Dinner: Gourmet Sausage

It's been a while since my last post. Here are some pictures from dinner. And to change things up a bit, I shot in monochrome:

I usually eat the same thing every time we drop by this place, but tonight I felt like something different, something new.

Change. Sometimes it's a good thing.

Shabu One, Lot 10

The Fam were in KL early last month, and we visited this steamboat place called Shabu One for dinner. Steamboat restaurants are different from state to state, apparently. Here in Kuching, they're pretty miserable affairs, with limited choices and cheapo cuts of meat. For similar prices, you get literal feasts in KL and Penang. Like in Shabu One.

You get seafood. Fat, juicy prawns. Crabs that look fresh enough to grab at you with their pincers. Strange creations called fish noodles that are basically fish paste in the shape of noodles.

You've got the usual raw meat and vegetable section, only here, the sheer variety is mind-boggling. And if you're lazy and don't feel like grilling your own meat, they have a little station where some workers grill salted beef strips for you!

They also have a sauce station, where you can mix up your own dip from the range of sauces and spices and oils and condiments available. They have a section for desserts like fruit and jellies and syrupy stuff.

They even have a tootin' grilling machine just to grill little fat sausages! How cool is that?

But did I stuff my face with the seafood, the meat, the vegetables, the soupy ingredients, the ice-cream, the desserts, the sausages? No. What did I eat then, what caught my fancy?

SUSHI.

They have tootin' SUSHI!!!!

Thinking back, 70% of my dinner that night must have been sushi. I couldn't take much of the soup, especially as the first mouthful was so potently spicy that I nearly choked. The sushi made my dinner that day.

The guy at the sushi booth was really nice, and he said I could go ahead with the photo-taking. Mind you, it wasn't just one quick snap, but many repetitive ones. Thank you, Nice Sushi Guy, for letting me take those pictures. Now I get to put them on my blog! 

The bright side

I've been neglecting the garden the last few weeks. I guess other things just crept up, like rediscovering good reruns on the telly. I've been watching The Walking Dead and Once Upon A Time, and parallel worlds and late-night zombies are pretty fun, especially when you're tired and in need of a little escapism.

Some of my herbs are thriving from the lack of attention, while some others are looking a little rough around the edges. The basil and rosemary fall into the first category. The Thai basil, on the other hand... let's just say that not all flowers are good, hey?

Apparently flowers are an indication that your herbs are gonna start deteriorating soon (or so the many articles I've read online claim). I get distracted for a couple of weeks and the Thai basil is sprouting purple, lavender-like spikes and white flowers! The articles advise snipping off these blooms, which is precisely what I did. *snip snip snip!*

The blooms were actually quite pretty though, and I didn't wanna toss them out just like that. I grabbed the old tin the basil came in, and it still had some potting mix (is that what it is? it looks more synthetic than natural, actually) so I stuck the blooms in.

The old tin can is sitting outside on the little outdoor table, and I think it looks quite quaint. Now I'll know what to do if I neglect the herbs and send them all to flower. Not that that's a good thing of course, but look on the bright side and all that, hey?

Logos Hope

Logos Hope was in Kuching for a couple of weeks in early August. I visited the ship a couple of times, browsed the shelves, got some books and souvenirs, had the ice-cream, even managed to catch the volunteer farewell session because some friends who had volunteered had tickets but weren't in town, and and and and at the end, for refreshments, there was lemonade and chocolate cake!

Brings back good memories of my own volunteer week all the way back in 2009; cleaning toilets and folding laundry and scrubbing floors till the skin of your knuckles peeled. Good laughs, good food, good times. That was a great experience.

Procrastinate

The dust

on my keyboard

is a reminder

of my weakness.

The dry

coughs and sniffles

are just remnants

of my sickness.

Going bananas for bananas

I'm not a big fan of bananas. I get really happy when there are bananas in the house, but mostly because Tortilla the Emo Turtle likes bananas and it means he might eat something and fill his little tummy. Lately I've been thinking of banana bread, though. And lately I've been feeling really happy when I see ripe, squishy bananas, and thoughts of hoarding them in the fridge have crossed my mind quite a number of times. Last month, the right moment came (ripe bananas + free time + opportune moment to use the oven) to bake some banana bread. I found a good recipe and tweaked it some.

You've to make sure you've got all your ingredients ready. You don't wanna be drooling over thoughts of banana bread only to realize you've run out of flour, or don't have enough bananas to push the banana factor to the max. You can rummage around and use a recipe you like, but most recipes will have the following: bananas (duh), flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder, salt, and oil. Spices optional.

Beat your eggs. I like mine with plenty of bubbles. Not sure if that helps the bread, but I think it makes for a prettier picture. And you can work those arm muscles (optional).

Mash your potatoes bananas. Some recipes tell you what the texture and consistency of the bananas should be, and even discuss techniques of mashing, or even if mashing is the way to go. I don't care. A squished-up banana is a squished-up banana.

Mix all the ingredients together. If you're like me, you end up with more banana bread mixture on your shirt than in the bowl. Tastes good, eitherways.

Pour or ladle or throw mixture into a bread tin and put in oven to bake. I had to constantly check on my banana bread to make sure it didn't burn, and really I guess it depends on what temperature you set it to.

Be patient. Don't rush the process. And don't burn your fingers and tongue by grabbing and munching on fresh-out-of-the-oven banana bread, no matter how pretty and yummy and warm and toasty it looks. Because fresh-out-of-the-oven banana bread is really pretty and yummy and warm and toasty.

And the aroma that wafts up and tickles your nose when you slice that first slice of crusty banana bread. And that first taste of crumbly banana-ey goodness, with just the perfect amount of sweetness to whet your appetite for more.

And maybe then you'll understand why you feel that sudden urge to hoard bananas in the fridge.

Out of space

As of this instant, there is only 678 MB of storage space on my lappie. 678 MB, out of a total 283 GB. Why?

This is why:

I take pictures. Multiple pictures of the same thing, just at a slightly different angle. This is what it looks like, where all that space goes.

I need to stop taking clone shots. That, or I just need more space.

Fish fodder

How did the weather get this hot and humid? I understand we're right smack on the equatorial line, and our choice of temperature is always going to be between hot and not-as-hot, but really, was it always this sweaty and sweltering?

You can't hide from the heat. Even when you stay indoors, under the air-conditioning, with the lights off, and with a cool drink beside you. Think cool thoughts, think cool thoughts. Does not work. The heat will get you. I can't sleep. I miss the cold. I miss sweatshirt weather. My sweatshirt, the gray one, the one that's been with me for ages - it's shoved, all squidged up amongst the pillows, looking lonely for lack of use.

I miss the cold.

P.S. This is a shot taken at a fish spa last week, with my mobile phone. I'm running out of storage space, only 1.56 GB left on my laptop, both portable drives flat out of space. End of P.S.

P.P.S. Please excuse the rambling. No continuity of ideas. Not organized. I know. Brain fried. Too hot. End of P.P.S.

Sharing is caring?

Had a great dinner with The Fam tonight. After several days of debating the pros and cons of each option, we decided on Sharing Planet. It was a pretty rainy evening, which made for a very pleasant al fresco dining experience (read: no air-con).

It was supposed to be individual platters, but when the food arrived we decided to share it around. The portions are huge, and really, it would be a bad move if you decide to be selfish and hog your plate all to yourself. You'd be quite grossed out by the end, especially with eating so much of the same thing, and you'd be reduced to telling yourself to eat up or see all that food go to waste. Trust me, speaking from experience here. The best strategy (uh-huh, eating involves plenty of brain work) would be to order a few plates and share around. That way you get to taste a little bit (or in the case of Sharing Planet, still a generous amount) of everything, and you won't be bloated or bored to the point of nausea by the end of the night. Win win.

We had the mixed grill, and this consisted of a sausage that seemed to be speckled with oozy bits of cheese, lamb chop, battered fish, chicken chop, mashed potato, and some blanched veg. This picture shows a portion of the mixed grill (specifically, the lamb chop and bits of the chicken chop and sausage), with a different chicken dish in the background:

I'm not a fan of potato, but The Fam said it was good, especially with the black pepper gravy. The sausage was good (prolly chicken, prolly easily available from a supermarket or cold storage), lamb and chicken chops were juicy. I really liked the battered fish; it was prolly dory, and yum, the contrast of crunchy deep-fried batter and crumbly tender fish was really addictive! Want moaaaar! The chicken dish (the one that looks like lasagne in the background with coleslaw on the side) tasted like grilled chicken chop with cheese on top, and came with coleslaw and french fries.

We also had the seafood arrabbiata (which means angry in Italian, according to Wikipedia), but this was more sweet than spicy. What they lacked in spicy hot fiery chilliness they made up for with superb seafood. The fried fish (dory?) was amazing, and the prawns were big and juicy. They did a great job with the calamari, which was sweet and tender, and they were generous with the mussels. The only problem with this dish was the sweetness; it was sweeter than I like my pasta to be, but it's a tomato puree-ish kind of sweetness rather than the sugary kind. Which is good if you like tomatoes. And they have chunks and chunks of tomatoes (and onions) in this.

On the whole, we were very satisfied with dinner tonight. Hours later I was still thinking happy thoughts about dinner, and that's always a good thing. Good night out, looking forward to returning and trying out the rest of the menu.

Garden updates: 1st week of April

Don't have much time to blog (wanna read a little bit before bedtime), but still wanted to do a quick update on the garden. Some of the little seaweed-like shrubs (?) that I trimmed and transplanted are doing really well. I was very pleasantly surprised to see pink and orange blooms amongst the new transplants. It was just a matter of sticking bits and pieces into a pot and to be honest, I didn't think they'd do this well:

The garlic shoots are doing well. You'd notice the use of the plural, because there are more of them now! This picture was taken a few days ago, and there are even more shoots right now! Happiness!

Since the garlic is doing great, figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some shallots in the garden as well. Chose a few good-looking bulbs and planted them. It's been raining lots this past weekend, so I'm hoping to see some bright green shoots soon.

Some friends have also kindly donated some new plants, and it's been many days of finding them new homes. Like my new banana tree, which I'm really excited about because they'll eventually bear gigantic purple bananas! You read that right: PURPLE bananas! Banana Tree is now in his little plot of land just outside the gate, guarded by tall palms, a hedge of ixora, and a drain.

Then I've got these strange herbs, also from a friend:

I call them strange because I don't know what they are. If you've stumbled upon this blog and you're reading this and you know what these are, please leave me a comment!

And this last picture below is my newest herb, peppermint!

I've planted trimmings in a few pots, and I'm hoping they take root and grow well. Planning to try brewing some fresh peppermint tea, and maybe even dry some to use as seasoning. Heard and read that they're quite aggressive though, and I've decided to plant them in pots of their own rather than straight in the garden, just in case they get out of hand. Peppermint is good, but peppermint gone all crazy alien invasion we-want-to-take-over-your-garden is bad.

And that's it! Bye bye for now, it's time to read some Austen! Cheers!

No duck noodles this time

Had dinner with The Fam tonight. It was raining quite heavily (it's been raining quite a bit the last few days, and I'm happy!), which meant no dining out in the open. We ended up at the Imperial Duck restaurant near the Stutong Market, and almost every table was already occupied. When I was studying in Sydney, I had a coursemate who would tell us how her family would prepare roast duck noodles for their Chinese New Year open house. I wanted roast duck noodles tonight, but no. No roast duck noodles for me. We had these instead:

Roast duck. But of course. You don't go to a roast duck specialist restaurant and not order roast duck. It's prolly even some sort of unspoken rule that you have to order duck. Kidding. But really, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Like, you don't go to KFC and expect to have roast duck. No. For roast duck you go to a roast duck specialist, and for good juicy tender succulent roast duck you go to Imperial Duck. End of roast duck soliloquy. Moving on to the next dish...

... stirfried asparagus. This was pretty expensive, but I guess it's justified since the asparagus was prolly imported. This was alright. I prefer my asparagus minimalist style, i.e. blanched till just tender and accompanied with some garlic, and I found this particular dish a little overdone. Too many other ingredients fighting for centre stage. The prawns were really good though; not overcooked, still juicy and tasty and with that al dente crispiness that proves they've been cooked to perfection. Good prawns.

This was a surprise, as I wasn't expecting fish tonight. Cod with lotus flowers and black fungi. The first bite was quite amazing, all fishy and bursting with sesame oil goodness. The subsequent bites weren't as tasty, I don't know why. I don't like lotus flowers and I don't like black fungi, but I like this fish. It's not rough in texture and it doesn't stick to your teeth the way some fish do, if you know what I mean. Good fish. Adding cod to the list of fish I actually enjoy eating.

The deep fried tofu was good, though rather bland. It usually comes drowned drenched in a sweet sticky gravy, but here they separate the two, which is good if you enjoy your tofu all blistering hot and crunchy and not soggy. Upon breaking into the tofu squares, I noticed that it consisted of thin slices of tofu mixed with capsicum, and I don't quite get this. Why not just cut the tofu into squares/cubes/rectangles and then deep fry? Won't that be less time-consuming? We had a little discussion about this, and came to the conclusion that they were prolly charging you for this fancy tofu-cutting technique. Pretty impressive. The batter was really good and crunchy. I actually liked that this dish was quite bland. You can always add soy sauce to a bland dish, but you can't always ctrl+z an overly-seasoned one.

My drink: milk tea. Tea not thick enough, but not too bad. Not overly sweet once you let the ice melt and dilute. Quite refreshing.

Satisfactory dinner, although more expensive than other restaurants. You could prolly have a really good spread at other restaurants for the same amount, although I suppose their roast duck is one of the better ones you can get in this town.

I still want my roast duck noodles though. Will return to try one day in the very near future. Hopefully.

Superhero

I've suspected for quite some time now that I might be a superhero and not even know it. I have superpowers. Quite a few, actually.

Superpower #1 is heightened hearing. Don't whisper from across the room; I can hear you. Don't play out of tune; I can hear you. Superpower #2 is heightened sense of smell. I don't wanna elaborate on this point, but I have been known to detect the presence of leaked gas from a bunsen burner or stove a good few minutes before everyone else. Superpower #3 is sensitive tastebuds. Put a new spice in my food and I will ask you what it is. I might even tell you what it is.

And this is evidence of Superpower #4...

... speed. 

All unidentified flying objects that choose to buzz close enough, do so at your own risk.

Beware the speeding hand of this reluctant superhero. Rawr.

The garlic groweths!

The other day I noticed a strange-looking stalk peeking through the mound of earth where I'd planted my garlic. I didn't think much of it, and figured if it was my garlic growing, there would be a whole bunch of 'em strange-looking stalks, rather than just one lonely stalk. Besides, I read somewhere online that it takes quite a few weeks for garlic shoots to appear.

It kept coming back to my thoughts though, this little enigma of a plant/weed/whatever. It bugged me to such a point, I decided to dig it up a couple of days ago. And this is what greeted me:

My garlic has sprouted!!!!

Fine, I know it's strange that there are like seven or eight other cloves of garlic in the ground and this is the only one that's sprouted (and really quickly too), but I don't care, it's cute, and I'm happy. I'm rooting for this weird one, pun intended. I just can't help wondering why the other garlic cloves refuse to sprout. Or maybe this particular clove is just really brave and impatient to see the real world. I also read that it's usually the bigger cloves/bulbs that will sprout/grow more, and it's ironic that this one (the one that's sprouted way before his peers) is actually one of the smaller ones.

You go, weird lonely impatient kiasu* garlic clove! I'm happy to see you in my garden!

*kiasu = scared of losing out to others (Hokkien, slang)

Blindsided

"I come through the window

I'm crippled and slow

For the agony I'd rather know

'Cause blinded

I am blindsided."

Bon Iver, Blindsided

Wontons with The Girls

One of the little conversations that popped up the other day while we were hanging out was how our hang-outs usually involve food. As we grew up, we started making food too, rather than just consuming them. We've made several batches of pasta over the years. So much pasta in fact, that we got sick of it and decided to try cooking different things. So far we've made pancakes. Last weekend, we decided to make wontons.

We minced pork and shrimp and green onions and seasoned the mixture with salt, pepper, chicken stock, and a few sprinklings of chilli flakes. We sat on the table and played origami fold-up with the wantan wrappers. Four different personalities, four different wantan wrapping styles. Here's what mine looked like:

It was supposed to be wantan soup, and The Girls had even brought out the fancy steamboat machinery, complete with vegetables and all those little extras that make a steamboat a steamboat.

The soup was great, but we ended up frying most of the wantans. They tasted better that way, all golden brown and crispy and crunchy and unhealthy. We made junk food out of healthy wantans.

And that's just the way we like it.