MAXWELL FOOD MARKET HAS TO DO HELLOVA LOT TO REDEEM IT'S STINKING SMELLY SELF AFTER TODAY!
Met up with Edmund, food connoisseur, makansutra tour guide, fellow glutton.
Met at Tanjong Pagar because we thought we could find ah-balling tang yuens around the area.
Maxwell food market seemed like a fantasitc choice as the food selection there is vast and palatable.
This is why I will not return there for a long while till the sorry place redeems itself from six feet under.
1. TIEN TIEN chicken rice stall.
As recommended by makansutra.
How do you differentiate good chicken rice from bad ones?
And what differentiates TIEN TIEN from all other chicken rice stalls? (As told by Edmund)
It's all the the fatty Jello baby!
The secret is in the chicken.
The chicken is first broiled/steamed for a good 20 mins.
When almost done (ie: meat still pink round the bone), the chicken is hoisted out of the steaming vat and placed in a cooler temperature.
NOW! This is where TIEN TIEN's secret manouvre comes in.
Conventional stalls would place the hot chicken in cool tap water, TIEN TIEN however, places its chooks in ICE! Yes people, ICE. So you see, the broiled chook then contracts quicker than you can say 'smelly salty balls!' and the fat round the chicken forms a thin gelatinous layer between the skin and meat. Through the process of contraction, the juices are sealed and trapped, encapsulating the essense of the broth.
HOWEVER! Timing IS crucial.
You can't let the chook cool down too much, as you still want the meat to cook slowly when you hang it up.
Ah....so you see watson, as Uncle TIEN TIEN takes the chooks out, and hangs it on the rack, the chicken cooks slowly with the residual heat and the minute the pink flesh against the bone turns white...the first customer of the day rocks up and chicken rice is ready to be served!
Of course, Edmund had to have TIEN TIEN when we went to maxwell.
It was absolute rubbish.
The chicken was soggy, the rice was tasteless, simply disgusting. A far cry from the last time I had it some 2 months ago. PHUI!
2. Mr BEAN dessert stall
The quintessential chinese dessert stall in every hawer centre, bean curd.
I had the one with peanut tang yuens in bean curd.
The bean curd was lumpy and resembled puke consistancy, and the tang yuen skin was thick and doughy! Repulsive! For the first time I could actually relate to Discovery travel and adventure's Ian Wright's description of the durian:
It's like eating cheese off a corpse fermenting in the sun
3. Some YUM CHA stall
Yam balls: Attrocious
Ha Gau (Prawn dumplings): Skin thick and leathery, praws mashed up in a paste, BAD!
Egg tart: Crust dry, not enough butter, egg filling tastless and bland.
AND! When we thought things would be pretty safe when it came to drinks, Edmund ordered sugar cane juice and bit down on something crunchy...and we are not talking sugar-cane-fibre kind of crunchy, more beetle/bug crunchy. Visions of the cat urine sugar cane juice poisoning incident flash before our eyes.
We both agreed that we had to have better lunches.
Met up with Edmund, food connoisseur, makansutra tour guide, fellow glutton.
Met at Tanjong Pagar because we thought we could find ah-balling tang yuens around the area.
Maxwell food market seemed like a fantasitc choice as the food selection there is vast and palatable.
This is why I will not return there for a long while till the sorry place redeems itself from six feet under.
1. TIEN TIEN chicken rice stall.
As recommended by makansutra.
How do you differentiate good chicken rice from bad ones?
And what differentiates TIEN TIEN from all other chicken rice stalls? (As told by Edmund)
It's all the the fatty Jello baby!
The secret is in the chicken.
The chicken is first broiled/steamed for a good 20 mins.
When almost done (ie: meat still pink round the bone), the chicken is hoisted out of the steaming vat and placed in a cooler temperature.
NOW! This is where TIEN TIEN's secret manouvre comes in.
Conventional stalls would place the hot chicken in cool tap water, TIEN TIEN however, places its chooks in ICE! Yes people, ICE. So you see, the broiled chook then contracts quicker than you can say 'smelly salty balls!' and the fat round the chicken forms a thin gelatinous layer between the skin and meat. Through the process of contraction, the juices are sealed and trapped, encapsulating the essense of the broth.
HOWEVER! Timing IS crucial.
You can't let the chook cool down too much, as you still want the meat to cook slowly when you hang it up.
Ah....so you see watson, as Uncle TIEN TIEN takes the chooks out, and hangs it on the rack, the chicken cooks slowly with the residual heat and the minute the pink flesh against the bone turns white...the first customer of the day rocks up and chicken rice is ready to be served!
Of course, Edmund had to have TIEN TIEN when we went to maxwell.
It was absolute rubbish.
The chicken was soggy, the rice was tasteless, simply disgusting. A far cry from the last time I had it some 2 months ago. PHUI!
2. Mr BEAN dessert stall
The quintessential chinese dessert stall in every hawer centre, bean curd.
I had the one with peanut tang yuens in bean curd.
The bean curd was lumpy and resembled puke consistancy, and the tang yuen skin was thick and doughy! Repulsive! For the first time I could actually relate to Discovery travel and adventure's Ian Wright's description of the durian:
It's like eating cheese off a corpse fermenting in the sun
3. Some YUM CHA stall
Yam balls: Attrocious
Ha Gau (Prawn dumplings): Skin thick and leathery, praws mashed up in a paste, BAD!
Egg tart: Crust dry, not enough butter, egg filling tastless and bland.
AND! When we thought things would be pretty safe when it came to drinks, Edmund ordered sugar cane juice and bit down on something crunchy...and we are not talking sugar-cane-fibre kind of crunchy, more beetle/bug crunchy. Visions of the cat urine sugar cane juice poisoning incident flash before our eyes.
We both agreed that we had to have better lunches.