Seafood Salad

Something for a taste of Asia

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Assam Fish Curry

One of my all time favourites, a good dish of fish curry loaded with brinjals and lady finger served with piping hot white rice.

Comfort food. Learn how to cook this!

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Tom Yum Soup

Tom Yum soup originates from the Land of Smiles and is something everyone has got to try. I have tried this before and I must say that the outcome was good. Tasty, spicy and sour. Eating this as a family is simply fantastic especially on a cold wet day.

Note: Please adjust the amount of ingredients used to suit your taste preference as amount indicated may differ with each individual

Preparation Time: Approximately 30 mins

Serving: 4 persons

Ingredients:

• 5 cups of water
• 2 stalks lemongrass, crushed/flattened
• 2 slices galangal root, crushed/flattened
• 3 kaffir lime leaves, torn into average-sized pieces
• 1 tbsp tamarind paste
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon tom yum paste mix

Get the complete recipe from our site: The Foodies Corner Foodies Corner

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Cheap N Good Weekends! - Part 1

Singapore is an island that is blessed with lots of good eating places. By that, I am not referring to the fanciful restaurants that we find at all shopping malls. We are talking about streets lined with eateries and our popular food centres that both tourists and locals must check out.

This post will be on a popular food centre that most Singaporeans and even tourists are familiar with.

Indeed, we are speaking of this food centre which gets really crowded in the evenings. Rows of food stalls line the food centre. This place serves what most Singaporeans would say 'local fare at its best'. We arrived shortly before 6pm which is a good time to check this place out before it starts getting packed. We saw famous local treats such as Prawn Noodles, Char Kway Teow, Rojak, Ngor Hiang and freshly made kuehs. What was also an interesting sight was a long queue in front of a stall selling pasta and several food stall serving Western cuisine. Nothing is complete without the Tze Char stalls which serves up cooked food and the seafood stalls.

And so, the first dish we decided to try was the Char Kway Teow. Scouting the place, we were drawn to this stall which had a long queue. This stall was also introduced to us by a member of our Facebook group Makan Time! and so we decided to check it out.

We were in the queue for half an hour and as the legs started to ache, the level of expectation increased. I remember saying "This have better be good!". This stall is called Lao Fu Zi Fried Kway Teow located at #01-12. Pricing starts from $3.00 per plate up to $10.00. Choice to add prawns is available. Operating hours is from 10:00am to 12:00am (Weekdays) and 11:00am to 12:00am (Weekends) with their rest day being Tuesdays.

Here is our order of $4.00 Char Kway Teow with chili and cockles. With the smoke till rising, we dug in and oh... I must say, it was worth the wait. The noodles were tasty and not too spicy. It was loaded with Chinese sausage, beansprouts, spinach, egg and a generous portion of cockles. The plus point being the 'Wok taste' as the noodles were fried over high heat. Nice.

Next up, we decided to try out the Western food. Well well, I have heard of the the London Grill but since there was quite a lot of people eating from the other stall, Holy Grill, we decided to order from the latter. 

Well, the ordering system is pretty simple. Just order a main course and choose 2 side dishes to go along with it. They have a variety of poultry, fish and steaks that you can choose from for the main course. We decided to order a simple grilled chicken chop with sides of baked potato and pasta salad for $5.90. They will serve it to you so all you need to do is to provide them your table number.

Hmm... This was actually quite disappointing. The meat felt a little overcooked. It was not tender but a little hard and dry. The sauce was a diluted version of brown mushroom sauce. The pasta salad was normal and the baked potato was dry and bland. So I guess we should have just stuck with local fare instead. 

Moving on, we decided to try from stall selling seafood. I didn't get the name of the stall but it has a white color signboard and is located opposite the Taiwan Porridge stall. We ordered a dish of Crayfish and since it was a famous stall, we were quite certain that it would be alright.

Perfect. The crayfish was fresh and its natural sweetness preserved in its flesh which is moist and tender. The shellfish was lightly seasoned with salt and steamed. It comes together with chili and lime as side condiments and costs $18.00. The price is not fixed as most Singaporeans would know. Seafood here is charged usually by weight and season so avoid seafood if you intend to stretch you dollar here. Also, from what I hear about this stall, there is no definite operating hours and they do not open every day.

With our stomachs filling up, we decided it was quite enough that we have eaten since we needed to leave some space for our stomachs. So, dessert here we come. 

I guess everyone has heard of Lao Ban Beancurd. They currently have outlets at Maxwell Food Centre and One Raffles Place too. The length of the queue was an approximate of 3.5m long and it is a common sight to see people holding on to several bags of beancurd. Each container of original flavor beancurd costs $1.50. From our observation, the average number of beancurd ordered per customer is 10 containers.

Smooth as silk is its texture and it is light on both the palate and stomach. Every spoon of it is simply irresistible. So it is no wonder that we too, left the place with bags of beancurd too. 

I supposed the next time we come back for dinner here, we will check out the other popular dishes such as Rojak, Claypot Chicken Rice and more. Till then, we will continue to check out other food centres.

Cheers!

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Cook using the Crock Pot for a healthy life

A crock pot or a slow cooker is an instrument which makes the process of cooking food more convenient and also helps to reduce the time involved in performing the process of cooking. The ingredients required to cook the meal can be placed in the cooker in the morning and the food is cooked and ready to be served once you return from work in the evening. This slow cooker also helps to retain the nutritive content of the food that is being cooked. Since the food is being cooked slowly, the vitamins, minerals and the other nourishment contained in the food is not lost.

Food will be even tastier when it is cooked inside a slow cooker or a crock-pot. The flavor of the food that is cooked can be enjoyed since it still contains the goodness of the herbs and the stock that have been used for cooking the meal. The meat that is cooked in a crock-pot also becomes nice, soft and tender due to the moist heat. The cooker should be functioning in a proper manner and the rules regarding cooking using a slow cooker should be followed correctly. This makes the food that is cooked perfectly safe and bacteria free.

Cheap cuts of red meat and white meat get cooked in a much better manner when they cooked in a slow cooker. They also help in saving money compared to expensive cuts of meat. The fat content in cheap cuts of meat is much less than that of expensive cuts of meat. This reduced fat content makes them suitable to be cooked in a slow cooker. A time period of eight hours is required to cook meat properly in a slow cooker.

 

The crock-pot should be filled with food only up to two-thirds of its total capacity. If a slow cooker is filled up to the brim with food, then it will not be cooked properly. But food will be cooked in a much quicker manner when the liquid level is lesser than normal. Food that is placed in the bottom half of the slow cooker will get cooked faster due to the presence of the simmering fluid. When meat has to be cooked, the fat should be removed and the skin of poultry that has to be cooked in the slow cooker should also be removed. Due to the long and slow cooking process, the fat in meat will melt and the completed dish will not taste good. During the last thirty minutes of the cooking process, the setting of the slow cooker should be changed to a high setting so that the juices involved in the cooking process will become thicker and the flavor of the food will be concentrated.

Seafood like fish, which has to be cooked in a slow cooker, should be added only in the last hour of cooking. This will prevent the seafood from getting overcooked. Seafood that has been cooked for too long will have not have a good texture. Ground meats that have to be cooked in a slow cooker should first be fried in pan before being placed in the cooker. Large cuts of meat can be turned brown in this manner before being placed in the cooker, though this is not an essential step. This only helps to give a special flavor to the meat. Vegetables like mushrooms, tomatoes and zucchini should be added in the last forty-five minutes of the cooking process to prevent them from being overcooked. A small amount of Tabasco sauce and cayenne pepper should be added after the cooking time has been completed so that the food does not get a bitter taste. Spices should also be added to the food at the fag end of the cooking duration so that their flavor is not lost when they are mixed with the other ingredients that are needed to cook the meal. Normally, dairy products like curd, milk or butter should be added towards the end of the cooking duration unless the recipe states something different.

If the recipe for the meal does not state that a slow cooker should be used to cook the meal, then the amount of liquid used should reduced by half or at least one third since the liquid in the crock pot does not boil so soon. Slow cookers are easy to use since they can cook food on low temperatures and the lid of the cooker is closed all the time. This helps to avoid cooking accidents like a fire. There are certain types of meat that will get cooked better when they are cooked slowly in a slow cooker.

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