Lei Garden, Orchard

I spent a lovely afternoon with hubby and princess eating and shopping. Hubby took us out to lunch at one of my favourite dim sum restaurants. However, I find that the food isn't fantastic now, and the staff were really pushy. There were like 3 menus to choose from, and the minute we sat down, we were 'pushed' to go for a soup dish. You really need to be very firm in what you want. We opted for the dim sum dishes which was what we were there for in the first place. But before I could even go through the dim sum menu, another lady came along and asked if we wanted to order soup. Again! They tried to 'push' their specialties, set menus etc. It got pretty annoying after a while, and with the princess being a bit hyper, it was getting on my nerves. We stuck to dim sum and 3 dishes from the main menu, and even with those, we were stuffed to the max. Of course dessert was a must.

I don't know what was with the girl yesterday, she was all over the booth seats, couldn't sit still, and I hadn't even given her any sugar! Hubby and I were discussing it later, and realized it could be because exams were over. Kids can't tell you, but I guess they show it through their actions. Their stress has been released so I guess it was a great weight off their minds. Could it be?

Apologies for poor photo quality as photos were taken with my iphone. I don't usually use cameras in restaurants. In order of appearance...

Siew Mai & Har Gow. A must as hubby loves these.

Cheong fun with char siew. Ok, hubby doesn't touch this. He doesn't like tasteless food, which is how he describles cheong fun, chwee kueh, tofu. I loved the cheong fun. It had great skin, not the mushy ones that make you feel sick after polishing off a plate.

Fried radish cake was ordinary.

Baked cod with some bean sauce. Ordered this for the princess to go with her bowl of plain rice. It was lovely and hubby enjoyed this. He had most of it.

A very unusually shaped ham soi kok or fried glutinous rice flour dumplings with meat and mushroom stuffing.

Sweet and sour pork with pineapple. This was well done, and went very well with the rice.

Lovely crunchy broccoli, not overcooked. I asked for oyster sauce but this seems to be the garlic version. Didn't bother to check with server.

Another favourite of mine after ham soi kok is wu kok, fried yam balls with similar stuffing to the former. I felt the stuffing was a bit on the salty side.

Princess wanted to have these. Nice crunchy, addictive fried silver fish. This came too late, at the end of the meal, and was nearly cancelled. I thought we could have done without this dish as we were quite full by then.

Mango pudding which used to be my favourite dessert here. Somehow I had forgotten the taste of this dessert, but something tells me it is not what it used to be. Maybe I am wrong, or my tastebuds have forgotten but this one feels more like a mango mousse. Thousands of bubbles burst on the tongue with each mouthful. It was a delight but I prefer my mango pudding to have more substance.

After lunch, we made our way to Tangs to look for my pot. I was really happy that they were having specials off the Le Creuset range. There wasn't just the buy 1 @ 20%, 2 @ 30% and 3 @ 50% off normal discounts. There was quite a good selection of reduced price items. I couldn't decide between the red oval pot or the pink 24" round one, but when the sales lady said the antique rose colour was a limited edition range from Japan, it kind of decided for me that I would go for that. I love pink, and it's not too girly a pink for a pot, so it was perfect. I'm in love with it! It was originally $568 but marked down to $284. Happiness!

Teochew Char Siew Bao

I was busy all of last week and wasn't in any mood to come online much. Mum is having a makeover for her bedroom so I was going places with her, mainly to Ikea, and since she had the use of my uncle's car for a couple of weeks, we decided to do the stuff we planned for when such opportunities come knocking, such as visit far off places like IMM. ;P

We spent an entire Monday at Ikea Alexandra and mum had all her meals there from breakfast right up to dinner!! She was super excited about it and couldn't wait to clear out the three big wardrobes belonging to my grandma, which were mega old and rotting. She now has more space and spanking new furniture, and added to that, her pride and joy - a new HP desktop with a 20inch monitor! My guess is that she will be keeping even later nights now, playing with her pet and her cafe. ;)

On Wednesday, she decided to make a trip to IMM, yippee for me, Daiso here I come! She wanted to check out some furniture shops there for a new wardrobe.

As we weren't familiar with the road and timing of our journey from Jurong to the girl's school, we left IMM way too early and found ourselves to be half an hour early to pick the girl up. We decided to look for some snacks along the way and ended up at this market which has a famous stall selling Teochew style dim sum items. It was 2.45pm when we got there and the stall had actually closed for business, although everyone was still busy at work churning out food. The man directed me to a separate stall where a lady was shredding carrots. She said that they did not have freshly steamed items (as they closed at 2pm) but I was welcome to purchase them if I didn't mind that they were not hot. I didn't mind of course. She was pretty nice and very patient as I was checking out the stuff and couldn't decide on what to get. In the end, I bought char siew baos, tau sar baos and some siew mai. They also have a specialty which is kong bak bao. Those were really cute and mini. Everything here costs 50cents, except for stuff like big bao, lor mai kai etc. I kept them in the fridge (her advice was not to freeze them). I had these for breakfast the next morning.

The meat in the siew mai is different from the Cantonese version which we are so used to. It is very fine and soft, as if it had been ground 3 times over. There is also the addition of shredded carrots. However, I found it slightly salty and I much prefer the texture of the Cantonese ones where you can actually taste the meat and prawns. This version kind of melts in the mouth.

The char siew within is also finely shredded, and not in chunks or cubed like the Cantonese char siew. The skin of the bao is thinner and I found it too oily. I like the soft fluffy type.

If you are in the neighbourhood, do check them out for a different taste. You might like it more than I did.

Handmade Teochew Bao
Blk 127 Toa Payoh Lorong 1
#02-02
Singapore 311127
Tel : 62542053

Lor Mai Gai

This is my first time making this dish. Prior to this, I didn't realize that it was so easy to do. This came about during a conversation at the bff's house. Her cousin was in town last week and they were planning to make some. So this missy wrote down all the ingredients and method on how to make this delicious dim sum dish. The good thing about making it at home is that you can control the amount of oil that goes into your cooking. As I was busy making tarts yesterday, I thought today would be a perfect day to do this, thus I soaked some rice in the late afternoon yesterday, and by 10pm, I was able to season the rice. I left it till this morning before I steamed them and took some along on my breakfast date with the swimming mums. Unfortunately, it being my first time, I wasn't sure on how much water to use, if any at all, thus I didn't put in enough water. It resulted in a pretty dry dish as can be seen by photo, the sides are not moist enough. The mums thought the meat was well-seasoned so that was the saving grace. Upon my return home, I added water to the remainder rice and fried them again. This time the dish turned out much better. It was missing something. I suspect it's a lovely fragrant five spice powder as the one I bought from NTUC wasn't fragrant at all. I am definitely going to make this dish again sometime soon.

Ingredients - (I will try to give exact measurements wherever I can)

3 cups glutinous rice
5 deboned chicken thighs, cut into small bite-sized pieces
garlic minced
shallots (I didn't add it this time)
dried mushrooms (soaked till soft and sliced thin)

Seasoning for chicken - (this was all done by estimation)

light soya sauce
oyster sauce
sesame oil
white pepper
5 spice powder approx 1tsp
a drop of dark soya sauce
I seasoned the above overnight

Seasoning for rice - (basically the same seasoning ingredients as the chicken)

light soya sauce
white pepper
Chinese wine (I used hua tiao but found it a bit too strong)
5 spice powder approx 1tbsp
a drop of dark soya sauce
Also seasoned overnight

Method -

1. Wash then soak the glutinous rice in water for minumum 4hrs. (I started this at 5.30pm)

2. Meanwhile, season chicken and leave in fridge overnight.

3. 4hrs later (9.30pm), rinse out and drain rice. Season with the ingredients mentioned above and leave it overnight. I did mine at 10pm and steamed it at 8am.

4. In the morning, fry shallots, garlic & mushroom strips till fragrant. Add rice and then water. I don't have the exact measurement of water I used as it was my first time making this dish, thus it was a trial and error thing. I suggest that if you are not sure, just add water gradually, starting with a half cup full first. Do not steam the entire portion but rather leave the rest of the rice and test waters with one portion of lor mai gai before going ahead and steaming everything.

5. Into individual portions, place some chicken pieces on the bottom of each bowl. (You may like to make one big portion but smaller portions are better for storing but be warned, they might all disappear within the day :P). Top up with rice right to the top of bowl if you like as the rice will not expand.

6. Steam for approx 20-30 and test the rice to see if it cooked before removing from steamer.

I can't wait to try it out again soon as it was pretty successful the first time. Do let me know if you try making this and how yours turned out. Happy cooking!