Cheap Atas Meal

Met up a friend for lunch this afternoon and we had an affordable fine dining experience at Cathay.

Concetto by Saveur.

The restaurant wasn't as crowded as I had anticipated when we arrived at 1.30 pm , so we were ushered to our seats relatively quickly. My back was reeking from sweat at this point and I was really self conscious about it, but no one seemed to notice ,or maybe they just kept quiet about it and endured, but it stank, mixed with the deodorant I had sprayed liberally in the morning before I left the house, it was a confusing aroma.


We were presented with the menu and a tick sheet when we are seated. Decided we would go for the 3 Course Lunch Meal since it was only 20 bucks.


Everything was great, but there's a downside to the restaurant, and it's really just a minor issue because it's just this particular waiter who was waiting on us, it seems as though he was new and didn't really know how to do his job as a waiter, not that he was rude, but trying to get his attention was a bit ridiculous because he was standing literally 2 to 3 meters away from us, looking at our general direction, it took my friend 2 to 3 waves to get his attention as the waiter was just scanning the area. I mean even if you are not looking at us directly, your peripheral vision should be able to see something waving at you.



When we finally got his attention, we passed him our tick sheet, he lowered himself to take it and collect the menu, and normally at this point, a waiter would read out your orders to you to make sure he got the orders right, or in this case, we got our own orders right and did not tick the wrong items, this is practiced in Tim Ho Wan, at Hoshino Coffee, really anywhere that has a tick sheet, taking it and repeating our order to us verbally to confirm should really be automatic, but for some reason, my friend ended up being the one who had to literally point out our order on the tick sheet to the waiter and the waiter just stays in his lowered position, holding one end of the order sheet while my friend held the order end, and lets my friend do his job for him. It was so odd.



The first dish came.  I ordered a bowl of salad to aid in my bowel movement and my friend ordered the pasta.

Saveur Pasta. Garden? Salad

This was taken from my friend's phone, so it's from his point of view. 

Turns out there was a promotion going on that day that the waiter failed to inform us (really? it's not that hard to tell us that a promotion that was going to affect us was going on) when we were making our orders. Ordering 2 Three Course Meal  would entitle us to a free Pasta starter, that explains why they are 2 bowls of pasta instead of 1. It was a good thing I ordered the salad, otherwise we would be eating 3 bowls of pasta, and as delicious as the pasta was, 1 bowl really is enough for me.


This was only the starter, not even the main dish and it was quite good. Angel hair Pasta, dried shrimps, the yellowish white thing I assume is some sort of shredded seafood , prawn or fish I'm not really sure, but it was nice, the salad was a nice accidental side to the pasta because the pasta was a little on the drier side.

Duck Confit / Pork Belly?

I got the duck confit and my friend had the pork belly for the mains.  I like how they waited until I had finished the starter before serving the mains instead of just shoving them on our table on their own timing because I really took my time with the pasta.


The duck meat was quite nice, like pulled pork and the skin was a combination of crispy/chewy, it took me a few bites to actually break down the skin before I could swallow, and they served little tangerines on the side that were juicy and sweet. Mash potato was nice and silky, soft and not lumpy, with some mushrooms at the side. I'm not a fan of mushrooms, so it was aight. My friend's soft boiled egg looked really good though.

Creme Brulee

For our final course, we had Creme Brulee, I thought it was Nutella at first because of how brown it looked, turns out it was coffee creme brulee. Made with real coffee and not the paste because I could taste the bitterness of the coffee. I still prefer Vanilla Creme Brulee, or White Chocolate, not a huge fan of coffee.



Overall, it was actually quite a good meal, really enjoyed it, and only $20++, it was a great value for money



After our lunch, we headed to Westgate to meet up with another friend over cakes at Lady M.


I love having meet ups over cakes, I don't think I have ever had a meet up with friends over cake before.


We ordered 2 cakes and 3 cups of Ice Earl Grey tea, the cakes cost about $9 each, a price I'm accustomed to seeing how I've been patronizing their store relatively often. The Eary Grey Tea on the other hand was insane, $6 a cup, literally just Earl Grey Tea in a cup of ice, that's not worth $6, not even close, it was ridiculously expensive, but we got it anyway because that was the least expensive drink on the menu.


In the end, the cost of the cakes and drinks were almost on par with the 3 Course Meal I had at Concetto.


Cake Pop Rant

Prior to meeting my friend, I actually paid a visit to Cold Storage to get some baking supplies for my Cake Pop experiment. White Chocolate Bar, Dark Chocolate Bar and Heavy Cream. My brother had requested I make some cake pops for his friend, so I decided to do a test run to see how the batch would go.


I've only ever made Cake Pop once or twice and that was more than a year ago, it was alright, but it wasn't perfect, I hated making it because I didn't have a microwave and had to melt my chocolates over a double boiler. Fast forward to today, I still don't have a microwave and have to melt my chocolates over a double boiler.




It's just a very tedious process, it's alright for a bakery because they have cake scraps all the time and have access to huge amounts of chocolates and I don't.



I had actually made a batch last night and it went horribly, just making the cake pop dough itself was a disaster because I didn't actually have a proper recipe to follow, the one I followed a year back was from the bakery I worked at. I have completely forgotten the cake to chocolate ratio, and winging it didn't work. Threw the whole batch I made yesterday, that included a packet of Lindt chocolate I had melted down to make the dough.



Decided to use the ingredients I bought today and follow a recipe online, instead of using pure chocolate, I decided to make a ganache, since the problem I had last night was too dry of a cake pop dough. So I made my chocolate gananche, baked my chocolate cake and proceeded to roll the balls, STILL it was too dry and the balls started falling apart when I rolled them. I went on to make a smaller batch of ganache and at first I thought that did the trick, but soon the balls starting to show cracks, decided since they were already round, might as well just freeze them and dip them in chocolate.



So I took my bar of white chocolate, Nestle White Chocolate Bar that was recommended by the Youtuber whose cake pop recipes I was following, and started melting it over the double boiler.

10 fucking dollars.

According to the Youtuber, the chocolate bar supposedly melts smoothly. It didn't, the fucking bar just became a soft lump of chocolate, it didn't became a nice pour able/dipping consistency at all , it had the same consistency as soften butter, how the fuck am I suppose to dip my cake pops in that kind of consistency. Thought since I was already at it, might as well add a bit of vegetable oil to loosen the chocolate up, and it did get softer but before it could fully soften into the proper consistency, I notice the spatula that I had been using to stir the chocolate over the double boiler was missing a chunk of plastic.




I lost my fucking spatula because it fucking melted into the white chocolate mixture, literally a chunk of it disappeared as I was stirring the white chocolate with a little vegetable oil to thin it out. I actually took it out and stared at it for a few seconds in disbelief.


The last time I melted my spatula, it happened because the spatula was non-heat resistant and I was making caramel, which got up to 200 degree Celsius, that was understandable, I was an idiot and should have known better. This on the other hand is just fucking white chocolate melted over a double boiler, it's not even in direct contact with the pot of boiling water and it actually melted into the white chocolate mixture, what the actual fuck.



Had to throw the whole batch of white chocolate away. it's so fucking stupid because I already had a packet of white chocolate that gave me the exact same results, both are compound chocolates, that I tried melting before and failed,  I thought maybe since the Youtuber said the particular brand will melt nicely, it will melt nicely, which was why  I bought it, but in the end I got the same results as the chocolate I already had in the fridge, with an extra ingredient of melted plastic thrown into the mix.


So that Youtuber has lost all credibility to me. Her recipes for cake pops don't work, her recommendations for chocolates doesn't work and because of her, I wasted so much money buying unnecessary bars of chocolate and managed to melt my spatula in the process.


Update: 
Reduced the cake crumbs by half and used the same amount of ganche.
Cake Pop dough worked.

Chocolate was still a fucking bitch, luckily I got my hands on a tub of shortening and managed to thin the chocolate out, but it was still a horrible process. Made 12 Cake Pop, only successfully coated 6, the other half fall off the stick mid dip.


Used Wilton Candy Melts first, that was wayyyy too thick, even with shortening, so this is the last time I will be buying Candy Melts, another product that's a waste of money. Gonna just stick with White Chocolate.


Update 2. 

Didn't take a picture, but managed to make another successful batch which will be given to my brother's friend.  Used white chocolate this time for the coating and it worked, the cake pop dough was a little on the oily side but it was able to keep it's shape.


There isn't any odd shortening taste to the chocolate like the previous batch because none was added. It was able to set relatively well and it taste alright, not amazing but way better than the last few batches.



This is the last time I'm going to take request for cake pops.