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 June 2010

Green Muffin

Tuesday, June 29   keyboard  


25 June, 2010

Muffins are one treacherous food. Frosting and toppings, they mislead you into colour.
One day, like slot machine icons white Raisin, yellow Peach, brown Chocolate, gray Blueberry, green Green Tea- now that is what I call Bread Talk.

Green Tea Muffin (SGD 1.50)
Biting into the coloured carbohydrate there was a burst of tea. Not green tea; it can't be. Jasmine. Yes— the scent of an unknown midnight-blue pastry I had picked up whilst gamboling in the kitchen decades ago in a mooncake festival. I did not know I would find it in a green muffin today.

Like most industry cakes, this muffin was chewy on the inside; thinned to a dry flour at the edges intercepting with paper. Reverse-psychology, I actually craved for that more and more- salty refined sandpaper granules. And look at that, our acquianted sun-kissed grain Bravo Packaging now encompassing green carbohydrates.

P.S. I finally found out that it had been a traditional mooncake with cassia bloom That autumn festival. I will never forget it until today.



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Soda Green

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June 25, 2010

Get yourself a meal with drinks changed to Grape Soda. Stylishly, at the MOS burger. To get any posher it would have to be this:

DemiSoda (SGD 1.30 ea)

[KimCheese.(At the forefront of introducing K pop into our bread - making headlines with kimchi and cheese).] Heralded the bread of 2006; even BreadTalk sensed the coming of K-Wave.

P.S. Green Apple and the Green Globe. 11% juice, not alcohol. Toast.




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Rainbow Baos

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June 25, 2010

If there was a food mold I would ever need, it would be the pau(bao). Not the mooncake or some cookie cutter. Its capricious figure beats the cakes' surface area times height; simple math calculation{cylindrical shape}anytime.

Hammering out pink, light yellow, deep yellow; green, lavender and white. Pink is for red bean, light yellow corn, deep yellow peanut, green pandan lotus(no longer the usual white), purple yam and white su! char shao.

Mini Buns (SGD 1.85) (9 pcs)

Red bean the zealousness of our ancestors; grinding them to scalding in water. Corn and yam our creative prowesses, purple and yellow in our foods. Peanut our lands: dry, sunny and always sandy. Pandan lotus our heritage and culture- the foods that we add into dessert. And char shao for a protein change.

But they were su(vegetarian)! Along with barbeque mince and salt and pepper, it was gratifying protein that we cannot distinguish with real meat! Potato hunks and I was levitating on the fatty pork. Red bean and peanut were the make-or-break it- whenever a steaming stove was in sight. Not precious and jelly of an overfreeze, their skins were supple without flourry, and most importantly, pastes that were ground bean and peanuts- not maimed with sugar!

The two bodies fusing together, loggerheads primary red and primary blue; yam was my favourite colourflavour! It wasn't as simple as a yam; paste thick and white from the decadence of coconut! Corn was my counterpart's favourite, deserting the maize and keeping the ear; it was actually cream and curds!

There was another variant that I like; flying off the shelves in mint-green skin. Never would I think it was crystallization fusion, pandan and lotus paste! You could smell the pandan fragrance whilst having your lotus seed paste. Somehow, the aspects of the nanyang world seemed harmonious to each other; any two paired together for taste would never be disagreeable in texture!(This is unlike the pharmaceutical off-the-cuff, smash-and-blend creations found in confectioneries today).

P.S. Steaming buns at the crack of dawn, it felt like nonya ladies preparing meals, or popiah-making sessions. Bao, my "recess" food in elementary school. What's yours?




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Rainbow Birds

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24 June, 2010

Bird-of-paradise. You are what you eat. Look ma{at Jurong}, the flamingo's pink(shrimps?). Carcophagus birds, fruits got to be the foods of paradise(so that they have colourful feathers).

. .WHEN THEY BEAT IN THE AIR, THE 5 (OR SO) COLOURS AUGMENTS TO A 5 BILLION SHADES.

P.S. Sometimes, its just that the naked eye cannot see it.


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Greem Puff

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June 24, 2010

Yamazaki. That name looked rather familiar. (Not because it has another outlet at Isetan; SunMoulin, I could spell it all out), but Yama-shita! (Yes, history!)

Jumbo Green Tea Puff (SGD 1.60)

Wheat✓ Eggs✓ Milk✓ Peanuts ✗ Buckwheat ✗
I was spellbound at those little icons. Neat, squeamish, informed. Aways prissy, always proper.

Local bakeries could learn from the Boulangerie Chaude.

P.S. Come here if you want to indulge in high-quality cream puffs. For the liqueur/caffeine fix, its got to be its punch-drunk!green tea. If you've got an ordinary-tooth, don't worry; they've got the Jumbo Cream Puff. Wheat. Eggs. Milk. Peanuts. Buckwheat. Is there any foods with a deviation? Only the bagel(plain) and country loaf were wheat-less and eggless. The rest were all the same as cream puffs!(I wonder where did the peanut and buckwheat go.)

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Rainbow petite Cake

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June 24, 2010

The lone ranger, an outlier as the single Coffee Club blooming in the heartlands; one cannot treat the wind-and-rain-element exposed shack, short circuited deli bakery display with contempt.


Mango Madness (SGD 6.50)
Curlicue black-and-gold white chocolate at Marina Square, Millenia Walk and Raffles City, curlicue black-and-gold white chocolate and motley red-and-silver white chocolate at Tiong Bahru Plaza, only variegated banded white chocolate at Tampines 1!!

P.S. 'Madness' treading all over island, the white chocolate was just- white chocolate. But within the burnished dome there were a potpourri of textures- light mango chiffon; upon a caramelized biscuit, sticky praline, and behold: real passionfruit center! No wonder it is called a petite cake. (Or parfait, in my sense).
P.P.S. And how can it be white chocolate- when it is coloured on the surface.


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Rainbow Muffin

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June 23, 2010

Viva La FIFA. Who's gonna win?

Butter Cupcakes (SGD 6.00 for 2)

Say it with me. Red, white, green: Yi-ta-li.
Green, yellow, blue, white: Ber-ra-zi-il.
The most original-rainbow you can find on a frosted muffin yet. (No Hundreds and Thousands, no rainbow sprinkles, no jimmies).

P.S. Yitali has crumbled for some unknown reason. Berraziil has been eaten by Ho-(l)land. [Italy was for Da Paolo Gastronomia; Brazil was to acknowledge the '10 host.]


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Black and Green Bao

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June 23, 2010

Crystal Jade Palace Restaurant, Crystal Jade 'Golden Palace', Crystal Jade 'Shanghai' Restaurant, Crystal Jade 'Korean Ginseng Chicken' & BBQ, Crystal Jade 'My Bread'. I laugh the names away.

The intriguing thing is that here at My Bread, something as so infantile; a baby to the family of the Crystal Jade group, one wonders if it has any chimerical visionaries, besides having gst, and as yet another bakery amongst the throat-cutting patisseries, orthodox-and-nots?

It is the the off-beat embrace of Hong Kong and Europe. Refreshing from the lands of the french-japanese, local-japanese, local-french, and swiss and german bakeries! The ristorante way there are chilled buns for you to takeaway by the bundles, or warmed breads hot and fluffy on the spot. How touching!

Longevity Bun with Sesame (SGD 1.20)

So what is Hong Kong like? Edgy, with the use of custards, butter, eggs, and traditional bean pastes. This longevity peach has its leaves picked, neatly aired as greens at the bud's tip.

Poked fun of its outlandish shape, the longevity bun epitomizes the elliptical form, and also the affiliation between the chinese and their buns. Picking out a green one is like picking a genetically-modified variety, artificially ripened without compromising its shelf-life and flavour. Grazing the inner filling, it is a double-tiered smooth(creamy) with an extra crunchy peanut butter core. Where is the sesame? There was a temporal pause before continuation- it was so natural-tasting that it felt more like tahini! For the days when you are caught between smooth and crunchy peanut butter.

Black Sesame Mantou (SGD 0.80)

Black dancing on a gray's surface. The first bread I had grabbed from My Bread's display. Why? Because it is so shiny; pailletted with not the ordinary white(catching the light), but black(absorbers of the light frequency).

Kaya Bun (SGD 1.00)

My Bread at Crystal Jade couldn't have been more my bread. Though this bread could really be a piece of jade. More is less- I wouldn't have been more enraptured seeing an all-green kaya bread. The whites could have been the metamorphic quartz- crystal.

Non-pretense foods, I did not bake nor streak this in green, so I did not know that the ripples would turn out this way with cutting. Crystal Jade; the kaya did live up to Crystal Jade's name, trusted.

A no-filling bun(mantou) in black is like the white-version of the gou bu li bao(go believe) bun. Unpretentious, unsightly, even; for the piebald body, it is a treasure that can be disguised with any topping/filling/flavour you want. Or ala carte; in my case, it was like the solid cube of my favourite chinese dessert, black sesame paste.

Black Sesame Bun (SGD 1.00)

Speaking of which Crystal Jade did go to the expense of setting it with stone-the black sesame- becoming a black sesame bun! True to its stance, it is indeed a black sesame-bun! Like squid ink topped with calamari spaghetti, you can never go wrong with a matching top and bottom! Fashionably black, one remembers this is not red bean bun, lotus paste bun or char siew bun, but black sesame bun!

P.S. Have an alice-in-wonderland bunny spread today! The buns are sold at buy-2-buns-get-one-no-filling-bun free.





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All-Day Dining

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22 June, 2010

Whenever if I am in the dire straits of the independent life; I would have an immaculate, grease-proof kitchen. Less of the oldfangled way packed lunches, 'street bentos'; for a more elegant name, or commercial loaves to make subs the painless and swanky way, it mustwould have been these:

Cedele's 4.80, Cedele's 5.80, Cedele's 6.00. (Bread)
Lasting me for about a week; without the side dishes.

Pink Beet Cake (SGD 4.80)
This is for the takeaway when I want to be environmentally-friendly- without the-taking away.

P.S. I see the graffiti not black and white, but black because it is the drawing; cakes, name, and the ambience. The wall is not included.



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Rainbow Bottles

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22 June, 2010

There are some things which we have left on earth- the black and white, liquorice allsorts.

Newspaper prints, emotional articles, photography.

Hence SEPHORA has added 'rainbow' into black and white; bath double bubble bath.

P.S. So rainbow does not contain all the colours. Then why is it still here if it is not a 'rainbow'? This is because it is a standard, conforming to a few colours only. We should have our ownbow; adding in also the usual colours of Earth.

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Black Ramen

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June 22, 2010

Seeing is believing. Unlike times where Little India is not accessible by Little India mrt station; City Hall mrt leading to Esplanade(and vice versa!), most of the times they fall into place logically.

Goodness gracious for Black Ramen. Foods, with an implication on the body, it is the restaurant's duty to make clear on its stance: Halal, organic; no gluten, no buckwheat. And to hold on to their words. So that no allergens/religious reactions will occur.

Earthenwares in black. The oblong blocks stuck out like eyebrows; to catch any debrises/aqua forming above, to add expressions to the face of the wall.

Black Ramen's eating implements all in black. Upon that is the 味; japanese kanji for flavour, or experience. Black 'invisibles' the hand implements so you can concentrate on the foods.

Just that ironically, it is black food here. And yes, Black Ramen do sell black ramen. Just in case you are allergic to it. Also, as indicative signposts for the conscious consumers (you will be informed of half baked in Ben & Jerry's not being microwaved and roasty, but chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge brownie added into ice cream).

Cha Shu Ramen (Karai) (SGD 8.80)

Black Ramen. Still; rather inconclusive as ramen is a dish(just like Promenade MRT station being the Singapore Flyer, PARCO Marina Bay, or Milenia Walk; counting Suntec City and Marina Square even), it is not the soup base or pork(kurobuta black hog meat); but squid ink-infused noodles black. Karai(spicy soup base) and squid ink noodles, both requiring a select taste for them to be ordered; them together in a bowl is an erratic permutation, hence the terrific sight of grey noodles blanched in creamy orange formula.

Sake Teriyaki Ramen (Shoyu) (SGD 9.50)

The makings of a japanese; food technology pink cherry blossom kit-kat, orange yubari melon kit-kat, green tea kit-kat, blue ramune kit-kat. A world of sights inside their foods, whilst on a basic mould; protein here. Fried beef, smoked duck, pork belly, chicken teriyaki. All with black noodles. And on the select choice; the{only} sea-borne-salmon teriyaki, spelling orange-fleshed, black-skinned cuts submersed in prime grey noodles.

Look at the egg. Gelatinous, you feel like a cannibal carnivore. Seventh-heaven! Like most squid ink noodles, they are 'spaced out' in taste. Which depends on their sides and soup. Soy-based(shoyu) here, it was light but more of watered-down; the Cha Su (karai) fared better with stimulating karai.

Noodles; the pronounced version of the rice- gray is protracted into black. Collective; like slowcook, it is relished more than a bun of bread/pizza, with chopsticks.

P.S. Still, it pays for Acadiaa at the basement of the foodcourt.



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Peony Jade

Monday, June 28   keyboard  


June 22, 2010

Where we have the Crystal Jade, we also have the Peony Jade. Hold them in your palms to compare. There is no Peony Jade in the map. Its new branch is behind the Labrador Nature Reserve. A figment for you to own your own car, so you don't have to share the Dubai Palm Islands-scenery with the taxi driver; or simply to chauffeur someone else away.

To cure some of that is Keppel Club opening to the public; extravagance extorting you at only SGD 18.00 per head for dim sum buffet.

While Crystal Jade is a see-through stone, Peony Jade attacks with a two-pronged fork- polished brand of marbled green and black. Since green is a symbol of Jade, black is the idol of Peony. Peony- a black(!) flower.

Seen here with its logo, Peony Jade does not go easy on the over- extravagance; its Jade(玉) raised in one complete brushstroke.

And a walk to remember with Peony Jade is, playing both the Hong Kong and Taiwan's 90s hits and the coming-of-age Mandarin Pop in sweet ballad renditions. Popular music/ballads that make you want to rip the cds!

Steamed Scallop Dumpling (SGD 4.80) (3pc)

Foods, exclusively something to be consumed in our body, eminent is the 点心; something to end up flowing through our hearts. Therefore menus are an uphill and elaborate task; nuggets of words to suggest the sight, sense, and texture of the foods. It becomes an outrage when the suggestion is incomplete; siew mai, in black roe presentation, siew mai, in har kaus' stuffing; rendering a second skin even- scallop dumpling(har kau) that is green in colour? However, such an unexpected appearance (to the incompleteness of the suggestion)is naturally effortless compared to the expectation of creaming A, creaming B, adding the mixtures together and repeating the process to get your own coloured foods!

Green stained on carbohydrate mains, we notice that the skins are made from rice. Rice; the bowl we scout for in steakhouses and tv dinners with studying in europe, not letting-off on our snack foods even. Hence we eat our way into the 点心, using staple as an excuse. More advanced than a mexican spinach tortilla, these greens had a lower opacity; making the fillings green too.

However on the other hand, the peony jade dumpling did not have skin black like the peonies, the rainbow fish dumpling did not have a fruits-and-vegetable pureed skin. Therefore a tad too many carbohydrate steams ended up on the table, equivalent to eating white bread, white bread and white bread; 3 mornings in a row! (Thats why the history of bread dates back to the New Stone Age; centuries for us to deal with the ways of grilling this carbohydrate.) Regretful for my dining acquaintances having trudged all the way from Mainland to Keppel Island, yet this emerald-turned jade skinned dumpling had whole stock-infused scallop stuffing. A condensed bouillon cube!

Cream of avocado with ice cream served in young coconut (SGD 12.00)

Nurturing and inebriating, these are the roles given to white, yellow and orange when ladled in a bowl of thick, heaving liquid. Now that it is green, its the-whites of the coconut to bolster the greens of the avocado; there is nothing left to inject affections and armour. This green soup made it look like split pea soup, totally forgetting that it was paired with a coconut's bowl.

Cream of avocado. That malformed alligator pear with a tea tree oil bite; even when its whipped to a mass. To dispatch the abhorrence a little, we need the white. Mellow vanilla to neutralize the spruceness of the avocado; arctic chill shearing the fattiness of the avocado. Yet as someone who adores spruceness, this vanilla ice cream was a meticulously created batter- freshly squeezed milk! This dessert is not to be complete without its gummy sago pearls.

Mr Penguin (SGD 4.20) (3 pc)

And the most unsuggestive name ever, it is actually deep fried lotus bun. Which leads to more ambiguities. Deep fried; it is is pan-fried for the chinese, not breaded and deep fried the western way. (Just like pastries are steamed for the chinese, not necessarily oiled and pan-fried the western way.) And the lotus? That caught me. Distinctly 'animal' and not plant on the outside.

A stang hit me when I decided to rupture the animal's body- the 90s, roll over, the autumn 90s; yes, mooncake. It had an intense flavour of jasmine- the flowering of lotus paste mooncakes; highly elevated, sugar having no stand here. Lotus and almond flakes so powering it has got to be a green-bellied penguin.

P.S. It came to me as a blow when Mr Penguin's body is the same as the commonplace pau(bao). Lian rong bao, to be exact. All the while; the other bao beside red bean bao yellow bean bao, nai huang, custard or whatever, I did not make out lian rong as lotus seed paste! Because it tastes a too watered-down-tea compared to the lotus seed paste mooncake; or Mr Penguin here, together with the obfuscation on terminology: traditional!Penguin!Lotus seed paste!Shuang huang bai liang rong; instead of lian rong bao. Browned a three-quarters to resemble a penguin's darker black plumage, (I wonder how the pan fries so evenly on the rotund surface); and black sesame seed devicefully decorating as eyes, I got the repercussion of a baby-bento box: No facial features, No character-design; No green. It will only lead to apathy(amongst the kids) with incising little creatures/heads.



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Black Bao

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June 18, 2010

Some like it cakey, some like it cottony. Some like it hard, some like it flaky. Carbohydrate mains our bread having to eat as a staple, we have invented many ways of leavening and baking(so that we could go through the days without feeling sick). And throughout human history.

For some, its the glazed and the golden. Henceforth there is the croissant. The most glorious ones I had ever bought was at Shangri-La Hotel, Suzhou, (the type with roaring fireplaces replacing televisions as main entertainment in the room), hence one can imagine the nature of those pastry shells with their inner filling chocolate.

Mirabelle Patisserie did not fare behind; faceted white pillars and green lorries comparable to the vaulted halls of Shangri-La, whilst bringing out a batch of croissants. Its ham and cheese, chocolate, plain; everything is to die-for, especially towards the non-glazed, non-golden takers. A re-heat in the oven and they will get all melty again.

Black bread. No longer the heterogenous gray, sad, dark tales of dark chocolate foods, blackberry imposters blueberry-cured carbohydrates- but massively black! I did not run out of words to describe it, its just black! The first thing on my mind was squid ink, squid ink sauce, squid's ink, whatever. The last thing on my mind was this bread's burnt: I had seen more blacks to make this statement.


Bamboo Charcoal (Custard) (SGD 1.80)

But it is! Charcoal-C: slow combustion of Carbon; activated charcoal it absorbs toxins and neutralizes gases, health-alleviating when added into foods or placed around the house, near electrical appliances. Finally, a vegan and vegetarian version of black foods!

Comparing squid ink and charcoal, why do we add them into foods? Squid ink, just like omelette with chicken, is another edible element of the versatile animal; dyeing the foods like cakes with egg yolk, or itself when chicken is wrapped in egg omelette. Just that it becomes bigger hoo-ha because it is black.

Charcoal, however, like this unassuming sweet bun, is added for novelty, for an additional colour, a temporal boost on health value. Not nutrition value; novelty, because you can't possibly buy charcoal breads everyday. Hence it forms the base of snack breads, squid ink sauce on carbohydrate mains.

I ♥ my heart charcoal is good for me.

And their outcomes? Like makeup powder charcoal cakes the skin an-incredible black, but within the sponge the grains catch less. Like makeup liquid squid ink seeps into the flour mix, noodles and dumpling skins thoroughly dark. (This is why liquid makeup is a breakthrough in cosmetics, retaining on the skin longer and better).

Bamboo Charcoal (An Pan) (SGD 1.80)

Like squid ink is with calamari, charcoal nestles with its adzuki: japan-found filling for japan-found foods. Sinking onto the fragrant core, yes, it is fragrant; void for the black if without the sweetness of carbohydrates! And those innards were lusciously sweet, stung with white sugar, full-bodied on the adzuki. There couldn't have been a more skewered graph with these two taste-variables as extremes!

For the complete filling, there were also aduzki husks inside(something like the wholegrain rice). The custard filling from the charcoal custard is for those who like their charcoal milky, their rice white.

White sesame seeds on a black charcoal bun, the entire sea of emotions is inverted. Black; on foods has liberated the white, re-liberating black and white typography/imagery-cliches.

P.S. Animal, vegetable, mineral? I wonder if vegetarians are banned on eating mineral. Though; though very trying hard to maintain composed in front of the black foods, I do hope that the streak of astringency detected from the black crumb I am admitting here is but a trace of the morning's toothpaste.


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