Review Archives • Mushroompride

Tom Yum Risotto (Cookware Review) – Delishar

The last thing I want to worry about when making risotto, is rice and food bits sticking to my pan, and burning as I’m cooking it. Good thing I have a non-stick casserole pot from Corningware’s Retroflam range. I don’t have to worry about food sticking to the bottom of my pan. In fact, I don’t even need to deglaze my pan after cooking my onions and garlic. Absolutely nothing sticks. You’ll be able to see how the food glides on the pan in the video embedded below.

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That’s because the range of cookwares from Retroflam series are not only quality made, they are also very well designed. The manufactured in Korea cookwares are made of 5 layers of coating to facilitate heat conductivity to up to 400 degrees Celsius. So more worrying about damaging a non-stick pan or pot on high heat!

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As shown in the diagram, the 5 layers of coating consist of quality cast aluminium, black titanium, and sparkling pearl ceramic coating on both the interior and exterior of the cookware. Ceramic has been recognized as a more advance material for non-stick cookware. It is also widely considered to be the safest and most environmentally friendly option. The pearl ceramic coating does not leach chemicals and is free from toxic chemicals such as PFOA, cadmium and lead. The coating is also made to last as it is highly scratch resistant, unlike the traditional non-stick coating with a relatively short lifespan.

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All parts of the pan has been well thought out, even the base of the pan was specially designed with radiating grooves to allow for even distribution of heat, promising evenly cooked food. No more hot spots leading to burnt and/or under-cooked food!

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I am enjoying my Corningware Retroflam cookwares, both the 24cm casserole and the 24cm frying pan (review here). Here’s a quick look on why the Retroflam series have won me over:

Non-stick
Scratch resistant
Easy to clean
Food cooks evenly
Safe & non-toxic (Most important!)

I experimented with this simple Asian fusion one pot recipe, and I’m so glad I did. The recipe is straight forward and only requires a few simple ingredients. The only challenging part here is that you’ll need to work for your food. Let’s get cooking, and get some elbow-grease in shall we?

Heat pan, add some oil and start sweating the onions.

Then add in your garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add arborio rice and cook for 2 minutes, , stirring frequently.

Add about 1/4 cup of hot stock, and stir until all the liquid is absorbed by the rice.

Continue adding stock about 1/2 a cup at a time, stirring frequently to release the starch.
Allow liquid to absorb before adding the next ladle of stock.
Continue stirring and cooking until you are left with the last 1/2 cup of stock.

Season with fish sauce to taste, and sugar.
Add prawn, stock, and frozen peas.
Then continue stirring until rice in al dente and prawn is cooked through.

Tom Yum Risotto

Delishar

1 cup Arborio rice
3-1/2 cups water
1-1/2 cube Knorr Tom Yum stock cube
10 large prawns
180 g shimeji mushrooms
1/4 cup frozen peas
2 cloves garlic minced
1/4 yellow onion diced
2 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 tsp sugar
Fish sauce to taste
Lime wedges for serving
Coriander leaves to garnish

In a saucepan, bring water to boil and dissolve stock cube.
Remove from heat but keep the stock hot.
Heat medium pot on medium-high heat, and add 2 tbsp cooking oil.
Saute onion for a minute then add garlic to cook for 30 seconds.
Add risotto rice to cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add about 1/4 cup of hot stock, and stir until all the liquid is absorbed by the rice.
Continue adding stock about 1/2 a cup at a time, stirring frequently to release the starch.
Allow liquid to absorb before adding the next ladle of stock.
Continue stirring and cooking until you are left with the last 1/2 cup of stock.
Season with fish sauce to taste, and sugar.
Add prawn, stock, and frozen peas.
Then continue stirring until rice in al dente and prawn is cooked through.
Serve immediately with wedges of lime, and garnished with coriander leaves.

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Serve immediately with wedges of lime, and garnished with coriander leaves.

The Corningware Retroflam is available at leading department stores listed here.

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{Review} Bliss Restaurant @ Cheng San Community Club – Delishar

An easy 7 mins stroll from Ang Mo Kio MRT station will get you to the newly remodelled Bliss Restaurant located at Cheng San CC. Along with its new face-lift, Derric the Chef de cuisine took the opportunity to revamp the menu as well. There is quite a few crowd-pleaser, and items on the menu are affordably priced.

Once we were seated, we were presented with 2 different menus. A western and a Vietnamese Menu. Which we later understand that Bliss has expanded to offer Vietnamese cuisine to the public during lunch while the latter western menu starts serving from 5pm till late.

The menu offers a very decent selection of food. Being the Libran that I am, it took me a while to decide what I wanted. But I’m very certain that I needed coffee, and it was promptly served. The coffee was strong.

As I continue browsing the menu, I saw this. Free kids meal with every adult main course on Sunday! The mummy/auntie in me secretly let out a “YASS!”. Guess where the fam will be hanging out this Sunday? The price of kids meals is $8, which is really reasonable. And this place has PLENTY of space for kids to run around safely while the adult sip on their energy drink (read coffee or alcohol).

When I’m finally ready to order, the server presented me with an Ipad to place my order electronically via diningbutler.com. The app has a preloaded menu as well, and users can go cashless by paying through the platform. Took a while for me to get used to the self-service system, but it was pretty straight-forward and easy to grasp.

However, while I was at the payment page, the personal payment information of the previous user showed up! Although to be fair, I wasn’t able to see all the info as it was partially encrypted. So I’d suggest ordering it from your phone instead. Just go to www.diningbutler.com search Bliss, and you are ready to go!

Food started streaming in shortly after. My Smoked Salmon Caesar Salad came with a very generous serving of smoked salmon! Happy me! Greens were fresh and crisp too!

Then came this! According to the menu, it’s Super Spicy Wings. Not sure if it’s my tolerance to spices, but it was not as spicy as I thought it would be. It was more sweet & spicy, think Korean chicken. But, it was delicious nonetheless.

If you do not mind the extra calories, you HAVE to order their Sinful Chicken! OMG! Sinfully good! Totally with every single calorie. Heeeeee…..but it is not an everyday food, it is a once in a blue moon kinda food. In moderation, mmmkay?

Mains started to arrive. But now we were questioning if we are able to finish what we ordered. The portions that have been served so far are pretty generous. The lamb shank is huge! Meaty, tender, flavourful, rich, and not at all gamey. Served with creamy mash, it a pretty dense meal on its own.

I had the pan-fried salmon, and was pleasantly surprised! The salmon was perfectly cooked! No gunky white stuff (albumin)on the salmon, the flesh flakes beautifully, the meat was moist and tender while the skin was beautifully seasoned and crispy. So good I ate it on its own without needing the sauce at all.

Then Chef sent out another dish, their Signature Pork Ribs. Ultra flavourful ribs, one bite and you know that it has been cooking for hours, so tender it falls off the bone. That sweet potato fries still gets me excited. Personally, I prefer sweet potato fries to regular french fries and it’s good to know where I can get them since isn’t a norm in many restaurants.

Took a walk around the compound in between main courses to aid with digestion and hopefully burn a few calories. I really like the area. It’s bright and airy, with plenty of event space to host a private party or social gathering with friends. Bliss also has party packages for birthdays, ROM, and baby showers at very reasonable price.

The al-fresco dining area would be a great place to lounge around with friends and family after the sun goes down.

These tables situated right beside the hand-painted fence adds so much character to the place! We didn’t have any room for dessert and didn’t want any more food to go to waste. So, we sat around to chat with Chef Derric instead.

The extremely humble and down-to-earth chef shared with me a little more about Bliss. It’s extremely heartening to find out that Bliss is a social enterprise that offers employment opportunities to individuals with special needs. Bliss also partake in giving back to society by donating their used carton boxes & canned tin to low-income elderly residents & donating groceries to low-income needy residents thru Aljunied GRC.

Bliss Restaurant
Cheng San Community Club
6 Ang Mo Kio Street 53
Singapore 569205
TEL: 62803389 / 97624226 / 98175056
Email: [email protected]

Opening Hours
Sun-Thur – 5pm – 12 Midnight
Fri-Sat – 5pm – 1am
Vietnamese Food 12pm – 11pm

* This was a food tasting invite hosted by Bliss Restaurant. However, all opinions are of the author’s own.

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Christmas Tree Otak Pizza [Panasonic Cubie Oven Review] – Delishar

One thing that most Singaporean home cook can relate to, is the limited kitchen counter space we have. So when I come across something compact and multi-functional, you’ll see me do my little O.M.G dance. Especially one that is an all-rounder with 16 auto menu and cooking modes such as steam, bake, roast, ferment, sterilize, and healthy fry with little to no oil at all.

It’s an oven that will replace your steamer, sterilizer, and air-fryer. The Panasonic NU-SC100W Cubie Oven is what I’m talking about. I put the 15L capacity oven to the test in one recipe to try out 3 of its functions and I’m going to share with you my experience.

The Panasonic Cubie oven is compact measuring 355 x 455 x 351 mm to fit on countertops without taking much space. It weighs only 10.8kg, light enough to move it around when needed. Although compact, the oven has no problem fitting a 1.5kg chicken, whole fish, 24 buns, or a 10-inch pizza. I think you might even be able to fit 2 x 1.5kg chicken, if you spatchcock it.

It comes with a 600ml water tank removable on the top right of the machine, and a drip tray below for easy cleanup. I tested the auto steam function. Set my otak on the tray, select auto mode and started the oven. The oven got all steamy in about 30 seconds!

So much faster than getting the steamer water to boil on the stove top! Oh, no open flames too. That means I can go prepare my other ingredients, and not have to worry about having to watch the fire. Beep, beep, my otak is ready. Hands off cooking, I’m starting to like Cubie. 🙂

Next, I tried out the fermentation function, which can be used for dough and yoghurt. I made my pizza dough with a bread maker, then turned it out with lightly greased hands, and shaped it into a ball. Placed it in the oven, set ferment mode and let it do its thing till it doubled in size. No need to wash additional bowl, use cling wrap, and take up counter space like I normally would! Shorter fermentation time too! Woop woop!

Then it’s time to put it all together. I shaped my Christmas Tree pizza crust, prebake it in the preheated oven, then top with all the good stuff, and bake again till the cheese melted. The bake mode has an adjustable temperature between 100C-230C.

My girls were extremely excited to eat their ‘Christmas tree’. I made a non-spicy batch for them with pasta sauce and pepperoni instead of otak. Everyone at home polished off their dinner and wanted more. Lucky I planned ahead and made 2 batches of the recipe.

Panasonic Cubie Oven has definitely won me and my family over with its multiple cooking functions and ease of operation. It’s a very nifty machine. Bonus points for being so compact and lightweight! If you are interested, you can get your Cubie oven at major home appliances stores. Search for your closest store here!

Christmas Tree Otak Pizza

Delishar

Makes 2 Christmas tree pizza
Serves 4-6

Pizza Dough

140 g high protein bread flour
140 g plain flour
20 g butter
1 tbsp castor sugar
1 tbsp milk powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
190 ml cold water
1 tsp instant yeast

Pizza toppings

180 g fish otak Cook using auto mode 1 set weight at 200g
1 red pepper sliced
1 yellow pepper cut out star (with cookie cutter) and dice the rest
1 green pepper diced
Shredded mozzarella cheese to top

Sauce

3 tbsp mayo
3 tbsp chili sauce

Pizza dough

Place all the ingredients except yeast into Panasonic bread maker.
Place yeast into yeast dispenser, then select pizza dough menu ‘10’ and press start.
When done, remove dough with lightly greased hands and transfer to baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Place dough in Cubie Oven set to ferment mode. Ferment for 45 minutes, until double in size.
Remove dough from oven and preheat to 210C.
Divide dough into 2 portions, and roll out 11 balls per portion.
On a parchment paper, arrange dough balls into the shape of a Christmas tree.
Flatten with finger tips, making sure the edges joins.
Make holes on the dough with fork to prevent bubbling.
Slide parchment onto baking tray.
Pre-bake for 8-10 minutes, and remove from oven.