Cherries

It's not cherry season over here now but here are the pictures that I took of the cherries early this year. I even carried a bag of these juicy, fat fellas all the way back home for Mom. They're gorgeous.

Food That I Miss

This one is for all of you who also miss food from back home. Here are some of my favourite foods.

Sweet and Sour Pork: I know, I know, the most common and cliched of Chinese dishes. I can hear all the complaints in my head. Being Chinese, a foodie and a self proclaimed critic, I should be more discerning right? I don't care, it's still one of my favourite things to have.

Yam Basket with Chicken and Prawns: One of my absolute favourite things to order when we go to my favourite Chinese restaurant. I've posted a picture of this before, but this is a much better picture of it.

Kangkung Belacan: OMG, drool with me. I miss this so much!!! I Googled it and the English name for this vegetable is Water Spinach. Belacan is shrimp paste and the vegetable is stir fried with it and chilli. It's the BEST. I don't know how to cook it. All I know is that it's so mouth-wateringly good. Just looking at the picture and thinking about it is making me salivate.

Prawns in Sweet Dark Soy Sauce: Ask B how good this is! It's served with a bed of mango salad that accompanies the prawns very well. I think it's the speciality of the restaurant that I frequent, my favourite restaurant for Chinese food back home, Sin Kee, where this, all the previous pictures in this post were taken.

Chili's Triple Play: Wings over Buffalo, Chicken Crispers and some random fried spring roll thing that I don't really like. I love the wings and the Chicken Crispers though. The wings are really sour and zesty and go very well with the subtly flavoured white dipping sauce that comes with it (I don't know what it is). The sauce sort of reduces the bite or the sourness of the chicken. Yum!

Chili's Chicken Crispers: The sauce that accompanies the Chicken Crispers is deliciously sweet and tangy. It's supposed to be honey mustard sauce but it sure ain't like any honey mustard sauce I've had anywhere else. The battered chicken is never dry and the batter is tasty and thick but not sickeningly so. It actually comes with fries but I always ask them to substitute the fries for mashed potatoes because they have the best mashed potatoes and sauce (sinfully rich and creamy!) that I've ever had anywhere.

Damn! The keyboard just shortcircuited from all the drool...

Spiced Apple Cake

Yesterday I baked a Spiced Apple Cake myself! The only thing I didn't do myself was take it out of the oven. Luckily for me, Sab was keeping a watchful eye on me, while cooking dinner at the same time, and was prepared for my obtuseness when it comes to baking. The recipe is so simple (Thanks Michelle!) and pratically idiot-proof, yet I probably would have messed it up if not for Sab's consultation. It smelt really good and turned out okay but it wasn't as sweet as Michelle's because I skipped the topping (didn't have rolled oats). It should still be decent if warmed and served topped with vanilla ice cream.

For dinner we had a fish curry concoction. We actually had an extra bottle of Tandoori Palace Chicken Tikka Masala sauce left over from Monday that we'd accidentally opened but didn't need. The stuff needed to be used within 5 days of opening, so I thought it would be a good idea to use fish instead of meat, since we hardly ever cook fish over here. Since the fish over here is usually sold filleted and would crumble and disintegrate if thrown into a pot of curry and stirred about, I thought it would be better if we battered and fried the fish first, before putting it into the sauce. Even then, some of fish pieces still broke, but it would have been infinitely worse if we hadn't battered and fried them. We had to add quite a few things to the sauce before it was to our satisfaction, but in the end, it was pretty good. Sour, tangy, had a good kick and zero fishy taste or smell! Of course, as usual, I came up with the plan and Sab did all the work. Hey, I was baking remember?

And just because I was uploading pictures of food that we'd cooked, here's a picture (right) of the Lemongrass Chicken that we made some weeks back.

PS: I realise that the pictures all look 'orangey' but my camera doesn't take very good photos indoors and I had to take all of those without the flash, otherwise the pictures would be too hideous to share.

Plato

We went to Plato yesterday for dinner. I would say that it's my second favourite place here, out of all the restaurants that we've tried. The food was good, although I would still rank Two Chefs (which incidentally has closed - They took a hiatus and went to Europe for a holiday during the later part of last year. They're supposed to come back and re-open somewhere else but we haven't seen any sign of them yet.) above Plato (by quite a bit too). Their ambience is quite pleasant, except for the odd entrance to the restaurant. They had closed up the main entrance to make room for more tables, so they made their side door the entrance to their restaurant. I thought that that was really stupid because that meant that, to come in, wait to pay or leave the restaurant, everyone had to squeeze in to that narrow space (about two feet wide) between the payment counter and the kitchen and clog up an area that should be left clear for staff to move through easily and quickly as they work, not to mention the unpleasantness for the customers of having to manoeuver or squeeze to make way for other customers who are coming in/going out or staff that want to get by.

I had the rib eye fillet with mashed potatoes and...something on the top (pictured above). I couldn't really tell what it was, and I hadn't read the description on the menu thoroughly, but it tasted very much like the Lisa's Chunky Dips - Roasted Capsicum, Ricotta, & Pinenuts (or something like that, I can't remember the exact name). I also had a margarita. It was no where near as good as the ones you can get at Lone Star.

Sab had the eye fillet with duck pate and mashed potatoes (pictured above). I tried a bit of the pate. Neither of us really fancied it. Philistines. Haha...

Scott had the venison (pictured above). It came quite rare. I forget, but I think he liked it.

Justine had the lamb (pictured above). I forgot to ask her if it was good.

And the ornamental, salt and pepper shaker pigs on the shelf in front of the payment counter had each other!