Thursday, October 29, 2009

I suppose I should do Day 4, since it's been so many weeks since I came back from Singapore... it'll be quite hard to recollect everything now that so much time has gone by, but.. let's go~

Day 4~ not quite the middle of our trip, but close, and at this point, I think I was starting to feel a bit of a flu coming... it happens when the weather is warm and humid outside, cold and dry in shopping centres, and sleeping with the air-con and fan turned on all night~ like my sister said, the two seasons in Singapore are summer (when outdoors) and winter (when indoors, because the aircon is so strong). So it was another bright and sunny morning and we had breakfast at...

From Singapore
A kaya place! For those who don't know, kaya is a jam made out of coconut milk, eggs and sugar. It takes forever to make, and I've failed at it quite a few times (to my mum's frustration, because each time, I waste heaps of eggs ^^''). It takes a few hours of standing in front of the stove, stirring at low heat... and if you turn the flame up out of impatience (.. am guilty of doing such thing), the whole thing just fails and you have to start all over again.

From Singapore
It comes with teh tarik, which my sister had, or cold milk tea, which we got, as well as two soft boiled eggs. Apparently, all you have to do is to boil the water, turn off the heat, put the eggs in for a few minutes, and then crack it into a bowl. Serve with soy sauce and pepper~ what I don't know is how many  minutes to submerge the eggs in the hot water for, but that's experiment for another day. I recently tried to experiment with the soft boiled eggs that are served on top of most good ramen. Needless to say, it was a failure (it's starting to sound like most of my cooking adventures end in failure, but that's so not true) because the less cooked the egg, the harder it is to peel. And I was never good at peeling eggs =_=

From Singapore
And the toast itself. What's so special? Starting with the bread, it has been sliced super thin and toasted evenly. Because it's half the thickness of usual sliced bread, it's super crispy~ then there's the thick coat of kaya, and right in the middle, a big slab of butter- not melted. I don't get why people like melted butter on their toast- you might as well pour oil on there-, because butter that's not melted taste so much better. Of course, the guilt of biting into butter is enough to put off a lot of people, but not us =)

From Singapore
A mini soup spoon rather than teaspoon. Who can be bothered with dainty teaspoons when you can get a soup spoon to stir your teh tarik? =P

Wandering around a shopping centres (I've long forgotten the names of the many shopping centres we visited~), we stumbled upon a tea shop. Hoping it'd be better than the tea shops in Sydney, we walked in and took a look. I've been wanting to get this tea:

From 2009-06-18-2205-35
for ages, but haven't had much luck in finding it. They did have the same type of tea, but not the same brand.


From Singapore
We tried out the tea and had a mini tea ceremony- Chinese style, in the shop.

From Singapore

From Singapore
The tea is poured from the pot into the tall cup before being transferred over to the smaller cup. The scent is left in the tall cup, so you take a whiff of it before sampling the tea in the small cup.

Bought the tea, but realised it's still not as good as the one I had... =(

Lunch was at "Soup Spoon"~ a chain restaurant in Singapore that serves... well, soup. They had a whole range of soup there, from the typical cream of mushroom and minestrone to Asian double boiled chicken soup.

From Singapore
Served with a bread roll with each bowl of soup, this was tt's minestrone soup.

From Singapore
This was my clear soup with chicken, melon etc inside. Felt like something a little less heavy on the stomach since we've been practically eating nonstop the past 3 days, needed some veggies too, so this soup was really good. Except it doesn't go well with bread roll because... you just don't dip bread into this kind of soup.

From Singapore
This looks like pumpkin soup, but it's actually tomato, basil... I think? My sister's~ I dipped my bread into her bowl of soup since I can't do it to mine~

From Singapore
After a rather small lunch (though we were never hungry during this 10 day trip- ever. Unless you count mornings before breakfast, but throughout the day, not once were we hungry, and I really don't think one can go hungry in Singapore, not if they have a least a dollar in their pockets) we walked around and found this cute shop, the Chocolate Research Faculty... uni should have this faculty, I can imagine quite a lot of people will enroll.. they had all sorts of weird flavored chocolates there, but in the end, we bought a lychee one. Generic, I know, but a safe choice.

Next, my sister went to go pay some bills and we waited in a Japanese restaurant. My sister used to work there when she first went to Singapore and was looking for a proper job~ a very nice restaurant called... Sun and Moon? Can't really remember, it's something to do with moon =|

From Singapore
My sakura fruit drink.

From Singapore
Their sweet potato dessert plate~ Love the mont blanc~ they had sweet potato chips, parfait-like dish, and sweet potato covered with toasted sesame seeds.

From Singapore
Close up on the mont blanc =) Yet to taste a good one in Sydney. Still looking, I think Azuma has it. Might go check it out soon~

From Singapore
Think this was their float~ looks like lime based with vanilla ice cream? (or is that cream?) I think my memory is fading fast... =(

From Singapore
My sister came a while later and order this cheesecake. It comes in a cage, and apparently, when she was working, she used to fold origami cranes that comes inside the cage along with the cheesecake, but after she left, there was probably no one who knew how to fold cranes, so it now comes bird-less. I want my money back! The picture on the menu had a crane!

From Singapore
She also ordered dango, because apparently Sydney doesn't sell this kind of Japanese dessert. I'm sure it does though, just not sure where... maybe... Wasaby...

From Singapore
The cheesecake without its cage. Very nice, I must say. Like tofu.

From Singapore
Oh, this must be the day we went walking along Orchard Road- a whole big stretch of quite high-end shops. Not really my thing, because one can really only window shop and look at things that are ridiculously overpriced (they probably get it made for 1/10 the price and use the "brand" as an excuse to up the price for brand-chasers and guys with high-maintenance girls), but it's a popular place to look around in Singapore.

From Singapore
All these high-rise buildings around~ Singapore is a little island afterall, build up instead of wide~

From Singapore
Shopping centres are huge and absolutely stunning in their interior designs. This was within a shopping centre... it's a freaking big bright fountain!

From Singapore
After all the junk we ate, in dire need of detoxing~ so we sat down to rest our feet and had some... turtle herbal jelly. Whether there was real turtle inside, we'll never know. As M and my sister like to say during meals, "Don't think, just eat." Wise indeed... attention all fussy eaters, heed these words!

We met M for dinner (think he went to work, but my sister took the whole 10 days off for me [thank you jie!!] so while we shopped around Orchard Road, he was at work, poor guy) and he took us to an Italian restaurant for pizza. It's not really Italian, but it does have some pretty special pizzas.

From Singapore
Started off with some vietnamese rolls~

From Singapore
Followed by a pekking duck pizza~ having never tried this before, we were a bit skeptical. I mean, hoisin sauce plus cheese?! o O'' but nevertheless, you can't really go wrong with duck... so yup, we have here a pizza of cheese, hoisin sauce, duck pieces, long strings of spring onions, and flakes of... I don't know what you call it, but it's like deep fried pastry. Like... cornflake...? It's really good! I've been tempted to make it at home... with... lebanese bread as base. Might... one day~

From Singapore
Oh, they had mushrooms too...

From Singapore
Sausage and capsicum... seemed like a good idea at first, but I suppose we could have made a better choice. Onions =( Lots of onions...

From Singapore
Something safe- spaghetti bolognese~ with extra cheese on top~

We went walking around after dinner~ and went into ToysR'us. They had those... machines, where you put coins in, turn the dial, and a ball comes out with toys inside... and I have no idea what they are called in English, but as a kid raised in Singapore, we call it the "tikam machine", in Japanese, the "gashapon" machine. Anyway, there was a yuyu hakusho one (that's an anime, very old, but epic) and we tried it...

From Singapore
and managed to get the two that we wanted most! That's Kurama in his human and youkai form, the fox. The fox one is hanging off my phone now =)

Even though after dinner, we were really full already, we managed to squeeze in one last thing: dessert~

From Singapore
M recommended it as the best egg tarts of all times, not just Singapore. Apparently, even people from Taiwan wanted to take this back to their homes, but it's unlikely to survive any plane trips, since it' extra-crumbly pastry will probably break with a car trip, much less a plane trip.

From Singapore
My sister had a custard pudding instead~

Thus concludes Day 4!

7 comments:

tt said...

"attention all fussy eaters, heed these words!"

Is that like you and onions? =P

And that brand of tea leaves..could probably find it in Hong Kong.

Unknown said...

I eat onions if they're finely chopped... or extremely soft... as long as their presence is not overly evident.

Hey! I still eat them, dreadful they may be!

I've long given up on those tea leaves ; ;

K said...

Hey! As a melted-butter eater I'm horrified that you'd think it's just like eating oil. The butter smell permeates through the toast and makes it soggy. Otherwise you may as well put pour oil in mashed potatoes instead of a knob of butter! Not that there's anything wrong with oil - I like dipping toasted bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar...

Unknown said...

But that's exactly it. Who wants to eat soggy toast soaked in oil (albeit smelling like butter)? The point of having toast is so you get the crispy texture. Maybe for pancake, it can be forgiven... because pancake isn't meant to be crispy... but not toast!

K said...

When the butter melts (assuming you don't put too much) the exterior remains fairly crisp and the melted butter oozes out of the bread like a sponge when you chew on it. Lovely! And toasted english muffins with melted butter. Again good stuff. Oh and toasted turkish bread with melted butter and vegemite - the best!

Unknown said...

Toasted english muffins are much nicer with unmeltedbutter~ (or maybe just some bacon, sausage pattie and avocado!) Turkish bread.. better used as pizza base rather than... wait wait...did you say vegemite?? D=
....
Dx

K said...

pizza base? you're thinking of pita bread.... i'm talking about the longish turkish bread. turkish bread toasted crisp (usually needs 2 runs through the conveyor belt ^^ ) and then quickly butter it to get it to melt.. then scrape on a tiny bit of vegemite for saltiness.