0 A much welcomed break

I had a mini respite from the 12-hour intensive lab work over the course of last week. We marked granny's 83rd birthday at Ming Kee seafood restaurant, which meant I had an excuse to complete my work earlier. The dishes were lip-smackingly good from start to finish: signature homemade beancurd with shitake and broccoli, bamboo (razor) clams, triple cooked crab bee hoon, soft and silky smooth steamed tiger grouper, sea cucumber with more shitake and broccoli, and chinese spinach in superior stock. Everything was flavorful without being too rich, salty, or having that MSG taste that so often plagues cze char eateries. The crab bee hoon was Shiok with a capital 'S' - thin rice vermicelli coated in its sweet & robust crab stock, with more crabtastic goodness from the chunks of fresh Sri Lanka crab pincers. The fish was also very good (flavoured in the classic soy sauce/spring onion way), albeit a tad pricey. I loved the plump shitake shrooms featured in the bean curd and sea cucumber dishes too. Unfortunately, I didn't take to the bamboo clams, and the broccoli and sea cucumber could have been more well-cooked as they were slightly hard to the bite.

Before that I had a jaunt at Marketplace@Tanglin Mall, where I stocked up my supplies. Exciting new buys included Mullers coconut greek yogurt, cappuccino Larabar and a tabbouleh salad mix (Fantasic Foods). Also bought Israeli couscous, Pacific soy and cage-free eggs (to test if there's a difference between that and normal eggs).

For lunch today I decided to have the egg yolk, instead of throwing it away. Lunch was tri-colored fusili pasta with purple sweet potatoes and the last of my soaked and roasted crunchy buckwheat groats, salmon, aforementioned egg done sunny-sideup, cucumber and lettuce, and pesto and goat's cheese. I thought the egg yolk would make a "sauce" for the pasta since I don't fancy Pappy's pasta sauce, which is the bottled creamed version. Although I couldn't really make out the taste of the yolk, I did have the thrill of poking into the yolk and seeing the golden liquid ooze out. I was eating in the dark (in confocal room), and sometimes I like it that way.