Bellini Chianti Riserva 1997

Bellini Chianti Riserva 1997@60SGD
1997 is a superb vintage for Italian wines. The Bellini is made from 100% Sangiovese grapes from the Chianti region. Nose was alluring, with some hoysin (oyster sauce) note, saltish, reduced dark berry with licorice. Elegant complex nose. MMMM. However, on the palate it was lacking in acidity to cut. A mild body with no angular edges. Finish was short. However, after 1hr, the nose was getting more complex and some tannins and acid emerged. Interesting.

Babich Black label Sauvignon Blanc 2007

Babich Black label Sauvignon Blanc 2007@30SGD
This gotta be a big big QPR wine that i chanced upon recently. A Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough region. The nose was crisp and filled with beautiful pineapple, citrus, white flowers. A complex nose. On the palate, it was clean and refreshing, perfect to go with some roasted meat or duck. Mild sweetness. Finish was abit short but overall it is a solid wine. However, after 30mins this wine went down hill and getting more acidic. Great QPR wine.

Penfold 407

Had this over dinner at Kamboat courtesy of James.

Opened up with a typical Aussie jammy black fruit nose, intermingled with currant. Surprisingly there is an absent of annoying alcohol heat so typical of South Aussie wines in this case. After about 45minutes of breathing, some graphite emerged. Palate was medium huge, with a pretty jammy mid.

Verdict: It is much better than I thought it would be. Worth a try and go with heavy dishes.

Kamboat restaurant @Marina Square

J, JA and me went for a simple dinner at Kamboat @Marine Square.
I first went to Kamboat about 8 years back and I've been returning back to the restaurant ever since..
The service is friendly and personel and prices are pretty affordable. Most importantly, the captains do know how to treat their regular customer well ( remembers your name, free dessert, free corkage, free this free that, sibeh ho!)

Kamboat's Rule #1: Customer must be happy. Xiao Long Pao@4SGD: This wasn't the freshest XLP i had. Probably due to the fact that it is dinner time and they'd just resteamed the XLP. Average
SiewMai@4SGD:Big big scallop sitting on top of your royal siew mai. Again, it was not as firm as i would like it to be. Remind ya, no more dimsum at nite!Prawn and Mango@4SGD: This fare much better than the 2 steamed dimsum. Prawn and mango fried with some vermicelli like batter. Crunchy at the outside, juicy in the inside!
Vegetables and 2 eggs@9sgd: A homely food. The broth is clean and flavourful, without being overly salty and heavy. The vegetables are in a nice soft texture, laced with pieces of salted eggs and century eggs. we like this! Comfy food!



Japan Diced Beef with Onions@14sgd: Chunks of succulent beef cubes stirred fried with their special japanese sauce. Slightly on the sweet side but the beef cubes were so tender we easily wiped clean the plates in a matter of minutes. Top grade.
Pork with Preserved Vegetables@9sgd: Again, its a comfort home food. The meat is ultra tender and the vegetables not overly salty. Gooood!
Ee Fu Noodle@12SGD: A very good effort of stir fried eefu noodles from Kamboat. Good amount of wokhei and it is not drenching in oil.. Clean. Yummy to go along with the in house chilli.
Total bill = 72.95SGD for 3.

Free corkage, plus very good service and good food. Do give them a try, and if you are fan of suckling pig, do order one day in advance. Kam Boat makes the meanest suckling pig in Singapore. It is so crispy that you will screammmmmmmmmm!!

kuriya@ raffles place

Need to find a good value afternoon tea set in town?
Look no further, do check out the Kuriya @ Raffles Place Basement. For 5.50per set, you could choose a dessert dish + a drink of your choice (coffee, tea, soba tea etc)

J and I had a simple tea before dinner with JA. Good value. Nice .
Soba Tea: Tasted like a massively burnt rice tea. I like the bitter toasty note..Too bad you could not have a refill on this else Demona would have seen me gulping down a whole 1 litres with no problem.
Excerpt on introduction of Soba Tea: Made from the buckwheat plant, it has a hearty and toasty flavor. Naturally high in protein, vitamins and minerals, soba tea is good for digestion and high blood pressure.

Whateveryoucallit One: I'd ordered this, basically just a scoop of ice cream with fresh fruits balls, jellies and some type of honey. Not great and elegant but refreshing.

Whateveryoucallit Two: J ordered this, more like a variation of the presentation of Whateveryoucallit One but with a green tea jelly with red bean paste. Not too bad.

Verdict: Overall, the tea set are screaming good value for money. It is only valid for 3-5pm, so do go down there when you are aroudn the area looking for some not so crowded yet affordable place to chill out.

Yuet Loy Cooked Food@Outram Park

This place is just screaming "WOK HEI" from tip to toe!!! If you are a big fan of "wokhei" and great value Chinese food, you should never give this place a miss!

Frankly, I'd never been an avid fan of hawker CzeChar, and I rather prefer the cozy and comfy environment of an air-conditioned restaurant (crystal jade, imperial treasure, shatin, kamboat etc", however, this place really blown me away and it just shows that there are still many hidden gems worth finding in the midst of this tiny island. Another plus point? this stall is pretty well ventilated and the cooling weather do gave a big help as well!


Homemade tofu (9sgd): The texture of this tofu is really unique. It is kinda like a hybrid between tofu and those stuff being made into vege-charsiew. It has a hollow centre and the sauce was thick thick and coated with massive note of wokhei. Creamyy!!!
Beef Kailan (9sgd) A simple dish and you'd thought it could not be any better? Try this and i guarantee it will set you on level 100 Foodielicious Zing! Finely chopped beef coated with a thick soya based gravy drench on top of freshly boiled kailan. The chef reallly controls the stove/fire very well. You could taste huge huge wokhei flavour in this dish but there is no burnt/charred parts in it. A wonder!
Salted Fish + chicken (9sgd): The salted fish sauce coating the chicken was so thick that i could imagine school of salted fish swarming into your mouth when you put a scoop of the juice into you mouth...It is that thick/pekat and again with macho wokhei.. Very flavourful dish that went well with the steamed white rice..
Seafood Horfun (12sgd): Check out the biggies prawn.. Succulent and fresh.. and not to mention, the horfun is fully coated with macho wokhei again...This is one of hte best horfun i had in singapore, infact, it could rival many stalls in KL/Malaysia. It is darn good. Eachs pieces of horfun was fried to perfection, with macho wokhei sticking to them, and the gravy was thick and flavourful without being too salty.
Close up of Horfun laced with Wokhei:
Roast pork 4sgd: This is the roast pork from some random stall in the hawker centre. Nothing to shout about but went well with sauvignon blanc


Verdict: One of the very best Chinese Food I had in Singapore. Unpretentious, good value for money and simple, comfort food. It could easily beat many other restaurant hands down. It is time to organize a makan session with demona and gangs the next trip she is here! Wok hei Woot Woot!

Coffee Biscotti@Demona's home

Demona: I'm back home again... time to get my hands flour messy! This time.. I'm going to attempt a Coffee Biscotti recipe. I've never done it before, but since I had some beautifully ground, aromatic good class of coffee beans, I had a good reason to drive me towards baking this recipe.



Demona: This Hediard coffee can was given to me by my team mate, P, as a birthday present last year. The pungent, smoky, aromatic, sweet, bitter roast aroma just surged up my nostrils when I opened the can. The ground coffee was an amazing class of its own. I saw this exact one in a Hediard shop in Singapore, cost SGD 17. Good quality ingredients.. I can't wait to start baking!



Demona: Times have changed. Everyone, everything, everywhere is becoming more and more digitized. My brother bought this digital weighing machine for my mom for Mother's day. I must say... it was very convenient alright! It made the ingredient weighing part SO, SO easy. It also reminded me of my science lab days, using the tarring machine.



Demona: Cubes of butter were rubbed with the plain flour, forming crumbly like dough. Next, some sugary grits!



Demona: A few big spoonfuls of ground Hediard coffee were added in, you could see the tiny black dots in between. The aroma had filled the whole kitchen. Two eggs were added in as well.

The dough was split into two, then formed into rectangular shaped ones, and was ready to be baked! Bear in mind, this was my first attempt, thus I did not know what to expect of the turn out.



Demona: I made a big mistake. The first shaped dough was too thick, it was not properly fully baked in some areas after the oven time was up. I had to put them back in to bake a while longer. My mistake again, for taking a break in the living room and left the biscotti baking without supervision. When I got back in, they were burnt! :(

See the overly brown edges. Some were fine, but half were burnt. Sniffs, careless.





Demona: I was feeling artsy farsty that cold, stormy evening (GREAT time to bake in a non-airconditioned kitchen!) so I took some chunky pieces of nicely baked coffee biscotti and put them in a small glass cup, attempting an artistic food picture. Did my artsy fartsy work ? LOL...



Verdict: I must admit, this first attempt definitely needs a few more rounds of baking this recipe to improve on everything, taste, looks, shelf life etc. I brought a batch of 'em back to KL, and packed another one nicely in a tight air-sealed container for Dogma to be collected the weekend after.

I realised the flaws. Fresh from the oven, the biscotti was very crunchy, and the coffee aroma was unbelievably fragrant, each bite was subtly sweet with the coffee's bitter note at the end. I was actually quite happy with the taste despite its looks which needs more improvement. I know that this will make a GREAT complement for a hot cup of coffee in a cafe.

However, the batch of biscottis which I brought back up, was just wrapped in a plastic bag and when I took them out to eat a few days later, they had softened quite a fair bit and strangely, the aroma of the coffee had greatly reduced too. I thought it was due to my biscotti's poorly stored condition.

I was hoping that Dogma's ones will be kept crunchy and hard (since I stored them nicely) like how I had tasted them back home. The useless fella had forgotten about my good will biscottis.. HMPHHH.. Sometimes I do feel like kickin' him in his derriere.

After lifting his sore butt over to my house to collect them, he later called me to say that they were also softened already. I was quite disappointed, it wasn't the storage then, but instead it must have gone wrong somewhere along the baking process. I don't know whether he had tossed the rest away or left for his doggies to eat, but I hope not.

I am not giving up on this recipe though, because it has potential to be in a great bakery's menu! My bakery.. one day :)

Childhood Kuey Teow Soup@Restoran Kakak

Demona: Here I am, back again to my childhood breakfast eatery. Something just doesn't feel right if I don't come here got a hearty, boiling, steamy hot bowl of kueh toew soup in Kakak whenever I get a chance to come home for the weekend. I grew up slurping uncle's tasty kueh teow, and I will never ever get bored of it. Its been years already, and I can see them via uncle, his devoted wife and sister, and his loyal helpers. They've aged gracefully. Yet, the place is packed to the brim almost everyday.


Demona: My favourite, kueh teow soup! Smooth, thin rice noodles. Savoury, flavourful chicken broth. Unbelievably good sambal to go along with. I usually add so much sambal that my soup would turn red. Then, MAJOR loo session for the rest of the day.



Demona: This was the "Kwon Lou" (dry) Lou Shu Fun, stirred with dark and light soy sauce. The Shu Fun was quite smooth too, but I much preferred the soup one as the broth is slurpy-licious!

Verdict: I know that uncle will grow old and retire one day, but I do hope that he's got plans up in his mind to find ways of continuing his delicious kueh teow soup business in generations to come. I want to bring my future kids to eat here one day, and to let them experience my childhood days via food.
<>

Loong Foong Seafood Roast Duck@ Taman Paramount

Demona brought me to Taman Paramount during lunch to try Loong Foong's famous roasted duck couple of months back but alas, the shop is only opened for dinner. This trip we managed to squeezed in some time before my 9pm train ride back to Singapore for a quick visit to Loong Foong.

Packed to the brim @ 645pm, we waited for 45mins plus constant reminding before the roasted duck arrived on our table. The ordering system is practically a chaos, with several waiters running around the whole shop taking orders and verbally inform the 2 chef who were busy chopping up the roasted duck. In the midst of the chaos, our order was lost and our tummy growls louder and angrier seeing the succulent duck being dished up at other tables who came later.

Half Roasted Duck@20RM: Demona and I shared half a roast duck. It was pretty clean crispy skin and a juicy succulent meat. Big chunks of meat was a real treat accompanied by the garlicky chilli sauce. We both have macho garlic breath right after the meal but it the stink was worth it.Shinny shinny duck skin... It is delicious!

Garlic chilli: See the minced bits of garlics in the chilli? It packed a good spicy punch and i was left perspirating profusely from top to down. Not to mention the lack of ventilation at our table. GRRRRRR
The end product: Clean clean duck bones nicely chewed by the Dogma the Boner.


Verdict: The roasted duck is above average and price was reasonable. I would prefer to Da Bao (take away) the roasted duck and enjoyed it in the cold comfort of an air conditioned room. The restaurant is pretty hot and humid....SWEAT>

TATA KL.. Hello Singapore! I've been taking the KTM Intercity Commuter from KL to SGP recently. The comfort and price ratio was a plus point compared to taking those bus coaches. One way tixket is about 40rm for a bunk and you will reach your destination around 8am in the morning. One gripe thou, some tourist released a toxic fart during the trip and i nearly died from it. Some hairball and sari dropped from the indian aunty sleeping on top of me as well...
Other than that, it was a pretty peaceful train ride home.... :)

Bruno's Restaurant and Bar@Jaya33, PJ

Demona: Dogma and I decided for a luxurious lunch at Bruno's, located on the ground floor left corner lot of Jaya33. The restaurant was posh looking, furnished with dark brown leather chairs and tables. It was undeniably cozy in there.



Demona: Dogma did the sniffing on the menu.



Demona: He ordered a roast lamb with radish ciabatta sandwich, served with salad and fries. RM 24.



Demona: The cherry tomato relish was an excellent spread to the meat. The relish was... amazing. When you first ate it, you would feel its sourness, then slightly spicy, then sweet finish! Amazing... amazing... if only I could steal some home.



Demona: The lamb was also beautifully roasted. The meat was extremely tender, juicy, smuckers! I needn't explain further, the colour of the meat told it all. Dogma and I eyed on the meat like hawks eye-ing their preys.



Demona: We also ordered another sandwich, with Iberian ham. According the Bruno's menu, the black Iberian pigs roam the oak forests of the Iberian peninsula, along the southern borders between Spain and Portugal. Upon slaughter, these pigs are strictly constrained to only acorn, to produce high quality Iberico pork.

The information surely caught plenty attention from us. Even by reading the paragraph above again, surely re-lived the temptation.



Demona: The ham was salty, savoury, but 2 slices were a little bit too..... measly. To be honest, I could hardly taste it if I ate it along with the ciabatta and the parmesan cheese chunky shavings. The strong parmesan flavours had overpowered the iberico. The overexcited feelings that were bottled up in Dogma and I had quickly faded away.



Demona: We had immature, childish Papers-Rock-Scissors duel to decide on Tiramisu or Warm Banana with palm sugar, raisins and cream. From the picture, you could tell that I had lost the battle, and Dogma and his banana selection carried the victory banner.
However, the banana dessert did not win brownie points.



Demona: Strangely, the bananas were salty and the palm sugar was sweet alright, but it was definitely an acquired taste. Reminded me of petrol. The almond flakes and raisins were also so minimal, you can actually count them. Each portion came with 2 bananas, RM 15.

I hope that the waiter did not catch us with our private jokes.

Demona: RM 15? Can buy 1 "SIKAT" already!
Dogma : Yeah, you buy I'll caramelize for you. Even throw in good quality vanilla ice
cream and will still be cheaper.
Demona: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... posh place, posh price.
Dogma : Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.. *Giggles*



Verdict: Put aside the dessert, to sum it all, we actually did enjoy our luxurious lunch very much. The roast lamb sandwich was definitely 5 thumbs up, the iberico ham portion was a bit too little, but the parmesan and nicely toasted buttered herbs ciabatta made up for its flaws. At least, it got us keen on coming here again to try out the Iberian pig meat. The prices were actually quite reasonable, considering its good quality food. Much better compared to many famous restaurants who are steeply priced for OK-so-so quality food. The dessert menu is limited, and after the banana experience I think we will probably keep the extra cash aside for other worthwhile treats.... like Oreo and MnMs MCFLURRY! Waffles with vanilla ice cream! Kinder Bueno! The list goes on.......

Bruno's. Definitely won a return-for-round-2 pass from FoodVenturas.

Frankland Estate Olmo's Reward 1997

This gotta be the Buy of the Year 2008 for me.

While strolling along PJ at night, I casually went into the Denise wineshop. There are only 2 labels that attracted me.
1) Cims De Porrera 1999@ 298rm and
2) Frankland Estate Olmo's Reward 1997@88rm.

I had the 99 and 97 Cims de Porrera before and the 99 are smoking hot dark ruby juice with intense graphite and pencil shavings note. Made form 60-90 years old vines, it is both elegant and powerful at the same time. Muscular. I'll probably get this bottle from denise next trip up to KL.

For the Frankland Estate, I had read some reviews on it before and the recent vintages won the trophy award during some local competition. However, the bottle in store was in quite a pathetic state. The label was torn and dusty, and it was simply chucked aside in obscurity. After much negotiation, the retail manager gave me a 50% off for this bottle.

As usual, the bad storage condition has resulted in a dried up cork. The cork broke and left pieces of cork bits in the wine. Poor aesthetic aside, this is quite a beauty at 44RM.

EYE: slight brownish red at the rim
Nose: Sweet berries, cigarbox, slight leather and tobacco. Medium complexity.
Palate: Smooth and glides thru your throat. Tannins has mellowed quite abit. It is probably dipped a lil from its peak but nevertheless, pretty enjoyable still. Finish was short to medium. Demona enjoyed this alot and her comment was as follow: "boh tannin wa sukak cuz bo potong potong" ( rough translation: No tannin, I like because there is no cut cut"

For around 20sgd, i got this 11 year old aussie wine. It is not rated highly when it was released however, it's quite impressive after 11 year of bottle aging. Good deal Good deal!