Miss Clarity Cafe

sweet tidings.

oh gaw-! my department is actually not coming in today as they will be heading off to pulau ubin for a retreat and nobody really expects me to come in tomorrow .. which means today could be my last day!!! yayyYYYYyyyy.. happy day today!

ok here's the erm funny bit- i am actually of returning- not just tomorrow thinking part-time for them. not for anything reason other than the fact that i did enjoy my short stint here afterall. i might have been particularly snappy or moody at times but somehow i cannot find the heart to just throw down whatever i have been doing. i mean i should at least clean up the outstanding work right? tomorrow will be an extremely busy day as noone will be around. and i just got added assignments. heh heh. i guess i pretty much love having too much to do.

anyway my collegues treated me to lunch today, seeing how it was my second-last/ last day and we headed off to a really homey cafe on purvis street called miss clarity cafe. amazingly, the auntie who owns it used to sell cakes and pastries back at smu before we moved! and the best part was she recognised this regular patron- your truly and gave me a free hoho strawberry ice-cream!

then she gave me this stack of cards to give out so people, let me your ears!

MISS CLARITY CAFE is now operating along
5 Purvis Street
Tel: 6339 4803
FREE BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS

sticklered senseless.

yesterday yang attended her scrapebook making class at laine's papeterie at wheelock place and bought a bundle of stickers back.

yes they are actually stickers!





aren't they just the sweetest things?

i am feeling wayyy too stepford-wifey now.

pages pleasure.

going through amazon, i came across these books.




and how i yearn for them.

very soon, i will be bankrupted by food and books.

Crystal Jade Macau

a real entry.

i have not blogged properly for the longest time and i think my blog suffers from an identity crisis. is this a food blog? am i a flogger? i kind of prefer to think of myself as a blogger who blogs TOO MUCH about food. haha.

now if you think i am crazy about ebay, wait till you hear about my mum's friend who BOUGHT a MAC laptop so that she could surf at her country club.

on another note altogether, i have just finished harry potter and the half-blood prince. i think the potter magic is gone. after going through 600 over pages, the book ended on a 'huh' note. i wonder why jk rowling does not want to keep to writing shorter stories .. many a times, i find the story going off track and basically out of focus. not a cliff-hanger, i felt that the book was trying to hard to create twists. not forgetting how everything is starting to sound like a bad korean drama with key characters dying and bad blood brewing. how disppointing.

my birthday went along quietly- just the way i wanted it. in fact, my younger sister actually forgot about it (yeap after the whole roast beef dinner!?). amazing how i received well-wishers from those i would never have expected.. and to the well-wishers (in order of receival): toon, shafiq, waiii, diana, douglas, denn, ade, mingxi, aizhen, mingzheng, muhd, ziang, edward yap, nicole, seng
-thank you.

i met up with two old friends toon and mingxi for lunch at crystal jade macau yesterday. it was my first time at the macau-themed outlet at bugis junction. the menu is slightly different and i think i would want to return just to try out their other dishes.

and fyi, the murky pool below happens to be macoroni with fried egg, luncheon meat and pork chop. a mouthful of comfort food i must say.

i was re-reading my old glamour magazines yesterday when i chanced a small section on nigella lawson, titled 5 things you didn't know about me. sadly and surprisingly so, she said that her mother suffered from am eating disorder her entire life. but when told she had cancer and only weeks to live, she decidedly to immerse herself in indulgence and ate heartedly for the first time. -sigh.

i think this is a similar sentiment to alot of us and i have found many around me actually answering those thoughts like "if i were to die tomorrow, i would order a plate of char kway teow with extra lard". aren't we all alike?

Windows on Bukit / Auntie Chiah Ming's place

nostagically yours.

last weekend, it was all about tradition- time-honored practices that stood firm through the test of time and season.

for yang's homecoming, a family friend auntie chiah ming (cm) invited us over to her house for what was affectionately known as 'white noodles'. though 'white noodles' bear a striking resemblance to 'ban mian,' auntie cm's 'white noodles' originates from the sin huat province in china and is epitome of home-cooked delectable.

how this is eaten is that a hot steaming bowl of noodle soup (consisting of chicken broth, prawns and vegetables) is first served, then you proceed to add the preferred condiments such as shredded chicken breast, fried fish, shredded omelet, ikan bilis, peanuts and even seaweed. of course, there will be sambal belachan on the side.





it is funny how such a nondescript dish is able to evoke such strong devotion. whenever auntie cm calls my mum for just about anything, my sisters and i would always cross our fingers and hope for an invitation over to her place for some 'white noodles'.

if there were a prize for the 'most visited restaurant for birthdays' for our family, windows on bukit wins hands down.



(l-r) a spectacular view that overlooks the golf course; a platter of aphrodisiacs awaits; fantastically-fresh sashimi



not for the faint-hearted: i do realise this hunk of a steak might seem almost sacrilegious to the more hard-core vegans. though i have not tried lawry's or morton's, i would proclaim this still-squeaking piece of beef to be the best prime roast beef in singapore. and it gets even better when you use the yorkshire pudding to soak up every morsel of the savoury gravy.



(l-r) a carnivore's first bite; bread&butterpudding/ strawberry mousse/ peach crumble; chocollate souffle


beaming away.

YESTERDAY afternoon, jimmy, jie, jimmy's friend benny and i went for tea and by team i do not mean coffee at starbucks or high tea at some pish-posh hotel. we actually visited a REAL tea joint over at bugis, north bridge road called tea joy where they specialise in chinese tea leaves and the art of drinking tea.

the array of teas were pretty musch amazing too as they had about 10 different types of green tea alone .. not to mention yellow tea, black tea and even cheemalogy ones such as pu-er and oolong. phew.

it was a refreshing experience as i got a first hand account on how tea should be served. like you first had to put the tea leaves into the teapot, drain in some water, pour the first batch of tea away as a form of washing the leaves then eventually refilling the teapot and serving it to the rest.

a mess of a crumble.

introducing a weapon of mass digustation- blackberry and coconut crumble.

come saturday, i tried to bake a blackberry crumble for a friend's party but it was a sheer disaster. dry, crumbly and tough, it tasted more like a prehistoric weapon than dessert.



and i was soooo disappointed.

shaken but not stirred, i was determined to get at least something right. so i walked out to the supermarket to get cocoa powder to bake this choc-chocolate cake.



jimmy says it reminds him of the chocolate cake from roald dahl's matilda. remember the scene where miss trunchbull forced bruce bogtrotters to finish up the cake as a form of punishment? yea, like downing a fudgilicious chocolate cake is any form of torture... haha.



frankly, after baking this i was almost exhausted. all that breaking, cracking, measuring and whisking.. not to mention washing up.. times twice effort. i was p-o-o-p-e-d. which was why i basically fell asleep on the couch while waiting for the cake to cool.

Ember Restaurant, Hotel 1929

eros for ember.

forget what you have heard from others-
MY experience at resturant ember (hotel 1929) was mind-blowing.

this was kind of like my birthday lunch since i have always wanted to visit this resturant, so the three of us- mum, yang and i made it a point to visit ember today. as soon as we got off the cab, a lady opened the entrance and greet us with a wide grin. welcoming attentive service? -check.

figuring out that we could share, yang and i ordered set lunches while mum ordered an ala carte. i know after reading kitchen confidantial by anthony bourdain, i should have enough foie-sense than to order "set lunches" but seriously the dishes here at ember easily trounced the usual myth.

my appeitizer was decided upon recommendation. like as if i would walk into a non-japanese resturant and order 'tofu'?! but this roasted egglant with homemade tofu and mushroom is wow! the eggplants were mush-soft without that churlish feeling and the tofu was sinlessly good. you really have to give the chef due credit for coming up with such an unusual but winning collaboration.

yang's appeitizer consisted of deep fried soft shell crabs with sweet wasabi aioli. though predictable, this dish here was surprisingly tastbud-teasing due to the unusual sweet wasabi.

onto main courses, marinated cod with black miso and herbed potatoes
braised lambshank with mash potato

oven roasted marinated spring chicken with blood orange and thyme jus, mash
& lambshank undone

though the main courses did take its sweet time to arrive, the taste, not to mention service, more than made up for it. our waiter apologized for the delay without us even having to raise an eyebrow. the taste? ok *drumroll, i think this is the best lamb dish i have EVER EVER in my LAST few days as a 19 year old tried. tender to the core, the lamb was an absolute delish. on top of that, the mash potato mix stew gravy was a bundle of buttery goodness. must order for sure!

the chicken glazed in pesto sauce was a safer dish and delectable enough though i did prefer the pepper roast potatoes that it was sitting on. i have not had cod fish in a longggg time so yang's cod was like a heartening nostalgic dish. well, like many fishes, cod is an acquired taste. extremely fresh and cod-dish-smelling: fish-fiends- beware; fish-friends- go for it!

a satisfying meal ALWAYS ends with dessert -wink. when dessert's missing, it is like a fantabulous cheeseburger without the urm.. cheese! i had a warm banana tart with homemade lavender ice cream while yang ordered the frozen banana and pureed white chocolate ice cream topped with chocolate-covered cherries.

having only tried elderflower before, my fetish for flower-flavoured ice creams was sealed after trying out the lavendar. though i was disappointed that they had removed the basil crepes with jasmine ice-cream from the menu, this banana/ lavander dessert was extremely comforting. eat it fast though, because when cold meets hot, cold duh-melts-fast.


peppermint tea- soothing end to a riot of flavours.

ember is an engaging mix of substance and style. it is definately not one of those resturants that depend on frou-frou-ambience to sell. perhaps i was lucky- i ordered the right stuff but my experience at resturant ember will definately be hard to top.

criminal culinary.

i came. i shopped. i baked.
i took leave yeaterday and i baked! haha. so much for piorities right?

anyway, i picked up this sour-cream cookie cake recipe and decided to bake it since i have NO IDEA?! what a sour cream cake tastes like. i have originally wanted to bake one with a biscuit crumb bottom, instead it fusing the crumbs into the cake so i could not locate my digestive biscuits so i decided to make a pineapple sour-cream cake instead.

it was actually quite simple -by the way, in my opinion, cakes are a lot simpler to make then muffins- so with the normal beating, whisking and melting, a cake was produced. hmm, reason why i have not "smsed" anyone is because.. i think this is an acquired taste.. i can imagine some people cringing at the thought of a sourrr cake..



oh, i almost forgot to mention that i finally found my digestive biscuits under yang's baked cookies .. so i created a crummy layer of biscuit bottom after the cake have been baked and joined the two and baked for another fifteen minutes.

mum liked it precisely because it was not sweet. and come the next morning, i reaslied the cake was firmer and the sourness had worn off a little. so if you want to try a sour cake .. just buzz me. haha.

after morning baking, yang and i ventured into the realms of borders and kinokuniya where i could have spent my entire day at. the amount of culinary essays were just amazing and it did require some an herculean effort just to pry myself away from those cookbooks!



see anthony bourdain? i even found nigel slater's appetites and e meal observed by andrew-somebody! if i had an extra digit in my bank account, i would have bought the entire shelf down. i did however get two periplus mini cookbooks as i realised it tiring it was to lug a 500-page recipe book around -a sigh on contentment.

i love my day.
i don't wanna work no more.

Ah Teng's Bakery Raffles Hotel

Judging a cafe by its cover, Ah Teng's bakery at Raffles hotel resembles one of those awfully prententious pseudo-nostalgic cafes. Although the pastries were not exactly mindblowingly great and nothing fantastic. but anyway i decided to feature them as my company happens to use them for all our morning seminar refreshments.


A glimspe of the window display.


L: Fan shaped croissant stuffed with cheese and raisin.
R: Assortment of pastries.


L: nutty chocolate croissant.
R: butter croissant.


L: blueberry croissant.
R: chocolate croissant- torn up.

Overall, the pastries were decent. Most of the time, the fillings were overwhelmed by the stale pastry casing and the pastry lacked the fluffy feathery texture, which was characteristic of sensational pastries. For a hotel which wears the badge of quality assurance proudly above their breast pocket, this cafe and its offerings just did not live up to expectations.