The Hungry Bunny

I also whipped up another easy peasy stir-fry. And because I'd done all the prep work over the weekend, I managed a homecooked dinner after an interminable bluesy Monday, in under 15 minutes! Ingredients (feeds 2-4 pax): 400gm chicken fillet, diced into 1" cubes and marinated in tare 2 medium heads broccoli, cut into florets, makes approx 5 cups 1 punnet shimeiji mushrooms, cleaned and separated 1/2 cup XO sauce (any bottled one from the supermarket will do, I personally like Crystal Jade's version) 3 cloves garlic, minced 2 tbsp canola oil 2 tbsp sesame oil dried chilli flakes for garnishing Directions: 1) Fry garlic in canola-sesame oil mix in pre-heated pan at low-medium heat until fragrant, taking care not to burn the garlic, about 1 minute. 2) Add shimeiji, turn up the heat to medium-high and toss through. 3) Add about 1 tbsp heap of XO sauce, stirring through, about 1 minute. 4) Turn up the heat to high, add chicken and toss through. ...

It's been a while since I last cooked...I've been laid up recuperating from a torn patella tendon, and while it was wonderful being waited on hand and foot by the long-suffering Hubs, the lack of mobility got stale real fast. Also, having to ration visits to the loo was quite the pain in the ass. But I'm all well now, and so I returned to the kitchen to tinker...Also, after a couple weeks of takeaway food, all I wanted was the familiar comfort of homecooked fare. This is an East-West fusion dish, inspired by the Japanese who ingeniously thought to blend butter and soy sauce into a most umami sauce. Here, I first browned the butter, for a toasty edge, before dousing it with light soy sauce. Ingredients (feeds 2-3 pax): about 4 rolls of tagliatelle (we wanted to keep this low-carb, but feel free to increase the amount of pasta, and use any other type of pasta you prefer) 400gm chicken fillet, diced into 1" cubes, marinated with tare 250gm baby kailan, trimmed...

I was devastated when celebrated Chef Sebastian Ng exited the food business entirely. Restaurant Ember , which he steered to glory as Chef de Cuisine, was never the same after that . So when I heard that the good chef returned to the scene, with an iteration wholly owned by him this time, I was ecstatic. I'd missed his chilean seabass ( that truffle butter was awesomesauce ), and crossed my fingers that he'd bring it back at this new venture. The cherry on the already delicious parfait: the new restaurant, Venue by Sebastian , is now super duper convenient to get to: it's right smack in middle of the CBD at UOE Downtown. The corresponding downside: even with the bigger premises (compared to Restaurant Ember's 40-seater space) it's ridiculously packed EVERY weekday mealtime, i.e. reservations are, as before, a must. Clearly, the break away has not diminished the chef's craft. I've dined at Venue several times since it's opened, and tried just about e...

We'd gushed to the lovely waitress at Meta how we loved their food, but bemoaned the lack of an ala carte menu...So she recommended their sister restaurant, Kimme , a bistro-styled restaurant headed up by yet another Korean-born chef. Unlike Meta's exclusively degustation menus, Kimme 's menu is primarily ala carte: which is split into the sweet and savoury - the latter served in small and big plates. The food here is similar to Meta: European techniques awash with Asian influences and grounded in Korean flavours. We really wanted to like Kimme , mostly because we love Meta so damn much...But, while dinner was perfectly enjoyable, we thought that Kimme fell short of the extraordinary that is Meta. There wasn't a marked grouse nor could we pick a particular flaw, but it was missing that "je ne sais quoi", that magic-something that distinguishes between the competent and the transcendent. The sumptuousness of the Wagyu Bulgogi Tataki ($26) was contraste...

Sometime in the throes of my fishball noodle-frenzied spell, we made the trek out to Song Kee 's new home in the East. We weren't quite sure, at first blush, if we'd gotten the right address; the coffee-shop was barely occupied, on a Sunday evening no less. We'd braced ourselves for its legendary snaking queue and budgeted a half hour-long wait for our dinner, so it was almost shocking to find the famous hawker this desolate. But then we heard the familiar refrains of the music blaring out the stereo, a disparate compilation of 90's Mandopop and trashy techno covers of Billboard's Top 100, also from the 90's, and we knew, this was the correct Song Kee . I'm not sure why Song Kee appears a derelict wasteland these days, because their food is as amazing as it was back when they were located at Upper Serangoon . Maybe it's the fengshui, or maybe their customers haven't realised they've moved to Tembeling Road. Or maybe it's because they...

Every once a while, I get a craving for a particular hawker food. There was that one time, when I was crazy about chicken rice, and so I ate chicken rice for an entire month. And then there was that one time, where I went nuts over laksa, and had that for like three weeks. And there was that other time, when I was completely addicted to wanton mee, and so became a daily fixture at Eng's wantan noodles for two weeks straight. Bonkers, I know...I only stopped because I ended up with a bout of stomach flu. So recently, I got erm, well...a little obsessed with fishball noodles. And we thought of hitting up  Song Kee , which arguably serves up the best fishball noodles and fish dumplings in all of Singapore. But because we were too famished to drive all the way to its new locale in the East, we went to Finest Song Kee instead, a set-up by a relation of the original Song Kee, and which took over the old coffeeshop premises of the latter when it moved out to the East. And while it...

A week-long obsession with Hanwoo beef at just about every restaurant in Seoul meant that we were due for a change of protein. I wanted something-chicken and didn't want anything-fried...so we headed to Andong Jjimdak  for braised chicken. An insanely popular chain restaurant with multiple outlets all over Seoul, Andong Jjimdak is tremendously accessible as there's a branch in every district. Service is choppy but quick, detached but efficient. Like a fast-food restaurant, without the ensuing oil-laden guilt of fast food. So even if there's a queue, especially during peak dining hours, it moves real fast. Because we're lazy AF, we opted for the Boneless Jjim Dak (30,000KRW), which is nearly twice the price of the bone-in version. This passed muster: the chicken was juicy, the sauce was robust, and there was a comforting rustic quality to it...but I would have liked a stronger spice to this. And tbh, a competent homecook would easily muck out a better rendition. ...