What to name our Boutique / Cafe? Why not Boufe?

I kid you not, the name of this Boutique / Cafe hybrid is simply "Boufe." Occupying a shoplot in the gorgeously retro Phoenix Park off Tanglin Road (think colonial-style bungalows with whitewashed walls), the shared entrance splits off to the boutique on the left and the cafe on the right. Since we're not a haute couture blog we'll concentrate solely on the food!


Boufe has an almost-all-white interior motif - all the furniture, walls and ceilings are white or close to white. Together with the huge windows it makes for a very airy, open feel in the dining area. Menu options are pretty basic, with little more than brunch basics like eggs benedict, croque monsieur, smoked salmon croissant, sides of truffle fries and crispy wings ... and of course a mandatory big breakfast. Here it's the Triple B (Boufe's Big Breakfast, $21 nett), and comes with sausages, mini croissant, salad, scrambled eggs, mushrooms and candied bacon. It's all pretty par for the course for the price, with the exception of the scrambled eggs which are a gorgeous serving of creamy, velvety deliciousness.


There's also a selection of single-portion cakes and desserts - like this Chocolate Tart ($5.50 nett). The tart is lined with a thick caramel paste that isn't too sweet, and the glaze/filling is suitably chocolate-y and moist.


We also tried the Strawberry Shortcake ($8.00 nett), which was pretty good! Sponge layers were light and fluffy and the whipped cream layers were smooth and not too sweet.


Naturally we washed it all down with coffee - Flat Whites and Lattes are $4.80 nett each. Our preference is for slightly more intense flavours, but the coffee was still pretty decent nevertheless.


The nett pricing brings us to $44.10 for two - which are very reasonable prices for brunch in cafes around town. Ambience is nice and chic and Boufe would be a great place to catch up with friends or impress a date - pity the location's a little out of the public transport net so it would be best if you drive or take a taxi. Non-halal.

Boufe Boutique Cafe
308 Tanglin Road, Phoenix Park, #01-01, S 247974.
Open from 10am on Sat/Sun (no reservations accepted on weekends, tends to fill up by 11am).

Naked Black Forest Cake Recipe

It's a trend now to leave the sides of the cake not frosted, they call it Naked Cake.

Deary is a fan of Black Forest Cake and have put it in the queue list for me to bake it. This is my very 1st attempt, will be trying again. As this round it is not there yet due to the new brand of Thicken Whipping cream I'm trying out.



Naked Black Forest Cake

What you need is:
1 can of Dark Sweet Pitted Cherries
10 Glaced Cherry or fresh Cherries for decoration
Chocolate Fudge Cake
Whipped Fresh Cream Frosting Recipe



HAVE FUN & ENJOY!!!!!!

Some tips from us:
- Look out for Whipped Fresh Cream Frosting tips in the link. Overwhipping may lead to butter cream taste and leaving the fresh cream not light and fluffy as it needs to be.
- For home shaving chocolate you need a chocolate shaver, I used our normally house peeler that's why the chocolate does not break, curl and appear thin.


Click here for our blog page Baking Classes for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

Foochew Red Glutinous Rice Wine 红糟酒

When I'm young every birthday, my family will have a simple homecook dinner Red Wine Chicken Soup with Mee Sua and an egg. That's my family tradition but it kind of discountinued...

I am missing a good bowl of Red Wine Chicken Soup with Mee Sua! The another dish that this can be made with this is Dry Red Wine Chicken that goes with rice. Since it is hard to find, time for me to brew some at home.


Yields:
1L of Foochew Red Glutinous Rice Wine
960g Foochew Red Glutinous Rice Wine Residue

Ingredients
1kg Glutinous Rice
2 pieces Wine Biscuits
1 cup Water (Distilled or Cooled-Boiled)
200g Red Rice Bran

1. Wash and soak glutinous rice preferably overnight or at least 3 hours, completely submerged in water.
2. Drain the water and cook the glutinous rice in a rice cooker.
3. When the rice is cooked, loosen and spread the rice out to cool completely.

4. Dry-blend the wine cakes and the red yeast rice and pour the powder into a big bowl.

5. Take handful of the cooled glutinous rice and coat it with the powder. Put the powder-coated glutinous rice into a big glass container.Repeat until all the glutinous rice are used up

6. Use water to rinse any remaining glutinous rice or powder from working bowls and pour into the glass container

7. Place a clean thin cloth in between the cover and cap. Always keep the cap loose.
   During the fermentation process, the red rice mixture will start to float upwards causing 'boiling' bubbles and these form the essential Ang Chew. This stage will happen between 24 to 48 hours and will last for another few days. At this stage, it is important to stir the mixture at least twice a day to avoid overflowing or use only half a jar/container. During this process, the red rice mixture will separate from the liquid and stay afloat. The mixture will then stabilise and red rice will slowly sink back towards the bottom of jar.
8. Set aside glass container in a cool dark place for 7 days for the fermentation to continue.
9. On the 7th day, stir mixture in container then replace the cover, again loosely
10. Set aside for another 23 days (30th day) and it is time to harvest the wine and the residue.
11. The whole content will then be filtered with a piece of clean cloth hanged and allowing it to drip or place a piece of cloth on a strainer. Pour the whole jar content onto the cloth and strain it overnight. Or you can assist to squeeze out to speed up the process and avoid leaving it out to strain overnight.
12. Store in fridge.

Enjoy brewing yours~!

Recipe coming up soon: Red Wine Chicken Soup with Mee Sua
Recipe coming up soon: Dry Red Wine Chicken


Notes:
- Best using aluminium bowl to cool the glutinous rice as they do not retain heat.
- If any globs of rice fall on the floor or table, leave it and throw away when done. Do not pick it up and rinse and put it in the container. Bacteria picked up can ruin the wine.
- It is imperative not to screw on the container's cap tight, as the fermenting process produces a lot of gas.
- The wine cakes affect the taste of the wine significantly. Experiment with vendors until you get a taste you like, then stick to them like white on rice (or in this case red on rice). The Honey Wine Cake that we've use in this trial was told it will make the wine sweeter.
- It is normal to see mouldy substance on top of the red rice mixture at the early stages especially during the 24 -48 hours as fermentation is only beginning. Stir the mixture if you see this as alcohol will kill the mouldy substance off and hence making it negligible. But if mouldy substance is seen floating on the Ang Chew, it is a goner.Water vapour is also normal at the early stages.
- All utensils must be clean and dry.
- Beer bottles should be washed and dried. Then a little Ang Chew was poured into each bottle and thrown away. Then filled each bottle. This way the Ang Chew will last longer.
- The lees or the residues is the Ang Chow, which can be kept for various cooking purposes and of course to make the famous Foochow preserved vegetable Chow Chai.


Click here for our blog page Cooking Classes for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

The Ultimate Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Miles Redemption Guide!

3rd March 2017 Update: Singapore Airlines has unfortunately carried out a devaluation exercise: mileage requirements for redemptions have increased, and the 15% discount for online bookings has been removed. So while previously a first class one-way redemption to Tokyo was 51,000 miles, it's now gone up to 65,000 miles: A hefty 27.5% increase. With the new redemption chart we've re-done the math, so head on over to our analysis of how much a KrisFlyer mile is worth!

Do you have a bunch (or couple thousand bunches) of Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Miles which have been sitting around for a while? Or a bunch of various Credit Card points that could potentially be converted to KrisFlyer Miles? Have you also ever asked yourself "I wonder what I can do with these miles/points" or "I wonder what these miles/points" are worth? Well wonder no more, because today we're going to break it down for you with Look See Eat's Ultimate KrisFlyer Miles Redemption Guide!

First, a quick paragraph on the basics. Almost every single Singapore Airlines flight ticket has at least two components to the price - the Base Fare and one (or more) lines of various taxes, fees, and surcharges. Using your KrisFlyer Miles to redeem award tickets only offsets the Base Fare; everything else still needs to be paid in cash (or credit card). So in the example below, whatever number of miles you spent on the redemption would be only 'worth' $170, as you would need to pay the remaining $156.90 from your pocket.


So how do you find out how many miles you'd need for a particular redemption? The easiest way would be to just use SIA's KrisFlyer Mileage Calculator. Select your departure airport, class of carriage and one way / round trip from the drop downs and the site will re-calculate on the fly. Do note that SIA applies a 15% discount for bookings made online; so while a one-way Economy ticket to Adelaide shows 25,000 miles required, when actually making the booking you'll only need 21,250.


With the basics out of the way, let's get down to business! We took thirteen popular destinations originating from Singapore - a couple each from South East Asia, North East Asia, Australia, Europe, America and Africa. We then recorded the number of miles needed for a return journey redemption, the corresponding (base) air fare, calculated the monetary value and plotted it into a nice little graph:


Some quick conclusions:
- First Class redemptions are the best value, averaging 7.4¢ per KrisFlyer mile.
- Business Class redemptions come in a little lower, averaging 5.1¢ per mile.
- Economy Class redemptions are a relatively poor value 2.3¢ per mile.

Let's go into the details of First Class round-trip redemptions! We can see that in general, you get more value (cents) per KrisFlyer mile spent on longer trips that cost more money. Note that if you don't quite have enough miles for a round trip, you can book a one-way award for exactly half the number of miles listed in the table.


Moving on to Business class, the trend of higher value per KrisFlyer mile spent on longer trips that cost more money continues, except for the journey to/from Cape Town. The strangely low miles requirement for this trip (76,500, which is 40% less than required for a Singapore-London redemption) means a record-high 8.8¢ per mile value. One possible explanation here is that SIA flies older, smaller Boeing 777-200 ER's that don't have the same newer, comfortable seats as some of the other destinations.


Finally, Economy class. It isn't as straightforward here because for paid air tickets, SIA has four different booking types - Super Deals, Sweet Deals, Flexi Saver and Full Flexi, but the mileage redemption values remain the same. In fact at their cheapest fares, the Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Perth and London flights give you less than one cent a mile!


Now, you'll still need to adapt these calculations and figures for your own needs, your mileage accrual rate, and your personal valuation on how much SIA flights are worth. For example, Full Flexi economy fares give a seemingly respectable 3-4¢ per mile of value. But would you really pay $1,500+ for a full flex return ticket to Tokyo? Perhaps it would be better to just fly budget for a third the price, and keep the miles for a more aspirational redemption in the future.

Our recommendations for the best value redemptions are as follows:
- 10,000 - 25,000 Mile range: One Way Business Class to SE Asian destinations.
- 25,000 - 50,000 Mile range: One Way Business Class to Australia, Africa or NE Asia.
- 50,000 - 75,000 Mile range: One Way Business Class to the Americas, or one Way First Class to Australia, Africa or NE Asia.
- 75,000 - 100,000 Mile range: One Way First Class to the Americas.
- 100,000 Miles and above: First Class to wherever your miles can take you!

If you're new to the whole mileage game, you can actually fly in comfort for a remarkably low miles count: 15,000(ish) miles will take you to Bali in Business Class, and 30,000(ish) will take you to Hong Kong in the comfort of Singapore Airlines' flagship product, the Suites!


Image Courtesy of Singapore Airlines
We hope this post has given you a good idea of how far your miles can take you - and whether you get there in style. At a later date we'll write a follow-up on the different ways you can get KrisFlyer miles (it's easier and quicker than you might expect). In the meantime, if you've got any questions at all do leave a comment and we'll be sure to respond as best we can!

Sydney Trip Itinerary - Hyam's Beach, Dolphin Watch Cruising from Jervis Bay and the Kiama Blowhole!

For a recap of the entire trip, table of contents and links to other posts, do click here: One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

We've got another road trip lined up for our third day in Sydney - Southward-bound this time, on the Grand Pacific Drive to Jervis Bay and back! It's pretty much a full day trip, with over six hours of driving in total, so got an early start and hit the road!


We took the Princess Highway southbound as we actually wanted to catch the earlier Dolphin Watching boats out of Jervis Bay. As luck (and traffic) would have it though, we arrived into the town of Huskisson just as the earlier boats were pulling away from the harbor. Sadface. So we had some brunch at the Angels Bayside Cafe on the corner of Owen and Hawke Street. It was okay.


Having some time to spare we took a short drive to the nearby Hyams Beach to dip our feet in the (cold) water and take a stroll on the sands. Apparently the Guinness Book of Records lists the beach here as having the whitest sand in the world; whether that's really true is anyone's guess. What's evident, though, is that it's crazy hot thanks to the summer sun.


There are a number of dolphin and whale-watching boat operators in Huskisson; which only go out if there are sufficient passengers. So do make sure you give them a call and ask. We ended up going with Dolphin Watch Cruises because they were the only operator sending out a boat at our time slot.


Dolphin watching is pretty fun, and within the one-and-a-half hour cruise we saw at least a few dozen of them. Getting good photographs of the dolphins is really, really frustrating, though. They appear for just a fraction of a second at a time, so unless your camera was already pointed at the right spot you'd likely be a little too late. With enough time, skill and/or luck I'm sure you'd get at least a couple of amazing shots, but apparently today we didn't have enough of any of 'em.



We take the leisurely Grand Pacific Drive northwards back to Coogee, and stop at the Kiama Blowhole. A small cave/tunnel starting at the sea wall ends here at this hole, so when the waves come in they've got nowhere to go but up and out, sometimes in spectacular 20-foot high walls of white frothy seawater. Today the seas are tame, though, and all we get are weedy 6-8 foot high sputters. Ah well.


Our final stop before heading home was the University town of Wollongong. While there are a ton of things to do here, we only take a quick pit stop for dinner and drinks before leaving to catch the Sea Cliff Bridge before sunset.


"Sea Cliff Bridge from air" by illawarrashowcase - Sea Cliff Bridge
The bridge itself is a 450m long, balanced cantilever bridge that runs parallel to the coast. We've got a video taken from the car here below, but honestly the video really doesn't do the spectacular view justice.


Once across the bridge we decided to cut through the Royal National Park, which turned out to be a huge mistake. The roads wind through the hills and would undoubtedly be an amazing drive during the day. But at night, all you see are the cats eyes on the road and it was really a waste of time and effort. Anyways, after a long, long day we stop for some pick-me-up meals from one of the nearby Woolworths before heading back to Coogee to eat, shower, and sleep.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up soon!

Oreo Brownies Recipe

It's been 2 years since I tried out Nutella Brownies a.k.a. 3 ingredients Brownies Recipe comments received was it is too sweet.

Diane Gale's Oreo Brownie caught my eyes. It's simple, direct and deliciously good that our colleagues love them.


Square Pan of 9" x 9" sides x 2" height

165g Butter
200g Dark Chocolate Droplets
Pinch of Salt
4 Eggs
165g Light Brown Sugar
3 tablespoons All-Purpose Flour
1 tablespoon Cocoa Powder
Mini Oreos / or Oreos broken into pieces
White Chocolate Chips (Optional)

Melt Butter in a pan over medium heat. Remove and add the chopped chocolate, use a spatula and keep stir until smooth and well combined. Set aside.

Preheat your oven to about 180°C. Prepare your baking pan by lining it with baking paper, or spraying vegetable oil, or lightly buttering the corners.

Whisk the eggs in a large mixing bowl until they triple in volume. Add brown sugar and whisk until incorporated. Whisk the melted chocolate into the eggs quickly until well combined.

Add All-Purpose Flour, Cocoa Powder and fold in until combined. Pour the mix into the baking pan. Scatter the Oreo Cookies over the top of the mixture, pressing some into the batter.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the middle is only slightly fudgy and gooey.

Let it cool and store in airtight container. ENJOY!!!!!!

Lesson learnt and honest review:
- Chocolatey and irresistible that you'll pick up a second slice.
- Use the type of chocolate you love, Milk Chocolate, Semi-Sweet Chocolate, Dark Chocolate. If using White Chocolate do not add the Cocoa Powder.
- If you baking a big brownie and slicing up, you can put it back in the oven for 5mins at 150degrees. It will give each brownie a crust.
- If you are planning to give this as a gift to friends you may use small loaf pans. It fills up to 6.


Click here for our blog page Baking Classes for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

Sydney Trip Itinerary - Fruit Picking, Terrigal, and Pelican Feeding at the Entrance!

For a recap of the entire trip, table of contents and links to other posts, do click here: One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

We're on a Northbound road trip today! We had initially planned to go all the way north to Newcastle, but as it turned out that was a bit too ambitious. So instead we did five hours in total of driving covering 300km to the Canoelands for fruit picking followed by a drive northwards to The Entrance, before turning back and heading over to Watson's Bay to catch the sunset before dinner.


The first checkbox on today's agenda was to find an orchard and do some fruit picking. There are dozens of farms all within an hours' drive (or two) from Sydney, many of them with different crop types. Unfortunately as we only visited one orchard we aren't really in a position to give recommendations on which ones are better - you'll have to do your own research on that. We can, however, give you a quick guide as to when each particular crop comes into picking season - so tough luck if you're here in the cold winter months of July-September when nothing is in season.


Anyway we settled for Tangerines at Canoelands Orchard, about a one-and-a-half hours' drive from Coogee. There's a $5 basket rental fee (i.e. entrance fee) and then you're set loose among the fruit trees in the Orchard, free to pluck as many Tangerines as you like. It isn't a fruit buffet, though - after you're done you still need to pay per-kilogram rates for whatever you'd like to take home with you.


While it was quite fun wandering around the orchard hunting for big and ripe fruit - sort of in a go-back-to-your-ancestors'-time-and-forage-for-your-own-food kind of way, to be absolutely honest the actual fruit wasn't that great. Most of what we picked out was either under-ripe or just "meh, okay lah" on the sweetness scale. Probably better to leave it to the experts next time, and just buy our fruit in the markets.

After that's done we head back into the car and continue our road trip North. If you're hoping for grand sweeping vistas and majestic cliffs, you won't quite get it on these roads. Yes there's lots of foliage and the roads have an occasional interesting twist and turn, but by and large the drive is rather uninspiring. Check out the fast-forwarded video below for what we mean (and do disregard the cheesy royalty-free music):


After about an hour-and-a-half we stop to stretch our legs at Terrigal, a quaint little seaside town with a nice, almost-deserted beach, and a row of shops selling food, ice cream and other curios ...


... and a further half hour after that we stop at The Entrance to check out the daily 3.30pm Pelican Feeding!


Taken from the town's Official Website:

"Just over twenty years ago, the pelican feeding started by accident when staff from a local fish and chip shop would throw out scraps. It became such a ritual that whenever the staff were late in throwing their scraps out, the pelicans would cross the road and come up to the shop to be fed.

One of the main objectives of the pelican feed is to keep an eye on the pelican's medical conditions as many have hooks and lines tangles up in their gullets, wings and other parts of their body. The feed is a chance for the co-ordinator to assess their well being. It's certainly an amusing show to come and see."


By the time we're back on the road it's already well after 4pm, so we abandon our original target of Newcastle and turn around to head back to Watson's Bay, making it in time to catch the sun setting majestically over the Sydney CBD skyline:


Sunset means dinnertime, and Watson's Bay has a well known seafood joint called Doyle's on the Beach. It's really expensive though so we settle for salt & pepper shrimp and pork belly sliders at Watson Bay Hotel's Beach Club instead. Sipping coffee and eating sweet sticky sliders while watching the sun set - an awesome end to the day.


After dinner we head back to Coogee for an early night as five hours of driving does get a bit tiring. Plus we hadn't fully recovered from the lack of sleep on the overnight flight from Singapore.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up soon!

Should I redeem KrisFlyer miles for Scoot or TigerAir vouchers?

As you might already know, Singapore Airlines is actually a conglomerate (of sorts) of four different airlines - Singapore Airlines, Silk Air (the regional arm), Scoot (long haul low cost carrier) and a substantial shareholding in Tiger Airways Singapore (short haul low cost carrier). Up until recently however you could only spend KrisFlyer miles for flights on the two main carriers.

Well, a while ago Singapore Airlines announced that they would soon extend KrisFlyer miles spending to the two LCC's, and now that the redemption rates are out for cash-equivalent vouchers, the question is should you redeem your miles on Scoot or TigerAir vouchers?


The short answer is no. With these voucher redemptions, you're geting 0.9 cents per KF mile of value. While you might be tempted to think that's still better than nothing, KrisFlyer miles can be worth a lot more on paper when used for flight redemptions on the two main carriers.

For example, a return flight to Bali costs $210.00 in fare + $152.60 in taxes and surcharges:


With a KrisFlyer miles flight redemption, you need 12,750 miles + $152.60 in taxes and surcharges. This represents 1.6 cents per KF mile of value.


This is just one simple example for a short, two-and-a-half hour flight. In general, award flight values go up as you fly longer distances and/or step upwards in booking class (i.e. premium economy, business, first class). In fact, long haul first class redemptions come close to hitting 9 cents per KF mile.

Now, one caveat here. The "Value per KF mile" figures are all paper/theoretical values. You will need to adjust them for your own personal view of what each particular flight is worth. For example, you can fly to Sydney on Scoot for $509, or on Singapore Airlines for $843. Are the extra perks on the Singapore Airlines flight worth the 60% increase in airfare? In other words, if you are planning to book a Scoot flight, how much extra would you pay to fly Singapore Airlines instead?

Finally, if you only have a minimal amount of KrisFlyer miles and don't accrue them regularly (whether via flights or credit cards), then it may make sense to use up whatever miles you have on some Jetstar/Scoot vouchers to at least get some value out of them.

Let us know in the comments if this write-up was useful for you, and if you'd be interested in reading a longer blogpost on the best sweet spots for KrisFlyer miles redemptions. Happy flying!

One63 European Bistro & Bar near City Square/Komtar JBCC in Johor Bahru!

Today we head across the Causeway to the city of Johor Bahru for a quick dinner review at One63 European Bistro & Bar! If you're one of the tens of thousands of Singaporeans who occasionally take a bus across the bridge for some shopping, food, massage, etc, you might be interested too - This restaurant is just 400-500m walk from Komtar JB. It's in the row of shophouses on Jalan Trus/Jalan Ngee Heng, directly opposite the Doubletree by Hilton JB hotel.


One63 is helmed by Chef Kelvin who has previously done stints with three Michelin-starred restaurants in France, but strangely has a heavily Italian-weighted European menu. The meal starts off with a somewhat oddly-shaped and flavoured bread, which if we're honest wasn't very good.


The Cream of Mushroom Soup for RM 10 was delicious and value for money, though, with a good proportion of mushroom to cream in the flavour profile. We thought that the texture was spot on, too - not too creamy or starchy, and not too chunky.


For mains I had the Seafood Risotto - a proper arborio rice'd one with seafood, saffron, white wine and parmigiano cheese - for RM 36. The risotto was pretty good - not too starchy not too soupy. It came with a generous amount of shrimp, mussels, squid and scallops. We suspect that some of the items may have been frozen and not fresh, though, as there was a hint of fishiness in some spoonfuls of the rice.


The darling tried the Braised Lamb Shank with eggplant salad, potato wedges and garden vegetables (RM 37). Lamb was braised til tender, and very tasty. Vegetables and the supermarket-bag potato wedges were par for the course I suppose.


We were a bit disappointed that only the two least-enticing options off the dessert menu were available - crepes and Panna Cotta (RM 16.30). As you know, panna cotta is an Italian dessert generally made of thick cream, egg white and honey, and which generally isn't served in a small glass vial. Nevertheless I quite liked both the cream and the passion fruit glaze on the top, but the darling thought it was overpoweringly sour.


At a final bill of RM 132 (SGD 60) for two people, we thought the food was overall fairly good. Ambience in the restaurant was decent, if a tad bit noisy thanks to the lack of any sound-absorbing materials, and service was pretty standard "Malaysian-mid-range-restaurant" - that is to say the wait staff were competent but not particularly friendly nor knowledgeable about the menu.

One63 is open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. If you're in JB for the day, I'd say it is totally worth the short walk for a meal if you're tired of all the fast food options available in City Square or Komtar. No pork served.