Journey to the Far East Part 2 - The Desserts at Changi Village

Red Tea Jelly - $2 icy satisfaction

 Still my favourite red tea jelly ever - somehow whenever I have this elsewhere, it is never as good. I don't know where they get this jelly from, but it's deep red in colour (I'm sure it's all food colouring), had a nice fragrant tea taste with light floral hints. Topped with canned longans, and topped with lots and lots of evaporated milk. Tastes the same as it does in 2007.

Mei Lin Yin Pin 
Changi Village Hawker Centre

Chendol with corn

I also had a bowl of chendol, from this traditional melaka chendol stall across Changi Village Hawker Centre. Thankfully, I was there at least 2 weeks before ieatishootipost blogged about it, if not, it would have definitely have been swarming with people.

Ten thousand year queue - I exaggerate 

There's only one guy scooping the chendol ingredients, so it takes eons for him to get 1 bowl out. No rush. Even though there's like 10 people standing in the queue. It is very cheap, and their basic bowl with just chendol and gula melaka and coconut milk is $1.50.

Wormy Green Chendol

The whole time I was standing in the queue, I was debating if I wanted a standard traditional bowl (with just basic ingredients) or one with more stuff. I was so tired after standing in the queue for eternity I decided to heck it and just get chendol with whatever toppings I wanted, to make the queueing and waste of my life worth it. The corn is mehhh. Comes from a can. Bet it's from Del Monte. Perhaps it's all a ploy to get you to buy more ingredients, so that your bowl of chendol isn't just $1.50?

I don't eat red beans so I can't comment if they were good or not.

Traditional $1.50 Chendol Melaka
Opposite Changi Village Hawker Centre
(Don't ask me for directions, I'm as lost as you are since this is in the far east)

Spot the Nian Gao

After Chendol Melaka, we were walking over to the park but then was stopped by the fragrant smell of fried bananas and chempadak wafting from the corner store.

So we joined the queue. And I finally found the triple layer nian gao (which I have only eaten once before in my whole entire life, such a deprived soul I am, at MT's house during Mooncake festival). At first glance, I couldn't see the nian gao. Thankfully, all my friends have better chinese reading skills than me and pointed it out.

Triple layer fried nian gao!

Anyway, this is the triple layer nian gao. Not the usual dual layer (with just either yam or sweet potato). Plus the nian gao is so soft and chewy. Freshly fried, super crispy batter, which is even better than some of the tempura batter I've had. I'm glad I don't live anywhere near Changi or not my arteries will definitely be totally and irreversibly clogged.

Aunty in the queue! (Someone is going to slap me now)

I asked the store aunty if she had it all year round, since nian gao is only during chinese new year, does she keep nian gao from then the whole year? The answer is NO because, being a level up, she even makes her own nian gao. So it's totally worth patronising them.

Actually, I have realised that my Chinese is really really bad. I wanted to buy Tian Tian cheng teng at Tiong Baru Market, so my colleagues pointed me in the general direction. I completely missed the dessert store cos I was looking for the wrong chinese character. They probably thought I was blind but it was just cos I remembered the chinese character "tian" which is "甜" wrongly and didn't read the han yu ping ying at the bottom.

Journey to the Far East Part 1 - The Nasi Lemaks at Changi Village Food Centre

I was supposed to go to Batam (to laze around and relax) with 2 of my friends, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, couldn't. Since we were all sort of free, we decided to go for a staycation instead. 

Of course, the most important thing that the staycation revolved around was none other than food! And of course lots of relaxation (i.e. vegetating on the bed and sleeping early, since I'm secretly 80 years old). I think I ate a whole weeks worth of calories during this staycation. And have yet to burn them off cos I have been happily feasting the last 2 weeks...

International Nasi Lemak

So we decided to do a taste test (non-blinded unlike my fudge cake taste test here), we tried International and Mizzys standard nasi lemak, with an added otah. 

I personally preferred the International nasi lemak because their rice wasn't as oily and yet had lots of the coconut taste. I felt that Mizzys rice was as oily as the kind found in chicken rice, which, unfortunately, is my least favourite hawker dish (and yes I am Singaporean, just that I some how do not like chicken rice. My heart sinks to the deepest darkest pit when I have to eat it).

One of my friends preferred Mizzys corner because of the rice and the chilli. I suppose my friend really likes chicken rice (Note: I have yet to confirm this assumption).

The chilli from Mizzys was less sweet, and more fragrant compared to International. But I don't eat my nasi lemak with much chilli (due to my astoundingly low chilli tolerance) so I still preferred International.

Mizzy's Nasi Lemak

I found the ikan billis and fried egg very similar for both stores. The chicken wing was marginally better for International (to me at least), as I felt that the batter had more seasoning.

Anyway, to end off my post (since I'm really sleepy it's nearly my bedtime) I still think International is better, but since I hate queueing up, I will just go for whichever has the shorter queue and not waste my life queueing up. (The last time I came here was in 2007 - check out my post from then with my old non-smart phone camera)

The nasi lemaks can be found at Changi Village Food Centre

EAT - Laksa

Laksa with additional $1 cockles

Sometimes when a rare laksa craving hits, I go down to EAT at Railmall to get a nice big bowl of laksa. It's around $4.50 (or is it $5 now?) for a bowl of laksa, but then again, it's open 24h so I really don't mind paying a premium for my laksa. They also add a piece of crispy deep fried stuffed (with fish paste) tau kee, which soakes up the goodness of the laksa broth. The cockles are juicy, clean (no gritty sand) and pretty fresh, though it'll be better if they were bigger and juicier.

The noodles are smooth and translucent, and the laksa broth is spicy (but not overly so), with pounded hae bee (dried prawns) for flavour. It's not as creamy as the katong laksa, but quite flavourful still. Top the whole thing off with aromatic laksa leaves - makes a real satisfying supper.

I still prefer Katong Laksa cos the soup is really creamy and fragrant, but convenience is tops for me.

Eat also sells other noodle dishes such as bak chor mee as well as fish ball noodles. Bak chor mee seems quite popluar but I have yet to try it.

EAT
436 Upper Bukit Timah Road
The Rail Mall
Tel: +65 6462 3034
Daily 24h
(There's another branch at Ion basement)

Yuan Yuan Claypot Rice - ABC Brickworks

It's getting harder to find places which serve clapot rice, probably because its terious and no one really wants to slave over a hot stove. So I went to try the claypot at ABC Brickworks after reading about it in the weekend Business Times (love the CEO Hawker guide section!). The claypot stall was doing a roaring business. The claypot rice goes for $10 or $15, meant for 2-3 people. I got their mixed claypot, which has everything. There's one with chicken only, and another with minced meat and salted fish (I think), but I decided to try the mixed one so that I'll get the best of both worlds. The claypot rice is cooked from scratch over a high flame (not so sure if it's charcoal tho), unlike some of the newer stalls which 'cheat' by pre-cooking the rice. Tender morsels of chicken, fatty pieces of chinese sausage, a few fragments of dried fish and a serving of vegetables (which is cooked separately) are placed on top of the rice. Dark soya sauce and some aromatic sesame oil is drizzled over the top, and the huge pot is brought to your table. Since it's cooked from scratch, the wait is about 20min or more.

After furious stirring, to mix the ingredients well. The chicken meat is very tender, and there were little bursts of extreme saltinesses from the preserved salted fish. They could do with a bit more veggies - just a little clump of veggies in the huge claypot.

Some people enjoy eating the crispy rice stuck to the base of the claypot, but I don't particularly liked that burnt taste.

Stacks of claypots.

Yuan Yuan Claypot Rice
6 Jalan Bukit Merah
#01-38 ABC Brickworks Food Centre
Tel: +65 6276 5259

Pek Kio Prawn Noodles

I've never heard of Pek Kio's prawn noodles until very recently. I was reminded why I don't really blog about hawker food when I made a trip down to Pek Kio specially to eat their famous prawn noodles. It was just my luck that the 'famous' prawn noodle store was closed (they close on Mondays). So I ended up trying the prawn noodles from the un-famous store. The cheapest bowl of prawn noodles is $2, but if you want pork with your prawn noodles, it's minimum $3. They don't have big prawns, so I suppose that the $5 bowl just has many small prawns. The prawn soup had a mild prawn taste, but was nothing to rave about.

My $5 big prawn noodles from the famous stall (Wah Kee, it has ieatishootipost's blogpost printed out right infront of the stall :P). I didn't enjoy my prawn noodles at all. I had it with kway teow (usually I get kway teow mee cos I don't really like the waxy taste of the yellow noodles, but that day someone was helping me order) and the kway teow was super weird - it was all fragmented, each piece not being more than an inch long, so it felt like I was eating semi solid food. On top of that, the soup was very very garlicky and didn't have a nice prawn taste. There were many small bits of whitish garlic floating around my soup. I probably caught them on an off day, but the soup was really very horrible that day. The soup version - $5. I was looking at ieatishootipost's pictures, his soup has a much more intense colour than mine (which looks super pale and tasteless). Since it was $5, I ate the prawn but left everything else since it tasted terrible.

Unfamous store, with a quite long que on a Monday morning. It's very cheap (hard to find $2 prawn mee now!) and the lady boss is very friendly :)Famous stall, with a mega long que during lunch.

I'm glad to say that both prawn noodle stalls have pleasant lady bosses! They're very smiley and helpful - despite being very busy :)

Btw, my fave prawn noodles is the one from Hong Lim complex (or is it Hong Leong?), Adam Road (for the convenience) and the one at East Coast Road.

DSC Coffeeshop (don't know what the real name is)

My lunch at the coffeeshop in the same block at DSC. Not sure of the name (didn't see any sign board, but I wasn't looking out for it) but under this multi storey carpark.

The fishball noodles from the stall (which is famous for lor mee) is pretty bleagh. I actually ordered the bak chor mee, but then the guy must have heard the wrong thing and gave me fishball noodles instead (didn't realize until after I started eating). So I decided not to waste space on my fishball noodles, and ordered the Famous Sungei Road Laksa instead. It looks very 'popular' lots of those stickers and food award things stuck outside. If I'm not wrong, I might have watched the Chan U episode where they came to this stall? The laksa here is a no-frills laksa, and costs a mere $2. It comes with beansprouts, fishcake and cockles. The laksa gravy isn't the super thick coconutty kind (like the Katong laksa) but instead, it's more watery, but packs lots of flavour from the dried prawns. My $2 laksa + $1 cockles. The cockles here are pretty good - not those puny dark looking weird smelling kind. They're nice - pink and juicy, fresh and clean (no gritty sand bits).

Chicken wings ($1 each) from the 'famous' fried chicken wings stall, which wasn't very exceptional. Just tastes like the kind you can find from the nasi padang stalls (but it's a Chinese stall).

The coffeeshop is extremely dirty - there were so many flies buzzing about and there were also bees hovering around us the whole time we were eating. I am pretty sure all the flies come from the poorly located rubbish dump which is pretty near the coffeeshop.

For the people going there, I think that the Jalan Besar food center probably has much better food - it's well worth the walk over.

G7 Sin Ma Frog Porridge - Cheong Chin Nam Road

I like the Geylang Lor 9 Frog Porridge, but it's really very far away, and the parking is insane. So I haven't been there for over a year. There's a frog porridge place along the row of shops opposite Beauty World, which I've heard about for the longest time but never tried (due to the "backyard syndrome" [which ieatishootipost coined]). Frog porridge - frog legs and the sweet and salty dark sauce. I really like eating the legs, but I hate the body cos you can see each vertebrae and there's hardly any meat.

The porridge also comes in a claypot - it's very starchy and has a few discrete rice grains, and it tastes best when mixed with lots and lots of the frog sauce.

We had 5 frogs and 1 porridge (enough for 2 ppl) for $22. Much cheaper than the Geylang one, though I do think that the Geylang frogs are better - they're more tender. We tried both the kung pao sauce as well as the spring onion ginger one. I think the kung pao sauce tastes better than the spring onion ginger. As far as I can remember, the sauce tastes about the same.

Although it's not as nice as the Geylang Lor 9 Frog Porridge, I'll definitely come back here when a frog porridge craving hits - it's in a really convenient location, and I don't have to stress over finding parking. Also, the place feels cleaner and is brightly lit - no need to dine next to the dumpster.

There is a huge painting of 2 (ugly) frogs on the wall outside the restaurants. Totally unappetizing! (That's why I sat inside - fortunately they didn't have glass tanks full of slimey frogs piled on top of each other wading in murky water. Yucks!)

Thery also serve some other tze char dishes, which we didn't bother ordering since we came here specially for the frog, as well as dry chilli cat fish which the waitress was trying to convince us to get (obviously we weren't convinced).

I think there's also another branch for this G7 Sin Ma Live Bull Frog Claypot Porridge in Geylang in Lorong 3. Never been there but if it's the same as the one in Bukit Timah, you must as well go to the Lorong 9 one.

G7 Sin Ma Live Bull Frog Claypot Porridge

3 Cheong Chin Nam Road

Singapore 599730

Tel 64677317

Zha Jiang Mian, Chinawtown Hawker Center

Zha Jiang Mian (炸酱面) $3.50 from the newly renovated Chinatown hawker center (Smith Street) from stall 02-135. It's a Northern Chinese stall, and it's name begins with 中國something something... The noodles here are hand-made/pulled and the chef will get a lump of dough and pull and pull and pull it to form noodles (Random thought: his deltoids must be super big! It looks so tiring to pull!), which he will throw into a boiling pot of water. His wife/assistant will use a pair of super long chopsticks to pick the noodles out, and top it with a thick, salty bean and pork paste, and garnish it with crunchy shredded cucumbers, carrots and beansprouts.

They also have all the other Northern Chinese foods such as Guo Tie, Xiao Long Pau, Da Bing (big pancake with red bean) etc etc. Don't forget to ask for vinegar to add to the noodles.

Great that I stumbled upon this stall, cos I was just craving for some Zha Jiang Mian from Qun Zhong restaurant along Neil Road. Makes me realize how un-worth it Kopitiam food is, even with the 20% discount. At least the food has improved, thanks to the Koran stall (I'm going to survive on that till my posting is done!)

Btw, the carpark sucks, I always bang my front right wheel on the stupid short kerb, which I can't see while going up the slope. The kerb is so freaking chipped from all the banging. I bet I contributed alot to it's chipping! I'm sure my wheel alignment is out now! D:<

Ice Queen

Black Sesame and Peanut (not peanutbutter) and I can't remember if the last one was chocolate or coffee (or maybe both?) gelato. It's cos the black sesame and peanut was so memorable, that I forgot the last flavour. Actually, chrysenthemum tasted really good too, just that I felt like something chocolatey that day.

I liked the black sesame best, it's unlike most of the other black sesame ice creams, which tend to have a very thick, heavy sesame taste. This one doesn't leave the slightly oily after taste, but still has lots of sesame flavour and fragrance.
The peanut was lighter than the usual 'peanut butter' ice creams - great for those thirstily hot days (which it was when we visited).

They have the usual flavours, such as hazelnut, cookies and cream, rum and raisin, milk tea, lime (or lemon?) sorbet. The ice cream melts real fast - so it's like faster eat (because I don't see a point in eating melted ice cream).

Best of all, it's pretty cheap (comparatively - even though they've recently raised their prices). 1 flavour cup $2.50, 2 flavours – cup $3.20; 3 flavours – cup $3.80.Ice Queen Ice Cream
505 Beach Road
#01-83 Golden Mile Food Centre
(Car park sucks!!)

Long House - Deep Fried Chempadak

I went to Long House in the not so recent past and realised how unelightened I am. For my whole 21 years out of which nearly all are spent in Singapore I have never tried deep fried chempadak even though I eat goreng pisang (fried bananas). It's not very suprising - cos I only tried the usual 'breakfast' half boiled eggs with soya sauce and pepper in JC (culture shock maybe cos my sec sch was too atas to serve that kind of breakfast esp if you think about all the E.coli).

But this is a more devastating blow to me because I really like jackfruit and chempadak - I never knew that something yummier than the whole fruit or ice cream or jackfruit juice existed till now!

Just think of lovely ripe chempadak full of the wonderfully aromatic deep fried to a warm golden glob wrapped up in a delicate light batter. The batter is very light and crispy - not like those which overwhelm the fruit -and the chempadak is smooth and creamy, very sweet and warm.

It's so yummy that after buying one piece, (and 2 goreng pisangs), I went back to get 3 more and then another 2! It's about 60 to 80 cents a piece, depending on the size.

Haiz I want to find a good deep fried chempadak place near my house - Long House is so far away.

Anyway, I also tried some other foods at Long House - The duck rice, black chicken herbal soup, and the hokkien mee. I really don't like the hokkien mee it's the very gooey dry oily kind and it has the thin beehoon noodle instead of the fat beehoon noodle which I like. The chicken rice was not bad but I won't be going back anytime soon - furthemore, the parking's terrible and it's quite far from my house. I'm such a lard at travelling...

Botak Jones Clementi

After such a horrendously long time I've finally tried Botak Jones @ Clementi. My brother was talking about it so many times but then it used to be so crowded and gross and I hate queing up for my food. We were talking about Botak Jones (the lunch place at M4A when everyone burst out laughing... only chpgroup2 ppl will know this :P) This is my favouritest Caesar Salad ever! Personally, I think that the secret to a good caesar salad is good caesar salad dressing, and of course reasonably fresh romaine lettuce. According to their menu they use real anchovies for the sauce. I once saw this cooking program (probably on discovery travel and living) where they made caesar salad dressing - it's something like you use a wooden ladel and keep stirring the garlic and anchovies till they're all mashed up into a paste and then you add other stuff like egg and oil. How tiring. This caesar salad comes with real turky bacon bits, not those sorry little dehydrated light brown stuff that comes from a bottle. There's also croutons and generous amounts of parmesan cheese. They're really generous with the dressing too. The dressing goes quite well with the fries...
It costs only $5 no gst or taxes cos it's in a coffeeshop - very reasonable and yummy! Next time I shall dapao this home :D

This is Fish's Fish and Chips. Before I talk about her Fish and Chips (which, of course, I sampled for this blog :P), I shall talk about Fish, the expert in Clementi. Fish has been to Botak Jones @ Clementi before, and the night before we planned our expedition to Botak Jones, she said "aiyah won't get lost lah it's CLEMENTI" But then, it was also Fish - so obviously... fortunately not lost for like 45 min, 98 petrol is really expensive now...

The fish and chips ($6.50) are the breaded kind (not the kind tt i like - I like the smooth light batter kind) and comes with nicely seasoned fries and coleslaw. I've learnt something in their menu - Pacific dory = more ex dory and Cream Dory = Cheaper dory. They use the pacific kind though my tastebuds aren't discerning enough to taste any difference :/ The tartare sauce they use is quite different - there isn't bits of pickles inside but there's these black dots (is that pepper??) and it tastes even better than the usual tartare sauce cos it's not so sour.

This is my Cajun Chicken Burger ($6.50) comes with a buttered toasted sesame bun and a juicy chicken breast coated in Spicy and quite salty cajun sauce. It's quite tangy and I was so super full after eating my Caesar Salad and stealing Fish's fries and fish.

Next time I want to try the Rosemary Lamb Chops! Its $11.50 and everyone knows that this month I am trying to save money!!!! The sadness of being "salaried". Ahhh I want CNY to faster come so I can earn money! And my next salary will come at start of Feb! Woohoo! Lots of cheaper food places coming up in my next few posts :D

Block 325 Clementi Ave 5 (Kopitiam)

#01- 129 Singapore 120325

Phone / Fax: 677-41-225

Everyday 11:30 noon til 10:00 pm

Sri Sujana Nasi Lemak

omg cofm, casewriteups and pharmaco (and I forsee patho next month) are the banes of my life!

I'm so glad I'm not doing ortho posting now... Anyway, this is a super super outdated post :S, when I was still in CGH blissfully doing psyche...

Anyway, this is Sri Sujana, which is this nasi lemak stall which had such a super duper long que so I decided to try it! It had an even longer que than my usual 'International Stall'

See the que is very very very long.

The nasi lemak is very cheap, only $2 for one chicken wing, an egg and ikan billis, and alot of garlicky chilli. The chilli is less sweet and more galicky than the normal nasi lemak chilli, and the rice is slightly soggier and wetter than the usual nasi lemak rice. The chicken wing is marinaded in alot of spices, and is very tasty and looks very rough and has a furred appereance.

Personally, I prefer the rice from International Stall, but this one is cheaper (50 cents only) and their chicken wing is tastier.

Sri Sujana Nasi Lemak

Changi Village #01-54

I was boliao last time so i went to T3... Now I don't have time to blog :(

Ayam Penyet

Ayam penyet is this Indonesian dish - I first heard about it in the newspapers cos they did a review on all the best ayam penyats in Singapore - it's some flattened chicken or something, which is marinaded and fried and then flattened(?) or something liddat...

Anyway, the day before, Makansutra had this episode on all the good east food and since we were in Changi, we went down to Changi Village to try this.

Apparently this is a super shiok super good ayam penyet - Sri Bistari Changi Village Famous Ayam Penyet (the original). It's found on the market side, in the day you can find it quite easily cos there's really loud radio songs blasting from some hidden speaker, and at night it's brightly lit with flashing lights. Each plate costs $4 and comes with rice and soup.
They give a really generous portion of chilli - which is very chunky cos there's lots of spices like lemongrass ginger and all that kind of fibrous things and it's quite sweet and yummy too. The chicken itselt doesn't really have much marinade, and it comes with healthy crunchy salad on the side. It's also pretty unique cos it comes in a wooden bowl.Ayam Penyet can be found in Changi Village (Market Side)