Mango Pudding

I just couldn't resist putting up pictures of my mother's homemade mango pudding.

Full of big chunky fleshy mangos with every bite taken! Yum... that's why I like homemade stuff... when done right, they usually taste the nicest! Where else can you get such fresh, delicious concoctions filled with generous portions of ingredients?

Of course the quality is always good. :)



A Close up of Mummy's homemade goodness!

Fruits and Mango Pudding

I always love eating fruits because it makes a healthy and refreshing dessert after every meal.
An ingrained habit since young... I just got to have fruits after meals!
Fruits pictured: Watermelon, honeydew, Korean Pear and Jackfruit.
Full of Vitamin C goodness!! (Sounds like the tagline for some commercial doesn't it? ;) )

Close up of the delicious mango pudding

You can see the juicy mango bits and the smooth soft jelly in details. Full marks for mummy's hard work!

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Japanese Rice Biscuits

I just thought it to be so cool that these Japanese Rice given to me by W (the one half of a cute couple) were so cute and pretty. Apparently W&J were in Japan to catch their connecting flight back to Singapore. They bought these because they thought it was adorable. The Japanese sure know how to package their stuff!

I like how the biscuits were all dressed up in kimonos! Actually the prints are on the plastic covering and not on the biscuit!!

Nice and crispy! :) Just for the packaging alone... 5/5!!

Remind me to buy these if I ever go to Japan!! :P

technorati tags:Japanese, Biscuits

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Food, Food, all around me

Just in case people have a misconception that I only dig restaurant food/ gourmet food/famous food... well... that misconception is wrong! I eat everything! From the cheap $1 ice cream sold along the streets to the Polar Chicken Pies…

Ok... so the last time I ate at a foodcourt was more than 2 years ago... (Food Republic Foodcourt was the exception because it is just so nice!! :) And unique!) But... my philosophy towards life is that since you've got to eat anyway, you might as make sure you eat the best you can get!

So be it something cheap, or something simple, all that matters to me is that... It gotta taste nice! :) If it doesn't, well, it really spoils my mood. Food is afterall... my greatest passion!

Thus today, I will be doing a photoblog on the kinds of food I consume on a day-to-day basis! :)
Instead of a long-winded review on each individual food, this entry will consist of short summaries!

(I blogged this with Photobucket's Flock Web Browser! Ultra cool! Lets you drag and drop pictures from anywhere on your computer to the webpage anytime. You can upload hundreds of pictures at a time and the best thing is that you can drag and drop pictures to blog about them and then post! Ultra ultra cool! Meaning: Flock can connect directly to your blogger account and let you blog directly on the pictures in your computer, and finally you click publish... and everything will be uploaded! The ultra-uber cool thing is that there is also a function to save the blog entry in your computer... just so that your dedicated blog entry does not disappear!! Try it to believe it... Works with blogger!)

Main course!!

I like eating a proper whole meal. In other words, I'm not like some girls who choose to share a meal with their friends. I need my food!
P.S. Ambiance and Service are not rated in the following! The ratings for the following are not comparable to a restaurant's rating! This is what I term the "daily satisfaction gauge" for good, average, daily food.

Parco Bugis Junction Food Court Basement. (Food Junction?)
The Mee Siam (a Malay Dish with thin beehoon noodles and a spicy peanut sauce. There is usually beansprouts, toufu, taupok and eggs in the dish) wasn't too bad. I would have preferred if the sauce was thicker and that there were more ingredients in the dish. A rather average, nice meal. 2.5/5

Chicken Rice @ Liang Seah Street
During a cooking class I attended, the students were very hungry. We thus decided upon a chicken rice stall just opposite the school at Liang Seah Street. Not too sure which stall this was. But according to my cooking school teacher, it is the best chicken rice stall in Lian Seah Street! The rice is not too oily, the chili is good (very important for a good chicken rice dish), and the chicken portion is generous and tender. 3/5


Indonesian Stall @ NUS Engineering Canteen
Thankfully for me, NUS food rocks (unlike NTU's rock and rice food)! We have restaurants all over campus, great tasting food, cafes and a AIR-CONDITIONED Macdonalds!! Wow wee. This just shows that the student union IS listening. Food at NUS looks good, tastes good (ok, not all stalls, but it's still quite edible!!) and we never get bored of it (except now that the Arts canteen is close, I wonder where I should go).
On the left and the middle shows the grilled chicken set that I ordered. Right: Spicy Lemongrass Chicken Set
The grilled chicken set was still nicer in terms of taste. Because the sauce used for the rice was also the same spicy lemongrass sauce used for the chicken, the Spicy Lemongrass dish tasted pretty mediocre after a few bites. But for the grilled chicken set, the sauce used to marinate the grilled chicken was very good and it provided a contrast to the lemongrass sauce used in the rice. The lemongrass sauce tastes kind of like curry. Not too bad, but I would say "Aye" to the grilled chicken set as it's more yummylicious and you don't get "ni" of eating the same taste after a while.
The chili from the stall is also very good. Yummy.
Good portions, great sauce and fragrant rice makes it a good dish. Many people have said that the grilled chicken set is comparable to Plaza Singapura Food Court's Grilled Chicken Rice set! Oooooo.... 3.5/5 for a refreshingly satifsying meal. :)


Rojak from our friendly neighbourhood Kopitiam!
This was from the Coffeeshop opposite Eunos MRT station. Not too bad. A pity my maid dropped the bulk of the sauce into the sink upon opening the packaged sauce! The sauce could have been spicier and thicker. Came across as a tad watery. I like how the onions was fresh and crunchy, giving taste and bite to the dish. The rojak was very crispy (freshly done!) and the overall taste was good. Of course I'm not really very good in the area of Rojak, but since my stomach was happy, I say it deserves a 3/5!

Japanese Food (Seafood Tempura) at Eusoff Hall
Due to the latest renovations of the Arts Canteen, our favourite award-winning Japanese Restaurant has shifted to quite some distance away...
The standard is still there, great sauce, great taste... but the portions have shrunk! :(
Still, it's much better than the Japanese food at Engineering. Ewk.
The tempura was crispy and the seafood was quite fresh. The sauce was a nice compliment. 3/5

Din Tai Fung at Tampines Mall
This must be the exception to the non-resturants theme today. But since it was a rather average, normal dinner, it shall be included as part of my normal daily routine! (Have to write a proper review another day!)
After an evening movie with my friends, we had a quick dinner consisting of fried rice and hot and sour soup. The fried rice as usual did not fail us. I like how the oily texture of the rice complimented the freshness of the seafood used in the rice. The prawns were very succulent and the overall taste was very appetizing. I found there to be a nice balance between the ingredients and the taste of the rice. Of course some would gripe about how the oily-ness of the rice makes it too heavy on the stomach but that's how I like my fried rice to be! 4/5 (Always how i like my fried rice done!)
The hot and sour soup was a good bland of spiciness and sourness. I would have preferred the soup to be more spicy though. The ingredients were quite generous in terms of serving size, and it made for a nice contrast besides the fried rice. 3/5

Desserts (Sweets, Biscuits, Snacks, Cold Desserts, Hot desserts etc...)

Somehow desserts never fail to make me tingle with glee. No matter how stuffed I am, there is always room for dessert (note: The name of a cakeshop I adore! :))!!

Ice Kachang and Sea Coconut Ice at NUS Science Faculty
The ice kachang was very mediocre. Ice was too rough and tough, syrup was too sweet, ingredients at the bottom was lacking in variety and bland in taste... carnation milk taste was too strong... etc etc. Blah blah blah.
Welcome to the world of the school canteens. Don't complain ah! Got desserts in canteen very good already!
A world where cheap, simple, stone-age desserts reign.
I didn't know what to call the sea coconut dessert as initially I had thought it to be the "Sea Coconut Ice Jelly" dessert. But upon my "devour-ation" I found no traces of ice jelly which led me to a really confused state. No ice jelly? Well then, it had to be just plain ice dessert, sea coconut ice dessert (and syrup)!! I guess the aunty was in kind of a rush (since she had already packed up at 5pm, and you can't complain since this is 70 cents and since you are at a school canteen!) and she decided to humor us by giving us something (well it's the Singaporean mentality of better something than nothing right?).
So with the rough shaved ice and the quick mish-mash of ingredients lumped together... For the icekachang and sea coconut: 2/5 (aiya, don't fail them too much la hor... afterall got dessert better than no dessert. Somemore aunty purposely open shop for us!)

$1 Raspberry Swirl Icecream from Ice cream Man!
Needs no explanation. Simple quick fix for moody days and hot humid Singaporean weather! The normal $1 icecream with the biscuits or bread would have suited me very well, had it not been for the fact that I was carrying my laptop (which weighs quite a significant amt) and since I did not want to risk looking like a 4 yr old kid with lots of ice cream on my mouth... the cup would suffice!! Funny how this ice cream has come to be known as the $1 icecream right?
Anyway do buy from these ice cream men whenever you see them on the roadside. It's a pretty harsh life- standing in the open, exposed to the elements of mother nature, waiting for hours till the next peak period when office workers rush out or when school children get off school...
Plus I've heard stories from one old uncle who almost fell down once because apparently they have to queue to get the ice cream from their supplier early in the morning. When the supplier opened shop, there was a rush among all the elderly ice cream men to get the ice cream and he almost fell. Poor Mr Ice cream Man.
So support them if you can. You don't earn much with ice cream these days...
For the sweet simple satisfaction: 2.5/5 (It can't be compared to Ben and Jerry's or Haggen Diaz but the humbleness and simplicity makes this a good treat for everybody in the street!)

The New Cookie Chou! From Beard Papa!!
Don't know if I spelled the name wrongly... but here goes...
This is actually not too new an invention. 5 years ago, another japanese cake store had sold this but these days upon passing by, I don't see Cookie Chou anymore. Maybe the competition from Beard Papa was too strong...
Same name, almost the same taste.... but still good.
The harder-than-usualcreampuff texture warranted it a "cookie" status. But the overall taste is still the same. Smooth, sweet, refreshing custard cream with a cruncy, crisp bite makes you go mmmm....
A great after-meal dessert! 4/5
note: Don't bite too hard into the cookie... or the cream will burst out and flow all over you! Yummy!

Meiji Chocolate Biscuit (nicknamed Mushroom Chocolate Biscuit... p.s. because I don't know what it is called since the packaging is in Japanese!)
Upon the first taste it tasted like normal Hello Panda chocolate biscuits. While it is nothing unique or special I like the mushroom look because it looks just so cute... plus I like the crunch and taste of the chocolate biscuit. Upon the next few bites, it grows into a more distinctive taste- the milk-chocolate is more apparent, and the taste grows onto you. Couldn't help popping Mr Mushroom chocolate biscuits into my mouth one after another!
For the quick time it was gone... (it must have been yummy!!) 3/5

Green Tea KiKat Mini-Bars from Japan!
Courtesy of W and J! hahaha... I like how the milky green tea texture is not too bitter or strong and it is sweet enough for my liking as a KitKat bar! The nice blend of milky greentea with the wafer texture made it a nice teatime snack! Have a break, have a KitKat! Can't stop eating it too! 3.5/5

Polar Chicken Pie (Breakfast from home)
Great for those who like your pies to be of a big portion...
I like the crispiness and the texture of the crust. Unfortunately it was the filling that let me down. It just tasted wrong- bland, cold (it wasn't heat up enough?), eeky... I couldn't bring myself to finish it. There wasn't enough pepper... well it might have been the batch or the branch that screwed up. Let's just say that while I'm not going to ostracise Polar's chicken pies, I'm going to think twice the next time I eat it. 2/5

Drinks



Starbucks is here to take over the world!!
When I was in Canada and America, we drank Starbucks all the time! In Seattle (where Starbucks was born) Starbucks was EVERYWHERE!
I just like how Starbucks has managed to turn non-coffee fans like me into coffee fans. :)
I dislike the bitter taste of coffee... so the frapuccinos never fail to make my day! I love the caramel frap (because there isn't white chocolate mocha here!! NOOOOOOO!!!!) and the sweetness of the caramel mixed with the whip cream always make me smile. :) There was a sampler for the almond buttercake that day. Y bought a piece in the end. Buttercakes do go well with coffee!
And for the times when I'm cold, I love a hot drink (but there's no white chocolate mocha here!)... the mocha drink we ordered tasted too much like hot chocolate though. I thought it to be hot chocolate so much so that I went to the counter and questioned the staff. Upon their insistence that it was not hot chocolate and that nobody had mixed the drinks up... I went back to my seat and grudgingly gulped down the hot-chocolate taste-alike.
All in all, I love Starbucks and I give them 3/5 for always making my day! (Plus it's always a great chill out place!)

For those who wish to detract though and want other alternatives... there is always the....

MILO VAN at NUS!
Warning: Don't depend on them for your regular fix. The milo vans are irregular in schedule... no one knows when they will come and no one knows for how long... The best thing though is that they are always FREE! And the cold cup of smackingly good thick mixture of Milo is always a welcome addition to my hungry tummy! 5/5 (just because it's FREE!)

Holland Village Nasi Lemak & Laksa

I just wanted to blog about the Nasi Lemak and Laksa at Holland Village. For the benefit of my non-Singaporean friends who might be reading this, Nasi Lemak is this Malay dish in Singapore that consists of coconut rice (which is sometimes cooked with pandan leaves for added aroma) served with anchovies (ikan bilis), cucumber, egg, peanuts, chicken wings and other side dishes that is up to each individual's preference.

SH and I chose different side dishes. I chose the chicken wings, beans, taiwan sausage (simply because I hadn't eaten it for 5 mths!), and the chili egg. I like the affordability of the Nasi Lemak- about $3 plus usually. SH ordered his with chicken slices, sausage, vegetables and fish slices (I think).
The most important part of a Nasi Lemak would be the chili! The rice is very important as well, but the chili is what differentiates a Grade A dish from a Grade B!

Unfortunately on the day SH and I went, the standard seemed to have dropped. The rice wasn't all that fragrant, which is really important and essential for a good Nasi Lemak, and the chili wasn't sweet or spicy enough. I was quite disappointed because we have been to the stall a few times and most often, the standard of the Nasi Lemak was very good. What with the Channel U's food icon displayed, you would think that the standard would be maintained. Alas, it was not to be! SH speculated that this could have been due to a case of different chefs' cooking. True enough, the next day when we passed by, we saw different women manning the stall. Nasi Lemak: 2.5/5

The same went for the Laksa. The broth was not thick enough and there wasn't enough "kick" in it! It wasn't spicy enough for my liking, and it just didn't taste as good as I remembered it to be. Furthermore this stall (in the same shop as the Holland V's Nasi Lemak) claimed to sell the famed Katong "328" lasksa. Puzzling moment was: Which part tasted like Katong's Laksa eh?

Besides the short noodles which you could scoop out with a spoon, the mediocre Laksa soup and the bland ingredients didn't do anything to fuel the "Katong Laksa" claim.

But the portions of our serving were rather generous. The prawns, "hum" (sea cockles??), and fishcakes, were adequate and the noodles and Laksa soup went down pretty well in my stomach. Though it wasn't "wow, mmmmm...", it was "uh huh....ok...". Laksa: 2.5/5
I think I shall pay a visit to Katong again one day and eat the Laksa that J, W and I were pining for so much in Canada! I realised one thing also while in Canada... Singaporean Laksa is really very different from other countries Laksas, including Malaysia's! Our Laksa tend to be thicker, spicer, with more seafood, and with fatter noodles, and we tend to use alot of coconut milk in our dish! Yet I wouldn't say that our Laksa is much better, instead, the different tastes of each unique Laksa in the varying countries all have their own highlights.

Ambience: 1.5/5 (Typical coffeeshop, unless you consider the spots by the roadside as pretty good, considering you can people-watch and car-watch!!)
Service: What service? It's self-service!
Food: 2.5/5

Holland Village XO Fish Head Bee Hun Restaurant

I love Fish Soup... but the fish soup stall at my university closed down due to renovations. The Yu Pian Mian Xian was really good (at least to me), and the fish slices were always very fresh.

I love drinking soup, some people attribute this to my being a Cantonese. A piping bowl of hot soup, sipped bit by bit, never fails to give me loads of satisfaction.

Thus imagine my great disappointment upon returning back from Canada only to find that my regular source of fish soup was gone! Hence I was pleasantly surprised when SH and I stumbled upon this XO Fish Head place. We were headed for Holland Village's Nasi Lemak (shall blog about this in the next post), so we decided to return the next day for this yummy delicacy!!

It was raining heavily the next day. But we persisted in our attempts to get to the block. Despite my shoes being drenched in the heavy rain, we were still glad we made it to the place in the end. Upon arriving, we saw the row of XO bottles lining the shelves, and lots of pictures of celebrities adorning the wall. Not a bad sign. Unfortunately, my "pai-seh-ness" limited me in my photo-taking attempts. How do people do it? Snapping away at food stalls with everyone looking at them... I just couldn't bring myself to do it! So I hid away at some corner and took this picture from an angle... just to show you guys that it is really a Coffeeshop... hahah!!! It is the stall on the left most.

The funny thing about this coffeeshop was that there were always as many as 3 round tables "reserved". On the 2 days that SH and I walked past the stall, the "reserved" signs would be placed on the tables. That was really strange to us because firstly, it was a coffeeshop, and nobody really reserves places in coffeeshops, and secondly... even if there were people who would actually bother calling up in advanced to book a place at this coffeeshop, was there really that MANY people reserving the places? Perhaps this stall is really popular... but at least not to my knowledge!

The fish soup was really very good. The white milky soup looked really good, and you could see that alot of ingredients had been added... very value-for-money!

The first spoonful revealed a broth simmered with XO, making the soup really fragrant and unique-tasting. Upon rolling the soup in my mouth, I could taste the milkiness of the soup as well as the taste of well-simmered fish. I read somewhere that the colour of such soup is not because milk has been added, but really because the simmering of the white fish results in a white broth that makes the soup milky looking. I didn't dare to ask the auntie about this though, because as usual... I am very "hum-ji" (scaredy-cat)!

The soup was not too salty and was really very tasty. Unlike some soups which have not been boiled long enough (resulting in a very bland and flat taste), you could taste the depth of the flavours in this soup... very well-cooked!

The noodles really went well with the soup, providing texture and complementing the general taste of the fish soup. The fish was very fresh too. I like my fish with skin, because usually there are some fish fats stuck in between. To me, this fish fats make the fish really tender and soft. Just the way I like it!

The only gripe I had was that the fish could have been cut into thinner slices. This is because thinner slices would have enabled me to taste the freshness of the fish better, and I would have been able to savour the full taste of the fish slices, rather than having to chomp on the big pieces of fish first and losing the first taste as a result. SH and I were both very quiet while "savouring" the yummyliciousness of the XO fish head bee hun, for we were both too busy eating and enjoying our share to talk to one another! We devoured the whole bowl in a record time of 15 min.

I love fish soup! I don't know when the craze for me started, but having a hot bowl of rewarding yummy fish soup while it was raining cats and dogs made it really worthwhile. SH and I both agreed that it was a good bowl of fish soup, and that fighting our way through the thunderstorm had been worthwhile. On the whole, the aromatic XO taste really brought out the fish soup and the dish in general made a pretty good dinner. Think thick chunks of fish pieces, noodles, and yummy white fish broth in one spoon, and that's what I call "Smack-a-licious"!

Swimming to you at: Block 46 #01-359 Holland Drive

Ambience: 2/5 (Don't go there for the ambience!)
Service: 3/5 (The auntie was very efficient!)
Food: 4/5!!

Royce Chocolates

People know that I am very serious about food.

When it comes to quality, there can be no shortchanging, and I usually demand the best. If I find that my expectations have not been met, I do get upset.

Yet time and again one thing never fails me... and that is Royce Chocolates!

I first came to know of this chocolates when Lena introduced them to me. She was working at Takashimaya selling Green Tea during my Junior College days and opposite her booth was the Royce Chocolate stall. She would head opposite to try the samples, and often return with new chocolates. Sins, Royce, Neuhaus... I've tried everything. Yet Royce is still my big favourite because of its great quality and great taste. Don't get me wrong... the other chocolates are big on quality too. But I love Royce because its texture is just amazing and you can go no wrong with it.

I love the Royce White Chocolates especially. Girls who have not tried Royce... well... I would be speechless. It's like heaven in your mouth!

When I came back from Canada, SH bought me a box of Royce Chocolates. Till today, I haven't finished the whole box because I can't bring myself to eat the whole box at one shot. Not that it's extremely expensive (though it is definitely more expensive than the average chocolate. Priced around $12-15, depending on what you buy) but the taste is so good, you can't bear to eat everything up.

The packaging of the box... For those looking to give it as a gift, they do package it too!

I love Japanese Chocolates because of the high standard. And the attention to detail! They even include a toothpick-like stick for you to pick out the chocolates!

One thing I really like about this chocolate is how the chocolate powder lies atop the chocolate, forming a fine layer of sweet heaven. When you put the piece into your mouth, you first taste the texture of the white chocolate powder, then the sweet white chocolate melts in your mouth, blending together to give you a soft, liquid substance. It's really a "mmmm" feeling when you eat it because the chocolate is really not too heavy, and the light texture is very refreshing. It's not like Sins or Godiva chocolates (though both are really good) because their texture is heavier, and you can't eat too many pieces at one shot. What is different about Sins and Godiva is that they have a more creative mix of flavours and the variety is really good. You get different sorts of flavors and fillings inside your delicate chocolate! Royce on the other hand, is great if you want a simple, light chocolate to enjoy.

See the texture is so good... yummy. A piece of this chocolate never fails to make my day a "heaven"!! :) 4.5/5 Just simply because it is SOOO good. :)

Get this at the Royce Chocolate booth at Takashimaya (at B2, where all the food stalls are, further down the aisle) or Suntec, where they have a whole store dedicated to Royce delicacies! It's at level one, Suntec Shopping Mall. :) Yummy yummy!!

I still have a box of Godiva chocolates sitting pretty on my table, precisely because of the reason that I find it too pretty to eat! :(