One of the more memorable meals we’ve had recently was at The Halia Restaurant. The ginger-themed dishes were unique and interesting, especially their Lemongrass & Ginger Prawn Salad.
It was a riot of colours and an explosion of flavours, and was easily one most exciting salads we’ve ever eaten. What made the salad particularly special was the ginger flower dressing spooned onto the greens.
The Wife liked The Halia Ginger Flower Dressing so much that she bought a bottle home to experiment, and see what she could cook with it. With such a dominant flavour, it was best to keep it simple.
The first dish she made was also a salad. Well, sort of. Just take some tender okra (more commonly known as ladies fingers in Singapore), steam them for around 10 minutes, leave to cool for a bit and then drizzle on the dressing.
That’s it, easy peasy.
Okra is admittedly an acquired taste, with its slimy texture and grassy note, but it went really well with the sweet, tangy and floral dressing. If okra’s not your thing, it should work quite well with raw thick-cut carrot and cucumber sticks too.
The second dish she made was equally simple. Just boil some shirataki noodles, cut up a boiled-egg, add some shredded radish and top off with a generous amount of dressing.
Both the noodles and egg are fairly bland and complement the strong-tasting dressing, with the shredded radish providing juicy crunchiness.
She used shirataki noodles since we had some lying around, but it would work equally well with beehoon (rice noodles). You could try it on pasta, but I’m guessing that the flavours might clash.
While we were buying the dressing at the restaurant, Alice, our lovely waitress, managed to upsell The Wife. We ended up with two bottles of The Halia Chilli Crab Sauce that was on a 1-for-1 sale.
The back label of the bottle had a suggested recipe. It’s a bit small to read properly from the photo, so I’ve reproduced it here for convenience.
Ingredients
1 tsp Olive oil
1.5 tsp Chopped shallot
2 tsp Chilli flakes
2 tbs Cooked crabmeat
1 btl Chilli crab sauce
1 tbs Chopped spring onion
1 pc Egg beaten
0.25 tsp Salt
Preparation
1. Saute shallots, garlic and chilli flakes in olive oil til fragrant
2. Add crabmeat & chilli crab sauce
3. Stir well til sauce bubbles
4. Add spring onion & beaten egg
5. Stir evenly & season with salt
6. Sauce is ready! Serve with rice, pasta, or as a dip with keropok (prawn cracker) or mantou (Chinese bun)
We love chilli crab, but it’s too much effort to buy live crabs and prepare them for cooking. Processed crab meat from a can is an alternative, but it’s quite expensive and tends to be a bit fishy, so the recipe was completely disregarded.
Instead, The Wife heated up the sauce, dumped in some diced soft tofu, shredded crab sticks (not technically crab meat, but close enough!) and corn kernels, stirred in a beaten egg and poured it over rice.
The sauce had just the right amount of spice and actually tasted quite close to chilli crab that you’d get in a seafood restaurant. Minus the crab, of course.
With the 1-for-1 offer, the price was attractive, but I don’t think we’d buy it again at full price. The convenience that it offers is compelling though, so you might find it worthwhile just for that.
Remember Alice? Well, the chilli crab sauce wasn’t the only thing she managed to upsell. We also ended up with a bottle of The Halia Pandan Kaya Spread.
Yes, I know it’s not a sauce per-se, and you don’t cook with it, but it is easy to use. Simply spread it on sliced bread (toasted or otherwise) and enjoy. It was a decent kaya, though not quite as good as fancy artisanal versions.
Among the three bottles, the ginger flower dressing, despite being the most expensive, was definitely the most worth it. The taste is fantastic and we’ve not seen anything similar for sale, so it was definitely worth the premium.
The chilli crab sauce is good value if you can get it at 1-for-1 prices, and the kaya was good but not really anything special, at least to us.
All three are available online on Shopee, via the affiliate links above, though delivery seems to be restricted at the time of writing this post. If you’re interested, you’ll probably have to drop them a chat message to enquire about shipping options.
We bought ours from the restaurant itself, but getting into the heart of the Botanic Gardens can be a bit inconvenient. Though their delightful ginger-infused dishes alone are well worth the journey.
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