Eat Out No. 51: Nadaman at Shangri-La Hotel

If you need a quick and healthy way to blow a couple of hundred on a meal, kaiseki is certainly top of the list.  Largely similar to the western concept of degustation in haute cuisine, kaiseki is the Japanese equivalent of an imperial banquet; only perhaps at a higher level of finesse and sophistication.  And the more elaborate type of known as cha-kaiseki which precedes a taditional Japanese team ceremony.  

It is given in any kaiseki menu that the ingredients and hence dishes change with the seasons and indeed even on a weekly or monthly basis.  So you can somewhatbe assured that your produce is served at its peak.  I thought it more environmentally friendly as well since you don't artificially create infrastructure like greenhouses or refrigerators to preserve off season food.

So we gave our maiden go at kaiseki at Nadaman at Shangri-La hotel as we had a credit card deal for a nights stay there.  To be fair, kaiseki menus are also available at Akashi, Kumo and Wahiro as well.  We gave the Aoi kaiseki (Aoi means blue) because we didn't see a need to blow an extra 50 dollars on wagyu beef portions, a familiar fixture in most upper end dining establishments and fine supermarkets.

Appetiser

Mugwort and sesame tofu, sea urchin, lily bulb with bonito broth jelly

Boiled spinach and yellow leek with sesame

Simmered conger eel and boiled rapeseed

Boiled prawn caviar, burdock, grilled egg and deep friend green beans

Soup

Clear soup with oyster and fish cake, seaweed, bamboo shoots and carrot

Raw Fish

White meat fish and medium fatty tuna sashimi

Sliced yellow tail with onion dressing

Grilled Dish

Grilled tile fish with sake, egg plat and baby yam with miso paste

Simmered Dish

Simmered and deep fried minced lotus root, clam, black fungus and green pea

Rice

Boiled white rice with Sakura shrimp

Pickles and red bean miso soup

Dessert

Black sesame pudding, raspberry with caramel sauce

The stand-out dishes to me were the appetiser and the grilled dish.  The bonito broth jelly was thoroughly excellent, so subtle and yet fragrant.  It complemented the tofu very nicely. The fried green beans that accompanied that tamago was a surprise.  It tasted, excuse me, like KFC fried chicken.  I think a serendipitous blend of proteins and enzymes there.  I also enjoyed the drilled egg plant and baby yam with miso paste.  The execution was quite brilliant.  The veggies were grilled to perfect, soft inside yet firm enough to remain on the stick.  Their slight sweetness was a great contrast to the saltiness of the miso.  I could could honestly eat twenty skewers of that any day. 

To be sure, there were some let downs and cost-cutting.  You can bet that anything that goes with onion dressing is likely to be less fresh.  Also, I found little synergy in the boiled white rice and sakura shrimp.  But then again, I wouldn't take my own judgment was full-proof.  Japanese cuisine is probably the most exquisite in the world; a true gourmet and connoisseur of it certainly cannot be made of someone raised on a diet of char kway teow, big macs and swensen's.  Who knows, some of these kinds could be out there screaming bloody murder that I said sakura shrimp and white rice do not go in the month of March.

But all in all, I thought $160++ was pretty worthwhile.  Service was excellent and meticulous and the green tea was fragrantly refreshing.  And, without doubt, the ingredients were all incredibly fresh. Ambience and decor was ordinary but it was quiet when we went there at 9pm.  Not having an MRT beside the hotel was probably a plus point.

 Food 7, Service 9, Ambience 6, Value for Money 7

Eat In No. 50: 家乡豆腐 Deep-fried Tofu with Crispy Preserved Radish

Such tofu dishes are the mainstay of any, and I mean any, respectable zi char stall in Singapore or Malaysia.  Yet, I cannot for the life of me re-create that perfectly deep fried tofu with a nice flawless exetrior and a soft interior.  The various Youtube videos online didn't have any realtime footage of those zi char stall cooks dressed in black pants and white shirts who wield a seasoned, blackened wok and a thick stainless steel.  So I scouted around for some agedashi tofu recipes and most called for the tofu to have been patted dry and floured before being deep fried.  My accompaniment to the bean-cake will be cai por (菜脯), preserved and salted radish which most famously goes with Chee Kway.

How then do you choose the right type of tofu for this?  I recommend not going for tau kwa, the tauhu goreng hard-ish type.  Go for the softer kind (but not too silky, these are meant only for soups and steaming).  Finding it in the cool section of NTUC was easy.  On the house brand packet, it stated clearly for soup and pan fry.  It is important that you extract your tofu from the box in a delicate manner.  You do not want a corner to come off and destroy the shape.  What you can do is to cut the tofu into half. The tofu halves make it easier to fry anyway.  Remember not to flour too soon in advance, the flour will extract all the moisture form the tofu and leave you with a watery mess in little less than an hour.

For the cai por, the critical steps are to soak, drain and dry.  Soaking will remove th excessive saltiness.  After that, drain and the most important part, dry.  If you do not dry the cai por and immediately transfer to hot oil, the vege will turn out chewy and not crispy.  I put mine other the sun for a few hours but you can use the oven.  You do not need it to be biscuit-dry, it can still be damp.  But when you feel it, there should not be any moisture left on your fingers.  Deep-frying it in this state will ensure crispness.

So once the tofu and cai por were done, I simply combined oyster sauce and water in the parts of 1:4 in a saucepan.  Make some corn starch solution separately.  Heat up the oyster sauce mixture, cook it around for a few mins, and then pour in the corn starch to thicken it.  You can be creative here - fried onions if you like, or pepper and some rice wine.  Then ladle the gravy over the tofu, top with cai por and maybe some coriander, and serve hot with white rice.

Food Feature No. 19: Pine Nuts and Pesto

Ranked up there in the list of the world's most expensive nuts are pine nuts.  These tear drops of majority fat sit up there with their more portly cousins, the macadamia nut.  A bag of 100g can probably set you back $10.  Why are pine nuts so expensive? In addition to the shrinking number of pine trees in NorthAm and China, pine nuts are hugely labour intensive.   You first need to dry the pine cones then bang them about in a sack until the nuts fall out.  Thereafter comes the most tedious part, extracting the little buggers from their shell.  The taste of pine nuts are quite exquisite.  Buttery, rich and aromatic when toasted, without the cloy of nuts like cashews.  

How to roast pine nuts? Definitely not in the oven.  Use a nice dry pan over a medium high fire.  Immediately put in your nuts while the pan heats up and gently use pan motion to swirl the nuts around.  The cardinal rule is this: Always watch your nuts.  Always.  Pine nuts go from roasted to burnt in maybe 0.3 seconds.  As you swirl them around, observe the white cream colour change to a nice golden hue.  Then maybe to the colour of white bread skin with nut oil coating the pan.  Stop there.  Do not overcook.  If not over a nice arugula salad with cranberries and 12 year old balsamic vinegar, then pine nuts are perfect for pesto

Pesto comes from the northern Italian region around Genoa and the word is derived from the Italian word pestare, which means to crush.  A basic pesto is excellent when you have left over pasta or macaroni or even both.  I like chunky pasta shapes with pesto because they tend to pick up and retain the pesto sauce better.  For a simple pesto:

Ingredients

2 cups of packed sweet basil leaves

2 cloves garlic

125g pine nuts

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Half cup grated parmesan cheese

Method

Simply blend everything except the cheese together and season accordingly with fresh ground pepper and sea salt.  You can freeze the mixture for three months by leaving out the cheese.  If freezing, converse half of the oil and pour it on top of the mixture (when in the container) before freezing.

When using, thaw and then mix in the cheese.  Try the pesto with some sundried or fresh beef tomatoes, on top of the pasta.  And garnish with more toasted pine nuts.  Bon_Appétit!

Eat In No. 49: Beef-tail Stew in Silit Pressure Cooker

It was a toss-up between the Happycall pan and a pressure cooker.  It was tough believe you me but finally I rationalised that Korea has hade enough exposure with Gangnam style so I decided to go with the Germans.  Besides, the happycall idea is now seeding like crazy with many other kit-ware makers so I'm hoping the price will come down.  So we trotted down to Taka to check out some pressure cookers.  It was finally between WMF and Silit.  The WMF pressure cooker was on an incredible offer with other WMF-quality pots and pans thrown in.  The same price bought a solitary Silit pressure cooker.  But the clincher for Silit was its really durable and tough pot base, almost cast-iron like with a ceramic interior finish.  It would definitely keep foods warmer and make cooking that extra faster with a good heat distribution.  

How a pressure cooker works is simple enough.  According to Gay-Lussac's law, temperature and pressure are directly related to one another.  In a pressure cooker with the lid tightly sealed on, a steady increase in temperature will cause air molecules to bounce more rapidly within the cooker (instead of escaping) thus raising the pressure.  As pressure and temperatures are raised, water within the cooker turns to steam which can attain a temperature of about 125 deg C within the high pressure environment.  Also, the high pressure acts on the fibres of the foods thus further breaking them down. The net effect is that food is cooked faster and more thoroughly.  Of course, a a fair bit of finesse and temperature control is lost when using a p-cooker so it is usually reserved for soups and stews where water content is higher.

So I tried this with some beef tail that is easily available at most big supermarkets.  I browned them on both ends and the sides with some vegetable oil in the cooker pot.  Once done, throw in some onions to deglaze and scrap off the browned bits.  After that, red wine, stock and herbs.  Once brought to a boil, put the meat back in and 30mins with high pressure on.  The meat should be rather tender by then.  It is the veggies' turn after this.  I like courgettes and eggplant so in they go.  10mins more on high pressure and voila, you have something that would ordinarily take at least 1.5 hrs to do.  No need to watch the pot, just listen out for the excess steam escaping through the vent and adjust your flame accordingly.  A real time and gas saver. 

You might do well to try out a p-cooker one of these days and maybe make it in time for a Coq Au Vin for X'mas or Buddha-Jumps-Over-the-Wall for CNY!

Eat In No. 48: Polenta and Chicken Skewers

Being one of the rare starches in Singapore, the mention of 'polenta' is sure to get you a fair share of blank stares.   But with Singaporeans more well-travelled and read these days, this dish that comes from northern Italy is gaining in popularity.  The Yanks call it by another name: grits.  Essentially, polenta is made from ground yellow corn meal and has the consistency of KFC mashed potatoes.  IT certainly begs to be paired with something else more savoury or acidic but when properly prepared, it is delicious on its own.  I bought my bag of polenta from NTUC Finest.

The key ratio to remember in cooking polenta is 4:1.  4 parts liquid to 1 part of grain.  You can use any sort of liquid from milk to broth to plain water.  Bring the liquid to a boil (for milk, to prevent curdling, you might want to use evaporated milk mixed with water).  Then dump in the grains and simmer for 25 to 30mins.  You should get a nice creamy consistency at the end.  Then add in some sin - heavy cream, parmesan reggiano, cheddar and butter.  Vary the proportions according to taste.  Top off with a bit of salt and pepper.  Some simple suggested servings are chopped tarragon and sliced tomatoes.  Its the first time I've used fresh tarragon and the herb is superb with the cornmeal.  Left over herb can be used to combined with panko breadcrumbs for a baked salmon topping or in pasta sauce.  I used good cherry tomatoes for convenience sake and it turned out superb.  If you have a bit of balsamic vinegar cream, give a few drops as well.

To round off the saturday dinner and the estate's halloween party, I made some simple chicken shaslicks or skewers which I 'served' in a plastic pumpkin-ish trick-or-treat pail.   These ang moh satays are incredibly simple to make and will not take more than an hour to prepare from packet to plate.  Get some chicken breasts and cube them slightly smaller than a mahjong tile.  Season with paprika, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and salt.  If you have time, do what I did: brine the meat.  In a large bowl, mix maybe 2 litres of water and half a cup of salt and left the breasts soak for 3 to 4 hrs.  The sodium expands the meat and allows the fibres to retain more moisture.  At the same time, the meat is salted. Prepare your veggies meanwhile: capsicums, red onions, mushrooms and pineapples (use fresh ones). Once all is ready and your meat is well-marinated (I always pop raw meat into my mouth to taste the level of seasoning and then spit it out later - learnt it form Alton Brown), skewer them in whatever regular/random fashion that pleases you.

I recommend setting them on a grill or a disposable BBQ set.  But what I did was to line a tray with foil and pop into a 220 degrees C oven for 12mins.  Once out, I used a torch to char the outer layers of the skewers.  I mixed together some honey and tomato sauce and smeared them Halloween-style.  If you are feeling really adventurous, make yourself some home-made smokey BBQ sauce.  

There! Done deal! Meal for the weekend - checked. Gained some street cred with the female species - checked.