Ban Heng

It was the SA 6^th anniversary dinner. This event is held annually and this year it was held Ban Heng Restaurant located at Harbourfront centre. If you’re not sure where is it, you could browse through any newspapers and could find them commercializing Dim Sum Buffet at $12.90++..

T. sir, the founder of this club. Wouldn’t further mention out his name to prevent *erhem*.  This is the man who I respect the most, the one that never give up on us even though skipped trainings lots, the one that always scold us but actually is for our own good, the one who shield and help us when we had troubles.Remembering those days when we trained until we can’t even stand still, the blood and sweat that we put into, the extra hours of pt before actual training starts. All these memories I would never forget especially him.

Alright straight to the food.

Ban Heng Five of Cold Dish Combination
Supposedly it stated a 5 combination. But came out to have 4 selections and one duplicate. Nothing much to mention about these as they taste like average snack shop ones.

Braised Shark's Fin with crab meat
The soup taste normal like some restaurant would serve..
Steam Seabass in HongKong Style
Didn’t took pic of the fish but I would its definitely a failure. Well according to their banquet menu, the fish was to be served as the 5^th dish but it came out earlier. OMG the fish was like old and had a little of stinky smell. What the shit?!

Steamed Emperor Herbal Chicken
The waitress helped us to cut the chicken as it was served as a whole. The chicken was quite soft and the herbs taste wasn’t quite strong for me. Hmm could give a try on it if you guys ever visit this restaurant.

Steamed Teochew Eight Treasures VegetablesNo pictures were taken for this dish again but not because it’s not nice, but I was so indulge in it that I forgotten about it. Although its just lettuce with mushrooms and some vegetarian mock meat but they were perfectly cooked to the right taste and soft. It’s the only dish that I went for 2^nd serving.

Poached Live Prawns

Braised Ee Fu Noodles with Chives & Mushrooms
Normal steamed prawns. Not gonna waste my stomach space for that. Every Chinese banquet there will be one carbo dish which it was noodles. It was bland, kind of oily. Had to eat it with green chillis.

Cream of Sago with Honeydew
Lastly the dessert. The coconut milk was tad strong. I only ate the honeydews and sagos as the cream was totally hell lots of calories.

So now then I know why they kept having promotions. Would never give a try on their Dim Sum buffet even though they are really cheap as who knows, since their banquet food were like this, their Dim Sum would be no further good too.

The F-outing IV - Watami

The 4th outing of the "Fs" happened like weeks ago and now im finally posting it out. HAHA. just realise that I had too many posts to blog. Sorry too lazy to do so. Ok so that day it was our outing day which supposedly we were to visit theFoundry, meeting time 6.30pm at clarke quay mrt BUT F2 went to repair her camera which made us waited for an hour. 7.30pm!! HUNGRY to the max, no energy to travel all the way to mohammed sultan road so therefore we settled down at Watami since F4 said its not bad too.

Crispy Potato - $5.80

For starters, we ordered this. It was totally a letdown. It was just potatoes coated with some flour and fried. Worse of all, the sauces given. They were so bland & tasteless that we didn't even know what they were!!

Mochi Cheese Gratin - $6.80

We thought that it would very cheesy n soft. But my god they are like rubber. Tasteless..went on playing it on the hotplate for the chicken katsu. Haix.

Chicken Katsu Tamago Toji - $9.80

F4 came watami for this only. She simply love it. It consists of chicken cutlet, caramelized onions and egg. The egg was provided seperately for customers to preference how they would wan to cook it. Quite nice, not bad but something I do not like was that half of the chicken were fats. yes ewwwww.

Sapporo miso ramen - $12.80

Was craving for some ramen so decided to try this. Just not my type. The noodles were thick n hard, the soup was totally salty that i had to ask for hot water to add on to it. Asked for chilli paste thinking it would be better n spicy but it just make it more salty n not spicy at all. In the end i just cleared up the vegetables leaving lots of noodles behind. 

Conclusion, for better ramen we should eat at the ramen shops at the Central.

2nd Hands On II

Next up the bread. Ciabatta bread with sundried tomato and olive. I could say this lesson is hell-killing time. Lots of ingredients and steps needed for the cake while this bread needs darn lots of time for it to rise. We're like almost doozing off while waiting..zzzzzzzz...

Ingredients:
(SPONGE DOUGH)
- 240gm of water
- 8gm of yeast
- 225gm bread flour
- 90gm of virgin olive oil
- Herbs

1. Mix well the water, yeast, herbs and flour together
2. Then add in the olive oil. Mix it well
3. Cover the dough and rest for 40 minutes

For this bread, we used oregano and basil instead. Low or medium speed is recommended while mixing the dough. No high speed as it would make the dough super watery in the end. It can be put in the fridge overnight too. After resting it, some other ingredients and steps were add on.

Ingredients:

- 1 tbsp of fine sugar

- 1 tbsp of salt

- 120gm of bread flour

- 60gm of sundried tomato

• Stir down the sponge dough 
• add in the balance ingredients
• Mix it well to a smooth dough texture
• Put the dough on a lightly oil tray and let it rest for another 30 minutes.

• Put the sundried tomato on it and dust flour/cheese on it
• Let it proof to double the thickness

• Lastly bake it at 200degrees celsius for 30 minutes

TADAH final product! sorry about the pic being blurish. Its best to eat it freshly out from the oven, with the cheese melting in your mouth. But do one thing to take note, try to get healthier version of sundried tomatoes as some do taste salty. If you had the bread overnight, just put in the oven for about 30 seconds before enjoying it!

2nd Hands On I

Managed to find some time to post this thingy.. busy these few days plus the weather went haywired. Kept on raining then sun popping out followed by rain & sun again. Can't even trust the weather forecast to plan my morning exercise routine at Macritchie Reservoir. Ok last friday went to Phoon Huat again for class. Skipped the previous one as there was like no much difference for the cake we gonna bake with the cake i learnt from my 1st Hands On. Its squared chocolate special cake with just hazelnut fillings. Same ingredients and method. The bread was black seasame wholemeal bread with diced cheese fillings. Not interested in that too...

Well this lesson, the menu was White Forest Gateau & Ciabatta bread with sundried tomato & olive. Ah Ha!! finally some western bread instead of the chinese bread from those previous class. First up the cake.

And as usual the vanilla sponge cake was already prepared for us by the chef. Even the cutting the cake into 1/2 has been done too. Haix... when can i be able to really bake one of my own??. Well the steps are quite basic & easy actually. With that we were left with the white chocolate cream and cherries fillings to be done. This time round i didn't even dare to lick at the melted white couverture as my partners were quite sensitive to hygiene. (*&^%$#$@#$^%^&. Added some liqour called Kirsh into the cream mixture to make it more tasty too but i prefer adding more passion fruits!! Fruits are healthier than liqour. LOL

Ingredients:
(VANILLA SPONGE)
- 250gm super sponge cake mix
- 5 eggs
- 50gm of water
- 50gm unsalted butter

1. Put all the ingredients into the mixing bowl except the butter
2. Whip up the misture to 2.5 times volume
3. Add in the melted butter and mix well
4. Pour on the tray and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes

Ingredients:
(WHITE CHOCOLATE)
- 3 Egg yolk
- 40gm fine sugar
- 1/2 pcs of vanilla pod
- 80gm of UHT milk
- 1 tbsp of Gelatine powder
- 3 tbsp of Hot water
- 50gm of Frozen passion fruit
- 100gm of melted white couverture
- 250gm of whipping cream (dairy)

1. Cream the egg yolk and sugar to creamy. Speed at 3 if possible
2. Boil the milk and vanilla. Add into the egg yolk & sugar mixture and mix until is cool
3. Whip up the cream to soft peak and add into it
4. Add in the passion fruit , white couverture into it and mix well
5. Lastly dissolve the gelatine with hot water, add in and mix well

Ingredients:

(CHERRIES FILLINGS)

- 200gm of dark sweet cherries and sour cherries ( optional usage of which as long as its 200gm)

- 200gm of water

- 1pc of cinnamon stick

- 10gm of unsalted butter

- 10gm of corn flour

- 25gm of fine sugar

1. Boil the butter, water, sugar and cinnamon together
2. Dissolve the corn flour with water and add into it
3. Lastly turn off the flame, adding in the cherries

This cake needed darn lots of items. Luckily we used the time for our bread dough to rise to make these stuffs or else we wouldn't be able to go home at 10pm. Well with those necessary things done, left the finishing.

• Cut the sponge cake into 2pcs
•  Put 1 pc into the cake ring and put the cherries fillings into it

• Pour in 1/2 the chocolate filling into it and put the 2nd layer sponge
• Repeat the steps of putting in cherries and chocolate filling . Level it after that
• Keep in the fridge to let it set
• Take out and unmould the ring, coating the whole cake with whip topping cream
• Last decorate it with white chocolate curl and cherries on it

And TADAH!!! hehe better looking than my first chocolate cake. YAY!

The F-outing III - Icekimo

After all those yummy stuffs, we still reserved a place for ice-cream which we headed down to Icekimo.

8 Sin Ming Road #01-03, Sin Ming Centre
6455 7585

It was around 9plus when we arrived which there were no customers at all. So we helped ourselves to the lovely, cosy sofas at the side of the shop. It was a wednesday which they were having promotions for their dessert combo at $8. The Combo consists of 3 scoops of different ice-cream choice together with one belgian waffle, 1 waffle biscuits and 1 chocolate fudge.

Left to right - sour apple, horlicks, lychee sorbet

We chose the sour apple , horlicks flavours and the lychee sorbet as we wanted to try something special instead of those common ones again. The sour apple taste sour at first taste but slowly it became more and more sweet. There were traces of apple in it but they taste powdery. The horlicks was ok nothing special much together with the chocolate brownie below it. The lychee sorbet was also average. I think the only thing that up to my liking is their belgian waffle. Its freshly from the oven, not soggy and kinda of have the crunch.

We did not notice that there D24 ice-cream available until we're about to leave. GOD DAMN IT. D24!!! AHHHHHH a must try for us next time. Overall I could say this ice-cream cafe would be a good chill-out place on hot sunny days.

The F-outing II - Old School Delights

215M Upper Thomson Road, 574408
6458 4518

Next up, we went on to find some cafe for us to sit down and continue our gluttony. Came upon this nice cafe called old school delights. It kinds of brought us back our memory lane when we're still primary school students. Vandalising, drawing cartoons on the walls while some old teachers nagging throughout the morning. Hahaha ok apologies to them. 

On every table, there was a box which contains some of the old school games that were played. Donkey, five stones, snakes and ladders and many other more. Chalks can be found in it too. Yes you're right! They were given to us to vandalise on their chalk walls. Scribbling, drawing whatever we want to do. F3 drew a Flamingo logo & a flamingo on it. I hope those drawings are still there. Old school food like mee siam, nasi lemak, curry chicken were sold but since we just had some main meals at LittlePart1 Cafe, decided to order some of their signature cakes. 

Lemony Cake
F3 ordered this cake, thinking that its gonna be filled with lemon cream but to our disappointment, it was just a normal lemon cake..... Not only that, it was dry with no bursting of lemony goodness like they describe on their webby. Haiz bad choice.

Old School Delights' Special Banana Cake
F2 actually wanna have their banana cake but then their waitress recommended us to their cafe special banana cake. Hmmm.. Isn't banana cakes too? wads so special. From her description, its less sinful with the ingredients used and its steamed instead of bake. OMG the cake really tasted awesome. It was moist and with a strong banana taste. Thank you so much for recommending that to us!! :D:D

Sticky Chewy Chocolate cake
Sweet tooth F4 does really love chocolate cakes. This cake was described as detectably sinful & not for " calorie-counting" faint hearted ones...oooo i think im included. It consists of 4 layers of gooey, fudgy, sticky and chocolate goodness. No wonder its sinful. OOOLALA. The cake taste perfect even its not placed in the fridge. Man this chocolaty cake cnt be consume often due to the sinfulness of it, but still Im gonna come back to enjoy again!

Crinkled Fries with BBQ coating
Regretted ordering this. Its far from the curry fries we had at LittlePart1 cafe. They were salty with the salt added, oily and its not spicy at all from their description. The fries were not coated properly, some with lots of powder some with none. But one thing for sure their service was excellent as they offered to change a whole new basket of fries as we feedback to them that its really salty. Didn't want to cause any trouble so we asked for more spicy powder coating for the fries instead. 
Even though we didn't like some of their food, but still its  sure recommend for a re-visit. Wants to try their signature dish and their drinks like teh-bing, lemon tea in their glass jars!!

The F-outing I - Little Part 1 Cafe

Alright alright i know this post is overdue way long. Even F2 who had 100++ photos had them posted on fb before my teeny tiny post. She even Photoshop them. We THE FLAMINGOS finally got to meet up after so long like since.....hmmm.... forgotten. LOL. super duper missed them, well the purpose of this meetup was at first a venting-out-anger HTHT but in the end it turned out to be a food outing for us. :))) I LOVE IT!! Met up at upper thomson road since F2 and F3's workplace is around there. First up we came upon this little cafe located right beside Thomson Plaza.

15 Jasmine Road 576584
6451 7553

This little cosy cafe is a regular hotspot for office workers to come down after a day of work, relaxing & have a drink. They serve german beers, british beers as well as some tasty treats. * Note to german beer lovers, they have 25% off for all german beers on wednesday night. Haha so do go down and grab yourself some of it!!

silken tofu salad
First up salad as an appetiser. To quench our thirst but most importantly to make us feel less guilty from the sinful stuffs that we going to have later on. The salad was fresh and the tofu was really silky. Together with the pumpkin seeds, its very refreshing. Definitely a good choice for dieters.

Buffalo wings - original spicy
Their signature buffalo wings were indeed spicy but up to my liking! These were served with some cucumber sticks and a sweet sour thai sauce. We love the sauce that we even mix it together with the salad!! HAHA.

Louisiana Crepe
The serving was quite big. Had it cut into 4 for us as we had to save some space for more food later on. Their crepes were normally served with salad but since we had the delicious salad beforehand, we requested for a change to their curry fries. The fries tasted heavenly... coated with curry powder not salt, crunchy and not oily, we regretted not getting a basket of it instead. Moreover there was no additional charges to the change made too!! But something caught our attention... the crepe was suppose to be black pepper ham but instead it turned out to be having the black pepper sauce on the crepe. Come on so we paid $3 more for this crepe than the italiano crepe with the ingredient just that there's black pepper sauce on the crepe.... -.-".

Earl Grey Tea
Ordered an Earl Grey tea as im allergic to beer, would grow rashes the next day everytime. Nothing special about the tea since its from the same packaging as anywhere. But this tea sure do help me digest these food.

Serangoon Gardens Breakfast.

Well well sunday is usually a day when people would wake up at 9-10am and have their meals as so called brunch. But for me. it is a must to wake up at 7am to do some exercise and have breakfast. Today mum & dad decided to walk to serangoon gardens market for breakfast since there was nothing to do.

Tan Soon Mui Beancurd - $0.50

 Everytime before we start gobbling down other food, we definitely would get one of this. It tastes so soft and smooth, especially when its fresh out in the morning. At only 50cents, it is so much worth it than the rochor beancurd at certain places.

Sim's Delicatessen's You Char Kway and Butterfly Fritter - $0.70 each

To go along with the beancurd, we got these as there was only one stall selling YCK. The YCK was not crispy and kind of oily. The only thing that i found it quite ok was its not so thick even though its quite big. The butterfly fritter taste much better than. It was fried to the right crisp and not so sugary. hmm yummy.

Rolina Tradition Hainanese curry puff - $1.20 each

Lucky i queued up for this puffs early when they just opened their stall... The queue went freaking long after that. Although Rolina is famous for their tradition curry puffs, i still prefer their sardine puffs. With onions and chilli, the sardine tasted so heavenly. The crust was another lovely point as it was thin and crispy. Even though it's quite ex for the size, i find it quite better than Old Chang Kee's. So Shiok!!

black carrot cake - $3

 Dad went to order this famous black carrot cake from the serangoon gardens carrot cake and wanton noodle. Even though there are quite a few stalls at the serangoon gardens market centre, but this one still taste the best. Fried with chilli, the carrot cake was soft not mushy and together with the egg its simply amazing...we could even swallow it without chewing.

The only disappointment is that we were not able to get buns from the serangoon garden confectionery. It was raining quite heavily that time and the queue was way too long. Dad and mum had to rush back to catch the Kungfu panda 2 movie. Oh well we could just come and get anytime since we lived near there!! WAHAHAHAHA

First hands-on!!

Ah its been so busy these days. Have to complete all calling of IVR and plotting out their call flows by these few weeks. But still i managed to find some time to go down to Phoon Huat which is located at aljunied, and attend their baking work shop. It was my first time baking without my fantastic dad... haix.. The menu for that day was  Chocolate Cream Fudge Cake and Caramel Nut Banana Bread. Luckily the class was quite small and I've got a partner to help me!! First up is the bread.

All the ingredients except the butter and salt were mixed together first.

the dough is then put to rest for 30 minutes before dividing them again.

While waiting for the dough to rise, the chef demonstrated to us how to caramelized sugar to the perfect the taste. The nuts consists of roasted walnuts, roasted almond, roasted hazelnut and roasted pistachio. Well any nuts could be added into it as long as they add up to 400gm..... I guess cashew nuts would be better than pistachios.

Bananas were cut into cubes and added into the caramelized nuts

The dough were then flatten and the fillings were added into it. God i hate the wrapping part. Its like wrapping xiao long bao but i just can't master it. luckily my partner helped me covered up the holes. They were then left to proof before bushing with egg wash and bake. Finally tadah!!

My first ever bread!! haha they smelled so nice, freshly out from the oven and soft!! I mean really soft!!! (Y). Next we carried on with the chocolate cake. Unfortunately, chef baked the sponge chocolate cake for us. :( I wanted to do that!!

We had to cut the cake into 3 layers so as to put in the chocolate cream in between it. Hahaha u guess it, help was needed for this too.

The ingredients for the fudge filling

While waiting for water to boil, i was busy stuffing myself with the left over cakes and the dark couverture. Oh my super glutton. We added some rum into our sugar syrup as it would taste better than just chocolate. yeah just chocolate.The filling were then spread on the sponge before covering up the whole cake with chococalte flakes on the side and dust cocoa powder on top. TADAH!!

I didn't add much cream to it as my family are kinda like anti-too-much-cream cakes. Yeah the calories add up would be woah. It was fun experience for me and im gonna sign up for the next lesson which we'll be doing chocolate special cake (hazelnut, hazelnut nougat and bittersweet chocolate) plus black sesame wholemeal bread with dice cheese fillings. Much anticipation!!

Giant Ikea. Ikea Giant.

33 degrees!! Man it has been hot, i mean really super hot these days. Even my fishes in the tank need some ice to cool down. Today we went to IKEA in search of cushions for sofa. 50 x 50cm cushions. Hmm something nice and compatible to our old traditional chinese wooden sofa. Almost all singaporeans would know what IKEA is famous for. Not the furniture, not the tools but.... the MEATBALLS!! yeap the swedish meatball.

Swedish Meatball Kid's size - $2.90

Got myself a kid's size as i wasn't hungry during that time. These meatballs are not purely beef but consist a mixture of beef and pork. I thought it would be like some meatballs sold at pizza hut but surprisingly it taste good. Its has a abit crunch when you bite it and its not salty due to the seasoning. Totally perfect with the sauce!!. These meatballs come with a potato... I think it would be better if those potato were mashed as isn't better to mix it with the meatballs and sauce?!

Vegetarian organic pasta with tomato sauce - $3.80

Mum tried the vegetarian organic pasta with tomato sauce. I could say it totally look so different from the menu picture. There was only pasta, the sauce and cheese only. And it costs like $3.90?!! oh well mum has to bear with it as its not 12pm yet. Her break from vegetarian time.

Salad - $3.20

There was a mini salad bar too where we can DIY our own salad. Well theres nothing to complain about since there was only lettuce, tomatoes, peas, purple lettuce and canned peaches. There was also soup of the day which was mushroom soup but we didn't try that as it cost $3.20 for just a mini plate. Not worth!!

After touring IKEA, we went to Giant which is like 2 mins walk only. But since its approaching lunchtime, we decided to fill our stomach first at the kopitiam before it. There was quite a number of people at the Dim Sum stall which made me quite curious, wanting to try their food.

Yuan Yang ( chee cheong fun + yam cake) - $1.80

 The sauce taste powdery and sweet. It is like drinking not well-stirred bubble tea!! ... eww yucks. Both the chee cheong fun and yam cake taste ordinary like from some factory. The only thing i like was their chilli. It was spicy and well to my liking.

Siew Mai and Egg Tart

The siew mai was bigger than the usual normal ones and was good. There isn't any smell from the pork and the outer yellow skin is still soft, not so dry like some. The egg tart was ok. Dad found the egg tart not to his liking but to me, i find it ok.

Besides these, there were dumplings, buns and fried stuffs. I do not dare to touch the buns as they seemed dry and the bread is more than the filling. The fried ones looked sinful and full of msg as well. So nope thanks!

Dad couldn't resist himself from taking one container at of this at Giant and wanted tohide it in his cupboard. HAHA! why? Cause durian is his favourite fruit of all!!

 This container contains 75 packs of it. Don't think that they looks quite small so consuming a number of it is ok. According to it, 3 mini of it contains 150 calories and 60 of it comes from fats!!. Well well I do have to control myself while snacking on sometimes!