Sunday, December 27, 2009

Garlic Chicken Ham Portabello Baked Rice

Today is the final cook-out day as the long christmas holiday is ending. I decided to whip up a quick and easy Baked Rice as I got leftover yam rice and garlic chicken ham. Baked Rice is a derivative from French Au Gratin and is hugely popular in Singapore F&B restaurants like Swenson, Pastamania etc.

I dropped by neighbourhood NTUC scour all the offer items of the week - Leggo Pasta Baked Sauce ($3.95) and Portabello Mushroom ($2.95) to complete my baked rice creation. The baked rice come out great as the Leggo Pasta Baked Sauce is thicker than the normal Leggo Pasta Sauce as a result you can use it out of the bottle without the need to reduce it consistency. It is also ideal as a pizza base sauce as it's thick consistency will not cause your pizza base to become soggy.



Garlic Chicken Ham Portabello Baked Rice
  • 2 slice of Garlic Chicken Ham
  • 2 tablespoon of Leggo Pasta Baked Sauce
  • 1 Portabello Mushroom Thinly Sliced
  • 1 Bowl of Yam Rice
  • Mozzarella Cheese
Layer the yam rice evenly on the ceramic baking dish.Optionally, you can use any cooked grain like couscous, fried rice or plain rice. Next layer the portabello mushroom slice to cover the rice leaving some for back rice topping. Slice the 2 slices of Garlic Chicken Ham diagonally until you have 8 slices. Layer the ham on top of each other on top of the portabello mushroom slices. Next scoop the Leggo Pasta Baked Sauce and ensure the whole baking dish is covered evenly with sauce. Now add in the rest of the portabello mushroom slice and top it off with mozzarella cheese. Baked in toaster oven for 15 mins until the cheese browned then serve hot.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Chinese Drunken Chicken

A change of work environment had kept me so occupied that I'm close to announcing my retirement to the world of cooking. Despite that, the spirit of cooking still burning strong in me and I took the opportunity of this long christmas holiday weekend to whip up this dish - Chinese Drunken Chicken. It is a chinese cold dish whereby the chicken have trace of liquor. It is one of the most unique chinese cold dish, as the chicken was serve chill which debunk preconception that chicken only taste good when it is warm.



Chinese Drunken Chicken
  • 8 pcs of Chicken Mid-Wing (Thigh or Breast meat also goes well)
  • 3/4 cup of Chinese Medlar
  • 1/4 cup of Jujubes
  • 1 teaspoon of Salt
  • 1 tablespoon of Chinese Cooking Wine
  • 1 to 1/2 cup of Chinese Cooking Wine
  • 2 tablespoon of fish sauce or soya sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of honey (optional)
Wash the chicken to remove any excess blood and drain. Add in 1/4 cups of Chinese Medlar, 1 teaspoon of Salt and 1 tablespoon of Chinese Cooking into the chicken wings and marinate for at least an hour or 2. Then put the wings into a steamer and steam it for 1 to 2 hours until the wings is cooked tender and leave it to cool.

Now you prepare the chinese wine marinade that will be use to prepare the drunken chicken. Add 1 cup of chinese cooking wine and 2 tablespoon of fish sauce/soya sauce mix well. Crush the jujubes add it together with the rest of the Chinese Medlar into the wine marinade. Leave the marinade for 1 to 2 hours to let the Jujubes and Medlar flavor to diffuse into the chinese wine. 

After that slowly add in the steam wings into the wine marinade till the marinade cover the chicken completely and chill for 2 hours in the fridge before serving. This is optional, you can add in a tablespoon of honey into the wine marinade to add a sweet twist to the traditional dish.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Thickest Curry - Go! Go! Curry

Another Japanese franchise restaurant (Go! Go! Curry) have bare it fangs in B4 of ION Orchard, competing for a share of Singapore F&B pie with fellow Japanese restaurants Ginza Barin, Gindaco & Aoba. You will a LCD broadcasting in japanese about Go! Go! Curry exploits in other countries and the number of people queuing just to have a GO for their curry. As there isn't much a crowd that day, so we decide to give it a GO as well. 



We were offered a paper menu showing the wide options Go! Go! Curry offer. You will be stumble why they have so many classes (Healthy, Economy, Business & First) amidst the curry type selection. The class is actually determine the amount of rice you get for your curry type you select. You don't expect they will give you additional or bigger piece of Pork Katsu if you order First or Business Class. What you will be getting will be bigger rice serving as you go down the classes. From what we gather about Go! Go! Curry's curry gravy was made from organic onions and no sugar were added to sweeten the curry, only organic onions that were cooked under low heat until caramelized till pure sweetness is added to make Go! Go! Curry gravy and the color of the curry gravy is black reminding you of black sesame paste.



After browsing through the menu, we decide to have Grand Slam as it is the only curry selection with all the toppings offered in under one. So we happily order 2 set of Grand Slam ($18.50 SGD), least to our knowledge, we had opened a door to Jigoku (meaning Hell if translate from Japanese). Before our orders served, we noticed that Go! Go! Curry's curry gravy seem to be premium and they do not seem to serve it in abundance if compared to other curry rice I had in Waraku or Tampopo. So I order extra curry topping of $3.00 for both of us.  



When our Grand Slam was served to us, we got a shock of our life the sheer size of Grand Slam. Grand Slam is a Business Class ranking curry that imbued with all the curry toppings that is enough to feed 3 adults. Neighboring Go! Go! Curry patrons especially a particular Japanese family from opposite table were conversing and making reference to our pure boldness or foolishness to order Grand Slam.

With a do or die conviction, we grit our teeth and assault the curry like mountaineer assaulting Mt Everest. After drenching the extra curry gravy topping on the katsu, we scoop a big of the black curry to taste. Go! Go! Curry is the thickest curry gravy I ever tasted. The sweetness in the curry isn't those "artificial" sweetness you get from adding sugar. It is purely derived from the onions. The curry is rich in texture but in flavor department it is not overwhelming with curry spices that is prevailing in other curry rice offered in Singapore. 


.

It is a love or hate depending on individual as it is very thick until you sometimes find you might not have enough to last your whole meal. Luckily, we order extra curry gravy toppings to avert this issue. The chicken and pork katsu fried till very crispy while still maintaining it tender. My friend did complain the pork katsu too thin and do not have enough fat as compared to Tampopo. At this price with so much toppings, such omission is permissible as long the katsu is fresh and not dry. The sausage and the ebi fry doesn't impress me much. The hardboiled egg was overcook as you can see sulphur rings in them.

It took us quite a while to conquer this Mt Everest curry rice with my friend trailing behind barely alive. Go! Go! Curry is a unique curry rice on its own but if they are going to establish their roots in Singapore, they need to do better than just offering curry rice as Singaporean are fickle epicurean that crave for food variety and there are other major Japanese F&B are also offering varieties of curry rice.   

Tonkotsu Ramen Born From Chaos - Ippudo Mandarin Hotel

Last weekend, I grace the newly renovated Mandarin Hotel shopping mall section and discover fabled Ippudo Hakata Ramen Restaurant finally grace Singapore F&B scene. So I gather my usual makan kaki and attend the soft opening of Ippudo Singapore this weekend.



I went to Ippudo early at 5.30pm (the queue was pretty brisk) in hope of making a reservation, however they do not accept reservation at the moment. By 6.30pm my Kakis finally came but the queue had grew immensely snake-like long. Eventually, we persevered for 1 hour and managed to queue into waiting area in Ippudo where you get to chow on peanuts while perusing their menu. There are primarily 3 types of ramen type available for selection: Shiomaru Motoaji, Akamaru Motaji and Shoyu Ramen. I decide to settle for the Shiomaru as I want to taste the Tonkotsu soup in it untainted glory while my makan kaki opt for Akumaru tonkotsu soup blend with unique miso & garlic oil. We decide to go all out and order the both chashu version ($18.00 SGD) with Nitamago ($2.00 SGD) to test out all 



It not long until we are usher to our tables and the attendants took our order promptly. The wait for the ramen is pretty long considering they have a extensive open kitchen with considerable number of chef cooking. You can feel the disorientation in the Ippudo's operation with orders serve wrongly or clients complaining they being overcharge for their order.

Nevertherless, the wait was worth it when you see the ramen serve to you. The first rule in consuming ramen is to drink the ramen soup. Ippudo's Shiromaru Motaji tonkotsu ramen is the richest tonkotsu (pork bone) broth I ever tasted surpassing even Tampopo's tonkotsu. The broth is rich but not overwhelming like Marutama It is lightly flavoured to suit the tastebud of average Singaporean who prefer low salt consumption and I simply can have second helping to the tonkotsu broth if it is free LOL.

The ramen noodle serve in Ippudo is same as Marutama's belong to those thin category. It is a either love or hate for Ippudo's ramen noodle. I generally okay with it although I would prefer those thick ramen noodle with el dente feeling. If you order the charsiew version, you get about 9 slices of tender light flavored charsiew that compliment the ramen well as they are very tender and not salty like some I've tasted. The wood ear is rarely added as a topping in ramen sold in Singapore, it is interesting to find it serve as ramen topping in Ippudo. The only grouse I had with Ippudo's ramen is the Nitamago is too over cook, for those ramen fanatics hoping to taste those semi-cooked ramen egg yolk can forget about tasting it in Ippudo. 



The Akamaru Motaji Tonkotsu Ramen is simply the Shiromaru version added a teaspoon of their own blend of Aka (Red) miso and garlic oil. My friend allowed me to try a bit of the red miso, it is pleasantly sweet and I believed it will bring a tinge of sweetness to the broth while the garlic oil giving support artillery assault on your palate. I would say Ippudo is a strong contender to current ramen operator out there due to its ability to offer a ramen that is close to Singaporean palate while retaining its Japanese roots. Ipppudo Ramen is really "Tonkotsu Ramen Born From Chaos" as a lot improvement need to be done in operation efficiency which is severely lacking in their soft opening.