Moon Cake Festival Or Lantern Festival Or Mid-Autumn Festival

This festival, also known as the Lantern Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival, commemorates the 14th-century revolution led by Yuan Zhang who smuggled notes inside moon cakes and used lighted lanterns as a signal to launch the revolt. One of the highlights of the festival is the Moon Cake Fair where hundreds of festive stalls line the streets of Chinatown selling an astonishing variety of moon cakes, traditional paper lanterns, decorations and other delicacies. Children parade down the streets with their brightly lit lanterns in the Children’s Lantern Procession. The Chinese Garden becomes a fairyland of lights and colours for the Lantern Festival, and there is also a range of cultural shows and performances including lion and dragon dancing, Chinese instrumentalists and craftsmen.

One gets a cool flavour of this festival in Singapore at the Chinese Garden. The place is walking distance from the Chinese Garden MRT. The entry ticket is SGD 12 per person for adults and SGD 8 for children above 3 & upto 11 years. The whole of Chinese garden is lighted right from Chinese Garden MRT & usually there are different themes followed during the festival for the lighted showcase that is an attraction for all young and old at this place.

We, my family, Faisal's family & Chandrasekhar we all went for this wonderful festival & had a good time on friday evening. One good thing was there were decent food varieties available at the place. I remember last time I had almost starved walking around the place & couldn't find a place.

We took quite a number of photographs.. Few of them I have attached here. Rest I have uploaded on picasa.

Hope you can plan for this, its open till 30th September... Since it is lighted show one has to go in the evening. Hope you have a good time..capturing the Festival lights..with cameras...

My best Friend Cooks for us....

Anand and me have been together since childhood.. and we have shared our school days & studied together for our graduation & have always been there for each other. He has been married since a few years now and luckily he and his wife, Ranjeeta shifted to Singapore few months back as well & we usually spend atleast one of the weekends in a month together at their place or ours. This time they came down to our place.
Anand & Ranjeeta had a memorable trip to Thailand in Phuket & they had a wonderful experience of cooking with one of the Thai chefs in Phuket who taught them 3 recipes. One of them was Red Curry Chicken with Basil.. and we had a pleasure to have this made for us by Anand yesterday at our house. It was made like a professional and we ate it to our heart's full. I am sure the Chef would have given him 10 on 10 for the cooking skills.

I just thought of sharing this simple recipe for some of you who would like to try this themselves. It is very simple to prepare and tastes lovely with white rice.

Red Curry Chicken With Basil
Serve this classic curry over jasmine rice for a traditional Thai meal.
Yield: Serves 4 as a main dish
Time: 10 minutes to chop ingredients15 minutes to cook
Total Time: 25 minutes




Ingredients:
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 & 1/2 Tbsp Red Curry Paste
1 can Coconut Milk, shaken
1 & 1/2 lbs ( 500-750 g ) boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into bite size pieces
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp Fish Sauce
1 red bell pepper, cored and sliced
10 large basil leaves, chopped


Equipment:
A large frying pan, which works much better than a wok!


Directions:
1 Heat the oil in the frying pan over medium heat.








2 Add the Curry Paste and simmer for 2 minutes, so that it is dissolved and foaming.








3 Stir in the can of the coconut milk. Cook over medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally.








4 Add the sliced chicken. Simmer for 4 minutes.

5 Stir in the sugar, fish sauce and bell pepper. Simmer until the chicken is cooked, about 3 minutes more.









6 Add the chopped basil. Season to taste with more sugar or Fish Sauce as desired.









7 Serve over rice.







Don't forget to drop your comments about the recipe. ... and keep coming back to the blog for more scintillating recipes..& other stuff..

Vijay's birthday at Bombay Woodlands Restaurant

Today is Vijay's birthday.. but we had the party yesterday for this cheerful and jolly person from our office. It happened so, since we knew Vijay would be fasting today since it is saturday. You heard it right fasting!!! You can find Vijay when you hear a heartful laugh when he and Tanmay specially will share a joke or when you catch Vijay trying to figure out things his own way.. We have been tolerating his N73 from the time, this toy has got into his hands almost about 6-8 months ago.. He shall have a new ringtone everyday.. and will never miss a chance to get a photograph on any occassion in the office... He has made lot of guys in the office change their ringtones...and you bet he has a good choice for things..like these...
You can always see the naughtiness in his eyes... the moment someone says something about any subject.. That's what is another reason...for him being liked by us all.
Well it was a little hard to convince him to take us for this party since he had plans to postpone it for next week, but finally he agreed when there was a total majority..
I found this place on internet - Bombay woodlands which is a branch of the one in Bombay. The place is located at Tanglin Shopping centre at the basement. There are couple other Indian outlets at the same place which I guess are owned or partnered with by them. There is this place Indian Grill which is not too far from this place.
Bombay Woodlands is a Indian Vegetarian outlet, located in the happening Orchard area. You guessed it right, it is pricy.. and so one needs to watch his wallet while planning to dine here. Lunch Buffet costs you 14.90++ & a dinner Buffet is about 16.90++. We had been there during lunch so we opted for the lunch buffet - the items available were - Dum aloo, Paneer, Bottle Gourd, Cauliflower, Tamarind rice(ponni rice), plain rice, Naan, Roti, Papad, Dosa, Idli, chutnies & sweets like gulab jamun and ras gula.
The place has sitting for about 30-35 people when fully packed. There is a nice Hindi music going on at the background. Food is ok, I later came to know it is known for udipi food.. so maybe we didn't find it too good. Anyway, we had a lovely time having food here and celebrating Vijay's birthday and having some sweet memories of this day.. Looking forward to more such celebrations in future..