Chinese Restaurant, Singapore

The only place I had in mind to eat Sichuan food in Singapore was Ba Yu Ren Jia, highly recommended by Singaporeans and that Hungry Boy in his blog. I wish Hungry Boy reads my blog because I want him to add a search widget. The fella doesn't categorize his posts except by the year which means unless you knew for sure what he ate in September 2005, you won't be able to get the info you want. I happened to have written down the name of this restaurant some time ago. All I wanted to eat was 'water cooked fish'.

We took a cab to Smith St, Chinatown and walked up and down in the hot humid weather but the restaurant must've relocated. Not wanting to end up eating a disappointing meal, we left Smith St, which, btw, reminds me of Cheng Huang Miao in Shanghai. We ended up on the main road (North Bridge Road?) and by then it was raining and our feet were numb so we settled for one of the 4 chuan Chinese restaurants across the road from The Majestic (not sure if that's a hotel or a cinema or neither). I did feel a little uneasy, but the restaurant was half-full and we were hungry. The China Chinese waitress was friendly. I still hadn't given up on Ba Yu Ren Jia, but Hub and Yi didn't share my tenacious streak when it came to seeking out new places. All I wanted to eat was 'water cooked fish'.

This was where we had the worst meal of our Singapore trip. This was the meal that ended my search for a decent Sichuan restaurant in Singapore. The restaurant didn't look dirty but I did get a whiff of the shabby wooden table and the others ignored me as usual, putting it down to my imagination and super sensitive nose. I wondered out loud that if a restaurant is dodgy in the dining area, the kitchen must be worse but Hub was already chatting with the waitress about the menu. All I longed for was 'water cooked' fish.



Yi's order of a simple cold dish of white tofu with century eggs turned out to be the best dish we had here. It was similar to what my MIL prepares, except there's a drizzle of black vinegar which made this dish very refreshing.



The waitress' recommendation of pork strips and veg in a bean sauce was surprisingly bland. Even Hub shook his head at this, which meant it was pretty bad.



A famous Sichuan dish of 'dry-fried French beans'. This was okay, barely.



Ah, my order of water cooked fish! I think of it whenever I crave Sichuan food.



Where's the fish? This bowl is full of cabbage and there were only about 5 paper-thin slices of fish that tasted soft and bland, even in that oil. I could eat the cabbage, if not for the fact that there was no ma la taste and flavor AT ALL. I put my nose to the oil and sniffed hard, but there was no flavor, not even of the chili oil. I'm sure I can cook a better bowl of water cook fish. This was just oil with no taste and flavor.

When the waitress asked, I told her what I thought, and we left. I thought you should beware of this place too especially since it is located on the busy main road and so is very deceiving. The shop's name is in Chinese only, Zhung Gou Chan Ting meaning Chinese Restaurant. How very creative.

I wouldn't ever eat here again even if it means starving.

Dian Xiao Er, T3

We got in midnight last night and were told that Yi's Jetstar flight was cancelled and they had put her up in a hotel for the night. Which made me thankful we chose to transit Yi in Singapore and not KL. First thing in the morning we got a call from Sniffer's discipline teacher. It was Sports Day and he was not seen in school. We were told to search the Damai cyber cafes and if he failed to appear, he'd get a black mark. I dressed for the role--jeans, shirt and jacket, sunglasses and mean look, considered bringing a baton, and marched into all the cyber cafes in Damai. Sniffer got lucky because a junior boy's mom got to the cyber cafe first, slapped her boy (which I fully applaud her for) and the rest of them scrammed off back to school. Did I really think that life would be easier when I have only one kid to contend with? Such is my life, and there must be a reason God gave me more sons than daughters.

We had no access to the internet in Singapore and I purposely did not make a list of places to eat because I wanted a relaxed trip where I can eat wherever I happened to be. I can tell you that that's a doable thing in Hong Kong, where if the food's not good the restaurant will close within a week, but in Singapore, you better know where to eat. I know you are thinking 'She's dissing Singapore again' but hey, between Singapore and Hong Kong, I'd rather live in Singapore where it's safe, clean, efficient, not chaotic and Singlish can entertain and embarrass (gosh, I didn't realise until now that there are two 'r' s in embarrass) you at the same time. But as far as shopping and eating go, hands and feet down, Hong Kong wins by a million limbs.

I decided that on this trip, we'll just eat Sichuan food and some good wagyu. Hub as usual is happy as long as I let him eat without guilt while Yi'll eat anything as long as it's Chinese. She thinks western food is boring except for salads, which she loves. I can't remember any exciting salads I've eaten.

I remembered reading somewhere that the best Chinese food are found in Chinatown and Geylang and since I didn't like Geylang, we went to Chinatown. In fact, we went to Chinatown twice, and both times we were disappointed, but I'll tell you that some other day when I get my photos uploaded by Yi. I'll work backwards today and use photos from my camera.

Do you know that Singapore has a swanky new terminal, Terminal 3? We arrived too early for check in so we took the skytrain to T3 and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Dian Xiao Er, meaning, I'm told, 'shop's little waiter'. These days when you throw a stone in Singapore it's bound to hit a China Chinese. From the waiters to the cooks to the salesgirls, the whole of Singapore has turned China Chinese. One thing this means is that there's lots of authentic Chinese restaurants, many of them mom and pop owned and run. But, surprise--authentic means as authentic as the local Singaporeans' taste and we were told over and over again by the Chinese waitresses that dishes have been adapted to suit our tastes. They say this like they were doing us a favor (which they were I suppose) but who wants fake authentic cuisine? Which is maybe why we were so disappointed and ended up, by the 4th day, eating instant noodles and udon with lots of veg and beef and agreeing that it was the best meal we had upto then.



Dian Xiao Er gave us the best Chinese food we had eaten on this trip. Although the ma po tofu, a dish I judge Sichuan restaurants by, was definitely suited for local taste buds, it was tasty and I would recommend this place for a quick meal. We chose the meal set for 2 persons at S$38, which gave us 5 items, including rice and soup, and we added two extra dishes and the bill came to S$66 all-in which was acceptable for airport restaurants.


Part of the meal set, the herbal crispy skin duck was very good. I give it high marks for flavor, taste and crispiness.


Next on the set was tung po pork, which was good too although, as with all Chinese braised pork dishes, there was too much fat to meat.


The last set dish was a simple fried baby kailan, done very well. The lotus root soup was good too.


One look at the ma po tofu and I knew it was more 'outside of China' ma po tofu. You can tell by the fact that cornstarch is used to give it a thicker sauce, there's no red chili oil, and most of all there was no Sichuan peppercorns which are essential to this fiery fragrant dish. As with most unauthentic or 'American-style' ma po tofu, the sauce was a sweet and sourish concoction that is no where near the real thing. However, this dish was tasty (as compared to those we had in Chinatown) as long as you don't think of it as ma po tofu.


I like yee mien, the best of which can be found in Shatin, Hong Kong. This is the regular yee mien with dried scallops, mushrooms and yellow chives and it was okay.

If you check in at T1, you are allowed into the transit area in T3 where there are lots of new restaurants. We hadn't checked in and so couldn't enter the transit area. I'm told the shopping's quite good too. I love airport shopping. There's so much to see all in one place and everybody's travelling somewhere, all dressed up in coats and travel apparel and it makes me feel so...excited, like hey, look at me, I'm travelling. And then I go to my gate, and it's further and further away and there's less and less people, and that's when I feel, yeah, I'm travelling...to a place called Kota Kinabalu.

Re-Post: The Best Choc Molten Cake

Here's one of my first posts. All these 'old' photos were never photo-edited (but now I do) because I hardly knew how to post without the help of my son Ming, let alone edit the photos. This is truly a super yummy cake. Everybody who loves choc should bake this!

Yummilicious molten choc cake.

I first ate MCC at the STAR Hotel but was not impressed because there was very little 'lava'. The next one I tried was at Benito's in Jesselton Point. It was good but pricey at RM10.00 for a small portion in a tiny cup. When a new friend and food lover told me about 'lava' cakes, I decided to try a recipe in Nigella Lawson's book 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess,' mainly because her recipe uses less butter and eggs compared to other recipes I've seen but be warned, she uses more choc than anyone! The cake turned out so good, with so much lava, that I've been telling everybody about it! I've reduced the sugar and don't bother with the muffin tins and turning the cakes out. Instead, just use small ramekin cups. This is a good dessert to make if you are short of time because you just mix everything together using a hand whisk and baking time is short. Try it, you'll impress everybody!

Perfect Molten Choc Cakes

350 g good dark choc (I like Lindt), melted & cooled

4 eggs, beaten

50 g unsalted butter

50 or 60 g fine sugar

50 g cake flour, or all-purpose flour

1 tsp vanilla essence

pinch of salt

1. Set oven @ 200C. Put a baking tray in. Get ready 6 ramekin cups of 3"/7.5 cm in diameter.
2. Cream butter & sugar (with hand whisk) till light & fluffy.
3. Add the eggs, beating all the time, then add the vanilla essence, salt, sieve in the flour and fold in the melted choc.
4. Divide among the cups.
5. Bake 8 to 10 min for 3" ramekins, 10-12 min for bigger ones. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice-cream or just plain, the best way to taste the choc I think.

Note: I've updated this post on 30/1/08 regarding the baking time and ramekin cups size.

Re-post: Taro Rice

Another post from 2007:

(Update: this recipe was amended on 24/11/07 to include mushrooms)

I can't remember if it was Meatball or Chickyegg who asked for a taro rice recipe. Frankly, I've never had taro rice before. I think it's a very West Malaysian dish, probably Fujian or Chowzhou in origin?

We had a couple of friends stay over the last few days and lunch was always a quick meal outside. Yesterday Ming found a large piece of plastic wrapper, complete with a sticker of the shop and name of the manufacturer of whatever it contained, in his soup noodles. I had wild imagination of what it held inside, and I'm totally put off eating outside. So I decided to try cook yam rice for lunch today. It turned out pretty good, tasty and fragrant, and I'm sharing the recipe (with some changes) from Betty Yew's The Best Of Chinese Cooking. Funny thing about Ms Yew's baking recipes - I never get good results, but her chinese dishes work fine.

Taro Rice

600g taro (weight after peeling), peeled and cut into 3/4" cubes or smaller
400g pork/chicken fillet, cut into 1/2" or 1 cm cubes
4 cups long grain rice, washed & drained
1/4 cup dried prawns, washed well

5 dried chinese mushrooms, soaked and sliced into slivers
6 shallots, sliced thinly
1/2 cup finely chopped spring onions
2 red chilies, sliced thinly
1 can Swanson's chicken broth
1 T light soy sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
veg oil

Meat seaoning ingredients:
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sugar
dash or two of white pepper
2 T light soy sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
2 t sesame oil
1 T shaoxin wine
2 t cornflour

1. Marinade the meat with the seasoning ingredients.
2. Fry the shallot slices till golden and crispy. Put aside.
3. Deep-fry the taro in 3 batches till lightly golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
4. Pour away the oil used for frying the taro until about 1/3 cup remains. Fry the dried prawns till brown and crispy, add the mushrooms, fry a minute and add rice and fry, adding 1 T light soy sauce and 1 T dark soy sauce (or more if you want more color), for about 1 to 2 minutes.
5. Put rice into a large rice cooker, add the chicken stock using a rice-measuring cup and measure out 3 1/2 cups (add water to make up to that amount), adding to the rice as you go. Add meat on top. Switch cooker on.
6. As soon as rice boils, add the taro. Do not stir to mix.
7. When the 'cooked' indicator is on, test a grain of rice to see if it's fully cooked. If so, fluff and mix the rice and taro thoroughly. Serve rice garnished with crispy shallot slices, chilies and green onions.

Chinese Baos

Here's one of my first posts, and nobody commented on it. Heck, maybe nobody even read it then. This is a really good recipe, so do try this out.



Some people ask me why I give away my recipes. Hey, I can't take them with me...

This is one recipe everybody should have. I've made bao many times but never really been fully satisfied with the results. So a few weeks ago I paid to learn it from a chef who is also the writer of many cookbooks in KL.

Chef taught us four kinds of baos (you just have to change the filling). However when he came to the highlight, the Hong Kong smiling bao which the 24 of us were there for, Chef made a mistake with the starter dough and declared the baos may not crack open or smile. And they sure didn't smile. Some did, but like Mona Lisa, the cracks on top were reluctant smiles. Many participants were upset about that but didn't speak up (Asian thing). The smiling baos did have that sponge-cake texture but unfortunately the stink of ammonia was very strong. The regular bao dough taught by Chef was very good though.

Regular Bao Dough

A Ingredients:

1 tsp dry yeast

2 Tbsp water

-mix A ingredients together.

(Sshh...if you know your yeast is active, just mix A and B ingredients together at once. I do that all the time)

B Ingredients:

350g Bao or HK flour or Rose (plain) flour

1 tsp double-action baking powder

50g (or less, say 30 g) fine sugar 

200 to 250 ml water* (amended)

1 Tbsp shortening (Crisco) or veg oil

*If you use 250 ml and you are kneading by hand, add 200 ml first and knead in the remainder slowly, 10 to 15 ml each time, so that the dough is not too sticky to handle.

1. Sift the flour and baking powder together (usually I don't bother if the flour is fresh). If using shortening, rub it into the flour evenly.

2. Mix A with all the B ingredients in a mixer bowl and knead at medium speed till very smooth, about 6-8 minutes. The dough should be quite soft. Never mind if it's slighty sticky. Continue kneading until it isn't sticky. If kneading with hands, put dough back into the bowl and cover with a cloth. Rest for 30 min or until doubled, depending on room temperature.

3. Divide dough into 50g portions, roll into smooth balls without using flour.

4. Flatten each ball, roll into a circle with a rolling stick and fill it, seal it and put it on a piece of paper. Rest at least 30 min or till doubled. Do not overproof or bao will wrinkle when steamed.

5. Steam at high heat for 8 to 10 minutes for cooked filling (red-bean paste, fried mixed veg or bbq pork) and 10-12 min for raw meat filling.

*You can substitute 100g of this with equal weight of steamed, mashed sweet potatoes. It'll give a tasty orangey bao.

note: if you know the yeast is good/active, just mix A and B ingredients together at once.

BBQ Pork Filling

300 g bbq pork, diced small
1 brown onion,chopped
3- 4 garlic, chopped fine
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 Tbsp dark soya sauce
1 light soya sauce
1/2 Tbsp fine sugar
1/2 Tbsp sesame oil
white pepper
msg (optional)
coriander leaves, chopped (optional)
toasted sesame seeds (optional)
1 T cornstarch + 2 Tbsp water, mixed

Heat 1 Tbsp oil in wok, fry oinions and garlic, add everything else and finally thicken with cornstarch solution.

Meat And Veg Filling

300 g minced pork
200 g wongbok, blanched in hot water and cut finely
spring onions or chinese chinves, cut fine
1 tsp ginger, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp light soya sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp chicken stock granules
2 Tbsp cornflour
3 Tbsp veg oil
1/4 cup water

Mix everything together and chill in fridge for a couple of hours till it is set so that it'll be easier to handle because there's quite a bit of water. Its okay if its slightly frozen.

Some important tips:

1. Do not over-proof or the baos will rise too much and when steamed, it'll shrink and become wrinkled.
2. Use a bamboo steamer because it'll let out some steam. If you use a metal lid, the steam will condense and drop onto the baos, ruining its surface.
3. Almost all commercial baos have ammonia because it will give a soft, fine-textured bao.
4. At the shops, baos are steamed at high heat till cooked, then constantly steamed at low heat not only to keep them warm and soft, but also to get rid of the ammonia stink.
5. Both Hong Kong flour and 'Pau' flour can be used. These flours have a lower gluten level so the baos will be softer. Plus these flours are highly bleached to make them white, something most consumers like. Me, I'd rather eat ammonia-free unbleached yellow baos.