Went to Midsummer House last night. Two-star Michelin restaurant, exceedingly expensive, this is a new one for me.

Anyway, I realised that somehow, foam and wierd jellies make "gourmet food" as I can't even begin to imagine the amount of foam (yes, the frothy stuff you get on liquids) I was consuming. I do wonder how they cause everything to foam, detergent, perhaps? Another point to note is that in that restaurant, it is almost mandatory to consume large quantities of wine. Being tee-totallers, my dad, brother and myself spent large amounts of time contemplating our glasses of distilled water, time presumably set aside for diners to slowly sip and enjoy the wine of the vine. I will endeavour to present a course by course breakdown of I ate...

7.50pm - Arrival at Midsummer House

8.00pm - We place our orders and wait for our food.

8.15pm - Still waiting, *nothing* has been served yet.

8.20pm - They give us an apertif of champagne and grapefruit foam. Felt like I was eating the foam from root beer.

8.25pm - Butter (without bread) is served.

8.35pm - Bread is served, there was a choice between brown and white, though the white looked pretty brown to me (brown looked like cardboard, as usual). Almost immediately afterwards, we were served pumpkin soup. Pumpkin soup isn't too bad actually, but this one definitely had a different feel to it, maybe because it had been foamed and looked like a good head of beer, or perhaps it was the lumps of mushroom jelly floating about inside. My brother made a very astute comment "tastes like chin chau jelly..."

8.45pm - Waiting, we get offered bread regularly each time we finish. I realised after the third piece that they would *never* let up on the bread, so I stopped eating.

9.00pm - The starter is served, FINALLY. Mine was navarin of lobster with assorted wierd stuff and a "jus of white port" whatever that is. The lobster was heavenly, flavourful and tender, while some of the unknown meaty bits in the plate were pretty good as well. Brother got a dish he described as "western sui kow", his one liners are positively astounding.

9.15pm - More waiting. Stomach is rumbling. Hunger. I think I must have downed about one and a half bottles of distilled water by this point.

9.30pm - Finally the main course arrives, and I realise I have made a dreadful error. The menu said "Veal kidney cooked in its own fat". I beg to differ, since that kidney looked awfully like what I dug out of Uncle Frank two years ago, except fresher. It was quite a chore to down my main course, and I ended up swapping half a kidney for a slice of my dad's beef roast, again pretty raw, but I don't mind raw muscle as I do raw viscera. The decor on the plate was really interesting, as it does appear that they used a paintbrush to paint parsley puree on the plate. There were some snails and garlic cloves in there as well. Fairly tasty dish, but it was a little too "different", even for my palate.

10.00pm - They show us the dessert menu. We choose desserts.

10.15pm - Waiting. Drinking more distilled water.

10.30pm - We are served something called "pre-dessert". Appears to be pineapple puree and even *more* foam. This time foam made from some wine that reminded me strongly of Novalustic (antiacid from long ago).

10.45pm - Dessert was served. Interesting take on apple pie, what with the wafer thin slices of apples rolled around cream. There was also glass full of more jelly, some cake-like substance, and foam, apple flavoured this time.

11.00pm - Finally we are done, 3 hours after walking in.

All in all, it was an experience, though not one I'd be pleased to repeat any time soon. The bill was enough to make my heart stop, not to mention having to wait 3 hours just to finish dinner. However, if anything must be said, the service and presentation of food is the best I've ever seen. Polite staff, nearly invisible but still attentive, and very professional execution of the whole place. While it may seem sterile to some, it does have an allure all of it's own.

It's 8.17am, the sun is shining through a slight haze of clouds. The buses outside are just beginning to kick up their daily ruckus, the whole city is beginning to stir from it's nightly stupor, and I still haven't gone to sleep.

Packing is always such a chore. Even more so when it's just one guy (me) vs 4 years of accumulated student detritus. I suppose it's the packrat in me that's to blame, but what else can I say... dissociative therapy perhaps... Anyway, this last night, I have not slept, at all. Considering that there was no May Ball, or incoming exam paper, or friends lounging in my room, that's quite an achievement.

In any case, over the course of the night, I have managed to squeeze, crush and manhandle with extreme prejudice virtually all items of value in my room into boxes and bags. All of this just because the college wants to provide "secure" and "supervised" storage, which only opens for 6 hours total in the week before term ends. Oh how I hate this time...

Crimson dreams have returned,

I sleep amidst frosted blood,

How will the sleeper be aware,

When all he does is never dare?

This was my lunch today: I had some salmon that was going to go off, so I decided to try something new and do otak-otak. Nevermind the fact that I had virtually none of the ulams and banana leaves, and used Sainsbury's Single Cream instead of santan. ;)

Anyway, I pop the entire mix of chopped salmon and assorted spices into the pot to steam (which was an adventure all in itself), and the net result came out looking like the photo. I'm still wondering whether it's a mutated cawanmushi or not...

And while we're discussing foods that have an identity crisis, please view the following specimen

What do you think it is? Curry?

No...

That was my attempt at oxtail soup... :P

And this ends another episode of my receipe-bending madness. Until next time...

In my poor attempt at trying to be healthy, decided to start eating chicken, fresh chicken for a change. Sainsbury's had one of its "Buy One, Get another one Nearly Free" deals,so I took the opportunity to grab myself some breast meat. This might not seem like much, but it's definitely healthier than a diet of corned beef, eggs and maggi mee.

Anyway, I tried making sauce again. The gravy has always been a sticking point when I cook. At no point have I been able to concoct proper gravy that tasted good and looked good without resorting to gravy granules. Today, I had my first success. Gravy that looked reasonable, wasn't lumpy with excess flour, and most importantly, it TASTED LIKE GRAVY. No more milky tasting liquid goo, or "gravy" that some people mistook for scrambled eggs. This is proper gravy, perhaps not a true western style sauce, but close enough for my needs. Anyway, I thank my mother for it. My receipe for dinner was as follows:

Ingredients:

4 Breasts (Chicken preferred, human has too high a fat content)

List A
Sage
Basil
Thyme
Lee & Perrins Sauce
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

List B
Garlic (Chopped)
Shallots (Chopped)
1 tsp Flour
Water
Dash of thick soy sauce.

Butter
Oil

Prick breasts all over with a fork and marinate in ingredients from list A for random period of time (1 hour is good).

Fry breasts in mix of oil and butter (vary mix to taste) until brown and slightly carbonised. Remove to serving dish.

Add more butter to mixture remaining in frying pan, and saute garlic and shallots until soft/fragrant. Add flour slowly to frying pan with constant stirring. Ensure that flour does not burn or begin to clump. Add about 100ml of water into pan, followed by thick soy sauce. Mixture should come out brownish. Bring to simmer, and pour on top of meat.

Serve.

Results and Discussion

Why, you ask, am I posting random receipes on my blog? Do I really have nothing better to do?

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No.

Just thought I'd mention that I spent Valentine's day eating dogfood.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

It's a bad sign for my academic health when I start thinking up funny projects to do. My latest one, inspired by the Iraq's Most Wanted distributed by the US Department of Defence during Operation Enduring Freedom are a set of playing cards. Some of you might know that back in the days, I had a calendar as a project, well, now I've regressed to a set of playing cards.

The name assignments are somewhat random, I've tried to group them into generalised cliques and the like, and arrange them sometimes according to sheer power level, and at others just by connections to the people immediately above and blow them. It's also very friend-centric, so some people aren't there simply because their names didn't pop into my head at this misbegotten hour. Anyway, feel free to buzz if you can think of a good alternative arrangement, or have more names (always welcome) to add to the list.

Spades

A  Joel
K  Chin Lik
Q  Anthony
J 
10
9 
8 
7
6
5
4 
3 
2  Gordon

Clubs

A  Sui Seng   
K  Sinyi
Q  Grace
J  Ashvina
10 Alvin
9  Yijin
8  Irene
7  Lay Ping
6  Shen-Han
5  Hasli
4 
3 
2 

Hearts

A  Cindy
K  David
Q  Rachel
J  Voon
10 
9
8  Cindy 
7  Raj
6  Imran
5  Andre
4
3  Jean
2  Yvonne

Diamonds

A  Beng^2
K 
Q 
J
10
9
8
7
6  Kuhan
5  Lucinda
4  Aaron
3  Eugene
2  Ying Xin

Cheers and I hope the assorted victims don't come after me with torches and pitchforks.

My breakfast for today...

The ruler is there for scale. MMmmmmm....

As per the title...

On an unrelated note, have a look at my new model.

It's a Kauz from Maschinen Krieger. Cute little kit from the 1980s, but with all the associated technical problems found with kits of that era such as mismatched parts and gaping seam lines.

Cheers