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Friday
The last three of the seven things we ordered at the new-ish Izakaya Fujiyama.
~ Steamed pork belly on a bed of dark miso and grilled eggplant - the boyfriend can't not order the "layered" pork when he sees it on a menu.
~ Their special Crying Roll - loaded with enough wasabi to make some cry. We didn't.
~ Ice cream with poached Granny Smith apples - can't remember now if it's the ice cream that's been made with the very intriguing Koikawa sake lees, or if it's the apples that's been cooked in it.
Already in our tummies were:
~ Konbu snapper sashimi
~ Miso-marinated tofu
~ Grilled mackerel
~ KFC - Kenji's (the chef) Fried Chicken. Chicken karaage with the best housemade mayo I've tasted. The amount of acidity in it was spot-on!
~ And umeshu (yum!), sake and a few Japanese beers.
We love our izakayas. There's one in Singapore, always filled with Japanese expatriate salarymen, that we used to eat at very often. And we like seeking out izakayas when we're visiting a new city. So you can imagine how excited we were when we found out that one has opened for business in our neighbourhood.
The service was tip-top and the list of alcoholic beverages was a cheeky drinkie-poo-lover's wet-dream but sadly, the food didn't measure up. I understand the need for subtle-ness of flavours and a light-handed touch in some food but Fujiyama's were way too "quiet". And missing from the menu is the whole section of charred and smoky grilled goodies - "loud" flavoursome beer food! Dashed are our hopes of crawling two streets home, stuffed and happily tipsy, from a local izakaya.
Saturday
A quick lunch at Mad Pizza. We wanted to spend at least a couple of hours at the Art Gallery of NSW before they shut for the day and the mad rushing-around made me forget my camera. Bah.
What you see here is a weak attempt (the prawn is so anatomically-incorrect) at drawing my lunch of a prawn salad on the paper table"cloth" while waiting for the real thing to be made. Shot on my crappy phone cam.
For dinner, we went back to El Capo where the boyfriend ate yet more pork belly! To make up for the not-so-satisfactory one he had the night before at the izakaya next door. I had the best piece of chicken breast ever! Sous vide is the best cooking method ever invented!
Sunday
Pub lunch at the newly-refurbished Strawberry Hills Hotel. Another one of our local old-man pubs that's been "hipsterised". Boo.
It was sunny so we ate out on the shiny new deck on the roof. More meat for the boyfriend. And they cooked it right! Another salad, a Caesar, for me because I've been strangely craving vegetables all weekend. And cold beers. Maybe my body thinks it's proper Spring already.
So, yes, you'll never go hungry in our neighbourhood. But you might have a hard time deciding what to eat sometimes.
Anniecure No.2 from ALL Daily Report
Annie, the designer and maker of the super-colourful range of ALL Knitwear, has recently decided to apply her amazing colour-combo-ing wizardry on her pals' nails.
Anniecures (tee hee hee!) - Free one-hour sessions of "color for volunteer participants' nails (top-coat included) and open discussion about anything". Anniecures are "intended to be approached with open minds from both parties. Boys accepted, no feet please."
I like her Anniecure No.2. A lot! She says its a "mosaic effect" but I think it looks like glistening scales on a cartoon fish or plummage on an exotic bird too. And the best thing about it is that it will suit fussypot me to a T. See, I'm never without colours on my toenails but manicures are wasted on me because I use my hands a lot daily and am really rough with them. If I find a chip on one nail, even the most microscopic of chips, I will clean the polish off all ten fingers right away. Yes, I'm that big a pedantic fussypot.
The beauty, besides the obvious kaleidoscopic prettiness, of an Anniecure No.2 is its "freeform-ness". So "free" that I think it will look good (maybe better) even with chips and scratches from wear. And notice how no two nails out of the ten are "mosaic-ed" with the same colours? If I chip or scratch one too badly, all I have to do is just remove the paint off the imperfect nail and put on some new tiles/scales/feathers without having to worry about matching up to the other nine nails. Yup, definitely the perfect manicure for a fussypot. Which I might try to replicate one day if Annie doesn't mind.
The blue one hasn't left my wrist since I bought it two weeks ago. A sign that I like it. Quite a bit. So I went and bought her hot pink and yellow pals over the weekend.
The cheap metal is already showing signs of wear but some "patina" is good, right? Still wishing for some made from proper silver. Wouldn't it be great if we have a small town full of silversmiths like Celuk on the island of Bali? Where they can custom-make pieces to your specifications. For not too many dollars. Yes, that'd be good.
Meet Jock, the latest stray we adopted.
He made us laugh with his silly nodding donkey act when we moved the blue ball on his back at our local charity shop yesterday so we bought him and brought him along with us to our old favourite Marigold to put some birthday-weekend dim sums into the boyfriend's stomach.
And you should meet Gerald, our other giraffe, too...
He's the King of our little Bookshelf Gang (his throne is on the top shelf between the "Cs" and the "Ds") because he was the first animal that we adopted when we first moved to Sydney, having had to leave all our old toy-pals behind in Singapore.
Yes, I now know, having seen more of them around, that Gerald is actually the world-famous Sophie. A girl!* But I didn't seven years ago when I saw him sitting forlornly at the window of the security guards' office at my first job, waiting to be claimed by the child who lost him somewhere in the vast art gallery. The child or the parents never came back for him for weeks so my security guard-pals let me take him home.
And now he's got Jock, a new pal! Yeah.
*To add to the confusion, the boyfriend insists that the name we gave him was "Jeffrey", not "Gerald", and has refused to address him by the latter all these years. Haha.
On our bus ride home. Stuck on the back of the seat in front of ours.
...that reads "six two one" (the food additive number code for monosodium glutamate) at Ms G's. Quite cheeky and brave for an Asian eatery, albeit a young and funky one, to have those letters in their name, I thought. Tee hee hee.
There really wasn't enough light for pictures and I wasn't planning on taking any anyway until Ms Booth, my dining partner, said that she should get a photo of Ms G's famous Stoner's Delight dessert (top picture) and pulled out her phone.
For pals who are curious about what we ate, here are descriptions instead of picture-illlustrations...
~ Mini Vietnamese meat rolls - Ms Booth had one with the pork belly filling and I had a chicken katsu one. Cute like my mini burgers. And warm. A comforting way to start a meal on a wet and windy evening.
~ Braised duck noodles - My favourite dish of the evening. Flat egg noodles + XO-saucy shredded duck meat + a poached egg (which we broke and mixed into the noodles). Like the chicken version we get at hawkers' centres back home in Singapore.
~ Sambal cod - A fat chunk of cod cooked to textbook-perfection and smeared with a pretty decent (and I'm a fussypot when it comes to sambals) house-made fragrant chilli paste.
~ A tofu, eggplant & tomato dish with a delicious sauce
~ Stoner's Delight - passionfruit marshmallow, blocks chocolate-coated rice puffs, bits of peanut brittle and doughnut ice cream. It's a lot of rich flavours on one plate. You have to be having a big case of the munchies to be able to stomach it all, I think. The marshmallows are the tastiest to eat while the doughnut ice cream was the most fun. As in, we had the most fun guessing how they put that doughnut-y texture in. Did they blend real doughnuts up and added them to the custard mix?
~ Pandan chiffon cake - I had to order that because I love pandan-flavoured things and the pandan chiffon cake was a childhood favourite. Very sad to report that it marred what had been, up to that point, quite a "ooh, we've ordered quite well" meal. The cake was a dense block of fake green. Not at all airy like chiffon.
And we drank quite a few of their bubble tea-packaged cocktails which were all strangely addictive.
Would I be visiting Ms G's again? For sure! It's a cute (and you know "cute" always wins with me) and fun place (and way) to eat and there were so many other items on their menu which we couldn't quite fit in. Particularly the prawn toast. I want to know if they measure up to those that chef Dan Hong's mother serve at her Vietnamese resturant Thanh Binh.
Ms G's
155 Victoria St
Potts Point
Sydney
Phone: (02) 8313 1000
Website: www.ms-gs.com
I'm a big fussypot about a lot of things and boiled eggs are one of those. I think over-boiled eggs are ugly. You know how they get a ring of bruise-like blue-grey rim around the yolks? That's not a good look. Especially when they are to be served halved, with the yolks exposed, in a salad or something. On occasions when I forget to set the timer for perfect semi-runny yolks (six to seven minutes after the water starts to bubble, for 700g eggs), I angrily ditch the ugly eggs (well, save them for things that call for mashed up eggs like an egg mayo sandwich mix) and start all over again.
So, it is with fascination that I look at these ajitsuke hanjuku tamago ("seasoned soft-boiled egg") with their soft yolks everytime we have a bowl of ramen (these ones are from On Ramen - we always order an extra serve, or two). I've always thought they were made the same way as the Taiwanese tea eggs - boiled, shell and all, in a flavoured liquid. Or like Chinese soy eggs - boiled eggs thrown into a pot of soy-braised meat to soak up all the goodness. But both methods would mean that the yolks are exposed to more heat than necessary rendering them hard and ugly with that blue-grey ring. How do the Japanese chefs keep their yolks gooey?!!!!!
Finally got off my lazy ass, after a bowl of ramen over the weekend, did some digging on good ol' Google and found my answer. Sometimes my head likes to complicate things that are so simple! It's basically eggs soft-boiled to perfection, peeled and then steeped in a cold soy-based liquid for flavour and colour! Duh. Bah. Haha.
Yup. Thought I'd share my newfound knowledge just in case I'm not the last person on earth to find out how. I suspect I most probably am.
[Not pictured, sadly] All the beautiful old houses that we drove past on the way to and in Burwood, the neighbourhood in which Ms Carpet and Meeps grew up...The chambray triplets - me in a jumpsuit, Meeps in a shirtdress and Ms Carpet in a flouncy skirt! Totally unplanned! Tee hee hee...The primary school that Meeps and Ms Carpet attended with the cutest greenskeeper cottage by the field...Ms Carpet's parents' gorgeous old house and lush garden!...Shopping along Burwood's main drag - the aim of our visit - with Ms Carpet as our guide!...Three treasure-filled op shops plus the mall...Ms Carpet's secondhand-buy-of-the-century at our second stop, the Red Cross charity shop. A 70s Rolling Stone groupie-type caramel leather coat with a big fat fur collar! With metal turnlocks for fasteners! At a heavily discounted price!...Our huge deep-fried late lunch at one of the many local cheap Chinese...The delicious rhubarb+coconut cake that Mama Carpet (Hello, "Louise"!) baked for tea...I was too busy taking it all in and having way too much fun to whip the camera out!
[Pictured rather boringly] Secondhand green stripey shorts. My first purchase of the day at our first stop - the Smith Family Store, a charity shop. A welcomed addition to my stack of flat-front schoolboy shorts that I like to wear with crispy white shirts in the Summer. Yay!
And it's funny that it's by Glassons, a New Zealand fashion chain that Ms Carpet has been telling me about and was taking me on my maiden visit to their Burwood branch that very day! Haha! There, I bought a floral-print pair of high-waisted awkward-length culottes. Like serious old-school look-like-a-skirt-when-worn culottes! Good for extending my Nanna look into Spring and Summer!
And a new sliver of metal for my wrist from Lovisa. Another chainstore-for-cheap-and-fast-fixes that Ms Carpet raves about. I've been on a delicate wrist-things kick since that watch in December and I wish I got a few more of the same bangle with ties in the other colours. I also wish that it's in sterling silver instead of a cheap metal that will discolour with wear.
~ The end of the most boring show-and-tell session of a fun-filled and lovely day-out (boo!) ~
From two very sweet girls in Singapore.
"A very blue letter" from my pal Nah-nah. She replied to my last email to her via snail mail. Haha. Because she knows I love finding surprises in my letterbox! Tee hee hee. And her drawings of little girls.
The second letter was an even bigger surprise! A medal bracelet from the Merci+Liberty range of cuteness from S, a girl I "met" on Ebay. To thank me for making her Lover collection near-complete with the Charlotte dress I sold her (I should be the thankful one as it has been hanging in my wardrobe, unworn, for years - so glad it's gone to someone who's been waiting to own one) and for "personal shopping" for her at the recent Lover Jumble Sale (I know what it's like not being able to buy from labels that are not stocked in Singapore).
Observations/conclusions drawn:
1. I still cannot get over how amazing the internet is. I wouldn't have met these girls (and my best girly pals in Sydney, Ms Carpet and Meeps) if not for online activities.
2. Us girls from Singapore are sweethearts. Tee hee hee. But I can only vouch for those that I know. And like.
3. Our post office has been churning out some pretty good stamps!
From the Surry Hills Markets over the weekend.
My magpie's eye zoomed right in on the green and on closer inspection saw the dark chocolate middle. One of my favourite colour combos! And then there was that dark wood lid! Wheeeeeeeeeeee! The textured surface made us think that it was glazed clay but when we lifted it to ask the stall owner for the price, it was as light as air. Aluminium with a painted finish! Haha. Which made it cheaper than we thought. Score!
We see her in that back alley every weekend on our way home from Chinatown but my arms are always too loaded with grocery bags to whip my camera out.
Yesterday, I only had a 2.5kg bag of chocolate strapped on one shoulder so here you are, my cat-loving pals, another one for you.
I wonder if she's pals with the AstroKitty I saw in Kensington.
Not tarts to put on a cheese platter but tarts made from bits leftover from a "cheesy" evening. A wedge of St Agur, my favourite creamy blue, broken into chunks and melted over figs and sweet browned onions. The dressing for the greens from my aunt's garden I made using quince paste and sparkling wine (the cheap stuff I use for poaching fruit) - a pretty dusky pink vinaigrette. Tarts are as good a way of clearing the fridge as fried rice or a stir-fry, I think.
1. My op-shopped yeti vest with its Dick Bruna/Miffy colour palette makes me happy whenever I wear it. It brought a smile to three other people too yesterday - a lady who tapped me on the shoulder on the bus to say that she loves the vest and two more on the streets who actually said that the colour-combo made them happy. Yay!
