Restaurant Week: Brasserie les Saveurs

Restaurant week continued with another lunch today, this time at Brasserie Les Saveurs at St Regis with Rachel. I took the afternoon off work so I could window shop in Orchard after.

The restaurant is pretty and a glance at the a la carte menu made me appreciate the Restaurant Week set lunch price. It was very quiet though, could hear a pin drop!




To start with, they served an amuse bouche of cold tomato soup. For my appetizer, I had the wild mushroom veloute, croutons and chive cream. What was different about the soup was that it came served ‘dry’ with just the mushroom bits, croutons and cream. Then the waiter poured the soup in for show.




I chose the oven-baked red snapper, confit of capsicum, Parma ham and herbs coulis. The snapper was a little undercooked for my liking and a tad fishy and I didn’t feel the parma ham went with it so I was a little disappointed with the dish. Rachel had a vegetarian pasta that was quite plain, more worth it to the get meat dishes I guess.

Dessert was a simple fruit salad and scoop of lemon sorbet…I think I make a better fruit salad! Rachel had a chocolate mousse trio.




After lunch I walked from Tanglin to Plaza Singapore, popping in and out of stores and fitting rooms. I was on my feet for a good 5 hours and am very pleased with my loot!

Restaurant Week: Alkaff Mansion

It’s Restaurant Week and after being abandoned for many years, the Alkaff Mansion recently reopened as an Italian restaurant and I managed to make a booking for lunch with some colleagues.



The place is lovely, great for special occasions and the service was friendly from the waiters, to the chef to the kitchen staff.

I had me the free range chicken cream soup served with black truffle and ricotta “gnocchi” to start and it was yums. Not a thick creamy soup but very light so you don’t feel guilty, it was nicely done and the truffle oil added an oomph. They were generous with their bread basket too, there was an interesting chocolatey one.



For my main, I had the roasted cod fish in sesame crust served with prosecco and lemon foam. The fish portion was ok and cooked alright, the sesame was not as crunchy as expected and the sides were quite meagre but I was surprising full after eating it.


For dessert, I opted for the blueberry cheese cake with fresh kiwi sauce…nothing out of this world but a nice ending to the meal.


They gifted us with a small bag of cookies when we left, nice touch. Walked around a bit, they had these giant wrought iron rocking chairs, very cool. I think I will be back!



There was a lovely sunset today, wish I had been on a hill somewhere!

iLight 2012

Brought the kids out to Marina Bay after dinner to look at some of this year's iLight exhibits, they were running around like monkeys near the Marina Bay City Gallery and Promontory.






Saw a cool squid looking thing, as well as what Swana termed mushrooms. There was free coffee and balloons from a Nescafe booth too so everyone was happy!

Recipe: Purple Ondeh Ondeh

I bought some purple sweet potatoes last week and finally had the time to do something with them. I’ve been wanting to make ondeh ondeh for a while now and came across a recipe online for purple ones. I adjusted it slightly as I went along, but the gist is below.








Ingredients
450gm of purple sweet potatoes
250gm of glutinous rice flour, sifted
200 – 300 ml of warm water
Thick bunch of pandan leaves
150gm of gula melaka, chopped finely
250 gm of grated coconut, no husk
A pinch of salt

Method

1. Steam the sweet potatoes till soft, remove skin and mash finely
2. Cut the pandan leaves into 2-inch pieces and pound or blend. Squeeze it to get 2-3 tablespoons of juice
3. Steam the grated coconut with a pinch or two of salt and set aside
4. Mix the mashed sweet potatoes, flour, pandan juice by hand and slowly add the warm water a bit at a time, until you get a dough consistency.
5. Roll into small balls about 1inch in diameter
6. Take one ball and press down in the middle to make a crater. Add some gula melaka and close the hole, then roll back into a ball. Repeat till all the dough is used.
7. Place a few balls at a time into a pot of boiling water, remove once they float. When slightly cooled, roll around in the grated coconut till covered before serving.

Makes about 50.

Koh Samui Day 3 & 4 (15 & 16 Mar)

Home sweet home! The holiday is over!

Yesterday was a chilled day. Sasha pretended to talk on the phone with the room key, I think she was calling her dolls to check on them!



After breakfast, us Lims went to explore the beach.



The kids then swam for a bit and we had bubble time in the pool. Lunch for the kids was room service and then we had a bit of a dance-off with me and Kavi leading the way.






Snoozed in the afternoon while some of the others went to the hotel spa. In the evening, the kids played in the sand and as I walked along the beach, I found the remnants of a wedding, how nice.





Then we swam again and Sasha insisted on jumping into the pool with us catching her, but on her 3rd jump she slipped through my hands and dunked herself in the pool. I scooped her up immediately and luckily she was nonchalant about it, otherwise I would have gotten a earful from Nick!



The kids had another home cooked dinner courtesy of me. Kavi narrated the 3 Little Pigs and got the kids to act it out, it was quite funny. Riley was the various houses, while Gigi, Nat and Ananya were pigs with Sarah as the wolf!


While the rest went to the next door restaurant to eat dinner, Nick and I had takeaway as it was late and nearing the kids bedtime. We had tom yam, green curry and prawn cakes but I suddenly have a wisdom toothache that started yesterday and was unable to move my jaw much.


This morning we finally took a group picture before we departed for the airport. The airport was really very resort-like, the duty free shops are all outdoors in individual huts and the walk from the check-in counter to the departure lounge and immigration was not sheltered at all. I guess maybe they have shuttles when it rains.




I managed to pick up some Thai tidbits and pastes at the airport and bought monkey and elephant keychains for all the kids as a souvenir.

The flight was mainly uneventful, Nat had to poop at one point and as soon we got in the loo, turbulence hit! It was pretty bouncy but she didn’t get scared and carried on with her business. However we were not allowed to walk back to our seats after that, and sat at the back with the stewardesses for a few minutes till the turbulence stopped.

We survived a holiday with the kids, sans helper but unfortunately didn’t get to the see anything of the island! I don’t know if we will ever go back, lots of other places to explore and I don’t think we missed that much.

Now I need to count the days till 11 May!