Recently I discovered an interesting dining out concept, by a restaurant franchise called Pepper Lunch. Heard it has been around in Singapore for about a year, but this rather ignorant person here just found out a few days ago.

Ever toyed with the idea of frying your own meal in a posh restaurant? Food or ingredients for your meal is served raw and you just need to mix it up together. This will give you a better idea.

Sounds pretty fun isn’t it? It kind of injected the fun element into it, and customers are in control of their salt intake, as customers get to add in their own soy sauce and the like. Besides, the hot plate keeps the food hot, which means, food will taste better. And pricing wise is quite ok as well.

Some might argue that the concept is pretty similar to Seoul Garden or even steamboat. The difference is that, you don’t get oily all over and smell of your dinner after the meal is over.

Kudos to whoever thought of this concept. Hmm however, one thing which I’m still wondering is how the hot plate manage to keep the heat to ensure the ingredients are cooked and then slowly cool off after the frying to allow the customers to enjoy their meal in peace? Anyone out there knows how they did it?

Believe it or not, we do not need any added salt in our food at all. We do not even need any monosodium glutamate (MSG) added. We have heard that salt and MSG are flavour enhancers, in fact I would agree they do. They do have an effect of making the food more flavourful, more palatable and have a better mouthfeel. In short, foods taste better.

However, you must know that we can get both sodium and glutamate in natural foods, such as vegetables, fruits and meat. If we can get them from the food we eat, why do we need to add more of them into our diet? Furthermore we know that salt is one of the culprits that causes hypertension. Meanwhile, there has not been extensive scientific research done on the health effects by MSG.

GLUTAMATE

According to data from the seminar I attended yesterday, glutamate is naturally found in many foods such as foods high in protein, mushrooms and scallops.

We can get 140 mg of glutamate in per 100 g of fish, tomatoes and mushrooms. Surprisingly, walnuts has as high as 658 mg of glutamate per 100 g and Parmesan cheese - 1200 mg per 100g!

SODIUM

As for sodium, the most common is the table salt that we use for cooking. Processed foods has an abundant of it, while fresh foods has much lesser. Sodium is usually found in a bound form, where Na+ attaches itself to other elements or molecules.

Even baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) has sodium, so it means all bakery products already has lots of sodium even though there are no added salt. No wonder cornflakes are no longer really healthy even though we are made to believe so.

The preservative sodium benzoate used for preserving meat products such as sausages also has bound sodium. With more salt added to enhance flavour, you can figure how much sodium you get from just one sausage.

According to the data I get from the talk, one teaspoon of soy sauce has 340 mg of sodium; one teaspoon of MSG has 615 mg of sodium and even one tablespoon of chilli sauce has 200 mg of sodium!

Do you ever think you can escape from salt? No way. Anyway, our body needs salt, but research has shown that we only need 100 mg per day to function.

When we eat more salt, our poor body has to regulate the excess salt and can tolerate up to 2000 mg without adverse effects. But, why put our body through such abuse? We are killing ourselves softly, isn’t it?

Went to a seminar on food senses on saturday with my classmates. I was hoping I could learn something from there. However, the first talk was rather disappointing because it sounded more like an advertisement. The whole talk is just on marketing that product by the company who sponsored the talk, even though the professor did it subtly. Yah, to think that the speaker was a professor. Was feeling rather cheated by the end of the first talk.

So during the second talk, I wasn’t really paying attention already. It was a cooking demonstration actually. Though the recipes sounds nice and smelled nice, but was rather put off by another advertising talk by the chef who was demonstrating.

Come to think of it, maybe because the ideas they are presenting is against what I believe in, and it was contrary to what I’ve learnt before this.

We get to taste the food that was cooked, but then it was cold by the time we get it, so it doesn’t taste nice anymore. On my way out to get more fruits, I met another two of my classmates. Was so happy then, because haven’t seen them for some time.

We stayed on, despite some other people leaving during the break. Luckily we did, because I felt I learnt far more from the last two talks. Instead of being contrary to my belief, it strengthen my belief of not needing any added salt in our food.

From the answer I get from the questions I asked the professor and one of the nutrition consultant, they further confirmed my belief that we do not need to add salt into our cooking and food.

Will update more on the significant things I’ve learnt from the seminar in the next post.

My good friends treated me to dinner at Thai Express, savouring super hot tom yam soup and fragrant green curry. The kangkung we had was also very nicely fried.

I was surprised the creamy and milky looking bowl of soup which looked more like a dessert with coconut milk, tasted exactly like tom yam soup, except that it is creamier. At first we even thought the waitress gave us the wrong order. However, it turned out to be really nice.

Never had that before and this was my first time tasting this. Of course it is a new discovery for me.

Some of you may think it is rather stupid, but to me, I am delighted to discover new things everyday. By consciously being aware of the new things that I’ve discovered everyday, I realised that I become more observant and sharpen my senses.

To my dear friends who treated me to the special dinner, was very touched and thanks so much!

Been missing in action for some time and now I’m back to deposit some thoughts and discoveries into my blog.

I’ve had a great time the past few days. And had enjoyed myself a lot too, stuffing myself with food which I’ve never tasted before and discovering new food.

My friend came to visit me and we went on window shopping round the island. Went to Suntec, Plaza Singapura, Bugis, West Mall, IKEA… I wonder how many shopping centres we can conquer in a day. I guess after a while window shopping gets boring too.

Back to the food we tasted:

1. Lamb Shank and Chicken Gordon Bleu

Kind of a bit too salty for my taste buds, but overall, it’s a nice change. And to my horror, it is just microwaved frozen meal, from this chain of food restaurant famous for its cheese cake. To think that I’ve just spent a bomb on a microwaved meal… I guess I shall just stick to my home-cooked food.

2. Swedish Meatballs and fried chicky wings

Something novel which we tasted. And was rather impressed by the fact that the chicky wings there in this famous furniture shop at Queensway is so much bigger than the usual chicken wings you can find elsewhere.

The chicken wings were nicely fried and marinated. Even though the skin outside was quite brown, but the meat inside is still tender. To be able to fry to this perfection, the temperature of the oil and the duration of frying must have been researched thoroughly. Just wondering what would be the temperature and time used for frying…

Yum! We stuffed 6 chicky wings between us and had free flow of coffee… Imagine the fullness we felt after the food spree. Wahahaaa

Still in holiday mood, even though the public holidays are over. It feels kind of weird that I wasn’t joining the crowd this time to head straight back home after work. Take three days of leave for nine days of holidays. Good bargain, right?

In fact I’ve looked forward to this long holiday and had even booked bus ticket home way in advance. But some changes in plan had flipped the ‘balik kampung’ plan 180 degrees. Things happen for a purpose I guess. At least I’ve experience how it is like to be ‘left behind’ during festive season for once.

My experiment with fish curry became a total flop today. It looks nice but doesn’t taste a bit like its looks. Looks are deceiving eh? Not only for food, but for human too.

The curry was so bad, I don’t think anyone would want eat it. I ended up eating just the fish and the rest went down the rubbish chute. Better preparations next time.

I have this tendency of not following exactly the recipe book. I’ll prefer playing around with my own ingredients and experiment with different types of food. So this time round, I know fish curry without tamarind juice is not nice at all! Bleeekk….

As the title suggests, yes, you can make yummy pork chop with apple cider vinegar! Do I see some raised eyebrows out there? Oh well, it was one of my discoveries two days ago which I wanted to blog but never got myself to do it.

Well, back to the pork chop. What I had was a weird mixture of everything. Even though it is kind of haphazard, but I’m proud to say that this dish is my own recipe! Wahahaha!

It all started with this idea of making my own pork chop. Oh mind you, this was my first attempt at it and it turned out right! I had this block of pork which I sliced into thinner slices.

Then, I wanted to make the meat tender and felt that using lime would be just too troublesome. So this idea of using apple cider vinegar came up. Why specifically this vinegar and not others like rice vinegar or black vinegar you may ask. You can experiment with those vinegars and tell me the result. What I had on my shelf was just the apple cider vinegar.

So in went the vinegar, just enough to cover the meat pieces. Next, I poured in 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and dumped in lots of black pepper powder. Then I mixed them all up evenly and left it to marinate.

I’m sure it will turn charcoal and stick to my normal pan in no time and if not, I’ll have to use lots of oil. Being a health freak especially when it comes to food, I opted for the non-stick pan. I scooped in some butter and nice-smelling fragrant filled the kitchen. Next, in went the pork chop pieces and were pan-fried until they were just cooked. Don’t overcook, because the meat will get really hard and you will have a hard time fighting with the meat pieces later.

After that, I poured in all the leftover marinating ’sauce’ to make the real sauce. I merely heated it for a while and poured it over the meat pieces on a plate. Voila! There you have a simple, quick and mouth-watering dish.

Better test it out before I copyright the recipe haha! Just kidding…:P