continue to cook in my trustable thermal pot. Took me less than 20mins to fried up the Vegetarian Vermicelli. Pounded the rempah for Chilli Prawn the day before and cooked the dish just before starting dinner. As Mushroom with Broccoli, the mushroom was braised in Chicken Soup and some seasoning a few days before and freeze till dinner day.

 

After dinner and all dishes done, another round of food started. This time round dessert: Bubur Cha Cha, Agar Agar and of course Pineapple Tarts and Peanut Cookies.



How did you spend your Chinese New Year?

Not always good food and good experience

We are into the 4th week of our vacation and both me and Mr being eating non-stop everywhere we go. We usually tend find hawker food when we are in Singapore, as it's  quite impossible to find authentic Singapore hawker food in Melbourne. Plus it's cheap and delicious.

We don't always ended up with nice food. As mention in one of my previous entry, we revisited one of the Japanese restaurant which we used to frequent. But we were so disappointed.

3 dishes that we ordered at Sushi Tei to start ,

Cha Soba, cold green tea soba - was served within 5 minutes after placing the order. Definitely pre-cooked and stored in the fridge. It was also over cooked.


Aburi Sushi Moriawase, halved boiled sushi assortment - sushi rice wasn't firm, breaks when picked using chopstick. The sushi assortment  were just laid on top of the sushi rice without even using any wasabi. Sushi assortment wasn't fresh.


Tsukuba - Sushi slices wasn't fresh nor firm. It cost us S$54 excluding 10% service charge and 7% GST.

After we paid the bill, we took the escalator up to level 4 food court and ordered a plate of Fried Prawn Noodle. Tummy felt satisfying after that.


After the terrible restaurant experience, I wasn't very keen to give any other restaurant a try till few days ago when both of us went to Marina Bay Sand (MBS). It's one of the casino hotel in Singapore. It also contains quite a few fine dining restaurant including the very well known Waku Gin which by Tetsuyu.

After making enquiry and flipping thru the different restaurant menu, Mr decided to make a booking for dinner that evening at Hide Yamamoto. We were looking forward to dinner as we spend the afternoon shopping at MBS. Didn't dare to set to high expectation as well.



But it turned out to be terrible and we walk out of the restaurant even without having a drink!

When we 1st arrived, 1st impression was alright with all the staff greeting us as we enter. Drink and food menu was being shown to us upon seated.

Mr. was in the mood of a mocktail and me a cocktail, Lychee Mojito. A young guy was serving us and Mr. made an enquiry regarding mocktail as it wasn't in the menu. Noticing how the waiter couldn't understand what Mr. was asking and noticing he was asking us questions in Mandarin. I decided to make the enquiry using mandarin.

Both of us do speak and understand mandarin but when it comes to food we are pretty clueless what's the exact name for most of the food names and ingredients used. As the result, we are more comfortable using english.

The waiter came back to us after checking with the bartender but we couldn't understand what he meant. It's either his mandarin is too power or our understanding is too poor. Mr. gave up and decided to order a coke instead while I sticked to my cocktail. Order was repeated to him twice before requesting him to serve drink 1st while we decide what to eat.

He came back few minutes later and asked "lime?". I was totally confused and repeated our drink order again. This time round a colleague of his was nearby and asked what she can do to help.

Told her about our order and she started informing us cocktail wasn't available as they were in the mid of changing the menu. Something else wasn't available too which I don't remember and only sake and soft drink was available.

I wasn't happy. Told them to give us for a few more minutes. Once they left, both of us decided to walk out.

If they couldn't even get our drink order right, how could I expect them to serve me the correct food?
If the drinks wasn't available, why was it still on the menu? Why wasn't we informed when the menu was presented to us?
If the waiter can't speak English, why didn't he ask his colleague who knows, to serve us instead?
Is that the standard for a fine dining restaurant?

We did feedback to the MBS customer relation and hopefully they message get pass and the restaurant can improve the service standard.



Macarons seem to be popular in Singapore as well. We sees them everywhere we goes. Mr. was craving for one and bought a Hazelnut macaron from The Icing Room. It was BAD. The shell was hard as a rock and tasteless except sweet and more sweet. Only took a bite and dump the rest into the bin without delay.

Kueh Dadar - Coconut stuffed Pandan Pancake Rolls

I was craving for Kueh especially after reading Fatbooo's blogpost on making Ang Ku Kueh. AKK was 1 of the many food item which I definitely have when I'm in Singapore.

Due to limited ingredients in my pantry and time, it wasn't possible to make AKK last weekend. Took out all my Singapore/Malaysia cookbook and ended up with 2 choices. Oneh-oneh or Kueh Dadar. I left the decision making to Mr.

I did tweak the recipe because

1. I didn't have any fresh granted coconut but I had desiccated coconut which I need to finish and decided to improvise.
2. I didn't use Pandan Juice as I was lazy and felt it was a waste using 40 leaves for just 5 tablespoons of pandan juice. Plus fresh Pandan is not easily available nor cheap in Australia. Pandan essence was a good alternative.
3. I only had half the amount of desiccated coconut required for the full recipe. Therefore I halved the recipe. Recipe said 20 Kueh Dadar which will be too much for us to finish.
4. I also didn't have enough coconut milk so substituted with coconut flavour evaporative milk. Healthy option too :-)
5. Although I halved every ingredient, I totally forgotten to halve the amount of flour. I only realised when I was mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients for the pancake mixture.
6. In the end I had to add more evaporative milk to thin the mixture. I just went with my feeling and stop adding milk till the mixture was watery enough to make a thin slice of pancake.

To make Filling:

Ingredients (clockwise): Sugar and Salt, Coconut, Water, Pandan Leaves, Palm Sugar




Combined everything together and cooked till coconut absorbed all the liquid. Mine turned out to be dried. I blamed it on the desiccated coconut used.

To make Pancake:

Ingredients (clockwise): Sugar & Salt & Baking Powder, Egg, Pandan Essence, Coconut Milk,  Flour

Combine all ingredients by whisking till batter smooth. 

Spoon 3 tablespoon of batter into a pan and spread the batter into a think pancake. Transfer to a plate once cooked and repeat with the remaining batter.

This was taken on my 3rd pancake? It definitely wasn't pretty! I was having a bit of difficulties trying to make it as thin and even as possible. Practise makes perfect. Towards the end, I was getting the hang of it.

To assemble, lay the pancake, place 3 tablespoons of filling and roll, tucking in the sides (just like making springroll).



Took me about an hour from start to finish. Although it was dried due to the filling, it was flavoursome. It wasn't too sweet and fragrant with coconut and pandan.

I will try to make it again but must 1st get hold of fresh granted coconut and make sure I follow the recipe more closely.

Cacao Macarons

Even since falling in love with LuxBite's macarons, I also started buying non LuxBite's macarons when I come across to give it a try.

Mr. and me were at Doncaster Westfield few days ago and saw Cacao store which not only sell chocolates but also macarons. We bought 4 in a box and took it home. It happen we had a few LuxBite's macaron which were bought on weekend. So we decided to have them together to have a comparison. But we only managed to get thru 1 each.

On the left is LuxBite Salted Caramel and on the right is Cacao Salty Caramel.

We were pretty impressed by Cacao's macaron shell. It was crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. But the filling was disappointing, the name says it all. It should be salty but I didn't taste any salt in the filling nor the shell at all. Did the chef forgot about it? The caramel do taste creamy. A lot more buttery when compared to LuxBite, I can even smell the butter! Definitely like LuxBite Salted Caramel more than Cacao reason being LuxBite is saltish enough, not too much nor less. Mr. likes Cacao shell as the sugar bring in a bit of crunch when you bite into it.

The other 3 flavours which we got at Cocao were Mint, Passionfruit and Hazelnut Praline.



Mint shell was pretty and shiny as it was sprinkled with sparkling powder to beautify it. The filling was actually white chocolate infused with mint? It smelled and tasted like spearmint but chocolate and mint didn't blend together. On the 1st bite, I taste the mint and follow by the white chocolate. Taste was totally independent of each other. Towards the end, it was just too sweet for me to handle. Can macaron be too sweet? I know it's suppose to be sweet especially it's made up of so much icing sugar but this is the 1st time I felt it sugar overloaded just by having 1 macaron.



The colour of Passionfruit macaron shell was nice as well. Not too bright but it does looks like a ripe mango rather than a passionfruit pulp. As for the filling, it was chocolate with passionfruit taste. This flavour didn't work for me at all! Can't really taste the passionfruit nor really smell it. :-(

I had both the Mint and Passionfruit flavour while Mr. had the Hazelnut Praline. I was still at work when he had it. Therefore I can't really write much but he did say it was pretty good.

Hunt for macaron continue.......