Celebration!!

It's December, my favourite time of the year!

I bought a large tree (after, like 3 trips to 3 different malls), and went for (I'd like to believe) a silver, gold and winter theme with icicles, silver balls and translucent angel wings. Unfortunately I broke 2 icicles, and the weekly maid another 3 :(. Note to self: Perhaps it's not such a good idea to buy glass ornaments. Next year will get another set of lights and more ornaments, so the tree doesn's look so bald.

We hosted a Christmas gathering amongst colleagues/friends, with a heated gift exchange that included steals and bargains, and then played Taboo.

I ordered a turkey from Hank's Fine Foods. Ordering was a bit of a hassle in the beginning, but the turkey turned out pretty good actually - moist and tasty white meat! Such a rarity. I made my own mushroom gravy to go with as well - pretty easy. Caramelize chopped onions, then add chopped mushrooms (I used portabellos and brown mushrooms) and saute. I soaked dried porcini in hot water, then strained the mushroom liquid and finely sliced in the porcini for extra umph. Grate in a clove of garlic, leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Voila.

Some other things I made:

- My guacamole, which our prep crew took to snacking on before the party started, and finished waaay too early. I should've made more! Next time next time.

- Mushroom pasta. Saute sliced brown and portabello mushrooms in olive oil, add chopped garlic. Let the mushrooms cook down. Add cooked pasta and a bit of the pasta water. I used about 5 cups of sliced mushrooms to one 400 g packet of spaghetthi. Toss over low heat, then add lots of freshly grated parmesan. I used my large oval Le Creuset to cook the mushrooms and toss the pasta with, and then as a serving vessel. Just before serving, sprinkle with freshky chopped parsley.

- My mum's awesome chicken wings, which is the subject of another post. They went down so fast I didn't even get to eat any!

- Early grey jelly with oranges and pomengrenate seeds

- Fudgy brownies using my favourite recipe

Some lessons I learnt on hosting:-

1) Get friends involved. We had one friend who was a general helper, helping to chop, slice, basically do anything I wanted doing. Another friend made his delicious rocket and avocado salad with olive and balsamic dressing, and artfully arranged the crudites in glass jars you see below. Yet another guy offered to make his Mojitos (virgin ones for me and another pregnant guest), which got the party started pretty nicely. You don't have to do it all yourself - and since our friends were guests as well, there was plenty of joking and mingling way before the party even started proper.

2) Prep as much as you can beforehand - I sliced my mushrooms, marinated my wings and made the gravy the night before. I also made desserts the night before. The day itself - roasted the wings, made the pasta and guacamole. With my friends around to lend a hand, this was easy and we had plenty of time to drink mojitos and snack on aforementioned chips and guacamole before everyone else arrived.

3) More is better than less! I would've liked to make more pasta, more guacamole, more wings - they went down so fast! And maybe order a ham. Again, something to keep in mind for next year

All in all, it was a good night. I know hosting something of the like is going to be a challenge next year with the baby and everything, but I'd love to make it an annual tradition. We'll see.

My precious gifts under my gold and silver tree - Boo's like, "Whatcha doin under MY tree??"

Turkey and "stuffing" from Hank's, homemade mushtoom gravy (in the large glass bowl), salad and mushroom pasta (left, partly visible only)

Our staircase - note that my Yogja skull has his Santa hat on!

Turkey from Hank's Fine foods - surprisingly tasty white meat. I would order this again.

The most artfully arranged crudites by our friend (veggies to be eaten with bought cheese dips), homemade guacamole with corn chips.

Mushroom Pasta

Boo staking his place under the tree again

Group photo of the night

Aloft in the City of Angels, and eats in BKK

Bangkok is my favourite city in the whole wide world. The dust, the humidity, the horrendous traffic, they're all nondeterrents for me. I love the food, the shopping, the all-round friendliness of the people.

We roomed at the Aloft Bangkok, a pretty cool place that's part of the Starwood chain. What we liked: the 42-inch LED televisions, the ports to plugin your hard disk or portable dvd player, the iPod docking station, the Nespresso machines and complimentary coffee pods in each room. Oh, and the super comfy bed that is the Starwood chain signature. The lounging area was also pretty nice, with its stock of snacks (yogurt, cereal, instant noodles) and coffee at very affordable prices. The lounge was also equipped with foosball and pool tables, comfy bean bags and a Sony PS3 console. AK and I spent a good amount of time trying to beat each other in beach volleyball, medieval swordplay and archery.

.

 

 

If you're ever feeling peckish at the Aloft, then we do recommend the steak sandwich. Thick, juicy, totally tasty and worth the splurge. This was so good that we ordered it again  the night before we departed Bangkok.

 

 

 

 

 

Erawan Tea Room was a place I read about here and also in the Bangkok City Guide provided by the hotel. We tried the seafood "stir fried with rhizome" and red duck curry, plus pork noodles to share. Everything was superbly done, and I left with a tin of silver-tipped white tea leaves and a jar of prettily packaged guava jam. I vowed to return to try their exquisite looking afternoon tea.  

 

Seafood stir fry at Erawan Tea Room

 

Another place we really loved was Laem Chaer Roen Seafood. They apparently have non-distinctive outlets at both Central World (tucked in a little corner) and Siam Paragon (Level 5), but remain a local rather than tourist favourite. A friend generously bought us dinner at the Central World outlet, where we had the signature Deepfried Snapper in a sweet Thai fish sauce, Tom Yum Goong (with lots of super fresh prawns), an ikan bilis salad and stir fried morning glory. The snapper was addictive, the Tom Yum was perfect. Defnitely a must-return.

 



Deepfried snapper in a sweet fish sauce, ikan bilis salad and fried morning glory at Laem Cha Reon Seafood Restaurant



 

 

I love Siam Paragon's abundant, slightly chaotic basement food court, with its combination of street food (barbecued pork skewers for 15 bath, grilled squid, rice paper rolls) and relatively upscale cafes and bakeries all under a single roof.  

 

 

Chocolate inspirations (love the brownie cake idea) at Siam Paragon's basement Gourmet Market

 

 

 

Publika

If I keep this up the Eats posts will soon outnumber the Cooking ones.

Despite the recent spate of bad news about malls in Klang Valley in general, I have fallen in love with this place. This, despite the super confusing mall layout, and the shops are so spread out that it takes some sturdy shoes and a little bit of bravado to explore the place proper.

But one's curiosity is rewarded with some really quirky shops. Not your run-of-the-mill MNG, Zara and the such - lots of local stuff, which is really nice to see. My faves - Kaleidoscope - a "lifestyle" outlet that stocks really nice accessories and cute homeware (they have clothes as well, but I found the collection nothing to shout about), 34 Bespoke - Malaysian-designed leather goods (didn't buy anything but the stuff looks of top notch quality - especially love the leather cuffs).

Foodwise - the food court boasts some really excellent versions of Yam Rice, Pan Mee, Beef Noodles and Zhang. For breakfast last weekend, we decided to be a little adventurous and try out the Red Bean Bag. I had the French toast, which was lovely (although I did flinch at shelling out RM12 for a slice of bread, I will be honest). AK ordered the baked eggs, and let me tell you, I was truly jealous when I dipped a fork into the dish and took a bite. It was a molted Middle-Eastern-esque concoction of eggs baked with minced lamb, sausage, aubergine in a passata sauce, topped with oozy mozzarella. Worth every bit of the RM17.90 we paid for it.

And did I mention B.I.G's, or Ben's Independent Grocers? Who says grocery shopping has to be boring? With its chalkboard quotes at the produce section, and the fact that you can find everything from Bunga Kantan to goose fat under one roof. So I pay a little more for my groceries - at least I know I'm buying kampung eggs, washed organic spinach (for RM1.30 a bunch - not bad for such an upmarket place), organic oyster mushrooms (RM2.40 a bag - cheaper than Miri), freshly cured bacon (at RM5.89/100 g, really reasonable) and environmentally-friendly handsoap and washing liquid (which you should too, by the way).

Lovely planter in front of The Red BeanBag

Quotes to grocery shop by at Ben's Independent Grocer

Kaleidoscope

Snippets of KL so far

Greetings from the big city (wow I finally get to say that)! I have been totally delinquent, I know, but I offer some bits and pieces of our little family settling in. In a nutshell - lots of eating, lots of shopping (in my case), and Boo remains ever the center of attention.

~ Boo caught a cold in our cold apartment. Poor fella's sneezing non-stop since we moved in. Hence the sweater. His appetite, however, is as good as ever. Hence his roundness in this shot.

~ Unique dim sum choices (stuffed crab shells, minced pork wrapped in bacon) at an outlet in Damansara Uptown.

~ A rather nostalgic dinner at the almost a-century-old Coliseum restaurant. Senior citizens, or "uncle" waiters dousing ginormous steaks with sauce on hot plates, causing great sizzle and steaming, and much fanfare.

Vacation eats recaptured

At the risk of repeating myself, we haven't really taken a break since Chinese New Year, which was a short, hectic obligation anyways. I have been consoling myself by going through my past vacation photos. We had quite a few memorable meals while on the road, and I've attempted to capture some of them here. I have done this before, blogging about our meals in Spain specifically. And while not all-encompassing (I will eternally regret not taking any photos of our meal at the Pizzaria de Buffato in Rome, still the standout meal for me), the list below still brings back the most lovely memories, and of course, more than a touch of gratitude that we managed to experience them.

The Haul

Fresh mangoes from India, bought from the trusty old fruit shop in Subang (SS15), whole-wheat Gardenia "Breakthrough" bread and black pepper sausage rolls from the airport (succumbing to peer pressure, everyone was buying bread at the airport like there was no tomorrow for their flights back to East Malaysia). What else? Chocolate fudge Pop-tarts (treating oneself, spotted these at Jaya Grocer's in Empire Subang - love the place. Oh, and kaya puffs from a SS19 coffeeshop, Hershey's from Candylicious, and a jar of supremely addictive sambal courtesy of AK's parents. Not to mentione a big bottle of my homemade cookies still waiting to be savoured. Just what I need to get over another quick weekend back West.

F & M

AK is not one to plan our trips abroad - he leaves these things to me - where to go, what to do, where to stay and eat, etc. Oh, he'll chip in with the odd "Do we really need our own villa?" or "We should explore China next year", and of course gasp at the rates of my desired hotel every once in a while, but most of the time, he goes along with my whims and fancies.

This time I got lucky. Since he was exploring London with a colleague two weeks before we met up there, this time he had an idea of where he wanted to take me in our limited time in London - a place he knew I'd go absolutely bonkers in given my love for food markets and such - one of my favourite things to do in any foreign place is visit the food markets, or even just regular supermarkets to check out the fresh produce and conveniences on offer. I've brought back French pate, German dried pork belly, wines, polenta, Ritter Sport chocolates, even cat food from abroad.

Despite my online orders arriving safely at AK's hotel, I was a little disappointed at not being able to visit Harvey Nichols as we wanted to reduce our travel time as much as possible, and I had made Anthropologie my top priority in London. Luckily Forntnum and Mason's was just a few blocks away. Happily, the visit there well made up for not making to Harvey Nicks. I went a little nuts there, and of course wished we had more money and luggage space to cart back it all.

Handmade marshmallows - plain vanilla, rose, strawberry.



Skull and ghost candies for Halloween.






Honeycomb and chutneys and crabapple jellies.





Stilton in clay jars.






Garlic-infused olive oil.




Lovely assortment of baked goods.






We spent a good two hours there and would have stayed for scones and clotted cream if time permitted. We also carted back lots of tea for our families back home in their lovely silver and turqoise tins. Love :)

Inspirations from Chiang Mai - Brekkie@Rimping

Now, thanks to the company we work for, AK and I have sampled many a hotel breakfast. And I daresay that we have had some of the best Malaysia has to offer (The Westin KL, namely, with its Japanese, Chinese, Western, Malay, Indian spreads and its antioxidant berry-yogurt parfaits and fresh fruit juice to order). The buffet at our splurge hotel, the Indigo Pearl, was also pretty good.

But our experience in Chiangmai was very personal, and altogether very different from all the other ones.

Beautiful celadon ceramicware.



Instead of the normal buffet breakfast, we were presented with a menu from which we could choose anything we wanted.

While perusing the menu, the wait staff brought us a plate each of these adorable little swiss rolls, pandan and some-red-berry filling.

I chose the soup rice, or rice soup, which is like Cantonese porridge, with pork. A warm, wholesome way of starting the day.

AK chose the pad thai. We both love that it came with raw beansprouts, which went very well with the fried rice noodles.

And then - dessert! We were presented with mango sticky rice and platter of cut fruit, but sent back the fruit as, well, one can only eat so much in the morning.

The sticky rice came in convenient little cups for wolfing down. The mangoes were wonderfully sweet and fragrant.

The sad thing is, although we spent three nights here we only experienced this once, as our tours departed too early. The wonderful hotel staff packed sandwiches, fruit and juice for us, but of course you can't compare that to a multi-course made-to-order breakfast like this.

If only all mornings were like this!

Chiang Mai, we miss you.