My new favorite show is Man v. Food. Though I'm nowhere near the host's caliber in scarfing down mammoth portions of the greasiest (but yummiest) food across America, I'm one of those people who would get hungry instead of grossed out after watching an episode. Case in point: I got a killer craving for McDonald's after watching Supersize Me. Haha.

Today I had my own mini version of Man v. Food: the Wendy's Baconator Mushroom Melt!







I wish I had a mini scale with me because that burger sure was heavy. Inside were two patties, strips of bacon, slices of mushroom swimming in cheese sauce, and more cheese. Nary a refreshing leaf of lettuce or a juicy slice of tomato.

Since I'm no Adam Richman, I threw in the towel halfway through. That burger's crazy!

The last entry about the Singapore trip! Boy, I did write a lot about what I ate there. Haha!

For our last meal we went to Soup Restaurant to try their famous Samsui Ginger Chicken. We had a hard time choosing what other dishes to order; it was a good thing that they offered a set menu which featured Chinatown Heritage Cuisine.

Soup Restaurant takes pride in its heritage. Most of the dishes they serve have some story behind it. You can read all about it in their official site.

Here are some of the dishes I was able to take a picture of:




Samsui Ginger Chicken


Back thenn the low-income Samsui women of Chinatown would indulge in ginger chicken only during New Year. The chicken would be steamed, and then pieces of it would be dipped in a special ginger sauce and wrapped in lettuce leaf.


Steamed Hand chopped Minced Pork with Salted Fish
They only make 30 servings of this a day. I think this may be the only minced pork dish I have ever loved. Absolutely no extenders, and very juicy and flavor. (It probably had the right ratio of fat and meat.)


Tofu Prawn
Fresh prawn in a sauce similar to what they use in Chili Crab.

I think I've been eating too much ice cream that it's starting to show in my food blog. Haha! I have two new discoveries that would delight two types of people:


Dublin Brownies from Sebastian's (P105/scoop)
Do you love Bailey's? If you do, be sure to drop by Sebastian's to get a scoop (or more) of Dublin Brownies: a mix of ice cream made from Bailey's and chunks of fudgey brownies. I don't know how many scoops will give you a buzz, but at least Sebastian's has found a way to make the Bailey's last longer.


Make your own froyo at fruttiYogurt (P75 onwards)
A lot of people are nuts about frozen yogurt. I noticed that a lot of the froyo places have the same concept: some variety of yogurt plus your choice of toppings.



fruttiYogurt from Dizon Farms (one of the biggest fruit distributors in the country) bucks the froyo trend by mixing your toppings along with the yogurt. It's Dizon Farms, so I trust that you get top quality fruits. The one pictured is made from raspberries. The fruits are frozen, but these were probably frozen at their prime. The raspberries were still gritty. Yum!


Fruit, chocolate and cookies!
Some of the toppings they offered: mangoes, strawberries, raspberries, kiwis, bananas, pineapples, grapes, lychee, melon, oreos, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, m&ms and sprinkles.

A single blend (choice of 1 fruit) costs P75. A double blend costs 120. Extra toppings are at P10 each, while extra fruit toppings are at P15 each. For those who want plain yogurt, a regular one is P60, while a large one is P110.


Vanilla froyo with blackberries and Choco+Vanilla swirl froyo

Personally I love the yogurt (sans toppings) at Yo Swirls in Shangri-la Mall. It's a sister company of BTIC. I think they're the only ones in Manila who have four types of yogurt: Chocolate, Vanilla, Plain and Tart. I tried the Chocolate yogurt; I am now devoted to it. The vanilla flavor tastes a lot like the McDonald's sundae cone. They even have a promo card which gives you one stamp per cup of yogurt purchased. Then you get a free one after 10 stamps.

fruttiYogurt from Dizon Farms is located at Market Market, in the open area in front of the Serendra driveway.

Thanks to OAP's tip, I found myself rushing over to SM Makati to try Go Nuts ice cream. As a kid I loved Coney Island ice cream. They had all sorts of cute and creative frozen delights. My favorite one was the plastic cone filled with bubble gum ice cream. Complete with a gumball at the bottom!


Bubble gum ice cream (P60, single scoop)

There are a lot of flavors available, but I chose bubblegum just to check if it was indeed Coney Island ice cream. And it was! The creamy swirls of pastel ice cream, the chunks of gumballs... it definitely made me feel like a kid again.

"What is it with tourists and ice cream?" I got that line from My Life in Ruins, Nia Vardalos's (of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame) newest movie, wherein her character still works for a travel agency, only this time around she's a tour guide taking obnoxious tourists around Greece.

But that line is so true. I don't know what gets to me whenever I travel, but I just have to have ice cream. To illustrate: while in Berlin, before going home I would switch trains just to buy ice cream at Potsdamer Platz Arkaden; in the US we'd pick out klondike or some ridiculous over the top ice cream with 1000++ calories in it and eat it at midnight; I'm pretty sure I stopped at every gelato stand I saw while in Italy. CRAZY. I guess ice cream is something you can't pack in your suitcase, so you might as well eat it now.



When I was in Singapore I got to try Azabu Sabo Hokkaido Ice Cream. Azabu Sabo is a Japanese brand famous for its dessert shop and teahouse. Its Hokkaido Ice Cream prides itself because it uses farm-fresh milk from Hokkaido to make its yummy low-sugar and low-fat ice cream.

What attracted us to Hokkaido Ice Cream was the peculiar way they scooped the ice cream unto a cone.







The server actually redoes the cone if it isn't pointy enough. We were so amazed that we just had to get one.

The standard flavors like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry were in the roster, but since I wanted try something different, I picked Green Tea with Red Bean and Black Sesame. So good! Black sesame was like biting into one of those delectable Chinese desserts. Green Tea with Red Bean would be something that Green Tea Frap lovers would love: just the right blend of matcha bitterness perfectly swirled with creamy Hokkaido milk. The sweet red bean offered a great contrast to the green tea.

I also observed the cleverness of the square-shaped top part of the cone. There were less drips, unlike in your circle-shaped top part of a conventional cone. Genius!

The Azabu Sabo Hokkaido Ice Cream kiosk pictured is located in Takashimaya on Orchard Road.

I never knew you could eat Aloe Vera. I knew that Aloe Vera is a great ingredient for cosmetics and other topical products, but I never imagined you can eat it. Eating Aloe Vera has great medicinal benefits, such as lowered cholesterol, and a reduction in hair fall. Apparently you have to skin the aloe vera, until you get past the green parts and come across the translucent white part. It is said to taste a little bitter, so you have to soak it in some sort of flavoring agent to make it taste better.

I was able to try aloe vera jelly in close to pure form. Luckily while looking for some yogurt to buy, I found one that had Aloe Vera in it. Very interesting.


Aloe Vera has a chewy, gummy texture that's a little hard at first. It's a bit like nata de coco. The jelly I tried and the one mixed with the yogurt were both sweet and cut into small strips.

I know it seems like cheating, but were only able to sample some of the must-try Singapore hawker food at the mall food courts. I was a little disappointed that we weren't able to go to the famous hawker centers like Maxwell, but I guess this was a fair compromise.

Food Republic is a chain of food courts operating in some of the most popular malls in Singapore. We frequented the one in Wisma Atria, since it was near where we were billeted.


Chicken wings and white fried carrot cake

The chicken wings are huge in Singapore. Stretched out as they are skewered through bbq sticks, the wings are marinated in a special blend of spices before cast into a grill to cook. So yummy, you can easily put away three pieces.

White carrot cake doesn't really have any carrots in it. Fried carrot cake (or Chai Tow Kway) is cubes of rice cake tossed together with egg batter, garlic and spring onions. The white version, the one pictured, doesn't have soy sauce. The black version has sweet soy sauce, hence the color.


Lamb and chicken satay

Skewered pieces of marinated lamb and chicken, grilled and served with savory peanut gravy. It also has pork and beef variants.


Hainanese Chicken Rice
The rice in Singapore is so good. I normally don't eat that much rice, but in Singapore, I found myself finishing everything. The yummy Hainanese chicken we tried was in a stall in Food Republic. But since we had it to-go, I forgot to take a picture of it. Pictured here instead is the one we had in Food Village in Takashimaya. A little disappointing, but still good.

The chicken was tender, the rice was flavorful (thanks to the chicken broth it was cooked in), and the skin glistened with fat and was anything but rubbery. Perfect with the blend of dark soy sauce, chili sauce and ginger sauce. This alone warranted another trip to Singapore.

Next time I'm in Singapore, I'll really make it a point to go to the Hawker centers. There's just so much to try, so little time.

Each city has a list of must-try food. For Singapore, the list includes (but is not limited to) chili crab, laksa, Hainanese/Mandarin chicken rice and fish head curry. I like to do a little bit of research before I go on a trip. So when I scoured all the sites for the best place in Singapore for fish head curry, all the reviews pointed to one place: Banana Leaf Apollo in Little India.


Fish Head curry, starts at S$24

The surprising addition of an oft discarded part, the fish head, in curry makes this dish very unique. But this was not your ordinary fish head curry. First of all, the fish head was huge. We thought that it wouldn't be that filling, so we ordered other dishes as well, only to be met by this vat of steaming curry.



The fish head curry was unapologetically hot, even if we had requested it to be mild. The curry was so red, it was criminal. Hats off to those who can take this as it is, or even request it to be spicy.

Each drop of gravy had to be accompanied by a mouthful of yummy basmati rice. It came to a point that in order to cool off my tongue/entire mouth, I had to take a bite of the other dishes we ordered. Their spiciness paled in comparison to the fish head curry!


Curry mutton. I love ordering mutton in Indian restaurants because the meat is always so soft. Plus, the spice always goes well to the gameyness of the meat.


Chicken Masala. This was so different from what you can get in Manila. Very good! I hate to describe it like this, but it tasted so authentic. Very well-executed.

We also ordered fish tikka, but I wasn't able to take a picture of it. My Uncle says it's the best one he tried in Singapore.

I loved that food was served on a sheet of banana leaf, where servers plunked down rice and other accompaniments like so:



It was certainly a lovely meal. I still don't know how I was able to survive the heat. But I will tell you this: I've never eaten so much rice in my entire life.



Banana Leaf Apollo is in Little India, 54 Race Course Road.

They weren't kidding when they said it was going to be warm hot in Singapore. Compared to Manila, temperatures in Singapore were always a notch higher. It would have been nice to be able to walk around outside to feel the beat of the city, but sometimes the allure of milling around in an air-conditioned mall was too much. Nevertheless, one of the great ways to cool down in Singapore was to eat Ice Kacang!


Mango Ice Kacang (S$3.00) @ Raffles City

It's a mound of sweet flavored ice over red beans and jelly. I opted for the mango instead of the durian version, so my ice kacang had ripe mango puree and mango ice cream. Halo-halo lovers who can't/don't handle dairy well will certain love this.

My mom and I loved this particular stall in the Takashimaya food basement. It sold chinese food that were all freshly made/assembled. Definitely try their dumplings (which had kuchay and sweetened radish ?? filling). I was able to take pictures of the lady making popiah (very similar to what we have locally as chinese lumpia, but way spicier) and a tikoy-like dessert rolled in nuts.


Making Popiah.


She reinforces the roll with a strip of lumpia wrapper so it wouldn't cave in when she rolled it.
The cute thing about is it she uses a shredder to add pieces of egg! Like it was cheese or something.


She pierces a small chunk off a gelatinous white mass in a pan.
It's sort of like tikoy, but more malleable.


She cuts it up in bite-size pieces and rolls everything in chopped nuts.


Puts it in a container, and hands it over to you along with a few toothpicks to enjoy!

It's very similar to what you can get here as "Peanut Tikoy". I like that you could get it here fresh.

The best part about going on a trip is the guiltless eating. When you're on vacation, calories don't count! When I was in Singapore I loved loved loved going to the food halls/food courts of the different malls. (And boy, do they have a lot of malls in Singapore!) I really liked the one in Takashimaya because it was near where we were billeted and it had a lot of interesting stalls.


Pop Doh Donut House! It had the best cream filled donuts! The cream to donut ratio was probably 3:1.


My favorite is the oreo choco one which had the oreo-flavored cream inside and the brown one with the white swirl, which had a vanilla cream filling inside. These were 5 for 2.80. Definitely not bad!


My dad loves bread and pastries, so we got a few for him to sample. I loved the Kaya croissant.


There was a stall that sold machang with all sorts of filling and in different sizes. I wanted to try a few but I had too much rice already.


Pretty and yummmy-looking gelato!


This is a stall that sold all things Durian. I think Durian's a popular flavor in Singapore. Almost all of the dessert items had a Durian (or Mango or Pineapple) option. It's an acquired taste, though. The only durian item I like is Durian chips from Bangkok.


A dried fruit and nut bar that would put our local House of Nuts to shame. I wish we had the variety here. You can get peeled squash seeds!

I have two other favorite stalls, which I'll write about in a separate post.

Takashiyama is located in Ngee Ann City, along Orchard Road in Singapore.

Just a quick note---



I'm happy that the ice cream and pancakes tandem is becoming popular. Try the new Oreo crepe pancake sundae (I forgot what it's called) over at Flapjacks. It's really yummy and they're heavy handed with the ice cream and oreos. Other variants include Mango Caramel and Banana Chocolate (P145 each). If you want something quick and cheaper, head to McDo before 1030AM and get pancakes and a caramel sundae. It works just as well. :)

What's better than having cake and ice cream for your birthday? (Well, come to think of it, lots of things are better than having just cake and ice cream for your birthday. But for this entry, let's just put things in the realm of birthday cake options.)

It's having an ice cream cake as your birthday cake!



I've wanted one since I saw the refrigerator filled with all sorts of ice cream cakes in Dairy Queen. There's the regular version (pictured above), a KitKat version and an Oreo version. I was partial to the regular version since the other two flavors seemed too "busy". So every time I went to a DQ, I'd gaze upon the ice cream cakes in the ref and wonder when I would find the occasion to get one. (Clearly my birthday was too far off then, so I really had to wait.)

I was really happy to get an ice cream cake birthday cake this year. And the best part about it was it came as a surprise! I had forgotten all about my longing for an ice cream cake, so when the boyfriend showed up with a light blue box, I thought I was getting yummy cupcakes from Sonja's.


Yummy layers!
It's a pretty simple ice cream cake composed of three layers: chocolate ice cream, a layer of crunchy (oreo cookie? chocolate?) bits with fudgy chocolate syrup, and vanilla ice cream. To go with the whole frozen delights theme, they used whipped cream as frosting.

This is definitely a fun way to eat ice cream.

BTW you can have the design customized, as in other bakeshops where you can buy cakes. Too bad that their decorator was out when my ice cream cake was purchased.

Ice cream cakes are available in the Dairy Queen in Eastwood and in Trinoma. I'm not so sure if it's available in the other branches, too.

My mom bought me the coolest baking gadget ever: a cupcake-shaped cake mold! It's made of silicone (metal pans are so last century, haha!) and it's pink! Since her birthday was coming up, I decided to make her a birthday cake using the mold.


It's a giant cupcake!

Since I'm just a novice (and practical) baker, I stuck with my template chocolate recipe:Devil's Food Cake 3-step cake mix. I added brewed coffee instead of water to the mix. It's a great tip I came across in my favorite food site, Serious Eats since it gives the cake this depth in flavor.


The mold is so cute.

I love this mold! Since it's made of silicone, it requires minimal greasing and it's very easy to pop out the cake pieces.



The mold is designed like a jigsaw puzzle. So you have to put everything side by side when you're about to frost it. Then, when you serve it, you can easily break off a piece.


I busted out my new icing pipe. I was so stoked to use it. Like on Food Network! Haha!

For the frosting, I beat 1/2 cup of butter and sifted confectioner's sugar until fluffy. It's a really simple frosting you can use as a base, if you want to make different flavors of frosting. I added vanilla extract to my first batch, and a little mint extract to my second batch.



I only realized halfway through that I ran out of food coloring, so I had to improvise with craisins (dried cranberries). I plumped them up by soaking them in hot water before I incorporated it into the frosting. I liked how they gave the frosting a nice, pink speckled look. It was perfect for the "frosting" part of the cupcake cake.


The cupcake cake up close.

My mom requested to pack in a lot of nuts on the cake, so I added chopped walnut brittle on the "base" part of the cupcake cake. I figured that the brown color would look best as the "cupcake lining" of the cake.



I really liked how the cake turned out. BTW I only used up 1/2 of the batter (as stated in the instructions), so I made cupcakes using the cutest cupcake liners I got from Saizen. The cake doesn't look like that anymore; we had too much fun breaking off the pieces! Although I always say that the best part about food is eating, I think this time I enjoyed the cooking part too.

This week I made sticky buns! I really like baking recipes that use practical shortcuts. This recipe substitutes the trouble of preparing the dough with ready-made puff pastry dough. I was able to buy a 500g pack of puff pastry dough from Santis Delicatessen for P129. It comes in a block, which you have to thaw for around 30mins before you can flatten it into sheets. If you want faster prep time you can opt to buy ready-made puff pastry sheets, which is also available but are a little more expensive.


The recipe is really easy to follow. I don't think this even qualifies as baking. It's more like, assembling. You basically just have to roll it with lots of butter and sugar, some cinnamon, some nuts and chuck it in the oven. And be attentive enough not to let it burn.


I'm so glad this batch came out okay. The sticky buns I made are a little small, around 2in in diameter. I would recommend to immediately take the buns out of the pan after pulling it out of the oven. It's really hard to scrape everything off once the sugar has hardened.

The stick buns came out really well! Butter oozed out of almost every crevice (Yum!) and the sugar-butter mixture on top of the bun was like toffee. BTW the texture's more like a croissant, rather than soft bread.

I still have some leftover dough (around 250g), which I'm thinking of using to make chocolate croissant. I officially love puff pastry dough.

4PM is around the time when the office gets to you: the fluorescent lights, the humming of the copier in the corner, the harmony of typing and telephones ringing. It's 4PM and you need a snack, but the 711 (or Ministop) can only do so much. That's when you need a quick pick-me-up of SMORES!


Get a pack of mini marshmallows (P4.00), chocolate (a small bar from Jack and Jill set me back P4.00), and graham crackers (P6.50). (This yields three 1in x 2in servings.)

Assemble and put in the microwave (I assume every office pantry has a microwave) for 10 seconds.


But this is definitely, definitely better than getting a pack of cookies.

Korean-style Fried Chicken is now available in Manila! After reading all about the succulent wonders of crispy Korean-style Fried Chicken, (Read it here) I desperately wanted to hop on a plane to NY to see what the buzz was all about. (Korea didn't come to mind, probably because I didn't want to struggle with the language barrier, hehe.) It was a good thing that a few local food blogs started featuring BBQ, a korean restaurant in Makati that's fast becoming popular among fried chicken fanatics.


Fried Chicken Set (P170 +tax)
Korean-style fried chicken is ridiculously crunchy. It has a clean taste (not game-y or gross at all) and tend to come in small pieces. It tastes good without the usual gravy or ketchup on the side.


Spicy Chicken Set (P195 +tax)
The spicy chicken is fried chicken coated in a mildly hot, sweet and sour glaze. Sort of like a lighter version of buffalo wings. I really liked this one because the chicken was really crunchy and the sauce wasn't that spicy (surprisingly). This will definitely cure any buffalo wings craving.

This definitely gives me a reason to drive all the way to Makati. The chicken is really good!



BBQ Chicken is located on Jupiter street, near the Makati Ave. intersection. It's behind the Petron Gas Station on the corner of Buendia and Makati Ave. It's between KFC and McDonalds. It's more accessible if you're driving on Jupiter southbound, when it's on your right.

Since we're on the topic of sandwiches, let me show you what I had for dinner yesterday:



Given a few minutes of prep time after work, I managed to whip up a decent sandwich. The bottom layer is chicken salad, the next layer is egg salad (made with leftover hardboiled eggs. I didn't bother to ask the helpers why we had boiled eggs), and the topmost layer is a BLT. I had more than enough strips of bacon so I put a strip on the side, along with a strange slaw I put together using leftover lettuce leaves, some mayo, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I'd like to believe that the acidity cuts down on the fat content of the bacon.

I am now the proud owner of a Wonderbread sandwich holder!


It's a tupperware made especially for a sandwich --since it's shaped like a slice of bread!


I can't wait to try it out tomorrow. I'll upload pictures of it "in action".