Street Food Warms Your Heart: Bottle Cap Cafe at 511 Guillemard Rd #01-54 Grandlink Square S(399849)

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Bottle Cap Cafe at 511 Guillemard Rd #01-54 Grandlink Square S(399849) - Meatball Pasta at S$8.90 per serving

This is the Meatball Pasta at S$8.90 per serving - Big & Tasty Homemade Beef Balls sauteed with Spaghetti served on the Lunch & Dinner menu at Bottle Cap Cafe located at 511 Guillemard Road, Grandlink Square, #01-54, S(399849).

Core Ingredients - Homemade minced beef meatballs 50gm each made fresh daily, Premium Chef's Grade pasta, homemade Pomodoro sauce, Oregano, Black pepper, EVOO.

How it is prepared - For the pasta sauce, Co-Founder Executive Chef Khaw Kah Weng uses canned whole peeled tomatoes to make the Pomodoro pasta sauce. He blends the whole peeled tomatoes & adds basil, oregano, salt & pepper & sugar to form his own concoction of Pomodoro sauce. He prepares the pasta sauce about 2.5kg pack in a food tub once a week that can last him for about 5 days.

For the pasta itself, Chef Khaw uses Italian Premium Chef's Grade pasta which is commonly used by many fine dining F&B restaurants, free of additives, preservatives, colorings. Chef Khaw shared that usually the cost for Premium Chef's Grade pasta is three times that of the other commonly used non Chef's Grade pasta. The pasta used in this dish has a standardised weight of about 150 gm. He usually cook the pasta well as the locals here do not like it al dente. But for expats who are used to eating the pasta al dente, he will prepared it based on their preference.

For the beef meatballs, Chef Khaw makes the homemade beef balls from scratch, using a total of 11 ingredients including herb & spices & sauces in this beef meatball recipe. Some of the ingredients include : fresh onion, fresh garlic, mustard sauce, tomato sauce, paprika, tabasco, apple sauce.

Each meatball weighs about 50gm, usually made fresh daily, Chef Khaw uses about 1 kg minced beef daily to make the beef meatballs. Chef Khaw gives about 3 beef meatballs for each serving. He uses corn flour & eggs to hold the minced meat together, then roll them into 50gm, & bake them at 220 - 250 degrees for 15 minutes.

When the order is placed, Chef Khaw bakes the meatballs ala minute for 15 minutes to ensure it is served fresh.

He uses black pepper & fresh oregano with the Pomodoro sauce when stir frying the pasta. To serve he drizzled the EVOO onto the pasta to lend an added fragrant to the pasta.

Tasting Notes - Chef Khaw uses minced beef meat mixed with onions, shallots plus other ingredients then oven bakes them. The beef meatball is tender moist & juicy, full of flavor of various herbs combined into one humble ball. The onion stands out especially to lend a sweet savour. The beef meatball are minced finely & blended smoothly to give smooth texture, juicy sweet.

The spaghetti pasta is cooked thoroughly not al dente, closer to Asian palate. The spaghetti is generously laden with dried herbs.

The spaghetti is evenly coated with the Pomodoro sauce with bite size fresh tomato embedded in between the spaghetti to lend a tarty sweet sourly flavor. Chef Khaw' cooking style is pretty rustic in that he uses quite an awful lot of herbs to flavor the spaghetti.