u m a m i

Franchising: Up and Out

I asked my colleague to buy some char-siew/ roast pork rice for my lunch. On opening the styrofoam food container, I was disappointed to find that for $3, they have only apportioned about 6 thin slices of char-siew and another 5-6 slices (cut like fat french fries) of roast pork. No complimentary pieces of sliced cucumbers or tomatoes. I really wish I have my camera to show how measly the portions were. My colleague also ate the same thing at lunch and his plate was equally mean. Apparently the stall has just started operations and it is another franchise of the famous Tiong Bahru Roasted Pig Specialist. Now, I am a fan of Tiong Bahru's suckling pig, and I am happy that they are expanding their business. But I remember that the original stall at Tiong Bahru market were more generous.

This typifies the Singaporean food scene. What happens when an outlet becomes successful? It starts to think that it has what it takes to make it really BIG. The fastest way to grow, it seems, is to franchise their business. To open new branches would take too much work, time and money. Franchising is seen as a way to let others take risk and invest their money in the business. We have seen the franchising of Katong Laksa (thick rice noodles in thick, spicy gravy), Tiong Bahru porridge, Zhao Ann Grass Jelly, Ya Kun Kaya Toast, and now roast pork. Typically the recipe remains a top secret and the franchisees have to buy the final product, e.g. the laksa gravy or the porridge base. They typically pay a percentage of their sales to the franchisor, which means they have to keep their expenses down to earn profits, which they do by cutting corners, like watering down the gravy, substitutiting of cheaper ingredients or simply giving the customer less. There are usually no monitoring of food quality or consistency of each outlet. Franchisors seem to be just as greedy, there must be about 50 Katong Laksas in this tiny city alone. In the long run, the brand is prostituted until it loses its allure. End of brand, end of story.

A Good Cake

Most cafes serve heavy cheesecakes which seems very generic and I always have trouble finishing a piece, even if I am sharing it. I definitely prefer a lighter cake. Cedele/ Bakery Depot have some cakes that tastes truly home-made, especially their Orange and Cranberry cake with its gorgeous frosting. Recently I came across this lovely apple cake from Caffe Beviamo at Tanglin Mall. It has a light spongelike, crumbly texture with sweet chunks of apple and almost-crunchy "skin" at the top and sides.

Thosai

This South Indian dish is usually served for breakfast and I have to have it at least once a week. Thosai is a thin lacey pancake made of lightly-fermented rice flour. Goes great with dhal and coconut sambars. Easy to digest and really cheap ($0.60 for a plain version like above). Variations include the extra-crispy paper thosai, or augmented with onions, fried egg or cheese, or even stuffed with a spiced vegetable mix called masala.

Race Course Road

When the fancy for something hot and spicy Indian style comes to us, we usually head for Race Course Road. The stretch of this road close to Tekka Market in Little India is full of Indian restaurants. Tourists make a beeline for Muthu's Fish Head Curry and Banana Leaf Apollo, which is good enough reason why I avoid these outlets. Seriously, they are very over-rated, because they use too much MSG and almost always overcook the fish. Instead, we like to poke around the neighbourhood and try the competition.

There's Andhra's Spice, opened a few months ago and located towards the end of the road. The restaurant was empty on our visit. The first floor (in Singapore we have no ground floor, we have Basement Level, First Floor, Second Floor.....) was too extravagantly perfumed for me, so we ate on the second level which was quieter and fresher-smelling . While eating our food, the power blacked out. Oops is it because they opened the second floor for us, switching on lights and air-conditioners? But the food we tried, our default orders of naan, tandoori and aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower), was tasty enough and reasonably priced.

We've also tried Spice Mela, and should have known better. It is operated by the people behind Apollo Leaf, and the food is mediocre and rather expensive. The aloo gobi seemed to be doused in ketchup (gross!), and the tandoori short on the taste of spices and yoghurt. The Punjabi dhal though, was a new discovery, the lentils were well cooked in a mildly spiced creamy sauce, this is rich comforting food indeed.

Our Makan Shop is a curious anomaly in that it is run by Chinese operators. The decor is original and genuinely retro, circa 1970s, and the place feels really down-to-earth. The proprieters are friendly and laid back. We love the squid cooked in black ink and the spicy fried chicken. However, the fish head curry is nothing to shout about. Really it quite impossible to find a good curry fish head in Race Course Road.

And for those looking for cheap and good food, they have to try Jaggi's. It is not really a restaurant, because there is no wait staff or fancy napkins, everything is self-serviced. But they have air-con, and the usual fixtures like the Bollywood music video*, water station and a prominent double sink to wash your hands. The food is really cheap, our dinner of keema (minced mutton), aloo gobi and chickpeas with a piece each of plain naan and chapati and a cup of tea, cost us only $9.40.

After eating, I like to check out what's new at Aussimart, a small convenience store that stocks certain exotic stuff like Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pies, Arnotts biscuits and other uniquely Australian foodstuffs. The owner is really chatty and he recommended his favourite restaurants around the neighbourhood- Jaggi's, Gandhi's just behind, and surprisingly he is also keen on the fish head curry at Chinese-run Soon Heng further up the road.

Note: Our Makan Shop and Soon Heng is only open for lunch.

*Bollywood music videos- I am fascinated by them. The dances look easy but must have taken quite some time to master, taking its inspiration from classical Indian and Middle Eastern moves, but pumping it up with disco beats and plenty of dramatics.

Seletar Hill Restaurant

You know how you have different sets of friends? Friends from kindergarden days, friends to go shopping for new shoes with, friends from work, uh huh. Well, you may or may not be surprised to find that I have a group of food-loving friends. In fact some of these foodie-friends are quite hardcore, they have made food their business, whether it is in maintaining a forum for like foodies, or running their own food enterprises. And one of the things we love to do is to gather for meals, at least once a month. And tonight, all 31 of us made our way to this remote part of Singapore called Seletar to eat at this place called, uh, Seletar Hill Restaurant. It has a big red signboard. Decor is the standard white walls, fluorescent lighting and requisite Chinese prints of flowers and birds. Their specialty is Szechuan food.

As usual, dinner was a noisy affair, conducted with much loud conversation, jokes, gossips and general catching-up. As is not usual, the food was sadly below expectation. We had many dishes, but most were memorable for the poor quality ingredients and badly executed cooking. Here are the more palatable dishes. The first is kong-bak pau, i.e. braised belly pork eaten with a bun (the pau); the pork was meltingly tender and fatty. The crispy duck was crispy but a little dry, it really needed to be dipped into the reddish-brown sauce.

Thereafter, it was downhill, all the way. The Hot and Sour soup was a caricature of Chinese restaurant soups- we had expected that it will be thick with cornstarch and were not disappointed, to add insult to injury there was only mushrooms and some unidentifiable vegetable matter in it, although they were more than generous with the pepper seasoning. After the undrinkable soup, cubes of tofu in a bland ma-po sauce was served, later I realised that the white tofu may have been the cook's witty idea of a counterpoint to a series of what I came to know as Black food. First, mandarin peel beef, which is supposed to be beef lightly coated in flour and cooked in a mandarin-peel infused sauce, appeared as a jumbled heap that resembled chocolate popcorn. I could not taste or bite into any meat, it was probably beef-flavoured batter we got. There was another version that was meant to be chicken, again, if I were blindfolded I could have sworn I was eating a new flavour of popcorn. A less than fresh steamed soon-hock (fish) in a deceptively fiery-looking gravy broke the tedium of Black on Black, but only for a while, next in line was black prawns. OK prawns in kung-bo sauce, actually damn frozen prawns and chau-tar (burnt) dried chillies. Finally the vegetables arrive, followed by four season bean, then an eggplant dish, both oversalted and sadly lacking crucial wok-hei (fragrance). My friend with the most discerning palate suspected that even the cooking oil used here may not be fresh.

Finally, it was all over. We had some more mediocre generic desserts like mango pudding and sea coconut with almond jelly. One of our new friends brought a lovely souvenir from USA, everlasting lollypops from See's Candies, it will take a good few hours to get through one of these. Thanks Kat!! Not forgetting also, an incredibly rich expresso cheesecake from talented baker JeremyK, just fabuloso.

The food may have been blah, but the company was not, so the evening was hardly spoiled. There's always the next time to get it right. Here are the details to remind you not to bother visiting:

Seletar Hill Restaurant
16 Jalan Selaseh
Seletar Hills Estate. S 808440

Roast Kampung Chicken

Although Wati cook dinner most weeknights, I try to cook dinner for husband and myself once a week. As I only have about 1.5 hours to prep and cook, the dish has to be quick and easy to prepare. So no more than 5 ingredients and no stewing or braising. Tonight for dinner I roasted a whole chicken and some vegetables. There was some walnut bread too, bought from the Bakery Depot. And for dessert husband and I shared a very scrumptious Pecan and Orange cupcake, also from Bakery Depot.

Last weekend husband bought some fresh kampung chicken from the wet market. Kampung is the Malay word for village, and kampung chicken does not mean that the chicken came from the village, but was reared in the kampung style, i.e. allowed to roam freely, the equivalent in western countries would be free-range chicken I suppose. Kampung chicken retails at almost double the price of a battery chicken, since it costs more to produce. The specimen above cost $9, and is enough to feed me and husband and still have some leftover for lunch tomorrow.

The chicken was first rubbed with some salt and olive oil and roasted at a 220 degree C, during the roasting time I peeled some onions and squeezed some lime juice. The lemon carcass and onions were then stuffed into the chicken and the heat lowered to 180 degrees C. The lime juice mixed with some meat stock (the last 7 cubes from my freezer stock) were used as basting liquid. After about 40 minutes, I stuck a sharp knife into the thigh and observed that the "juices run clear", yippee, the chicken was done. The pan juices were deglazed with more of the basting liquid and then reduced to make a glazing sauce. If you use a kampung chicken or similar good quality chicken, you will have a terrific dish. The meat was juicy, lean and muscular, unlike the pappy texture of battery chicken. The skin was quite thin, in battery chicken the layer of fat is thick and always makes me imagine that the fat is the collection centre for all the injections of hormones and antibiotics, but tonight, husband and I could not resist the skin, it was soo crispy and more-ish. The clear, mildly sweet taste of the meat reminded me of why chicken used to be such a prized meat many years ago.

While the chicken was cooking, I was also frantically cutting a cauliflower into tiny little pieces and then roasting them in a baking sheet with olive oil and salt. They needed to be turned only once or twice. Half way through I added some sliced eggplant as eggplant does not need as long a cooking time. I still had a jar of oven-dried tomatoes in olive oil that third sister gave me for Chinese New Year, that went well with the roasted veges. The vegetables were fabulous - especially the cauliflower. I learnt this method of cooking cauliflower from egullet, and this is one of our favourite vegetables now. The edges are caramelised while the rest of the floret is still crispy and sweet. It is terribly addictive, I could finish 3 plates of the stuff without blinking. If you are making this for the first time, please factor in more than you need, they shrink dramatically during cooking, generally allow half a head per person. Bon appetit!

Untold Scandal: the food

Normally at Korean restaurants we would be served 3-4 small dishes. Like bean sprouts, spinach, and the ubiquitous kim chi and cold tofu. Mainly vegetables, so there's hardly any need to order any vegetable dishes from the menu. I love picking at these side dishes, and usually ask for extras. Last weekend I saw this fantastic movie called Untold Scandal, and at my other blog, I did go on and on it. The food scenes, well, not really scenes, more like passing shots, show the characters having meals composed of so many side dishes I did not have enough time to count. At least 30 dishes at one seating to choose from. All beautifully plated in silver bowls and dishes and arranged on a large tray set on a low table. Makes the Japanese bento look like a kiddie meal. The tea tray also looks just as gorgeous. Hmm, guess who is going to have Korean food this week?

Tea Eggs

And for tea-time, we'll have Tea Eggs. Tea eggs are eggs cooked in tea and Chinese herbs. They go well with Chinese tea too, surprise surprise. So tea eggs are served with tea and at tea.

Only snag was, it all only came together at about 6 pm, so we're talking old English hi-tea time and not midafternoon as is common here. My English classmates used to say they have tea when they mean an early dinner, if they eat something else later that meal would be called supper, though sometimes they also call dinner, well, dinner. Confused already? Not to forget that, at the other end of the social scale, some would say dinner when they mean lunch, apparently in the old days of poverty, people have only one main meal a day and it would be quite substantial with loads of bread and butter, so that meal was called dinner.

Right....... My initial plan was to make these eggs for tea, but I did not factor in the 3 plus hours cooking time when I started cooking at 2 pm. But the end result was definitely worth the wait. Of course, tea eggs are readily available at supermarkets and pasar malams, but I've been disappointed with too many bitter bullets and "exploded" eggs far too often so I decided to make my own. The recipe is from "ASIAN RETRO FOOD, Dishes from Yesteryear" by Betty Saw. Of course as usual, I tinkered somewhat with the recipe, adjusting the amounts of herbs and seasonings, but the result was still marvellous. The smell from the simmering eggs were wonderful too, smokey and aromatic, unlike the overt medicinal and burnt heaviness that assails the nostrils as we pass by a tea egg stall.

How is this egg cooked? First, take 12 eggs and leave it to come to room temperature. Then cover it with water in a saucepan and bring it to boil. Then simmer for 15 minutes (seemed a bit long to me considering we have more than 3 hrs to go, so I shave about 5 minutes off). Drain eggs and leave to cool.

When the eggs are cool, tap them with the back of a spoon to crack the shell, but do not peel. You didn't think I waited did you? I started tapping on the eggs while they were cooling.

Then return the cracked eggs to the saucepan and add the other ingredients which included tea leaves, 5 types of Chinese herbs (tong-kwai, dong-sum, kei-chi, yuk-chuk and pak-kei), sugar, salt and dark soya sauce. And top up with water to cover. Bring the whole pot to the boil and then simmer for 3 hours. Or more, it can't hurt. I had a nap while the eggs cooked.

The eggs are then drained and left to cool and then peeled to reveal the tea-stained cracked shell pattern. Some of the crackings were not too delicately rendered so they were stained in patches rather than a reticulate pattern, but I actually found those patches more flavourful, because they've absorbed more of the tea. Even after 3 hours of cooking, the yolk remained soft and melted easily in the mouth. The eggs smelled of tea and tong-kwai, They've absorbed the flavours well and was not as bitter as I had expected, tasting mostly of tea and herbs with a light sweetness. A healthy and satisfying snack. Washed down with some green tea, I felt like I had connected with tradition and history, at that moment, I felt really Chinese, yes, even though I am Chinese. Just somethings can make one feel more Chinese than usual.

Fish Ball, Fish Cake

One of the favourite hawker foods in Singapore is fishball noodles. You would not catch me eating fishballs from hawker stalls though, not even if there was no more food left on this planet. I'd rather die. Most of the fishballs here have not been anywhere near a fish, being made mostly of fillers and artificial everything they really qualify as fake food. I have grown up eating home-made fishball for years and it is not too impossible to make.

The recipe here is truly a family recipe. My father obtained it from a fishmonger in Ipoh oh, 30 years ago. Now it has been passed to my husband, who usually makes it. I shy away from making this as it needs a strong forearm. It has only three ingredients: fish, salt and pepper. Some people may use a salt solution, that's perfectly acceptable. To make it even more tasty, one can add chopped reconstituted dried squid, dried sole or shitake mushrooms. But this recipe does not contain any pork or flour. The paste for fishball can be shaped into balls or cakes (hence fishcakes), so I am using the terms fishball and fishcake interchangeably here. Of course, it can also be modified with spices and herbs to make it spicy, Thai, Indian and so on.

Husband bought the fish from the wet market. Supermarket fish may not be as fresh. Saitoh makes sweet fishcake, but are terribly bony. Yellowtail would be a good candidate but they come in small sizes and would make for much hard work. Husband got instead, 2 medium sized whole mackerels. The criteria for the fish is that it can be processed into a gluey paste, and these are only examples, your fishmonger may suggest better substitutes.

At the market he overheard this conversation:
Old Lady #1: Mackerels are very fresh today. Only $8 per kg from that seller.
Old Lady #2: Wow, really!
So husband went to the seller and asked to buy some mackerels.
Fishmonger: Mackerel cost $8.50 per kg
Husband: But that old lady said you charged her $8
Fishmonger: Oh.... OK lor.

The whole fish is gutted and scaled by the fishmonger. At home, the head is cut off, and the fish filleted. A spoon is used to carefully scrap the flesh from the skin and bones. Sometimes, like here, the fish may have some roe, which is delicious panfried and dipped in salt and pepper.

The paste is then seasoned with a little salt and white pepper. White pepper more than salt. Now comes the tough part. Using just a metal spoon, the fish meat is "mashed and smashed" against the side of the bowl repeatedly, to try to work the flakes into glue. An alternative method is to use two cleavers and repeatedly mince the fishmeat on a chopping board, though I've never seen this technique before. The paste is about done when the colour turns 2-3 shades paler. To test the texture, a blob is cooked in some boiling water. It should have a chewy almost bouncy texture, with absolutely no trace of fish flakes, although it will not be as bouncy as commercial version. This part may take 40 minutes if you have strong forearm, otherwise you can do it for one whole day and it would still not glue-ify.

Then the paste is shaped into either balls or cakes, and panfried till cooked.

(The white balls shown here are the commercial version) It can be boiled of course, but I prefer it fried, as it can then be cooled and packed in Tupperware and frozen for future use. The cakes are sliced and then cooked with vegetables or in a konlo noodles. Fishballs are very popular with adults and children, just make a dipping sauce to accompany it. Another use for the fish paste is to stuff it into vegetables like bittergourd rounds, wedges of eggplant, beancurd sheets and tofu to make Yong Tau Fu. The two mackerel yielded about 25 pieces of fishcake. Whatever you do to it, the taste is still of briny, sweet fish, and its firm bite and wonderful texture makes it the perfect alternative to meat.

Boos

I did not sleep much last night, owing to a combination of pu-erh Chinese tea and going to bed at 2 am. If I do not sleep by 1.30 am I am certain not to sleep at all. So now, I am in this zombie-like state, fully awake but not refreshed, and experiencing stiffness and aching muscles all over. So I am not exactly thinking good thoughts. Prompted by two unpleasant dining experiences this week. The problem was not with the food, nor the service or ambience. Rather it was the customers. Let me explain.

It was the middle of the week, and I was enjoying my solitary lunch of toasted sandwich-cuppa tea-cookie at the Cedele Cafe at Great World City. The bread at this place comes from Bakery Depot, they taste good all the time and most are made from organic materials. The sandwiches come properly toasted, and filled with really crispy fresh vegetables and generous amounts of filling. I love their Ham and Cheese, and their grilled burger sandwich. Their cakes are also as consistent, my favourite being the Orange Cranberry cake. Being by myself, I did not want to occupy a whole table, so I sat as usual in the big wooden table in the middle of the cafe. This table also has padded stools that look more comfortable than the regular plastic chairs. There was one other female eating soup and bread at the diagonal end of the table. So I was flipping my magazine and eating my sandwich, when a group of office girls came in. They decided that the other tables were too small for their group, and proceeded to sit at the central table. There was more than enough seats to go round, but the leader of the group was offended that I place my handbag on one of the padded stools, and interrupted me to ask if I can put my bag on a plastic chair instead. I said no, since I figured there were enough seats for everyone. I also asked to be left alone, pointing out that the table is a communal one meant for sharing. She was not pleased with the answer, probably felt she has lost "face" in front of her colleagues, and from then on made remarks to suggest that I should not occupy such a big table. Non-stop, yap yap yap. Her colleagues giggled a bit and were not quite so hostile, but they were with her in spirit. The other lady at the table kept quiet, looking only at the wall, ate her soup and left the table soon after. The group then spread themselves out more, occupying more territory. I pretend not to notice them and continued to read my magazine and eat my sandwiches, but I was really just going through the motions. I just wanted to show that I had every right to be there, and to be dignified about it. Finally, when I left, she openly and loudly expressed her relief. I was so disturbed about the experience I called up the owner of the cafe, Ms Yeap. I don't know her personally, but there are articles about her bakery in the web. Ms Yeap confirmed that the table was indeed meant for communal use, and she commented that disputes over the table happens all the time in her other outlets (except for the city branch which has a very long table). Communal tables are common in Australian cafes, but not in Singapore. Those office girls may not know about communal sharing, but it does not take away the fact that no matter how righteous they felt their claim to the table was, I and the other lady were there first. I paid nearly $10 for my lunch and I was fully entitled to sit at that table. Later in the evening, as I relate the story to my husband, he said that next time I should just call him and he would come straightaway and fight it out with those twits. My Hero!!!

The other incident occured last night, at one of our favourite neighbourhood Chinese restaurants The Peach Garden. It was a busy Saturday night as usual, and our group of four were eating our dinner at a table just in front of the main counter. A group of 6-8 Chinese adults came in, they appear to be from the same family since they look quite alike. There was an elderly lady among them, and the rest were females save one flamboyantly dressed man in his 30s- and he started complaining loudly and dramatically (in a queenly fashion) that he had reservations for 8.30 and why does he have to wait for a table. The restaurant was in full swing then, but the staff mobilised themselves. What they did was to remove the screen from a private room, and moved another couple's table a little, to make room for this group. In the meantime, these bunch of people gathered themselves around the counter, to order their food. After ordering, they remained at the counter, some even Behind the counter. There was only 8 inches of space between the counter and my husband's chair. Husband had to endure the women's ( and the queen's) bums brushing by his chair for almost 20 minutes. I was not left out either, some of them also positioned themselves behind my chair. I don't understand why they had to stand around our table when there are plenty of seats outside the restaurant, and it was not raining last night. Yes, they had reservations, but will they die of starvation if they were seated a little late? I recognise them as frequent diners, because I go there quite frequently too. Hell, they could be owners in this restaurant too, judging from the way the staff deferred to them, but they behaved like the lunch crowd at food courts. You know, where the seats are scarce and people gather around your table waiting to jump on your table the minute you finish eating. Since my MIL was at that table, I kept quiet and did not complain to the management. The lady owner did aplogise to us when we left, which closed the issue for us. But again, this highlighted how ugly people can get, no matter how rich or priveleged they are.

Gripe over. I will go and have brunch and later, I will post some pictures that were taken yesterday when husband made fish cakes, from real fish!