hellooo

Hmm so I just checked my blogger homepage and I realised that the last time I blogged was in Feb 2011.
Shock, horror!

Thats practically a century in blogosphere time.
Way too long, and too much has happened for me to do the usual guerilla style blog post to try to catch up.

To be honest I am not sure if I will blog again after this.
I suspect I might, having been blogging for close to 10 years now
I dont think this is a habit that I ll easily break.
But real life gets in the way of updating,
and I am just not motivated enough to stay committed for long.

What drives me though, is how much I like looking back on my previous posts
Remembering events I attended, what I felt at the time, realising how my writing has evolved and yes, even feeling a little embarrassed at how much of a prat I was.
And reading comments from my friends.

So maybe I should make more of an effort..
No photos today as I am blogging from an university computer waiting for clinics to start, though there are several I want to share.

Seem to be at point in life where everything is perfect and I am feeling really lucky
so I really should blog and savour it!

k a chocolate-run calls, I cant resist. :p

st judes

Caught up with a few friends for dinner recently.

Decided to try out raw/vegan food on a whim

and headed out to a korean place on Brunswick Street,

Yong Green Foods.

Now dont get me wrong,

I have nothing but respect for people who choose to eat raw foods,

and the restaurant was really creative with the menu

(think almond milk sweetened with agave syrup, raw brown rice sushi, dehydrated chia seed nachos)

but at the end of the meal, it felt like I hadn't eaten much at all, and what I did eat, wasnt... properly cooked.

which i suppose was the point, but it felt rather incomplete somehow.

Except for the home made kim chee. That, was delish.

Take the green tea raw cheese cake with goji berries for instance.

Not bad, but I just wanted to throw it in the oven for a bit.

Left the restaurant bizzarely hungry and craving something savoury

Did a quick ring-around to my favourite restaurants, who were alas, closed on a Sunday night.

While walking back to car, I suddenly saw St Jude's Cellars.

Decided to give it a shot. And boy, am i glad we did!

No photos of the venue unfortunately,

as I was eager to order before the kitchen shut.

1st dish after the sour dough, charred corn croquettes with mahon cheese. Ummm.

Wont lie to you, this was this dish that I was most looking forward to, and it was good!

Perhaps a tad light on the corn and heavy on the cheese, but then again, I m not much of a cheese person.





Looks great doesnt it? All that ooozy gooey cheese.

Nicely displayed wines. Had a Sicillian zibibbo, which was very yummy indeed.

The rest of our dishes, from L to R, were

snapper and quinoa balls wrapped in wombok and baked in tomato- my least favourite of the night. Needed a tad more flavour, and didnt like it served cold

Jar of salmon rilletes with cucumber and toast- delicious! The spread with light and tangy with satisfyingly large salmon chunks, the toast was crispy, the cucumber was fresh. Umm!

My favourite would definitely have to be the fresh cracked walnuts with apple and double smoked bacon. Genius pairing! The saltiness of the pork cut through the sweetness of the apple and the texture of the walnuts give it bite. How inspired! I finished this whole dish by myself, couldnt help reaching for more.

The last dish in the forefront of the picture is the chilli calamari salad. Pretty tasty and a good smoky flavour.

Because neither of my dinner companions felt like dessert, we skipped it. However, the next time i return, there will be a dark chocolate mousse with my name on it!

Mum has been baking like a mad woman lately
Not that I m complaining.

Look at my dinner!
Hahahah
croquembouche heaven, here I come.



If this is my after dinner dessert at home, I must be truly spoilt, haha.

truffle

Mum has commented recently that my cooking has improved
to which I triumphantly credited to my constant eating out at restaurants.
She then proceeded to shoot me a death glare,
and said ' no no, silly girl, its obviously my genes!'
Haha. Well, be that as it may,
I find the art of cooking especially enjoyable nowadays,
though my repertoire is limited.
Here is one of my own creation, truffle soba!

Bought some summer truffles

and decided to try my hand at making a truffle dish,

The truffle salsa that resulted was very much inspired by Tetsuya's.

Ummm!

dont they look enticing? i find the smell of truffles so delicious I cant resist nibbling while preparing the dish

Made a truffle salsa, there it is sitting atop the soba noodles. I combined

2 truffles, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon bread crumbs

with the ingredients below, which I sauteed beforehand.

Brown 1 large garlic clove, minced, and

1 small piece of onion, minced, with a small pat of butter.

Add 2 oilves, finely chopped, and 3 large porcini mushrooms- diced

Cook till soft, and add a dash of balsamic vinegar and some salt

Store it in a little glass jar for at least the night!

The soba noodles were store-bought, I was too impatient to make my own.

I blanched them in salty boiling water and kept it in the fridge till I was ready to plate up.

You dont have to do this, but I usually toss through some olive oil so the soba doesnt stick together, and I find it really helps!

Added ice to my soba noodles to make them really cold! Dont have one of those nifty Japanese plates where the ice sits under the noodles, so had to make do. Also had little mini French toasts in the background to spread the salsa on, some oilve oil, a grater and of course, the truffles.

Grated the truffles over the noodles to give it an extra kick .

Bon appetit

And though I do say it myself, it was divine!

queensland

Had a short holiday up in Queensland over the New Year.

Flew up to the Sunshine Coast and then drove up to Brisbane and the Gold Coast,

so its a queer feeling watching footage on the news of the floods affecting areas I was just in.

Really feel for those affected by the flood

I have always dreadedfloods and fires, above anything else,

cant imagine what it will be like to lose almost every material possession

or having to choose your most precious item when fleeing

or losing family and friends

and can you imagine what the clean-up must be like? That mud!

So, here is the link to make a donation.

I hope this post will encourage people to holiday in Queensland

It really is a fantastic place and I always enjoy my visits there.

Didnt bring my DSLR camera up this time, as I really didnt feel like lugging it around.
Was a decision I soon regretted!
Made spicy hotpot and watched asian horror movies the first night I was at Sunny Coast.
Rainie Yang in The Child's Eye? Not good. She's too cute to be a horror queen.
She's screaming in fear and all I want to do is pat her on the head.
Incidentally, what was with the ending of that movie?
Very annoying and the worse thing was I couldnt rant about it to Jin as she gave up on the show midway.



Stayed at the Meriton when we were in Gold Coast, which was a nice serviced apartment just opposite Jupiters Casino. I think I much prefer serviced apartments to hotels, because I can make breakfast!

then partied the night away at Sin City with Kat, Nina, Joe and Chai
hahaha. What a night!

Ah Surfers Paradise.




Went to the Palazzo Versace for dinner the following night.

Had a lot of fun oohing and ahhing over the medusa heads on EVERYTHING

Candlesticks, cutlery, salt and pepper shakers, wine glasses. You name it.

I thought it would have just been the china!

Very pretty crockery which dont seem to be on sale at David Jones?

Probably is customised for Vanitas.

We were seated at a table right in front of the hotel pool,

great view, but unfortunately no swimmers to gawk at.

My entree was kingfish and tuna sashimi. Dish was nice as I am always partial to some raw fish, but to be honest, the food wasnt amazing, it was more of a novelty to dine at the restaurant rather than anything else. Still, good pairing with the sesame and watermelon sorbet!




My main. Was less than impressed with this one. Was bland, and the two potato chips on top of the potato mash was rather confusing. Suppose it was meant to add texture and height, but just felt awkward. Lamb was tender though.




This was a palate cleanser, think it was a mushroom and celeriac shot, but I could be wrong.

Dessert was some rather uninspiring strawberry souffle (Jin's) and mine was a chocolate mille feuille. Good flavour, but the pastry was so hard i couldnt cut through it easily, making rather a terrible mess. I would skip the dessert and go for the petit fours with coffee, served in a delightful winged cup.

Had everyone over the next day (NYE) for some drinks and Thai food.

Quickly evolved into a rowdy drinking game, 4 Kings,

and when everyone was nice and happy, proceeded to walk to Broadbeach for countdown.

I wont post any photos of the fireworks as they dont do them justice

but I can assure you, they were lovely! We were up against the barricade so were close as can be,

and unlike the ones in Melbourne,

you dont actually get burnt with little falling bits.

Played around with sparklers someone had the foresight to bring.

We were trying to write 2011 here, not successful.




Went zorbing on New Year's Day.

Jin and I were strapped into a giant bouncy ball and pushed down the hill.

She was screaming the entire way, was as funny as hell.



Was more a fun ride rather than a scary one, and being able to look at each other was hilarious.

Also did the water ride with Kat, where you are in a ball with 40 litres of water and you swish and slide all the way down in the ball.

I prefer the harness ride though, it lasted longer!

at this point my camera ran out of batteries.

I foolishly overestimated its staying power and therefore had no charger

but we went dancing at a spanish club in Brisbane the night after, where people were doing the samba with lightning quick steps and then the senuous moves of the zouk lambada..

oh i wish i had photos!

miss Jin terribly :(

might take a break now from blogging till later in the night,

typing about the trip has made me hungry and restless!

navy

Never been too great a swimmer.

I could keep afloat, but to swim distances with any stroke other than the frog was beyond me.

when we were kids, Lee would regale me with tales of her olympian style butterfly strokes

while i would mentally picture myself doing the doggy paddle while gasping for breath.

Skipped the mandatory swimming lessons in secondary school

as they were clearly for losers haha

though many times since then i ve wished i tried a little harder.

what this brings me to of course,

is that miracles of miracles, i passed the surprise swim test on my Navy undergrad officer's course!

we were woken up with a fire drill at some ungodly hour, bundled us into a bus, and off we went.

dont have many photos, as it was neither the time nor place

but i do have one of the group.

because Creswell is a national park, and there were plenty of shrubbery (and kangaroos!) and therefore lots of pollen everywhere

had a bit of asthma and was hospitalised.

must say, this year's hayfever season seems particularly bad!

also attended the 2010 Naval Engineers Grad ball

held at San Remo Ballroom

i must say, the male uniform looks much better than the female equivalent

very pretty ceiling!

and this photo is for tracey, who wanted me to keep it because 'we look so white!' lol

been also trying my hand at picking up the chinese tea ceremony from mum

its smoothing and each movement flows from the next

sure beats popping a teabag in hot water!

dad bought some amazing tea back from China and Taiwan

so been using these.

everything you need for the tea ceremony. kind of hard to explain the procedure in detail, but its the kind of thing that needs constant practice and i only recently started trying in earnest

will blog more when i am back from queensland, made the christmas ham for dinner!

just tried to upload ham photos but blogger seems to be down.

splurged yesterday on the most amazing, fantastic, gorgeous bed sheets

i couldnt resist

1000 thread count of pure luxury

and i cant wait to hop into bed

night!

press club movida bacash

i have a little confession to make

the reason i can go for so long without updating, is that sometimes,

i blog in my head.

pictures, captions, the whole she-bang.

but of course, there's nothing like a little sms or email from friends to remind me its high time to blog again.

for real.

there was some drama with my camera before, but its all fixed now.

unfortunately that means that some of the images are corrupted (!)

so i ll blog what i have.

had an ahmazzzing dinner at Press Club with Nick, Helen and Viet.

been reluctant to try it as I am not a fan of greek food

but, every dish we had was oh-my-god delicious, and although we initially booked a 2 hr slot for dinner, upon choosing to have the degustation, the staff were most accomodating and extended the dinner to 3 hours.

i hate buying into hype but i have to give credit where its due, and Press Club is fantastic!

started off the night with some wow factor. dry ice, cheese (boccocini?) and moscato d' asti. yum. btw, i apologise in advance, but i know close to nothing about greek cuisine, and the menu was all, well, greek to me!

kingfish and calamari.

zuccini flowers.

beef. apologies for the brief descriptions! but ALL the dishes were exquistely prepared and well matched with the elements on the plate, and i was a fan of every single thing I ate. it was that good!

Aphrodite. i used to be a big fan of aphrodite when it was a black forest cake, but Press club changed it to this- panna cotta. liked the rose flavours and the marshmellow. a nice light dessert to finish off the huge meal! had a great photo of Helen and I with our dessert, but alas, that is lost to the technological abyss.

Can view the Press Club's menu here

The degustation should set you back about $150 per head, but worth every penny.

And book early!

i only have three measly photos left of our epic night out before B left Melbourne

dinner at Bacash. Great seafood restaurant! I had the warm rare roast ocean trout with fennel confit and an orange and beetroot salad. Nice generous slice, cooked just right, with that smoky flavour i love. Hen, in the above photo, has the scallops.

Had some Pieropan soave. Great wine, full but perhaps a bit acid heavy. Went well with my trout main though!

At Movida after. A crazy amount of desserts, the chef was impressed! Wont elaborate on the exact number of dishes hehe, but the Marquis, which is a chocolate dish with sea salt and oilve oil, is absolutely delish! Dishes pictured here are the strawberries in cava and the churros.

have a snapshot of my amex bill from last month. the ones underlined in yellow are restaurants. uh oh, somebody isnt going to dine out for a while!

:(

matteos

Was hanging out with B one day and talking about visiting the Met store on Collins to see if anything new has been released,

when I was hit with sudden random inspiration.

(that can sometimes happen when studies drive me crazier than a dingbat.)

We decided to have a dinner to celebrate Faberge's genius!

Wooo!

The idea became known as having an 'egg dinner'

and in my excitement, i retrieved all the Faberge jewellery i own

and made a booking for Matteos.

B looks exceptionally gleeful here, must be the bread and butter arriving! i, on the other hand, was grumpy as i had seriously overestimated the time taken to travel to Matteo's and had been waiting for a full half hour. No traffic to Brunswick, who would have thought?!

B's Faberge jewellery.

My Jap seafood plate, with 1.Semi-cured Hiramasa kingfish, prawn remoulade, shiso Japanese basil sauce, 2.Teriyaki glazed smoked eel on rice crusted tofu, pickled plum & bonito mayonnaise

3. Petuna ocean trout tataki, oroshi grated daikon radish, Yarra Valley salmon roe.

the kingfish was my favourite, usually have it raw but curing it imparted the most extraordinary texture! To be honest this dish was packed chockful of ingredients, some palatable some not so much, it became sensory overload by the end! Was delicious though, and i enjoyed every bite.

My main was the wagyu beef. Slightly disappointing as it was served cold. Have had much better wagyu steaks and the pairing with the butternut pumpkin puree and 'red curry' seemed a tad disjointed. Silverbeet was good, but doesnt say much about the dish that the silverbeet was its saving grace! Also ordered the miso eggplant as a side, which i liked. Chef was heavy handed with the garlic and miso paste, but that made the dish very flavourful. Think i might have been the only eggplant fan on the table though!

Matteo's Cspot- dark chocolate ganache tartlet, which was great. Was so full by the end of dinner that this was all the dessert i managed to squeeze in, though i tried some of the other desserts. B's cherry & honeyed apple, custard crumble, and coconut gelato was really good! Coconut gelato in particular was so impactful it tasted like frozen coconut milk. Genius pairing with the tart crumble!

Had one of my favourite dessert wines that night, 2006 Partricia, almost finished 3 glasses by myself but boy, was it good.

Henny with her Golden Gaytime dessert.

Yay for Faberge! it rhymes! haha.

My DSLR has died, the SD card slot is broken.

Thankfully its 3 days before the warranty expires,

so will send it off to be repaired soon.

Finally retrieved the SD card and was looking through the photos and found a couple from Kat's birthday celebration last month

our valiant attempts at cake decorating

it only looks passable because i zoomed it all the way in!

hahah but its the thought that counts yes Kat? ;)

p.s you totally dont look impressed, i dont blame you!

spice temple

Had dinner at David's and Spice Temple a few days ago

A welcome relief after exams (though they re technically not over yet, i m kind of celebrating prematurely!)

Brought Mum to David's in Prahran to celebrate her birthday

not much to say about David's, yummy as usual!

Didnt have to foresight to remember my camera, and food reviews without photos are no fun,

so might skip talking about David's.

Went to Spice Temple the following night to celebrate the last of my written exams

I was completely taken aback from how different ST looked to Bistro Guillaume

where BG was cream walls and chandeliers and the like, ST was all dimly lit and oriental incense.

Was a tad early so had a drink in the bar while waiting

Ordered a Dragon from the zodiac themed cocktail list

(lemongrass and rose petal soda with gin)

Delicious, would have ordered another if i could stomach that much alcohol!

But i knew we were having wine so through heroic efforts, abstained.

The other (with the mint sprig) is a Monkey, which tasted of ginger so strongly i was sure all motion sickness would be kicked out of me forever.

Yeeuch. Not a ginger fan for sure.

The cocktail list can be viewed here

Definitely want to try the Rat next!

We then moved upstairs to start dinner.

Ordered quite a few dishes, but hey, i was hungry!

Can see the menu here

Started with tingling prawns and lamb and fennel dumplings

We are huge spicy buffs, i thought that the prawns, being bolded in red on the menu, would be spicier than it actually was, though the green chillies gave it an adequate kick.

The dumplings were good, nice skin! Couldnt really taste the fennel though. Was paired with a nice chilli sambal style sauce. Sommelier recommended a riesling (sat back and left wine decisions to him so not sure what we had), though i have to say, they went very nicely together!

my favourite dish of the night! Hot and numbing duck. Despite the name, this dish was not spicy, but the duck was succulent and tender, the skin ,fried to mouth watering perfection and the sauce, tangy with just the right amount of sweetness. This dish was good! Also had chinese broccoli and rice, but no photos, as really, you all know what that looks like!

This was a Guangxi style pork dish, and i was disappointed. Entirely too much coriander, and the pork was overly chewy. Crackling was alright but would have been better if the dish was sweeter to balance the bitterness of the coriander and spanish onion!

Funny story, while waiting for dessert, i looked up and because of how the restaurant was lit, i hallucinated that everyone was glowing, like angels! Was totally trippy, laid off the wine after that haha.
Had a orange cupcake with a jelly centre. Topped with persian fairy floss! More of a novelty dessert rather than anything else, but was pleasant none the less. Sponge was light and fluffy, and the texture of the jelly provided a nice contrast!

Chocolate and peanut parfait. With salted caramel! Is it sacrilege if i say that this is better than Il Fornanio's Snickers? Was looking forward to this all night, and was very happy with it, not too sweet, surface broke with a satisfying crunch, creamy, cold and altogether perfect! If i had to be picky about anything, it would probably be the presentation (as you can see above), but really, i could have finished this all by myself.

Spice Temple was lovely, looking at neighbouring tables (they were closely placed)

i saw a positive plethora of dishes to try next time. except for the guangxi pork dish, the food were good, service was attentive and solictious, and i loved the concept of free flow of sparkling water. Think it was about $8 or $9 each for the endless San Pelligrino, very handy if the dishes are a tad spicy for your taste!

Going to vent a little now before going back to the books

oral medicine, sigh.

been on the hunt for tea lately

for Serendipitea's Passion and Envy

searched everywhere for it since their Prahran store has shut down

and neither Caffee Moravia nor Cafe Dior had them

Caffee Moravia was absolutely appalling

never returning if i can help it

ordered a foccacia and tea

both times, they brought out the wrong thing

and far from being apologetic,

the server was almost inclined to blame us for their error.

Terrible. never going back if i can help it.

Lettuce was wilted and brown (BROWN!)

And do be careful if you order tea

they might be careless and offer you a Twinings teabag in hotwater instead of the Serendipitea

which is really rather unacceptable considering the price.

Cafe Dior, on the other hand, was lovely

and are even ordering in the tea for us.

Really now, just thinking about Caffee Moravia is getting under my skin!