Dine out fresh, dine in leftovers

Wow. Sorry for being AWOL for a few days, but I’ve been quite busy…But lots of pictures today to make up for that! I’ve been eating out consistently, so a lot of new foods introduced…Of course new food and different eating schedules throws me off and sets ED into a frenzy, but I am quite content with the way I handled it.

So, I left off on Thursday. Thursday’s lunch was a mix-up of all the leftovers I had in the fridge. I had leftover homemade pumpkin soup, leftover steel-cut oats, and leftover toman fish fillet (aka snakehead). I threw them altogether to make savory pumpkin oats and marinated fish with egg.

I cooked the oats in the pumpkin soup, while leaving the fish to marinate with some onions and mushrooms in my favorite marinade mixture: soy sauce, vinegar, sake, tons of ginger and garlic, sweetener, black pepper. I then pan-fried the fish with a cracked egg, and lunch was done in less than 10 minutes:

Altogether with a side of garlic stir-fried greens.

The fish was perfectly cooked this time, staying moist and tender and flaky inside:

Soooo flavorful! This marinade seems to work with everything! So far I’ve tried it with tofu, vegetables, pork, and fish. It’ll probably work really well with grains, too!

I like to plop the fried egg on top of the oats and let the yolk soak into the grains. Kicks it up into a whole new ethereal level!

I had dinner out with my old friends from secondary school. We all used to be in the same gymnastics team, and share fabulous, poignant memories of slacking off and getting the worst points ever in every gymnastics competition. Anyway, we went to Shokudo Japanese Street Food Market again! Remember how I raved about it the last time?

This time I got to try several more new dishes, as we ordered several different dishes to share!

Dried shrimp fried rice, done teppanyaki-style:

I hate rice, and probably always will, but I did try a bite out of this. It was actually tastier than the typical fried rice you get from a Chinese take-out, with each grain actually having a bit of a char to make it more flavorful and “fried".”

My friend also ordered the Japanese curry rice with tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet):

I did not try this, because I hate Japanese curry. To me, curry should be as fiery and spicy as possible, but Japanese curry is just too sweet and mild for me.

Also, some grilled skewers:

The top one is takopachi, which is octopus balls made out of some kind of floury batter and chunks of octopus, drizzled with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise and finished off with a scatter of dried bonito flakes. This was okay. It could have been better with more octopus and less batter.

The bottom one was a mix of grilled seafood and meat: scallops, beef chunks, and bacon-wrapped shrimp, all marinated in some kind of sweet soy sauce marinade. I tried one of each. They were good, but not too impressive. Just your average grilled seafood and beef.

We also ordered rosti with sausage:

I don’t know why, maybe I’m just being an immature pervert, but big fat sausages always make me giggle. Hee hee hee~!

The sausage was juicy and sweet and savory at the same time. I’m not sure what kind of meat the sausage is made from, but I think it was chicken. The rosti was awesome! It’s just like hash browns, but the potatoes were shredded into long skinny noodles, so it was so fun slurping up the fried crispy potatoes like noodles! The copious amount of oil oozing out freaked me out a little, but it was just so tasty!

And lastly, my favorite:

Omelet again! But this time with mushrooms and cheese. Of course I was the one who insisted on ordering this!

It was stuffed with lots of shitake mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. I have to admit, I totally hogged this one and ate more than 70% of it. My friends seemed to favor the curry though, so everything worked out well.

Okay, on to Friday! I was really busy this day because I went to the SIngapore zoo with my Penang friend in the afternoon, then straight to church youth group in the evening. So lunch was another mix-up of leftovers, almost the same as the day before: Pumpkin savory oats with fried eggs and otah:

Otah is this delicious fish paste ground with coconut cream and all sorts of spices, then stuffed into banana leaves and grilled/BBQed over an open flame. This is what it looks like in the banana leaf:

But of course you have to remove it from the leaf to eat it:

The last remaining yolk, running its savory gold nectar into the pumpkin oats:

I ate dinner at youth group, so no pictures, but I had: cooked cabbage, raw carrot sticks, chicken hotdogs, and sweet turkey sandwiches. Hurried and hasty, but so so yummy~

And now on to today, finally! I ate out with Wengang and Liwen for lunch today. We went to Ikea for lunch! Apparently Singaporeans really love Ikea food and sometimes go there not to shop but to eat! And I could see why, the food here was quite delicious! Here’s what we got…

Swedish meatballs with gravy, blackberry(?) preserves, and boiled potatoes:

The meatballs were really juicy and flavorful, and I found the gravy excessive and unnecessary. The fruit preserves added a nice touch of sweetness, though.

This one was my favorite. The herring platter:

Fresh herring, prepared in three different ways. I’m pretty sure they were raw, and either made ceviche-style, or pickled. They were great, and full of flavor!

We also ordered poached salmon with potatoes and broccoli:

This one was just okay. The salmon was nicely cooked, but boring. I don’t know what that sauce was, but it did nothing.

And we also had penne in tomato sauce and chicken wings:

I hardly touched both of them, because I’m too lazy to gnaw at chicken wings, and that pasta…well, it simply tasted horrible. None of us liked it, so I swear it’s not my ED talking!

PHEW! I’m finally done listing my foods for the past few days. Sorry for the long post. I promise to update more frequently.

Well, I hope all of you have a great weekend, and once again I leave you with a random quick question: How do you use up your leftovers?