Food Review: Asian Kitchen @ Vivocity

Patronised this restaurant ever since my army days a few years ago. I love their food and service. Simple, fast, delicious. One item in their menu which I really really really loves is their Avocado Snow drink. I know, I had the same reaction as most you; WHAT?! AVOCADO?! NO WAY. But seriously, I do not know why I even tried that in the first place. After 1 small sip, that was it. I loved the drink sooooooo much! It was really awesome. It is quite thick and filling though, so I recommend you to share it or reduce your order of food if you are getting this drink.

Usually I would order the avocado drink, a soup noodle dish and their "Xiao Long Bao". This time, we ordered something different. I had my usually Avocado Snow, Xiao Long Bao and their Chilli Soft Shell Crab Noodle. She had her favorite Fried Rice with Prawns. The food was excellent in my opinion. It was served fresh. Did not take too long to be served. Good ambience. Total we spent $30. And we were extremely full. 

So ya, go ahead and try out Asian Kitchen, I recommend it. And please try the Avocado Snow, I hope you fall in love with the drink like me because it is totally that nice!

SimpleMakan

Recipe: Roast Turkey, Jamie Oliver's Recipe

Almost every year, for the past maybe 5 years, my parents will order turkey from the supermarkets during Christmas. It costs about $60 and they usually give you a cold cooked whole turkey with stuffing. We then re-roast this turkey at home and eat on Christmas. My family doesn't celebrate Christmas, but we just make Christmas an excuse to indulge in turkey. To me, all these pre-cooked frozen turkeys are really horrible. They have this slight stench and they obviously do not taste fresh and juicy at all. This year, I decided to take control and roast a whole turkey myself instead of buy these crap. My dad and mum were against it. They said it was too much effort and a waste of money. My mum has done it before and she knows it takes quite a bit of effort to self-roast an uncooked turkey. And after calculations, you will realize that the money spend on the ingredients alone is more that just buying a cooked turkey.

All these did not stop me from roasting my own turkey. Being a fan of Jamie Oliver, I went to his website and looked for his turkey recipe. I went to Cold Storage to buy all the ingredients because most of the ingredients from Jamie Oliver's recipes can only be found in big Cold Storage supermarkets.

The frozen uncooked turkey that we can buy here usually takes about 3 days to defrost in the refrigerator. I followed Jamie's recipe step by step and it was very easy. Of course there are some ingredients which were out of stock, like apricots and rosemary, so I didn't add them. But other than that, my recommendation is to read the recipe over and over again and mentally understand what you are going to do so that you can plan the next steps of your preparations and cooking. If you try to follow the recipe line by line, I think you might realize that some steps should have been done earlier and some should have been done later.

Here is where I got the recipe from: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/turkey-recipes/best-roast-turkey-christmas-or-any-time

Just want to let you all know, the turkey turned out AWESOME!!! It was really really good and I have totally no regrets spending the time and money making this. It was totally worth it and I will definitely do it again anytime. My family enjoyed it very much as well. Only sad thing is that we can't get fresh turkey in Singapore.

And here is a horribly blur photo of the turkey.

SimpleMakan

Food Review: Ying Yang Rooftop Bar

Went to Ying Yang Rooftop Bar on Christmas Eve with girlfriend and her friends. This place is near Ann Siang Road and located within Club Hotel. The place itself was very empty. I think it was because it was still very early. The ambience was not extremely cosy nor nice. It was just simple and clean. I did not really feel super comfortable there. It was just a chill-out place and thats it. We just had some drinks and shots. We ordered some food as well. The food was really freshly prepared and honestly, it was good. The serving was small, but I know from tasting that they just made it fresh when ordered and that is why it tasted quite good. Drinks wise, it is the usual but I would like to just remind you guys to ask for the price of drinks recommended by the waiters. We were ordering some shots and there was once, we asked the waiter to recommend us a drink and he recommended this drink called Choc Monk. It was good, but when the bill came, we realized it costed $52 per shot. Haha! So just remember to ask for the price first or you will be surprised in the end.

Overall, the place was fine. I would only go there if I do not have any other choice left.

SimpleMakan

Food Review: Chicken Rice Shop @ Causeway Point

First time trying out the food at Chicken Rice Shop. The place was quite empty when we first went in at about 12pm but the crowd soon flooded the shop by 12.30pm. Well, the food is really nothing special at all. We bought one set meal and shared. The rice was okay, it wasn't very flavorful though. The soup tasted normal. The chicken was normal as well. The vegetables and tofu was good though. I felt they were under-staffed and the staff were mostly foreigners and could not really understand english. They were also very slow in responding to requests and at many times, did not even know what I was talking about.

All in all, I would say give this place a miss. Nothing special, expensive, not tasty. I rather pay $5 at a coffee shop.

SimpleMakan

Golden Village Gold Class Experience

I have never been to a Gold Class Movie screening before. To me, I felt it was an utter waste of money to spend $38 on a single seat for a movie, when I can simply pay $8. But my girlfriend went for a Gold Class screening before and she insisted on bringing me to watch Sherlock Holmes 2 in a Gold Class GV theater. She insisted and simply went online to book and pay without me saying anything. Very sweet of her, but at that moment, I still felt it was kind of a waste of money.

Everything changed when I stepped through the doors of the Gold Class entrance at I12 Katong shopping centre. We were running late and there was a person right there who attended to us. Immediately printing our tickets, letting us know the movie was just beginning and then walking us to our seats. OH MY GOD, THE SEATS!!!!!! WHAT THE!!!!!! I NEED THAT SEAT IN MY ROOM. Ok, sorry for digressing, back to my story. She walked us to our seat, gave us each a menu, told us where the "call button" was, showed us the button to control our seats and told us to use the discrete lighting on the centre table to read the menu. There were basically 2 gigantic ELECTRONIC reclining chairs and an oval table in the middle. We each chose a drink and some finger food while watching the movie and ordered it from the waiter. We were really treated like king and queen. No kidding. It really felt like an indulgence worth the money. The seat was super duper comfy and gigantic. They provided clean blankets to keep us warm as well. The toilets were very close by as well.

Overall, it was an exquisite experience, thanks to my girlfriend. By the end of the movie, I even told her I kind of do not have the mood to watch movies at the normal theaters anymore. :-X

This is the only photo I took in the dark. Very sorry! This post is just to tell you people to go experience Gold Class at least once because it is that awesome.

 SimpleMakan

Food Review: Soup Spoon @ I12 Katong

I tried Soup Spoon's Clam Chowder 2 years ago. It was the best I ever had. I had their Clam Chowder again less than 2 weeks ago; the same awesome taste and flavor. I love their Clam Chowder so much. My girlfriend and I have never tried any other soups from Soup Spoon because we just love the Clam Chowder.

The large bowl of clam chowder, with a drink, bread, and a half sandwich is about $15. But we can share this and feel extremely full after the meal. The soup itself is super thick and creamy. It is filled with ingredients like clam, celery, potato and may more stuff. The soup is always fresh and hot. The bread served with it is also fresh and warm. One thing I do not like about soups is when they use corn starch to thicken the soup. When corn starch is used, after some time of stirring, you will realize the soup becomes very watery. But Soup Spoon's Clam Chowder does not become watery after constant stirring; which goes to show it was naturally thickened through slow cooking and of course from the starch of the potatoes. The lemon tea they serve I think is made by them and it is really light and refreshing. Lastly, the sandwich is served with a small side of coleslaw and it is quite good as well. The bread is usually toasted till it is crispy and a little hard. I prefer my bread to be soft but I won't complain because the smoked salmon in it does not stink and tastes very good.

So go ahead, try the soups at Soup Spoon but just take note that the price is not cheap. Try to get a large meal and share with someone, I find it perfect this way.

SimpleMakan

Recipe: Cooking your own pearls! (for milk tea or any drinks!)

As you might know, I love milk tea. And at times, I love the pearls that come with the milk tea more than the tea itself. Pearls have to be done perfect, if not they really taste horrible. The sweetness and consistency of the pearl is really very important. It has to be chewy without a hard centre and is has to have a slight tinge of sweetness when we chew it.

My girlfriend came across this recipe from the Newpaper and so I tried it out. I loved it! The pearls came out perfect and I totally totally loved it! It was very nice but the very sad thing is that cooked pearls cannot be stored in the fridge. They will slowly become hard from the centre outwards. I'm not too sure if there is any way to prevent this but I guess freshly cooked pearls are the best.

Ingredients
200g uncooked black pearls
1 litre of water (more is fine, make sure its not less than 1 litre)
2 tbsp sugar

Instructions

1. Bring the water to a boil.

2. Add in the pearls and boil for 30 minutes with the lid open and constantly stir whenever possible.

3. Switch of the fire and leave the pot covered for half an hour until the pearls are translucent.

4. Discard the water and rinse the pearls.

5. Add in just enough water to cover the cooked pearls and add in the sugar.

6. Mix and if you want, you can refrigerate for a while before adding to your drinks.

SimpleMakan