Re-dressing my garden

Healthy Food -for a break

Cannot let our tummies work too hard all the time. To let the digestive systems take a break, I will usually prepare a variety of fruits & root plants as our dinners for a few days; after having pampered ourselves continuously with too much rich food. For the children, I will include some slices of tuna sandwiches.
Alternatively, I will sometimes dish out this Korean salad.
I use the thick transparent vermicelli (boil & run with iced water), capsicum (any colour - short stripe),cherry tomatoes (half), Japanese cucumbers (slice) & yellow soya beansprout (light boil to get rid of the raw taste). Since I grow basil in my garden, I will also add some leaves into my salad (not a must but I find it enhances the flavour of my salad. Mix all the ingredients well with Korean fish sauce (portion according to taste) & sesame oil (sufficient but not too oily). When ready mixed, leave it in the fridge to chill till ready to be served. This goes very well with the fruits.
The main theme of this special diet is to eat lots of fresh fruits & vegetables. Unless need to be boiled, such as sweet potatoes & yellow soya beansprout, if not, the corns can also be eaten fresh without steaming or boiling them. They are presently sweet & crispy when chewed on.

Gifts from my sis-in-law

Many friends call me a chilli queen. To kill my curiosity, my sis-in-law brought back for me the Habanero Chile & Poblano Peppers from the States during her home visit recently. They are originated from Mexico. I will be saving the seeds for drying & plant them when they are ready.

Don't you think the tiny ones are very cute when put next to the big ones! Habanero Chile are the tiny ones & the big ones are Poblano Peppers. They are chilli pepper plants which also belong to the capsicum family.

The fruits contain capsaicin which is the “ingredient” in a pepper that tends to burn your mouth. It is technically a chemical that effects the nerve endings in our skin as well as our mucus membranes & that is why if you have a stuffy nose, eating something spicy often opens your sinus right up!

To know how hot or the 'heat' of a chilli pepper, we can use the scoville scale. The Scoville scale works by determining the amount of capsaicin that is present in a pepper and gives it a number of Scoville heat units which renders the rating. If, there is a rating of from 1 to 20, Habanero will be ranked no: 15. Thai chilli which is the capsicum pepper most people familiar with is only ranked no: 13. Poblanco only rank no 5. Either my taste bud is superb or has gone haywire, I can still handle the Habanero. I just cut up one into big pieces & ate them fresh together with my dishes. I like the crispy texture & the fresh 'heat'.

One of our passions

Savouring varieties of good food is just one of my family passions. These are some recent good places we have tried out.
Dining at Amici (an authentic Italian restaurant)in Holland VillageI enjoyed their seafood soup. It's a little peppery. My daughter & sister ordered their Grigliata di Manzo (Grilled beef tenderloin with summer truffles in Madeira sauce) I ordered the Lombata D'Agnello Alla Griglia (shalow fried rack of lamb in rosemary jus)My boy & husband had the Lomabata Di Bue Arrosto (pan baked OP prime rib with tri pepper sauce) Cosy ambience Dinner not complete if without a superb dessert. This is their famous airflown coffee tiramisu - not in their menu because it is not available everyday.

A hearty lunch at Meeras Curry Banana Leaf Restaurant Pte Ltd before going to look for my Mulberry plant in nurseries nearby. It's located along Upper Thomson Road. Their pratas were better done than those from the famous My Prata Shop. We also ordered mutton briyani & fried chicken. Their fish curry went well with the pratas. The fried chicken did not taste as good as it looked.
The boss was very generous with their ginger when I asked for more to be added to our Teh Alia (ginger tea). We had it without sugar.

Tim Sum lunch at Yum Cha Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown. We were spoiled for choices - there were 70 over tim sums in their spread. This time round, we ordered their steamed beancurd skin roll in superior sauce, chicken giant bun (it is almost the size of a butter bread plate), glutinous rice in lotus leaf, steam chicken claw (my husband's favourite tim sum dish), siew mai with fish roe, crystal chive dumpling (my daughter's favourite tim sum dish at Yum Cha), steamed prawn dumpling (The skin is not springy. I prefer the one from Wah Lok Cantonese Restaurant in Carlton Hotel), fried glutinous rice (I like the texture), chicken yum puff, pan-fried chives & meat dumpling, baked mini egg tarts (my daughter's must-order tim sum at Yum Cha), fried beancurd skin roll with shrimp, garlic soft shell crabs, sesame prawn & mango roll (not as good as the one from Prima Revolving Restaurant). My boy actually wanted to order the steamed xiao long bao (his favourite tim sum dish at Yum Cha although he still prefers the one done by the Shanghainese chef from The Eastern Restaurant at Centre Point) but after having all those mentioned above, his stomach could take in no more.

Tong Ah Seafood Restaurant at Teck Lim Road in Chinatown dishing out very good Cantonese cuisine. I recommended my friends to try some of the dishes. The assam curry fish is a unique one to start with. Not the very traditional spicy & sour assam fish head you can find in many eating outlets. Here, the service staff will recommend customers to try their whole fresh red snapper (not just the head). To me, I find their assam gravy is quite similar to the peranakan udang (prawn) pedas. You can find ingredients like pineapples but very little vegetables added to the fish. The crispy pepper, sweet & sour prawn is very good. Even if you are on diet, you must not miss their Tong Po Stewed Pork. This claypot sweet pepper chicken has good texture & flavour on the outside but not the inside. I am sure the taste will turn out perfect if the meat can be marinated a bit longer before cooking. Another a must-order dish is their fried kangkong. It is not too oily & is dished out just in the correct timing so that the texture is crispy & colour of the vegetable is still fresh when served.

Look at the triangular shaped building where the restaurant is situated. Don't you think the building itself is a piece of art?