Celebration dinner

Celebrating something in our house means having a nice dinner and i was running late for my celebration of R's new job when I finally picked Restaurant Andre in Outram Park.

Restaurant Andre dinner is made of 8 courses following a list of 8 key words.

 

1. Pure

This seafood dominated plate did not use any salt and pepper, flavours were only highlighted by herbs and olive oil.

It was very colorful, I remember the Japanese prawn to be quite fatty, but my strongest memory is about this very flashy green gazpacho style soup in the middle, purely delicious!

 

2. Salt

I think it's this dish below, but I can't swear... The connection to salt may have been something about the foam around the apple mousse. Below was an oyster carpaccio and that was great!

 

3. Artisan

Neither R or I really understood the explanation about this dish but we believe it was duck's tongue (someone, please, tell me that this is eatable? Otherwise I have no idea what it was...)

Anyway, there was salsify (the thing which looks like hay) and roasted sesame seeds.

It was delicious, actually much better than the meat itself which officially came later in the meal.

Apologies for the photo, it's not the best... I was trying the new iPhone 5 camera...

 

4. South

A Mediterranean inspired dish, the best tomatoes I have ever tried (at least in Sg), a fantastic risotto, a melon sorbetand some sashimi.

So tasty and looking so fabulous!

 

5. Texture

I'm sure this was this dish but I'm not really sure why... The textures weren't that weird or exceptional. It was anyway very tasty and so delicate.

Lobster, truffle, gnocchi (ok, that might be the texture thing, there were very unusual gnocchies) and apparently some scallop emulsion (taste of scallop is difficult to identify when mixed up)

 

6. Unique

The signature dish of Andre, the foie gras soup/jelly (not sure what is the title)

As we say in French, "une tuerie"! A murder doesn't seem to be such a good translation...

Anyway, it was absolutely amazing!

 

7. Memory

A rabbit dish, a bit of a disappointment to be honest, nothing that I really remember about it apart from the fact that I was pleasantly surprised of the original rabbit choice.

 

8. Terroir

This is the last one and I'm now very confused, according to the photos I have , I'm left with the pre dessert which I liked but R didn't, a real texture mix with raspberry granite, dry and frozen raspberry and some powder of some sort. (3/4 eaten when I realized I was supposed to take a photo...)

I also have the real dessert with a destructed/recomposed snicker bar and also a fish dish...

I obviously got confused somewhere...

 

Just to make sure I don't forget anything here are appetizers and mignardises which were to die for. In no particular order: mushroom flavored crisps, fish and chips!, popcorn, Madeleine etc

 

It was a fantastic meal, we did wish there was more red wine than white to go with all the dishes but apart from that, it was one of a kind!

 

Cooking class in Thailand

I have wanted to do a cooking course in Asia for a long time but I had failed to convince R. (I took that as a compliment, it surely means that I do NOT need cooking lessons!:-)

As we didn't have much else to do one day, I managed to include cooking course in the schedule!

9am one morning, we are on our way to the cooking centre where we got to decide which 5 dishes we will prepare: 1 stir fried, 1 appetizer, 1 soup, 1 curry and 1 dessert; knowing that we also make the curry paste from scratch!!!

Once the decision made, we head for the market where we learn a lot about different type of rice, different types of noodles (who would have known that some of them are made from beans?), the difference between coconut milk, juice and cream and get to see some very colorful ingredients.

Then, it's time for the farm where we get to taste all organic herbs we will use, try some new fruit, have a look inside the mushroom cupboard and finally it's hands on!

First the little welcome snack: Meang Kum, a lettuce wrap of ginger, shallots, toasted coconut, chili, peanut, lime, peanut and sugar cane.
It was good but I would advise not to cut the chili with your teeths...

Up next was the stir fried. I went for Pad see uw, R opted for the hot basil with chicken. I think I won this battle! I even think it was my favourite dish of the day.

As we were pretty hungry by that point, we ate it straight away! And then carried on with the appetizer. I was making spring rolls and I got top mark from the teacher. :-)))))
To my taste there was a bit too much wrapping but they did look good!!!

R was making his favorite dish of the entire holiday: papaya salad (he has since found out that it is meant to be a lady's snack but that doesn't stop him ordering it for every single meal!)
Papaya salad was very good, full of chilies as usual. Making it also looked really traditional in the wooden mortar.

Once this second dish eaten, we were on a row, making soup, curry paste, curry and dessert in one go!
The Tom yam koong soup was a clear winner for R, I don't know why but it was just so much better than mine, richer, less watery, tastier...

Making the curry paste was quite an exercise! Apparently it takes 2h on the stone mortar to make a proper paste! We probably did it over 20min and there were several of us taking turn. (It seems as difficult as beating the eggs white without the electric whisk!)

I was going for the Massaman curry and R for the Khaw Soi, a Chiang Mai speciality.
By now I have had 3 Massaman curries and I can officially say that there are as many Massaman curry as there are Massaman curry maker. None of the 3 I have tasted (included mine) had anything in commun...
Out of all the curries our group made: red, Massaman, panang, Khaw Soi, the best one was when we mixed my Massaman with some Panang.
So that's the new rule: if you can't make one dish properly, just change it!

Finally, sweets!
Making anything else than sweet sticky rice with mango wasn't even an option for me, but I have to admit that the special recipe of fried banana that R produced was really good as well.

We now have at thai cook book and once we leave Singapore and I make it back in the kitchen, I plan to use it fully!

Afternoon tea at the Raffles hotel

Instead of just being tourists at the Raffles hotel, we decided to experience it properly, so we went for afternoon tea at the Tiffin room.

We were welcome by a pyramid of sandwiches, cakes, madeleines and cupcakes. A waiter in a colonial outfit appeared to offer us different kind of tea, we picked mint tea which was delicious and really light.

Once we had tested all our sandwiches (the usuals eggs, cucumber, ham, tuna and salmon), dad and I moved on to the dumpling area.
Mum decided to give them a miss and went directly for the chocolate mousse! Very quickly, she also pointed us in the direction of some delicious raspberry and strawberry little wonders...
But the king of the day was the bread and butter pudding, its vanilla sauce and marinated mixed berries...

This is definitly the best way to experience the Raffles hotel (close competition with the sunday champagne brunch...)
As we were in need of a walk after that many desserts, we had a look around the hotel and the famous Long bar! (where the Singapore Sling was invented)

 

Bia

Isn't beer the first word we learn in a foreign language?

Vietnam offers a great choice and R made it a mission to try them all! (ok fine, I'll take part of the blame too, and B should take some as well!)
A lot of them carry the name of the town they are from, otherwise, the name is easy enough to remember. Here is the collection:
From the north (town of Hanoi and Laocai):

 

 

From the south (city of Saigon)

Easy names:
BaBaBa (at least now we know how to say three in Vietnamese!)

An acronym:

And Kuda, famously served with an icecube :-)

Birthday celebration

As it is a big birthday this year, it deserved 3 days of celebration! Friday was warm up, before activities on Saturday and food and drinks on Sunday.
Here are a few photos of Saturday: my first flying lesson! R was brave enough to come in the plane with me and take the photos! Miraculously no one was sick! I was close...
 (pay special attention to my landing skills ;-)

And on Sunday, we indulged in champagne brunch followed by Pimm's at the pool. Not a bad way of celebrating a new decade!

European break

There has been a break in the SE Asia traveling as we went back to Europe for 10 days.

A nice little tour including London pubs:

A poor start of the rabbit year for some rabbits (Borough Market, London bridge):

A fantastic exhibition at the Tate Modern (millions of hand painted ceramic sunflower seeds in the Turbine hall):

Then we passed Paris but we were too busy eating drinking and catching up with friends to take photos...

And finally skiing in Switzerland, including some mountains without snow, some with snow, colourful bears climbing cranes and a parma ham (comfort food after hours on the slopes!)


I'm now nearly up to date with the blog (1 more missing article on the Philippines) but no worries more will be coming, we are off to Sumatra next WE!