ten-ele-ven

Chez Tang: Chicken Fricassee, et al.

I wish I had purchased a DSLR camera much earlier to take better photos of the mind-blowing meals that TBH and I have been eating at the Tangs over the last couple of years.

We learnt how to ‘eat well’ at their home. By ‘eating well’, I mean developing a discerning palate as to what is good quality western/european food. Thank you so much.

Many restaurants serving such cuisine here either serve poor quality food or are simply not providing the high quality fare (and service) that their eyebrow-raising prices call for. There are only a couple of places here which I personally feel have a respectable price-quality ratio.

For dinner last evening, we had a delicious chicken fricassee (with mushrooms, Ratte potatoes, onions and celery root), accompanied by a bottle of Lenz merlot. We sopped up the lovely sauce with hot, crusty baguette.

This was followed by slushy orange granita with Campari (refreshing in the hot weather) and a decadent three-layer (bittersweet, milk, white) chocolate mousse for dessert.

As usual, we had a good time chatting over dinner. Especially now that the kids are older and are good fun to talk to.

But we had to help them with their Chinese homework first – not that we were of much help since we are quite useless where written Chinese is concerned – and it is horrifying to know how much harder school is now.

Braised Carrots Lunch

Yay! I am finally out of work hell. Okay, not entirely but the light at the end of the tunnel is glowing quite brightly now.

Feeling relieved and somewhat light-hearted, I was in the mood to make lunch today.

Roast chicken thigh, carrots braised in butter and home-made beef stock (which has been sitting in my freezer forever), mesclun salad with a Japanese dressing.

Why doesn’t my chicken brown nicely…?!

Actually, what I really like is the braised carrots and the tasty braising stock sweetened by the carrots. So for me, the chicken and the salad are just accompaniments-for-the-carrots.

And almost everytime TBH sees carrots on his plate, he’ll ask his “rhetorical” question: “Do you know why western carrots are orange in colour…?”

Argh.

Bali: Bedugul

On the first day of Chinese New Year, we took a half-day trip to Bedugul, a mountain town in centre-north of Bali.

It was a bumpy but scenic, 1.5 hour drive from where we were in Ubud to Bedugul. We saw beautiful rice terraces on our way up and the scenery felt somewhat surreal.

In Bedugul, we enjoyed the cool mountain air, saw the Ulun Danu Temple at Lake Bratan, and strolled along the lake. The place is quite touristy and was crowded with so many visitors that day.

We visited the nearby fruit-and-vegetable market where I bought an assortment of freshly-made chips (tapioca chips, banana chips, sweet potato chips), spicy karopok and rice crisps.

The market also had several stalls selling beautiful flowering plants and orchids. We saw a few which we would have liked to bring home but couldn’t. We were hoping to visit the Botanical Gardens just a short drive away but it started to pour and that put an end to our plans.

Pretty place. If only there were fewer people.

Other Posts On Bali:
Bali: From Ubud With Love
Bali: The Chedi Club
Bali: What We Ate
Bali: Adorable Creatures We Saw
Bali: The Padi Field Walk

Orange Cake For Gramps

I baked my grandparents an orange loaf cake (the recipe called for some Grand Marnier)today.

They have a daily habit of eating afternoon tea at 3pm – a cup of teh with biscuits, or kuehs, or cakes from the bakery and when I was still a student living with them, pancakes!

According to the recipe book Paris Sweets, the French call such cakes le goûter (how to pronounce this…?) – a little something, often sweet, to tide one between lunch and dinner, usually taken between 4 and 6 PM (basically, afternoon tea).

It is my first time trying out this recipe and I hope the cake tastes alright.

Bali: Adorable Creatures We Saw

When we arrived at Ibu Oka (the second outlet, not the main one), we were half-expecting to see a crowd and a long queue.

What we did not expect was to be greeted by the number of CUTE chicks darting around the main driveway. They had been dyed in a variety of bright colours like vermillion, yellow, green, turquoise and fushia pink. I couldn’t catch hold of one in my hands – they were simply too fast.

In addition to the colourful chicks, the eatery also keeps a puppy, two tiny kittens, rabbits, chickens, hamsters and dogs. The two tiny kittens shared a cage with the puppy and all three were happily playing with each other in the cage.

It was feeding time when we arrived and we crowded around the cage to watch the kittens being fed milk from a straw by one of the staff (or owners) while the chicks and chickens were feeding from a plate of rice grains.

I mentioned that there are many birds in the Chedi Club and some are kept in cages. This particular white bird (a pigeon, I think) will continuously coo and bow at you when you stand in front of it. Like a mechanical wind-up bird!

And when we walk around the cage, it will follow us inside the cage and at the same time, coo and bow at us continuously, all the while looking at us solemnly. I wonder how the bird was trained to do this.

Other Posts On Bali:

Bali: From Ubud With Love
Bali: The Chedi Club
Bali: What We Ate
Bali: Bedugul
Bali: The Padi Field Walk

Bali: What We Ate

Foodie friends have been telling me about how we must go to eat at several places in Ubud – Ibu Oka (babi guling), Babek Bengil (crispy duck), Naughty Nuri’s (char-grilled ribs and potent vodka martinis). One of the resort staff also recommended that we visit Ibu Mangku who is well-known for her spicy fried chicken.

So we did. We went to all these places with our friends. And ate way too much for our own good.

All are local eateries with a laid-back atmosphere, menus scribbled in chalk on blackboards and great food at very affordable prices. I should also add “warm, no air-conditioning and mosquito-infested”.

Ibu Oka

“Pisah”.

A plate of rice, crackling babi guling skin with a thick, unctuous layer of fat, slices of tender pork accompanied by a very addictive spicy sauce and other fixings like blood sausages, deep-fried-something and vegetables.

Ibu Mangku

Nasi Ayam Kedewalan.

A plate of rice, a stick of satay, a small hunk of fried chicken (never mind that it was chicken breast which I am not particularly fond of), hard-boiled egg and all the delicious toppings of chili and fried bits (I had no patience to figure out what they were).

My braces “snapped” while I was shovelling nasi ayam into my mouth. I have no idea why, but my braces seem to always “give way” whenever I eat chicken (the last time it happened at Chin Chin Chicken Rice).

Naughty Nuri’s

The photos didn’t do the ribs any justice. The place was dark and I was too hungry to try harder.

This is basically an open-air, dingy-looking hut by the road and they cook slabs and slabs of pork ribs on a small charcoal grill in full view of the customers.

Nothing naughty about this place except that they serve a mouth-watering rack of char-grilled ribs and a very very mean vodka martini and margarita. I could barely walk straight after a glass of each.

Most joints serve ribs using a marinade that taste just sweet. But here, the ribs have a deep, complex and smoky flavour (from the charcoal grill, no doubt) and the meat is so succulent and tender, it falls off the bones easily. I savoured every bit of the ribs with my hands so that I could lick my fingers afterwards.

Problem with this place is that the smoke from the grill is so thick, I had difficulty getting rid of the smell from my hair even after two washes.

Babek Bengil (also known as Dirty Duck Diner)

Nasi Campur Bebek.

The first time I ate this was at its outlet in Jakarta and I didn’t find the famous crispy duck tasty. Also, the duck was too hard for me to bite into with my braces so I skipped it this time but TBH tried it and did not find it spectacular.

We also pre-ordered the babek betutu which is smoked duck stuffed with Balinese spices and wrapped in banana leaf. I thought it was very good. If I ever visit Dirty Duck again, I will definitely want to order this and skip the crispy duck altogether.

Chedi Club

During our first visit, we ate in most of the time because the restaurant does a very good nasi goreng and mee goreng. I ate mee goreng at least once a day and there were other days when I ate it for all three meals.

Both dishes still taste very yummy.

Breakfast

Fruits and bircher muesli (which I love).

It wasn’t all sinful food that I ate at every meal. Breakfast was healthy.

I also ate passionfruit for the first time in my life on this trip. Why have I not eaten passionfruit before, I don’t know.

Whatever the case, I definitely need to go on a “‘detox diet” over the next couple of weeks.

DO NOT ask me out for lunch!

Other Posts On Bali:
Bali: From Ubud With Love
Bali: The Chedi Club
Bali: Adorable Creatures We Saw
Bali: Bedugul
Bali: The Padi Field Walk

Bali: The Chedi Club

We like coming to Bali. TBH has been here 6 times and me 4 times. Our last visit together was four years ago in early 2006. We’ve stayed in several places in Bali and our present favourite is Ubud.

Kuta (icks, downright horrid). Jimbaran Bay, a really pretty spot where we ate grilled seafood on the beach, enjoyed the ocean breeze and watched the sun go down (that was before a bomb landed on the beach).

This visit, we returned to The Chedi Club, Tanah Gajah in Ubud, where we stayed for the first time during our last visit to Bali. I think we both fell in love with this place the moment we set foot onto the estate.

The Chedi Club is a sprawling, some 5-acre, verdant estate that is privately owned by a prominent Indonesian architect. The grounds are beautifully manicured and have a rustic feel to it.

Villas are surrounded by a variety of plants and trees, birds in cages, stone carvings of elephants and frogs, flowing streams and the ubiquitous lotus ponds.

What is most picturesque about the estate is the huge expanse of rice fields encircling it, some owned by the the Chedi Club and others belonging to rice farmers.

Restaurant, Chedi Club

Green rice fields greet us at the restaurant (which is really a long dining hall) where we have our meals, when soaking our feet before a massage (and during yoga), when we put up our feet to read a book in one of the day-beds in the lounge and when we wander around the estate.

It is very quiet, relaxing and restful here. We are more likely to hear a bird than a human, not that we are complaining! Which is what we wake up to every morning – birds chirping or sometimes, geckos clicking away!

And you can’t shut these chaps up like you do with an alarm clock.

Other Posts On Bali:
Bali: From Ubud With Love
Bali: What We Ate
Bali: Adorable Creatures We Saw
Bali: Bedugul
Bali: The Padi Field Walk

Bali: From Ubud With Love

Happy Chinese New Year!

How are we spending the first day of CNY and V-day?

We are making a half-day trip to Bedugul with another couple friend of ours staying in the same resort.

It is really hot and humid out here!

Other Posts on Bali:
Bali: The Chedi Club
Bali: What We Ate
Bali: Adorable Creatures We Saw
Bali: Bedugul
Bali: The Padi Field Walk

Reunion Dinners

Pen cai (or poon choy), Tunglok Classics

We had our reunion dinners this weekend. With my side of the family – at Mom’s place. With my in-laws – at Imperial Treasures.

For reunion dinner with my in-laws, we usually have steamboat (which I love…!) but we decided to eat out this year to give my mother-in-law some respite from looking after her new-born grand-daughter. We had a very tasty dinner at Imperial Treasures but it just cannot beat having steamboat dinner at home.

My mom, who is not big on steamboat or eating out, prefers to whip up a few home-cooked dishes for reunion dinner. I have always wanted to try the Cantonese dish called pen cai (I often saw this in the TVB dramas that I used to watch many moons ago) so this year, I suggested to Mom that we order a takeaway pen cai from Tunglok.

It was quite a hit with everyone at home, especially Mom who is fond of dried oysters, baby abalone, scallops, mushrooms, sea cucumber, etc and pen cai had most of her favourites in one pot. It made her even happier that she could keep the huge claypot that came with the pen cai.

Me, I wanted only that pile of fa cai (which vanished by the time I was done with taking photos of food on the table, damn it!), deep-fried pig’s skin….and the thick, luscious gravy!

Apart from pen cai, Mom also made pig’s trotters in vinegar, chap chye, lotus root and peanut soup.

And tossed yusheng from Tunglok as well…it was disappointing though.

And now, I am all ready for that huge bout of Monday blues.

Sprinkles – From Clarence Ville

Last year, a good friend brought back half-a-dozen Red Velvet cupcakes (light chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting) from Sprinkles in San Francisco (Palo Alto, to be exact) for me to try.

Lucky me!

Otherwise, it may be a very long time coming before I have the chance to eat these cupcakes as Sprinkles does not yet have outlets in this part of the world – which is where I usually travel to (well, I see Tokyo listed as an upcoming location for another outlet on their website…but I don’t visit Tokyo that frequently).

The cupcakes looked a wee bit bruised, having been on the plane for hours and man-handled by customs at the airport.

I couldn’t wait till I reached home to sink my teeth into the cupcakes so I ate one as I was driving home, scattering cake crumbs in the car, with TBH squawking away.

The cupcakes were terribly good. Moist, dense and very rich.

My friend also bought the Red Velvet cupcake mix and made her own cupcakes at home. The home-made ones were decadently YUMMY too.

They were my dinner tonight.

Pig’s Trotters In Vinegar

My sister-in-law’s mom-in-law made this for my niece’s one-month old party and it was delicious. It was cooked in the sweet-ish style that I like (as opposed to the sourish sort). I have to learn how to make this!

While I was happily chomping away on pig’s trotters at the party, someone commented that pig’s trotters in vinegar are meant for women in confinement and since I like eating this dish so much, I should have a baby.

I really ‘see no light’ in this comment. It was a good thing that my mouth was too full of pig’s trotters for me to say something caustic in return.

Look Pet, A Cat!

If I ever decide to keep a pet, it will have to be a CAT.

I have even thought of possible names! Like ‘Kimchi’. Or ‘Ninja’. Or my childhood favourite, ‘Socks’.

On the way to breakfast on Sunday, we saw this beautiful cat curl itself up, napping outside the Changi Village Food Centre.

A plate of carrot cake later, we see the still napping cat in the same spot but fully stretched out.

Aiyo, this cat is so adorable and her face has so much character.

Right Pet?

School Days, Kway Chap

Garden Street Kway Chap, Serangoon Gardens Food Centre

Garden Street Kway Chap has always been my favourite place to go to for a kway chap fix. I know they are not the best in Singapore for kway chap but it is still one of the better ones around.

Our standard orders are eggs, DOUBLE servings of pig’s intestines, TAU POK, pork belly, pig’s skin, salted vegetables (or is it called pickled vegetables…??) and perhaps, the fish cake. I like the kway as it is thin and smooth, and I find the pig’s intestines very flavourful, but they could do to improve on the pig’s skin which is not sufficiently tender and tastes a little rubbery (but I still order it anyway!).

One of the reasons why I enjoy going to Garden Street is because it brings back good memories of my secondary school days. In those days, Garden Street was located at the former Blanco Court. After every exam or major test, my friend and I would go to Blanco Court and pig out on kway chap from this stall; always with a big glass of yummy sugarcane juice from the drinks stall next door to wash it all down.

It all sounds so inane now – what really is the big deal about eating kway chap at Blanco Court (as the husband will say)? But it was a big deal to us in those days, at least to me, and it is also reminiscent of good times spent with a very good friend.

Sheesh, I think I am turning into an old lady. I am beginning to sound like grandpa, always talking about the ‘good ole days’.