Heng ah!

So Lim Swee Say recently made headlines with his infamous "Heng ah!" comments on him not being a Malaysian or Mainland Chinese. Not surprisingly, China and Malaysia were both rather pissed and fired back at him.

It's true that he shouldn't have said that - such comments should obviously be kept to oneself. But there is a big element of truth in what he said. For one, I know that personally, I am very glad that I am born a Singaporean and not any other nationality. This of course includes China and Malaysia.

God of War II

When I first started playing GOW II, it was in March 2014. Then due to my hectic work schedule (and inefficiency), I stopped. The next time I picked it up again was March... 2015. I fiddled with it until April 2015, then stopped again.

This weekend, ironically, I was able to play it again because my office laptop was under repair. And I managed to complete the rest of the game in one day. So basically, from start to end, GOW II took me  17 months to finish.

Next on the pipeline is Final Fantasy VI on the iPad. Targeting to finish it by 3Q2015!

Cooking steaks

I just found the best way (so far) to prepare steaks! It was from a video by FudeHouse, which can be found below.

Summarising the steps here:

1) Season both sides of the steak generously with sea salt and pepper.
2) Place the steak on a grill over a baking dish.
3) Preheat the oven to 140 degrees, then put the steak in for 30 to 35 minutes.
4) Take the steak out and let it rest for 15 minutes.
5) Heat up the skillet until it is very hot, then fry the steak for one minute on each side.
6) Serve immediately.

The steak turned out perfect - evenly cooked inside, and well-seared outside with a balanced tinge of smokiness. That's it - I am going to use this method to cook all my steaks from now on.

Teppei Syokudo @ Millennia Walk

Another Teppei outlet, this time in Millennia Walk.

Kaisendon, $16

Looks like Teppei still has the best barachirashi don (it's basically the same thing despite the different name. Kaisendon means seafood rice, by the way.). No other place comes close. The sashimi were all fresh and mixed perfectly with their own sauce, and when taken with a dab of fresh wasabi and some salmon roe (which bursts with flavour when bitten) it was so heavenly. The rice was also sweet and of good quality, and I finished every grain of it.

$16 for this is really a steal. To make things better, it doesn't come with service charge or GST. 

Horoscopes

In the past, whenever my classmates discuss excitedly over their horoscopes, I would look on in disdain and can hardly contain my disgust. How can the alignment of a bunch of stars and planets determine our fate and life? It's utter crap! One classmate in particular brought this to an extreme, loudly proclaiming that she detests all Virgos because they are all "<fill in the negative characteristics associated with Virgos>".

Today, I saw this on Facebook.

The most accurate horoscope ever.

Wow. This gotta be the most accurate horoscope ever.

Chikuwa Tei @ Mohammed Sultan

After slightly more than a year and a half, this was my second visit to Chikuwa Tei.

Chikuwa Sushi, $25

I must say that their menu is quite poorly designed.  It was purely text and very wordy, so it wasn't easy browsing through to find what you want to order. Despite having come here before, it took me a while before I could find their well-known Chikuwa Sushi set, which I ordered during my previous visit in 2013. It was still priced at $25 now.

The set still consists of four different types of sashimi - salmon, tuna, sea bream, and swordfish. But this time I felt that the standards seemed to have deteriorated slightly. The sea bream and swordfish were still as good as before, but the salmon and tuna weren't. The salmon didn't seem as fresh as before, while the tuna was a bit soggy - as if it was left outside for a while before serving. The rice also didn't appear to be those higher-quality rice used for sushi or other Japanese dishes.

In the end, I wasn't as satisfied with this as I was during my past visit. But at $25, it is still value-for-money.

Salmon Skin, $5

I am a fan of fish skin, and I always order it at restaurants. It is usually prepared very differently across restaurants - for example, Sushi Tei serves them in smaller strips but with more of the salmon meat attached. Tunglok Tea House does skin-only but with salted egg, while Ichiban Boshi's is more like Sushi Tei's but more crispy (I think it is also fried with a bit of flour as well).

Chikuwa Tei's was purely skin with no meat at all. Delightfully crispy, the teriyaki sauce drizzled on it also goes quite well with it. It also comes with some mayonnaise and fish roe on it, which serves as a equally good accompaniment to the skin compared to the teriyaki sauce.

Grilled Ika with Teriyaki Sauce, $15

Taste-wise this was all right, but the texture was a bit too tough and rubbery. A dish which you can skip unless you are a huge fan of squid and must order it to try.

Past visit:
5th September 2013

Teppei @ Orchid Hotel

Considering how difficult it was to get a dinner reservation here (waiting list is around three months), I immediately took up the offer when my colleague said she had an available slot.

For dinner, Teppei does it 'Omakase', which means "I will leave it to you". So diners typically just tell the chef what they do not want to eat, and leave the rest to the chef.

A rather traditional Japanese setting

The layout of the restaurant was quite traditional, where diners sit at the counter surrounding the chef. The chef will then serve the dishes on the counter. 

We all took the $80 set (most expensive one). If I recall correctly, we had three choices - $60, $70 or $80. To be honest, there were so many dishes that I couldn't really keep track of all of them. The employee serving us was also quite inexperienced and couldn't answer most of our queries.

A cold platter consisting of six dishes. Nothing really stood out.

Sashimi platter

Their sashimi were all reasonably fresh. But the ootoro (fatty tuna belly) definitely lost to the one I had at Hashi Restaurant.

Minced tuna hand roll

This was one giant minced tuna hand roll. Ladies were served first. Men were served later but get an extra large portion instead. 

A very simple dish, but I found this to be one of the best. Since it was freshly served, the seaweed was still wonderfully crispy, and the minced tuna was also refreshing.

Fugu (Puffer fish)

Coincidentally, I just read on the news that in Japan, several people just died from fugu (puffer fish) poisoning. This was the best puffer fish I have ever tasted. Okay to be honest, this was only my second attempt. The fish was well-grilled and lightly seasoned - this was also one of the highlights for the dinner.

By the way, 'fugu' comes from the Japanese word 'fuku', which means to swell. Very apt term given how the puffer fish puffs up when feeling threatened.

This tasted like some sort of corn, which had been grilled. It tasted a bit like popcorn.

Mackerel sushi

Soup with bamboo

The taste of bamboo was very strong in the soup, so if you are not a fan of bamboo, this is definitely not for you. My colleague gave this a miss.

While this didn't fare too well in the taste department, it scored some points in terms of uniqueness. I still do not know what fish this is, but its transparent body was certainly intriguing - just look at its skeleton!

Wagyu beef

When we asked our waiter what insect this was, he just smiled shyly and shrugged.

Crab soup

The soup was deliciously sweet and well infused with the taste of crab.

Eaten raw, this unknown vegetable tasted extremely fresh and refreshing.

Assorted sushi

The conclusion? $80 for an omakase dinner was very worth it. In the value aspect, Teppei scores quite high, as well as in the uniqueness category. But for taste, I would rather pay more to get better quality elsewhere. For Teppei, I will still stick to their famous bara-chirashi don during lunchtime instead.

Cornerstone @ Bishan Park

There was an adoption drive being held by HOPE Dog Rescue at Cornerstone today, and since Canopy was still undergoing renovations, we decided to have brunch here.

Benny, $12

Their version of Eggs Benedict. The egg yolks were runny, so that's a plus - but probably the only plus. The texture of the egg whites felt wrong, as if they were a little too raw. The hollandaise sauce pretty much faded into the background, and the ham was definitely cheap and of lower quality. Only the hash browns were good, being delightfully crispy and yet not too dry.

At least the egg yolks were still runny.

Queen Royale, $14

This was almost exactly the same as the previous Benny dish, but simply with the ham replaced with smoked salmon. The smoked salmon was quite terrible, to be frank - it was tough, dry, and ridiculously salty.

Luncheon fries, $12

Luncheon meat cut into the shape of fries and deep fried. This was done quite well; the meat still maintained some of its juiciness and yet wasn't too oily.