The Cathay Restaurant

My dd and I went to The Cathay for dinner on 12 September 2008. Due to my procrastination, I am only posting up my review on the restaurant in October.

I was there for dinner on a Friday night. Almost half of the restaurant was taken up by a company's dinner, so it got a little noisy during our meal when they cheered and laughed among themselves. Nevertheless, I had quite a satisfactory experience.

Food
We ordered half a Peking Duck ($32.00) and the Duck was skinned at a side table infront of us. It was delicious and half a duck yielded us 8 pieces of duck skin. We chose our duck meat to be fried with assorted vegetables ($12.00) and were given lettuce to serve as a wrap for the ingredients.

The Penang Hor Fun ($16.00) though not as fragrant as those you may find outside, it was still good and they are definately not stingy with the ingredients and the portion is big enough for 3 people to share.

The Captain recommended us to try the Special for the Day, which was Crab Claw in Egg White and Truffle Oil ($11.80). Though the crab claw was very fresh and tasty, I didn't quite enjoy the egg white. It has a slightly chemical taste to it which I didn't quite like. Maybe it is the way it was prepared.

Overall, the taste of the food is good. Portion is reasonable. What we ordered above could very well be shared among 3 people. So you can imagine how full we were as there were only 2 of us. We simply could not order dessert. However, I thought the tea & towel charge of $1.80 per person is slightly on the pricey side.

Service
Service was EXCELLENT! The Captain was knowledgable and patient with us when we were placing our orders, and was willing to make recommendations when we asked her for suggestions. She also periodically approached our table during our meal to gather feedback on the food.

The servers were very attentive and always keep topping up our tea or teapot. They are also prompt in clearing our dishes and replacing with new dishes before our next dish arrives.

Dried Berries Cheesecake Muffins

Took this recipe out of a cake book I have on my shelf. The original recipe is called Dried Cherry Cheesecake Muffins. I made an adjustment by adding in a bunch of other dried berries (keeping the quantity as per the recipe). I used dried cherries, dried blueberries and dried cranberries.

The original recipe only makes 12 muffins, but I needed to make three times the amount. So I had to triple the recipe. I was hesitant at first as I am not sure if the quantities will change. Nevertheless, I went ahead with the tripled recipe. I have never made such a big quantity before and I had quite a challenging time mixing it all.

The muffins came out quite ok. It has subtle savoury flavour due to the cream cheese and butter. I brought some for my colleagues to try without telling them that it has cream cheese (as one of them does not like cheese). They all enjoyed it and did not realise that it contains cream cheese! Only after I told them that they realise it does have that cheese flavour.

As usual.....My dd likes it....That's the most important! (Maybe he is biased....)

Strawberry Hearts

Disappeared from here for awhile. The laziness of updating the blog religiously has slowly but surely crept up on me...

Strawberry Hearts was the "in" dessert last year. It was really yummy and great for those who finds the normal cheesecake too heavy for their liking. Strawberry Hearts is made of a base of digestive biscuits, a thin layer of cheesecake and topped with strawberry jelly and a heart-shaped strawberry.

I looked up the internet for the recipe but found a blog mentioning where I can take the class in making the Strawberry Hearts instead. I contacted the baker and booked myself for the next available class! And below is my first attempt at making the dessert.

I didn't bother to go buy the specific size of the baking container, decided the disposable aluminium type ones will do as well. From the recipe, I made 2 aluminium trays.

Overall feedback...Yummy of course!!!