Cafe Maurice

We just arrived from Singapore and I would love to share the dishes I have tasted that were so uniquely Singapore! I am not exactly someone who would eat anything but I just had to try everything at least once. The pictures are still in my camera and I don’t have the strength to download everything right now but I will be sharing them with you soon – maybe next week! Today I need to finish work and look up some articles on ComeToBarter.com.

I got curious how to make this dish when I found out this was a healthy dish made of veggies!

The ingredients are easy to find too. Maybe I can give this a try one of these days:
Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini
1 (1.5 lb) bag of spinach
1 large onion
1 large or 2 small carrots
Sesame oil to taste
Olive oil for stir-frying
Sea salt to taste
2 cups of rice, cooked
1 egg for each person
Go-chu-jang (Korean hot chili paste)

Special Equipment Required:

Large steamer
Medium-sized hand-held strainer
Metal tongs
Mandoline (If you don’t have a mandoline you can just do a lot of chopping with a knife.)

You can read all the instructions here.

You might run across a blog that at first looks like it’s just another recipe posting or restaurant review site. A closer look, however, will reveal that it’s more than that. It also deals with food preparation and presentation, as well as fine dining and other food-related topics.

For example, you may be able to read about such customs as eating lechon. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, lechon is a roasted or deep-fried suckling pig. This dish is very popular in the Philippines, as well as other countries such as Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other countries that have a strong Spanish influence or ethnic base. Perhaps foodily.com has a recipe for lechon?

When roasted, the suckling pig is left whole and wrapped in special paper. Upon completion of cooking, the paper is peeled away, and the suckling pig, still retaining his original shape and features, including eyes, nose, mouth, and maybe even little piggy tail, is placed on the table. Sometimes, an apple is placed into its mouth before cooking for a decorative touch and added flavor.

It may be a little unnerving at first to see a whole suckling pig lying on the table, ready to be eaten, but this is part of what makes dining fun. This dish is often served in fine dining establishments in the countries where it is most popular, and its presentation is a very large part of the dining experience.

This is part of the excitement of visiting other places, and they don’t necessarily have to be in foreign countries. Some ethnic restaurants in the United States, especially in neighborhoods where many people of the same ethnic origin live, still practice specific food presentation that reflect their culture or even family traditions.

I love to experiment and try out different cuisines once in a while. I pretty much eat anything so you wont have trouble pleasing me. But let me eat something sweet (Im a dessert lover) and you will please me more . Ever since my obsession with Korean soap dramas started, I became curious to Korean food. Korean soaps involve a lot of scenes where talking takes place when they are eating and I got curious with all the food they eat sometimes. I just know Korean kimchi and that’s it! I would love to try out an authentic Korean restaurant here in our area but the problem is, Koreans (most of them anyways) speak very little English. And well, I speak nada Korean that I would need a language translator to understand what they are saying. Too bad there arent any subtitles in real life, eh? Here are some foods Id like to try:

For Appetizers:
Hae-mool Pajun, Gogi Wan-ja Jun, Kimchi Jun, Dal-gyal Mal-e, Kimbap/Gimbap

For Main Dish Recipes:
Ddok Kalbee, Kimchi Chigae, Soondubu, Kalbi Jjim, Dwaeji-dwen-jang, Sam-gyae-tang, Nuhbi-Ani Gu-e, Dwaeji-Bulgogi, Dak bulgogi, Dak Kang-jung

They are quite a handful to pronounce huh?