Just another munching Monday

Today was the beginning of my last week in Singapore. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time here so far and the people in the office have been very accommodating.

For lunch today we visited a clay pot rice restaurant. It was a relief to find we were dining in a air conditioned establishment. I've never had to sweat so hard for my meals before.

I went for the chicken clay pot as did most of our group. It's not too dissimilar to a bibimbap except the contents is cooked as the pot is heated. As well as chicken (least that's what they told us it was) it contained Chinese sausage, salty fish, green veg and Chinese mushroom. It's a good mix and the sauce it's cooked in is very tasty. However, a bibimbap would still get the nod over it for me because of the hot sauce, tastier meat and the egg on top to garnish.




Accompanied with this was a plate of Thai style bean curd. Im not a big fan of bean curd unless it's cooked in a sauce so didn't particularly enjoy it. This was simply a plate of plain bean curd garnishes with some nuts, lettuce and sweet chilli sauce. A rather lame effort in my opinion.




After work we made the short stroll over to Chinatown. A few side dishes were ordered that are certainly worth a mention.

First up is carrot cake that doesn't contain carrot and is made from flour. Very tasty and quite "Cheung fun" like.




Secondly we have Rotak which is a local dish that basically contains a lot of random crap in a sauce topped with nuts. This includes cucumber, pineapple, water chestnuts and many others.




I wasn't so keen on this one as I'm not particularly convinced the mixture works very well. Am I being too harsh? After all it's not exactly an episode of MasterChef.

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Location:Outram Rd,,Singapore

International delights

It's now been 4 full days in Singapore and although I've not posted until now it doesn't mean I've not been out and about sampling the various delights.

Today's lunch was a bit of a surprise, I left it to the capable hands of one of my colleagues here. We ventured out to the nearby hawker market again where there are 80 different stalls. The sauna like conditions in this semi open food court aren't the best way to spend lunch but the value and choice available certainly makes this worthwhile. There are numerous oscillating fans located around the market but this simply isn't sufficient to prevent you from perspiring (nor any amount of Lynx deodorant).

I'd already been informed it would be Ayam Penyet (Indonesian smashed fried chicken) but had no idea what to expect.







As you can see above it's basically a piece of fried chicken leg accompanied with rice, slice of omelette, vegetables and extremely spicy chilli sauce. If you examine carefully, plastic cutlery (fork and spoon!) was provided. To my surprise I was able to gentally scrap off small pieces of chicken with a flimsy plastic fork. The chicken is well flavoured and coated in a thin but tasty batter. It was also seasoned with what appeared to be breadcrumbs but I'm still unable to determine exactly what this was. This is a very nice alternative to something like KFC and possibly healthier.

Having sweated from a combination of the hot surroundings and spicy sauce I felt the need to cool myself down before the short walk back to the office in the midday sun. What better way to do this than to opt for a dessert containing ice. I've had variations of the strawberry sago in other locations throughout Asia and unfortunately this didn't quite meet those standards. Still, it was refreshing and just what you need in the humidity.

Stay tuned for more regular updates. With less than a week left here I've still plenty on my list to sample.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Moh Guan Terrace,Singapore,Singapore

Mamma Mia

Pizza has become the nation's favourite party food with Domino's with consistently seeing increase in profits. It has to be agreed that it is the ideal food to share with friends or in my case to consume all by myself.

This week my colleague described this new frozen pizza he had tried as "fit" but then he does have a way with words. I've often found that we both have similar taste in food (and women). He was the one that introduced me to the Dr Oetker Ristorante thin based pizza range and when he informed me of a new range I just had to try it for myself. It'd be rude to not to when it's been described as "fit". Their website describes it as "The Ultimate Homemade Pizza Taste".

With the above in mind, I popped down to my supermarket and picked up two frozen Casi Di Mama Daviola pizzas as they were on offer. There's always the likelihood when purchasing two that I might not like it but then there isn't much to dislike with a pepperoni pizza. As with most pizzas it takes around 15 minutes in the oven but where it differs is there is a baking sheet attached to the base.

The crust had risen during the baking giving it quite a authentic fresh look to it. This certainly gave it a restaurant style feel to the crust and was considerably soft like fresh bread. There's a nice kick to the pizza thanks to a few chillies.

Overall I'd give this a 9/10, a stuffed crust would probably make it a mind blowing perfect ten. I'm in Singapore now for the next 10 days so hopefully there will be a few updates.

Variety is the spice of life!

We all love a bit of choice in our life and I'm no exception, especially when it comes to food. It's one of the reasons why I particularly enjoy buffets, tapas and dim sum so much. When Tesco had an offer on for Gu desserts last week I couldn't decide which cheesecake option to purchase. Eventually I purchased both Chocolate and Vanilla and the Lemon flavoured cheesecakes. To be fair, you wouldn't expect any less from me now would you?

The best way to compare the two flavours was to consume them side by side on the same evening. The 300+ calories in each (about 700 in both) didn't deter me one bit. If that wasn't bad enough I couldn't help but eat the remaining two on the following night. It's a good job I enjoy exercising almost as much as I enjoy my food.

If you've never had a Gu cheesecake before they are packaged in a glass jar that can give your dinner guests the impression that you made them yourself. They can also double as a sauce container or candle holder afterwards. I decided to begin with the chocolate & vanilla flavour and with the initial bite you immediately hit with the richness of the chocolate. It certainly overpowers any vanilla flavouring that exists. I quickly demolished this to move on to the lemon flavour with a hope that the taste wouldn't be so strong. It's certainly not as rich as the chocolate flavour and the lemon rind that it's topped with certainly helps balance out the sweetness.

Overall I'd have to say the lemon flavoured cheesecake gets my vote but unfortunately I refuse to purchase these until they are on offer again. I do like to get value for money and at the time of writing, approximately 700 calories for £1.64 (Tesco) is pretty good going!

Everything in moderation

It's Fat Friday today! This often involves a trip to a eaterie nearby to the office. Today, was a trip to Wasabi, the sushi bar in The Printworks. Sushi is probably not considered junk food but they do serve "fried things" such as gyozas and fried pork cutlets which are extremely tasty. Experts often suggest that everything in moderation is perfectly fine. However, this rule often doesn't apply to me and the 11 plates I consumed is moderately more than is recommended, especially for a lunch.

How can one refuse tasty gyoza dumplings and fried pork cutlet? There is a very reasonable set meal available at Wasabi that consists a choice of one main dish and three plates of sushi. However, the lunchtime offer of £1 a plate is too good to ignore and I often find myself opting for this over the set meal.

It was a very respectable effort from me today but my eleven plates still falls a little short of my thirteen plates consumed one lunchtime. On that note it's time to go to a meeting and possibly spend the rest of the afternoon struggling to remain awake! Fat Fridays....embrace them!

Buffet Slayer

There's nothing more challenging to a junk food connoisseur than an all you can eat buffet. So when the opportunity presents itself everything and all ties are abandoned. This even resulted in me ditching a colleague on a pre-arranged lunch for a more appealing offer. It was also a simple case of "bros over hoes" but I do admit that I am very much a lunch whore too.

Today a group of us went along to the Red Hot World Buffet in the centre of Manchester. This is a buffet chain that recently added a new branch on Deansgate and more importantly within walking distance from my office. The website claims to have more than 300 dishes and that it's a food lover's fantasy, the latter I certainly don't disagree with.

They serve all types of food including Oriental, Italian and Indian hence the World in it's title. Unfortunately, I didn't encounter anything that was red hot but I do have a rather high threshold for spicy food compared to the Average Joe. More about the food though, after all that's why what I was there for. The starters seemed to be fresh unlike other buffet places where they quite clearly use frozen produce. The mains are quite hit and miss with curry dishes being very watery. The desserts option though, is quite immense with a selection of around 30 different options.

Overall, it is precisely what I expected from a buffet place offering foods from around the world. Kids and dessert lovers will certainly enjoy the place but for those that aren't you'll still be slaying away. Just don't visit on a lunch hour when you need to return to work in the afternoon, especially when you have an uphill walk. Alternatively don't have four plates of food but it would be rude not to!

You Scream, I Scream!

Great news, the Oreo McFlurry is back. I don't particularly like McDonalds but you have to (well I do) make an exception for the McFlurry. Ice cream is up there as one my favourite foods and I'm often reminiscing the gelato I had in Italy several years ago.

There is some significance in the title of this post. I was watching a pirate copy of Insidious earlier this week with my brother and cousins. My brother kindly picked up a delightful Oreo McFlurry on his way over to mine for me. Insidious is a surprisingly good horror film and certainly one of the better ones that have been released lately. There are considerably more frights than say Paranormal Activity and it's certainly not as static when it comes to the flow of the film. I'd certainly recommend it if you enjoy your horror films but unfortunately my experience was ruined by my chicken of a brother constantly screaming his head off in fear.

Unfortunately the timing of the Oreo McFlurry return coincides with my holiday as I'm heading to Asia on Monday. Keep an eye out for posts of fascinating snacks and food I may encounter on my travels.