Blum & Co reinvents the cheongsam for workwear

Blum & Co (Blum), a Singaporean brand, has introduced a modern take on the cheongsam in a new line of workwear.

Source: Blum & Co.

Invented in the 1920s, the cheongsam represented the liberation of women. In the early days, it was a full-sleeved, loose-cut garment. It then evolved into designs with slimmer fits and shorter lengths, plus a slit up the side. Cheongsam were banned when the communist government took over in China, but continued to hold sway in Hong Kong for years. Today, many Chinese officials and ministers don the cheongsam in both official and informal occasions as a reflection of their heritage.

Blum’s fashion design team has been inspired by traditional cheongsam to create bold designs using modern materials and accents such as lace sleeves. Designed to be worn throughout the year for both day and evening, light and airy fabrics sourced from top-quality apparel manufacturers from Europe, Korea and Japan have been used to create pieces that drape well and complement modern accessories.

The collection’s versatility is testament to the company’s experience in dressing Singapore’s urban women for over three decades. “We have designed workwear for Singapore women for so many years that we are familiar with what Singaporeans like in their office wear. We are excited to launch our all-new cheongsam collection as we believe that it is time for a reintroduction of this feminine trend in the workplace and that it will be well-received,” said Anna Kong, founder and owner of Blum.

“We have also worked in orchid, batik and Merlion icons into our collection, to make it a uniquely Singapore fashion statement.”

Hashtags: #blumsg, #blumstyle, #blumnco, #blumncosg 

*Image features a silk cheongsam (S$259) from the Blum & Co Cheongsam Collection with an S-curve to accentuate the female form. The piece comes in contrasting colours. There is a pink with contrasting green orchid version, and a black with contrasting blue and red batik version (pictured). According to Blum & Co, the orchid represents wealth and class. Items in the collection range from S$189 to S$389, and make use of fabrics such as lace, wool silk, cotton silk and stretchable silk.

A Celebration of Heritage Delights at Min Jiang at One-North

Source: Min Jiang at One-North is the only Chinese restaurant housed in a 3,000 sq ft, two-storey colonial-era bungalow.

From 1 July to 31 August 2017, Min Jiang at One-North (岷江在纬壹), a contemporary Sichuan and Cantonese restaurant in Singapore, will present A Celebration of Heritage Delights（欢庆怀念佳肴), giving guests the opportunity to savour iconic dishes that were popular in the 60s to 80s in Singapore.

Master Chef Goh Chee Kong ( 吴志光), who has been garnering many fans with his elegantly-presented dishes since 2006, has crafted nine dishes inspired by traditional recipes and given them a contemporary makeover. All of the dishes require time-consuming, meticulous preparation and some must be ordered a day in advance.

Master Chef Goh said, “I am happy that my guests will have the opportunity to reminisce about or discover these distinctive creations that made such an impression on the fledgling restaurant scene then, and hopefully have left an indelible impression in Singapore’s unique culinary history.”

Some of the heritage dishes include:

Roasted Boneless Chicken stuffed with Minced Prawns | 金龙百花鸡 S$30 (half), S$60 (whole)

Requiring almost two days to prepare, this seemingly unassuming dish is a result of several detailed steps that begin with thinly filleting the chicken, then air-drying it for eight hours before a home-made minced prawn paste is added. The resultant wafer-thin delicacy is then deep-fried before it is served with a home-made chilli-calamansi-plum sauce-ginger flower dip.

Stir-fried Crabmeat and Egg White served in Yam Ring | 鸟巢芙蓉炒蟹肉 S$24 per order

This dish is a mark of a chef’s wok-handling skill in creating a dish that results in a pristine white colour and silky texture. Freshly-peeled Alaskan crab is used to lend extra sweetness. Master Chef has also updated the look of the yam ring to an elegant latticed bowl.

Stir-fried Shredded Chicken with Stem Lettuce served in Yam Ring | 鸟巢鸡丝炒呙笋 $24 per order

Reminiscent of home-style flavours, this robust dish includes an uncommon vegetable known as ‘stem lettuce’ or ‘asparagus lettuce’ (莴笋) and is topped with deep-fried anchovies.

Banana Toffee | 拔丝香蕉 S$8 per order (eight pieces)

These battered bite-sized morsels are lightly crisp and drizzled with caramelised sugar. Traditionally they are dipped into ice water to harden the toffee shell.

Min Jiang at One-North is the only Chinese restaurant housed in a heritage 3,000 sq ft, two-storey ‘black and white’ colonial bungalow. It was established in this location in 2006 following the success of its first outlet at Goodwood Park Hotel. Complementing the bungalow is an alfresco wooden deck and an adjacent courtyard that serves as a dining area.

Min Jiang at One-North is also an authentic Beijing duck restaurant This signature dish is prepared by chefs from China according to an ancient recipe. The ducks are freshly delivered daily, and skilfully roasted to a golden hue over fragrant apple wood in Singapore’s first custom-made wood-fired oven at the restaurant. The dining experience is further enhanced with the chefs carving the aromatic piping hot duck tableside, before presenting it in two unique servings.

In addition to Beijing Duck, diners can also enjoy other delicacies such as the stewed lobster with eggplant and minced chicken in Sichuan chilli sauce, braised Wagyu beef cheek with papaya paste, and homemade tofu with crabmeat and assorted mushrooms. 

The restaurant is part of the Goodwood Park Hotel. An icon on Scotts Road, Goodwood Park Hotel is housed in a building that dates back to 1900. The hotel has five distinctive restaurants, including the original Min Jiang, along with a deli and a bar.

Interested?

View the full list of delights

A Celebration of Heritage Delights at Min Jiang at One-North (欢庆怀念佳肴 )

1 July to 31 August 2017

A la carte only 

Min Jiang at One-North 

5 Rochester Park, Singapore 139216 

11.30am to 2.30pm (lunch) and 6.30pm to 10.30pm (dinner), daily 

For reservations, call +65 6774 0122, or visit www.goodwoodparkhotel.com . Senior citizens aged 60 and above will enjoy a 15% discount on the heritage dishes during this period. 

Hashtag: #goodwoodparkhotel 

Meet moringa, the superfood

Green Virgin Products, a provider of responsibly harvested and ecofriendly moringa products, has released a new guide about the benefits of moringa.

Green Virgin calls moringa a 'superfood', quoting studies finding that a single serving of the powder (in capsule form) contains over 40 antioxidants, 70 nutrients, 8 amino acids and a long list of vitamins, minerals and anti-inflammatories. The company uses a far-infrared drying system to dry the moringa within hours of harvest, then package it within eight hours of harvest in triple-layer, resealable packages that contain a specially designed oxygen absorber in the pouch to help prevent sun damage and oxidation.

Moringa (M. oleifera) trees are also called drumstick or horseradish trees. The leaves, roots, flowers, bark, sap and fruit have been used traditionally, some for food and some for folk medicine. Pubmed research dating as far back as 2007 have outlined moringa's pharmacological properties. As recently as 2015, a Phytotherapy Research abstract noted: "A rapidly growing number of published studies have shown that aqueous, hydroalcohol, or alcohol extracts of M. oleifera leaves possess a wide range of additional biological activities including antioxidant, tissue protective (liver, kidneys, heart, testes, and lungs), analgesic, antiulcer, antihypertensive, radioprotective, and immunomodulatory actions."

A 2012 meta-study of moringa in past studies showed indications that it can help people with diabetes or fatty livers, with better glucose tolerance if used over time. Another 2012 study also noted that it seems to be beneficial for diabetes. A 2014 experiment on moringa leaf extracts in cold water separately showed that it could damage lung cancer cells with much less damage to normal cells.

It has not been established however which formulations of moringa extracts are the most effective for various outcomes, and the results not strictly apples-to-apples as the moringa was prepared differently in different research reports. Researchers have also pointed out that research subjects might unconsciously act to fulfil a certain outcome if they know that they are taking moringa.

Interested?

Read the guide online

Use the coupon code 10OFF to save 10% off an online order. Green Virgin ships internationally

Old Delhi Bazaar walking tour wins Tripadvisor Award Of Excellence

Source: Old Delhi Bazaar walking tour website.

The Old Delhi Bazaar walking tour has won a Tripadvisor Award of Excellence for the third consecutive year. The activity is ranked no. 1 for New Delhi in 2015 by Tripadvisor, and comes with a five star rating.

The personalised tour experience combines food, heritage and culture with walking and cycle rickshaw and is designed to give the visitor a taste of the real Delhi.

Both full- and half-day Old Delhi tours are conducted daily and include a traditional meal in a haveli, a mansion in the old city in which a single family has been living for generations.

Avex Group launches premium hemp fabric under majotae brand

Avex Group Holdings, a Japanese entertainment company, has launched majotae, a fabric brand which brings back a traditional fabric called taima-fu, or natural hemp*. 

From left: Representative Director of the Avex Group Holdings Shigekazu Takeuchi; CEO of Avex Group Holdings Masato Matsuura, natural fabric expert Shinichiro Yoshida, obi artisan Genbei Yamaguchi and the CEO of Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Hiroshi Onishi during the opening reception for the majotae: The Forgotten Fabric exhibition at Daikanyama Hillside Forum on October 22, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.

Avex says majotae is a high-quality version of taima-fu that is ideal for fine apparel, and also has potential for other applications such as furniture and decor fabric. Hiroshi Ohnishi, President and CEO of Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings said: "I'm impressed not only by the quality of the fabric, but also by the vision of the project."

The project is a collaboration between natural fabric expert Shinichiro Yoshida, obi artisan Genbei Yamaguchi and the Avex Group. Products for the spring/summer season are in development with Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, the department store operator. 

Taima-fu is a traditional Japanese fabric but disappeared after significant restrictions on cannabis cultivation after World War II, and apparent difficulties in spinning hemp threads. View the associated video here.

*Majotae uses only the finest, chemically-inactive hemp.

Mooncake flavours get more exotic

Mooncakes, a common corporate gift during the eighth lunar month*, are available in a wide range of flavours this year. Most hotels will create new flavours of mooncakes, while restaurants also get into the act with mooncake selections on their premises as well as at booths at various malls. Halal mooncakes are even available from brands such as Prima Deli.  

Early bird offers, credit card discounts and promotions for large corporate orders can also provide more value per dollar, but different offers are applicable at different locations, even for the same brand.

With sales (and deliveries) ramping up towards the mid-autumn festival, businesses are advised to put in their bulk orders in August, and to plan to buy in person well before the festival itself. The Goodwood Park's deadline for bulk orders, for example, on 29 August at 12 noon, while on-site sales end on 8 September.

Chefs experiment with new flavours both for the casing and the filling, with fruit-based flavours being the most common.

The Goodwood Park Hotel is offering mooncakes till 8 September 2014 at The Deli in the hotel lobby. Its new flavour is the Calamansi, Kumquat and Sour Plum snowskin mooncake, which contains bits of sour plum and sugar-poached kumquat, while the tropical fruit snowskin mooncakes Mango with Pomelo and Cempedak flavours are back by popular demand.

Goodwood Park is famous in Singapore for its durian mooncakes, particularly its signature D24 and ‘Mao Shan Wang’ Durian flavours. A new durian alternative debuts this year, made from the premium Black Thorn durian. According to the hotel this mooncake has "an intense bitter-sweet flavour" and comes in a gold-dusted black charcoal snowskin. 

This year’s collection of mooncakes at the Grand Hyatt Singapore includes four traditional and nine snowskin mooncake flavours. According to the hotel, all mooncakes are 100% preservative-free and do not contain pork or lard. Its two new flavours do contain alcohol, however.

The mooncakes are available for sale at the shop at mezza9 from 4 August to 8 September and also at the lobby shop on the ground level from 11 August to 8 September. 

Source: Marriott Singapore website.

The Marriott Singapore is selling mooncakes at the Hotel Forecourt Stall from 1 August to 8 September 2014. The hotel has introduced two new snowskin mooncakes: Italian Roast Coffee Paste with Vanilla Bean Custard, and Coconut Paste with Jhambiri Lemon Curd.

The Raffles Hotel supports online orders for mooncakes till 31 August, with a 20% discount for orders made this way. It will have two new flavours, including a snowskin Tropical Tango Mooncake (冰皮果味”探戈”月饼, pictured below in the centre), where a combination of mango, passion fruit and pineapple in a white chocolate shell acts as the 'yolk' of the mooncake. 

Source: Raffles Hotel website.

The hotel's mooncake shop will be open till 8 September at the North Bridge Road entrance. 

Sheraton Towers Singapore has an online order form up on its website and will offer mooncakes at its Li Bai Cantonese Restaurant, and at a booth at the hotel lobby from 6 August to 8 September. 

Three lotus seed paste-based mooncake flavours will debut this year: a lotus seed paste mooncake with cranberries and hazelnuts, a mini** white lotus seed paste mooncake with lemon mandarin, and a mini green tea lotus seed paste mooncake with rosehip truffle.

Source: Sheraton Towers website.

Mooncake promotions are also available in the malls, where shoppers can taste-test samples before they buy. Many of the well-known hotels and restaurants will be represented, including the Grand Hyatt, Goodwood Park and Sheraton Towers:

Ang Mo Kio Hub: 25 August to 7 September
Bugis Junction: 25 August to 7 September
Century Square: 22 August to 8 September
Change Alley: 11 August to 8 September, weekdays only
Chevron House: 11 August to 8 September, weekdays only

Compass Point: 25 August to 7 September
Junction 8: 25 August to 7 September
Jurong Point: 18 August to 7 September
Lot One: 25 August to 7 September
Nex: 25 August to 7 September
Parkway Parade: 25 August to 7 September
Takashimaya B2 Square (Ngee Ann City): 7 August to 8 September
VivoCity Level 1 Atrium: 19 August to 8 September

*The mid-autumn festival will be celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, which falls on September 8 in 2014.

**Mini mooncakes are about a third the size of traditional mooncakes.