Another Dinner, Another Winner

I strolled through the doors of Table at 7 on Saturday evening with a lot of thrill, knowing what I wanted to eat without needing to look at the menu and looking forward to the company. I've been eyeing the ball of shallot rice so much that I planned the day's other meals and pilates routine around it, in order to free up sufficient space for ingestion of carbs. Even a work call which interrupted 5 minutes of the evening didn't dampen my spirits. It made me more determined to shove it to the back of the mind and concentrate on the company, wine and food.

This is getting to be a bad habit. Instead of running away from wine, I'm beginning to enjoy it, given the right company, ambience and conversation which isn't about other restaurants or food. Good wine, to be precise. I dislike wasting calories on bad wine. Since Ivan is determined to be fashionably late, (actually, not true, but I just like to say that. :D It's because M. and I have a brilliant practice of setting our watches minutes ahead, forget about it, and keep turning up way before the stipulated meeting time), we went ahead to make the enormous decision of having white wine for the evening with the food, regardless.

M. astutely picked a fabulous 2008 Chablis Fourshaume that went swimmingly with the flavors of our meal, sambal belachan and spicy rendang notwithstanding. It was a beautiful wine and I almost contemplated ordering another bottle midway through. Heeeeee. I'm not bothered to upload any of my photos of the food because you can hop over to see Ivan's superior set of photos from his photostream!

(Ivan's photostream- Table at 7)

White asparagus was still available and it was a good starter to layer with a cream of mushroom sauce. Then I went for a mix of Asian steamed shallot rice and grilled prawns. The sambal on the prawns wasn't at all spicy. It was piquantly tart with fragrant limes used to pound the paste, and almost refreshing. It's like a sort of citrus-sambal olek.

I forgot what Table at 7 called this dish that is effectively made up of 2 croquettes, but I know it as 'kroket panggang' (with minced chicken) and the other version with potato 'kroket kentang', and its original Dutch version of 'kroketten'. It's something that I've always grown up eating with kecap manis, sambal or simply a tiny green or red fiery chilli. Ahhh....fond memories. Table at 7 gave it a twist by matching it with tau-cheo (fermented soy bean sauce).

I love sambal. Totally. I grew up with Japanese and Indonesian food! The only thing Chinese that has influence in the kitchens is Cantonese soups, double-boiled or otherwise because the grandmothers decided that these soups are more healthy, than say, sop buntut. I've spent alot of time squatting in my grandmothers' kitchens fanning huge charcoal stoves, dragging the cobek and ulekan to and fro for the maids to pound ingredients to make sambal. Many Indonesian restaurants in Singapore are disappointing. The best foods are really found in the friends' or their mothers' kitchens. So at Table at 7, the tastebuds have been pleasantly surprised, and I really like Eugenia's elegant interpretation of Indonesian dishes and spicy sambal.