Bolly Jolly Food

On our search for the new GT Pond at Neo Tiew recently, we made a stop for lunch at Bollywood Vegies, Poison Ivy Restaurant. Nothing wow to the place but I must admit the simple fare they serve is simply fragrant.

It could be the way they cook.. or the spices they uses.. or being organic does make a difference, but it taste really good especially when it is stated low salt and no msg.

Lemongrass Chicken and Stir fried Potato Leaves with Garlic

Organic Lime Juice with Aloe Vera

I have no appreciation for the desserts though.. but I guess it must be my preference cos i see a lot of others go for the platter of sweet kuehs.

Nice atmosphere.. relax and cosy. They have a new al fresco corner now. Oh, and houseflies comes with it... to complete the feel of a restaurant within a farm.


More info : http://www.myonlinetour.com/poi/bollywoodveggies/index.htm

Dinner : Kebabs on grill pan

Some time back, we invested on an iron casted grill pan. So occasionally we do feast on a variety of kebabs for dinner.

Above :

- fresh button mushroom sprinkled with oregano

- cherry tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and a dash of basil

- zuchinni

- sausage

- marinated pork and chicken pieces

19th Jul ~ Celebrating Jay's Birthday Part I

It is Jayden's birthday tomorrow so we let the kids 'celebrate' it in a fun way today. Thinking that Jay likes to dig into sands recently, we chose to go to Sentosa. But first, we went to have lunch at Vivocity. Swenson was chosen for its fingerfood and ice cream treat. But really.. i don't enjoy their food much even when it comes with free flow of salads. Still prefer Sizzler's salad bar.

Here's what we have :

Sausage roll...


Clam Chowder Hot Pot


Fish and Chips

The kids get their ice cream treats of course :

Jay's ice cream... he likes bananas.

Jem's ice cream... he likes the cone.

Lunch at New Chinatown Hawker Centre

Went to have lunch some time back at the newly reopen Chinatown Hawker Centre. Gosh!! There's really plenty of choices...














Mixed Beef Soup













Roasted meat. It's located behind the beef noodle stall... it has a constant queue going on so we couldn't resist ordering some to try. No regrets cos its really crispy and yummy... tho the char siew might be a tad too fatty for some to accept.

Delicious pork satay.. It's really yummy!! Just like those we had when we were young.. with the meat thinly sliced with a fatty piece in between then grilled till crisp. And not to forget the pineapple sauce in the satay sauce...

Dinner @ Carnivore

It was pouring cats and dogs after 2pm.. Thank God we finished most at the Birdpark. So we headed out to Vivo City to have the promised dinner for Mark as Father's Day Celebration.

Brazillian Churrascaria.... it had been on our Must Try List for quite some time. Yah... both of us are meat lovers thus the restaurant's name "Carnivore" sounds very tempting. But it served pretty mean salads as well... so you can imagine how much we indulged. Not a bad thing too.. as the nice food did soothe some of the hurting moods, aftermath of a rough patch.

Anyway... let the photos bring on some drools.

Carnivore.. that's the restaurant. Basically the people brings kebabs of meat right to your plate. On this plate are some of the salad : Buttered Kailan, Asparagus, marinated otopus. My fav was the sauteed onions.

That's one of the guy with the roast ham... Chrismassy yah!

Beef Topside... nicely raw. Yes... it is very juicy but still it did not beat the sirloins! I didn't manage to take a pic of the sirloins tho... the aroma is way to hard to resist to exchange my fork for the camera.

BBQ Pineapples... During the recent BBQ with my family, one of my cousin took bananas to bbq with chocolate chips. I was like eeewww... But this pineapple is one must have! The fragrant and sweetness is just so wow... if only they take the extra step to remove those parts that causes your tongue to have that tingling feeling. I couldn't take much though i really like it.

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ting-family/sets/72157605689662872/

2nd Year into Bak Chang Making

My first encounter with bak chang making was actually many years back when I was just a youth in church. I remembered vividly the times spend with the senior aunties back in Queenstown Lutheran Church, playing.. i mean making bak chang. One expert ah ma even uses big pandan leaves to make distinctively frangrant ones... Sad to say, over the years.. some of these beloved ladies had departed us.

I am one of those lucky wife with a MIL good at making bak chang too... Thus, i managed to get my MIL to impart some of her knowledge to me last year. That time, she assisted me with providing leaves that were cleaned and soaked proper. This year, it's purely Do-It-Myself... which really doubled my admiration for these old folks, my MIL inclusive cos it's truely hard work!!

Soaking the leaves itself already test ones patience.. having to soak it overnite, clean it thru once with wiping and wash, soak another round.. then wipe dry prior to using. 40+ leaves just to make 20 bak chang... gosh.

Oh well, this is my 'fruits' for this year attempt...

Yah... we went traditonal and use charcoal instead

Bak Chang with Pork Belly, Mushroom, Chestnut, Scallop and Hae bee Hiam. Nice!



Bak Chang with Braised Duck Meat, Enoki and Hae Bee Hiam. The duck meat got too tough after boiling thus not that nice

Yuan Yang Steamboat at Geylang

Yah... we are super hungry after the whole day of activities. So what's better than a buffet? We decided to try out the stretch of steamboat stalls we seen while driving pass Geylang. It is quite an experience...

Not only are there stalls of steamboat... there were tables all set up at the walkway and even the back alleys... quite like HongKong. There were a few that serves Ma la steamboat, korean bbq steamboat and those with china kind dumplings. Be prepared to see hordes of PRC here as well.

We enjoyed ours though secretly hoping for more variety of meats. But the chilli was good!! And I especially like the pickled cucumber salad a lot... free flow of course! If only i can get my hands on the recipe for it.

A Haywired Day

This is the first day of Jem's long school holidays. It was an awful day trying to cope with 2 hyper kids, cleaning up the weekend's mess and maintain day to day routine. I was totally bushed at the end of the day to cook dinner so chose the easy way out.

I had leftover pasta sauce from making pizza recently so decide to finish up my remaining spagetti. Thankfully i had some extra white button mushrooms and enoki in the fridge as well. I love the subtle earth flavour of fresh white button mushrooms..







Spagetti with white button mushroom, enoki and minced pork

Pan fried some camembert cheese to go with meal as well but who knows I started to have gastric pains. In the end, its Mark that gobbled up the whole plate of it.



Pan fried Camembert with raspberries sauce

The kids had their ABC pasta with fishball, enoki and minced pork with chicken stock. Yeap.. its Stock Replenishment Day. I freeze stocks almost every fortnight nowaday. It's used to braise, make quick noodles for the kids or 'instant' steamboat base. This is the recipe i use :

Chicken Stock
1 chicken carcass
2 carrots
2 potatoes
2 tomatoes
1 big onion
1 celery (optional)
water to cover slightly above all ingredients

1) Boil the water
2) Rinse the chicken carcass with hot water
3) Add all ingredients and bring it to boil
4) Lower heat and simmer for 20mins or more
5) Skim off oil and leave to cool. Remove ingredients after cooled.
6) Store the soup in bags or containers suitable for freezing. Stock can last for up to 2 months in the freezer. If there's little amount left that can't fill a container, freeze it in ice cube tray. These little cubes are great for stir frying vegetable, bringing more flavours without needing to add salt.

**Note : do not add salt/seasoning before freezing. Season only when defroze for use. Actually the soup is flavourful ehough to skip the salt.

Butterfly Prawns

It's been ages since i made these!!

Gina ! Xiu ! Rong ! If you are reading this post.. do you gals remember these 'little jewels'?? hehehehhe

I happened to have some breadcrumbs in the fridge that's meant for my camembert cheese and some miserable prawns from Giant. So i decided to make these for the kids to try out. Jem loves tempura prawns since young so he took a liking for these immediately. Jayden seems to like the crumbs and prawns individually on their own the way he had to pull them apart before biting them separately. Mark's verdict? Nice.. if only the prawns are bigger and juicier... argh!!

Saturday Part II ~ Joe's Kitchen

We read the review on this Thai food 'restaurant' at Alexandra some time back and been wanting to try. You can read more about it here.

It's more like a cafe to me due to its size and they were rather slow in service.. but then again, they do not charge for services.

But the food was nice!! We went there pretty late but it was still full of people. Saw quite a few ordered the fried Thai fish .. but we had enough 'fish' for the day so we ordered Tom Yam Soup and Beef Green Curry instead... I would say the beef was nicely done and tender though I'm really not a fan for green curries. They always taste like savoury chendol to me somehow.. but Mark says he loves it.

Tom Yam Soup

Beef Green Curry

Now... don't think too much... we didn't leave our kiddoes to suffer in hunger... we did order pineapple rice for them.

Lunchie at Astons

Finally !!! I get to go lunch at Astons after reading so much of it... It is really nice and yummy and quite comfortable environment too



Mark leisurely go through his Straits Time while Jay and I engaged in colouring. Jem was happily snoring away in the pram



This is Mark's order... Spicy Chicken Spagetti... came with a yummy soup.



This is mine nicely done medium rare prime ribeye, came with a choice of 2 sides. I chose the house salad and a mash potato to share with Jay. It was really gorgeous especially at the price of 13bucks!!

Dinners

Haven't been feeling well lately... the kids and I were down with bad bout of cough and flu. Not much inspirations to blog so here's back to my old favourite topic...dinner.

Here's some dishes I've prepared for the past few nights :



Stir fry prawns with celery and capsicum



Fried Fish Soup



Black pomfret with Special Chinchilok sauce



Stir fry beef with Kale



Sharkfin Melon Soup

I'm still plague with busyness...

yah... everyday's on a crazy schedule now.
Lemme try to blog our backdated news... Let's start with FOOD!!!
Check this out!! We tried the set for 2 at about $20+. OOhhh... the pork belly is nicely marinated and the brown mushroom with butter is superb!! The set comes with 2 different flavour of soups and 1 charcoal bbq. Try it out at the food centre near esplanade.

Lazy Dinner

One of the lazy dinner we had out of the fish we caught and frozen pratas. The kids had baked prata with sausage and cheese and shepherd's pie.

Bitten by Lazy Bug

Fell down some days back when the kids decided to splatter water from their bottle in the living room for some water play.

Somehow with the aches... i just can't bring myself to stand in front of the stove to prep the usual dishes.. so the family had been suffering on meals like this and a failed attempted of prawn noodles.

What's for dinner tonite? Prata Pizza and Shepherd's Pie... yah, the lazy bugs haven't left me yet.

Little Dishes from the Harvest

Steamed


Tom Yam sauce with Crab Meat Fried Rice


Fillet coated with breadcrumbs


Pan Fried with Dark Sauce