Xiang Kee Fried Carrot Cake & Fried Oyster

I have always been a fan of fried carrot cake. It was one of the Singaporean dishes that I would dream about when living in Sydney. In fact, after one particularly bad rendition of carrot cake courtesy of the food court at Market City in Sydney, I called Mum in Singapore to ask her for the recipe for carrot cake. I can say for certain that this is not an easy dish to make.

You have to grate the white daikon radish, poach it in hot water, mix in into a combination of rice and sweet potato flour and then steam it. The result is a springy pudding like cake which you cut into little pieces and fry with soy sauce, eggs and preserved turnip. A lot of work goes into making a good plate of fried carrot cake, so that is why, whenever I find a hawker who does it very well, I have to share it with the world!

Fried Carrot Cake: With Egg, Spring Onions & Preserved Turnip

A month ago, I had to make a quick stop at Chinatown Complex to buy veggies. I chanced upon Xiang Kee Fried Carrot Cake & Fried Oyster which is located next to the really famous ba chor mee stall (don't ask me which one). I ordered a plate of the "black" carrot cake which is essentially carrot cake fried with the dark caramel soy sauce. The sweet dark caramel sauce gave it a nice char and the savoury preserved turnip, great texture and contrast with the sweetness of the sauce. The carrot cake was still soft and pillowy and each tasty nugget is encased in fried egg. In my opinion, this carrot cake is the best in Singapore. It blows the competition out of the water. Forget about the rest in Bedok, Toa Payoh and etc.....just head to:

Xiang Kee Fried Carrot Cake & Fried Oyster
Blk 335 Smith Street
Chinatown Complex Food Centre
#02-24
Open: 9am-8pm

The hawker frying up the carrot cake is a really nice guy and it isn't crazy mad busy....yet. No long queues AND he is really polite and nice. So get to Xiang Kee before he stops making this delightful dish or before he gets so popular that you have to wait 30mins for a plate of fried carrot cake heaven.




The Wok & Barrel will be at 13 Duxton Hill

After 4 months of searching and seeing countless units in the east, north east and Tanjong Pagar, we finally found the perfect space for The Wok & Barrel!

There will be renovations and I hope we will be able to open The Wok & Barrel in June.

To celebrate, I went home and cooked myself a lovely fish curry for dinner as well as experimented with baking my own ciabatta. I loved getting my hands dirty with the flour and shaping the ciabatta loaves. These ciabatta loaves will be great for The Wok & Barrel Crispy Pork Sandwiches and Crispy Chicken Sandwiches. That means everything will be handmade by me.....right down to the mayonnaise that will be accompanying the sandwich.

Home made ciabatta for Crispy Pork Sandwiches and Crispy Chicken Sandwiches

I've also been working on the bistro menu for The Wok & Barrel and got the chance to serve Porchetta to my friends during D & AW's birthday celebration.

I wanted to kick up the flavour profile of the Porchetta so I used a satay marinade instead of the usual salt and 5 Spice seasoning. It was delicious and transformed an otherwise good dish into something quite sublime. Juicy tender pork belly with a crispy crackling.

Satay Porchetta

I also managed to serve them a dessert called Shendol Delights which was inspired by our local dessert Chendol. It is a deconstructed Chendol with a rich coconut pannacotta drizzled with gula melaka syrup and topped with home made red bean ice cream.

Coconut Pannacotta

Shendol Delights

French Toast for The Wok and Barrel

I took a long break but I am backkkkkkkkkk!

The Wok and Barrel is taking a longer time than I expected but it is actually giving me more time to work out the various menu items that I would like to put on the menu. Of course all fans of Madam Tan's Nasi Lemak will still get to enjoy my rich yummy Nasi Lemak rice together with my side dishes like Beef Rendang, Curry Chicken, 5 Spice Roast Pork, Otak Otak and Fish Curry but I will be adding some new dishes to my all day weekend brunch menu.

I have always loved the crispy french toast from Hong Kong, so today I set about getting the lovely crispy batter right. First I made some home made peanut butter, chunky peanut butter with no additives.


Homemade Chunky Peanut Butter


Then I set about making up the batter - a light eggy crispy batter that would hold the 2 slices of sandwich bread together.

Crispy Eggy Batter

For the purpose of this trial, I decided to use ordinary sandwich white bread but for The Wok and Barrel, I will be using an enriched white bread sliced thickly which I will stuff with bananas, nutella and peanut butter. Or any other stuffings that you may want - mango, peaches, pinepple? Tell me what you would like to have in your french toast.

Ok, coming back to the trial, I spread thickly on 1 slice of bread, rich chocolatey Nutella, and on the other, the homemade peanut butter. I dipped the nutella and peanut butter sandwich in the batter, and dropped it into the hot oil. After a minute of frying, I fished out the browned french toast and dusted icing sugar onto the hot fried bread.

French Toast with Nutella and Peanut Butter



French Toast at The Wok and Barrel

 The resulting French Toast is piping hot with molten nutella and peanut butter and perfect for brunch. I can't wait to start serving it to you!

Pepperoni Pizza @ Greenwood Ave

Another pizza post you might ask? Yes, we are that obsessed with pizza. This was a post Christmas gathering amongst friends and as we all love a good slice of pizza, this is where we ended up.

BH and I got there on time but spent about 20 minutes circling for a park in that housing estate. I feel for the residents of that estate with cruising cars passing their expensive houses, peering for a spot to fit in their cars.We finally managed to get a park about 600m away which was ok since it was a lovely cool night and allowed BH and I to have a nice romantic stroll before AND after dinner.

I cracked open the menu and to my joy, found a long long list of belgian beers. WHOOHOO! I set about trying new ones and that put me in an excellent mood for dinner. The rest of our party started arriving and we were suitably embarrassed when we kept peering over at the neighbouring table's dishes for inspiration. They had ordered an interesting mushroom dish but we couldn't figure which appetizer it was......the kind lady looked over to me and mouthed "it's the mushroom". I had to blush.

Just for the heck of it, we ordered the family sized pizza. It is 21 inches in diameter. It is a monster. We even had pictures taken of it, like moby dick. D obligingly posed next to it with her mouth wide open, like she was going to take a bite out of that massive pizza. Apart from the novelty factor of having such a humongous pizza, I would not recommend that you order the family sized pizza as the largeness of the pizza meant that it was cooked pretty unevenly. Some parts of it were obviously on hot spots in the oven and had been cooked down to a cracker like consistency as opposed to a light bready texture.


Ok, this just proves that we are pizza pigs because this 21 inch pizza wasn't enough (plus appetizers of mushrooms, chicken wings, calamari rings) and we ordered another 12 inch pizza. This pizza was much better than the 21 inch, so this is one of the rare occasions where size queen me will actually say, size doesn't matter! It had the lightness and the requisite cornicione. It had the big air bubbles in the crust where the extreme heat of the oven forces the moisture in the dough to expand quickly. Unfortunately, I still feel that the crust was quite bland and didn't have the multi dimensional taste that comes from doing a slow ferment in the fridge.

But then I am just being a food nazi. Overall a good pizza which I would rate 7.5/10. The mushroom was interesting - I would rate it a 8/10. The calamari were cooked well, they were tender and not overcooked but the batter was not crispy, I would rate it a 7/10.

ps. I apologise for the lack of pictures as I didn't bring my camera to dinner

Sole Pomodoro Pizza @ Mackenzie Road

I love pizza and whenever I read of a new pizza place opening, especially one with a wood fired oven, I can't help but get excited and hungry. I think that it is great that Singapore is seeing so many great pizza places opening up but, I have to say that to date, I have not found one that really hits the spot.

So when Sole Pomodoro was getting a lot of online press, I casually mentioned it to BH hoping that my better half would agree to join me in evaluating this pizza joint. But BH has learnt her lesson and refuses to go to any pizza joints as she claims that they never meet the mark and she doesn't want to be there when I start tut tutting and expounding on how the crust should have been made and etc.

I did the next best thing and got my colleague M who is always game for a new culinary adventure to join me. We ordered the proscuitto and mushroom pizza and a calamari to start.

The calamari was fresh and cut into large meaty rings. However, it was marred by a hair fried together with the calamari. Gross. When the waitress brought it back to the kitchen hand, he removed the hair and wanted to send it back to me. Which of course the waitress remonstrated with him and got him to do a new order. I would like to mention that this waitress was very good at her job. Her name was Davy and asked me if I needed a refill on my wine without prompting from me. If I were the owners of Sole Pomodoro, I would give her a raise!

 The calamari were good sans hair but did not stay crispy for long. But overall, they were pretty good hot out of the fryer and quite tender, a 7/10.

I felt that the pizza was a let down. Whilst there was a wood fired oven, you did not get the light pizza with large holes in it. Perhaps as we were one of the first few customers, the oven was not hot enough. Also, the crust was lacking in flavour and did not have the light yet crunchy texture. 7/10.

Tai Hwa Bak Chor Mee @ Crawford Lane

I was in the neighbourhood to pick up my Makansutra Certificate for Madam Tan's Nasi Lemak, and peeked into the coffee shop to see if the famous noodle shop was open. They were so I joined the relatively short queue and placed my order for mee pok with chilli ($4).

Tai Hwa Bak Chor mee is supposed to be the creme de la creme of Bak Chor Mees and at $4 a portion, the serving was certainly hearty and very substantial. There was a generous serving of minced pork, lean pork and noodles, which made it difficult for me to finish the noodles.

I have not had this version of Bak Chor Mee since they moved from Marina Square to Crawford Lane. And I have to say, that I seem to remember it being better at Marina Square. The guy cooking it also seemed different from the slight chubbier and older guy at Marina Square (also less grumpy than Mr Marina Square)

This bak chor mee is good. But it didn't blow my mind. The pork elements were cooked to perfection but if I had to nitpick, the cook didn't rinse the starch from his noodles. He cooked them like an Italian nonna would do with pasta, he left the starchy residue to form an emulsion with the chilli, lard, soy and vinegar mixture. While that works with pasta, this made the sauce a little too starchy for my taste. However, having said that, the noodles were al dente and not soggy. But if I had to compare, I would say the Prince Edward Road Bestway Building Bak Chor Mee tastes better and overall delivers a better taste sensation than that of the Tai Hwa Bak Chor Mee at Crawford Lane. I would rate Tai Hwa a very solid 7.5/10. Not outstanding but a very good Bak Chor Mee.

2 FAT MEN @ East Coast Road

With BH away for the weekend, I was a single girl hanging out with her buddies. And what does a single girl do? Why of course we play softball (ok, I played one game and then hurt my hand which put me out of action for the rest of the tournament), drink beer, eat and hang out with my buddies.

It was on Friday that D and I decided to have some beers and dinner at a local place that we both had heard quite a fair bit about. I had heard that they did an excellent burger as well as very very good thai food. Throw in the beers and of course I was there in a heartbeat.

As D and I have hearty appetites, we ordered the grilled pork neck, som tum, a burger (with cheese and bacon) and some new orleans chicken wings (errrr what are these? D and I couldn't help but ask). I started my beer imbibing with Phin and Matt's Ale.

A nice ale with a fruity fragrance of hops. It went well with the burger and the Thai food. I followed it up with a Le Chouffe which was delightful, somehow, the belgians just have my heart when it comes to beers. I finished with a Chimay. A nice end to the work week.

I have to say I was disappointed with the Thai food at 2 FAT MEN. The grilled pork neck was lacklustre and didn't have a lot of flavour beyond fish sauce and coriander. It wasn't really grilled either, so you didn't get the lovely char grill flavour essential when cooking meat. I was quite bland, pale and insipid. The som tum was ok, not great and didn't have enough peanuts nor dried little prawns. Both dishes lacked the big flavours that I have come to associate and love about Thai Food. I would rate both of them a 6/10.

The burger was better than the thai food. Maybe it is because they don't have to dumb down the western menu items that they seemed to do better than the Thai menu. The burger was juicy and well seasoned. My only beef with it was that the bun was obviously store bought and was flimsy and falling apart in my hand and the cheese was the stock standard plastic cheese slice from cheesedale. Not a lot of flavour. If I pay $1.50 for a slice of cheese, I expect a decent slice of cheddar on it. Not faux plastic cheese. I would rate the burger a 7.5/10.