Lunch at Kazokutei at Bishan Junction 8

This restaurant specialises in Udon and according to their website is a well known chain of Udon restaurant in Osaka and I must say their udon is pretty good. Most of the time they will have some lunch time promotions which is value for money.

Today with some friends, we ordered the following:

Pork Kimchi Nabeyaki Lunch Set for $13.90. Add $1.80 for a drink. It doesn't look anything like the menu, but luckily it was very tasty. Despite the lack of redness in the soup usually associated with Kimchi soup, you can definitely taste the kimchi subtly which I quite liked. The soup was rich in flavour and was generous in ingredients. So a thumbs up from me! 

A bit misleading no? Thought this is how Nabeyaki is supposed to be served, instead we had ours in a hot stone bowl with everything already added inside.

Salmon Wapa Gohan Set with drink ($14.90). None of us was really too sure what Wapa Gohan meant (is it like Oppa Gangnam Style? :p ) From the picture it looked a bit like oyakodon with chopped up salmon bits in it, which is basically what it was. It was served in a steamer basket which I thought was quite cute and came with a side of mixed tempura and miso soup.

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (Recipe)

These cookies in my opinion taste a bit like Subway cookies, soft and slightly chewy. I do prefer the chewy type of cookie, but I think I prefer one that is slightly crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle.

But these cookies are incredibly easy to make and would probably be great as an ice cream sandwich! I used a recipe from my Martha Stewart's Cookies book and only had to tweak the amount of salt put in the batter. The original recipe mentions 1 tspn of coarse salt, but this is too salty for my taste...though I'm not sure if it's because I had used fine salt rather than coarse salt hence it became overly salty. Anyway next time I make it I will just use 1/2 tspn of salt instead. Hmm...I also just had a realisation that I may have used salted butter, so maybe hence the noticeable salty taste...oops.

On a side note, this is a pretty great book for your baking collection. Worth the buy.

Lots of pretty cookies in the book, pun not intended :p Nobody wants to see her 'cookies' do they?! LOL!

2 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature (tip: if you are making cookies on the spur of the moment and your butter is rock hard from the fridge, just stick it in a bowl in the microwave for 15seconds on high. You don't want it to totally melt, but just soften).
1/2 cup granulated sugar (I think more specifically this should be fine grain sugar too, like caster sugar. Because I tried using raw sugar to top up my brown sugar since I had run out and the result was I could taste the raw sugar and was annoyed at the extra crunch of the sugar in my cookie)
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 tspn coarse salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips (2 cups to me seemed quite a lot, so go with your preference, I think 1.5 cups is plenty)

Preheat oven to 175C. Whisk together flour and baking soda in a bowl.
Put butter and sugars in a bowl and use an electric mixer to mix until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
Reduce speed to low, add salt, vanilla and eggs. Then once blended, mix in flour mixture. I'm assuming they had meant use the mixer, but because my electric handheld mixer only comes with a whisking attachment, not a paddle attachment, it was very hard to mix the dry and wet mixture together. Might be easier to use a spatula or something. Then stir in the chocolate chips.
Once it's all mixed in, line a baking pan with baking paper and drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto it. They do spread quite a bit, so either don't heap too much batter or make sure there's adequate space between cookies. I love the size of subway cookies and that was what I was aiming for.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, depending on the thickness of your cookies. Thicker and bigger cookies need longer baking time. Keep an eye on the cookies, they do cook and brown quite fast. You can rotate them halfway and if you have multiple pans cooking at the same time, you can rotate them, top to bottom.

The first pan I made was nice and flat, I heaped one ice cream scoop size onto the tray and they really expanded. My 30x40cm tray only fit 9 of them.Hubby said these were too soft. He preferred the ones below that I cooked a bit longer and was firmer. 

How do they look so even you might ask? Well I baked them on my Wilton whoopie pie pan. First time using them and I didn't know how much to fill them, and looks like I overfilled them a little. They rose quite high so was a bit thick...like a whoopie pie you might say :p I cooked these for 12mins at first, but they were still too soft, so after I took them out of the pan I put them on my other baking tray and cooked them for a further 2 mins, so in total I guess about 14mins.

This is the big flat ones, see how soft they are, when you hold it with one hand, it's literally flexible. But still delish to eat :)

Jollibee Singapore

Have you tried Jollibee? From my understanding it's immensely popular in the Philippines and now it's on our shores I can see it's still immensely popular with the Filipino community! I guess it helps that it's also situated on Level 6 of Lucky Plaza on Orchard, the unofficial Little Philippine of Singapore. It's so popular that they actually have staff doing crowd control! And the empty shop next door is converted into a queue area! Unlike most fast food restaurants here, the whole shop is covered in glass windows, and there's only 1 door for entrance and another door at the side for exits. You are only meant to get a seat after you've bought your food. My question is, what happens if you queue up and get your food and find there's no available seats? And I'm not sure how it works with your accompanying friends and family, do they follow you in only after you've got your food?

It's a pretty big shop.

Heard this kind of queue is pretty much what it's like everyday.

Take away Spaghetti in a box.

The spaghetti is a bit sweeter than what I'm used to.

The fried chicken is what they're famous for. KFC Singapore take note, how come you still haven't decided to serve steamed rice with your chicken sets?? Anyway, the chicken is all it's cracked up to be, it was moist, tasty and finger licking good. (I'm salivating as I'm typing this).

Given how popular they are (and I think not just with the Filipino community) I wonder when they will open another outlet. And why haven't they?

Just as I was writing this I decided to see if Jollibee Singapore had a FB page, and indeed they do and seems now they've opened up another outlet, at Lucky Plaza Foodcourt. Interesting....maybe they're not confident yet to move out of Lucky Plaza. Will be interesting to see where their next few outlets will be.

Eat Street Markets

"Eat Street Markets is the Brisbane foodies destination for international street food. Situated on Hamilton Wharf next to Portside at trendy Northshore" - http://www.eatstreetmarkets.com/

This sign says it all!

Even before my trip back to Brisbane I had heard about this new place. Anything related to food my ears instantly perk up. 

There is an entrance fee of $2 per adult and kids below 12 are free. Was a bit surprised there was an entrance fee, but I guess I had forgotten that it's common with markets that I had been to in Brisbane where you are required to pay an entrance fee. 

I've really missed these kinds of markets since they're not common in Singapore, perhaps because space constraints and I'm not talking about the usual Pasar Malam kind of markets. There was so much food stalls there I couldn't decide where to eat. The only problem is the food is quite costly for someone coming from Singapore, you could easily blow $100 for two people on food in just one night. And there was just so much variety, that you wish you could try everything in one go. 

Plenty of seats to sit and relax.

Potato Slinkys was one of the most popular stall there, there was always a queue. 

"It's like chips on a stick!" Yeah it was. But pretty pricey at $5 a stick...but of course the kids had to have one. It's nothing new in Singapore or Malaysia as they've been sold here for a long time. But somehow the way it was sold at Eat Street Markets made them more delicious....maybe ambience is the secret ingredient :)

Loved these glowing buckets! Great for parties. 

Another popular snack at Eat Street Markets is the Cronut. I had heard greta things about this pastry. A Cronut is basically a cross between a Croissant and Donut. I've never had it in Singapore so I was curious to see how it tastes...and I was a bit underwhelmed. I guess I was expecting to take a bite and have that big eyes look with a long drawn out mmmmmm sound coming out from my mouth. I guess maybe I'm just not a fan of eating cold pastry. But they were very pretty though and I could see why they'd be popular.

Yup $7 a pop....bit pricey don't ya think?

Pistachio in all its glory. Looked good enough to eat :)

Near the Cronut stall there is a Churros seller, which might have been nicer than the cronut. 

There's a lookout point just beside the Cronuts store, great vantage point.

Many more stalls to try, maybe next time when we go back again. 

Soto Betawi (Recipe)

This is a great traditional Indonesian beef soup that my Mum loves to make. It's always daunted me because with Indonesian food there's always a ton of spices to put in and honestly I'm just too lazy. But when I was in Brisbane, my sister in law made it and she said it was so easy and you don't need a lot of ingredients. So I searched the net for recipes and compared a few to see the similarities. I settled on this one and found it to be delicous! Now I can have Soto anytime I want :) No need to wait for Mama!

Tips: Find meat with a lot of sinew in it as it will make the tastiest meat in the soup. If you like in Singapore, you can find cheaper cuts of beef in the frozen meat section. You can also find tendon in the same section. If you choose to cook tendon, don't fret if you can't cut it with a knife...or anything else in your kitchen for that matter, because you're actually supposed to cut it after it's cooked, ie. after it become gelatinous. I also used a slow cooker for my soup, turned it on overnight and was ready for lunch the next day. Just remember not to cut your meat too small if you're using the slow cooker as it breaks down a lot and put the heat on low, not high. I cooked all the meat with the spices in the slow cooker, then when it was ready the next day I added the coconut milk and evaporated milk (instead of fresh milk so it was richer).