Grey Thoughts, Blue Memories

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I went nuts today doing something that was most Auntie-like - I spent 2 hours at Temple Street, shopping for kitchenware. In my defence though, the place had 3 kinds of people in them. Aunties who somehow know how to get kitchenware straight from the distributor, Tai-Tais who were mostly gathered around the fine china section, and ... MEN. 2 were chefs (Brotzeit's chef was there today, ordering some stuff), and the rare home cook. Sure beats the hell out of the gender distribution in a lingerie shop.

As could be expected, I grossly overbought stuff. I wouldn't say that I overspent - I simply bought stuff that I think I would need. You know, the usual "I probably could find a use for this" thing when you walk down Daiso. I think Yx will be happy with a couple of my purchases though - I got us a 12-piece shotglass set, 2 beautiful salt and pepper grinders at $14 each (I swear the same thing is going for $35 and up apiece at department stores), 8 pieces of dining plates at a third the usual price, and a knife! OK, there are some other $2 items that form the miscellaneous .. sugar bowls, ladles etc. And now I'm stuck with a whole load of stuff that I can't find a place for in the kitchen.

Anyway, here's the revelation - I decided that I'm going to stop cooking regularly. No, that's not a typographical error. I'm going to STOP cooking regularly. The game now is to cook 4, maybe 5, times a year. These will be full-fledged meals though, from starter all the way to dessert. (shiiiitt ... dessert ... I can't do these for nuts!!)

Hmmm ... actually it does sound a little silly. I have a hint of suspicion that somewhere down the line another little culinary adventure will pop up when I least expect it. Like if I chance upon that amazing streaky tuna in the store that I simply can't pass up. We'll see! =)

Labels: food

Wenky
5:35 PM

Monday, August 24, 2009

Shit. You know one of those situations when you yearn for something, and when it finally comes, you don't really know what to do with it? Well, I'm stuck here, with truffles. I've got truffle oil, truffle salt, and was just bitching to Yx about getting my paws on some fresh truffles. Now I've finally got access to them (not from the hotels, Yx - commercial stock!), I'm actually deliberating!!

Thing is that they last just 1 week at best, and are through-the-nose expensive. Also, these aren't the swoon-inducing Perigord winter truffles - they're Italian summer black truffles. But ooh ooh OOH I do so want to cook with them!

Was pacing my room and deliberating, haha .. such a comical sight. All this, for mushrooms. Ugly mushrooms, at that. I wouldn't actually bat an eyelid about buying, say, 200grams of the stuff, but Yx is leaving for Korea in a few days' time, and I really don't fancy eating the truffles all alone.

I am, however, suddenly moved by passion to plant more edibles in the garden. I'm thinking eggplant, peppers, rosemary, squash. Dang this perfectly disgusting weather. Imagine what I could do up in the Cameron Highlands.

Further to this out-of-the-blue gastronomy post, Yx and I visited this Cold-Storage lookalike at Ion Orchard (they are run by the same company, according to Yx). Our friend Ariel had tipped me off on cheap white asparagus there, but alas! They looked like they were out. We did have a good look around though, and I liked what I saw. In particular, they had baby vegetables (imagine farm-style baby carrots with roots and leaves intact - YUUUUMMM on a grill with salt and pepper!), smoked salt and white truffle salt (salt .. Mmmmmmmm), and sevruga caviar (I can only afford lumpfish pseudo-caviar, muahahahahaha). Guess I'll be back when/if my pocket gets fuller.

Labels: food

Wenky
5:31 PM

Saturday, August 01, 2009

It's going to be a scary week ahead. ACLS, ATLS and our concluding exercise, all in 1 week!!

Found a gem of a fruit at Seng Siong this weekend (although Yx doesn't think so!) - champagne grapes, or more correctly, Black Corinth grapes. They are tiny little things, each about the size of a pea and taste a little more tart than your usual grape. And obviously they are seedless. The nice thing about them though is how they look - very compact, very tiny, and very pretty. I think they'd function well as a garnish for a meat-and-berry dish. Still working on that! They aren't cheap unfortunately, a packet costs $7 or so.

Also managed to cook up something with frog's legs today. Dipped them in a mint-flour batter, with a parsley broth sauce and with finely-diced mushrooms. Unfortunately they were eaten up before I could take pics, and Brownie had a piece of frog too.

We also made a trip down Shark's Avenue (Tanjong Pagar Road actually), where rows upon rows of bridal boutiques are situated. I shall elaborate on the wedding blog. Was in quite an alright mood so I didn't really bite anyone's head off.

Labels: food

Wenky
9:04 PM

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Just a quick note before I dash off again, had a series of inspirational recipes cooked up during lectures. Look out for Frog Pie soon!

Labels: food

Wenky
8:43 PM

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Oh well, the moment's here at last. Time to go back, and restart where I left off 4 weeks ago. Brownie's used to me coming back home every night already, but I did manage to squeeze in another meal for him this evening so that he won't go hungry. I suppose, after those 2 horrible weeks at Jokun, going back tonight doesn't seem as gross as it previously did. Or maybe the last 2 weeks of civilian life has reset much of the angst.

Anything today? We went for Huiling & Khai Honn's ROM at OCC, and I ended up cooking the salmon trout (AMAZING STUFF!!), veal ravioli and some duck gizzard confit.

Quite a few tests this week, plus a long, long night on Tuesday at East Coast Park.

Labels: food

Wenky
8:08 PM

Friday, July 17, 2009

Had a really pleasant week (apart from a nasty incident of being late on Thursday), thanks to the friendly guys over at MCC. I felt a lot more at home there than at my precious week, and I think that's what really matters, even though workload may be a tad high at times.

Thinking of fixing up menus for a couple of dishes, we'll see. I still have that slab of salmon trout in the freezer, and a whole 2kg of veal ravioli that's getting on my mom's nerves.

Labels: food

Wenky
5:13 PM

Friday, July 10, 2009

Ornish

We went over to Prof Michael's house yesterday for someone's farewell party, and I had an enlightening talk with him. Learnt about this guy called Dean Ornish, and it's quite astounding what an ultra-low fat diet can do for you. I'm not talking about trying to maintain the usual RDA of 20% fat - Ornish advocates way less, something like 5% I think. It's a freaking difficult thing to follow, but it does make one think. Apparently, Ornish published in the Lancet in 1990 (Lancet. 1990 Jul 21;336(8708):129-33) his results on the Lifestyle Heart Trial, that such a low fat diet can actually lead to reversibility of CAD, not just prevention. Losing weight is one thing, but decreasing the cardiac risk index sounds really great. The only problem? My patients will cut my head off and put it on a pike if I were to ever suggest this. Imagine sticking to just 15g of fat per day. That's 2 packs of Mac's fries, and you're done for the day. Lke, you really need to eat just veggies for the rest of the day. No milk, no milo, no stir-fried stuff even. The stuff he made during the party actually tasted good, to my surprise. There was potato salad (fat-free mayo, of course!), macaroni with veggies, and braised tofu. Maybe I should *try* this out too, and see how difficult it is.

Labels: food

Wenky
10:17 AM

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Quite a lot of stuff to talk about this weekend. Actually, I got home extremely late on Friday (10pm!) and didn't manage to do much, except to fetch Yx home from her band reunion thingy. I was actually too drained to do anything else.

Met up finally with Chris on Saturday! He passed us our ROM photos, and even did some basic editing which was nice of him. (Our original intent was to have the photos raw, and I'll be the one doing the editing instead.) Will post them up on the wedding blog. And as I realised from my previous post, I got myself dead drunk on Saturday night. It was Ariel's birthday, and her bf threw a surprise club party for her. We brought Yx's younger brother along too! He subsequently drank a bit too much and lapsed into a bout of talkativeness.

We also put down out deposit today to secure our booking. So yes, it's confirmed, our wedding dinner will be at Swissotel The Stamford. We worked out some of the details as well with the manager. Now to think about the general theme of things.

Father's Day dinner at home -

Just feeling apprehensive about the next 2 weeks. Running around with a bunch of 18 year olds. Bleargh.

Labels: food

Wenky
9:26 PM

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Oh dear, time passes AWFULLY slowly in there. Maybe cos I wake up so early, that the day seems extended? Each day seems to pass like 2 outside. The good thing (in the short term) is that I'm not allowed to engage in physical activity yet until I resolve a couple of issues.

Anyway, once again I'm so very happy that Yx spends her weekends with me. =) And planning for the banquet - it really stops me from going round the bend in La La Land.

We ended up watching our very first midnight show together last night! Hehe, it was Xmen, and wow - it's really quite good. Both of us were bleary-eyed already though.

Before that, we had a nice family dinner at Picotin. Oooh, I only just realised last night that we supply their fowl. I had a wagyu steak at a steal, it was going for $32 or so. What's nice about Picotin is that the boss actually welcomes you when you come, reservation or not. And somehow he remembered that Yanxian and I had been there before. Impressive.

My dad had rabbit:

A new outlet for Sin Swee Kee chicken rice has just opened along Kitchener Road, and we were there for its soft launch today. Once again, the quality of the steamed chicken and the rice is fantastic. The roasted is good too, but I'm not the kind who is appreciative of roasted chicken. A few pics!

Labels: food

Wenky
4:32 PM

Saturday, May 09, 2009

Something a little belated - last Sunday we headed off to a restaurant near the Esplanade for an early Mother's Day celebration. It was a Chinese-fusion buffet that was quite good (and very filling), and best of all was the avocado dessert! That's the one my mom's drinking. We kind of swept their entire stock of the dessert, since all the other tables didn't seem too interested in the gooey green drink.

Also, the sunbird's nest right outside the window. Mommy Bird usually sits in there, but she just doesn't like the camera and took off before I could take a shot of her. I'm guessing there should be eggs in there?

Labels: food

Wenky
1:26 PM

Sunday, April 12, 2009

It's almost 1 am and I am sleepless. The silly Earl Grey I have in front of me sure won't help either.

It was a fun day of sorts! First of all, I really indulged by purchasing a carbon fiber tripod today - it's so light, I want to bring it everywhere! (which is sort of the point, isn't it?) It's a much better alternative than my rickety old one, which came FOC. I actually have been putting off taking photos due to the difficult tripod - it can't take the (almost negligible) weight of the camera even, and kept falling off to one side, which was extremely disturbing. I'll probably still keep the old one though - first of all, it won't fetch even $10, and I could always use it as a scapegoat when I feel the urge to wade out to sea again.

We subsequently had a fun evening of games at Mind Cafe. I shall remember WJ's "purr purr meow" and Monty's "Hoo Hoo Hoo" for a long time to come. It's much nicer than Settler's, I think. At least the drinks were free flow, although once again the food leaves much to be desired.

Talking about food, as an aside, we over-indulged at Valentino's on Friday night. I must say though, that the cooking was SUPERB. I almost fainted after eating the beef, and I'm not kidding or exaggerating. It came in 1" bite-sized chunks, with fresh porcini mushrooms (where do they get them from??) and a light drizzle of truffle oil. It was a tad more expensive than an average meal, however - but honestly I would charge the same too, if I were the one cooking. What I particularly liked was the level of service, and I thought it so sweet that the owner's mom was part of the waitressing staff too.

Anyway, I am sooooo going to be tested tomorrow. Yes, I decided to bring on a semi-nouveau Falsomagro for the picnic tomorrow. (YX, I finally discovered the name of this dish. Turns out it is a Sicilian classic! My version's a little different though. We'll see how it turns out.)

Labels: food

Wenky
12:43 AM

Monday, December 15, 2008

Post-call today ... Had an irritating weekend call. My entire Sunday was spent sitting in the call room in front of my laptop, touching up photos, and wondering what the hell to do to while away time. But the moment 12 midnight came - boom! Everyone started getting admitted into the ICU. Anyway, I managed to get off early today. Sitting in front of the computer, post-call, blogging, and sipping away at a measure of Drambuie that my sis brought back from her trip to Ozzy .. sweet.

Did Pulau Ubin & Chek Jawa on Saturday. It was pretty fun, since we packed our own sandwiches for a nice lunch, and trekked there instead of taking the bicycles. (Someone actually died there recently while cycling). There were actually wild boars roaming around, no joke. And they weren't the least frightened of humans. I apologise for the poor shot - it was one of those "Shoot it now! now! now!" situations.

We also took an off-road trail that was slightly creepy - it was along the mangrove coast, and I kept half-expecting a crocodile to leap out of the water at us. It was fruitful though. We passed by some undisturbed patches of ferns and promptly harvested a bagful of tender fronds to cook at home. For first-timers at cooking ferns, we weren't bad at all!

Chek Jawa is so different from when we visited it 2 years (I think) ago. Because of beachcombers and irresponsible behavior, they have built this boardwalk so that you can no longer access the beach. Not for some people though. This family of 3 climbed down and started collecting snails - for consumption I think. Doing this at East Coast or Kranjji is fine, but NOT at a protected sanctuary! Yx and I were seriously pissed. We stood there staring at them from the boardwalk, camera in hand, and attracted a small group of curious people ("what are they staring at?"). The shameless poachers eventually got cold feet and threw back the bunch of stuff they collected. Just for good measure though, I really did take shots of them. These people ought to be dragged off to jail, starved, and publicly executed.

There was loads of wildlife as usual, but it's really a huge shame about the boardwalk. Back when we were allowed on the beach itself you could see anemones, starfish, and other cnidarians. We did spot some stuff though, including this tiny pistol shrimp that failed to evade Yx's roving eye.

It happened to be low tide that day, and there were plenty of photo opportunities. It was way too hot and bothersome to take out a tripod though, else a long exposure shot at this angle would have been amazing.

We ended a very nice day by eating at the pier. It was quite amazing - we finished up a huge platter of hor fun, kai lan, sweet & sour pork, and a 1kg crab. The crab was seriously good. Absolutely no qualms about going back there just for the crab actually, hehe.

Where to, next?
Looking forward to Dec 28th.

Labels: food

Wenky
11:18 PM

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My brain's feeling really numb. So I'll just sit around, and wait for the inevitable? I don't know if you've ever felt this way before - like chasing around something in tight little circles, only to get right back to where you started from, leaving behind debris, pandemonium and indelible footsteps in your wake. So you stand there, looking at the mess you've made, and wonder if it'd have been better just not to have moved around in the first place.

I have a problem with adaptation. I hate spectacular changes to my life. So maybe this contributes to a large part of what I'm feeling now?

Had a really refreshing talk with Yx over lunch yesterday - a good talk over pig's head terrine and duck leg confit. The problem with all of us is that we're all trapped. I envy those that aren't. When you truly hate something, you just grit your teeth and bear with it, only just because you really can't get out of it. I'm suddenly reminded of Smarty Pants' dilemna - dude, I wish I could offer you some better advice, but I too am a victim. And so is Montyelm. And so is Yx. So do look out for the multitude of contraptions designed to keep you in. "University? We'll subsidise you, and on top of that, offer you a 0% interest loan". That's fine, it's a necessity. "Doctorate? We'll offer you a scholarship, and on top of that, provide you with an allowance." Wow. "Post-doc? We'll offer you a place overseas." And you just go on signing on those little pieces of paper. Why? Because you think those 3 or 5 or 7 years will soon be over, easy. A stable job cum upgrading experience, so why not? But what then, when you realise that you've really had enough, when you finally see what you want out of the years you've been given? Do you really want to draw on that half-million-dollar backup that you've always known you've had, just in case you want to bail? And that is when you truly and properly realise that all you've been doing is to walk straight into the lobster pot. You see the exit, but you just can't - or won't, seeing as there's still food in the lobster pot - get out.

I'm reminded of those stories where people are held in artifical micro-environments, with their controllers successfully making them think that they've got everything they need.

I have something to work towards. Whether it can be fulfilled or not is really something else altogether. But at least I have a little sanctuary to preserve my sanity later on. It's radical, but I know deep down that it's what I've always been after. No more thoughts of having a small clinic somewhere in the heartlands, nor of an office in hospital. Not even that of a mahogany-panelled office with a long, soft couch. Yx, maybe we've just been looking for this all along, but have never really put our finger on it till now.

This may well be just an adaptive mechanism to stress, but whatever it is, I'm glad of it.

Labels: food

Wenky
7:06 AM

Monday, October 20, 2008

Finally in the mood to cook some decent (or decadent) food! Had a surprisingly pleasant clinic with the bitch today, and that slab of foie gras had been sitting around for some time anyway. Actually on hindsight, I really need to cut back on food expenditure - although doing up haute cuisine at home is still way cheaper than pigging out at some stupid expensive restaurant. Managed to buy a whole lobe of duck foie gras at Culina (go check out the Dempsey one!) and a precious little bottle of sale con tartufo nero (essentially sel gris de Guerande with 1% dried summer black truffles).

Mind - it's actually an experimental run tonight so the foie gras aren't perfect. Also, the recipe was completely made-up so there's just that wee bit of fine-tuning to do. Flambéd foie gras with lavender jus, wild aragula and sale con tartufo nero :

For tonight's trial run I was seriously caught between fleur de sel and the sel gris, so I actually put fleur de sel on the foie, and the sel gris as a side together with the dried lavender flowers (top left in the picture). Next time I'll just forget the fleur de sel. Recipe's on the food blog! The food blog recipe version is NOT with aragula - this is the one thing that killed this dish. Normal aragula, yes - but wild aragula is just way too tangy. Try it with celery instead! Yes, and I desperately need to work on the presentation. I'm thinking "square plates".

Labels: food

Wenky
7:35 PM

Monday, April 30, 2007

.. for now.

Had one last session in the kitchen today, I just have no idea when's the next time I can cook up a pot of something just for the heck of it. While we're on this subject, my apologies for the delay in posting up my recipe for bouillabaisse with sauce rouille - the version I made, from Provence, is simply too complicated, and I'm having trouble recalling exactly what I did. That, and the cost! Almost $100 for the raw materials for just one dish.

Made up this batch of Mini Toasts with Yx tonight, it was well-received. Most were adventurous in how the flavours blended together, with the exception of the old-time favourite, mini toasts with shrimp. Recipe has been posted up on Gastronomia!

Labels: food

Wenky
9:53 PM

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Full recipe coming up soon. This is but 1/4 of the entire dish, lol. Check out the food blog sometime tomorrow!

Labels: food

Wenky
1:15 PM

Monday, February 26, 2007

You know how those contestants from Survivor start off looking like chunks of beef and, a few months later, end up having saggy skin filled with aqueous fats??

Well, I suspect that's what's happening to me. No doubt I didn't start off looking like a chunk of beef (although YX would be quick to point out that our dear Jit from J1 definitely thinks otherwise), I'm pretty sure that I've been gaining a hell lot of fat. And yet, my jeans almost slipped off me today.

Probably losing muscle mass, gaining tonnes of fat and having chunks of loose skin flapping around. OMG. I should just die right now.

Oh, and talking about getting fat .. this is belated, but there's a new recipe up on the food blog - beef stew with bouquet garni. We made a huge pot of this for a potluck gathering, and it was emptied to the very bottom. Many of us won't be in the mood to cook right now, but perhaps show it to your mums and drop huge hints? ;) Cheers.

Labels: food

Wenky
11:27 PM

Wenkyland

*****************************

To cure sometimes,
To relieve often,
To comfort always.

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