Wednesday, May 11, 2011

THINKING OUT OF THE MLA BLACK BOX




Top toques...Mandarin Oriental snagged the overall winner title
at the recent MLA Black Box Challenge

Young guns to watch...the all-black Taylors University came in as 1st Runner-up

Event host, Hilton Kuala Lumpur consoled themselves with the 2nd Runner-up title

The knives were out and pans were fired up as teams of young chefs from some of the city's most prominent hotels and culinary schools battled it out at the Meat Livestock Australia (MLA) Black Box Culinary Challenge recently.

Aimed at raising the bar of these youthful talents, participating teams were given one hour to create a three-course menu that best showcased the various ingredients contained in a black box. Then the different teams had to swing into action; to prepare the dishes for the judging panel.
Soup's up! The Best Soup of the event was boiled up by Mandarin Oriental

While Mandarin Oriental wowed the judges to land them the Best Soup award, Taylor's University's men in black conjured up the Best Appetiser. Newbie DoubleTree by Hilton KL flexed its culinary muscle to snap up the Best Main Course and Westin KL got their sweet taste of success by landing the Best Dessert award.

Here's an overview what the competing teams whipped up.

It was admirable how creative these youngsters were. Whether it's appetiser, soup, main course or dessert, they pulled out all the stops and even cooked for some 300 invitees who showed up for the gala dinner.
Some of the appetisers (above) and main courses (below) on display

Horsing around a Country & Western theme ... a table centrepiece by Seri Pacific KL

Each hotel also had to decorate two tables for the dinner - Renaissance KL's simplest but pragmatic set-up seemed to have struck the right chord as it was awarded the Best Table Display.





Thursday, May 05, 2011

SO SHIOK IN SINGAPORE

It wasn't meant to be a food tour but old habits die hard...plus we gotta eat right? Anyway here's a snapshot of what we got up to down south recently over the long Labour Day weekend.


Ah, the sign that says it all! Yes, Mother Earth is worth saving; otherwise where else are we gonna find chocolate in the Milky Way pray tell? ;D

We stumbled on this row of Candylicious shops just outside Universal Studios - a sweet spot to get your sugar fix. There's a dedicated Hershey's & Reese's outlet and another devoted to all sorts of candies...

Smile folks! It's Candyland on camera!

Big chief here doesn't look too thrilled to find his head in such a sticky sweet situation...

Loui's Pizzeria inside Universal Studio serves the thinnest, crispiest pizzas...
we love that porky pepperoni by the way!
The other two's Hawaiian (again REAL ham mind you!) and Tandoori Chicken.

Pretty tea-infused macarons all in a row from TWG

We also trawled The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands to check out what was all the hype about. This retail mecca is where anyone wishing to strike it big can access the casino or empty their pockets and max out their credit cards at the countless shops.

There's a huge ice-skating rink, a mock river where one can take the kids for a sampan ride or pig out at the eateries here. Yours truly of course succumbed to TWG's irresistible tea-infused macarons.

For lunch, we retreated to Todai for a stupendous spread of fresh seafood and international buffet! (Sorry folks, my gluttony got the better of me so there weren't any pixs of the amazing feast... which included giant spider crabs and crayfish!)



The Toy Museum is not exactly a destination by choice but we had to go as a consolation for our girl when we discovered all the Universal Studios entrance tixs were completely sold out! Being the crazy foodie that I was, I had to take some shots of these classic wind-up chef toys.



It was by sheer chance that we stumbled upon Takashimaya's Hokkaido Fair. We had an enjoyable time tasting the different Japanese delicacies available - from hand-made ramen to the freshest seafood.
Japanese glutinous rice with vegetable and hijiki seaweed. There's even one variant with sakura (cherry blossoms)!
Interesting appetiser of cuttlefish and flying fish roe flavoured with red pepper

Grilled & salted cod fish roe





Crabs, crabs and more crabs!

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