Japanese curry & cabbage

I was on leave today, and decided to prepare some lunch. Since we'll be going over to a friend's place for a gathering and dinner later, there won't be a chance to cook dinner, so I thought I'll cook the Japanese curry which I'd been planning to cook, before the potatoes decide to sprout!

I've had tubers sprouting at home, right on the food shelf, until they look like alien things, like the "alienated" sweet potato.



Anyhow, I cooked the Japanese curry using S&B brand of Medium Hot curry paste, as the SO is not quite into spicy food, but it didn't taste a teeny bit hot at all - even the SO said so. I think even if they come out with a Extra Hot version, it would still barely taste a little hot for our Asian palettes.

Here's the chicken curry with the "disappearing" Hokkaido potatoes. I've added some ground coriander and chicken stock to add more flavour.




The market stall had these Hokkaido potatoes on sale, so I bought a couple of big, round tubers to try. When raw, they had the texture of crispy apples!

During the process of cooking, they've somehow disappeared, leaving me with barely half the quantity of potatoes in odd, tiny shapes. I thought I'd scoop them up into a separate bowl before there was nothing left!




The lunch, served with steamed rice.



The Beijing cabbage at this time of year tastes extremely sweet and crunchy in texture. Stir-fried simply with garlic, fresh young ginger and a bit of chicken stock, it tastes so fresh and sedap!

Yummy hawker food

We were at People's Park area for a bit of shopping yesterday, and ate quite a lot of food...too much, perhaps! In the late-afternoon, I felt hungry (having had only a light lunch) and went to galivant around the hawker centre for food.

The SO wanted to reprise his past yummy experience with the chee cheong fun, but in the end, we choose a new item instead from the same stall, i.e. chee cheong fun maki with zhar2 jiang4! We forgot to take photos of this item but it had bits of carrot and cucumber strips and meat sauce rolled in thin, smooth layers of egg crepe, seaweed and chee cheong fun (steam rice pastry), then cut up to look like rolls of maki. It was yummy, with 6 large rolls at $3.

Later, we also consumed the following:
:P


Amoy Street Fried Oyster (Orh Luah, min.$4 for a tiny plate)

Pot Stickers (Guo Tia, $6 for 12 pcs) and Hot & Sour Soup ($6, enough for two) from Tien Jin Feng Ji

Closed-up of the hot and sour soup which had lots of liao/ingredients

I felt very full after all that binging and right until bedtime. :P

Christmas dinner at Sakura

On a whim, we went to Sakura restaurant for dinner on X'mas day. It came to almost $30 per head, including 7% GST, which was slightly more than the usual price.

I noted the food was a bit different from the usual too, since it was X'mas, but of course, the usual favourite Japanese items like sashimi, sushi, etc. were all there. What was new among the appetisers were the pink prawn sashimi, the smoked salmon appetiser with some mango mayo sauce and smoked duck breast with orange mayo sauce. The hot items too, had some new items, including steamed prawn with garlic & butter*, yam ring, etc. (I can't remember coz my interest at buffets is always on the appetisers).


(* Maiden photo attempt with new hp camera)

In addition, there was roast turkey with stuffing*, honey baked chicken ham* and X'mas log cakes. Both the turkey and chicken ham were so-so. I'm not a dessert person, but I did like the green tea (minty) cake and chocolate log cake.

The bonus was when the chef brought out the scallop sashimi after the pink prawn sashimi ran out. That was like "Wow!" coz it's the very first time I've seen scallop sashimi at Sakura after all these years. We were lucky to have spotted it as we were seated just beside the sashimi platter...heehee! While it wasn't fantastic, it wasn't too bad either, so overall, it was a nice and rather satisfying dinner.

Guess the fruit

Just for fun, guess what fruit this is?

The package actually says "fresh fruit in syrup". :PP





I bought it at the market yesterday, but haven't tried it yet. While at the market, I had this exchange with the fruit seller (in Mandarin):

Me: (Intrigued, confused and peering intently at the fruit package) What is this?
Seller: This is good. It is xxxx (name of fruit).
Me: Got seeds inside?
Seller: I don't know, I haven't tried it yet.
Me: You haven't tried yet, then how you know it's good???
Seller: *speechless....*

*cues comedy music*
Gwa gwa gwa gwaaaaa!

Ikoi Japanese buffet

We went to Ikoi for the a la carte buffet lunch which I'd heard so much about, mostly about the fresh sashimi that's good value-for-money. We didn't eat a lot, but I felt so full after eating most of the sashimi, and a bit of everything. The staff also gave out free soup, perhaps to fill up our stomachs faster? Kekeke...

It was about 12pm, so the lunch time crowd hasn't arrived yet.


Anyway, it wasn't a full house during the lunch, though I was told it's wise to book at least 2 to 3 weeks in advanced for dinner.

The complimentary appetiser - sake sashimi in a slightly sour (plum?) sauce.


I didn't know what that crispy stick of vegetable was (maybe mung guang?), but it was nice and the slightly bitter taste of raw dou miao contrasted well with the sauce...yum!

All tables were "decorated" with a bowl of edamame (Japanese green beans) and soramame (broad beans) that we could eat while waiting for our orders to arrive. Well, we sure don't want to eat too much of these at the start, since they're apt to create gas in the tummy.



The first dish I ordered - mixed sashimi, which has sake (salmon), maguro (tuna), mikajiki (swordtail), tako (octopus) and a dark fish (right next to the octopus) which might be hamachi (yellow tail)? I couldn't be sure coz I'd never had yellow tail before this.


The above is one person's portion. The sake was sweet and tasted great with just a teeny dip of soya sauce. The fish sashimi was generally quite soft, and everything was served cold, which is good.

Then came the yakitori (skewered chicken), tebasaki (mid chicken wing) and california handroll.
Perhaps we could have skipped the chicken wing, and I think I didn't taste any avocado in the california handroll ?


By the way, everything came in 1-piece portion per order, so if you want want more than one, you'll need to specify.

Then came the saba shioyaki (grilled mackerel) and agedashi tofu which came in a tiny piece - about 1 square inch each. These were good, except the tofu was a bit over crispy / hard at the top.



They started serving us the complimentary sake/miso soup. It has salmon, toufu and bits of vegetable. I guess it wasn't too bad except that it was too salty, so we hardly drank the soup.



Mixed tempura with prawns, shitake mushroom, sweet potato, brinjal and ladies finger...generally ok, though I think the batter was a little hard and too thick.


I guess if the batter mixture is too thick, i.e. not enough water, too much of it will stick to the vege, making the fried product hard, instead of light and crispy

The potato croquette was nice, with a curried layer in the middle. These 2 tiny pieces are considered 2 portions.



Ahh...more complimentary teapot soup which had a prawn head inside. The squeezed lime was definitely needed.



I ordered this by mistake, thinking it was soft-shell crab (which wasn't available). It's just one piece, but look at the way it's presented!



California maki, but as one can see, there was no avocado. :-(



Of course, I had to have another portion of sake and tako sashimi. It's just one portion but look how generous they are!


They were very good, but as we get more and more full, the law of dimishing returns sets in and my level of satisfaction per mouthful goes down somewhat...

The SO had the yaki udon, which was not bad.



Stewed meat and potato dish (niku jaga) - the dish that I want to learn to cook!



Broiled tofu (Atsuage tofu)



There were no desserts but there was free flow of hot green tea - all at a price of $33++.

While Kuishin-Bo has more variety, dinner there costs $46++ and it is impossible for anyone to eat everything from the buffet table, and I'd barely eaten one-third of the food the last time I was there, so I guess this smaller Ikoi buffet at a cheaper price is good enough for me.