China Fish Soup @ Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre
I’ve received complaints about how my recent entries have been too specialised / technical and haven’ wrote about mundane stuff like about my boring life. We’ve not had a food recommendation at the Asylum for a long time so here goes…
There’s this place we’ve been going for our sliced fish soup needs. I believe I first went there with my parents. I brought Jo there some time back and she’s been craving for it now and then every since.
Located at the 2nd level of Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre, China Fish Soup serves up a bowl of slice fish soup for 3 dollars. The simple soup contains just some vege, bitter gourd and, the main attraction, the big slices of fish. We’d usually eat it with rice which costs 50 cents each (increased recently from 30 cents).
Unlike other sliced fish where it tend to be rather flaky, the fish served here is big and supple, almost like fish steak! Even with the bitter gourd, the soup tastes sweet and savoury, not pepperish like how Jo claims most fish soup are. I like to eat my fish with the chilli which contains tiny chopped garlic I believe.
Ribs, steak and boozeThinking deeper into organic food
I’m sure we’ve all heard about organic foods being natural and good for you. Increasing amounts and variety of organic foods that have made their way into our supermarkets are a testament to the success of organic foods in persuading the more health conscious, wealthy and increasing obesity society to embrace them. But before you jump in at everything organic and scoff at genetically engineered food or it’s less glamourous name of frankenfood, we should analyse what organic food really mean. Afterall, it’s just a fanciful name for the product of an agricultural practice.
Direct from OrganicFoodInfo.net:
“Organic farming produces plant and animal foods without the excessive use of chemicals. It focuses on using fertile soil..Organic farming prohibits the growing of GM foods…”
Looking at the first part of the definition, we can think of it like home grown vegetables or kampung chickens. It’s a more humane way of rearing the animals for food and does much less damage to the environment when growing crops. As for the second part, prohibition of GM food means farmers are growing crops that are less resistant to pests. The next generation of crops are grown through natural selection of seeds from the previous generation. This means that yields are lower as compared to crops grown the commercial way and are less robust. Think of tomatos that start to soften while being transported to the supermarket and rotting while it’s sitting on the shelve with the label “organic”, waiting for you to pick them into your busket. In fact, organic farming is the extreme opposite of farming practices developed during the agricultural revolution that are used in most commercial farms today.
I am a supporter of being more humane to the animals that we eat so I’ll definitely support organic meat. As for vegetables, I’ll rather go for hydroponics or aeroponics that uses high tech ways to increase yield and does less damage to the environment by recycling the nutrients that are sprayed to plants and have proper drainage system for their waste disposal. (Not that I eat much veggies)
Anyway, if you’re still afraid of frankenfood, here’s something to think about.
I was at Carrefour a few days ago and a very amazing collection of organic foods. We all know cheese comes from milk, somehow. In the past, cheese was made by allowing milk to ferment in the gut of baby calves. With GM food, ecoli replaced the role of the bacteria present in the gut of baby calves so milk can ferment in tanks. Organic cheese anyone?
HK Cafe, Pork Chop Rice Mania
We just went to Jurong Point, the surroundings changed quite a bit. The extension looks like it’s gonna be a big complex with residential units at the upper levels. Anyway, there’s this new HK Cafe at the outdoor area. It’s opened 24 hrs apparently but only with full menu between 11am and 11pm. So I have to try the pork chop cheese based rice at every HK cafe like how I try the mee goreng at all the prata places. Although the sauce here there wasn’t as salty as the other new HK cafe in Plaza Singapura, the portions was actually rather miserable. Not that value for money. I think I still prefer Wan Zai.
[Pictures to come maybe....]
There are these HK cafes popping up everywhere, some are better than others. I should probably go take pictures of all the pork chop rice and rank them!
Gathering
Every programmer will definitely have experienced times when one’s mind refuses to solve the coding problems at hand which leads to code-moodiness. I had the most vexing of times today trying to debug a code. Eventually, I sank into inefficiency by being a couch-potato for most part of the afternoon.
Was kinda lazy to pull myself out of the state of deterioration initially but I’m glad I did. Met Liyong, Suqin and Subby for dinner at Thai Express @ Holland V in the evening. If my mind did not fail me, I believe this is my second time at Thai Express. The first time didn’t make much of an impression. This time, I had honey chicken rice and Subby stuck to his curry soft shell crab rice which he was full of praises for. The honey chicken was superb. It’s kinda sweet when you first put it in your mouth but leaves a tangy sour aftertaste. Very interesting! I’m not a curry lover but I thought that the soft shell crab was not bad.
We had dessert at 2amDessert. It’s a small place but the interior looks very posh and cozy. We each ordered a dessert set (a dessert with the recommended alcoholic drink). Turns out that the dessert came in quite a large plate and the chocolate dessert was oozing with chocolate goodness! It has lifted me out of code-moodiness! The drink that came with it was sweet. I’ll definitely order than drink the next time I’m there.
When out on gatherings, I’m more of the person who feels more at ease in small groups. Maybe it’s because everyone gets their chance to participate in the same conversation and they take away a little something more about the small group of people that they have met. Anyway, the bill came up to be quite a lot but it didn’t matter that much. The company was great, the food was good and I enjoyed myself.
Pics will be up when Subby is less busy.
Subby: here they are:
包箩万香 @ IMM
Another foodie place you might wanna check out. It’s located at the basement of IMM together with a lot of other mini foodie stalls like donuts and crepes. They sell la mian and dim sum which are much more affordable than those at crystal jade. I had seafood la mian which was rich in ingredients and Subby had spicy sauce la mian which wasn’t spicy but gd to eat (in the opinion of the non-spicy lover).
The dim sum was pretty good too but the jurong one is better! (That’s for another review) ^.^
Four Seasons Durian @ AMK Hub
The family was at AMK Hub a couple of weeks back so we took the opportunity to check out the Four Seasons Durians shop. There was a long queue for their now-famous durian pancakes. We shopped around for a while before joining a shorter queue. It still took a good 15-20 minutes before I could place our order. We purchased 4 durian pancakes and a box of durian mocchi.
We only managed to sample the food when we got home. The durian pancake is as its name says durian wrapped with a pancake. What surprised me was that the durian was actually cold; somewhat reminding me of eating ice cream between bread. The filling was chilled fresh durian. The mocchi’s skin was kinda thick, the shop sells durian mooncake and I can imagine it being exactly like the mocchi except square and with a thinner skin.
With that said, I still prefer the durian rolls from Angie The Choice with its thin crepe skin wrapped around a generous durian core.
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- She can’t wait
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- Pau likes it
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- Doesn’t like the mocchi as much
Sakae vs Ichiban
A comparison
Sakae : Ichiban
thin slices of salmon : generous slices of salmon
boring sushi : cool inventions
some machine made sushi : all hand made in front of you
served by the waiter/waitress : your sushi is served by the chef if you’re seated at the counter. Be entertained!
shouting staff : talking staff
No cake : cheesecake!
I feel cheated : Hmm…enjoyable.
Pin Si @ AMK Hub
So far, all our food reviews gave recommendations to places of must try with 2 thumbs up! However, we have met the extreme end of yucky food today so from now on, we’ll include “places to never visit” in our foodie review.
While we were deciding on where to eat for dinner at AMK Hub, a very polite lady from Pin Si encouraged us to step in. She must have flying colours for her chinese oral because my taste buds were kicking up a storm after she showed us to our seats. It serves HK food which have sprung up all over our island recently. I ordered the chef’s recommendation (which was shan lau hor fun if you go to the zi cha stall) and Subby got himself a pork chop cheese bake rice.
It was utterly disappointing as my dish was the only one with a chef recommendation stamp and it tasted like MSG stale fish hor fun. They probably used the wrong type of cheese for their cheese bake rice because it became thick and hard after a while and instead of the usual tomato ketchup which came with it, this one had pepper. In addition, the pork chop was tough.
To add to our unsatisfaction, the meal costs twice the amount of a decent meal we could get at the food court. Even Subby the not so picky eater thinks it’s bad so yes, it is bad!
Subby
Dumdum