Pork Chop Rice Lost & Found

By chance I found the pork chop rice stall that I used to patron at Concourse. It had shifted to a food court at Brash Basah Complex.

For S$3.50, you can choose to have pork chop, chicken chop or fish fillet rice or noodle and come with a small bowl of seaweed soup. In order for the pork chop, chicken chop or fish fillet to be hot and crispy, the stall owner will only deep fried them after you place your order. Hence, you need to wait a while for your food.

My favourite is the fish fillet noodle. The fish fillets are cripsy at the outside and yet soft & juicy at the inside. The special chilli paste that go with the noodle is also great. I also like their preserved mustard vegetable, you can taste sweet, saltish and spicy at one go. As noodle don't come with the preserved mustard vegetable, you have to let them know in advance if you would like to change the side dish.

The picture below showed the pork chop rice and fish fillet noodle.

Claypot Rice @ Toa Payoh Lor 5

My favourite place for claypot rice is at Toa Payoh Lor 5 Hawker Centre. The claypot rice here is cooked using charcoal. They will only cook the rice after you order, so you can have special request if you want to. For me, I always asked for extra salted fish and green vegetables, but must pay extra also lah...hehe. Their main ingredient for the claypot rice are chicken, salted fish, chinese sauages and vegetables.

Once they served you the claypot rice, you are to add in dark soy sauce and cooking oil to the rice to your liking. Then have a good stir and mix the sauces with the rice and the ingredient. After that, you may enjoy your rice.

Other than the claypot rice, the pig stomach double-boiled soup here is also very good. The soup is tasty and peppery hot with quite a lot of pig stomach in it. Some people came here specially for this soup. I always asked for this soup to go with my claypot rice. If you don't like pig stomach, they also serve other soup like, lotus root with pork ribs, old cumcumber with pork ribs soup, etc.

Bak Kut Teh or Pork Ribs Soup

Bak Kut Teh (in Hokkien) or 肉骨茶, if direct translation means pork ribs tea. But you will never find tea in making the pork rib soup. As the soup is made mainly with pork ribs, it could be quite oily due to the fats. So chinese tea is usually taken together with the soup to cleanse off the oil.

Bak Kut Teh is considered a signature dish in both Singapore and Malaysia. Bak Kut Teh in the old days are normally taken at breakfast, but now you can have it any time of the day. The are 2 common types of Bak Kut Teh you can find in Singapore, the Hokkien style or Teochew style. For both, the basic ingredients are pork ribs, garlic with skin, white pepper seeds and spices. For Hokkien style, normally dark soy sauce is added to the soup and it is also less spicy. Some will also add in star anise and cinnamon to strength the taste. As for the Teochew style, the soup is normally clear and more white pepper seeds are added to the soup which make it more spicy.

Bak Kut Teh is to be served with rice and cut red chilli in dark soy sauce is used to dip the pork ribs. In the recent years, Bak Kut Teh's stall owners have come up with more side dishes to go with the Bak Kut Teh. The commonly found are the preserved mustard vegetable (咸菜), you tiao (油条) and braised pig trotters. Others are like pig livers, pig kidney, pig stomach and pig intestines are served in the same soup base as the bak kut teh.

Someone recommended to Ng Ah Sio Pork Ribs Soup Eating House located at 208 Rangoon Road. It is one of the famous stall that served Bak Kut Teh in Singapore. They are opened for breakfast and closed after lunch around 2pm. I was impressed by the uncle who took my order with a HP PDA, and a while later my food arrived at your desk.

Although the soup was good, but I found it too spicy for me. There are too much residue in the soup too, hopefully the stall owner can improve by draining off the residue before serving the soup to the customer. I like the chinese tea they served, there is a after sweetness left on your tongue after you drank it. I found the price there was a bit too steep. We paid almost S$20.00 for 2 bowls of bak kut teh, 1 bowl of vegetable, 1 bowl of you tiao and chinese tea.

Ah Chew Desserts @ Liang Seah

Whenever I crave for some Chinese dessert, Ah Chew Desserts at Liang Seah Street is always my no. 1 choice. Ah Chew started off with 1 shop unit, but now, it has taken over the unit next door. Even so, the place is still packed with customers at night. So you need some patient to wait for seats.

I tried a lot of places selling "Yang Zhi Gan Lu" (or mango with pamelo), but Ah Chwee is still the best. Not only the mango is cut into big chunk, coconut milk, sago and mango juice is used to make the base. The combination is just perfection.

If you don't like mango, you can also try their steam milk. It is silky smooth. They also served other desserts, like papaya with white fungus, walnut paste, almond milk, grass jelly, etc.