I’ve been a regular at Bedok South Hawker Cenre’s Opera for a long time. The auntie who took order would take one look at me and tell me my order immediately. It’s too bad she’s not there anymore, but the auntie who makes the noodles is still there.

What I love about this stall is how healthy and clean everything tastes. It’s not your usual fishball noodle nor bak chor mee. It’s invariably full of fresh ingredients like baby romaine lettuce (which other stall uses baby romain?), sprightly beansprouts and incredibly fat free minced pork. Coupled with homemade fried shallots, good chilli sauce and excellent vinegar,  the dry version is heavenly. I could eat here every day. In fact, I see lots of old-timers order their daily fix from this stall. (For the record, it’s not the one with the queue, I personally can’t see why people like the famous fishball stall with the long queue.)

I also ask for extra vegetables for $0.50 more and they give me a much bigger bowl of soup plus extra fishballs and other ingredients. This is worth my while because it’s the only accompanying soup worth drinking. At other places I invariably leave the soup untouched because it’s just msg and water. Here, things are quite different and I always finish every drop of the soup. It’s fantastic.

What’s not so great about it? The meatballs are only a notch above run of the mill and the meepok can sometimes be soggy. Go for the meekia or meesua, both the dry version. Both are excellent.

Opera
#01-175
Blk 16 Bedok South Road Hawker Centre

As an unprofessional blogger , blogging at noon (1pm) is so not me…hehe, normally at this time, I would be busy preparing for the meeting in the afternoon, or squeeze my almost depleted cognitive resources into the never ending programming…

But today is a party day!!! we had a department tradition of celebrating the end of semester – well, it should be “celebrating we all survived another semester, no major head damaging, no major depression, no major physical injury, due to intensive reading, programming, writing, presenting ” !! so everybody will bring a dish to share and yes, it’s a department of Marketing, as Linda asked me yesterday: how could you be a PhD in Marketing ??? oh yes, in tonight’s party, you gonna see a bunch of people doing marketing, with a PhD title!

So I kick off the day with some “leisure” work. Since I just turned in my paper yesterday, I give myself a day break , Shhhhhhh…..

I was a bit slacking in posting, again!! this week , I’ll stop beating around the bush and go right into the topic : FOOOOOOD!

For lunch, I made some Tofu Box with Corned Beef. or should I call it Tofu Boxing to rock this a bit? haha.

This is a fun dish to make , and of course, very easy . I made this simply because I have a bigger project to do  - my food for the party. This one, only takes 5 minutes to prepare.

I use the silky tofu and make a little hole in it

and then, stuff in my leftover corned beef.

spray on a bit veggie oil to give it a nice golden edge.

Send to the oven, 400 degree, for 20 minutes. till u can hear the beef sizzling inside that tofu box.

The nice juice from beef flavored the tofu naturely, and I didn’t expect that the corned beef after baking will be soooo crispy!!

I pair this three tofu box(ing) with some veggies. but I have to admit that that tofu box completely win me over !!! I have almost all the veggies left in the plate when I am really full, haha

And then, my big project, is my favorite Pearl Coated Meatball. This is my secrete party weapon, since most people in my party would be meat lovers!!! So, Please stick a ruler up your eyelids !!

The meatball is made of corn beef, pork, and silky tofu (with 1 egg and minced ginger). When I blend the ingredients in the mixer, it turns out to be a very smooth mousse texture and I almost can’t help to dip my bread in it:

then, use your spoon to make meatballs from this mousse . it’s a bit hard this time because of the texture , but I have confidence that it will taste much better than the coarse texture ones.

then roll the ball in a bowl of sweeten rice that has been soak for 12 hours to absorb enough water.

Steam pearl-coated meatball for 30 minutes.

Then, made the sweat and sour sauce (isn’t that your favorite Chinese Sauce, hehe ):

1/4 cup of soysauce,

1 tsp of vinegar,

2 tsp of sugar,

1/4 cup of water,

while the sauce is boiling, stir in 1 tsp of corn starch to thicken the sauce to your taste. Pour the sauce over the meatball, sprinkle some greens ( I use green pepper) for garnish.

Enjoy my friends!!

Off to party, oh yah!!!

東ロンドンのショーディッチのLeonard Streetに最近できた、カフェ／バー／レストラン、The  Book Club。バー／クラブ・Queen of Hoxtonと同じオーナーが経営、以前はHOMEというバーだったビクトリア時代の倉庫があった建物にある。元倉庫のレンガ壁と広々としたスペースを生かした、2階に分かれたフロアは、ビンテージ風の家具や長テーブルが置かれ、地階にはビリヤード台、1階には卓球台が置いてある小部屋もある。また、トークやワークショップ等の文化イベントも開催されており、週末等にはDJも入る（イベントスケジュールはこちら）。客層は場所柄、デザイン事務所やファッション、メディア等で働くクリエーターや、ヒップな若者が多い。Wi-Fiは無料、プライベート・ミーティングルームや映写施設もある。ちなみにイギリスでは、カフェやパブで、一般客に混じってビジネス・ミーティングをしているのをよく見かける。テーブルが小さかったり、うるさい場所でもやってるので、気が散らないのだろうかといつも思う。

オープン時間は朝8時から深夜まで（木・金・土は午前2時まで）、時間帯によって食事メニューも変わる。夜はお皿のサイズで値段が決まるユニークなシステムで、グループ用に大鍋でパスタやシチューも注文できるそうだ。私たちは遅めのランチで、スパゲティ・ミートボールと、Bangers&Mash（ソーセージとマッシュポテト）を注文。ソーセージ＆マッシュはまずまず。スパイシーなトマトソースとミートボールは美味しかったけれど、スパゲティは品質が良くなく、ゆで過ぎだったのが残念。

The Book Club is a recently opened café/Bar/Restaurant, located on Leonard Street in a former Victorian warehouse (where used to be the HOME bar) in Shoreditch, East London. Run by the same people as the Queen of Hoxton, this former warehouse with brick walls and vast 2-floor spaces is decorated with vintage-style furniture and long tables, and has a pool table and a DJ area downstairs and a ping-pong table in a small room on the corner of the ground floor. The Book Club also offers a variety of creative and cultural events as well as parties and DJ nights (event schedules are here), and attracts creative workers and hip twenty-somethings who live or work around the area. Wi-Fi is free, and you can also use private meeting rooms and screening facilities. I often see people having a business meeting in a café or a pub in UK and always wonder if they are not distracted: sometimes it is noisy and a table is too small to spread documents.

The Book Club opens all day from 8 am to midnight (until 2 am on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays), and the menu changes accordingly. In the evening, diners pay by plate size and large groups can purchase huge pots of pasta or stew. We ordered Spaghetti with Italian Meatballs and Bangers&Mash for our late lunch. Bangers&Mash is not bad, and spicy tomato sauce for the pasta was good, but disappointment was the spaghetti – it was a cheap kind and mushy + far away from al dente…

Turkey meatballs + honey = gooey goodness. My standard recipe for turkey meatballs was missing a key ingredient this week, so rather than gambling with expired eggs I used honey for the “glue” that holds the meat and bread crumb mixture together. The results were moist meatballs with a pleasantly sweet flavor. (I didn’t overdo it – just drizzled probably 1/4 cup’s worth in the bowl.) Plus, I added dried oregano, salt and pepper.

I also credit the baking method – rather than frying in olive oil, I baked the meatballs in a pyrex dish. Healthier to boot!

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These are quick and easy to make. A less fatty alternative to pork, but are still moist and tender. Great for making a head and freezing, perfect served with and alfredo or marinara sauce.

1 pound ground chicken

2/3 cup  cooked cous cous

1/2 large white onion

2 garlic cloves

2 rashers of thick cut bacon

3 tablespoons tomato paste

3 tablespoons dried oregano

1 tablespoon dried jalepeno flakes

Salt and Pepper

Heat the over to 350°

First I get my cous cous going, so that it can cool a little before I need it. I use Near East brand  for a couple of reasons, It cooks up  super fast and it comes in a lot of flavours. I like the herbed chicken in this recipe because it layers the chicken flavour and gives the meatballs more depth. Which is the same reason I make it with chicken stock instead of water. I  prefer cous cous to bread crumbs as  I think it results in a moister ball.

The chicken stocked and flavour packet came to a boil, I added in the cous cous, gave a quick stir, removed it from the heat, put the lid on and left it for 5 minutes. Now fluff and loosen the cous cous with  a fork while it’s still warm and put it one side.

Next cut the bacon into lardons and brown in a pan until crisp. While they are cooking, get everything else together

Put the ground chicken into a bowl

Chop the onion half and add in to the chicken

Crush the garlic cloves and add

Sprinkle on the seasonings and squeeze in the tomato paste

On goes the bacon…

…And the warm cous cous. Now’s the time to get messy or use a fork to thoroughly combine everything. After all the ingredients have been mixed I take a little bit and fry it up to check the seasoning.

Once I know it tastes good I…

I roll them into balls, each ball is about 2 tablespoons worth of mix. A cookie dough scoop is great for this job

In a couple of teaspoons of olive oil I brown the meatballs in a pan on the stove top. Then I transfer them into a baking dish, cover them with foil and bake for about 15 minutes, to make sure they are cooked all the way through.

When you take them out of the oven you can either serve them or let them cool and freeze them.

I made Spaghetti and Meatballs from the blog Guilty Kitchen.

I didn’t have spaghetti squash so I used regular spaghetti with great results.  Usually I don’t really like “tomato” sauce, for me there has to be meat in it.  And also I’ve never made spaghetti sauce with meatballs.  So that was a first for me.  I really liked the taste of all combined together.  The meatballs are great and yummy.  Cheese on top would be great but like that it’s very good.

Don’t you love Greek Food ? I DO…check out the recipe to make , Greek meatball soup…oh boy !!!

For more Greek recipes , refer to : www.despinaskitchen.com

Joey Chestnut maintained his dominance in the sport of competitive eating — and expanded his palate — by winning the first-ever Martorano’s Masters Meatball Eating Championship in Las Vegas.

Chestnut gobbled 50 meatballs in 10 minutes at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino. The 6.25 pounds was a new world record and earned him the first-place prize of $1,500.

Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti finished in second place, just one meatball behind Chestnut.

Sonya Thomas, weighing in at 105 pounds, ate 42 meatballs to finish third.

The event was a Major League Eating-sanctioned competition.

Chestnut’s resume also includes hot dog, pizza and chicken wing contests.

You would think that something silly like the world’s largest meatball would not be a big deal, but it turns out there is a meatball arms race underway at the moment. The record was set in Mexico in August. In September a new record was set on the Jimmy Kimmel show:

Now that record has been shattered with a 222 pound meatball:

NH restaurant sets meatball record

CONCORD, N.H. – The bouncing mega-meatball record has landed in the East Coast. Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of Nonni’s Italian Eatery in Concord, said Sunday that a 222.5-pound meatball was authenticated as the world’s largest after being weighed by state weights and measures officials.

There’s even a web site: Worldslargestmeatball.com

The criterion, according to the Guiness folks:
1) The meatball must be a “larger scale version of the normal food item with the same ingredients”
2) The meatball must “all be made in one day”
3) The meatball must be edible

See also: Emeril Green: Mock Meat Balls

[[[Jump to previous world record - Oasis of the Seas is the world’s largest cruise ship]]]

There has been a new record breaking MONSTER MEATBALL created in the US state of New Hampshire, Here’s the facts of the Record Breaker:

• 222.5lb (101kg)
• Verified by Guisness World Records

The owner of the US Italian diner quoted he wanted to “to bring the meatball back to the East Coast”.

If you would like to attempt to beat this record here are the guide lines:

• It must be on a larger scale than the original food item.
• It must be made with the classic ingredients.
• It must be made in one day.
• It must be edible.

Good Luck!

The bouncing mega-meatball record has landed in the East Coast.

Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of Nonni’s Italian Eatery in Concord, said that a 222.5-pound meatball was authenticated as the world’s largest after being weighed by state weights and measures officials.

A Guinness Book of World Records official confirmed the big meatball as a record breaker and presented Mitnitsky with a plaque.

The old record of 198.6 pounds was set just over a month ago after Los Angeles-based talk show host Jimmy Kimmel vowed to beat a record set in Mexico. That record — 109 pounds — was set in August.

Mitnitsky said he got involved “to bring the meatball back to the East Coast because that’s where it originated.”

Rice with seasoning

Kiriboshi daikon

Meat-balls

fried potato

Egg omelet with spinach

Egg omelet : beat eggs and pour into skillet, while it is cooking, add spinach across the middle of the eggs, then roll it up

This is Today’s Obento!

Iluma is one of those places that seems like such a good idea but once you go in, you get bored so fast 10 minutes seems like an age. Unsurprisingly for a teenage-oriented place, this place is teeming with kid-wallet-friendly places. Empire State is one of them. Surprisingly for a teenage-oriented joint, this place has decent value for money food!

I insisted on having salad, so this starter came along. I was pleasantly surprised to see the fairly sophisticated touch of pistachios and grape halves under the balsamic cream dressing. Of course the teenage touch was having way too much dressing so after a while I gave up trying to scrape the extra off. Can’t fault them for being generous though.

I thought I’d have a change from burger (DC was on a bit of a burger roll), so I went for the completely different spaghetti meatball. If I was a teenager, I’d be in heaven: it was one hell of a plate of pasta. Think of a huge plate of spaghetti smothered in bolognaise sauce and then have a giant meatball on top of it all. It’s crazy mound of food and it took ages to get through.

DC of course went for the Empire State Burger. In a rare moment of weakness, he declared it the best burger he’d had in a while. I felt that while it was incredibly juicy, there wasn’t a whole lot of taste to it aside from salt. It wasn’t a bad burger though, and was hardly asking to be gourmet.

This is a great joint for having a lot of food at decent prices. The tagline is spot-on: they’re sure to stuff you till you’re full. It’s a great place to take a teenager (or a DC for that matter!).

Empire State
201 Victoria Street
#04-03 Iluma At Bugis
Tel: 6238 7076

{ J & J surprise baby shower } 5 of 10
This food took a lot of love and time to prepare… but boy was it tasty! I couldn’t get enough of the chinese chicken salad (not shown) or the yummy meatball + pineapple. delicious! Thanks to Ang, Katy and Alison for knowing how to coook! I also love the idea of little name-tags for the food.

I really appreciate any opportunity to practice using my camera, so I feel completely honored to shoot the surprise shower for Jas and Joel!

Theresa Giudice, the table-flipping, Italian-conversing, meatball-of-a-man-loving Jersey girl from Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey has been in the news this week with allegations that her and her aforementioned meatball man Joe’s McMansion on the hill has been foreclosed on. New reports indicate that the foreclosed property is an additional property owned by the couple, not the mansion that was the focus of their plotline in the show during the first season.

Regardless of which house they’re losing, I feel the question must be asked:

Isn’t having the bank foreclose on your home schkeeve-y?

meatball

I am a 73 year old woman and an early (1960’s) convert to feminism. Yet I found that a giant meatball could cause me to question how I looked at what is expected of women.
My family was eating dinner at the Whole Foods Restaurant.  While enjoying my meal, I watched the chef create meals for a man and woman seated at the dinner bar with us.  “Whoa,” I thought, “she’s certainly going to eat sensibly.  She’s ordered the same vegetarian meal as my daughter-in-law.  But, just like a man, he’s into big portions and heavy food.  Look at that huge meatball on top of a very large portion of pasta.”
Was I wrong. The vegetarian dish was set before the man and, with a smile on her face, the woman accepted that giant meatball and pasta plate.
So, a meatball was significant.  It made me realize that prejudices learned early in life, don’t just evaporate, even those as minor as who gets the big meatball. We really have to work hard to see beyond preconceived ideas, to delay judgment and to accept that there is no “one size fits all.”

Furikake rice ball

Egg Omelet with spinach

Meatball

Sausage

Daikon

Egg omelet : beat eggs and pour into skillet, while it is cooking, add spinach across the middle of the eggs, then roll it up

This is Today’s Obento!

The kids loved making this creative, kid-friendly finger food for our Halloween lunch.  Best of all, they could easily do most of it all by themselves.  All I did was put the caterpillars in the oven and move them onto serving trays.   Thanks again for the idea, Pillsbury!

All you need to make your meatball caterpillar is a can of Pillsbury Golden Layers refrigerated flaky original biscuits (I accidentally bought the extra big ones, which worked just fine,) and a bag of frozen pre-cooked turkey meatballs, which have been thawed ahead of time.  Shoestring potatoes or chow mein noodles make cute legs for your caterpillar, but we forgot to put legs on ours.  You will also want to slice up pickles, carrots, olives, peppers and anything else you can think of for your kids to use as decorations.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  Cover two cookie sheets with foil and spray them with cooking spray so your caterpillars won’t stick.  I forgot to spray mine, but was able to get the meatballs off.

Have your child separate the dough into individual biscuits, and then separate each biscuit into two layers.  We found that the biscuits pulled apart easily.  You should now have around 20 pieces of dough.  Show your child how to wrap a biscuit around each meatball and line the wrapped meatballs up on the cookie sheet in a curved line, touching to form a caterpillar shape.  You will be able to make two caterpillars of around 10 meatballs each.

Now it’s time to decorate!  Let your child place veggies and herbs on each meatball (or every other one to leave some plain for picky eaters.)  Some of the decorations may fall off during cooking, but my kids didn’t seem to care.  Put the shoestring potato legs on at this point, if you have them.  Bake your creations for 13 to 16 minutes, or until the bread looks done.

Move your caterpillar onto a serving tray, if you want to.  It will probably come apart, but just reassemble it on the tray.  Serve with ketchup and mustard, or marinara sauce.  We served baby dill pickles with our lunch and called them goblin fingers.  The kids loved it. 

Coming soon:  Marshmallow Monsters and Yummy Hot Dog Mummies.

1 lb ground beef

1/2 Tofu (soft)

1 Burdock

2 tbsp cut green onion

1 Egg

1 tbsp Bread crumbs

1 tbsp milk

Potato starch

oil

3 tbsp Japanese soy sauce

2 tbsp Sugar

1 tbsp Sake

mix ground beef, drained tofu, cut green onion

add cut very finely burdock, egg and mixed bread crumbs with milk

make 1 inch size ball and coat with potato starch, and then deep fry in the oil till it is cooked (about 2-3 minutes)

when it is cooked, remove it from oil

heat the skillet and put Japanese soy sauce, sugar and sake into it, and then put meatballs back to that

stir it for a few seconds

serve it on the plate

Burdock makes this very crunchy and taste so good!

You can enjoy different meatballs!

click please