Spaghetti with Vongole

Who says you need expensive ingredients and top range cookware to produce deliciously exciting food?Spaghetti with Vongole should not be a difficult recipe to dish out in our humble kitchen. You do not need top of the range kitchen ware, raw material. The focus here is technique to dish out a flavoursome pasta dish. All you need is spaghetti, generous portion of vongole especially if you them, lots of garlic thinly sliced and of course oilive oil.

Heat up the pan with oil and add the thinly sliced garlic. When you could smell the aroma of the garlic in the kitchen add white wine to taste. Let the white wine burn off for around a minute and add the Vongole and start tossing. Add more white wine during this time and continue to toss the vongole. Be mindful not to lift the pan off the fire during the tossing motion lossing the heat in the process.

Add a knob of butter and continue to toss the vongole. Add freshly chopped basil and freshly grounded pepper to taste. Finally add pre-boiled, drained spaghetti and allow the spaghetti to be infused with the sweet aromatic juices of the vongole with white wine. Pasta now is ready to served on a plate, drizzle extra virgin oil over the spaghetti and garnish with dry basil or parsly to taste.

Voila, now you have a aromatic plate of tasty, delicious Spaghetti Vongole ready to be served.

Vegetarian Pine Tree Cafe 長春橱

Who says that vegetarian food has to be bland and not tasty to the palate? To locate this cafe, all you need to do is to look for the escalator. The cafe is immediately visible on the left at the end of the escalator ride. The first sight to welcome you would be the spread of vegetarian Yong Tau Foo. Since it is vegetarian, the filling shall not be fish paste. The Tau Kua is soft and juicy and bitter gourd not cut to smaller pieces so that the fillings does fall off.

Another dish that we like is chestnut with brown rice. This dish is served with a generous portion of Kai Lan stem sliced and cooked to perfection. A delicious and healthy vegetarian meal.

The wonton noodle is really springing or in our local lingo "Q". Sauce is tasty but you need to give the noodle a good stir with your chopsticks and spoon to enjoy all the goodness of the sauce. In fact, it so good, I almost fogot that it is vegetarian.

Vegetarian Bak Kut Teh was also on the menu and we decided to give it a shot. Soup was tasty and yet not overpowering with herbs. A great soup to drink on its own or to eat with rice. Ingredients include mock meat made with mushroom stems, sweet corn, bean curd skin, black fungus and goji berries or wolf berries.

In general, a vegetarian cafe with a good spread of dishes to appeal to vegetarians and non-vegetarians wanting to try out a vegetarian meal. Business was good with a steady stream of customers. According to the name card, they have another outlet at Blk 29, #01-52 Bendemeer Road (Hawker Centre), Operating Hours: 6am - 2pm. Rest on Saturday.

190 Middle Road
 #02-13/ #02-09
Fortune Centre
Tel:  9815 4940 / 9681 5457
Operating Hours: 9am - 9pm