The cze char scene in Singapore just gets better and better, and one of the best is Ming Kee Live Seafood. Our friend Lester and his wife Chane are two of our long-time favourite eating buddies, this dinner was on them and they gave us a really good treat. Starting with a basket of very more-ish deep fried fish skin. Then plump la-la clams in a garlicky soy sauce which husband was totally in love with. Also a whole river fish and some delicious coffee ribs.  

The highlight though, was their crab beehoon. For me, this dish is all about the beehoon and in this aspect, Ming Kee exceeded my expectations. There wasn't much noodles but every strand was 100% clean, sweet, crab flavour. One of the crab was a female, its roe gave the noodles even more oomph. I definitely prefer this version to the one at Sin Huat,  which had always striked me as a tad too sweet and occasionally blowzy with its heightened seafood umami-ness; nothing wrong with that, but I definitely prefer Ming Kee's minimalist rendition.

The following day was one of meeting with ex-colleagues and their families at a dim-sum lunch at Imperial Treasures Nan Bei, Takashimaya Shopping Centre. My friend really likes their special pork-belly char siew and I could see why. The meat, self-basting fatty melting deliciousness in itself, was coated in a gorgeous sweet-savoury glaze that turned it into meat bonbons, terribly addictive.  

Knowing husband's fondness for fiery Sichuan cuisine, Andrew and a bunch of close makan friends organised a no-holds-barred dinner at Ba Yu Ren Jia restaurant near Bugis. It started off innocuously enough with an appetite-stimulating salad of liangpi (greenbean noodles), century eggs and shredded cucumbers dressed in sesame oil, vinegar and chilli oil.

Saliva chicken was snapped up quickly. Done right, it is supposed to be so delicious that the drooling reflex goes into overdrive, hence its name.  The chicken itself was juicy and nicely muscular with a good ratio of springy skin, picking up lots of of the delicious yet mysterious sauce. A quick succession of dishes came out, all very tasty, and some rather spicy, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Until I ate a few strands of the vermicelli noodles from this platter of braised eel and my taste buds went into seizure. The noodles had absorbed all the heat from the little peppercorns, the dried peppers and the inflammatory chilli oil. This dish was way too hot to handle, and we had to resort to eating sugar to counter the spiciness. Till today I am not sure if this is the norm in Sichuan, or were the cooks trying to play a joke on us. But would I eat it again? Absolutely!

Ming Kee Live Seafood

556 Macpherson Road (Jn Macpherson Lane) T: 67474075

Imperial Treasure Nan Bei

5th floor, Takashimaya Shopping Centre

Ba Yu Ren Jia Restaurant

791 North Bridge Road T: 62979148

The Singapore weather was cool and occasionally rainy the week we visited. As usual we were spoiled rotten by friends who made time to meet and host us for lots of delicious meals.

Actually, on our own we didn't fare too badly either. Within 1 hour of our plane landing we were rubbing shoulders with pyjama-wearing aunties at the Bendemeer Rd Market Food Centre and eating our favourite "chye tow kuay", only SGD2 for a generous portion of garlicky, eggy, sweet-savoury wok-fried turnip dough. Before long husband was hungry again and we sat down to a large spread of more local delights. 

Dinner on our first night was at Old Mother Hen, an old haunt for bacchanalian excesses and font of claypot wisdom. The food was quite stunning, it felt like we were at a "best-of" relay. Stir-fried fallopian tubes was a novelty for most people, especially our V who couldn't seem to get enough of it.

Still, the most memorable dish had to be a shark's head steamed in Cantonese style. The head was mostly cartilage, the gelatine tamed to a silky texture akin to tofu. Flavour came from an elegant garlic-infused master soy sauce. The chef's urgings to finish the fish quickly, lest it gets cold and turns rubbery and fishy, were quite redundant, even the bones were not spared.

Fried pork trotters, nothing to look at but the skin was crispy and the meat and fats tender and melting.

What is a meal here without their famous claypot rice? We demolished two large pots. They don't skimp on the quality of the ingredients, the salted fish and liver sausages were particularly fine touches. We staggered home with huge silly grins on our faces.

The following day I was running back and forth between two banks for my parents who came down from KL. We finally finished at 2.30 p.m. which was too late for a good Japanese meal so we settled for Din Tai Fung at Paragon. The dumplings were delicious but my father commented that the dumplings are now quite tiny. V loved their mochi-stuffed red dates.

Not pictured (because I suck at getting my white balance right) but dinner that night was cooked by my good friend Ivan. Authentic hungarian sausages and massive slabs of air-dried dry-aged USDA Angus beef with pan-fried foie gras and a killer potato salad almost did me in, thankfully dessert was relatively light, only two types of real Sarawak pineapples which I loved.

Speaking of friends, the Lims have got to be one of the most unassuming and generous people I know. A so-called 'simple dinner at home' was so bountiful I had to wave the white flag midway through the meal. Lots of meat and a deep bowl of soup.  "Top de top" though,  as my French friends would say, goes to the really humble dish of bean sprouts stir-fried with salted fish. Everyone, including myself, knows how to cook this, but their Indonesian cook Noor has a particularly deft touch that turned this into a masterpiece, getting each element right (crunchy sprouts, perfectly fried fish etc etc) and harmonising them just-so.

A green carpet over a fried fish. What is this my friend?

Florence said, it is my new creation. Fried fish, topped with sambal, then fried minced pork followed by freshly chopped spring onion greens. Flavour explosion? Absolutely. 

There will be more in the next post, but before we finish, here is some snacks to think about. Breadtalk may rule the roost in Singapore, but I reckon Bread Society is a worthy new competitor. Update: Reader Yun Huei informed me that Bread Society is part of Breadtalk. I'd say that this is a welcome new concept. Bread is very fashionable in Japan right now, if even 10% of this perfectionist streak filters through to Singapore it would raise the bar considerably.

The pedigree is very fine, at least what I can see from their tall posters of cute Jap-TV chefs, and their Japanese style breads very good from a random sample of three items. Granted, one item was not that random, I saw a tray of the mont-blanc tarts being assembled, they obligingly finished one for me upon request. It is basically chestnut paste piled on flakey pastry base but embedded inside is a little chestnut-like cookie with a fine chocolate shell. Yuzu flecks lightened the pared-down French classic making this a relatively guilt-free treat. The pizza-esque thing on the left is a remake of Floss, amped up with spicy floss and grilled eggplants, it was so delicious I gobbled it up in about five bites, all the while telling husband how good it was.

The base is made up of roasted vegetables and some tasty meat. Here I used a packet of chorizo sausagemeat which I bought from Bellota Bellota but I've had really good results with Italian sausages and fresh sausages from my market charcuterie.

I love roasting vegetables like leeks, onions, shallots, and going down the bitter and anise flavour profile, fennel, endives and even brussels sprouts. For a different effect, roast eggplants and zucchinis as I did when these vegetables were abundant in late summer. Equally happy to go into the mix are carrots, green beans and broccoli. On this occasion I used leeks and some leftover shallots, and broccolli which I could have roasted but didn't because I did not want to crowd the roasting pan. 

Try to time the pasta to finish cooking at the same time as the vegetables. All ingredients except the cheese should be hot at the moment of mixing otherwise the dish would cool too quickly. I reserved some pasta cooking liquid just in case the pasta sticked, but it was not really necessary.

Ingredients

Pasta

2 leeks, cleaned, sliced in diagonal chunks

2 shallots, quartered

1 cup chorizo sausagemeat

1/2 head broccolli, cut into florets

1 slab gorgonzola, cut into small chunks

1. Roast shallots and leeks at 190C (200C if not using convention oven) for 30 minutes then add chorizo and continue to cook until vegetables are soft.

2. In meantime, boil broccoli in oiled and salted water until tender. Set aside. Just before mixing reheat in a microwave or plunge into boiling water for 1 minute.

3. Cook pasta in oiled, salted, boiling water until done. Drain.

4. Take leeks out of the oven, quickly put pasta, broccoli and cheese into the pan and stir briefly. Serve.

Days before arriving in London, my sister C emailed me about wanting to try out lunch at Pearl by Jun Tanaka. Sure, I replied, thinking we were going to eat some Japanese food. Imagine my surprise when we reached the restaurant and did not see any blond wood or calligraphy screens. Instead there was a double-height dining space clad in beautiful marble, while splendid columns of more marble and pearl chandeliers added light and sparkle. White tablecloths and an army of greeters, waiters and sommeliers completed the impression of a serious continental restaurant.

The staff were professional and endlessly patient- every time V dropped her napkins, and we were talking at least five times, someone would come by with fresh linen; even when we objected and said it was not necessary.

Lunch was a really good deal at 20 pounds for two courses and 24 pounds for three. Amuse bouches arrived quickly. Beetroot gelee, celeriac purée and parmesan was simple yet elegant, eating well  on their own and with each other.

Husband's appetiser of mackerel fondant with horseradish cream came artfully presented. The ingredients may be inexpensive, but the mackerel fondant was rich tasting yet light. His main course of provencal vegetables was a more substantial rendition of more vegetables which was, truthfully, rather monotonous.

My main course was cornish plaice with artichoke gnocchi, caramelised chicken wings, girolles and baby artichokes. A substantial plateful but I wished they didn't remove the fish skin. The highlight was the three little nuggets of chicken wings- skin and luscious meat, all salty-savoury and sweet in one mouthful. Across the room a group of dark-suited executives was having a business lunch. I saw one of them, a bespectacled lady, popped a piece of the chicken wing in her mouth without realising what it was, also that the bones had not been removed. Probably without benefit of eating bone-in-chicken like I have since I was a child, she had a hard time eating this delicacy with dignity.

C's main course of braised pork cheeks with caramelised squid, white polenta and shallots was another generous serving. While excellent, we all agreed my dish was the best.

Dessert were complete crowd pleasers. Poached prune and almond crumble looked like a square version of mince pie, quite magnificient- the rich dark and slightly spicy fruit filling a perfect foil for the buttery almond crumble, the whole accompanied by an equally indulgent almond ice cream. There was also a chocolate dessert of dark chocolate brownie, pear granite and pear crisps; evidently it was good, for daughter and sister made short work of it. 

That was just lunch. I imagine that dinner would yield even more surprise and gratification. Just remember to save room for desserts.

Pearl by Jun Tanaka

225 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EN T: 020 78297000

Typepad introduced a new micro-blog feature yesterday. It is like twitter with more than 140 characters plus pictures plus RSS subscription. Readers can follow me, make comments, re-blog something that they liked and even indicate their favourites. Please go and have a look, I think I'll use it to post all the other stuff that don't make it to the main food blog, you know, exciting stuff like mini-reviews and oh, what I ate for lunch today.

I probably shocked my friend Florence once by telling her I hate to handle raw meat, especially chicken. It's not difficult to chop up a chicken but I would prefer not to do it because my cleaver cannot cut cleanly through the bone. Fortunately my regular vollailer, or poultry stall at the market, understand what I want. The owner and his son, as well as some of their more experienced workers, can strip a chicken from its bony skeleton, although this is a pretty unusual request because most French people nowadays don't know what to do with the carcass. They will obligingly cut up a whole chicken, or even chicken or duck thighs, into small pieces that is typically called for in Asian dishes. My mother would probably not approve but I really appreciate the convenience, it cuts down a lot of prep and washing-up time.

So, three juicy duck legs all cut up ready for the pot; what does one do with them? A stew, perfect for the cold weather. In any case, I always make some sort of a stew or braise once a week; it gives the impression that I am dedicated housewife and fills the apartment with tantalising smells.

I thought of the block of assam, or tamarind paste, languishing away on the bottom of my fridge; it would give a mellow sourness which is great for such a fatty meat. Rounded off with sweetness from dark sugar, kicap manis (sweet Indonesian soya sauce) and carrots. I used a cube of the dark ginger sugar that Andrew gave me last year- the mahjong tile-sized cube has fresh ginger preserved in between sticky black pressed sugar, the ginger added a welcome warmth. When my stash is used up I will probably substitute with fresh ginger and unprocessed soft brown sugar or even palm sugar.

The result was gratifying, neither an adobo nor an itek sio, but something in between, with lots of velvety soupy sauce that husband gleefully poured over his steamed rice. The child liked it too, the ginger spiciness not too overwhelming for her, in any case she was distracted by the tender duck meat and carrots cooked to an almost candylike state. 

3 duck legs, cut into small pieces, bone in. Peel off/remove as much fat and skin as possible.

2 carrots, peeled, cut into chunks

Flavouring

4 tbsp assam paste, made into slurry with 6 tbsp hot water, strained to discard seeds. 

2 tbsp kicap manis 

2 tbsp dark soya sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce (optional)

1 cube ginger sugar (or 1 tbsp soft brown sugar and a thumb-sized piece of ginger smashed up)

Black pepper (optional)

1. Put duck pieces into a pot. Add cold water to cover the duck. Bring to boil and discard the water, along with the scum that would have risen to the top.

2. Return duck to pot. This time, with just enough water to cover 70% of the duck.

3. Add all the flavouring ingredients. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a slow simmer. Let it cook, covered but allowing a little steam to escape, for 30 minutes.

4. Carrots go in and the stew cooks a further 45 minutes. Taste again and adjust seasoning. Remove surface oil if there is a lot of it. If is not sour enough, or is too sweet, finish with some lime juice or a few dashes of good vinegar.

When she heard I was going to Scotland, Sui Mai told me that I must eat "haggis with neeps and tatties". The version I had at The Dores Inn was so delicious that I decided to go back a few nights later. The restaurant is located about 20 minutes drive away from Inverness, and features a short menu of unfussy and well-cooked dishes. It also backs onto Loch Ness and the view from the back of the restaurant is phenomenal.

Back to the haggis, this was meaty and deeply savoury, like concentrated fond from roasting mammoth dinosaur bones. I liked also that it was relatively free of distractions like oatmeal fillers or peppery spicing, just pure melt-in-the-mouth-gasm with every bite. Neeps are mashed turnips- a bit watery and bland despite the bright orange hue, tatties are mashed potatoes which I preferred, the velvet gravy lapping over them comfortingly.

The view from the back of the restaurant. Isn't it marvelous?

One morning we decided to drive out to explore the Cairngorms, which is Britain's most extensive mountain massif. It is dotted with tiny and very charming little villages with the most adorable names like Aviemore, Kingussie and Laggan. We visited a clan museum, then moved on to find lunch at the Mountain Cafe. Situated in Aviemore, an amenities-centre for the rugged holidaymaker, the food served in the cafe is wholesome and politically correct. No haggis or anything that twee, but my sweetcorn and zucchini fritters (more like a dense skillet cake than fritter) was rather too filling. What blew me away though, were generously thick chunks of hot smoked salmon tucked between; so much better than cold-smoked, hot-smoking rendered the yummy Scottish salmon even more smoky and voluptuous-tasting. After lunch, one could go shopping in the sports equipment shop below but not me. I am not the sporting type, besides the goods are so expensive and rather ugly.

After such a hearty lunch, it was time to visit the Highland Wildlife Park. A bit like doing a safari, visitors drive and walk around to observe exotic foreign species like wildcats, bisons, yaks and even wild boars. It was a fun outing for V, she had enjoyed seeing rare sheep and chickens in a rare-breed farm in Fort William the day before (image above) and this thrilled her even more. I think the animals found me exotic, the Chinese woman with big sunglasses and parasol. 

Literally next door, there is the Highland Folk Museum, straddling the two villages of Kingussie and Newtonmore. A sprawling complex of farmhouses and ye-olde churches, train-stations, schoolhouses etc, visitors can explore traditional Highland ways of life, and of course, take a ride in pre-war type buses. It was totally charming.

Clan life, wild life, Hebridean life. There is definitely more to the Scottish Highlands than castle ruins, whiskies and the Loch Ness monster. Darling, take me there again?

The days flew by quickly, and soon we had to leave for Glasgow. Instead of going by the A9, husband took the slower, older A82. We thought we would make Glasgow for lunch, but we didn't account for the meandering two-lane highway full of trucks and leisurely drivers. Couldn't blame them, the view of the waters of Loch Lomond and surrounding forest parks are gorgeous. By noon, and still in central lowlands rather than further south, we had to improvise. Thumbing through the Rough Guide and the road map, I told husband to stop at the next village of Tyndrum, where the Real Food Cafe is said to "serve fast food that is locally sourced and cooked to order".

The cafe sits on the side of the highway. No other buildings save a few houses on the other side of the road. Not even a convenience store or a petrol station in this neck of the woods. Hmm, how many buildings make a village? The carpark was full of trucks containing frozen fish boxes with Eastern European words. Not too local eh? Still, we had no back-up plan, who knows what was in the next town, so we decided to take our chances here.

Inside, it was quite spartan but warm and quietly buzzing. Lots of recyclable cups and blond wood à la Ikea. Families, farmers, mountain trekkers. We sat ourselves in a sunny corner while husband queued up to place our lunch orders. He came back with hot tea and scones for me. The scones did not contain white flour, but were still quite tender and light, there was jam but no butter. I was slowly getting the impression that mountainside establishments hold possibility of good unpretentious food (unlike, say, their competitors in town fooling around with lemongrass infusions and masala veal chops). A middle-age lady and another volunteer shepherded a gaggle of elderly residents out for their lunch outing. All the old ladies ordered fish and chips. The manager came out to take care of them personally.

Eventually, like 25 minutes later, our lunch came. Old ladies table got served first. Husband had ordered burgers for me. The burgers, handmade from good local beef it may be, was too dry and skinny with a cardboard texture; I would have preferred something more recognisably meaty. Still, the cheese was tasty, the bun nicely toasted and the salads properly fresh and crisp.

I munched half-heartedly and then took a bite of husband's fish and chips. Hmm, what is this? Crispy batter with very fresh-tasting fish inside. I couldn't believe it. We had been eating fish and chips at various locations the whole week, including a famous pub in the fishing village of Ullapool which had won awards for its beer-battered version; all had been huge disappointments- too greasy, too bland, too boring. The fish and chips at Real Food Cafe was absolutely fabulous. We were all over the plate, it was the best fish and chips I've ever tried. 

I was not the only fan. The boards near the restroom were covered with appreciative letters and approving reviews. The trucks were a red herring (haha); the fish do come from far away, from the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia. It is good fish, cooked upon order, in a light but still crisp-crunchy batter coating, as it should be.  So there we had it, a most excellent fish and chips served not by the seaside but a roadside cafe in the middle of nowhere in Scotland.

Dores Inn Dores, Loch Ness, Inverness T: 01463 751203

Mountain Cafe 111 Grampian Rd, Aviemore T: 01479 812473

Real Food Cafe Tyndrum on the A82/A85. T: 08457 484950

The second part of our holiday happened in the Highlands, which accounts for most of the northern and western part of Scotland. It is a terribly romantic place. Relatively uninhabited, unindustrialised and quite remote (3 hours drive from Edinburgh), it is dominated by lochs and mountains. The waters in the region are very pure, they go towards making the national beverage that is Scotch whisky. The whisky from this area, in particular Speyside, have beautiful and long notes of floral, citrus and fruity aromas, mirroring the splendid countryside of its origins. 

Here I found the Scotland of my fervent imagination- brave warriors with flying ginger hair and distinctive plaids defend their beautiful lands against the bad, greedy-assed English invaders, in their castles their women are called lasses and their dogs westies, the land marked by exotic growths of heather, gorses and thistle flowers where grouse fly and dignified broad-antlered deers survey the magnificient lands. Aye, can you hear the wail of the bagpipes and the lilting harps? When you stand in the grounds of a long-ago deserted and much crumbled castle like Urquhart you most definitely can. They say it is more beautiful at night, when the tourists like us are gone and the former inhabitants return to their haunt. I don't know, I was plenty carried away myself that day. 

Back to the present, the café at the castle Urquhart was bang on trend with their cupcake selection. Here we had a cupcake with butterscotch frosting and toffee bits, particularly delicious eaten with force 10 winds howling in your hair and the coffee risking premature dilution with the perpetual Scottish rain overhead, all dead romantic really.

Speaking of another Scottish delicacy, we were much taken with Scottish marmalade, in particular that of our b&b. The Westbourne Guest House in Inverness is a 4-starred establishment because among other things, it provides tea-making facilities in the room, fan (no air-con), shirt-presser and shoe-shiner machine. We think. It can't be because the toiletries are supermarket brand,or because of the plain dormitory furnishings and a blown-up dishrack doing double-duty under the sink as bathroom shelves and basically lack of any natural stone, chintzy swags, swivelled mirrors or Grohe amenities. Their lounge has a common PC, every time someone opens the fridge in the adjoining kitchen the PC reboots itself, very Monty Python.

On the plus side, it was clean, the room was roomy enough for the three of us and they didn't complain when V left her bed all bloody one morning after having a nosebleed in her sleep. They did laundry too, i.e. I gave the landlady a bag of clothes and she ran it through her machines and returned them folded though not ironed, all for the rather reasonable price of 6 pounds.

Well, back to breakfast. Lots of choices in terms of cereals, yoghurts and fruits etc etc. Bacon, ham and haggis of ordinary quality which meant we stuck to toast for most of our stay. They use good grainy bread and the homemade marmalade was one of the most delicious we have ever tried. Terribly good stuff, packed with flavour and the texture was just right-thick yet spreadable, really much better than some award-winning marmalades we later brought home as souvenirs. The landlady also made sure we got two fingers of her home-made shortbread in our room every day. Two may sound a bit mean but these were outrageously rich biscuits, really buttery, flecked with tongue-tingling citrus peels (presumably from making the fabulous marmalade). Every evening when we returned from our excursions V and I take turns biting from the cookies and say to each other how good it was. Sometimes we couldn't finish them so we eat leftover chunks for breakfast.

Besides exploring castles, including Cawdow where the real Macbeth had ever stayed, there were other activities. Like visiting farms and picking strawberries. Rain had spoiled most of the crop, but V thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The better specimens were available for sale, and they were big, deeply red and tasted very sweet and vibrant like high summer. 

Just another view of the placid lakes. Until I read the little plaque at the side of the river which documented that this was a site of some bloody massacre in the great bloody past.

We took the old Jacobite steam train on the western side of the country. Run on coals and puffing white smoke as it chugs along the rugged mountain ranges, it thrilled all the train buffs in the carriages including a shy terrier lass sitting next to me. The seaside town where it ends, Mallaig, is small and touristy. I did well to have packed sandwiches from Tesco for our lunch on the pier.

The eating options in this area are not as great as in the larger towns. In Inverness itself there are a few cookie-cutter bistro types that didn't really appeal to me. A foray into the Indian restaurant scene was even more disastrous- the newly opened Jaipur actually offers a menu of different sauces poured on tandoori meats, it was the worst meal of our trip.

In terms of Chinese food, all we saw were takeaways, not exactly something I wanted to take back to our airless room (even if we got past the landlady). One evening we took a random turn into Academy St, off the city centre, and I spotted Gathering Place. It seemed like a mirage, there is nothing else of note along this drab street, but there it was, a sit-down restaurant that would not be out of place in Gerrard Street, London. The menu is predictable and their takeaway business was going on non-stop while we ate our dinner. The waiters are from Malaysia! The food was good and cooked with practised skill, we had a happy feed of fried rice, sambal kangkong and a prawn stir-fry. I reckoned this was the best Chinese option for miles around, heck I don't think there is any other Highland competitor, still, to do better, the waiter recommended going up to Aberdeen where they have the largest immigrant Chinese population in Scotland. 

In Part 2, we get acquainted with the truly Scottish food icons i.e. haggis, black puddings and the mythical Scottish salmon. 

Gathering Place 87 Academy St, Inverness T: 01463 713 244