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How to excel in Food-o-logy Visiting new eating places Re-visiting old and good eating places Willing to try almost anyting and everyting Try out various recipes on your own Fail? Try again! Share cooking experiences with people Lastly, spread the marvel of FOOD! Other Foodies Sg food blogs Credits  Blogskins Soup-Faerie.com for Cursor Archives July 2005 February 2006 March 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 November 2006 December 2006 March 2007 May 2007 June 2007 |
Monday, June 11, 2007 had dinner w family and 3rd uncle's family on grandma's treat at this Hokkien restaurant called Ban Ting at the 5th floor of OCBC Building. so since its a typical Hokkien restaurant, most of wat we order are typical Hokkien dishes familiar to grandma and parents' generations. Firstly, we started off with a bowl of fish maw (he piu in Hokkien) soup. its the thick, starchy kind of soup, which people from china would call geng(1). but its pretty tasty, without tasting fake i.e. such dat it came from a can or packet. other den fish maw, there are also crabmeat, mushrom, spring onion strips, carrot strips and some other ingredients i cant quite remember.  the next dish is called hae cho, or rather deep fried minced prawn and pork ball. some versions add in chestnuts too, but this version doesn't have, so dats minus the slight sweet crunch. but they coated the ball in grated potato (according to the waitress) b4 deep frying, although we dun really taste any potato.  this is how it looks like inside. a little oily though, coz its fried, and not really a favourite of mine.  this is the hokkien style of or luak, or fried oyster omelette. this version uses lesser starch den the ones found in hawker centres, and their eggs r broken up rather den as an omelette. but there is a very thin crispy layer (dunno if u can see from the pic) which i m not so sure wat is it, flour? a sweet and spicy chilli sauce is lathered over the oysters, which hints dat the oysters r cooked separately from the rest?  close-up view. oysters are rather plump and juicy, but i dun tink its very fresh.  the next dish is a plate of very normal looking stir-fried spinach. nothing much to comment abt it coz theres nothing very special abt it. nothing very disastrous, but nothing very good either. but 1 thing to note, it pretty expensive at $28!!  this dish is chicken stewed in a brown salty and slightly herbalish sauce with green peas, mushrooms and ginko nuts, something similar to wat we know as herbal chicken. once again, although the sauce is pretty tasty without being overly salty, its a pretty average dish too. the chicken is not as tender as i would like it to be too.  this dish is a household hokkien dish, known as kong ba pao, or stewed pork bun. slices of pork belly are stewed in a dark brown sauce which is both salty and sweet, and den sandwiched in between chinese buns or mantous. this version is ultimately guilty. only suited for pork fat lovers, becoz every slice of pork belly has a ratio of 3:1 of pork fat:meat!! the min i saw the pork fat "wriggling" on top of the meat when its served, i knew i will never touch a piece of that thing. so i ended up having juz 1 of the bun dipped in the sauce, which tastes not bad, juz dat i find it a little too watery for my liking.  the last dish was of coz the noodles. we had this hokkien stir fried mian xian, which kinda looked like ee-fu noodles. it was fried with all the usual ingredients like veg, fish, squid, pork. another average dish again, abit like those u get at wedding dinners.  for dessert, we had the traditional or nee, or yam paste with ginko nuts and pumpkin slices which was 1 of grandma's favourites. i dun really like yam so i wun say i enjoyed this dessert. but i guess the pumpkin when mashed and mixed with the yam paste, adds sweetness to it, and the paste isn't too cloyingly sweet such dat it makes u thirsty.  Place: Ban Ting Restaurant 5th floor, OCBC centre, near shenton way. Rating: 2.5/5 |
