domestic blitz continued

what lasagne and shepherd's pie lacks in presentation, they make up in spades in comfort. had some time on my hands and embarked on yet another domestic blitz, this time cooking enough for two days. it's pretty scary how because i can't count, and hence can't successfully halve recipes, the mister and i end up eating double portions of everything. what's supposed to feed at least four, or last two people two meals ends up being one meal when it comes to us. on the top left is a naked lasagne, and the bottom right is shepherd's pie. made a second pie (in four ramekins) so as to better enforce portion control, but we ended up having two of each instead. so much for that theory! but yay to lazy days and almost-fresh meals :)

cheeky weekday breakfasts

we've this thing about how breakfast is a holiday luxury because we don't usually have time in the week for a proper breakfast. it's usually coffee, juice, vitamins and then a dash for the door. last week, however, we made a conscious effort to give ourselves an earlier start and managed to zip down to our neighbourhood gail's for a quick bite. as luck would have it, it was mid-term and we were surrounded by rowdy children and their overworked nannies. hey, i'd be worse for wear too if i'd been dealing with a screaming child 24/7... and as it was gail's, of course i baulked at the price. GBP9 for a grilled mushroom on toast?! are you kidding meeee! admittedly uncool to talk about money but seriously. it was literally daylight robbery! was so reluctant to spend a pretty penny that i brought half my quinoa (yeah, i mock myself) and chorizo box home for lunch.

excuse the blurry photo

but i'm chuffed to have met my little nephew for the first time! technically i don't get to call him 'nephew' because he's not my sibling's child. instead, he should be my 'cousin once removed' but that's a mouthful to describe a little guy. 

 

2013 was truly a bumper year for my porpor :) she's got six grandkids. three from my uncle, three from my mother. my eldest cousin had a baby, my second cousin got married, i got married, my third cousin graduated from medical school and my siblings started university. not bad for descendants of a kampong girl whose education was disrupted by the japanese occupation, never finished primary school and obediently "stopped at two" when it came to child-bearing. i know people complain, and i appreciate current the political climate is unsettled, but seriously. how many other countries empower people to break the poverty cycle in the span of ONE generation (my uncle and mother are both uni grads). similarly, my paternal grandmother, a school teacher, was widowed when my father was nine. she raised her only child alone and he was awarded an army scholarship to go to university. again, i'm very conscious of how my grandmothers' and parents' hard work got them where they are today. and am so grateful to be born into a country that gives equal opportunity regardless of socio-economic status.

some semblance of political awareness aside, chuffed as i was to meet baby S, he didn't seem half as chuffed to meet me. in fact, doesn't he look downright petrified to you? haha i do try but babies just don't like me. sad but true.

it's always christmas

when we entertain at home :)

in part because our tiny flat is accented with red, and in part because when i bought "nice" china, christmas was just around the corner. the green tumblers are from a debenhams sale for 50p each so we're accidentally festive. you might recognise the wooden ampersand from our christmas card, scored for a quid at primark and restored to former glory by colouring in the chipped bits with a black marker. we're creative like that...

anyhoos i was feeling domestic and more than happy to have my darling didi over. figured bad as my cooking might be,  it would still beat hall food. plied them with bellinis on arrival, followed in quick succession by cream of mushroom soup, chawanmushi, mushroom risotto and steamed halibut with seasonal vegetables. a bit of a schizophrenic menu but didi <3s his chawanmushi so of course it had to feature, somehow. multi-tasking isn't one of my strengths, so we only have photos of the blueberry cake for dessert. was quite happy with the timing - popped it in the oven as we had our mains and it bounced out piping hot and oh so fresh after we'd some time to digest the rest of the meal. could've made blueberry ice cream to complement it but got lazy and didn't feel like competing with hagen das.

kumari naha*ppan chilli napkin rings, a wedding gift that just keeps giving :)

early birthday dinner

it's no secret that i'd a little wobble when my birthday rolled round last year. long story short, the mister had flown up to spend the week with me and i maintain the wobble was precipitated by his imminent departure. 

that said, i was a huge pansy because, really, he'd be moving to london a mere two months after for good. so it's not like we were going to be apart for all that long. for two people who'd spent three of our five years together on separate continents  (he spent the first year in belgium, i spent the third year in stockholm and the fifth in the uk), being needy was something we could ill-afford. multiple qualifying statements aside, i felt i was approaching the quarter-century mark (eep) still in school and with nothing to show for it. one year on, i'm still in school (and will be for awhile yet!) but am counting my blessings. in the past year, we've gotten married, found a home to call our own and have the love and support of wonderful family and in-laws. to be fair, not much has changed since last year. at my last birthday, we were four months away from tying the knot, already house-hunting and our parents/prospective in-laws have been consistently awesome :) but it was a timely reminder of how the mister gets me, and is the most positive and persuasive person on earth.

ok! no more mushy mush. on to the amazing omakase he found us. only managed to take photos of half the courses because i was too busy eating the other time. tell a lie. all photos taken by the mister because i was too thin-skinned to channel my azn food-photo-taking tendencies, and too busy stuffing my face.

junmai daiginjo. 'nuff said.

ama ebi with fermented rice, caviar and edible gold.

stewed alaskan king crab cake  and japanese peppers

grilled dish of mackeral, home-made pickles and chilli leaves

the first of three sushi courses, and the freshly grated wasabi had me ecstatic with its natural sweetness

the second sushi course - scallop with black truffle, sweet prawn with torched sea urchin and smidgen of pesto

the third sushi course was anago (sea eel) with bean curd skin and glutinous rice. the whole parcel was wrapped in leaves, a bit like a square ba zhang or ketupat!

easily the best omakase we've had in london and if turning one year older meant a feast of this proportion, sign me up :)

lazy person's lasagne

been on a bit of a domestic blitz and tried my hand at lasagne for the first time. G, my superwoman coursemate with five (!!!) children, told me that white sauce was the easiest thing to whip up, ever. this was over a year ago, mind you, but i never thought to take her word on it. should've known better, i mean, she's routinely cooks for an army! so when i did eventually get down to it, i was surprised by how simple it was. a bit too simple, seeing how there's 1L of organic full fat milk in that, lots of white flour and even more butter. uh ohhhh... so much for undoing the damage of CNY binging. 

in a vain attempt to assuage my conscience, i figured doing away with the pasta sheets and instead devouring alternating spoonfuls of the stuff would make it less belt-busting. so there you go, deconstructed lasagne for the lazy!

pancake day

it was only after moving to the UK that i learnt of shrove tuesday, affectionately called 'pancake day'. far from schooled in religious traditions but from my limited understanding, it's the last tuesday before the start of lent. and observers would finish whatever is in the cooler (no electricity then?) by making pancakes. please do share if you know more about pancake day than i do!

historical detour aside, we made pancakes a few days after pancake day for breakfast and i'm so relieved they turned out ok. if you're observant, you'll notice that the pancake in the pan is a different pancake from the one on the plate. we made too many to finish in one sitting (oh the perils of cooking for two but eating for a dozen!) and kept the rest for breakfast the next day.

it's been a whirlwind two weeks and quite surreal to be back in london, just us :)

have a few more posts from the weekend lined up so do check back if you'd like to see.

the commute

sometimes i complain about the commute, other times i'm happy to have some time out to read, to think, to stare out of the window. and sometimes, there's even a rainbow :)

french supper*club

we'd the privilege of trying a french supper*club over the weekend. being newcomers to the supper*club scene, our host kindly sent a link of how to best enjoy being at one of them. i'm in two minds about supper*clubs. i liked the intimacy of being entertained in someone's (beautiful) home. i liked how it was BYOB (haha) and how the quality of the courses served was largely very good. i liked that it was a fun, new thing to try with the mister. however, i didn't like meeting new people. 

there, i've gone and said it. while these events are admittedly self-selecting and most people there are united by their common love for food, meaning at worst you can always discuss what's on the table, social interaction is something i enjoy to a limited extent. before you think we met horrible people, or gasps, i'm a horrible person (the latter probably more true than the former), we were seated facing each other at the end of the table, next to an empty seat. and i'm sure our host has a degree in seating people because we were seated next to a pair from HK and had much to chat about as the evening progressed. they had met through a mutual friend and were each other's go-to for foodie (ugh i hate the connotation) events. the layout was such that 4-6 people shared the dish so it was communal dining. and, face it, you are sort of socially obliged to make small talk to avoid being standoff-ish. think of it like a wedding dinner where you don't know any other guests! in a perfect world, the mister and i could've been in our own little bubble and not had to be sociable. we managed this for the first hour or so when we were all upstairs having cocktails and canapes but once seated and reaching across to the shared plate, it'd have been rude not to have shown any interest in the next person at all. and they were interesting, fascinating even, with wonderful stories and experiences. clearly, the problem lies with me. 

i guess if i wanted a private date night, we could always have gone out just us. funnily enough, when i told a coursemate about the supper*club, he said being forced to make small talk with strangers is his idea of hell. and that's when i realised that maybe it was as much an occupational hazard as the mister's compulsion for us to explore london on weekends. for we talk so much during the week that weekends are meant for quiet decompression.

we're doing a japanese supper*club next month because i feel it would be unfair to knock something before trying it twice. this time, i've wised up and invited friends along so it might end up more like a double date. i suppose i went with my eyes open, knowing full well that it'd require some degree of socialising so i really have no reason to complain now. and if you must know, we've a cny hotpot date with the HK pair,  and might just be scalping her sigur ros tickets. so it's not like "talking to strangers" was such a bad thing :)

double decker restaurant

when the weekend rolls round, all i want to do is curl up on the sofa under our mountain of throws and watch brainless teevee the mister faithfully records during the week. after spending the whole week in school and occasionally venturing into the far flung reaches for clinicals, the last thing i want to do on saturday morning is go out. most times, i succeed in reigning the mister in with the prospect of a huge breakfast. crumpets slathered with truffle honey, perfectly soft-boiled eggs, fresh buttery croissants stuffed with burrata, prosciutto and basil from our herb garden, organic juices and gourmet coffee and whole milk... you get the picture :) pretty darn tempting, isn't it? but other times, the mister needs to be free. occupational hazard of working long hours, perhaps. if he's lucky, he gets me all the way to a brand new neighbourhood. other times, he's to be content walking down the road and checking out finds in our kampong. and this double decker restaurant was one such place!

we've passed it so many times and kept making mental notes to go in. this time, we finally did! love the clever concept - what a way to double floor space. and of course, everyone wants to sit "upstairs". the appetiser portions were huge (you've a choice of having each dish as an appetiser or main) and what was initially meant as a light lunch (we'd french*supperclub after!) turned out to be enough for lunch and dinner, for two days.

but it was good fun, we paced ourselves, washed everything down with sangria and rolled out so full we'd to walk to harrods. for avoidance of doubt, and to pre-emptively quash any labeling, no, we don't live near harrods, we just walk very far. so off to harrods we went to check out the nespresso*compatible*capsules. wish we could've had a taste, but oh no. brought them home and they were AWFUL. which posed a small problem because in our enthusiasm, we did buy 12 sleeves :( managed to return them but there was a heart-stopping moment where i thought we'd be subjected to bad coffee for awhile. eeeyur :( and tails between our legs, we humbly topped up our nespresso stash. looks like nespresso is safe for now!