I had my first real truffle experience last night.
K and I never pass on the truffle fries if it's on a menu. And we figured that if truffle fries are only drizzled with truffle oil, which purportedly doesn't even contain true truffle, then the real thing shaved over a truffle cream dish should make us die on the spot.
The funniest thing is we didn't die.
We had a creamy, cold, light burrata cheese with a truffle heart, and we said, "A great delicate start."
Then our pasta and risotto came. We took a deep sniff, moved our noses closer to the plate, and took another deep sniff. "It's there."
We tasted it-- "Let's get the extra truffle shavings."
We ate the flakes. Nothing.
What had happened to us had been written about in many an article about truffles, if we had bothered to read up first. A disgruntled chef put it most succinctly: the "one-dimensional flavour" of artificial truffle oil was spoiling the truffle experience because, quite simply, that had become the expected flavour.
Actual black truffle, even this most pungent Perigord harvested in winter, smells more like a warm nut than the sensual, stinging oil we were used to. And eaten raw, is bland.
The food was good. Very good. And had we come to dinner to be educated on the truffle flavour, rather than seek for that common fastfood flavour, we might have tasted it. (Unless we were like another kind of consumer also written about in articles, the kind genetically unable to taste an important component of truffle.) But instead we were left bewildered, and a little sad, that we couldn't see the emperor's new clothes.
We came up with lots of analogies after our truffle dinner. It's like a young girl besotted by Hollywood dreams, only to find that life as a star is faintly dull. It's like a man always craving success, but when success is in hand, that's all there is. Or women whose idea of romance is based on korean dramas. Or men whose expectations of a woman's body is based on Playboy and all the plastic-surgeried, Photoshopped fakes. A typical tale, a sad story. "The dream is more fulfilling than the reality of it," was my mournful conclusion.
The bright side is, we prefer truffle fries. And that's way more affordable. :D
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http://casatartufo.com/ is a cosy Italian fine-dining place at Forum, opened by my one of my big boss's impossibly gorgeous daughters. It's also the first restaurant in Singapore to have a truffle-centred menu all year round.
Working here in Toa Payoh has exposed me to a whole slew of food I never knew existed. Before I leave this job and all this food, I will try to document everything worth eating again. I'm sorry I don't take note of unit numbers, I will try to if anybody is interested enough to ask me personally. But everything is around the Yellow Pages Building, 1 Lorong 2 Toa Payoh.
1. Cranberry muffins from BlissHaven
"Clean Market," 2nd floor, Blk 12_ (in the 120s, i don't know exactly what block)
Their muffins, when freshly popped from their baking trays, are crispy all over their edges. They have the chewy consistency of those Chinese pink and green cupcakes, but as said before, are also crispy and browned. I normally do not go for fruit muffins. But this critter, smaller than the rest, has a coating of crispy crackled cheese and nuts. The cranberries are sufficiently succulent, and the muffin, buttery.
2. Meatball Ee Mein from the porridge stall
"Clean Market," 2nd floor
I'd never eaten Ee Mein with soup before, so the joy when I discovered this was known to all--colleagues, friends, grandma, etc. They serve this with a meaty pork soup thickened with an egg dropped into it, with fish, chicken or porkballs. I once ate this three days in a row, with different meats.
3. Fish and Chips, from the man who had lived in London
Coffeeshop down the lane from Tims (more about Tims later), block 90-smth
His London life shows in the four bottles of Malt Vinegar generously laid out for customers to help themselves to, and the paper he wraps takeaways in. The fish portions are huge, as are the sides of spaghetti, mashed potatoes, fries, or rice. He proudly displays his heritage and his son's photo at the counter, and is said to have a colorful vocabulary. To be honest, I don't remember the taste of anything, but it is like Botak Jones, in that it is good Western food in an unexpected setting.
4. Tims
Blk 95
A humble-looking restaurant without air-conditioning that pulls business away from the sad eateries next to it. They serve Western and Nepalese food, with a menu that boasts everything from $5.90 set meals to $20 Black Angus steak and lamb chops. The variety of the menu alone makes it fun to eat here. Surprisingly good was their crispy grilled saba (mackerel), which instead of being overly oily as they tend to be, had faint smatterings of what I think is plum sauce. Their daily soups and desserts always change. But there was this one slab of plain-looking butter cake that looked like nothing, but was awesome. If you're gonna be a butter cake, you'd better the best butter cake you can be.
5. El Piccolo
Coffeeshop near SPH that also has Botak Jones
If my colleagues were more fond of long walks, I'd eat here more. Amelia and her intern came over one happy day and we shared a caesar salad (creamy, garlicky), a pasta dish, and a free soup. This place has $2 Tiramisu that I hear isn't too shabby, and the rarer pastas like Crespelle and Gnocchi.
6. Fish head mee sua from the everything-fish stall
Renovated market near Tims, blk 100 (?)
Only gripe: too many pieces of fried fish head to finish. Which isn't bad. I heard the stall auntie say that mee sua must never be eaten with milk, so I insisted on adding milk to my soup. You have to have milk, with all those fried bits. The best part for me is digging up the dried fish at the bottom, which are pungent and bitter and make everything flavorful.
7. Sarawak pineapples from the cut fruit stall
Near 7-11, in the stretch that has Macs, Blk 109-111
One of the rare fruit stalls that sells these heavenly half-moons chilled. I eat two at a time after lunch, and have to be sitting down and calm as I do. I learnt their sweetness while working at Pass the Juice some years ago. The trick to eating pineapples is to not eat the white hard core, which gives the tongue cuts that so many people complain of.
8. Ice blended coconut from the bubble-tea shop
Corner of the newer bakery, near 7-11
Coconut milk, coconut flesh, and coconut juice ground up into an icy, frothy explosion of sin. I love all things coconut, and even drink that artificial stuff from the can because it has conveniently-diced real coconut bits in it. But I couldn't finish this magnificently coconutty creation because I thought my arteries would burst. It is more lemak than refreshing. But ice-blended coconut is such an excellent idea!
This post has been fun, no wonder so many people write about food. The words pour out, as if they had been longing to do so since I had my first bite.
So we had morton's last night, in a booth seat that faced the dining area, like two kids on the sidelines having a peek at how the filthy rich live their lives. Casual big-bellied caucasian men with little asian women, ordering two servings of oysters when the waitress rattled it off in her introduction speech. Family eating one steak each (we shared one ribeye and were absolutely stuffed to the point of pain). And we imagined everyone sitting there for hours ordering more sides and glasses of wine, proceeding to a bar to drink till twelve, and then taking cabs back to their hotels. I think Singapore's the only place you can share a steak at morton's. In fact the staff expect sharing and volunteer to separate steaks onto two plates. In France we could be stoned.
But that all said, the ribeye steak was massive. Small eaters like k and i shouldn't have ordered the side, which was a sinful and potent mac-and-cheese. The complimentary onion and egg loaf could have fed a brood of five. We left half the loaf untouched. The steak was crispy top and bottom, perhaps because of the fat, and rare in the middle without being bloody. Ooh fat tastes really good. I don't like steak with mushroom sauce or black pepper sauce, and this was pure and still tasteful.
We passed on the raved-about filet mignon this time, but perhaps will go for it the next round. No sides, no matter how frugal we look, because we still need dessert to finish off every meal.
So before we hit 30 and our arteries start to get clogged, try a really good steak. Amelia recommends Les Bouchons, which sounds like a pretty good deal at $30 for a steak with freeflow fries.
I am addicted to watching cooking videos on youtube, in particular this very helpful series called "Cooking with Dog". The voiceover is apparently supposed to be the dog talking. Cooking with Dog just means that the dog sits there and watches while the mother figure cooks. When the stove is turned on the dog leans ever slightly to the side to avoid it, but never leaves his spot.
I tried the ichigo daifuku recipe and it's pretty easy to make. Mine turn out as huge ugly lumps, nothing like store-bought cute daifuku, but they taste like it and hopefully will look more and more palatable.
I love it when Francis (the dog) keeps saying "Let's make_____." and "Be careful not to cut your hands."
How to make chocolate covered corn flakes
I love Jacques Torres too. I think it's the accents of these hosts that get me. Like Francis the dog, Jacques is very sincere and helpful, and very funny. "You can make that at home, then put them into a little bag like that, and I guarantee that your friend going to love you even more."
Look at that. A frightful concoction. I didn't think, I just played. We went to Lena's house to bake but I was sick so they put a mask on me and I stayed away. But I had to decorate, what with all the edible glitter and hearts and confetti.
Graphic design kills me. Good design makes me think too much. Not like drawing or painting or decorating cupcakes, where I don't think.
My emotions are a rollercoaster riot these days.
"I still have vivid memories of boarding school cuisine, which seemed to have been carefully color-coordinated--gray meat, gray potatoes, gray vegetables, gray flavor."
French Lessons, Peter Mayle
It's always like this. When I get too bored, I cook. In the long break before uni and when my parents were away, four whole years ago to this day, I started flipping through the Jamie Olivers in my kitchen and in a week had started a catering business in what can only be a fit of passion. I devoured recipe books from the library and copied every listing of hors d'oevres, main meat, sauce, dessert and bread I could get. I wasn't even interested in cookies and cakes, the kind of thing that young girls love to bake. I was interested in smelling prawns turn red in olive oil, stuffing mushrooms with sage and walnuts, and making variations of aioli.
Now my parents are out of the country again and it has started. It wasn't intentional. I started playing Restaurant City like everyone else, harmless entertainment. Then I picked up a book called French Lessons from my mother's bedside table.
"For instance, just when you think you have mastered the potato, that such a basic ingredient could have nothing new to offer, you discover aligot, a velvety blend of mashed potatoes, garlic, and Cantal cheese. Or you are introduced to the unlikely but triumphant combination of tiny wild strawberries served not with cream but with vinaigrette sauce. Then you encounter roasted figs. The education of the stomach never ends."
That reminded me of everything I once loved so dearly. So I gave in to food shows on tv, food reviews, more Restaurant City, new recipes online, and at long last, the always exciting Grocery Shopping, to go back to my full days of uninterrupted and focused cooking experiments. This time I am curiously passionate about soups, in particular the thick pureed kind of soup that makes one full entirely on soup.
Today I made a Vanilla Pumpkin Apple Soup, that I will rename Leek and Pumpkin Soup because it looks a very dubious shade of green and nothing like the warm orange pumpkin soups I've loved. Aside from being horrified at the amount of butter that goes into soup and scalding my little finger, it was an intensely satisfying affair. The apples and pumpkin are a perfect sweet foil to the leek, just that the next time I make it it will be thicker, like baby food.
On to the next experiments: honey mustard grilled pork and pumpkin potato salad, for a surprise picnic :)
