Todai @ Marina Bay Sands

This is my 2nd time to Todai since it opened. My first time was during the first few weeks that they  opened. This time round, I tagged along thanks to the folks from HungryGoWhere.Com

Todai says on its website, it's an international seafood and sushi buffet restaurant. In my two trips there, I think of it more as a Korean Buffet plus International Seafood restaurant.

The first time I was here, I ate probably half of the things served here. This time round, I tried more with some overlap. Meaning I might come back in a few months time to try other things.

I don't think it's wise to try every single thing. By the time you eat them all, you would be too full and be too full to appreciate what you have eaten. I noticed that there's a Korea Promotion on and decided that I shall try those special food plus a few 'must try' things here.

They call themselves a sushi buffet restaurant so expect to lots of it. They do have a huge variety of sushi on the buffet tables! You know sushi is mostly rice, it makes you really full. So I was quite selective. I picked those that stood out and also those with Korea Festival on it.



The above I think was the White Dragon Roll. I was tempted by the mushroom on top.
It had my favourite ingredient and I went back for thirds!



If you are a Kimchi fan, this Kimchi Sushi roll is a must try!
Wrapped in kimchi cabbage leaves and also some kimchi on top of it! I like kimchi and find their kimchi not too fermented, so it's to my liking. I had 3 of this!




If you watch Korean soaps, they always talk about Korean Beef. (韩牛)
These are marinated BBQ Korean Short Ribs! Verified it with the Manager that these are all imported from Korea!

The taste, you can't get enough of it! Probably because of the marinate and also the slight char smell. It's not sinewy and cuts easily with the fork and knife.

The get wiped out by fellow diners quite quickly though. So when you see them, take a few pieces to try.




This is another thing that you must try. Deep fried Ginseng!
If you hate the smell of Ginseng, then skip it. I am OK with it.

Fried Ginseng does taste better than small ginseng pieces that mum forces us to suck like sweets when I was a kid studying for exams! It's just skinny pieces of ginseng roots with tempura batter. Not the super potent kind.




Tuesdays and Thursday are Oyster Nights. (We went on  Tuesday night).
I am not an fresh oyster fan and I ate it just because it's expensive. I ate one and passed the next one to my wife!




I like the Alaskan Crabs though. It's lots of work trying to cut the thing out. I think these are easier to cut than the usual Sri Lankan varieties we have with chilli or pepper crabs.

It's therapeutic sometimes to slowly cut and snip the crab up! I think I do quite a good job didn't I?

By the way, I was told, that Todai Singapore might be ending their Alaskan Crab on the menu quite soon. Todai in other countries like Korea and US are already removing it from their menu. Prices of Alaskan crabs are getting too high to be viable to serve them as buffet now.

(you can check the prices yourself for example in Fairprice Finest, it's getting very expensive!)




Something from their Korean Cooked Food section.
I was told they were Korean Beef, so I took 2 pieces. Yummy!



Chilli crabs and fried mantou.
It's deliciously, but not really spectacular. Go to your favourite chilli crab stall.




They have a churrasco section too. I like the pineapple and the fattier portions of pork.

They are kind of lightly salted, so you might need sauces. This might sound weird, but the kimchi station has nice pickles to go with these brazilian styles of meat!


(Note: the beef in this section is from US and not the Korean beef.)




There are the usual fresh sashimi station as well.




More cold seafood, do you find that the smaller the shell fish, the sweeter it taste?
The common stuff that you get in many other buffets around.




These are some Korean Rice cake snacks in conjunction with the Korea Festival.
Some are nicer than the rest and probably an acquired taste to some people. The texture is chewy!

For desserts, I had some cakes. What I liked was the self service sundae machine!
I can't resist ice cream!




Check out the promotion that they are running now.

Todai Marina Bay Sands (Singapore) B2-01 The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands 2 Bayfront Avenue Singapore 018972 Tel: +65 6688 7771

Scan QR Code for Address Details.

Singapore Writers Festival : Literary Meals

Singapore Writers Festival - http://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/. 

Oh how time flies! Way back in 2007, the Singapore Writers Festival had a segment in their program for bloggers. Cheryl from thebakerwhocooks.net and I were on a panel discussion moderated by ChubbyHubby. We were talking about Food Blogging. It was interesting that food bloggers were invited to the Writers Festival. Were you there in the audience?

This year, the Singapore Writers Festival will be running from 22-30 October. The theme for this year is "Transaction". It will feature over 120 writers in a wide range of activities and events.




With so many programmes, one particular programme might be interesting to you all.
It's called Literary Meals.

This is an unique opportunity to get up close and personal with your favourite authors and share ideas over a meal at The Arts House. The authors participating range from Vikas Swarup (author of Q&A, which was adapted to become award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire!) to philosopher Julian Baggini, distinguished English poet Sir Andrew Motion, respected contemporary Chinese author Yang Lian, and finally Cheryl Tan, Singaporean author who penned the well-reviewed food memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, and who’s returning from the US for this event.

The event is payable programme.
If you are interested, tickets are available from www.bytes.sg

LITERARY MEALS In collaboration with The Arts House
	Literary Meals: Eat Your Words with Yang Lian   Sat 22 Oct | 7.30pm – 9pm | Viet Lang, The Arts House | $60 (inc. dinner)   Described as one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature, Yang Lian is known as a writer who stretches poetic language to its linguistic extreme and for the sensuous strength and intellectual clarity of his words. Over dinner, discover more of this author and poet – his views on exile and contemporary Chinese culture, and how he bridges Chinese traditions to western modernism.
	Literary Meals: Eat Your Words with Andrew Motion  Sun 23 Oct | 1pm - 2.30pm | Viet Lang, The Arts House | $60 (inc. lunch)   Join distinguished poet and writer, Andrew Motion for an afternoon of delightful poetry, interesting anecdotes and insightful conversation. Over a leisurely lunch, find out more about being a poet laureate and balancing commissions from the British Royal family and drawing inspiration from the ordinary life.
	Literary Meals: Eat Your Words with Julian Baggini Sun 23 Oct | 7.30pm - 9pm | Viet Lang, The Arts House | $60 (inc. dinner)   Over hors d'oeuvres, meet British philosopher Julian Baggini, and see why one reviewer called him a “guardian of good sense.” From making an intellectual case for atheism to relooking at the age-old conundrum of the self, how does he condense complex ideas and communicate them? Come stretch your mind while enjoying a delectable dinner.
	Literary Meals: Eat Your Words with Cheryl Tan   Tue 25 Oct | 7.30pm – 9pm | Restaurant 1827, The Arts House | $60 (inc. dinner)  The charming Cheryl Tan, whose first book was the well-reviewed food memoir A Tiger in the Kitchen, will delight you with tales about growing up in a Teochew household and her culinary and publishing adventures. What is the special connection between learning age-old recipes and our cultural identities? Not to be missed by food and book lovers!
	Literary Meals: Eat Your Words with Vikas Swarup   Sat 29 Oct | 12 noon – 1.30pm | Restaurant 1827, The Arts House | $60 (incl. lunch)   Spend the afternoon with Vikas Swarup, best known for his novel Q&A which became the basis for the global movie hit Slumdog Millionaire. Find out more about his second novel Six Suspects which has been optioned for a film and how living in Osaka, Japan informs and inspires his writing.

Nasi Lemak - Prawn Sambal

We prepared this a few times over the last few weeks. Relatives coming over for a homemade Nasi Lemak lunch. Nasi Lemak made at home just taste extra good. You know the ingredients are fresh and there is no additives. The rice, fragrant and steaming hot right out of the rice cooker gives it an extra uumph!

Cooking at home the last 6 months has been easy because we no longer have to wash dishes. We got that part out by not getting a maid, but a dishwasher! Yup, it saves us water too! We no longer squabble over who shall do the dishes. Now, we have strong opinions on how things are to be stacked. Oh well, quarrels don't stop. LOL.

It was early Saturday morning. Mum and Aunt made an appointment to meet at the market to buy ingredients. I followed them to be their 'Siri'. Siri, please carry this. Siri, please collect this and that from who and who. Siri please pay for this.



This was the Nasi Lemak! 
I decided to document the prawn sambal cooking process and share with you all!




We had 1/2 kilo of fresh prawns. Get small to medium size ones. Too big and the sambal won't look correct. Mum don't want to get the smaller ones, so she does not need to peel so many prawns!



Two onions.



Chilli Boh. We just got the freshly made ones from the fresh food market. To simplify the process.

If you are up to it, you can soak dried chilli a day ahead, clean them and mix them with fresh chilli and other spices to make your own chilli boh.





Mum's recipe does not only have Chilli Boh, she adds in Chilli Powder too.
This is to make it extra spicy!




Heat your kuali. Add enough oil, usually 4 to 5 tablespoons of oil. You need enough oil to bring out the fragrance. It's called 'naik minyak' in Malay.

Fry the Chilli boh first for a few minutes. On medium high to high heat. I assure you, you will choke and cough when you do this! The spiciness will fill the air. Keep stirring before it chars! Around 5 minutes of so, add in 2 to 3 tablespoons of the chilli powder. Fry it a while more and the mixture becomes like a lump. It will smell superb!




Add in the onions!



Looking good eh?




Next we got to add in the Assam Water.

This was about a 2 tablespoon of Assam and we add it into a bowl of water to dissolve it and get the Assam Juice.




Pour it in and the whole mixture turns even more fragrant!




Don't you think it is looking so delicious already?
Mum prefers a dryer version, but I like a wetter version. So we compromised and we settled on this! It's really up to you!

Add in some probably around 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar.



Add in the prawns!



Simmer it for a few minutes, you get the prawn sambal!



After cooking it, you can't wait to have lunch!
We had to wait for 2 hours until lunch time when our guests arrived.

Mum prepared the cucumbers and the hard boiled eggs.
Aunt came over with prawn and fish keropok, fried ikan bilis (anchovies) and fried peanuts that she prepared at her home.



Tempting?



We have been quite busy and for those friends who are asking when are we having the house warming? The answer is "soon". This is a preview of what we will serve!

Review: EPSON STYLUS PHOTO TX720WD

A few weeks ago, I was loaned the Epson Stylus Photo TX720WD printer by XPR / Epson Singapore to test it out and give a review of it. It was exciting as the TX720WD has been considered one of the superior photo printers around.

If you are interested in the detail specifications of the printer, the Epson website has all the information. Some of you might prefer the PDF version, which can be downloaded here.


This image from the Epson Singapore website.

You would know that I take excessive amount of photos. Mostly food photos, but I don't print food photos on paper. They usually remain in digital form online either on this blog, Flickr or Facebook. What can I print and not waste the photo paper?

Wedding photos! For my wedding a few months ago, we engage a photographer to take photos for us. The photos taken came back in a DVD of all the raw images taken. It has been a few months and we have not send out the wedding dinner photos to our guests.

Most people our age prefer the soft copy emailed to them. We have also invited many uncles and aunties and parent's friends that would prefer a physical paper copy of the wedding photo. We thought we will print them out and pass it to them.




The review set that was loaned to me. Looks like it has been well used by many reviewers.

It's a 9.6 kg all-in-one printer, that scan, copy and print. You might think it's very big compared to the portable photo printers by other brands, but remember this is an all-in-one.

The machine can be connected to your home Wifi network, which I did. The CD Tray that you see is for printing on CD/DVD that has a printable surface and not to print from a CD. I did not realise that initially and tried to put the DVD from the photographer inside!




To print, you can insert the various formats of storage cards or use PictBridge connector if you wish to print directly from your camera.




A few packets of 4R glossy paper for printing courtesy of Epson/XPR.
This printer also prints larger sizes like A4 / Letter / Legal sizes.




This printer uses the 6 colour system.



They are easily replaceable too. The printer came with some used cartridges from the previous reviewer. To check how much ink was left, I could see it from the front panel on the printer. I could also check it using the software provided or even from my iPhone.

Printing the Photos.

I printed the photos using two methods.

1) Using the iPad/iPhone App that I downloaded from the Apple App Store. I think it's also available from the Android Market.

2) Printing directly from my MacBook Pro connected via the USB cable.

The nearly a thousand photos that we have of our wedding has been loaded into both my wife and my iPad. We have been bringing it around so that friends and relatives can view it. We decided to try printing the photos directly from the iPad.

To print using the iPad, you would need to connect the printer to your Wifi network. It was quite easy to do that. Then turn on Wifi on your iPad to make sure you are on the same network and the App will detect the printer.

(Wifi enabled printer also means, all your various devices at home, can all share this printer!)



The screen capture of the iPad app. It was easy to use. We press on "photos" and selected the photos we want to print. You can select the number of copies, the output size etc all using the App.

Though it's convenient to print directly from the iPad, we found it a bit too slow. It takes too long to transmit the photo via the Wifi network. I am not sure if it's because we are printing using hi resolution photos.




If you have an iPhone and want to print the photos from your iPhone just download the free App.




As we wanted to print a lot of photos to be given out, I printed using my MacBook Pro instead. It's much faster. I did not install the programs that came with the printer to print.

I simply insert the DVD into the MacBook Pro and used "Preview" to view the photos and printed from it. That's because the photos were all taken professionally and I did not need to edit them. ;-)

The Photos Printed

The first few photos that came out had some 'fine lines' and I thought should not be the case. I did a 'print head' cleaning function and the subsequent photos came out superb!


For the next 5 photos, if you click on them, it will bring you to Flickr and you can choose the highest resolution photo to zoom in and see for yourself how the photos come out.



During our wedding, we gave out green apples as wedding favours after the ceremony in the church.
Are you impressed by the prints? The colour rendering is very good right? The printer prints at a high resolution of 5760dpi, I am sure you can see the difference.



We were pleasantly surprised by the quality and so did our parents when we showed them the photos.



We got married in our church that has these mosaic tiles. The colour comes out really well and almost similar to the real thing too!




For our wedding banquet, we ordered a real 3 tier cake that can be eaten to be served to our guests. I know some people are asking where the cake is from, it's ordered from Creative Culinaire, which is a cooking and baking school at Tiong Bahru.

Can you see the quality of the print out? The pattern on the edible bride on the cake can be clearly seen too! Remember I am taking this photo of a photograph and it can still be seen clearly.



I think the cake's really cute isn't it?

We took big group photos during the church and also during the wedding banquet. We printed a few of them on the A4 size paper and wow, it comes out really well! We could see all the faces clearly.

Some of you my real life 'older' friends,  we will send you the photos printed on the Epson paper using the EPSON STYLUS PHOTO TX720WD. We will mail it or pass it to you all real soon!

Retailing at SGD$398, the Epson Stylus TX720WD is quite a reasonably prices printer, suitable for those who require good quality printouts.

Here's a link to the Epson TX720WD page at the Epson Singapore website:
http://www.epson.com.sg/epson_singapore/printers_and_all_in_ones/inkjet/product.page?product_name=Epson_Stylus_Photo_TX720WD#