provincial food

before i go on to describe how life is good to me, let me first......

clarify that i am not plugging LOCK & LOCK products no matter how partial i am to all things korean.

cannot resist adding the above to this post cos it's one of my pet peeves that people do not remove stickers on the products they are using.

(i know for a fact that this water bottle is at least  6 months old).

just like i cannot stand price and size stickers left on back of shoes...

or price tags on potted plants, even books.

call me a sticker-hater, sticker-destroyer, stickler for no-sticker, if you must  but nothing gets my goat more than a worn out sticker on something still in use.

i know what you are thinking - go get a life!

actually, i do have one and a pretty good one too, haha... ^0^

like last sunday, i felt like teriyaki chicken don. didn't feel like going out to eat so cooked my own.  

had this recipe cut out from a japanese newsletter yonks ago but didn't have the time to try it out.

it called for chicken fillet to be marinaded in sake, ginger juice and soy sauce for at least two hours.

chicken is then grilled in a shallow pan with a little oil, and then sake. finally, teriyaki sauce comprising mirin, sugar and soy sauce is poured slowly over the cooked fillet.

to be honest, i burnt the first piece of chicken. realised fire was a little too big so sugar in sauce caramelised too quickly. lucky there were two other pieces so those turned out all right.

later that evening, we had a really nice meal at pu tien restaurant(tampines mall branch).

pu tien specialises in heng hwa cuisine. the ongs are heng hwas, their forefathers having coming from putien county in fujian province in china.

we are not very familiar with many of the putien dishes so don't know if the restaurant serves authentic heng hwa food.

but if we are to believe the papers' food critics, it's the real McCoy.

anyway, we have always enjoyed the food even if it meant having to brave traffic to kitchener road where the main restaurant is.

luckily, it opened a branch at tampines mall some months back. 

yeah, so convenient.

and you know what? the consistency is there! food here is just as good. apart from our favourites, we also tried new dishes.

like this drunken cockles.

it was the best thing we have ever tasted for a while. the cockles were juicy and boiled just right. no bloody mess if you know what i mean. the simple sauce of chopped garlic and sliced chillies in vinegar and soy sauce was just the right stuff.

i wasn't too perturbed about contracting hepatitis B than i was about the smell of garlic on my tongue that lingered until the day after.

but it was worth it.

our fave. 

sliced ice cold bitter gourd served on a bed of ice and eaten with honey. 

crunchy, refreshing and bitter-sweet, thanks to the runny honey.

another of their signature dish - sweet and sour pork with lychee.

taste a lot more superior than the zi char type. what stands out is the sweetness from the lychee. i cannot figure out if its just the juice or pureed lychee in the pork but whatever it is, this dish is nice.

doesn't look like much but this heng hwa lor mee is one of their must-eats. the broth, though thick, is not gooey like the singapore type. 

while oz prefers the lor mee, this heng hwa beehoon is my fave.

heng hwa beehoon is the very fine kind which needs no soaking. m-i-law used to cook it quite often until a few years ago. now, i am glad i am able to find it here. there are other ingredients like clams, veg, tau pok,  roasted peanuts and fried seaweed, all adding crunch and texture to the melt-in-the-mouth beehoon.

told you life is good.  :-)