Italian Seafood Restaurant will Bang Heads with the Giants

There’s a new player in town, specifically in the East Coast Seafood Center where the giants and the pioneers of seafood cuisine are based. This Italian restaurant is called Pizitalia; they offer Italian dishes and sea foods in one roof and get this, they’re selling Italian Chili crabs. Yes, you read it right Italian chili crab. The famous Singapore chili crab given a new name – the question is this, is it worthy of the name. Will it be any different fro the other chili crabs especially the big guns and more established restaurants of seafood row (No Signboard, Jumbo and Palm Beach). A friend told me that they had a soft opening last December 24th if I remember correct and the official launch will be this January 12th.

First things first – Italian chili crab. Singapore chili crab is the original and it’s good and can stand by itself. I don’t have to state the obvious. Will there be any twist on this so called Italian chili crab? Maybe some Italian spice added or cheese maybe? I don’t know. The tomato sauce is the Italian connection since the 50’s but I will reserve my judgment until I have tasted this dish.

I checked their website (http://www.pizitalia.sg) to check on the menu, it’s divided between seafood and Italian dishes and the first thing you’ll notice is the banner “ITALIAN CHILI CRAB?”

Under seafood – there’s crab, lobster, prawns, fish, vegetables, buns and other dishes. For Italian - starters, soups, salads, pizza, pasta and desserts. I was expecting to get the whole menu available at their website but I think it’s just in the initial phase so I will give it some time. I still two weeks to get a taste of this restaurant and I hope it doesn’t disappoint and they deliver the goods. Pizitalia has to keep in mind that the big 3 is its competition. Anyway, Italian chili crab and seafood marinara doesn’t sound bad.

Kim’s Place Seafood Restaurant

If you have been living in Singapore long enough or a local, you would have surely heard of the cook donning a white long sleeved and Rolex whipping a mean fried hokkien mee. He’s Mr. Kim, the proprietor of Kim’s Place and the one responsible for one of the best prawn hokkien mee in Singapore. Mr.kim has setup several stalls for years now and the quality of the food is still the same.

I took my family for dinner yesterday. It’s my mother’s birthday and I thought of dining out with the family. Kim’s is one of my mom’s favorite restaurants so this is the default choice. We had prawn hokkien mee and XO oyster hokkien mee. Kim’s hokkien is not too wet or to dry and definitely one of the best. It was served with sambal chili and fried pork lard that we can mix with the mee. Sambal chili is not too spicy and it complimented the dish just right. The broccoli with prawns is average, it would have been better if there’s more oyster sauce in it. The black pepper crab is very good. It was served in a pot. The dish has a buttery taste to it making it more delicious. Butter and pepper never tasted so good. The chili crab is as delicious as the pepper crab but I still prefer the chili crabs from Roland’s. The sambal kangkong, stir fried asparagus with scallops are all decent.

43 Joo Chiat Place (Junction of Tembeling Road)
Tel : +65 67421119
Singapore

Karu’s Banana Leaf Fish Head Curry

A friend told me that there’s this restaurant that serve’s the best fish head curry in Singapore. My friend told me we have to travel across the island to go to Karu’s Indian Banana Leaf Restaurant to sample the dish. Off we go in his car to have the delectable dish. I hope it’s worth the travel. We’ve arrived after a few hours, there were little traffic and the good thing about it, the traffic made us hungrier. The place looks pleasantly simple at the outside. The blue and green signage inviting customer’s to dine in.

Luckily we’re seated comfortably and already made the orders before people came rushing in for lunch. The fish head curry looks delicious in its brown/orange gravy and the smell of the herbs and spices makes us want to grab the head and eat with abandon hehehe. Now there are 2 version of fish head curry in Singapore – The Chinese version and the Indian version. The Indian version is way spicier than the latter and the fish head I s cooked in a pot of spices. Surprisingly the fish head curry is not spicy, balanced and well rounded dish. Really delicious. The chicken masala is also well balanced. It’s not too oily and the masala was completely absorbed by the chicken. Flavorful, flaky and nice. Other Indian restaurants makes it to hot for comfort, some of it are like incendiary pieces of food.

I ate with my hands; I only used the spoon for the fish head curry. It doesn’t matter if my fingers turned orange, as long as I’m enjoying the food in this place. Orange tinged fingers will not kill me. The biryani rice and the papadams are good curry accompaniments. We had the masala tea to wash down the curry goodness of the fish and chiken masala.

I had another order of chicken masala and fish head curry to take home. Chicken masala taste even better if you re-heat it after a day or two. Have it with garlic fried rice and your all set. The fish head is worth the effort. I love this place.

KL Hokkien Mee

A friend has invited me to eat with her at this Kopitiam in Geylang called Kong Kee Seafood. My friend told me that this kopitiam offers Kuala Lumpur style Hokkien Mee. The place is not very hard to find, you’ll just have to look for the colorful sign with colorful food photos above the sided entry. My friend said the hokkien mee in this place is quite different form the regular Singapore fare. There are two varieties of hokkien mee – the regular hokkien mee and the other is hokkien mee with freshwater prawns or “ulang”. The difference from the Singapore version is the bigger noodles and deeper and distinct flavor. Instead of using yellow egg noodles, KL hokkien mee uses tai loke noodles which is more smoother, with a dense, slippery texture and a nice bite to it. the proprietr said that these noodles are bought directly from Kuala Lumpur. The stock is made from chicken, pork, and flatfish and simmered slowly for about 4-5 hours making the sauce thick and rich. The noodles are cooked in the sauce making it more plump and sumptuous. The sauce sticks to the noodles, black and rich with deep soy sauce and spice taste. The prawn sits in the middle, big, fat and enticingly beautiful. It would have been better if the prawn was cooked with the sauce to give it a briny sweetness to it. The prawn was steamed but still, it tastes good. The one ingredient missing on the prawn hokkien mee is the deep fried lard. We’ve requested for it and a quick wok mix was made and it was generously sprinkled over the noodles. The crispy crunchiness of the lard and the soft and firm to the noodles are a combination in heaven. We also ordered deep fried grouper chunks. Its looks good, the golden chucks of fish sitting on a bed of rice sprinkled with chilies and flosses of herbs crowning the dish. The texture of the fish is firm to the bite and flaky at the same time and the herb coating makes the difference. There is a sesame aftertaste to it which gives it a toasty sweet flavor. All in all, the KL hokkien mee is good alternative to the regular Singapore fare.

Fried Fish Soup

There are different kinds of fish soup in Singapore, there are fresh fish used for stocks and main courses and there are also fried fish soups. There are 2 kinds of fried fish soups - the clear Teochew fish soup which uses fresh slices of fish and there’s the milky Cantonese version with fried fish fillets. Most people prefer the clear fish soup but I have to find out which better of the two varieties. Some people are skeptical of how the fried fish fillet will taste with a milk based broth. I have to find out myself.

Off I go to the Maxwell Food Center went in queue at Jin Hua Fried Fish Soup stall. This stall is known to have long lines during lunch. A bowl of milk fried fish bowl costs $4.00, same as the clear fried fish bowl. I made my order and went to another stall to have a plate of Zhi Char hofun. The soup is really delicious and colorful, big pieces of fish fillets compliment the sweetness of the milk with a hint of ginger. The saltiness of the fish goes well with the milky savory soup. The hofun is saucy and its fun to mix all the ingredients. I made sure all the ingredients, pechay, pork, squid, mushroom and fish is coated with the sauce. The thick hofun sauce and then a sip or slurp of the fried fish soup made my day. I had a wonderful lunch. 2 working class dishes at affordable prices, I love Singapore!

Shrimp Curry

Last time, we had the shrimp and crab in coconut milk. I hope you liked the recipe that I have posted. I’m into the spicy and curry dishes these past few days so I thought of having shrimp curry this time. As always, I woke up early to go to the wet market, bought about kilo/2 pounds of prawns and 1 cup of coconut milk. The other ingredients are already available at home. It’s best to buy fresh shrimps because it taste better and sweeter. You can buy coconut milk in cans but freshly pressed coconut milk gives a full flavor, plus there are no preservatives added to it so it’s much healthier.

Some of the greatest seafood curries originated along the south coast of India where shrimp, fish and other seafood are plentiful. I have my own version of shrimp curry but I like to try a different approach in cooking the dish. I found this recipe in the Internet, I tried this before and it was delicious. This is the south Indian style shrimp curry.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 10 fresh curry leaves (optional)
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2/3 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 tomato, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground red chili pepper
• 2 pounds large prawns - peeled and deveined
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• Chopped fresh cilantro to taste

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a wok or large saucepan over nearly high heat. Add the onions; cook and stir until browned. Mix in the curry leaves, then season with the ginger garlic paste, coriander and salt. Cook and stir for 1 minute.

2. Season with salt and turmeric, then mix in the tomato, chili powder, shrimp and water. Reduce the heat to medium-high and cook for 7 to 8 minutes, until shrimp are opaque. Taste and adjust salt and chili powder if necessary. Season with garam masala, stir and remove from the heat. Garnish with fresh cilantro and serve with flat bread or rice.

I like my shrimp curry with rice. It balances the spiciness of the dish and ice cold fresh lemonade. Enjoy.

Crab and Prawns

I woke up really early today, 5am to be exact. I’ve been thinking of cooking something spicy since yesterday. I thought of cooking mussels and prawns in coconut milk. I set my alarm and set off to Little India by 530am and went directly to the Tekka wet market. Most Singaporeans prefer to do their shopping in wet/dry markets because they will get the freshest and the cheapest buy compared to a supermarket. Almost everything you need for food is there. Most wet/dry markets close at noon but the Tekka market closes late in the afternoon so that’s a plus. Well the downside of going late in the afternoon is that you may not get the best pieces since most of them were already sold in the morning.

People are already doing their thing as soon as I arrived and its getting busier every minute. I went directly where the shellfish are sold. I bought a kilo of mussels and a ½ kilo of medium sized prawns. I was tempted to add a crab or 2 but I hesitated because I thought that there will be too much going on in the dish if I added crabs. I went to the dry section where vegetables are sold, I purchased a few batches (?) or heads (?) of bokchoi or pechay as we call it, 3 green chilis, 4 pieces of red chili, a head of garlic, 1 large white onion and about 4 cups of coconut milk. I spent a few more minutes in the market to browse and check if I needed to buy anything.  I bought 500 grams of pepper corns to replenish my stock and then went home after. 

I thoroughly cleaned the mussels removing some of the small barnacles remaining in the outer shell and rinsed it with old water and salt.

Procedure:

1.       Mince the garlic, chop the white onion, cut 3 green chilies and 4 red chilies into small pieces

2.       On a hot wok, put about 2-3 tbs of extra virgin olive oil

3.       Put the onions first until cooked and then followed by the garlic. I like lots of garlic so I minced the whole head of garlic. I want to have the sweet taste of garlic so I just rolled in it for about 40 seconds in the pan

4.       Put in the coconut milk (in my case, 4 cups) let boil for about 10-15 minutes in high fire while stirring and then put it on low to let it simmer until it has that thick oily consistency. You can put a little bit of sugar if you want to have that sweet and spicy taste to it.

5.       Put in the mussels and prawns and let it simmer for about 10 minutes to let juices infuse with the coconut milk. Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste followed the chopped chilies.  Give it a few stirs to prevent the coconut milk from burning and sticking.

6.       Lastly put the bokchoi and then cover the wok. Turn the fire off. The remaining heat will cook the mussels, prawns and bokchoi. This dish goes well with rice.