Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

An Equador Rose

Say it with me. #iloveyouimissyousecretfriendshippleaseforgivemeremembermethankyoubemysweetheart. On a rose.

Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

An Equador Rose

Say it with me. #iloveyouimissyousecretfriendshippleaseforgivemeremembermethankyoubemysweetheart. On a rose.

Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

Archive for 2010

Black Tau Kwa

Friday, December 31   keyboard  


Rainy

Hiding with slippers of grass jelly, rice noodle rolls and steamed buns, is this black beauty that is not to be mistaken as any cooling dessert.



It is actually one of our cultural foods, black tau kwa or black beancurd! Firm beancurd that can be added to almost every dish, beans, noodles, spring rolls or meat. Black that is the stunt double of carbohydrate starches, like when we've always had the antagonistic black and white fried turnip cakes.



Nothing of the sinister, this is not smelly fermented beancurd, deep-fried beancurd or severely braised beancurd. It is non-GMO beans eschewing the MSG, wholly vegetarian and tipped with a little caramel.

Unicurd Black Taukwa (SGD 1.25)

Burn it a little till it gets toasty at the sides, and this will manifest the caramel out of them. Caramel, the same moving liquid found at the bottom of your pudding. Give it a whiff and it is like sweet popcorns throwing their pretty heads at you.



Put it in bread for a protein punch! Alongside its fluffy buddies, it feels like eating a scrambled egg sandwich with ketchup, the colourful food granted by this genie beancurd, very old-school yet always working.



The beancurd itself is very plain, despite the harsh colour and appearance. On its own, it is very beany, save for a crunchy crust that tastes like chocolate. Where we have the asian carrot cake, now we have the eastern oreo cheesecake!

P.S. The sparkle of cocoa brown. The delights of this chocolate pizza on its own, now I can conjure why there is cocoa pasta, and spaghetti broken with chocolate sauce.

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Green and Red Cuppa

Friday, December 24   keyboard  


23 Dec, 2010


Tcc has always been known for its festive brews. In 2008, Eggnog Desire was a heap of snow, fudge and white edible snowflakes and dark green and red jimmies. In 2007, Berry Oreo was a cold concoction of iced chocolate/coffee with yellow, pink, light purple, blue, green and orange edible stars. This year, it returns with the Nutte Winter. We await at what will be created for 2011.

Nutte Winter (SGD7.00)

Christmas is prescribed in 3 colours, with tiny silhouettes of red and green firs beckoning. The cup is immediately transformed into a landscape. There are robust clusters of peanuts at the bottom.


Tcc is not some catchy syllable trio, it stands for The Connoisseurs Concerto, something found out only today.

P.S. Sipping such coffee, and time away, it feels like winter outside. Sometimes, not only the immaterial, paraphernalia can also do time travel.

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Green Buns

Monday, December 20   keyboard  

Drizzling

The light here turns rose-tinted, and the food themselves, soaked in sap green. The atmosphere becomes phantasmagoric, out of a medieval rpg or a virtual encyclopedia.



Green bread! To collect all of them throughout the journey. (We will need their help later on).



For the bread and green breads, they are found in 3 different kinds at green pumpkin. The anpan, a japanese sweet bun, dragon roll, a circle of twisted bread, and matcha (green tea) loaf.



Matcha Koshi Anpan (Left) and Matcha Tsubu Anpan (SGD 1.20 ea)

Intergalactic stars. Opposites of each other. Shade bewitching the sesame seeds out of each bun, making them look a little too numerous and teetering. Yet this is nothing when you think of a hamburger, sesame seeds on a toasted bun, remember?

The fine bean paste (left) and chunky red bean paste right. Smooth and sweet, encrusted in a fragrant soft bun, the fine red bean anpan feels like non-sticky jam. The chunky red bean anpan holds what you call crunchy peanut butter, where you get red bean husks also in the mash.

Sakura Anpan (SGD1.40)

Slapped adroitly with a salted sakura flower on top, this was how anpan looked like and spread around japan. Ham-alert, anybody? Well no, the pinkish crown is actually paste of white adzuki and sakura. Similar in taste and texture to the sakura mops of the new taiyaki, sakura mochi flavour. Beany, but bitten sharply with a saucy sweetness, that's what the pretty pink mass tastes like.


P.S. Sakura, the name of the tree itself. More specifically, its cherry blossom, the name of the pink flowers. Extract of a flower, something so pure and symbolizing life, heinous to ingest it?


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Green Pumpkin

keyboard  


Cloudy

Halfway when we are growing up, we will have nex in between to join us. Its approach is the 'x'; x to spell xciting, xtravagant, xperience. (Ion Orchard was the suffix ion; fashion, sophistication, temptation). During this december.


Nex is also the place to find green food. Green pumpkin, a japanese bakery, isn't named for sheer poetry. Gratefully, it suggests the things it bakes.


Pumpkin-inspired goods! Pumpkin is added everywhere, effortlessly. A pumpkin croquette sandwich, pumpkin mont blanc, pumpkin anpan and pumpkin seed muffins. The flexibility of pumpkins in recipe!


To propel the statuses of pumpkins, artifices are laid beside the breads. A rustic christmas, together with the squashes and snow spray. With a green pumpkin cafe also at Shokutsu 10, you can bask inside such air with a cuppa.


And now trepidation on the higher level of its name- there is really green coloured-bread! Green is made with luxury green tea powder carefully folded into bread.


Green bread everywhere! Green pumpkin uses only one weapon, the colour, enshrouding a whole new culture, of richness in detail and aesthetics. Green pumpkin makes it that we walk into bakeries and see bread green, scarcely noticing their effects, just like green grasses on earth.


Green pumpkin (SGD 1.40)

And on the face which launched green pumpkin. In its name the bread is dressed like one, character play with bread. Green frosting suggesting the pumpkin's shell. A ball of dough for the pumpkin's stem.


There is real pumpkin flesh within the pumpkin! Honest, and moist, they give texture to the soft breads of japan. The frosting is delicately laced with the sweetness of green tea. The star is nothing but the fruit itself- pumpkin.


P.S. Green pumpkin has a slogan. What colour is a pumpkin? - Green in Japan.

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Black Balloons

Sunday, December 19   keyboard  

Cloudy



The last black balloon I had was the unflated ones, in a package at Borders. From red to green to blue to purple, I do not recall picking a black one from the bouquet of any restaurant, as a young diner. Probably they'd be unwanted, amongst the repertoire of colours.


Yellow and black. And that's all to delineate new york city, the urban and sophistication and The Cafe Cartel. A distinct but classy combination.


Urban Bread Pudding (Top)(SGD 8.50) and Créme Brûlée (SGD 6.20)

The Urban bread Pudding came warm and toasty complex with many sensations; silky for the vanilla ice cream, savoury, for the bread pudding, and soft, with a yielding bite. You could mash/bludgeon/divide the elements any way you want to eat, like Big Breakfast. The raisins were not fat and rum-doused as described, though. The Creme Brulee was chilled, a weaker contrast with the cold ice-cream but creamy and tasty as it should.


Black balloons in conjunction with Christmas and the opening of The Cafe Cartel, nex.

P.S. Yellow, the only colour that remains in RYB and also in CYM(k). Would you pick the yellow balloon, or the black balloon?

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Green Bao

keyboard  


Cloudy

If you were a Pau-aficionado, you would know they come in three sizes. The king crown, for the Da Pau- they usually come with a half boiled egg inside. The small crowns, for the Char Siew Pau or meat pau, specifically. The smallest round buns for the sweet-paste paus. You would also know if they were to come in odd colour, it would be the small crown's measurement. Purple, for yam.



To be sitting nonchalant, at any steamer around kopitiams in Singapore. (Even the supermarket-bought ones boost only the purple, yam). They are in the dimension of the small crown, big enough to fill your entire palm. Once, I saw this green one selling in a kopitiam. Before it closed down for good the next day. Next, I saw a yellow one sold at Simply Cafe, Clarke Quay. I wonder if it is still there. Now, at least I got the green's name. Its called Pandan Pau, with regards from NTU.



Months later, from all the previous encounters, appeasement is found when the green pau is not as uncommon as thought! The green is like a stone ready to be picked from the roaring steamhouses, outstanding from all the white ones in the glass.


The bun may be green, yet it tastes plain like the ordinary. The deep-smaragdite paste may be pandan, yet its tastes no different from a sweet-lotus filling. The brain has to try hard to squeeze out some faint kaya or musty pandan flavour from the eating this pau.

P.S. If you venture into the bowels of VivoCity's giant hypermarket, you will also see the green pau being sold! Alas, uncommon, if you do not give up heart.

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Green Tree Cupcake

Friday, December 17   keyboard  


Cloudy

Where there are lots of conversation pieces such as Naan Da Yo?, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bacon, Smart Aleck; BreakTalk and family dresses up as the eccentric character again with seasonal quirks at the end of the year!



Once more BreadTalk and family did not disappoint! Silent Leaf, (in other words 圣诞叶, Silent Night); makes you Merry and ChocoMint. It is a cake shaped in a green leaf. There are also other miniature icing cupcakes and cookies for sale.


Xmas Theme-CupCake (SGD 3.30)

In a matter of 15 minutes and the cake art is done! The bells and snowman are tiny stencils. When you want lots of icing like christmas cookie, but not cookie-based.


Icing so thick, it grows out. A gathering of all the outer coating of M&M'S on a cupcake. The tree serves as a hard base for the soft cupcake.

P.S. Icing as a filling/centre/flavour of the cake. Cake can just be icing and cake/it can be eaten that way.

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Green bubble Pudding

Sunday, December 5   keyboard  

4 Dec, 2010

0-calorie, zip-fat pudding! Heralds all kinds of kids dessert at cold storages. Jell-O, vanilla, custard caramel. Yet their fit nutritional data does not entice more than these cartridges in green.


Vanish: In 02/(20)12
Firstly, its familiar Nestle, packaged similarly like those of Petit in Europe, in detachable cartons of four or six. Secondly its green and green all over with bubbles, portraying the less common flavour- mint, for green.


Aero Mousse Peppermint (SGD 6.15 4S)

Feel the whoosh in green with brown streaks! The brown came in as a surprise, when the dynamic packaging gave way to an unimaginable pudding for its colour and shape and texture- but definitely no brown anywhere.


Its Aero. Feel the bubbles. So what is it exactly like? It is mint pudding with tinges of chocolate, and when you scrape your cutlery over the edges of the dessert, a hissing sound takes over to add dimension to your eating. Put it in your mouth and the mint foam disintegrates, circles of mint breaking down to nothingness. A wonderful technology, and a wonderful technology to add into food!

P.S. Staring at Cadbury Mint Crisp and Mint Bubbly, this must be how they work, also, for the green.

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Green Tea Cheese Cake

Thursday, November 25   keyboard  


24 Nov, 2010

At Ichiban Sushi, a full-course dinner can be found on its conveyor belt. Like a head into a tunnel, you don't know what will come out.



Unagi rolls approaching, a sweet yet savoury dinner. Gunkan and tamagos, for a buffet. Seasoned jellyfish, for appetizer. Green and orange kyonakyu jellies, for dessert. Chocolate and custard coronets, like the petit four.



Desserts and main course on the conveyor belt! And cheesecake, a slice, peeking from underneath the hood. And not just that, cheesecakes from Ichiban are green(!), at the ends of the brown that used to meet yellow.



Cheesecake (SGD 2.10)

Chanced upon like sushi, this cheesecake is incredibly light and tasty, with thin hissing sounds made when you compress it. Synonymous with the cow; Fiesta cheesecake, yet in between the burnt edges it is scented with green tea. Like eggs, flour, sugar and butter; green tea is in the batter like cinammon is to gingerbread.

P.S. So why is there a green cheesecake? The tale goes as with Fiesta Japanese cheesecake, also remembered as the cow with a chef's hat going green, Matcha, in addition to chocolate, pandan and coffee flavours. From July 2010 they will be in production, and also invited to seat at Ichiban Sushi and Ichiban Boshi Japanese Restaurants.

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Green Chicken Floss

Wednesday, November 17   keyboard  


16 Nov, 2010

Past the stretches of City Square Mall, basement, a host of delectables greet you. Adorned in wood block typography is mugiya, wheat house bakery. Traditional, conventional bread slumps by its displaysill, and under the warm light, their textures are illuminated like shadows of grey glitter.



Giant pillows with needle-like pock marks, a smooth cheese glaze with pressed green shards. And this, a shapely bun in a green moss dress? The brain takes more time to adjust, than the eye in yellow light.


Wasabi C.Floss (SGD 1.50)

Lo and behold, chicken floss in this house is green! Doings of the roots of the horseradish again, making it look like some mythical creature. So, does this variant look as acceptable as it looks? The floss is iced sweet, with the slight stinging nettle of wasabi; making it taste like hot floss, just that it is more earthy of plant nature. The wasabi floss is balanced triadically with the savouriness of mayonnaise, and shearing mayonnaise's fattiness with the spiciness of wasabi. All in one bite of soft, fragrant japanese bun, the wasabi c.floss is the bolsters of seventh heaven.

P.S. The japanese has exploited before, the sweetness of wasabi as a flavour in ice cream. Similarly here, the sugar in the plant is dissected and distilled onto the strands of chicken floss, imaginatively inventive, and beautifully finished. Air-spraying the mosses green, this separates the hot floss bun from the usual chilli floss, as with its visual the wasabi taking the role of the colour.

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Green Carrot Cake

Wednesday, November 10   keyboard  


10 Nov, 2010

Under the hanging corridors of Plaza Singapura, there is this very 'green'-looking café, bespeaking environmental and preservation matters.



The Society Café. Food sold in trinkets of silver, as if to be treasured, savoured. The sun's rays penetrate through the panels of the arena, making you think about global warming, and the better of times, like now.



Lime citrus tart (All Day Special) (Set) (SGD 9.00)

Yet its pantry appeals with the eccentric. Edible printed designs on chocolate- slick marble texture, for powerpoint? Cut-out and pasted like the galaxy. Flavour-wise the lime was a perfect substitute for sugar in the curd, thinning it out calming tea within the dense tart.



Facing their backs together were wedges of tall, tall carrot cakes. Arranged as two cakes in all, there were slices with white stripes, and slices with green stripes. The stripes coming to your nose; its green frost elevating the cake somewhere into faux land, where frostings come in green.



Carrot Cake w/ green tea frosting (All Day Special) (Set) (SGD 9.00)

So how did this elvish-looking frosted cake taste like? The sponge did not lose out to Cedele's, heavily scented with carrot and spice. There is also a generous amount of walnuts! And in between the green butter gave pleasure of saccharin, nothing but a mere vapour of green tea; richness in contrast to the sleekness of the dense cake.

P.S. Green tea. Uprising as the fourth position behind superstars chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Our glimmer of hope that green foods could be uplifted on the pedastal of stardom, where we gaze upon brown, pink and white foods with affection, in recognition that they are mouthwatering foods.

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Green Baumkuchen

Monday, November 8   keyboard  


Cloudy

The Baumkuchen. Also known as the tree cake, because the tree reveals its age when you chop off its trunk. The the older it gets, the more rings it have.



Named by the Germans but made popular by the Japanese, the Baumchuken looks like a lapis cake, but in the shape of a chiffon cake. Wheat baumkuchen, proudly purported by its baker in Toa Payoh, there is the classic original, chocolate (imagine a brown-looking chiffon), durian/oreo mascarpone cheese (imagine round icing cakes) and valrhona chocolate (imagine glazed donuts). Lovely, earthly-toned series, there is also this green to complement the woods tale.



Baumkuchen (Matcha) (SGD 4.00)

Cloyingly sweet, matcha was like how the japanese mediated their red adzuki beans- full on the sweetness. There was also the egg flavour and richness of a lapis cake. The frills though, is the texture of this cake. A bite of the chiffon sponge tinged with burnished goodness, thin but peelable, forming an alternating gastronomical delight.



A bite of Baumkuchen, in the most classic flavour or this green flavour, one interweaves in and out of reality, in and out of green, in and out of cake/brown, in and out for a breather.

P.S. Almost perennial japan/taiwan fair at ngee ann city one can find the wheat baumkuchen outside toa payoh! Its the refresh page for food enthusiasts. And brouhaha baumkuchen is also found at muji islandwide! For the daredevils, grab these little tree spirits in their round package, complete with the green variant too, at muji.

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Green Scone

Sunday, November 7   keyboard  


Cloudy

Many months ago, Coffee Club was the central kitchen, churning muffins from T3, bottom of Borders, Tiong Bahru. This is because there is oatmeal and cranberry, cinammon, blueberry, orange, amongst many others. Where you don't have to steal seats for a cuppa, them sitting in a glass dome like dolls.



Similarily there is also a case, for scones. Many months ago, they were plain beside the royal crown muffins, until last month, I thought I saw a green one. ???. The tan-tea-lising set is still available until today, for sampling.



A Toast to Scones (SGD 8.90)

My stance to the green scone still stands today! The English Green- not pandan, green tea, but mint. I was right on the spot. A chocolate mint scone- it was a hybrid of a cookie and bread. The bottom of the scone brittle like biscuit, the body plain like flourless cake. Mint acted like an air-refresher through the confectionery, and you could spread it with apricot and mango curd like bread. It felt like christmas peppermint cookie.

P.S. The usual muffin flattened, but in the characteristic of a scone. In the poster flagging tiny icons of russet, brown, green, beige, in the glass case rolling out sweets in russet, brown, green, beige, it is like a rainbow world, and we are in this plastic world.



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Green Sundae

Saturday, November 6   keyboard  

6 Nov, 2010

You know you are back to civilian with new green, black or rainbow. Also the end of psle, e-y-e, mark of op, A's, and ord. Some kind of jet lag but this year is going to end! Indoors are starting to snow with peppermint background.


Chocolate Chip Sundae (Green Apple) (SGD 1.80)

So are Mcdonald's sundae. With a red beside the green in the sundae's poster, you can't help to acknowledge your lag of time. But it is not peppermint, it is green apple. Green apple fragrant like handwash, mellifluous like candy, embedded in the smooth, vanilla puree that we are all familiar with.

P.S. In condensed fashion almost like some kind of trifle or pavlova, you think about yuletide, and that christmas is almost here.


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Rainbow XLB

Saturday, October 30   keyboard  


29 Oct, 2010

On a wet, dreamy evening, smoke unfurls in front and behind you like partitions to keep your dining private. If you overlook them, you can see a myriad of nationalities. A caucasian lady, holding her chopsticks with her left hand, and her college, who's indian. An asian lady, conversing in mandarin, and her english partner, who's maneuvering the chopsticks with his left hand.



The two tables speak about their love for chinese food. Adjectives, punctuation, come in. They travel around the world but they keep their penchants radiating out from the chinese.



Here at Paradise Dynasty, you are introduced to both northern and southern chinese cuisine. To understand what is in the head of the chinese, you have to understand the flavours they conjure, or somewhat, like what Paradise Dynasty interpreted.


Signature Dynasty Dumplings (8pcs) (SGD 13.80)

They are to be sampled in this following order: Original (white), ginseng (green), foie gras (brown), black truffle (widow), cheesy (yellow), crab roe (orange), garlic (grey), szechuan (pink). As the flavours get more intense. You have to wipe out the taste of the original with ginger at the first step.



They are all springy and thin-skinned holding a different soup base inside. The black truffle was soft, pulpy and almost meatless. The cheesy was like curdled milk, tame for dairy. The szechuan had a sweet-tasting soup, not too fiery like its smothered pink. The crab roe had a deep oceanic smell to it. The foie gras was sweet too- sweets of the adults? And the ginseng had an acrid edge to it, complex and satisfying.

P.S. These are the flavours conceived by the chinese. Somewhat different from the rest of the continents, if you were to ask them to frame 'rainbow'. XLB, chinese catching up with fusionopolis, or modernity. Surreptitiously it has sneaked into the dictionary of the west, and the young, or the informed. There was a bunch of youngsters celebrating their birthday meal here at Paradise Dynasty. XLB, for birthday.

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