Category: food fascination

I had some chicken in the fridge. Initially, I wanted to make some Ayam Penyet or Ayam Masak Merah. But in the end, I decided to make Chicken Noodle Soup instead after watching it on foodwishes.

The broth looks very jelly like after being in the fridge overnight

I have to admit that it was really troublesome to make. About 10 mins pre, 45 minutes roasting, 3 hours simmering … JUST for the broth. And then about another 20 minutes or so to make the chicken noodle soup proper. I was almost regretting it. I mean, if I were really sick, I’d collapse from waiting to eat this.

But after all that hassle and giving it a taste …

It was really really satisfyingly good. The best that I could describe it is that it tasted like the most flavourful chicken soup that you could make from a buillion but much more intense. And the fact that it’s made from scratch means that it has all the nutritional goodness without the chemical additives.

Very very nice … MmmMMmmMMmMmmm!!!

And I still have about 3 portions of  broth waiting for me in the fridge! Hehehe!

Watch how to make the broth :

And then how to make the Chicken Noodle Soup :

Sidenote : In the first part where Chef John throws away the solid parts from the broth … I know it seems kind of wasteful, but throw it away! The meat is completely bleargh after all the flavours has been absorbed in the water. Laws of osmosis I suppose.

When you go to bars in Italy, you can be sure to find loads of tramezzini.

Picture by Alice.tv

Tramezzini are basically sandwiches made of white bread with the crusts removed, filled with any type of filling, and sliced into triangles. And these are popular as they are cheap and can be filling.

But Cart and I have yet to eat one served in bars though. This is because tramezzini breads are known here to contain strutto or lard – an ingredient that we don’t consume because of our life choices.

And since living here, we’ve been very attentive in reading ingredient labels for all our food stuff. Which boggles my mind as sandwich bread is something that I took for granted in Singapore – there were so many kinds to choose from. And since everyone eats this and that bread, I suppose my guard was down and I didn’t have to worry about the ingredients. Just pick one and go.

Cute van I spotted back in 2007

Of course, we could have used regular breads from panetterie or bakeries, as they only use flour and yeast. But they tend to be chewier, and not such a great substitute.

For a couple of years, looking vigorously at the ingredients and always feeling crestfallen after that … (I was almost giving up hope) you can’t imagine how delighted Cart and I were when we recently discovered this :

No strutto! Not even treated with alcohol! OOOOH! What a find! We bought like 3 packs at a go!

So all through last weekend, we’ve been stuffing our faces with tramezzini of all the kinds that we could think of. And it was good. We were so deliriously happy with our simple joy …

I end this post with an Italian movie that I thought was hillarious. Try to skip to the 1 min spot.

Sandwich al burro? Sandwich al prosciutto? Sandwich allo stracchino? Perfetto.

Oh boy, I’ll go crazy myself with an anal-retentive husband like this!

Cart and I were invited for the opening of a restaurant called “Il Bavaglino” last weekend.

Located in Via Ruggero di Lauria, it is within walking distance to the Vatican museum and also the Cipro metro station which is on my way home from work. So I could have this while driving home at the end of the day! Hehehe.

By the way, the name bavaglino means bib, like what kids use on their chest while eating. It sounds very cute. Nevertheless, its a classy and cosy looking restaurant. I really liked the beautiful tableware, and how every drinking glass was etched with the logo.

While I have to admit that while I do not have a very sophisticated palate, but my unrefined mouth could tell that food that we had was lovely. And here are what we had :

Antipasti :

Tonno scottato al finocchietto con riduzione di balsamico, fiore di zucca grigliato ripieno di spigola e zucchina romana con coulis di pomodoro

This is my tuna, lightly seared and it was so good paired up with the fennel and balsamic reduction. I would have never thought that the fresh fish and the cream would be so exquisite together.

There is also grilled zucchini flower stuffed with sea bass, which was a classy and upscale (and also healthier) version of my favourite “fior di zucca”

Cart, who is vegetarian, had cheese with vegetables inside, instead of tuna and there was ricotta cheese for the zucchini flower.

Primi :

Paccheri con seppie, fave e pecorino romano con mentuccia croccante

It’s typical to have pasta as a main course in Italy. And since it’s fava beans season, we had paccheri, which is a type of big and round pasta served with pecorino romano, a type of sharp cheese and cuttlefish with a touch of crunchy mint.

I almost expected the dish to be strong, but fortunately it wasn’t. The fava beans were small and sweet (older beans would taste more … grassy) and balanced the cheese well.

Trofie con vongole, asparagi e peperoni concasse al basilico

Trofie, one of my favourite kind of pasta (on account that it’s curly and cute) served with asparagus, peperoni and clams. It was so delicious! And I was sorry when it was all gone from my plate.

Secondi :

Calamaro ripieno con patate viola e fave, Raviolo di spada con caponatina

Second course would usually entail a meat based dish and we had squid stuffed with red potatoes and fava beans. For some reason, it reminds me kind of like eating sushi. The little package on the left is a sort of ravioli, but instead of pasta, it’s made of sword fish and stuffed with caponatina.

Cart’s vegetarian version was really good too.

Oh gosh, look at that parmigiana di melanzana! One of my favourite Italian things to eat! It looks so gorgeous and tasted so good, I was almost wishing that I had that instead. This was accompanied with a medley of seasonal vegetable tempura.

Dolci :

Gelato alla birra, carpaccio di ananas con gelato al riso venere

For desserts, we had gelato alla birra, which I could barely touch. While it didn’t contain any alcohol, I just don’t like strong, bitter tastes.

But I absolutely adore the black rice ice cream, which is amazingly not at all black in colour here. Served with a thin slice of pineapple, it was so light and delicately sweet, it was wonderful.

All in all, I had a very pleasant and lovely evening with good food, and good company in a beautiful place. It’s hard to ask for anything better 🙂

Il Bavaglino
Via Ruggero di Lauria 26/A – Roma

This post is probably gonna make a couple of food traditionalists eyes roll but oh well

Anyway, living in Rome for several years now, I found it interesting that there are recognizable fast food restaurants like Burger Kings and Subway and Macdougals here in Italy, but the strangest thing is that I’ve never seen a KFC branch in Rome before.

But discovered quite by chance by Claire, there is a new alternative in town though, called Kin’s Crunchy Chicken.

Founded by a Muslim man, there are branches in UK and Pakistan. And now most recently in Rome. Claire and I went to the branch in Via Carlo Alberto which is right next to the Vittorio Emanuele metro.

The place seemed so new that even the sign wasn’t revealed yet when we arrived there for the first time!

And look! Everything in there is halal food. Yay!

Coming in the place, there was a sense of familiarity. I have a lot of memories especially when growing in the old house in Singapore, Taman Jurong KFC was just 5 minutes walk from home so I spent quite a fair bit of time there.

Pardon the blurry picture, but see, everything looks pretty much the same, down to the display.

I had the 2 piece chicken and 3 spicy wings combo set with drink and fries. (You could change it to rice if you wanted) I don’t remember how much this costs. I think it was under 6 euro.

I quite liked the chicken. Like the namesake, it was crispy and hot. And it was fast to get. I got it immediately after ordering.  On the other hand, while the Spicy wings were yummy, they weren’t spicy enough for me. But then again, being in Italy, the level of spicyness is seems to always be toned down.

Don’t let the size fool you though, although the portion looked tiny, it was very filling! I could hardly move after I had my meal.

Claire on the other hand, had a chicken fillet burger. This took a while to be cooked as burgers are prepared on order.

This was pretty intriguing to me as it had a hash-brown in it! Does the combination taste really good this way? Claire seems to think so!

I’ll try to remember to do this the next time I make a bur-gher!

The second time that we went there, Claire tried the combo meal that I had the first time while I decided to go for the grilled chicken burger. This one I liked a lot! I think that they put in black pepper sauce inside and with the mayo and the grilled chicken combination, it was oh so good! Fattening, but I really didn’t care.

Next time, I want to get the double grilled chicken burger!

Oh, another thing I wanted to mention before I forget, Claire and I were playing the “Count how many Italians are in this restaurant” game while we were there. Not surprisingly, there weren’t that much Italian (or Italian looking people) there. Also the fact that the restaurant was situated in Vittorio Emanuele / Termini, where there are a lot of foreigners.

Nevertheless, to me, eating there was a good experience and we’d definitely go there again when we are hankering for fried chicken!

Oh! But just one thing. Though the restaurant is clean, be careful of their toilet.

Monsters seem to lurk there …

Remember when I spotted frozen sushi at the supermarket?

The supermarket that we normally go to happened to have an offer on this particular brand and while I had no intention of buying it, thanks to DK’s suggestion, I’m going to give it a try.

From the instructions on the box, although you could put it in the microwave oven, I thought that was a tad too blasphemous, so I chose to defrost it in the fridge in the evening before. Amazingly, it was still rather hard after I checked it next afternoon, so I let it go till the evening.

The types of sushi in the pack are as follows : 2 sweet egg maki, 2 prawn maki, 2 imitation crab maki, 2 california roll, 2 prawn nigiri, 1 abalone nigiri and 1 salmon nigiri.

And this is how it looked like when I took it out of the box :

It looks so … empty of life.

But I’m a pretty easy going person, so it’s not so much about how it looked like and but more about how it tastes. I can look past the faded, dull colours, so I was still willing to give it a try.

But eating it, the whole experience just tastes unnatural to me.

The rice especially, has this strange, dry, crumbly texture instead of the soft, fluffy rice that one is used to. It was kind of like eating edible styrofoam. You know how when you put a slice of apple in the freezer and when you take it out to defrost, the texture has completely changed. It was kind of like that for me when I tasted the rice.

Flat top sushi

The seafood itself, while not completely horrible, it tasted old and it wasn’t anything that I would want to eat again. It was really dry, and no amount of soy sauce can rehydrate it again.

To put a long story short, my advice to all who is thinking of buying frozen sushi … Don’t. Even if I am a sushi monster and haven’t eaten sushi for months and months, and don’t have any other means. I’d rather wait than eat this.

Something I saw in the supermarket recently and I thought that it’s a leetle bit blasphemous.

Frozen sushi.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the whole philosophy of sushi is about the freshness of the seafood, so that one can savour a small piece of the sea when they eat it.

Instead, you’d have to defrost this in the microwave oven … *gasps* And it’s not even cheap at 8 euro for 12 sushi!

First, it was frozen durian, now frozen sushi … what else?

It’s not often that I get to eat fresh fish at home as it’s quite expensive. But it so happened that there was an offer on Orata, one of my favourite type fish in Italy, last weekend. And I got a piece.

At 6.50 euro, it’s still not cheap, but it’s a once in a while treat. Moreoever, cooking it yourself is definitely cheaper than in restaurants and it’s not that difficult to do.

The hardest part is probably gutting and cleaning a fish, but luckily, most of the work was already done for me at the counter.

All that I had to do was to cut away the fins on top, the side and the bottom and scrape away any scales that was still there.

Nice clean fish!

Dry it with a paper towel, then sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper and cover it with  some slices of lemon on the outside.

And in the inside where the gills used to be, sprinkle some salt and pepper and stuff with some garlic and parsley.

Wrap in an aluminium foil on top of a bed of potatoes (already mixed with olive oil, salt and rosemary) and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes at 220 degrees Celsius.

The fish will be cooked in it’s own liquid mixed with the lovely ingredients that you’ve added. And when it’s done, the most amazing smell wafts out as you open the foil.

Using a fork to pierce through the flesh, the fish is wonderfully tender and moist. I just couldn’t wait to eat this!

And I did. And it was so delicious and I ate with gusto! (Hence the lack of pictures) All that’s rest are bones.

Le sigh! I wish I could just share with you a taste. It might sound extremely simple, but trust me, it was very very good!

Last weekend, Cart and I were in heaven …

Or at least touched a piece of heaven, also known as the chocolate festival. This event was held in the ippodromo delle capannelle (nothing to do with Hippos) where horse races were held.

We didn’t get to see any horse races, but we did get to see cute fuzzy ponies which was meant for kids to ride on. They are really so very cuddly! I loved stroking them. It was like hugging a toy!

In any case, there were quite a number of things to be seen, non chocolate related ones like stalls selling acessories, clothes, toys … limousines! There was even a stand promoting line dancing.

Candied apples …

And also something that I didn’t care about. These people has been stuffing their flyers (like 10 at a go!) in our mail box. Even if I was the least bit interested with Scientology (which I am not) hard selling like this just turns me off.

Anyway! (changes topic) Fun fact!

While we know that Brazil and Africa are the main producers for cocoa, did you know that Indonesia contributes to 15% and Malaysia 1%? I didn’t know that! I’ve always assumed that the main export was palm for Malaysia.

There was also a working display. I’m not too sure what the function of the machine below.

But this one in particular warms and mixes the chocolate to make it ready to be filled in the moulds.

Such as this chocolate spoon one. I also saw another mould all filled with chocolate and wrapped with a clingwrap, sitting while getting ready for it to set and harden.

And the end product would be cool shapes such as this one.

Ring ring!

Anyway as we were walking around the chocolate stands, there were interesting things to be seen. I literally hyperventillated and squealed and gasped, probably a little too loudly at every stall.

There were so many different types.

Like this chocolate kebab. Have you ever heard of a chocolate kebab before?

It’s made of three different chocolate “meat” out of white, milk and dark chocolate which will be grinded and then served in a sort of crepe “bread” and drizzled with nutella sauce.

And here are pastries all filled up with chocolate. Looks so good!

Crepes with chocolate sauce … Mmm!

There was even a booth where they sell a full meal such as appetizers, first course and second courses which was the main reason why I wanted to go to this fair.

Unfortunately, we had to wait for at least two hours for this, and in the end, we gave up. But doesn’t pasta with cocoa, chilli with rabbit meat in tomato sauce and wood berry sauce sound interesting?

(Actually, looking back in the menu, I don’t think I could eat anything here since almost everything contains meat and I don’t like gorgonzola)

For me though, the highlight of the chocolate fair was in seeing the different types of chocolate shapes. This one below says, “In sweetness I believe.”

Chocolate in bunnies and cow shapes in front which I’m not sure if you could see them properly. Anyone know how I could reduce the glass glare effect when I take a picture by the way?

And some of the displays, I had to take a double look because they looked so realistic!

The coal-iron for example, it looked real! Like a rusty old one that my mum used for ironing her clothes when she was really young.

And the hammers and the spanners and these keys below. It looked so realistic, more like a rusty tool rather than chocolate. Genius work!

There were also other shapes such as these roses, computer mouse, pens and toothbrushes. I got a toothbrush because I thought the idea of brushing my teeth with a chocolate toothbrush is funny.

As Halloween was coming soon, there were quite a number of spooky related shapes such as these skeleton in coffin ones.

And it’s probably a little too early, but there were a number of Christmas related ones too. Not sure if you could see from the plastic glare, but there is a cornucopia, Christmas trees and snowmen.

One of my favourite ones would have to be these shoe shaped ones. Chocolate AND shoes! Which woman wouldn’t love this! I looked longingly at Cart to get them for me and even told him, “If you love me, you’ll get me one”

He just laughed and said no. Boo!

Check out how busy these chocolate sellers are. I bet they are having a booming business from this event! Makes me kind of keen to learn the art of chocolate too. Like in chocolat and meet a piraty Johnny Depp

The only problem is that being surrounded with chocolates, and seeing chocolates every day, one can get sick of them very easily. My sweetness tolerance isn’t very high.

Oh! Before I forget, we also saw these chocolates. I thought that these could be a nice gift to someone. Each of  these chocolates are for sale at 1 euro per letter.

Lets say Cart + Rinaz for example would make 10 euro. But if we both used our full real names, it could easily go to 38 euro … quite pricey … not to mention if someone claims their love for this place in New Zealand

I also spotted out a chocolate fountain where the sellers sold dipped spiedini (basically fruit skewers) Didn’t get a chance to see how much it costs though.

But I’m over it, because for us in Singapore, we even have them at home! I think we should buy a set when we get back to Singapore, so that we could invite friends over for a chocolaty fun treat! Heheheh!

There was also this chocolate banana cake which I was sorely tempted to try (didn’t get in the end, because a slice is just too much for me)

A couple of the high end chocolates.

All of these chocolates shown in the pictures are handmade by the way, in fact the only booth that sold commercial chocolate was from Perugina.

And I saved the best for last. Handmade cremino. Probably my kryptonite. It was so good! Made of hazelnuts, almonds and cocoa butter, it tasted even better compared to the commercial one I tried before.

In my opinion, if you’ve never tried one before, you’ve never really lived. It’s the creamiest, most tasty and delightful thing that can be made out of chocolate. The one on the left is the classic while the one on the right is pistacchio. There are also other variants.

But it’s also thickening to the throat, so eating one is actually enough at one sitting. It’s also quite fattening too, unfortunately … *so sad*

Cart also got this candied tangarine covered with chocolate. It was super sinful and sweet for me, that I couldn’t take more than a bite. See why I can’t work at a chocolate factory?

To end this post, I thought I’d share a picture of this cat we found at the chocolate fair. She’s a timid little cat, but came over quickly when I handed her some treats.

She also has an overactive saliva gland. When she was done eating, my hand was all wet. Bleh! Nevertheless, doesn’t she have an intelligent look? All that’s missing is a pair of glasses.

I would totally kidnap (or catnap?) her home.