#110 - Sunday night dinner (dinner experimentation gone awry)

You know the saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it"?  Yup, broke the rule and this is what happened.

Texas sirloin chili

I've made before successfully.  This time I changed the cooking time and heat setting on the slow cooker with mixed results.  Tasted pretty good, although a bit heavy on either the cumin or the oregano (cumin, I suspect - I kind of spilled the spices) and needed a bit more chili for my personal preference.  But the cardinal sin...the meat was dry.  Not what you want, especially when you made some for a friend who also happens to be a food critic.  Nooooo!!!

However, the salad was delicious and it was a nice, refreshing accompaniment to the chili.  I think it would have been good if I had had some hot sauce to go with the accompaniments.  Edible but not my best work, a bit disappointing.  Oh well, next time the recipe will require a few tweaks until we get a good product.

The big excitement of the evening is that I got my invitation to a wedding of the friends with whom I had dinner.  In Tahiti.  In July.  There are worse things than having friends who are from all over the world - it's a hard life but someone has to do it.


So until next time, good luck on your endeavors (leave well enough alone) and may you have as good a week as I had tonight.

#107 - Mom's birthday dinner (What a wonderful world)

It's been a little while since I cooked anything worth posting but it was my Mom's birthday last night.  A bit of a rush since I made dinner after work but it's all in the preparation - last minute sauce but mise-en-place done before and/or most of the major cooking, which means the only things I actually had to do was make the sauce, reheat and flash the duck, supreme the orange, re-heat the broccoli, toast the almonds and plate.  Easy 60 minutes (only because the sauce takes a while).

Happy birthday Mom!
The result was a group effort - Dad made salad to which I added a few bits and pieces (roasting the almonds took the longest, surprisingly enough), Mom made the rice and I did the duck, sauce and veggies.

And I found out why you trim the duck's legs before you cook it.  Trying to trim them after - well, the bones shattered into pieces and the ugly end was still attached.  The confit leg may not have looked very pretty but apparently it tasted really good.  Frankly, I couldn't face eating any duck after smelling the duck fat while it was cooking.  Don't get me wrong, the duck fat actually smells really good but it's such a rich smell, all I wanted for dinner was a little rice and all veggies.

No madeira for the sauce.  Oddly enough, the liquor store / bottle shop didn't have madeira.   ("What?  No madeira?  What kind of bottle shop doesn't have madeira???")  They had port but I forgot it at home so I cheated - red wine and orange juice.  Substituted chicken stock for brown duck stock.  Yes, shock horror - but it all still tasted pretty good so happy faces around the table.

Dad's pretty salad to the right with cherry heirloom tomatoes - just right with the toasted almonds and vinaigrette.  The crisp greens were a perfect antidote to the duck fat smell.  I think I would have been happy just to eat salad and nothing else.  Why is it that there's so much pleasure in cooking but sometimes, the pleasure in the eating is just not there?

And then of course, dessert.  You can't have a birthday without dessert...but I didn't have time to make it so I bought it from the deli.  I have dessert guilt.  On the other hand, this was gluten free and my gluten free repertoire is (thus far) very limited.  Mousse, anyone?

 In any event, a lovely night with the parents and they got to eat something they don't cook at home and isn't necessarily on a restaurant menu.  Ah, Cordon Bleu was definitely not a waste, according to them.  A true pleasure for me to have more people who like to eat!

(I am off to pick up some dinner - yes, yes, cheating but all in a good cause - I don't cook Chinese food at home.)

So until next time, happy Mother's Day, happy eating and a very good night to you all!  

#89 - Death by tuiles...

Replating the desserts... 
I keep thinking it's Friday night but it's not.  My lattice stencil arrived yesterday and I picked it up from a friend today so that I could have a practice run at my plating with all the decorations.  Yech - another try tomorrow...it's a pain because I don't feel like I have a natural talent for putting the shapes and things together.    Nothing came out quite the way I imagined or hoped except for the white chocolate twirls.  I had to make my own blackberry puree so I had to guess a bit.  It turned my tuile mix purple instead of a dark pink or deep red.  I know part of it is the the tuile batter but still...lavender?  And the pretty tuiles broke because I overcooked them so I had to use the crappy one for the plating.

Had to be kind of ruthless with the chocolate twirls.  Hopefully I'll get the same shape or be able to snap it around the same place during the exam - it's hard to get the angles exactly right and depending on the acetate you get, sometimes it's easier than others to get the twirls to be around the same circumference/curve as what you're aiming for.  Got lucky today with the twirl, but still ended up breaking the long twirls into a better height to go on the plate.

Have been having trouble coming up with a design on the plate where I would have enough sauce and still have something that looks clean and interesting.  This still isn't quite what I was looking for, but it's an improvement over what happened during the exam skills class with our plated dessert earlier in the week.  I've been lucky enough to get some suggestions from friends who did this exam two terms ago.  They had a couple of ideas which I think I can try tomorrow so that I can put photos in the portfolio.  At this point if it takes too much time, I'm not doing it for the exam (except for piping the poppyseed tuile and even that has me whining that it sucks when the batter is melting).

The Anglaise came out this time but the coulis is still really thick even though I didn't boil the sugar as hot as the other day.  The coulis gets this weird skin on top - I think blackberries must have some kind of pectin because the coulis looked like it might set if I left it to its own devices for a while.  In any case, the Anglaise wasn't as runny today and the coulis not as lumpy so I think I've fixed my technical difficulties.  Hopefully there will be time to do them again tomorrow - just in case, and also to try out the suggested platings with the sauces.  We've got a few ideas on the go so hopefully one of them will look good.  I don't want to try anything fancy because I know my hands will be shaking by the time I get to plating the dessert and wobbly hands don't do good piping or other fine, delicate work.

JB has been a very good sport and tasted each of the components I made today - a bit of a feat given he was trying to eat dinner and go out while I was plying him with the Anglaise (he wanted to know what it was.  I could only explain it by saying it's kind of like a custard), the coulis and tuile.  He declined the white chocolate - probably just as well, I need the twirls after all so that I can try a couple of more alternative platings.

Dinner

Then it was time for dinner.  I was really craving the goat's cheese and the baby beets I bought last night.  Also the mac 'n cheese.  And I bought some chicken today - baked it wrapped in Serrano ham.  It sounded good in theory but not good in practice.  The bottom part of the chicken  / ham roll kind got steamed / boiled so it wasn't crispy like I had thought it would.  Super classy dinner, non?  I think the best part of dinner was the salad though - the chicken was boring and the mac 'n cheese stopped being nice right around when the breadcrumbs started to go a bit soggy.

Tempering is really taking it out of me.  Somehow managed to get the white chocolate twirls done but my hand has started to peel.  Have decided that I will not cook again before finals after I've turned in my portfolio (well, except to cook dinner or something).  I want to rest everything as much as possible for the big days.

Anyway, it's time to go to sleep.  I've been sitting here trying to formulate a sentence for quite a while now and am afraid I have said something silly further up.  Thank goodness for artistic friends who can make a judgment call as to whether something is pretty or not.  Or clean looking or not.  So until next time, may the suggestions you get from your friends be as good and useful as the ones I have received from mine.  

#4 - What just happened?

Heathrow - in which I wondered whether my London experience was to end before I left the airport...
No matter how organised you are, there is always that moment of sheer terror when the immigration person with the stamp asks you a question which you answer and instead of stamping your passport, they start asking more questions.  This is even harder when you have been having difficulty processing the really difficult questions on board the plane from Hong Kong, such as "would you like a snack?" to which I had to think for half a minute before I could formulate an answer in a language that resembled a standard language for communication.

The guy:  "Why are you here?"
Me:  "To study."
The guy:  "Until when?"
Me:  "Until December."
The guy:  "Where's your letter?"
Me:  (Thinking *#&$@!!!!!!)  "What letter?"
The guy:  "The one that says you are going to study here."
Me:  "I didn't know I needed the letter.  It's all there on the visa."
The guy:  "Anyone can get a visa.   Otherwise how do you prove you are going to study here?"
Me:  (Did you ever try to get a freakin' visa, jump through all the hoops and get all the paperwork together?  They're more uptight than you are!)  As sweetly as utter exhaustion permits "I can print it out, if you can get me to a printer."
The guy:  "We don't have time for that."  (The he stamped my visa.  Not that I'm complaining, but really, it didn't seem like it was fun for him to give me a hard time, so why do it?)

The rest of the day continued on a much more promising note.  I actually managed to get my many bags and myself to JB's place near Regent's Park.  The taxi driver was kind enough to put my very heavy bags by the front door and the rest kind of took care of itself.

In desperate need of coffee but realizing that it was now late afternoon, I wandered down the street towards Le Pain Quotidien, hoping for good hot chocolate.  On the way, I stopped by a real estate agent's front window to see what was available in the area and voila! there was a one bedroom apartment.  I had no idea where Devonshire Street was, but I thought I'd check.  Like so many other things which have fallen into place for this particular venture, it turned out to be ridiculously easy - the flat was directly above the agent's offices (and about a 5-minute walk to the Cordon Bleu).

I know I said I could suck it up and stay in a studio for nine months, but the fates have conspired against such a plan - there wasn't much of a price difference between the studio flats and 1-bedroom places in the area, except that most of the other places were too far away or had something quite wrong with them (i.e. opening onto the end of a railway line).  As absurd as it may sound, it seems that the perfect little apartment presented itself before I had been in London for more than three hours.

Deja vu
I also quickly stuck my head in at the Cordon Bleu.  It turns out that Marylebone Lane doesn't go all the way through from Wigmore Street to Devonshire Street.  It's also crooked - charming, but confusing if you are expecting a grid pattern to the streets (flashes of wandering for an hour last April in search of Bond Street to Picadilly, only to end up right where I had started, haunted me).  Clearly Manhattan and the Sydney CBD (Central Business District, for your non-Sydneysiders) have spoiled me.  Having to learn North/South is unnatural and should not be required in order to find one's way around a city.

In which I learned that I can't fake tech-speak...
And now for the complicated part:  setting up a bank account and a mobile in the UK.  If you don't know the difference between terminology, what's included on what plan, etc. etc. the whole process can be a bit overwhelming.  Luckily the guys pointed me in the direction of a chain of stores named something like Carphone Warehouse (sorry guys, I really can't remember it) where a helpful fellow whose name I also can't remember got me set up with a mobile and mobile broadband.  Of course this required some investigation when I eventually crashed my computer.  I blame it on new software rather than user error...

Oh, by the way, the coffee at Le Pain Quotidien is drinkable.

A vacation day in London...
This morning started a little later than yesterday - I woke up at 5am instead of at 3:30.  There was a mad dash to get ready for class - there's a dance studio nearby!  I thought I was so organised, but then I couldn't find my tights, then my shoes, then my hairpins.  Boots sells hairpins (they're not quite big enough, but when you're desperate...)  As much as I wanted to stay for another class, on this occasion discretion was most definitely the better part of valour.

In which I discover that time has disappeared at an alarming rate
So it is now Sunday night and I forgot that a couple of days have passed since I last updated this blog...so, high points of the last few days, because I am tired and afraid that it will take me 2 hours to write 3 sentences.

Friday night - VT's birthday drinks at Players - some club that is underground in SoHo.  SoHo, apparently, does not stand for anything in London.  Except for the cool part of town - kind of like in Hong Kong.  I have decided that any place that is SoHo must be cool, regardless of where it is.

Went to Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House yesterday.  The Royal Ballet was amazing and I was lucky enough to attend with another person who appreciates ballet, one of ACP's work colleagues.  NB knew enough that we could exchange glances of appreciation when something particularly spectacular happened on stage.  The amount of skill and strength it must have taken to make it look that effortless defies words, so I won't try.

Then Vietnamese dinner by Leicester Square and Liam Neeson (Unknown) at the movie theatres.  Fun was had by all and we got to give reviews to the others who hadn't seen it yet.

Breakfast this morning in SoHo - some of JB's flatmates had a mission in mind but the place was packed so we ended up at a place with a French sounding name and what appeared to be Mediterranean influenced food.  Good coffee (first good cup in London!) and pretty yummy food - eggs cooked with butter and Turkish sausages.  The sausages were beef, not pork (I checked) but tasted a lot like chorizo.  I could have that with rice and not miss Portuguese sausages, eggs and rice at home too much...although it did mean that I missed the Russian ballet class which kicked my butt the other day.  Used it as opportunity to try a different ballet class - learning experience, but I won't be taking class with this particular teacher again.

Spent afternoon looking at printers because have started reviewing reading lists - the updated one is different from the one in January.  I know they said they were reviewing the material, but come on!  Have realised that I will have to compare all of my readings and that I could have saved myself the weight of schelpping 5 weeks' worth of readings with me.  Also that an extra unit has been added to the course.  Have decided that the early bird not only doesn't get the worm, it gets pissed off that it got up early at all.  I could have packed sweaters!  So much for doing things early.

Made a very large salad for dinner.  It didn't start out that way, it just ended up being really big once I got the couple leaves of lettuce, other veggies, cheese and chicken added to it.  I think I ate enough to feed 50 rabbits.  At least.  Also that the veggies from Waitrose are delicious.  Didn't make it to the markets today, so will try for later in the week.  For someone who has nothing pressing to do, am very busy...

Have determined that tomorrow I will sign the lease for the flat and hope that my bank will accept instructions to wire funds from the US to the UK when I tell them the amount in British pounds because I don't know the exchange rate.  Realise that they may tell me they can't do that and then will have to make alternate arrangements with letting agents.  Note to self:  must ensure that the lease document allows for this - because it doesn't have anything in it yet about the funds except that they must be paid in advance...

Until next time!

#2: To Hong Kong (HK Days 0 - 1)

Oh thank goodness - the first time this popped up in Google it was in Chinese and I couldn't find the button to change it back to English.  It may have been there, but who can say?

Departure from Sydney
For those of you who know me and travel, this will come as no surprise to you.  For the rest of you, I assure you that I have only missed a flight once.  The other time I happened to arrive 24 hours earlier than necessary, but that's another story.

Luckily I happened to check my itinerary again for departure to Hong Kong because I didn't trust my math when I calculated departure from Sydney at 11:55pm and arriving in Hong Kong at 5:55pm (local time) with a flight time of just over 8 hours.  Then I called my lovely travel agent because it occurred to me that I had the wrong 11:55.  Sure enough, I had forgotten that Qantas writes its time in 24hour time.  All of a sudden I had 12 hours less than envisioned in which to do everything necessary to get to the airport.

JelLo, I apologize profusely - I needed those 12 hours to wash the sheets and towels and fold and put them all away.  Guest sheet sets are in the same closet as the guest towels, just a shelf up.  Obviously I did not succeed in finishing the laundry, so please tell your dad he can put them somewhere in a corner and forget about them.  I certainly will - I hope.

The flight was on time until 11:10am when we were supposed to board.  There was an announcement a while later that we would be delayed for an hour due to routine something-or-other.  Which confuses me because if it was routine, surely they would have allowed for that when allocating departure times?  Oh, and my big bag was 3kgs over.  So I had to reshuffle my luggage - FYI, if you didn't already know, paper weighs a TON.  It was no use telling the lady at the counter that it's only a teensy weensy bit over.  I make it a policy not to piss off the person who controls where I am going to sit.  Or the security screeners (TSA, what did you think I could possibly hide in my rubber slippers with clear straps?)

Dodger and Jester, sorry about the rush for the airport.  Those truffled scrambled eggs at Zigolini's are really good.  It might be worth having breakfast/brunch there anyway.

Hong Kong
The flight to HK was uneventful once we left Sydney.  They made up almost all of the lost hour (although, Qantas, did you think I wouldn't notice that the lock was gone from my small bag?  Really?  A bit disconcerting really - I will have to wash all of my underwear before I am willing to put them on).  Once we landed, it was another story altogether.  The carts you can use for your hand carry only go so far before there are metal poles sticking up out of the floor to make you leave the carts behind.  I happened to be schlepping one more bag than originally intended because I had to carry my dispute resolution and pilates readings.

Immigration moved really quickly, but it took a few moments to sink in.  This is mainly because you have to find the right line (visitors with some kind of electronic thing, HK residents, etc. etc.) and then there's another set of lines for people who need stamps, I guess.  I didn't know which passport to give them, so I filled out both.  Hopefully the immigration official stamped both passports, which I haven't checked yet.  Otherwise it will take a lot longer to complete my mission to actually fill up an entire passport, especially since they added extra pages to my US one.

So the taxis in HK are color coded.  Luckily my travel packet had something about it and my taxi driver spoke English.  I was confident that I could get around fine and it shouldn't be an issue that I speak no Cantonese or Mandarin.  This lasted until about 8:15 when, after checking in, showering and needing to meet S&J for dinner, I got into another taxi outside my hotel and found out that he couldn't understand me.  Thankfully S had told me her address phonetically - after I repeated it a few times and tried to describe it, he got the idea and I realized that because I don't know the proper accent, I may have said something indescribably rude to him.  It was more interesting after dinner - we went around in circles a bit (we got to the general area).  I have since put the enclosing envelope to my room key in my pocket so that I can show it to the next taxi driver.

By the way, you still have to do the smell test of your room.  My non-smoking room had previously been a smoking room.  I'm not sure when they switched it over but my foot didn't even make it in the door.  I swiped, I opened, got a whiff, then went straight to the satellite hotel desk by my room and requested a switch.  Better a twin room which hasn't had smoke than a queen bed with smoke lingering.

Hong Kong may now be part of China but it doesn't feel like it is.  For one thing, I haven't been grabbed by anyone on the street trying to sell me things.  For another, it's a lot cleaner.  The number of designer shops that I have seen all over the place make it quite clear that if you want to spend all day shopping, this isn't a bad place to do it.  Personally I find the crowds overwhelming and the traffic where I am (Wanchai) sucks.  It seems to be walker friendly, but I haven't tried that yet - definitely on the list for later today.

The grid layout also helps - the hotel's directions to a suggested dim sum place was to walk two blocks up, then turn left and it was halfway down the next block.  It's like getting directions in the grid portion of Manhattan...

Food!
S&J took me to a steak place somewhere between their place (really nice place, but any place where S has had an influence always is) and my hotel.  What's to say except the food was excellent?  Must remember that my idea of medium (steak) and a restaurant's idea is different.  The waiter and I had a slight difference of opinion...their description said pink in the middle.  My steak was red and still bleeding.  J said it was on the more rare side of medium.  The waiter nevertheless took it away and brought it back more cooked.  I'm sure their chef probably thought it was well done.  In either event, the restaurant gets bonus points for waiting to clear appetiser plates until J and I had finished our salads (we got a set menu, S didn't) and for replating my steak when they brought it back instead of putting it back on my half-demolished vegetables.  Dinner was well paced until we got to dessert - mainly because they forgot two of us were having a set menu.  It may have appeared that we were settling in for a long night of catching up but there was no rushing us out the door - very civilized.

Note:  I may fail steak grilling at the Cordon Bleu.  Must practice cooking steaks.  A lot.  S's salad was delicious - main sized Caesar salad where the dressing coated all of the leaves without drowning them and no single ingredient overpowered it.  You know the kind - the garlic or anchovy knock you over and you wonder why they switched your Caesar salad with something that wasn't on the menu, while other dressings are so bland you wonder what happened to the lemon/garlic/anchovy/etc.  This one was more-ish.  For the Americans, this is Australian for "you want more".

We were all impressed to see what must have been the AUD$100 steak go past.  It sounds excessive until you read that this is meant for 2-3 people to share.  Apparently food in HK ranges from stratospherically expensive to cheap (and delicious, at least according to Time Out HK) street food.  I would try the street food if it weren't for the fact that I have to get back on a plane in a few days to continue on to London.  A plane is not a fun place to be sick, as some other friends can attest.

I am sitting in the hotel lobby and trying to drink coffee.  It tastes really burnt, which someone told me means that the water got pushed through the espresso too fast.  I never knew that I would ever be able to tell good coffee from bad.  The pain au chocolat is nondescript.  A bit floury...on the other hand, who goes to HK or China and eats French pastries?  My bad, the hopes are saved for dim sum/yum cha this morning when I meet S & J at 11am at my hotel.  I have to walk down the street and find the place (and see if I can make a booking) - it's unfortunate that I didn't write it down when the airport taxi driver told me its name.

S&J have not yet been able to find HK versions of essential pantry items, so I brought back a small section of Coles with me.  Thank goodness for the requests!  Left to my own devices, I may have packed unncessary items (and still been over the weight limit).  They will still have to leave on the extra "Heavy" tag on my big bag, but I don't expect I'll have to take things out and carry them on the next leg.  Am wondering about girly credentials - having trouble finding all cosmetics in my bags despite having packed most of my bathroom cupboards into the bags.  Think perhaps I should pack makeup bag with essentials for travel, like I do with my shampoo and conditioner.  Well, perhaps not.  No one seems to care here, in complete contrast to Seoul where all the women were dressed up, makeup and hair done, matching bags and shoes...everything that seems to take so much time in the morning when you are trying to get dressed.  I'd rather sleep...

Find the money really confusing.  Now I remember why I had that extra little pouchy thing out, which I left behind in Sydney.  It was for currency which wasn't USD/AUD/GBP.  HKD and GBP resemble each other quite a bit.  Have taken to carrying HKD folded up in my pocket.  Figure if I get pickpocketed from my jeans pocket, there are probably bigger problems than some missing cash.

Wish me luck - I am about to sally forth onto a street whose name I don't know to find a restaurant whose name I can't remember in a city where I don't speak the language.  More later!