La Forketta

Once in awhile we like to visit Dempsey Hill and try out the restaurants there. One evening we decide to try out this Italian restaurant. It looks good and we sat outside in the cool evening air. We were off to a great start as the bread basket they put down was absolutely delicious!

It was SO good with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar! The problem was that we had to fight the bread with our 2 year old girl, who insisted that the bread was hers. -_- We also ordered their minestrone soup, which was like the most chunky minestrone soup I've ever seen. I think they should just call it vegetable and tomato soup. Duh. I prefer that the vegetables in my minestrone to be boiled to death and unrecognizable. Haha...

Cobby ordered a cured beef with wild rocket pizza and I wished that I've ordered that instead. :P

The naughty girl ate so much bread, she couldn't eat anything else.

I ordered the tagliatelle al ragu, which was alright, but it was a little too salty and the pasta was a little too soft for my taste.

I would probably not go back for their pasta, but pizza's pretty good. Go check it out.

Seoul Yummy

The last time we were here, I was out with my girlfriends, celebrating a birthday. We just chose this restaurant as it has the shortest queue, but it turned out to be a pretty good choice as all of us agreed that the food was quite good. I remembered thinking that I would bring Cobby here some other time, so one Saturday, I did!

As usual, there wasn't any queue. I don't know why, I guess everybody's there for Japanese food. The last time I was there, we ordered kimchi soup with rice.

I love kimchi soup, and this was really good. The ingredients was generous and the soup was so flavourful! Perfect with the fluffy rice!

Another one of the highlights was their side dishes. It's quite common to have several free flow side dishes when you go to a Korean restaurant, but their side dishes was super awesome! My favourite was their cold toufu, which was garlic-ky and slightly. Cobby loved their crispy sweet and savoury ikan bilis. Yum!

When I went with Cobby, we ordered the spicy beef soup. Not bad, the meat was quite tender, but not as fabulous as the kimchi soup.

We also ordered the bibimbap. Not bad too, but honestly, the one at Wisma's Food Republic's better.

Overall a hearty and delicious meal. Would probably go back when I have a craving for a hot bowl of kimchi soup with rice. :)

The Central,
6 Eu Tong Sen Street,
#03-92/95, Singapore 059817

Mother-in-law's pa-mee (打面)

Everyday you learn something new...

My mother-in-law is heng hua dialect, so one night when we were over at her place for dinner, she cooked a huge pot of what they called, pa-mee (打面). I'm not sure how authentic is it, but it's delicious!

She bought this noodles from the market near her place, and I loved it as it doesn't have the alkaline taste like in those "yellow noodles".

So she gave me a packet and I tried to make a pot one evening. I'm not sure how, but I guess the main things would be the soup base, ingredients and the noodles.

Soup Base
Chicken breast, with bones
Ginger, one thumb size nob, smacked with a knife
Salt
Chicken powder

Boil for an hour, skimming off any excess oil or scum. Remove chicken and ginger.

Ingredients
Shitake mushrooms
Pork shoulder, sliced
Cai xing
Toufu fish cakes, sliced

Put everything into the soup base and boil until pork slices are cooked. Adjust flavour accordingly, it should be slightly more salty than usual to balance out the bland noodles.

Noodles
Put raw noodles in a big bowl, pour boiling water into it and swish it around for a few seconds before pouring away the water. Run under cold water for a few seconds and set aside.

When the soup is ready, add in the noodles and boil for not longer then a minute. Serve!

It's delicious, easy to make, and everybody in the family loved it. Definitely a recipe to keep!

Miss CoCo's Virgin Mooncake

Took a leap of faith and made my very first batch of mooncakes. Well, the first batch was made from a recipe I read on the newspaper, by some chef at Capella hotel. No offence, but it turned out like crap. Looks like I still have lots to learn, I'll summarize all my learning points at the end of the blog.

Since I've already bought a whole kilo of white lotus paste, might as well try again, so I searched the web for a recipe for traditional mooncakes, (only from trustworthy bloggers this time) and found this recipe from Anhsfoodblog. Turns out quite ok, but I did make some slight adjustments.

Here's what we need:

Skin:
120g golden syrup
40g cooking oil
160g plain flour
½ tsp Alkaline water (or lye water) (I don't like)
¼ tsp baking soda

Filling:
6 no. salted egg yolk, steamed (didn't bother to buy them)
white lotus paste

Eggwash:
1 egg beaten with a little milk

1. Preparing the skin - Combine the golden syrup, cooking oil together. Mix in the plain flour and stir until you have a smooth paste. Cover, leaving the dough to rest for a few hours.
2. Filling portion - Big mooncake - wrap 50g : filling 130g Small mooncakes wrap 25g : filling 35g
3. Wrapping – this steps requite a bit of practice. Make sure when you wrap the filling, no additional flour is around. Start by flatten dough slightly with your hand, then put the filling ball in the middle. Gently wrap the dough all around the filling with smoothing and rounding motion. Be gentle not to break the skin.
4. Shaping – Gently dust the mould with flour, the tap off any excess. Very lightly, dust the ball with a little flour. Press the mooncake ball into the mould. Knock the mould to release the mooncake. Repeat with the rest.
5. Baking - Place the mooncakes onto the baking tray, lined with baking paper. Bake them in a preheated 200C oven for 7-10 minutes.
6. Take the tray out, and wait until the cakes cool down for 30 minutes. Use a pastry brush, brush a light coat of eggwash onto the mooncake (just the top, don’t brush on the side of the cake). Return the tray to the oven, and bake for further 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
7. MOST IMPORTANT - Let the mooncake rest for at least 3 days before consumption. In Cantonese, we called it 出油, where the oil from the lotus paste and yolk would slowly seep into the mooncake skin, making it shiny and soft.

So with that in mind, next year when you are buying mooncakes, please don't ask the vendor if it's fresh, because there's no such thing as a "fresh" mooncake. Freshly baked mooncakes are hard and dry and terrible in taste!

So with that in mind, here are my notes for making home-made mooncakes:

1. Prepare early, minimum 1.5 months! As mentioned earlier, you need to keep freshly baked mooncakes for at least 3 days. Also, traditional mooncakes need a special sugar syrup that's made at least a few days to a few months in advance. The sugar syrup would darken over time and the brown syrup would contribute to the rich brown colour of the skin. My dad used to own a bakery and they would make the syrup at least 6 months in advance! Seriously!
2. Add salted egg yolk. It doesn't matter if you like yoke or not, you should add it anyway. The oil from the yolk would slowly seep into the skin, adding flavour and improving texture.
3. Use good quality paste. On top of flavour, good quality paste also have higher oil content, so again, contributing to the oiling of your mooncake skin.
4. Dough should be wet. If your dough is wet and damn difficult to wrap the paste, you probably got it right. They never said it was easy! 
5. Eggwash - Go easy! If you brush on too much, the delicate pattern on the mooncake would be distorted.

I guess that's it. I've definitely underestimated the complexity of making a traditional baked mooncake. It's so simple yet difficult all at the same time! I would learn from this and make even better ones next year. But seriously, if you aren't a baking enthusiast, it's not worth the effort. Go buy a box and enjoy! Leave all these craziness to the crazy ones. :)

By the way, I'm submitting this very special post to Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011). Hope all readers enjoy my little post!

CoCo's Sausage and mushroom thin crust pizza

Was at my wit's end as usual, wondering what to cook for lunch when I remembered that I bought a packet of wholemeal wraps a few days ago.

So I decided to make a little home made thin crust pizza.

It's basically a pizza even people who can't cook can make.

1. For the tomato sauce base, I spread on some pasta sauce from a jar. 
2. Next I sprinkled on a generous heap of shredded cheese. Yumz~!
3. Lastly, put on whatever ingredients you like, which was some sausages and mushrooms. 
4. Bake the pizza in an oven at 200 degrees celcius for just 10-15mins, which is just enough to melt the cheese and make the crust crispy. Cut and serve!

Unfortunately, my 2 year old wasn't very enthusiastic with the pizza, but I really liked it! It really tasted like those restaurant style thin-crust pizza. I polished off the whole thing myself! Sigh, now I have to go make something else for the little princess... -_-

Holland Village XO Fish Head Bee Hoon

Hubby and I would often dine here back when I was working around Clementi. Back then, it was located near Holland Village, hence the name. We haven't eaten there since they've moved, which was also around the same time I left that job to become a stay-at-home mom. One Saturday, we had a craving for some of it's soupy goodness, so we found out it's new location and headed there for dinner.

Obviously their signature dish is their XO fish head bee hoon, but they also have one of the best 虾酱鸡 (prawn paste fried chicken) in Singapore. So that definitely is a MUST-TRY dish.

The prawn paste flavour wasn't too heavy and salty like in most ze char stores, and it's served pipping hot to your table, so when you squeeze the lime juice all over the chicken, it makes a slight "sssssss" sound. It's yummy on it's own, but dip it in their special chilli sauce just for this dish, and it would be close to heaven. The chicken is crispy on the outside, and yet oozing with juices when you take a bite. Shiok!!!

By the time you are halfway through your chicken, your XO bee hoon would have arrived. As you would have guessed, they are famous for putting a generous amount of XO liquor into the soup. I'm not into hard liquor, but I love the soup. It's incredibly sweet from all the fish meat and bone and all, plus there's a nice fragrance from the XO that seemed to enhance the fish flavour of the soup. I'm not a fish head person, so we always order the fish meat bee hoon.

As you can see, they are very generous with the fish. Each piece is a huge chunk of sweet meat that isn't dry on the inside. Also, I love that they put loads of vegetables in the soup (it's at the bottom of the bowl). Healthy! :) Their thick bee hoon isn't your average hawker centre type that's semi-translucent and super slippery. It's actually white in colour and slightly rough. My dad once told me that these are actually how bee hoon and kway teow use to be like in the past. Using a higher percentage of rice flour, thus, more flavour and texture.

So the combination of good quality bee hoon, chunky sweet meat, fresh vegetables and a crazy sweet soup base, what's not to love about this dish??

Dover Coffee Hub
Blk 19A, Dover Crescent
#01-05, Singapore 131019

Mooncakes 2011

Mooncake festival is here again! This year we bought our mooncake from Vivo City, rather than the usual fair at Takashimaya. As usual, we tried out most of the mooncakes at the fair and finally decided on two brands. For my parents, Cobby bought from Huating, Orchard Hotel. This year, I bought a box from Mandarin for my mother-in-law. She doesn't like mooncakes, so I've never bought her a box before. But I just wanted to buy something for her. What the heck, we can all eat it after the dinner right?

Anyway, other than the taste, I think that the packaging makes a whole lot of difference when it comes to mooncake shopping. Afterall, the best mooncakes taste very similar. If, as a reputable hotel's restaurant, your mooncake does taste like crap, I think you can just jump off from the hotel itself. So, the deciding factor, after the taste, would be how pretty your packaging is. Afterall, everybody buys mooncakes for SOMEONE else, looks matters.

Orchard Hotel, Huating
Baked mooncake with macadamia nuts and white lotus paste S$42.00

My sister bought a box for my parents from Peninsula Hotel, baked mooncakes with red lotus paste.

There was quite a debate over who's mooncake tasted better, but as my dad had a sweeter tooth, he claimed that the red lotus paste tasted better. He said that their lotus paste is more oily, making it more smooth.

He claims the one on the left is more shiny... can you tell?

Hubby stuck with my choice and said that mine tasted better. As for my brother, well, it all tasted the same to him. -_- Me? I think both tasted great, but different. Hey, different type of lotus paste! Anyway, next year I'm buying red lotus paste mooncake for dad. -_-

For my mother in law, I bought this:
Mandarin Orchard
Baked mooncake with macadamia nut and low sugar white lotus paste, S$50.00

Like I said, I've never bought her mooncakes before, but turned out to be a good decision as the mooncake was delicious! We were blown away by the giant macadamia nuts inside the mooncake.

Usually they would chop it up into small bits, but Mandarin left it in quite big chunks. And it was toasted, so it was very fragrant! It was perfect with the mooncakes, in fact, it tasted like a nutty candy bar. Very different from a regular mooncake, so I really liked it.

All in all, a very satisfying mooncake festival. :)

Uno Beef House

One day, while heading to our favourite bak chor mee store at Toa Payoh, I just wasn't in the mood for noodles, but my hubby was. It's been a long time since I've had a decent coffee-shop western food, so I gave the western food store next door a shot. The store seemed quite confident of itself, taking up almost half of the whole coffee-shop space. As I stood there, looking at the menu for their steaks, I was shocked to find out that the cheapest cut, which was a sirloin, was a whopping S$11.00.

What?? Has it been that long since I ate western at a coffee-shop? Am I that suaku? Is it inflation? Or has the stall owner gone mad? I wanted walk away, but then I thought, maybe, they are so good, that they are confident enough to charge that ridiculous price at a neighborhood coffee-shop? I was intrigued. So I ordered the beef sirloin and waited.

As I waited at my table, the staff gave me my cutlery. Haha, so nostalgic!

When my dish arrived a few minutes later, another wave of nostalgic hit me. The hot plate cow! It's been so long since I've had a steak served in a hot plate cow! Haha... But after the initial "awww...", a delicious looking steak appeared. Looks promising!

When I ordered, I noticed that they don't serve fries, which kind of bugged me. I love my fries with my steak! But then I noticed this little ball on the plate. When I cut it open, it turned out to be mash potatoes, rolled into a ball, and fried! And it was YUMMY! Ooo... I could eat a few of those!

Next comes the ultimate test, how was the meat? I ordered medium, but was skeptical that a neighbourhood stall cook could achieve that. When I cut the meat right in the middle, my skepticism was confirm. It was almost rare! A little disappointed, but I didn't expect much, so I just carried on eating from the side of the steak. But I was super impressed a few minutes later. As I was eating, the hot plate continued to cook the meat, soon, the meat became PERFECTLY cooked.

Genius! They intentionally under-cook the steak! Oh by the way the meat was quite tender, the pepper sauce was tasty, not too spicy, so it didn't overpower the beef. Other than the beans (which I didn't like), it was a very satisfying meal. Definitely worth going back again. Next time, I'll even try their more expensive steaks!

Uno Beef House
Block 51, Lorong 5 Toa Payoh,
#01-60 Singapore
Opens Daily: 11.30am – 10.30pm

Almond and vanilla biscotti

Teacher's day is here! To celebrate my daughter's very 1st Teacher's Day celebration, I made some Almond Biscotti for her two teachers. To thank them for taking such good care of my baby girl!

I found a recipe from one of my cookbooks, Donna Hay - Modern Classics Book 2

We'll need :
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup blanched almonds
3 eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 160C.
2. Place flour, baking powder, sugar and almonds in a bowl and mix together. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well to form a dough. Divide the dough into two.
3. Place dough on a lightly floured surface. The dough would be quite wet and sticky, so dust your hands with flour and shape into two logs and flatten it slightly.
4. Place logs on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper and bake for 35minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

5. Using a sharp knife, cut the logs into thin slices and placed on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper.

6. Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until the biscotti are crisp.
7. Store in an airtight container and serve dunked into espresso coffee or liqueur. Makes 40.

Since it was a present, I placed them into airtight ziplock bags and wrapped them in pink tissue paper. There enough for the both of them, plus some for our own enjoyment! Yums!

Happy Teacher's Day! Hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Pancakes with banana and pecan caramel sauce

As you know I LOOOVE pancakes, so I'm constantly trying new things to either put inside the pancake. Then I wondered, how about making something to go ON TOP of the pancake for a change? So I decided to make a simple caramel sauce. (Slowly cook sugar and water together until golden brown - don't stir, swirl the pot if necessary, and add a whole chunk of cold butter)

I remembered this caramelized banana thingy that Gordon Ramsey once made for an ice cream topping, so I added some ripe bananas into it. Then I remembered that I had some pecan nuts in the fridge, so I poured it into the caramel sauce.

Hmmm looks good...

Next, the pancakes! Check out this ultra cute starship trooper pancake spatular that my sis bought for me from New York. CUTE OR WHAT?!?! It's all these adorable kitchenware that makes cooking even more fun!

Well, turns out that the nuts weren't very nice. I think next time I wouldn't buy from Phoon Huat. It doesn't taste very fresh, so it affected the flavour of my sauce. But minus the nuts, it was delicious! Will try again next time with better quality ingredients. :)

Peramakan

We were at Vivo City the other day, so we headed to the Peramakan Restaurant at the Keppel Club near the area. Of course, that is if you are driving.

If you are craving for some authentic, spicy, rich, Peranakan cuisine, this place is one of the best place to go.

Ikan Garam Assam $16.00. Red snapper fillets cooked in a spicy garam assam gravy with brinjals and ladyfingers.

Spicy and sour, this dish is great with rice. Makes me salivate just thinking about it. I love to mix the gravy with their rice and gobble down with the fresh, fleshy fish. Not a great fan of lady fingers, but I love the brinjals. I do wish they would put more vegetables in the dish. My mom would put loads of other vege like onions and tomatoes. :)

Beef Rendang $14.00. Shin beef braised till tender in spicy coconut gravy. Served with serondeng (toasted spiced coconut).

OMG this is one of my utmost favourite dish, a MUST-ORDER whenever I go there. Usually, people would use a more lean meat when cooking beef rendang, but Peramakan decided to be brilliant and used the shin instead. The result? The meat would practically MELT in your mouth as the tendons in between the tender meat is cooked till jelly-like.

*quivers....*
But like all Peranakan dishes, it is very 'jelak', which means very rich and heavy. Due to all the coconut milk, oil and spices used during cooking, don't be surprised at how full you feel after the meal even though you didn't eat much.

Sambal Kangkong $10.00. Water convulus stir-fried with dry prawn sambal (Sambal Udang Kering).

Of course, we should always have a balanced meal by eating loads of vegetables! :) Since my baby girl isn't with us, we went all out and ordered a spicy vege dish too. Nothing new, but I just love the taste.

Chendol $5.00. Home-made chendol with tender kidney beans, topped with shaved ice, gula melaka and coconut milk.

Bubor Pulot Hitam $4.00. Black glutinuous rice is cooked till tender and served with gula melaka and coconut cream.

Interestingly, even though peranakan desserts are one of the most awesome, next to Thai ones, Peramakan's desserts were only so-so. The Chendol wasn't that fantastic, and so was the bubor pulot hitam that I ordered.

Peramakan
Level 3, Keppel Club
10 Bukit Chermin Road
Singapore 109918

Tel: 65 63772829
Fax: 65 62727585

Open everyday, including Sundays and public holidays for lunch and dinner.

Lunch: 11:30 am to 3:00 pm (last order: 2:30 pm)
Dinner: 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm (last order: 9:30 pm)
http://www.peramakan.com

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Dad decided to come over to my place one day to make some Pandan Cakes. I guess that's our way to bond, we love to bake stuff! :) The problem was that he was a professional baker, well, he used to own a bakery, self taught, so his style of baking is more, free style. Me, being the anal one, likes everything to be perfect. So it was... challenging. Haha...

So anyway, I got this recipe from someone else, but it was altered, so I'll just called it mine. :)

PART A:
3 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
60g oil
70g coconut milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon pandan juice
1/2 teaspoon pandan essence
100g cake flour

PART B:
5 egg whites
50g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Yields 4 small cakes

1. Preheat oven 180C.
2. Mix everything in PART A together, except for the cake flour. Sift flour into batter until combine.
3. Whisk everything in PART B until stiff and glossy.
4. Add 1/3 of the whisked egg whites into the pandan batter to get a light green batter. Gently fold rest of the egg whites into the pandan batter.
5. Pour the batter into the cake tins. Give the tins a few sharp bangs on the table to release the trapped air bubbles.
6. Place the tins into the oven at the lowest rack for about 45 minutes , or until the crust is golden brown.
7. When the baking is done, overturn the tins and let it cool.
8. To remove the cake, use a sharp knife and with one movement, separate the sides of the cake from the tins.