Double boil, more toil and trouble?

The heat here is nothing less than sweltering and earthen jars that the soups sit in are over a meter tall. Working here, if you ask me is no easy feat. But nonetheless, the good people at Earthen Jar here get up everyday to make great soup and they do everything with a smile.

There is soup and then there is double-boiled soup. Here I would say it is great double-boiled soup. Double-boiled, is like double the trouble but the flavours are twice as bold. When it comes to soup, slow cooking prevails and I think the Cantonese have patiently mastered the art of 老火湯 “old fire soups”. The superiority of the double boil is that the ingredients are slowly allowed to relax in their watery environments and to gradually release their nutrients into the soup. Very little moisture is loss in the process and because of the gentler heat as compared to boiling. This is how I would explain it ... imagine the molecules of liquid dancing around and making merry with the other molecules (please use your discretion; the chemical basis of this argument is my imagination) it is by this unhurried process mutually intensifying the overall flavour.

Here at Earthen Jar, they serve six healing soups: Healthy chicken soup, ginseng chicken soup, pork with or without lotus root, black chicken and duck soup… Correction. Not just soups but good precious soups done the old fashion way that preserve delicious and won’t break the bank.

Amongst the six, we tried four. Between the ginseng chicken and healthy chicken soup, the first had a slightly herbal flavour lent by the fresh ginseng whilst the essence of the chicken was clearer. The black chicken soup was by far the sweetest from dates not in a saccharine manner but a little too much for me. The pork I expected to be the sweetest of all turned out to be the most delicate and soothing like its calming benefits. What was surprisingly good was serving of rice the mushroom and dried shrimp, a fragrant sidekick that supports the bigger flavoured soups.

This place is likely to be overlooked. It sits a corner and is overshadowed by its neighbouring eating house which houses heavyweight hawkers such as Rong Cheng Bak Kut The, Hup Seng Braise Duck Rice and a smaller outfit of Ah Orh. We only chanced upon it because we were pointed in that direction by fellow foodies that we met eating at the neighbouring eating house. Well, now that we’ve found it, I’m satisfied and gratified.

Earthen Jar Treasure Herbal Soup
Blk 22 Sin Ming Road
#01-244, 77 Eating House

Craving Chirashi

Oh how I badly wanted to eat this today but I couldn’t get anyone to meet me for lunch and I had all these groceries and marketing to get done today. This was the last bowl of Chirashizushi that I had and possibly the best one this year. The chef’s choice for this bowl had lovely nuggets of abalone “skirt”, marinated pieces salmon, tuna, scallop, topped with uni, ikura and something that I fell in love with at Mizutani - tamago castella. Why didn’t anyone tell me earlier that they were topping their chirashis with tamago castella?!

Aoki
1 Scotts Road #02-17
Shaw Centre
Tel : 63338015

Taste Paradise, Expanded

My memories of Taste Paradise are good. A standout dish that I remember is XO carrot cake which has now been proudly claimed by Taste paradise in the menu now as Taste Paradise XO carrot cake. So when a representative of Taste Paradise reached out to me, I was curious to know if it was still as good as I remembered it.



Taste Paradise ION looks different from its original one at Temple Street. The dragon inspired gold ceiling feature, the paintings of the emperors and rich colour palette that invokes opulence. No expense was spared, no detail overlooked - gold leaf ceiling feature, hand picked fine porcelain, tableware and chairs, the custom made menus… It is a little over the top but I still like it to a certain extent. Much like the ION building itself, it is not my favourite style but at least it is something interesting to look at.

The new menu here is longer. It now does dim sum lunch and I anticipate that it will continue to grow to incorporate other new dishes that they continue to innovate and reinterpret classics. One of the reinterpretation that we tasted was the Peking duck served with a their very own formulated rice roll, an interesting alternative that is equally smooth but add more of a bite as a opposed to the regular crepe.



Part of the new dim sum menu is their lux version of the xiao long pao – steam shanghai pork dumplings with foie gras. It is a juicy morsel, most of the foie melts in the heat so, don’t lose your soup! Following that was another foie gras number, this time pan-fried foie gras with Peking duck reduction, very rich and a cute celebration of the duck on the plate.

Their classic shark’s fin soup that can be enjoyed as a green version comes seething on a Japanese stone pot and accompanied with a lengthy crispy spring roll that is to be dipped into the soup. The hot idea of the stone pot, I love; the crispy spring roll, I’m not such a fan, too much of a distraction for me.



What we had last of the savouries, braised vermicelli topped with simmered crab meat, was my favourite. Deceptively simple looking, the delicate strands noodles were coated gorgeously with wok hei and a gentle sweetness from the crab, delightful mouthfuls and this is just me, but I like it with drizzle of vinegar.

The dessert was surprising, the winning factor that gave them the winning edge was their cloudlike bun that encased the salted egg yolk custard, think soft and imagine softer. a nice concluding note.

Taste Paradise at ION Orchard
2 Orchard Turn
#04-07 ION Orchard
Tel: 6509 9660

Middle Road Pork Ribs Prawn Mee

I was excited about having lunch here since and tried to like it. We ordered and waited twenty minutes so when the soup bowl of piggy parts appeared, I was ready to dig in.

It was a tad disappointing. The soup was lackluster and flat but the saving grace was the perfectly cooked liver but really other than that, this was really letdown.

Middle Road Pork Ribs Prawn Mee
16 Sam Leong Road
Tel: 62924870

Let's Eat in Paris, Quick!

Quick and easy, good eats that can be done on the run.



Jabugo Iberico & Co serves happy hams. The happiest and tastiest of them all, the black Iberian pigs that roam in oak forest and eat acorns are happy pigs. We dropped in for a plate of delicioso of ham and bread that we dipped in their gorgeous homemade garlicky tomato spread. Simple. Awesome. Not technically not eat and run, but they should do take away!



A falafel from L'As du Falafel is one of those non-French but very Parisian food that everyone should eat. Light, crisp and fluffy falafels are the best I’ve had; and the eggplant that jammed into the pita bread is really good too. Seating is available but somehow I prefer to eat my falafel standing or walking.



Plenty plenty plenty to eat here, their tarte au citron was noted in Figaro's best of Paris at no.4 and umami swears and cherishes the apple tarts when they are in season. A great bakery with too many edible treats, not one for sweets I passed on those, but as was led to their gougeres which I agree, are amazing.


Jabugo Iberico & Co
11 rue Clément Marot, 75008 Paris

L'As du Falafel
34 Rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris

Secco
20 Rue Jean Nicot, 75007 Paris

The Croissant Diet

After days in Paris stuffing myself with croissants and pain au chocolat that were gloriously washed down with espresso and apple juice, I think I’m ready for a lighter diet. I ate them walking out of the store, walking on the street, at the breakfast table, in the middle of the night when I woke up starving, on the plane, on the train, under arcs crumbing on my book; I’m all buttered up.

Unfortunately not all Parisian croissants are made equal. But with that said, part of being a good cook is being a good shopper, start with good ingredients and half the battle is won; and France has great butter. The croissant is simple, 2 main components: dough and butter; but the beauty and difficulty many fold. Folded and folded in a precise manner to hold the butter and to create the distinct layers, if done right and with delicious creamy butter the result is an ethereal light pastry that is crisp and flaky that is at the same time buttery and rich. And sometimes I like mine with a little chocolate but this diet for me is really unsustainable, I love the way it licks on my lips but damn the way it sits on my hips.

Tasted & liked:

La Boulangerie Julien
Invalides, Paris
85 rue Saint-Dominique, 75007 Paris

Ladurée
Champs Elysées
75 Avenue des Champs Elysées, 75008 Paris

Lunch Specials

Of all the sushi places, my favourite to have lunch at is Sushi Yoshida. Prices on the menu are represented nett so it saves you a small headache from the post lunch bill calculation. This is my favourite chirashi place and the icing on the cake for me about having lunch here is dreamy onsen tamago that kicks of the meal.


Hot foie gras jelly topped wild mushroom fricassee under buckwheat brioche crust and black truffle coulis at Jaan

Lunch at Jaan is what I call Jaan made more affordable. Priced higher in relativity to most set lunches in the city, it’s still a really great place to have lunch – dining with a view, quality service and extremely stylish and gratifying food. The foie gras with wild mushrooms bowl that I had during my last lunch there was deliciously awesome.


Onglet Steak with shallots and garlic confit served with French fries at Au Petit Salut

Although having lunch at Au Petit Salut’s either requires a car, a taxi ride or a bus ride and small hike making it slightly less accessible than its former location; their winning formula of classic simple bistro fare priced rightly lunch menu still fill their lunch tables. My favourite thing to have here is the onglet steak with shallots and garlic confit served with French fries.

I first ate at Tenshin six months ago and beware, it is dangerously addictive. I have been back there five times. The mini kaiseiki is the best way to lunch there, if not I’ve sort of invented my own set lunch – a tempura set with an ‘upgrade’ of scattered rice.

I think “Let’s do lunch” is probably one of my favourite three-word phases.

Sushi Yoshida
10 Devonshire Road
Tel: 6735-5014

Jaan
2 Stanford Road
70F Swissotel
Tel: 6837-3322

Au Petit Salut
40C Harding Road
Tel: 6475 1976

Tenshin
1 Cuscaden Road
The Regent
#03-01
Tel: 6735 4588

Sushi Mizutani: Gaining perspective on Sushi and Tamagos

Not all tamagos are made equal. If there was a standard for tamago, there should be one for all the tamagos I’ve eaten and then there is Mizutani’s. It defies being a regular tamago and it is really a cut about the rest – rich, sweet, eggy and almost custardy – trust me, you’ll want more than a piece and will go back just for seconds.

When it comes to sushi, there are no real measures. No cookbook can tell you how much wasabi to put in a sushi; the parallel measure to that is a pinch of salt – how much? That really translates as: unless you know, you won’t really know. Neither would the book tell you about how much rice. The rice is a delicate balance and for each piece to have a consistent mouth-feel. That’s craft.

Why knife skills matter? It isn’t just how sharp your knife is but also your relationship and knowledge of the muscular structure of the fish or sea treasure that matters. With every slice, there are choices – how thick, what angle? Why it matters? Because it just does; because it can change everything. Abalone sushi to me has always been on a chewy rubbery side but here, Mitzutani slices at a calculated thickness and this transforms it from rubbery to crunchy – amazing, I’ve never had abalone sushi like this.

Now I think I understand. This is the art of sushi. This is sushi Mizutani.

Sushi Mizutani
Seiwa Silver Building B1F
9-2-10 Ginza, Chou-ku
Tokyo,Japan
+81-3-3573-5258

Killer Style Teppanyaki

My memories of Teppanyaki are family dinners. For some reason there was a period when I was less than three-feet tall that we used to have weekend dinners at this particular Teppanyaki shop that now closed. And then, since the proliferation of the quick and dirty version of teppanyaki at food courts and I haven’t been to a teppanyaki for a long long time.
There is so much beauty in the simple things.

I’m a big believer of simplicity, pure simplicity. And here, they keep it simple. Very simple – quality ingredients treated with the highest respect (excellent knife skills are a pre-requisite).




As with a lot of eating that we did in Tokyo, there was a close physical proximity to the man that prepares your food. The chefs here have their personal groove; they work with the hot plate and they do things well. Part of the experience is the dramatized cooking, a little flame a little steam and a “smell-track” that is designed to whet your appetite.





Our order included both surf and turf – both exceptional, so if budget and diet permits – have both. The cooking here is cone with commitment and integrity. After the live prawn are presented, they slide onto the hot plate and are gently held down, then deftly beheaded, shelled and de-veined. Special attention is given to everything. Care is taken to flatten the tail shells, removing the unsavoury bits from the head and then coated in oil and left to fry up to a crisp. Head to tail eating. Yum, the crunch and the intense flavours that were concentrated at these extremes were even better than the sweet crunchy flesh. A little salt, some heat and a fresh piece of sweet flesh and all carefully orchestrated on the shiny hot plate – so deliciously simple.



Teppanyaki Akasaka
Tokyo Zennikku Hotel 37F,
1-12-33 Akasaka,
Minato-ku, Tokyo
Tel: +81-03-3505-1437

The Skinny on Skinny Pizza

The Skinny Pizza to me isn’t pizza.

It looks like a pizza but it sure doesn’t taste like one and thankfully is a fad that has not taken over all the pizzerias. I had the Ah Taki Tuna Skinny at Barracks that promised much but really it was more like tuna salad (tasted ok) served on an edible cracker plate. Sure it was skinny and yes it made a wonderful crack and snap but it was also too crispy and hollow to be a good honest pizza dough. I’ll vote for thin crust –crispy and tender- any day!