Wild Child Urban City

Knowing that my cousin and her family were coming from New York to visit, I wanted to bake something for her to welcome her arrival. It had to be something to do with bread, since I was not ready to venture into cookie and cake territory. It had to be better than plain wholemeal bread... something sweet, nice to have with a cup of milky tea or coffee. After Googling around a bit for ideas, I decided on a cinnamon sugar pull-apart loaf: sweet, aromatic, warm, comforting.

I am pleased to present the results of my second attempt at a 100% wholemeal loaf. As you may know, my first attempt was with PrimaFlour's wholemeal flour, which is coarsely ground. Coarsely ground flour prevents dough from rising much, because it cuts through the gluten strands. This resulted in the crumb of wholemeal loaf #1 being very dense - good for people who like hearty nutty bread, but bad for people who like soft bread.

Ayam Penyet Ria is one of the most popular ayam penyet cafes in Lucky Plaza. They have cafes on two floors in the building, and another nearby at Far East Plaza. We were lucky that we had our weekday dinner there early at around 6pm, because the entire cafe was soon filled.

We have many good memories of Delifrance because twenty years back, it was pretty much the only western sandwich and pastry place in Singapore, and therefore the place to get sandwiches and pastries. My mother, sister and I loved all of their sandwiches - chicken, tuna and egg - and regularly ate many of their pastries as well.

Recently, my father's friend invited us to dinner at Mong Hing Teochew Resturant. According to Mong Hing's website, it started rolling in the 1950s "at Singapore river side's new market". My father's friend was a child then, and was friends with the restaurant's chef, his family and the restaurant workers. They called him "fat boy" in dialect, and still recognise him today.

Some people had emailed me saying that they wanted to write comments but there was no comments box. After a bit of investigation I found out that there was a separate checkbox in Blogger to enable comments for each post, which I had not checked (oops!). Anyway, I have fixed it so that every post can be commented on now!

 Fried black pomfret topped with sambal chilli.

Unsatisfied with my sup tulang experience from Newton, I decided to try the tulang from Adam Road. For $6, I received five bones with much more meat on them than the almost meatless bones from Newton - compare the pictures and it is pretty obvious. With a bit of knocking on the bowl, each bone yielded a sliver of slippery marrow.

Snack: Kale with coconut oil and sambal chilli

If you are addicted to spicy food, the sambal chilli from Coriander Cafe should satisfy your cravings. I am a chilli padi eater, and this sambal chilli is really spicy. We have found it a tasty condiment with home cooking, and have also used it to fry fish in.

My mother is a creature of habit and must, every morning, have a slice of bread. As such, the next best thing I can do is to bake some delicious wholemeal bread that is at least in some way healthier than the quick-rise mass produced bread sold in supermarkets.

$1.50 for original and almond flavours; $2.50 for strawberry, durian and mango.

In the spirit of beancurd pudding sampling, yesterday night my father brought home two tubs of almond tau hway from 51 Soya Bean for me to try.

Throughout my life I had rarely gone into Lucky Plaza. There were no reasons to go there - no shopping, nothing to see and no good food (or so I thought). So when my cousin told me that there was good ayam penyet there and suggested that we go there for dinner, I stepped into the building for perhaps the fourth time in my life, and the number of little Indonesian restaurants serving ayam penyet was surprising.