my local

T was done with his research paper weeks before the rest of us were. this, of course, warranted a celebration and i managed to arm-twist him into going to my local. one of the perks of living 30m (i google mapped it!) from the pub is that i'm generally well-watered. but drinking alone is reserved for very specific occasions (like when i want some down time with a good magazine) and thankfully there's usually someone who's up for a pint or two. the mister says this photo of the local in daylight is very telling. but hey, don't blame me, blame the increasingly long day light hours ;)

burger*lobster

if you're the faddy type, you'd have heard about and possibly even been to burger*lobster. where it's GBP20 for a lobster, served with salad and fries. the burger costs the same so if you do go, please don't make the tragic mistake of ordering a burger. however, we finally made it to our little neighbourhood diner that serves all that, plus a margarita or beer, for GBP15. with way better service too! made friends with our lovely waiter and he comp-ed an extra margarita. woot! the way to my heart and to ensure my undying loyalty is clearly with free alcohol. that's precisely how the sneaky E  got me hooked on pollen*stsocial i.e. with bubbles the moment i waltzed in. disclaimer: it all sounds more glamorous than it really was in person :/

level up!

when i first invited A and R over for dinner, ever the considerate guest, A asked if there was any occasion. telling him it was a celebration of being alive (albeit true) was just too cheesy, so i went with "we're celebrating my new deep fryer". and that, my friends, is the unfortunate truth. so continuing on the birthday theme, my present to myself was a "cheap cheap" mini deep fryer i found on amazon. this is something i have yet to tell my healthy living parents so please be gentle and withhold judgment. 

it's easter break now and i've one glorious month to while away. last easter break (well last st paddy's to be precise) i was being kept awake by drunken revelers in a tiny 6 bed dorm in manhattan. this st paddy's i was feeling all grown-up with a spouse and a house, enjoying a very refined japanese supper club dinner with my charming changmoh cousin and his wife. what a difference a year makes!

to further cement this new-found status as capable young wife, i felt the need to learn to cook. and as a product of the internet generation, what better place to start than online. so i googled a few recipes, got the mister to drive me to the asian grocer's* and armed with hope and a freezer full of frozen lasagne (just in case!) i set about this latest domestic blitz. truth be told, i'd been mulling on the menu for almost a month now since i first sent out the invite and envisioning my little action plan as to what to cook and when. hey, when you're simultaneously prepping and cooking six dishes in the span of two hours, organisation is key! thought canto-style would be the most crowd-pleasing and thankfully our wonderful friends 1) ate lots 2) complimented loudly. behaviour that secures them an open invite to future 'dos. 

i attempted the list below, served with steamed rice. nothing fancy, no bells and whistles. really should have done a dry run because there was this heart-stopping moment** just before they arrived where i thought the said fryer was. not. working. turns out i was using it wrong and after jiggling it around a bit, it cranked into motion. disaster averted but oh so scary nevertheless.

so we had: 

steamed egg

salt & pepper chicken wings

beef stew

spare ribs with black bean sauce

sweet & sour pork

wonton soup

"lao ban" style tau huay and fresh fruit for dessert

and because their mamas taught them well, they came laden with cakes and sweet wine. be still, my sugar-craving heart. in fact, we were so full that they graciously left the goods behind and the cakes are now mine all mine for breakfast, lunch and dinner today :D

for the aspiring home cooks out there, the evening's cooking order was as follows.

1730h prep stew and marinate chicken wings, spare ribs, sweet sour pork

1800h put stew in oven for 2h, mix eggs for steaming, prepare tau huay, make sweet & sour sauce

twiddle thumbs till 1930h

1930h put egg dish and spare ribs (separately) in steamer and steam for half hour, steam rice too

1940h fry chicken wings

1950h fry battered pork in deep fryer then stir in sweet & sour sauce in frying pan

2000h pop frozen wontons into soup (boiled pork bones with dried shrimp earlier in the day) and simmer for 5mins 

(and bob's your uncle!***)

*funny story here, indulge my little brag! tried to buy beer for them boys but GOT CARDED. and because i'd run out of the house with just the mister's plastic, i had no ID. tried flashing my wedding band (hmm, maybe counter-productive) and insisting that i've been legal for longer than i care to admit but the cashier wouldn't budge. didn't know whether to laugh or cry but unabashedly thrilled i look underaged :D in fact, every time i'm NOT carded, a small part of me dies on the inside.

**yes i shouldn't joke about these things. but if that had happened (CHOY!) i would've been in good hands because incidentally, R is a totally bad*ass neurosurgeon who once casually CPR-ed a man back to life on the streets of london. no big, just your friendly neighbourhood doctor-man.

***cantonese as dinner might've been, anglophilic i still am

maturity

so my birthday came and went with barely a whimper. phew :) had a lovely dimsum lunch with the grads somewhat belatedly, what with us all having commitments of the family kind over the weekend. one of the nice things about being back in school is that my coursemates are in a similar place. some are married, others have children (!!!) and when it comes to weekends, everyone respects that everyone else has 101 things to do. things like hanging out with +1s who've been sorely neglected during the week...

what i'm trying to say is this would be so much harder if i didn't have this core group of wonderful wonderful people who know what it's like to be a graduate medic but don't take themselves too seriously. it's crazy how between the 6 of us we've already something like 10 degrees. #firstworldproblems, much?

and they surprised me with a lemon drizzle cake that T baked. the photo really doesn't do it justice but i'm tickled by how J manages to make a kawaii moment of everything. for a finnish army man who later taught english in japan before finding himself (and his medical tendencies), guess you can take a finn outta japan but the japan in the finn hangs around a bit longer.

spontaneous sundays

the sun came out and so did we! the mister and i excitedly brought our good white out without realising we couldn't drink in the park :( we were good and respected that rule and apart from the many many dogs that came charging at our little cheese platter, it was a good afternoon trying in vain to top up our tans.

on a roll

home made butternut squash and home made bun with home grown basil. oh so smug. but as always, pride before fall and halfway through i realised i'd also cooked, blended AND CONSUMED foil wrapper from the butter. oh the horror.

notting hill

we'd an atypically early breakfast with a dear friend who was passing through london. i'd the pleasure of meeting T 4 (!!!) summers ago when the mister had banished me from leuven. made the most of being based smack in the centre of europe to visit my cousin who was in dublin. and guess who was there the same weekend, fresh from a posting at the great ormond street hospital? T was ever-gallant and i still remember he bought a round of baby guinnesses when he saw me balk at the real guinness. +points in my book! we kept in touch and i'm amazed by how much he remembers of his month in singers when he doing a stint at K*K, right down to who we met at brunch (edinburgh medic) and where the mister hadn't joined us (reservist). minutiae that has long slipped through my sieve-like memory. this was also just before i left for stockholm and T brought me to a swedish embassy 'do and showed me my first midsommar celebration. yes i realise i've said about the same thing in an earlier post and there you go, evidence of my wonderful memory.

sent T to paddington after our aussie brekkie and then went back to notting hill for round two! the mister had some shopping to do and i entertained myself with selfies. mature...

and because it was my birthday the next day, the mister let me pick a present that i've had on high rotation since.

we also fell hook, line and sinker for some coconut water and only later realised our fridge stocked just bubbles, sake and coco. so much for growing up!

one of those days

and just the pick me up i needed.

sometimes it's hard to deal with the lack of visibility. i'm admittedly OCD and need to know what's going to happen and when. i mean, i can't even watch a movie without wiki-ing the plot first. spoiler alert, much! sometimes if it's a complicated movie i draw mind maps too so i can follow without being that moviegoer who asks 101 stupid questions during the show. so it's really only natural that i don't like (most) surprises. but since i started going out with the mister, i've become better with spontaneity. and he's probably the only person who manages to surprise the already ever-suspicious me. 

it was one of those weekends where the mister nudged me into being sociable and meeting new people. while i was initially uncomfortable when someone i'd just met persisted in stating the obvious, it got better as the evening wore on.

strawberry sponge

had some time on my hands and decided to modify the blueberry sponge recipe. strawberries were the natural, economical alternative and they seem to be in season! got a bit brave and tried to tweak the recipe as i went along. of course, i forgot to take notes and that's that - unreplicable :( but it was fun seeing how the sponge rose and semi-submerged the strawberries i'd painstakingly sliced and arranged. didn't halve the recipe this time and baked two massive cakes which went down too easily and were well-received, if i may say so myself :)

self-invite

was at covent garden with my sweet friend M and after a highly satisfying tea at la*duree, i must've been drunk on their special blend that i invited myself over to hers. dodgy as that may sound, M was ever indulgent and didn't mind me hanging at hers while our men were at work. yep, we're fun like that :) and it's a nice story, really, because when M was first accepted for her LLM, i commiserated with her housing woes. little did we know that she'd eventually be given accommodation and of the most luxurious sort! her 450sq ft studio is every student's dream... well, it'd definitely have been mine! and she's got a lovely view and almost 360degrees of huge windows with plenty of natural light. if you squint, you can even see the shard in the distance. what a gem of a place! and what a gem of a friend :)

"breakfast for dinner"

is one of our favourite things but this time we decided to shake things up and have "tea for dinner" instead. although in the UK, "tea" is used interchangeably with "supper" and "dinner" so it does get confusing at times. question of semantics aside, had booked afternoon tea in the city with a friend who's on a flying visit to london en route to geneva for a skiing holiday. can i say how envious i am?! we met five summers ago. the mister was in leuven studying for his final exams and had banished me to dublin where i visited my cousin. as luck would have it, all her friends descended on her at the same time. T was doing a month at great*ormond street and hopped across to dublin for the weekend. we got along great, and have since kept in touch although that's more to T's credit than mine. in fact, swedish-canadian T spent a month at k*k hospital in singers and introduced me to my first swedish midsommar, just before i left for stockholm on exchange. so much as i was looking forward to an elaborate english tea with T, we rescheduled for notting hill brunch. not one to let a hard-gotten reso slip through my fingers, i went nevertheless and the mister joined later. what made things more interesting was that i happened to get talking to the charming gentleman next to me, who turned out to be paddy*renouf. P was more than fascinating and the best accidental date i could ask for and my goodness i only wish i could be a fly on the wall during one of his private tours of london.

truffle gruyere and chorizo egg cup

spent a day up north last week and this little baby sure perked up my train ride :) while i'm not a creature of habit, neither am i big on rituals, it's nice to have a little train routine. it usually involves the biggest hot chocolate possible (because calories imbibed in transit don't count!) and trashy magazines because neither guilty pleasure is as enjoyable without the other. when i'm feeling particularly industrious, i do try to get some work done but more often than not i cherish the time to kick back and decompress.

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!

saturdays under the railway

one of the things we love most about london is its diversity, and how we are at most half an hour away from an as-yet unexplored market. much as london is fast-paced and rushy, there are also parts of it so laid back that it feels like we've left the city. people are so friendly, everyone has time for banter, and no one's in a hurry. these little arches under the railway is one such place. who'd have thought there would be the yummiest custard donuts, ultimate reubens and little bird cocktails under a railway :) can't wait for our next londontown adventure!

why we walk

so i got a teensy bit conned into a 10km hike. the mister suggested we take the funicular up the mountain. seeing how i don't usually enjoy going against gravity in the natural, a funicular solves all problems. little did i know that the funicular only went midway up the mountain. and the mister, oh the mister, had his eye set on the many kilometres of forested trails. we alighted from the funicular, took a few great shots of the view from the platform and then started walking behind the pushchair army. but then the pushchair army stopped, and we kept going, and suddenly we were walking almost vertically. and off piste. which was not fun. 

hike

we rode the funicular thinking there'd be a good view from the top, and so there was! what i hadn't realised was that this was all part of the mister's sneaky plan to hike 10 (!!!) km in the undulating terrain, before catching our afternoon flight back to london. it was a breath-taking walk with majestic views of the norwegian wilderness. what we liked was how everyone and their mother seemed to be on that mountain on a sunday, just chilling. it was so social - like it was the common meeting point and we saw many groups of friends / family walking together. what a great example of healthy living! unfortunately, the guidebook sort of under-sold (over-sold?) the route the mister chose and when we as we were climbing steep steps cut into the mountainside, i started to wonder what exactly we'd signed up for.