Foodie Times: Yong Tau Foo (Food to try in Singapore)

One of the food to recommend and commonly found in almost every food court/hawker centre would be Yong Tau Foo.

Have it for a heavy breakfast or lunch or dinner, it's a "any time can eat" choice. There is a wide variety of ingredients from fried to non fried, vegetables, beancurd stuffed with fish/seafood fillings, ngoh hiang, fishball, tofu, hotdog, etc etc

Basically the stall will have the food laid nicely at their front counter/rack. With a bowl and a tong, just grab the ingredients (usually I stopped at their minimum number of pieces needed to ordered). I always ordered it with yellow noodle without any soup or gravy and add on a lot of sweet sauce. But at times when I craved for hot and spicy, I will go for curry/laksa base. 

Previously, the stalls I visited would scald the ingredients in hot water. The fried items turned soggy after that. But nowadays, the fried items are separated from the non-fried ones. And some stalls actually re-fried those fried items. 

"Select your own" style, with sweet sauce and yellow noodle 

"Select your own" style, with sweet sauce and yellow noodle 

Koo Kee Yong Tow Foo Mee 高記釀豆腐面

A pre-selected set which comes with kangkong

How to order: 

1. Pick the ingredients you want from their display counter into the bowl. There is a minimum number of item for a certain price. After the minimum number of item is met, additional pricing will be added (based each additional item)

2. Choose base:
-> Spicy Gravy (curry/laksa dependent on the stall),
-> (Non-spicy) Hakka Gravy (only selected stall offer this),
-> Clear Soup based or
-> Plain (they either fried the ingredients or scald it with hot water)

3. Choose noodle/rice (dependent on the stall also):
-> Huang Mian (Yellow noodle)
-> You Mian (Thin Yellow noodle)
-> Guo Tiao (flat rice noodles)
-> Mi Fen/Bee Hoon (Rice vermicelli - thin)
-> Cu Mi Fen (Rice vermicell - thick)
-> Plain white rice
-> Plain (without any noodle)

Condiments to go along:

1. Sweet Sauce - I always go for this. Don't be mistaken, this is NOT ketchup. Although it is sweet, it is totally different taste (apart from being sweet) from ketchup.

2. Chili Sauce - This is for the majority of the people I know... But there are some who actually liked to mix both sauces together (a scoop of sweet sauce and a scoop of chili sauce)

3. Sesame oil/seeds - Make it smell nicer with a tablespoon amount of sesame oil or go for a less oily version with sesame seeds.

For Koo Kee Yong Tow Foo Mee 高記釀豆腐面, just select a set from their menu. The dish's ingredients is pre-fixed. For the condiments to go along, it would be the same as normal stalls.

Easy Cold Tofu (kewpie sesame sauce and bonkita flakes)

Easy Cold Tofu

Ingredients (Serving for 1)

150g (1/2 of a 300g) silken tofu

20g of bonkita flakes

Kewpie Sesame Sauce

1. Open the packet of silken tofu and slice in the middle. 

2. Remove half of it and drain the water

3. Place on serving plate

4. Place bonkita flakes on top of tofu

 5. Pour desired amount of Kewpie Sesame Sauce on top.

Bonkita flakes

Kewpie Sesame Sauce 

Note:

> Tofu tasted better if served cold

> For better visual, reverse sequence 4 with 5 but the bonkita flakes will fly off the plate.

> Kewpie is the brand. Can go for other brand's Sesame Sauce.

> Add spring onions for better visual 

Foodie Times: Non Entrée Desserts

Taste: 5 out of 5. 

- Chocolate Avalanche: Presentation was so beautiful and cute. When I cut a portion of the cake, a smooth running chocolate started to ooze into the glass ball below. Quickly took a snapshot, I pushed the cake and biscuit down into the glass ball to eat it together with the ice cream. The chocolate was warm and concentrated with a well-balance sweetness and goes very well with the orange tangy ice cream. The biscuit that remained crispy even when soaked in the chocolate and ice cream. The only thing I need to complain is... It's NOT ENOUGH for me! It's just so nice to eat.

Service: -  Friendly and fast. Didn't take long for the dessert to be served. Waitress was very detail. For every dessert, she personally gave the instructions from how we can get a better photo to the steps for eating the dessert.

Location: Located at the Rangoon road, it is still a distance from Farrer Park MRT. Look up for the buses which can bring you to nearest bus stop with approx. 2 minutes walk to the shop. Here's the link to their Facebook.

Price: $13.90++ for the Chocolate Avalanche.

Nano Block - Owl in the making

Foodie Times: Snacking!! Churros Churros Churros

Started with my craving for churros.. It was difficult to find in the past and I could only find them at selected cinema popcorn store. It seems to be in trend now! So here I come...

Churros 101 

(The 2 images on the right side from the top of the picture)

- Cream Cheese Churro

- Dark Chocolate Churro

Taste: 4.5 out of 5. 

- Cinnamon Churros: Realized there was a difference in length (it was longer than the churros with fillings). Better to have a drink to go along for this. It made me felt thirsty because of the sweetness and the oil/heat. Texture is a bit overcooked (quite dark color)

- Dark Chocolate Churro & Cream Cheese Churros: My last purchase for the Dark Chocolate Churros was a disappointing less than 20cm in length. Not sure if it's supposed to be that length or I was shortchanged. The first time I tried the same thing, it was way LONGER. Anyway, I still recommend to go for the churros with fillings. Better in taste and keep you going for more. I prefer the cream cheese than the dark chocolate.

Service: -  Order over their counter. (Just some nagging : The first time I was there, we were misled by the collection queue for the ordering queue. The collection point sign was blocked by the people where half of those in the collection queue are customers thinking it was the ordering queue. The ordering point/queue was blocked by their congratulation flower stands. But now that the area is unblock, no one will be mislead)

Location: Located at the 3rd floor of Bugis+, walkable from Bugis Junction (linked to Bugis MRT)

Price: $3+~ $6+/churros (depending on the type of churro ordered)

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Back Alley Bites

(The last images at the bottom right corner of the picture)

- Cinnamon Churros with Chocolate Dip

Taste: 4 out of 5. Served with chocolate sauce (can be changed from a few selection), it must be due to me still recovering from a bad cold and cough, the churros felt too "heaty" and not well cooked inside. I poured the entire chocolate sauce in to try to finish it. I read from their facebook and it was all good reviews. I should just revisit but till then, this will be my verdict for now. 

Service:  -  Order over their counter. (I remembered that day the store was almost running out of everything. And although it was a simple order, make and collect, the male cashier seemed to be a bit impatient with few customers.)

Location: The one I had was at Bukit Batok Pasar Malam.

Cost: Approx $4+

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Jimmy's Seaside Fries 

(The 2 images on the left side of the picture)

- Churros with Chocolate Dip

Taste: 3.5 out of 5. Had to pay for the chocolate dip and I regretted getting a dip. It was too sweet for me and the churros was too oily. With every bite, I could feel the oil on my lips and also, there seemed to be an extra flavor...of chicken or something savory...just not churros only. Wonder if the oil was shared with their other fried items.

Service: - Order over the kiosk counter 

Location: Located at the 1st floor of IMM, walkable from Jurong East MRT station.

Price: Approx $5 

Easy Ice Cream

Following the recipe from here

Ingredients
2 cups Whole Cream or Heavy Whipping cream (16 fl oz)
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk (about 14 oz)

Steps
1. Blend everything together for around 4 minutes till mixture is thick and creamy.
2. Place in freezer container and refrigerate as desire.

Optional
For flavors, add in your desired toppings before step 2 and mixed well.

For Biscuits Flavors
Oreo Flavor
1. Crush the desired amount (maybe 8 Oreo for every 1/3 portion of the mixture. DON'T make it too finely crush, try to have it as big chunks of it).
2. Scoop the required mixture amount and fold in the crushed Oreo.

For Coffee/Tea Flavors
Tea Leaves/Coffee Powder
1. The amount of tea leaves (maybe 2 tablespoons/6 tea bags of tea leaves for every 1/3 portion of the mixture) or a pack of instant coffee powder for every 1/3 portion of the mixture
2. Scoop the required mixture amount and place on a pot.
3. Warm the pot over low heat and when pot is slightly heated, add in the tea leaves or coffee
powder.
4. Infuse the tea leaves or coffee powder till the taste is to your liking and remove from heat.
5. Remove any solid residue in mixture.
6a. (Optional) Leave to cool for around 15-30 mins (till steam is not visible from mixture)
6b. Refrigerate mixture in freezer.

For Fruity Flavors
Fruity Flavor
1. Use a tablespoon of the artificial flavor essence and cut the desired amount of fruit bits into cubes.
2. Scoop the required mixture amount and fold in both the fruit bits and the essence.

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Outcome
I tried making the Oreo and Tea flavors.

-> For the Oreo flavor, the ice cream was hard. Hard to remove from freezer for a while before I can scoop it out. However, the Oreo I used was too fine/too little. Would recommend to mix in more quantity and have bigger chunks. Gently stirred the Oreo into the mixture

->For the Tea flavor, the ice cream was just right. Easy to scoop but the taste of the milk overpowered the tea. If preferred a stronger tea flavor, maybe had to increase on the quantity of tea leaves but not increasing the amount of water. Would recommend to mix in more quantity and have bigger chunks. Gently stirred the Oreo into the mixture