7 Dec 2013
En Jap Grill and Bar Skewer Buffet - Grilled delicacies
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| To celebrate my Mum's birthday, I suggested treating her to a buffet. Despite being out of the way, I picked En Jap Grill and Bar as the venue, which was located at UE Square. The place had a relaxing vibe and the restaurant was conducive and easy for conversation. Picking a buffet meal to celebrate my mum's birthday was quite a horrible choice as she hardly eat much! (My brother and I felt that we were wasting our money...) It was my second visit and having the skewer buffet here, which made me experienced enough to know what to order in plentiful or in minimum. Click here to read about my first visit! |
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| The platter of fresh sashimi, average thickness, for 4 of us. (One time order only) There were no fishy smell at all and I hoped I could have free flow of them! |
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| Salad with thinly sliced pork! I hoped they were more generous with the pork slices as we did not want to order another serving of salad just for it. |
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| Basically all the skewers were grilled on the spot and could be seen through the glass panel that separates the diners and the cooks. I felt that the open concept kitchen definitely made the cooks more stress! There were hits and misses and the quality were not exactly consistent. Our favourites were obviously the grilled beef (not shown here), scallops and salmon skewers as they were simply delicious with natural juices emitting from them. |
5 Dec 2013
Experiment : Choux with Salted Yolk Custard
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| Just a quick post of my choux pastry I did quite some time ago! I decided to experiment with salted egg yolk to incorporate into my custard cream to mimic the all-time popular 'liu sa bao' found in Chinese restaurants serving Dim Sum. Baked some really nice looking oblong shaped choux pastry to hold the custard cream. |
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| The standard custard cream recipe with salted egg yolk! I actually bought 4 salted eggs but ended up using only 2. You know why? 2 were bad, I dam 'sway' right? Visible bits of salted egg yolk in there. I should have boiled the eggs before using the food processor to blend them into paste, prior to adding into my custard cream. My bad. |
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| My yummy looking eclairs with salted yolk custard cream! I may want to experiment and modify the recipe next time when I have the time... |
29 Nov 2013
Artisan Boulangerie Co. - Bread and Savoury Fix
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| I wasn't born to be a bread lover, often avoiding bread during breakfast, not until I was attached to the bakery section of my internship place for 2 months with Lawrance. While learning to make bread, I felt the distance between me and bread being pulled slightly closer and I learnt to accept and appreciate bread now. Ryan, who taught us to make bread suggested that we try the kind-of-newly-opened Artisan Boulangerie Co., which is a bakery led by award winning French baker, Eran Mayer. The products are made by artisan techniques (from scratch by hand), can be said to be quite uncommon in Singapore. After work that day, we headed over to Orchard and took a shuttle bus to Great World City. |
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| The outlet had great lighting for photography which food bloggers like me would look for. After being amazed by the selections of bread and savoury products available, we spend quite some time on deciding the suitable lucky dough that would end up in our tummy. Thankfully the pretty staffs were really patient with us and I must compliment them for their great costumer service too! Ryan picked the Ciabatta, known literally as the slipper bread, topped with half a capsicum, cucumber slices and a pile of micro-greens. I guessed the bright red colour of the bell pepper and those greens were for colour contrast against the dull white-brown crust of the ciabatta. They act as a crunch as well as a value-adding element to the bread too. The large piece of flat oblong shape bread had a crisp exterior and a soft doughy, slightly chewy interior. |
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| My first target would definitely be the quiche as I just love savoury food. Due to limited choices, I ended up picking the Smoked Salmon & Dill Quiche. I was kind of surprised that my quiche came with salad with sweet-sour vinaigrette dressing that could cleanse my taste buds. I was thankful that the quiche was only lightly salted by the few small pieces of smoked salmon visible. It was slightly cheesy inside and I tried to eat as slow as possible to savour it. (I could have easily eaten 3 pieces of quiche!) The crust was slightly thick, resulting in the inner layer of the tart being raw (unbaked). I only noticed that halfway through my meal as this happens when I had too much free time to admire my food in details. |
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| My other friend had the Tuna Stuffed Focaccia. It was a rustic piece of 'figure of 8' loaf and I guessed he wanted something filling enough to be his dinner. Although the sesame seeds were sprinkled rather randomly and unevenly, the perfect golden brown crust was really crispy! The interior was also light and naturally flavorful, if you understand what I meant. It was sliced in half and stuffed generously with tuna. This loaf was so photogenic that I had problem choosing the best 'pose'. (Sorry, can't see the tuna filling from this angle.) |
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| Both Ryan and Lawrance added on coffee which emitted a lovely aroma. The barista did a great job creating such an impressive coffee art which I would not bare to destroy if I had a cup too. (I did not order as I did not want to risk having insomnia that night.) |
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| Last but not least, we shared the Cafe, Passionfruit and Cassis (black current) Eclairs (From bottom to top)! 3 lovely stripes of colours on each eclairs depicting the flavor it contained and only the Cafe (coffee) was easily guessed right. The choux pastry were towards the hard and dry side (more water than milk (if any) used in the recipe?) and baked into a crisp dark brown hollow case. Our favorite was the Cafe, light in flavor and not overly sweet. Passionfruit was fruity and tangy, same as the more unique Cassis. Overall, the ambiance was not bad, great for a chilling out session or a romantic hi tea meal with partner. I was also thankful that I was dining with patient people as it took me about 15 minutes to finish taking pictures! |
25 Nov 2013
Xing Xing Odeh Odeh Tapioca Cake - Handmade kuehs
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| YAY! I had a weekday off that day and I decided to take a walk around the CBD area in search for desserts or snacks to munch on while most people were busy at work. I specially went to try the popular Tian Tian Chicken Rice for lunch before the lunch crowd outbreak and it was really tasty! I noticed a queue of aunties at this ondeh-ondeh ; tapioca cake outlet and ended up buying a couple of those chewy munchies. |
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| Peering through the glass pane, I noticed that only 4 snacks were sold here. The ingredients used were mainly tapioca, shredded coconut, palm sugar and obviously glutinous rice flour. I spotted the uncle behind making more of these snacks by hand and I basically bought everything to try! You don't always have to indulge in cakes and pastries to gain satisfaction as these kuehs were also yummy in their own ways. |
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| My top favorite was the tapioca cake, coated generously with shredded coconut! It was the softest tapioca cake I have ever eaten and I could barely hold the pieces upright without breaking them. The kueh kosui was firmer and chewier and had a wonderful aroma and taste of gula melaka (palm sugar). I was also addicted to this kueh. The odeh odeh / lor mai qi (glutinous rice balls) were like irregular ping pong balls (not exactly round though) with thin extremely stretchy skin. They were soft but too sticky as they kept annoyingly sticking to my fingers. The amount of coconut / peanut fillings were so generous that I found the peanuts too compact, resulting in cluster formation. The worst was the Ubi Kayu which I stopped after a mere bite. It was like eating into pure tapioca flesh, only mildly sweetened by a thin layer of sugar on top. |
18 Nov 2013
My Term 4 Plated Dessert Exam
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| My Term 4 has passed, and my exam that term was to create a plated dessert with 1 main component and 3 or more sub components. Total time taken was about 10 hours which was split into 2 days. The theme of my dessert is Fossil! Just a brief about my components below and I tried not to 'advertise' my own creation so much... |
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| Banoffee Ice cream (banana + toffee with digestive biscuits for extra crunch) coated with silky chocolate glaze, giving a gooey texture as the ice cream melted within. |
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| One of the criteria was to plate 4 plates of similar dessert and here's my picture of 2! |
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| My small choux filling was salted custard cream while my big choux was salted hazelnut ganache. |
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| My osmanthus Jelly which I loved so much! Beautiful yellowish transparency with the flower and petals encased within. Those mint leaves gave extra minty flavor as well as colour! |
14 Nov 2013
Hifumi - Celebrating a birthday
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| Meeting out and gathering as a group would happen less occasionally nowadays since each of us have our own lifestyle and work commitments to concentrate on. The only thing that would pull us together would be a special occasion such as a birthday or a public holiday like Christmas which would be approaching real soon! Anyway, we were still procrastinating on where should we have our dinner that day. I ended up recommending Hifumi since they have the concept of free flow appetizer when you ordered a main course. I just love the feel of Jap display... |
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| I love capturing simple images of minimalist objects such as this unique shape bowl containing my chawanmushi. I was utterly stunned by its silky smooth texture, although the bottom half felt kind of powdery. |
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| Among all the appetizers available, this was our favorite! Glazed with sugary sweetness, these sweet potato fries were so addictive that we shared a rather huge serving! |
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| Let me show you guys the 4 main courses which we ordered! Random tossing of unagi, salmon, prawns, egg, cucumber and roes! Just the colours itself was so attractive! |
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| Thick but slightly dry pork cutlet embedded among moist and fluffy eggs! My second time having this dish! My first visit can be found here! |
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| Swirly melted cheese fusing with Japanese curry rice! The surface definitely looked like it was torched (char parts spotted). |
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| Rather spicy curry chicken with vegetables fusion! Something which I would not have ordered... |
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| Happy birthday!!! So many people were staring at us while we took pictures as we were making a hell lot of noises (laughter) at a cafe. We were having fun among ourselves that those stares were oblivious to us, LOL! |
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| Posing with our printed polariod shots! The group shot was a tough one as we tried not to waste any films or els someone would be angry... |
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| Had many shots but these were the best 3! |
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| Cheers! |