Tar Pao Dinner

On a whim, I went to tar pao these for dinner tonight.


All in environment-unfriendly take-out boxes


Tar-dah!!


From Max Cafe - one pork sausage and the other with herbs + 2 sides and came with a bowl of chicken corn soup.

The sauteed veggies of carrots, zucchini, brinjal (non-soggy at all!), cauliflower & whole garlic cloves (browned) were absolutely delicious. I feel like trying to 偷师 from the chef!


Something's hidden underneath the sio pek chye - from the food court above the bus interchange.


It's a big chunk of pan-grilled saba (one-half of a large mackeral) sitting on a bed of sauteed, sweet onions. The set came with rice and seaweed soup.


Don't think this is just any plain soup. It's simple but oh, so delicious! I don't know why, it just taste very good. I think I like the stall owner's style of cooking.

It was a good and satisfying dinner.

Bibimbap & Kimchi

It's been a while since I've had bibimbap, so I went to eat it. Then I ate it again... And again...

I had these within a span of 6 days. Thinking about it now is making me drool... :P


BBB from the revamped J8 foodcourt. It's very so-so...can't really describe why I didn't like it...maybe something to do with the taste and/or texture, but I'm unlikely to eat it again, unless feeling very desperate.

BBB, the organic vegetarian version. This one is fresh-tasting, with a nice crunchy texture of the vegies and nice chewiness of the brown rice. Yet it didn't feel heavy and didn't make me feel sleepy after lunch. It's super yum! I can eat this everyday.


BBB from Novena Square (Velocity) Kopitiam foodcourt, where I get my regular fix of BBB and kimchi. I've asked to skipped the chicken. The ikan bilis and kimchi are the side dishes provided as part of the meal.

I like this version, and their freshly-made kimchi, which does not taste "powdery".


I always tar-pao a box of their kimchi, which I will keep in a glass jar at home. Even then, the smell is so strong that it will "stink" the whole fridge.

Yummy...when will I eat them again?

Vegetarian - Hakka Lei Cha 2

The first attempt at trying Hakka Lei Cha (organic version) didn't turn me into an addict, so I thought I'd give this dish another try, this time from the Pine Tree vegetarian stall. Pine Tree has several branches over the island and has build up a reputation for nice vegetarian food, especially their yong tau foo.

I figured I won't be able to stomach all the rice, veges and that bowl of soup for lunch, so I tar-bao it home.



This version tastes much better and the brown rice has just the right chewy consistency - not too hard, and not too soft.



The soup though, was another matter - it has lots of "meshed-up grass"!


The soup was a bit oily (maybe from sesame oil?) and just a tad salty, which stopped me from drinking more of it.

After finishing the rice (I ate the leftover the next morning), the base of the plastic bowl was quite oily. The oil must have come from the seasoned vegetables. So, while this dish is quite healthy, it does contain quite a bit of oil, and should be eaten with restraint. :)

Vegetarian food

Some of the vegetarian food that I've had recently, besides the brown rice chye png (vegetables & rice) combo every now and then.

Kueh Chap - Interestingly, the fishball was super crunchy/crispy, but too salty.



Herbal noodles - very nice with herbal soup and the ubiquitous mock mutton (made from mushroom stalks)



Laksa with mock cockles, which was wrongly served to me!


I'd ordered yong tau foo items with laksa gravy, including the vegetarian ngoh hiang, and this bowl arrived, also with the ngoh hiang on top, so I thought it was my order. Luckily, the other customer didn't mind having my food instead and paid more for it. I find that the regular customers at vegetarian stalls are quite amiable and willing to accept such minor mistakes without fuss.

The soup accompanying the main course of ...



Vegetarian Korean Bibimbap (organic version with brown rice)...super yum!


Instead of the usual sunny-side-up egg, it has what looked like scrambled egg, which was very cleverly made from toufu and almost tasted like the real thing. The soup has radish, carrots, soya beans and perhaps a piece of yam-cum-sweet-potato thing.

Hakka Thunder Rice

It's been around for 2 or 3 years, but I've only tried this rice a couple of weeks' ago - Hakka Thunder Tea Rice(?) or 客家擂茶。

This version I tried happened to be the organic version from an organic eatery.



It's got lots of ingredients, like (clockwise from top) bean curd, green vegetable, black-eyed beans, long beans, cabbage, dried chai poh (preserved radish, for vegetarian version) and peanuts served over brown rice (for organic version).



Served with a herby, grassy-tasting, minty soup which one is supposed to pour over the rice, but I didn't do that, coz all that water will definitely stuff me up too soon.

It's very filling, so it's wise to ask for less rice and to forgo the peanuts since I don't like them. However, I think I still prefer the Korean Bibimbab over this anyday, even if it's the vegetarian version... I can eat that rice+vege dish everyday!

Nasi Bryani

I haven't been cooking dinner much lately, coz it takes too much time to cook for 2 persons than it takes for us to eat the meal!

So, I've been buying our favourite nasi bryani from Tekka Market.

Nope, it's not from the often-quoted famous "A" stall, but from this one which I find even nicer.



The mutton dum bryani is very good and the basmati rice used is light enough that the first time I ate it, I managed to eat up ALL the yummy rice (which does not happen often)!

Somehow, the mutton usually tastes more fragrant than the chicken, so mutton bryani is preferred.



Closed-up of the tender, flavourful mutton from an earlier batch of rice.



We enjoyed the bryani so much so that we don't ever want to eat those bryani from around our place.

Tekka market is due for an overhaul in May, so we won't get to eat the bryani till more than a year later. I just hope this stall will still be there when renovations are completed.

ps: I have been eating the bryani from this stall for quite some time, but only in Jan this year did I realise that their bryani was rated 4 chopsticks by MakanSutra, which means excellent. Glad to know I have good taste...keke!

;P