For this recipe I used the following ingredients:
- A chunk of baccalá
- 3-4 garlic cloves, squashed
- 1 onion
- A few cherry tomatoes
- 1 chilli padi, chopped
- 4-5 walnuts and a few pistachios
- A handful of breadcrumbs
- Half a glass of white wine
- Olive oil
- Some grated orange peel (optional)
In the meantime, finely chop the onion and slowly sweat it on a frying pan. Add some of the water from the simmering cod if necessary, to protract the cooking time. When the onion is nicely soft (about 20 minutes) make a cream by blending it together with a few spoonfuls of cod water using an immersion blender. Toast the breadcrumbs on a perfectly clean frying pan (without any oil), until lightly browned, and set aside for later. Chop the walnuts and pistachios with a knife, some coarse and some fine. Make a small incision into each of the cherry tomatoes.
Remove the cod from the simmering water, then break it into flakes and set aside. On a large frying pan, pour generous olive oil and bring it to the heat. Add the squashed garlic, brown and remove. Add the cod flakes together with the chopped chilli, lightly fry them, then deglaze with the white wine. Finally, add the nuts and the cherry tomatoes until they pop. Remove from the heat.
When the pasta is almost cooked, drain it and add it to the frying pan together with the rest of the ingredients, back on the heat. Reduce the sauce with some of the water from the simmered cod, add a couple of spoonfuls of the onion cream, lightly sauteé and serve in portions, topped by a couple of the cherry tomatoes, the breadcrumbs and some orange zest to taste.
I must say that it is hard in Singapore to find such a selection: a combination of regional dishes with a touch of modern to lighten up the flavours and make the food more suited for a multiple course meal. Every single dish was brilliantly executed and had something to say.
Amouse Bouche: Mackerel fillet with caramelised onions. A great start of the meal, this Sicilian style amouse bouche combined the sweetness of caramelised onion, with the saltiness of a small fillet of mackerel.
Carpaccio di ricciola con caviale Oscietra e erba cipollina (Amberjack carpaccio with Oscietra caviar and chives). This was incredibly good. This dish looks simple, and yet many restaurants don't get it right. They either make it too plain, or too sour, or just not very interesting. This carpaccio had the right balance between oil, salt, and sour. Sicilian salt flakes still in crystalline form animated the dish, busting bubbles of flavour as they dissolved into the palate. 
Brodetto chiarificato di vongole veraci e porri (Light vongole broth and leeks). The base was a classic Italian "brodo" which brought back memories of when I used to live in Italy. These flavours were very nostalgic, since I haven't had this Italian classic for many, many years. On top of the base stock, there was a delicate but distinct taste of clams.
Tortelloni della vigilia (Homemade tortelli filled with red prawn, tarragon butter and saffron pepper cheese). This was an outstanding combination of textures, enriched by a smooth buttery sauce with deep, well rounded herb flavours. The cheese was just sufficient to give an extra kick to the dish, without overwhelming it.
Capitone piccante in umido e polenta di fave secche con finocchio selvatico (Spicy Italian large stewed eel, dry fava beans and wild fennel). Whenever I go back to Italy to visit my family, my mother knows that if eels are in season, I really appreciate plenty of "anguilla in umido", which is a thinner type of eel as compared to the one served in Gattopardo, slowly cooked in tomato sauce. This dish was a mouthful of goodness. First time I had polenta made from broadbeans, but I must say it was excellent: less grainy than the corn polenta, and lighter to the palate. On top of the polenta was a layer of tender and succulent eel, flavoured by a topping of slowly braised onions and a couple of reduced cherry tomatoes. It is only a shame that instead of a couple of bites of this, I could have eaten a whole plate.
Sinfonia di cioccolato e castagne (Chestnut and sabayon cream, chocolate flkourless sponge, cherry compote). Chocolate flavours emerged from the layers of sponge, lightened by chestnut-textured layers. The Amarene (Cherry compote) added a Christmas touch to this beautifully presented dessert.
The location is indeed breathtaking, and the interior is bright and extremely spacious, as you would expect from a restaurant in such a premium location. The overall theme is a sober classic modern. I opted for the set lunch menu, priced at S$48++ for 3 courses. You are requested to select a dessert, so starter, soup and main is not an allowed option.
The prawn bisque was ok, although definitely not one of the best I've had in Singapore. It's fairly hard to go terribly wrong with this dish, but I thought the surface of the soup was quite dried out, as if the dish had been standing somewhere for quite a while, waiting to be served. Not ideal.
My starter was poached eggs with mushrooms, pan fried foie gras and truffle oil. Nothing so exciting that I would order again, but decently put together.
The cod dish was a bit too bland. I didn't think that the sauce really worked with the cod, and the fish itself was perfectly cooked but didn't have any flavour.
The beef was tender enough, served with a nice demi-glas sauce which gave it some flavour. The braised tendons were very gelatinous and would be appreciated by many, although I am not that keen. Another dish that didn't excite me, although technically there was nothing wrong with it.
I seasoned the meat with a sprinkle of pepper and generous salt, then vacuum packed it together with a herb sachet containing rosemary, sage, thyme and a clove of garlic sliced into two. I then put the bags into the water bath for a continuous 72 hours. I recommend that no matter what, but especially if you are in Singapore, when you cook sous-vide over such long periods using an immersion circulator, you observe the following:
After 3 days of wait, I was eager to extract the bags from the water bath and unveil the beauty of these slabs of meat. Pictured above, what the ribs looked like after I extracted them from their own envelope and drained the juices (set aside to make the sauce).
Now, time to make the outside crispy, seal the flavours and create a tasty Maillard reaction all around this gourmet cut of meat. I blow-torched the short ribs from every side, making sure that the outer layer of fat crisped up, sweating out some of its oil.
While slicing, the meat fell off the bone and really didn't take much effort to cut through! The slices revealed the fairly thick inner marbling which was already well visible before the cooking (see first photo on top). The meat, despite being perfectly pink as a "medium" would look like if you cooked a steak, actually tasted like a "medium-rare" throughout. 
This is without a doubt a result that you would never achieve without sous-vide: the meat was tender, incredibly juicy, and felt almost like raw meat. Marbled with melting fat, crispy outside, but most importantly packed with flavour throughout! In actual fact, it didn't need any sauce since the natural beef flavour was enhanced by the balanced aromas released by the herbs.
Making focaccia Genovese is a bit involving, since it requires the dough to raise 4 times and you MUST stick to the given timings, so you must be around it and you can't "leave and forget it". On the other hand, the result is amazing and well worth a try!
Put the water, the malt, olive oil, salt and half of the flour into a large bowl. Kneed it well until homogeneous. Completely dissolve the yeast into a bit of water (temperature @ 30C), then pour it into the dough, and kneed until fully incorporated. Then proceed with the rest of the flour and kneed until the dough is smooth and not excessively sticky. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for about 15 minutes at room temperature (about 30C).
Fold the dough twice by slightly stretching it and then folding the two sides into the middle, once in each direction, first horizontally, then vertically. This is to strengthen it. You should end up with the dough shaped more or less rectangular as your oven tray (although smaller in size)
Press the dough with your hands onto the tray, flattening it until it covers the whole tray. You should try not to stretch it in order to maintain a regular thickness throughout. You might find that it's quite elastic and that it needs a little bit of work to stabilise and cover the entire tray. Sprinkle abundant salt on top to give flavour to the focaccia and also to prevent the formation of a dried crust. Let the dough rest a 3rd time, for about 30 minutes.
Now it's time to make the classic depressions into the focaccia. Cover the dough with a few tablespoons of tepid water and some olive oil, then with your palms, massage the liquid on top of the dough to mix it and spread it uniformly. Now, with your fingers push into the dough with energy top to bottom, forming depressions as in the picture above. The oil and water should sink into the depressions, forming softer areas that will create the interesting different textures that are typical of focaccia Genovese.
Let the focaccia raise a 4th time, for about 60-75 minutes. Now it's finally ready for cooking. Put the tray into the oven at about 220-240C for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven, lift from the tray and let it slide onto a grate, or any surface that will let the focaccia breathe underneath. This is because if you keep it in close contact with the tray, the steam from underneath will make the base soggy instead of evaporating.
Let the focaccia rest for a couple of minutes, brush with some olive oil on top, slice and serve while still warm. The crust should be salty and crispy, while the inside must be soft and porous.
The idea is to make a mild tomato sauce, enriched with a fish fumet done on the spot. You can of course use other fish, and red mullets (in Italian - triglie) would be ideal for this dish, but I couldn't find them at the market, so I replaced them with red sea breams.
The ingredients for this recipe are:
Some of the flavours are classic (pistacchio, matcha), some are a bit inventive, such as banana with lemon zest, lychee lemonade sorbetto, Pandan guacamole.
I tried the pistachio and it tasted very natural, although I find that it would have been more complete with a more generous portion of crunchy nuts to top it up.
The design invites customers to go in, buy some ice cream and relax in the spacious setting while having a chat, reading or browsing the Internet. The concept certainly works, and it's paired with a decent product which, although it might not be as artisan as what you can get in some places in Italy, it's still one of the best in Singapore.
The food deal is good value for money, pricing a 7 course dinner at 59.80++. You get to chose each course from a selection of about 5 dishes each. I must say that I found it difficult to compose my own meal since there were too many things I wanted to try, and there were quite a few conflicting choices. You can never complain about being spoilt for choice! After ordering the food, we were served a glass of ice cold fruity juice together with the amouse bouche.
I must say we weren't incredibly impressed with the amouse bouche, which included smoked salmon topped with whipped cream, a pan seared scallop, and some foie-gras. I found that the whipped cream was a tad too sweet to be paired with the salmon, and the scallop too dry (probably pre-cooked). One of us also complained about the fact that the fruity drink which was served with the dish was so strong in flavour that the scallop couldn't really be tasted after savouring it.
One of the best dishes I had that evening was also their signature dish. We all ordered the same cold dish, the beef tataki with shaved Parmesan and truffle mayo mosaic. The beef was nicely marbled, soft and thinly sliced. It was wrapped around a crunchy wafer whose drier texture actually enhanced the flavour of the beef. I would have this again.
The steamed fresh bamboo clam, which was served as a side dish, was not as good a choice. The cooking style was more Chinese than Japanese or western, and I just found that the chopped garlic just covered any other flavour. The other side I had, the tempura battered soft shell crab, was up to expectation, served with a nice dipping sauce.
I personally loved the crab bisque cappuccino style. This was served in a coffee cup, and was extremely dense and foamy. The flavour was quite intense, but less striking than the texture.
Coming to the main dishes, the Sake infused grilled unagi on hot stone was very good. Served as described on the menu, the sake was poured onto the eel right at the table, creating a show of steam raising from the hot stone as the alcohol evaporated. The rice that was served with the dish was flavoured with unagi sauce. This was probably the closest to Japanese food that I ate on the night. I had a baked Atlantic cod in basil sauce which didn't quite score it for me, when compared to the other dishes; wrong choice, I wouldn't recommend it.
The beef tenderloin on "Pu-Ye" and granite hot stone was even more outstandingly presented, and with a flavour to match. The beef was tender and juicy, nicely seared and crispy on the outside. This would be my recommended choice for most. The herb-braised lamb shank was also very good, succulent and full of flavour.
