The New Tekka Wet Market - Opening on 1st August 09!

Finally the renovated Tekka Wet market (Zhujiao) is going to be opened on 1st August 2009. After the long renovation which started in May last year, this hawker centre with fantastic food is going to be back! So this weekend they will start operations again, yeah! Some of the stall owners are back as I recognised familiar stall names.

Originally the renovation is slated to last 16 months from 1 May last year, and so that means they finished everything about 1 month earlier. I guess that is good for our hawker friends. The wet market section also seems to look better, with proper gates and such.

I am sooooo looking forward to the food again.

See also: - Temp Tekka Market at Race Course Road

Desserts at MOF

MOF (Ministry of Food)'s Japanese desserts are worth trying. Generally they do serve nice varieties that make diners drool somewhat. MOF has plenty of branches spread around the city area, and so it is not hard to find them or try their food.

We had these desserts sometime back and here's some of the photos:

One thing I like about MOF is that they bother to pass the diners little slips of paper that explain the desserts. This adds the information dimension to the whole dinning experience, and it is always nice to know how to / origins of the food you are eating.

For example Kanten Jelly is made from the roots of a plant with the same name, and it contains fibre. Normally it is plain but MOF added the dark sauce made from black prunes and black dates. So yupz, when you feel like having Japanese style desserts, drop by MOF for some varieties!

友记家传鸭饭 & Kway Chap - Opp Bugis Junction

There is this great kway chap and duck rice shop (友记家传鸭饭) right opposite Bugis Junction (right across from MOS Burger side). It is a coffee shop setting and is quite suitable for a quick and good meal ($3.80 - $4).

Both the duck rice and kway chap (broad rice noodles with pig innards and egg) are simply fantastic. I think it's got to do with the sauce they used for the dish. They splash generous amount of this sauce onto the meat and I think they put a generous amount of different spices and herbs into making this sauce. Thus there is no 'meat' smell for the different innards.

Yes I know it is sinful. The amount of oil, and the other unhealthy parts of this dish mean that one cannot have it too often. Nonetheless it is definitely worth a try! The 'kway' is also smooth in its feel and yes they use the same sauce for the 'kway' except that they mix in some soy mixture to dilute the concentration or else it will simply be too salty.

Ion @ Orchard - 21 July 09

The ION at Orchard is opening soon on 21st July 2009, and that is just 2 days away!

Normally I am not that excited about shopping centres, but recently the newer shopping centres do have interesting architecture (another example is Bugis Iluma) and that is the fascinating factor.

ION Orchard seems to be a place for those with more 'atas' taste, since their website describes that ION will be home to exclusive boutiques and arts. I have no objection to the arts part, because the currently entire Orchard shopping belt is simply too commercial in its feel. A few more buildings with more interesting and varied shops will be fine.

To project this artistic and somewhat different feel to the shopping centre, ION Orchard has made this '3D Augmented Reality' video where users can use their video webcam to get a 3D image of ION, quite cool. I wonder what other special stuff would they give away / showcase during the opening of the shopping centre on 21 July 09.

BreadTalk - 10 years

Heh the BreadTalk promotion just ended today. I didn't realise that BreadTalk is now 10 years old. During the promotion, the breads were all priced at $1.10 and if you have bought 10 buns, they would cost just $9. That would be less than a dollar each per bun. Quite worth it!

BreadTalk was also giving away some vouchers with discount, e.g. $1 off with any 5 buns purchase. These vouchers would expire by 20 Sep. It is interesting how a bread shop could grow to such a size, to include Food Republic, Din Tai Fung, and Toastbox. Yes, it is also a listed company. All these achievements done is 10 years.

Wonder if I start a company, could I also be as successful? I don't think there are many such local companies which enjoyed such growth. Lolz. Oh yah, I bought the discounted bread and below is a photo of the bread spread at the shop.

Home Cooked Chicken Stew... by me!

It has been such a long long time since I last cooked. Yeah and because I am not such a great cook, I need a longer time to get prepared. Some days back I decided to try cooking my chicken stew again.

Peeling potatoes was the most time consuming process. Four potatoes for the stew because I wanted to use the potatoes starch to thicken the stew. The potatoes were cut in both ways, thinly sliced russet potatoes so that they could 'melt' and thicken the stew, and also the normal potato cubes.

Other ingredients included the tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and pepper. Heh the ingredients look good right? Fresh food always look good (in comparison with canned stuff). I only had about 2.5 hours to marinate the chicken thighs. The thighs are the fatty part and I cut away quite a bit of fats.

So voila, here's the final product. I stir fried the chicken together with potatoes slices, carrots, and onions, before putting everything into the pot. Appearance wise it was only so so. I must think of ways to improve the 'looks'. Oh well, because it has been so long since I last practised this dish, a couple of mistakes were made. The garlic was not fried long enough, and I didn't put enough oil in the wok to make sure all the stuff were cooked nicely. Another mistake was that I put too much water into the pot, and thus it took about 5 minutes more before the mixture turned sufficient stew like. Actually I over cooked it somewhat, and thus it was slightly burnt.

The stew was still passable. Actually it tasted good. Once I practised it 1-2 more times it should be fine. Stew with bread is great. The cheap skate me bought the 'buy 1 get 1 free' bread from Carrefour, and thus these bread slices were not as 'fragrant'.

Hope to have more time when I can practice, and perhaps with other interesting recipe.

Singapore Science Centre Tour - Tesla Coil & others

The Singapore Science Centre is a very interesting place to visit. Often the location (in Jurong) deters people from making visits but I must say it is quite worth it actually. Of course, please do not go during school holidays or you would be squeezing past the exhibits with school going students.

Right in front of the entrance is this big dinosaur model. The model moves (somewhat slowly) but is still entertaining enough to take photo with.

After you paid for the entrance fees (a bit expensive), you can select the galleries to visit. We saw the optical illusions which gave me the impression that it is a huge magician gallery with its many 'tricks'. For example, can you spot the 'humans' between the columns in the picture below?

Further into the galleries we were being shown more 'scientific stuff', for example the strobe fountain where we can see the droplets of waters. By varying the frequency of the strobe light, we could even make the water droplets 'flow' back / upwards.

There was also a demonstration of the Tesla Coil. The demo was really interesting with the different 'lightning-like' tesla buzzing in the air. I took a short video clip and here's the YouTube I took.

The more difficult part of the visit (which meant that I don't exactly understand the exhibits) is the part on the DNA. The diagrams were all quite nice, but honestly other than diagrams I were exactly impressed by what they have.

The most interesting part of the visit is the Omimax Theatre. We selected the sea monsters, which was about prehistoric sea creatures. Looking at huge monsters and fossils in the big theatre is quite an experience. Over the years there were a lot of different Omimax films.

So yupz, drop by the Singapore Science Centre if you have the time!