Home-made: Tuna Avocado Mixed Salad with wrap

We have tuna avocado mixed salad with wholemeal wrap today. Something 'simple' that doesn't require cooking due to the logistics available to us this weekend. Crunchy and tasty!

Home-made: Oven-baked vegetable salad bento

Healthy food prep despite the busy weekend. Thanks Mky for the love!
 
This week, we have oven-baked pumpkin, beet-root, organic baby carrots, potatoes and romanesco broccoli. All this was put together like a salad and topped with sliced avocado. 
The main is roast chicken from Cold Storage. As you can observe, we cheated on the protein. 

Pre-baking stage.

Bento lunch for lunch on Tues or Weds.

Home-made Bento: Turkey Sloppy Joe on Wholemeal Wrap

Bento lunch tmr is turkey sloppy Joe on wholemeal wrap with a side salad of baby spinach and arugula.

Home-made Bento: Lean Chicken and mash avocado salad

Something simple for this busy festive season - got to eat them greens before the feasting begins! Hearty salad of romaine, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cukes and radishes and topped with lean chicken and mashed avocado!

Chef's Insight:
Most of the time, I don't use recipes, I just try to recreate a particular taste with healthy ingredients, or just combine stuff I think would taste good together... A.K.A 'agak-agak' method... or some say, 'rojak' method.

Home-made Bento: Meatloaf Muffins

On the menu this week - veggie-filled Meatloaf Muffins stuffed with a surprise centre (and sweet BBQ sauce), radish-celery-cabbage slaw dressed with tahini and Greek yoghurt sauce, and mashed sesame sweet potatoes to round off the meal! homemade meatloaf is da bomb!
— feeling in a frenzy
 

Home-made Bento: Cold Chicken Pasta Salad

Really easy to put together - poach skinless chicken breast in simmering water (flavoured with your choice of herbs and spices) and when almost done, dump in carrots and a head of broccoli to steam till just tender (and mostly still crunchy).
Remove everything from the cooking liquid (now a tasty stock) and chop.
Next, cook wholegrain pasta in the stock you made earlier.
When cool, toss everything together, along with corn kernels, kidney beans, Greek yoghurt, herbs, a few spoonfuls of chicken stock and lots of parsley!
DONE. chill and enjoy!
— feeling hungry

Accomplished Italian Dining at OChre

OChre has some fantastic Italian food that brought back fond memories of our Italian honeymoon over a year ago. Located at the top of Orchard Central, seating at the restaurant surrounds the open kitchen where the chefs can be seen doing their stuff. Surprisingly, the ventilation is pretty good and so you won't get blasts of hot air, or get choked by the smoke etc. Instead, you get to watch how the chef prepare their dishes, and sometimes, hear the banter of staff too.

For the starter, we went for their Burrata dish, which is a concoction of mozarella cheese and cream. OChre's Burrata arrived on a bed of proscuitto, It was nice and soft, and when cut open, cream/butter oozed out slowly. The menu said there was supposed to be tomato slices so we were a little disappointed that there weren't any tomatoes to be seen. Imagine our surprise when we found the baby tomato slices folded WITHIN the mozarella cheese itself! What a gem! You can also flavour the Burrata with a choice of sea salt, vinegar, pesto or herbs, giving a nice variety of tastes throughout the whole course.

Our first course was a seafood linguine pasta that we asked to be portioned into two (we learnt to share one of the courses if we were going to do the full Italian 2 courses + dessert). Pictured is one portion of the order of pasta - can you see how much ingredients it has? The quality of the squid, clams and mussels were top notch, apart from the type of prawn used. Sorry to say, crystal prawn (low on flavour but full of bite), seemed out of place in this seafood dish. But the white wine sauce and other ingredients more than made up for it, and we both savoured the dish joyfully.

Moving on to the second course - Mky ordered a Tristecca, which is OChre's version of a beef steak (ours might have been a ribeye - no bone), seared on the outside like a bistecca fiorentina, and medium done on the inside. It was full of flavour and bite. Excellent! For under $50, this is a more affordable version of beef steak than the one at Valentino's, and one that definitely satisfies! The truffle potato slices that came with it did not lose its aroma the more one ate of it, unlike some other truffle dishes we have eaten elsewhere. It was soo good and very moreish. 

I went for the Osso Bucco, which was stewed veal shanks on a bed of saffron risotto cake. Ordinarily, this would be a dish that I would really enjoy, however, compared with the linguine and steak earlier, the Osso Bucco just didn't sing for me. As Mky said, by itself, this dish was excellent, with the veal meat gently breaking off the bone with only a little coaxing. She particularly appreciated the slightly crisp and very fragrant saffron risotto cake. Unfortunately, the Tristecca and Seafood Linguine were just that good, and the stew was totally outshone!

 

I have to say, OChre has some delicious Italian food that is priced just above your regular restaurant fare. For the quality of the ingredients and the perfection of execution, this restaurant deserves the attention of more patrons who are looking for great tasting Italian food without having to burn a hole in their pockets. The only complaint we had was the presence of flies. Don't ask me why a restaurant on the 11th floor has those small annoying pests, but it did reduce our level of enjoyment a tad. A little more effort with that issue and we would definitely be back for that Tristecca!

OChre

181 Orchard Road

#11-03/04 Orchard Central

 Tel: 66340423



Aloha Ma Maison!

We are fans of Ma Maison. We love the homely, Hayao Miyazaki-inspired ambience, along with the fusion Japanese/Western food. Unfortunately, we don't go as often as we might like for two reasons. 1) the higher prices don't encourage recurring patronage, 2) the constant queues don't encourage walk-ins.

Fortunately, the Ma Maison group have spawned an offshoot called Aloha Ma Maison. They've adopted a Hawaiian theme and have a menu that is different, yet somewhat similar to the original. Enter the Loco Moco..

Loco moco is a traditional meal in Hawaiian cuisine. There are many variations, but the essential loco moco consists of white rice, topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy. - from Wiki.

Ok, we won't find Loco Moco at Ma Maison, but the hamburger patty that comes with this dish is a very similar one to what you will get at Ma Maison (ie. the hamburg steak)! And the good news is, it's cheaper! Furthermore, you can opt for either white rice or multi-grain rice at no extra charge, and a further choice of having a larger serving for a slightly higher price.

Take for example the Ma Maison Loco Moco in the picture above. This was the larger portion. Two sunny side ups cover a hamburg steak, stewed apples, macaroni pasta salad in a demi glace sauce with 2 servings of multi-grain rice. And of course, the mayonnaise! Can't recall the price at this moment, but for sub-$20, your Hamburg Steak at Ma Maison won't come with as many sides nor will it be as satisfying, I can assure you.

Ahipoke 

The salad Ahipoke dish has diced vegetables, and would have been perfect except it had some spice in it. We think it's Tabasco sauce, but we can't be certain. All I know is that it was a tad strong for a salad. When our mains came, having the rice with this dish made it more bearable.

Mky: Ahipoke flavours were not well balanced, the dressing overpowered the fresh flavour of the ingredients. The spicy element, which had a strange numbing effect on the tongue, did not add to enjoyability of the dish.

 

Tuna and Avocado Loco Moco 

A heavenly mix of fresh raw tuna and slices of avocado with a heavy dose of mayonnaise.Can't go wrong here. Mky says you can either eat it as presented, or give it a good toss (ala Pepper Lunch) and mix everything up. I chose the latter and enjoyed this dish perfectly.

Very interesting decor making use of the overhead space

Overall, we loved the rice dishes and the two variations we tried. As I understand it, they are also known for their pancakes, something Mky really loves. Unfortunately we were so stuffed by dinner that we couldn't make room for those delicacies. We'll definitely be back to try that next time.

Aloha Ma Maison

201 Victoria Street,
#01-12 Bugis+

+65 6884 4471

Home-made: Japanese Pasta Salad

Home-made Japanese Pasta Salad. Ikea pasta with frozen vegetables, apples, peaches and shredded chicken thigh. Sauce is made up of mayo, mustard, condensed milk, apple juice, salt, black pepper, garlic, a small amount of tumeric for colour, and oregano. This isn't one of Mky's healthy dishes cos of the mayo and condensed milk, but it sure is tasty!

Served cold, it's the perfect cool dish for the hot summer, or warm tropical climes.

Eating with the Garden Slug

We went to try out The Garden Slug on a Friday evening. It's an eclectic little restaurant that comes off very laid back. Their unique list of appetizers, mains, desserts and even a small cider selection, has a substantial vegetarian slant. Their motto is an interesting "Eat Drink Don't Think". Cute! We received some surprisingly professional service from the young staffers there.

I went with the strange choice of a Sloppy Portobello Veggie Burger - it was a vegetarian choice. When the plate was laid down in front of me, I was aghast cos the only sides to my burger were huge raw celery and carrot sticks! I confess, I didn't expect vegetable sticks for sides, expecting some fries to come along if at all (it wasn't specified in the menu). However, with some encouragement from Mky, I dipped the veggie stick into the thousand island sauce and found that I actually didn't mind it at all. Quite refreshing really. It also helped that Mky's dish came with 2 other sauces.

The burger itself was composed of a large portobello mushroom and a "curry patty" (basically potato spiced with curry powder) sitting on romaine lettuce and a slice of tomato. For some reason I was instantly reminded of Cedele's excellent Chicken Chermoula Burger. Must be the curry. Well, being as how the Chicken Chermoula is one of my favourites, the Sloppy Portobello was immediately judged on a higher scale. I thought it was delicious, I just didn't think the burger bun was anything to shout home about - it just served its purpose I guess.

Mky had heard that the fried calamari rings at the Garden Slug was heavenly, but we didn't think we could finish an entire serving of it between us, so she went with the Battered Seafood Sandwich, which came with the aforementioned calamari rings, some potato wedges and more veggie sticks. The calamari rings were quite perfectly done - crispy batter covering the still soft and juicy squid ring. The potato wedges were as standard as potato wedges could be. The platter came with 2 sauces though, Ranch and Honey Mustard! All the better to dip those healthy veggie sticks into!

Her Seafood Sandwich was almost like a less sinful version of traditional Fish & Chips - with the battered hake fish in question served between toasted multi-grain bread with romaine lettuce and tomato. She liked her order well enough (well it was mostly friend stuff, who does not like fry-ups? =P )

Overall, the Garden Slug has some interesting offerings on their menu that we would like next and gets our "We'll be back!" vote!


The Garden Slug
55 Lorong L Telok Kurau, #01-59/61
Bright Centre,
Singapore 42550
6346 0504
justask@thegardenslug.com

Home-Made: Beetroot Couscous/ Quinoa Salad

Mky was inspired to make a couscous salad one weekend. However, she had to hold on to that urge for an entire week due to the lack of time. By the following week, she had so many ideas and was just bursting to get started! In this instance, she mixed in quinoa as well. Presenting, the Beetroot Couscous/Quinoa salad that Mky made!

I'll leave her to describe the process. I vaguely remember the process enough to describe it! It was a very sweet and sour dish, and a great balance of carbo, protein and greens. It can be eaten both warm or cold.

 

For dinner that night, Mky also grilled a few pieces of chicken with tumeric along with a grilled pineapple to supplement the dish. Fantastic!

This last pic shows Mky's own dish, having a little bit of a rabbity flourish to it. =)