Tag Archives: tiramisu

Fun Relaxed Dinner @ Bistroquet Pizza & Grill on 25Apr2013

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capresse (mozarella with rockets & tomatoes)

caprese (mozzarella with rockets & tomatoes) – S$12

today our monthly dining quartet discovery took us to bistroquet pizza & grill at ARC (Alexandra Retail Centre) @ PSA Building. the host for the evening bought 9 voucherlicious vouchers of S$270 worth for S$135 & we were especially keen to try out the 400g porterhouse steak (which looked very alluring on bistroquet’s Facebook photo). 🙂

the place had the relaxed rustic ambience for a great chillax & drinking joint (though it was not drawing the crowd even with voucher promotion as we stayed till 9pm closing time and traffic was quite light). we were liking it already, though still suspect about the standard of food. 1 of our dear friend had kind of “forgotten” (we guessed correctly huh 🙂 ) & was about settling down to watch TV serial with his mum while our other quartet member was frantically SMS-ing, whatsapp-ing & calling him. 🙂 anyway we ordered a caprese (read ca-pri-seh) salad & a funghi pizza to start. the caprese was the usual mozzarella with rockets & tomatoes, light, good actually, and enjoyable.

thin crust funghi pizza

12″ thin crust funghi pizza – S$18

the large (12″) thin crust funghi pizza was good too (they served a white pizza here but we were the old-fashioned lot who loved tomato sauces on our pizza). our friend was not much into cheese but ok with light mozzarella & the young chef (looked like no more than 28) was most obliging to our request to warm up the quarter pizza we kept for the friend. 🙂

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baby back ribs – full rack S$28

we ordered a full rack S$28 baby back ribs (1/2 rack S$18) to share, and it was good!  fork tender and tasty, well marinated, though some of us would have preferred to have the sauce served separate. and 1 friend liked the purple cabbage with mayo which was too sweet for me

400g porterhouse steak

400g porterhouse steak – S$36

next was the 400g porterhouse – the reason we came for specifically and got 1 of us into the highs. 🙂 however it seemed that the office lunch crowd had taken off most of the porterhouse steaks & we were left with 3 porterhouse to share. we had 2 medium rare and 1 medium, served with beef sauce and the chef brought us some chimichurri sauce (taste like pesto sauce) which went well with the steak. 🙂 it turned out that while the taste was ok the meat was a bit tough on the sirloin side to be considered a good steak. The small tenderloin cut in the photo (what I usually thought of as a tender & tasteless cut) turned out to be quite a world of difference –  tender & nice. also of the 3 only 1 had the T so we were guessing the other 2 pieces were all sirloin or new york strip & no tenderloin..haha. 🙂

we asked the chef later & he admitted that the ribeye would have been more tender. well we would have to do that another time. I wouldn’t mind coming back.. in fact I bought another 5 vouchers (S$150 worth) for S$75 afterwards. 🙂

chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream

chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream – S$8

I am not much of a dessert person and we did not expect much really but since we had the coupon, we ordered a chocolate lava cake and a calzone (a turnover which can be sweet or savoury..in fact they serve a foie gras calzone here as a main course item). As it turned out the lava cake was quite outstanding, and the hardened crust containing the chocolate lava was very good in texture & taste & different from lava cakes in other places. the caramelized walnut with ice cream was a good pairing too.

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calzone – S$8

& the calzone was so pretty. the dough texture was really good too, crispy on the outside not fluffy but a bit like a pizza dough. 🙂 according to the expert among us,  since no one else was in a position to dispute with her “calzone made of the same pizza dough, filled with choc, hazel nuts, pistachio, etc”.

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somehow the young chef took a liking for us, and he showered us with 2 more desserts FREE – a panna cotta which was forgettable and a tiramisu, which was again quite pretty in presentation & tasted quite good albeit not enough liquor for some of us. very good indeed & far above our expectations for dessert in a drinking joint kind of place. 🙂

we paid in total S$124 (7 vouchers=S$105 +S$19cash), and that included 2 cappuccinos + 4 beers on 1 for 1 happy hour promotion. 🙂

c.h.e.f andy

Enjoyable Lunch @ Pasta Inc on 29Mar2013

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seafood spaghetti in squid ink sauce

seafood spaghetti in squid ink sauce

Pasta Inc has a simple nice uncrowded ambience and feel of a fine dining restaurant. It is at Kiong Siak Street, in a locale dotted with the more expensive restaurants like Ember, Nicolas le & Bistro Soori.

I only came to Pasta Inc once and that was more than a year ago when a few of us bought the S$38 4-course lunch set coupons. Somehow that experience did not leave any impression ie not some place I was wanting to go back soon.

Today though I had a really enjoyable 3-course lunch with my daughter using 2xS$15.90nett Bigdeal coupon (which is like S$13.50++pax) for the 3-course lunch set. The normal price was S$22.50++pax and judging from what we had, I thought it would still be a good value lunch. 🙂 The service was also good. The server, Alvin, who was also the one who took my reservation, was cheerful & professional, kept filling my ice water, and was not any less friendly because I ordered no other food or drink except to use my 2x$15.90 coupons. But perhaps that was because they were not busy as there was only 1 other table. We started lunch at 12pm & stayed & chatted until 1pm. 🙂

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We had toasted bread which was warm & crispy to start.

prosciutto - parma ham wrapped over rock melon with mesclun salad

prosciutto – parma ham wrapped over rock melon with mesclun salad

For appetizer I took the prosciutto, which came with a decent helping of 2 slices of parma ham wrapped over rock melon (rather nice to eat them together) with mesclun salad.

lobster bisque

lobster bisque

My daughter had the lobster bisque. I tasted a little of it. It was flavourful and had some pieces of lobster meat in it, but not as good as many restaurants these days which served a foam cappuccino version which delivered a much better overall experience. 🙂

seafood spaghetti in squid ink sauce

seafood spaghetti in squid ink sauce

We both decided on the seafood spaghetti in squid ink sauce, and it was good here. The pasta was very al dente. It was less salty than many other places. The ingredients were good – scallop, several squid rings, mussel & littleneck clams, no prawns. 🙂 It was a pasta dish that I much enjoyed.

tiramisu - "pick me up"

tiramisu – “pick me up”

I had the tiramisu. It was in the “good not overwhelming” category. My daughter had her health-conscious lemon sorbet – probably quite forgettable. 🙂

Being fast eaters, we finished in 35minutes or so, and chatted for another 25minutes. I drank lots of water & had many refills by Alvin. Great lunch!

c.h.e.f andy

Chocolate Lava Cake

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Chocolate Lava Cake with Strawberries

as it turned out, i subsequently made very good tofu cheese cake, tiramisu, banoffee cake & pumpkin cheese cake, so i have not made the lava cake for a while. i also tried a jam crumb cake which was pretty ok too.

I am generally NOT a dessert person. When dining out with family or friends, I will take the lower cost 2-course option (for set meals) & pick an appetizer & main, ostensibly also to avoid too much calories.

I also have NOT baked in my entire life before this, and in any case I only started any form of serious exploring of cooking from Mar2012 when I had my first 5-course home cooked dinner for friends.

It was in August 2012 after a very nice smoked meat dinner at a friend’s place, where some friends brought along a very nice tiramisu cake, that I started then to google for some dessert I can make. Well I found one which I now do rather well – the oozing chocolate lava cake. But I must say that I am both NOT motivated and luckless in finding another “worthwhile” dessert to make (worthwhile being that there is a “wow” factor in producing it & it is nearly as good or better than what you can grab from a good bakery stall). I can make a passable apple pie now but does not quite meet my “worthwhile” criteria. I had been looking at soufle recipes for a while and hopefully that would be the subject of my post in the not too distant future.

Back to the oozing chocolate lava cake. I was successful in my 3rd attempt, and thanks to Facebook for being such a faithful repository of memories, that was on 22.8.2012!

success at 3rd try!chocolate lava cake oozing lava @ home 0n 22.8.2012

success at 3rd try!
chocolate lava cake oozing lava @ home 0n 22.8.2012

Well, now I can make an awesome chocolate lava cake 99% of the time successful. It is NOT really as good as some very good ones in restaurants here but still equal or better than many.

The keys to a good chocolate lava cake are (1) taste & (2) lava; otherwise it will be just a good tasting brownie! I find the 70% cocoa chocolate makes the lava cake flavour really mesmerising. I have tried Cadbury Old Gold Dark Chocolate but w/o the cocoa the taste experience is several notch down, so if you do you will need to experiment with adding cocoa to get to the right taste. For the lava, the size of the muffin tray (I still do not have ramekins!),  temperature & timing are CRITICAL; and because in this recipe the time is only 3mins 30secs, any variation & you will have to trial & error to get the correct combination. For example, I have to use the grill function at 210degC in order that the top hardens while inside is still molten & let the bottom harden further while resting for few minutes!

c.h.e.f andy

Ingredients:

  • Cadbury Old Gold chocolate 70% cocoa 100g (1/2 bar)
  • unsalted butter 100g (0.4x250g bar)
  • sugar 1 tbsp flat
  • normal flour a tbsp flat & sifted
  • 3 eggs + 2 eggyolk
Directions:
  1. beat egg & sugar
  2. add in flour & beat (steps 1 & 2 can do together)
  3. melt butter & chocolate (on top) in microwave 70-80seconds & beat
  4. then add slowly to egg mixture (so egg won’t be cooked as chocolate slightly warm) & beat
  5. use butter cube to grease thoroughly each cup of 6 cup small muffin tray & fill up 70% with the chocolate mix
  6. preheat oven to 210degC and put to grill/broil function
  7. place muffin tray in preheated oven – use phone to time 3mins 15secs & remove immediately
  8. leave muffin tray for few minutes for bottom (top when inverted) to harden
  9. invert & serve the chocolate lava cake with a nice ice-cream or strawberries