September 1, 2013

The weeks in brief: 19 August – 1 September

Agnes weekly

Is Spring coming?

Oooh excitement. 😀

Sooo… in the past couple of weeks, DD and I ordered and drank this at Gangnam Pocha. It’s a bottle of soju and a bottle of Maehwasoo (a Korean plum wine) and comes to the table stacked together like this. Gradually the two alcohols mix together until both bottles are the same.

It was worth it for the curiosity factor. It tasted… ummm… okay? It was better the more we drank. :p

Oh yeah we ate stuff too. If you go there, order the corn cheese. Do it.

I’m steadily eating my way through the danishes at Dana Patisserie – so far I have tried cinnamon, vanilla and berry, and chocolate. As well as their almond and chocolate croissant. Their danishes are soooo good and really buttery.

I also had lunch at Common Ground – where I tried blintzes – these thin pancake/crepes were filled with beef and came with sauerkraut, egg salad and a pickle.

There was a pub meal at The Quiet Man with friends. Alastair ordered the shepherd’s pie and it was super delicious. It was also hot with the heat of a thousand suns. I don’t know what they did to it to make it so hot but if they could harness that power, it might solve the world’s energy crisis.

Happiness is banh mi. Yes?

There was a very nice dinner at Wayside Inn with Sue (hi Sue!). Look at Alastair’s glorious steak. So pretty. I had duck, which was delicious but not pretty.

Last Sunday we helped celebrate Cherrie’s birthday. 🙂 She hosted a Filipino potluck and there was this almighty lechon.

So. Much. Pork.

Hey, it’s time for mooncakes! In honour of the mid-autumn / mooncake festival, Silks in Crown are holding a special banquet (disclosure, I was invited to try it). More details on that coming up soon but I have already started eating mooncakes and I’m opening up applications for the Mooncake Appreciation Society.

The first rule of Mooncake Appreciation Society: you must like egg yolks.

On Friday Haz and I went on a date (husbands, what husbands?). We had dinner at Shandong Mama – yay, I finally got to eat there.

I really liked the pan fried dumplings, wasn’t that sure about the boiled fish dumplings (it was a texture thing), loved the zucchini and egg pancake, and loved the jellyfish and wombok salad. But all in good – food was excellent.

It way too much food for the two of us though. Wah.

Oh and this weekend, Shellie hosted a matcha party (thanks to the organising efforts of T.Do.

I’m a total idiot head and decided, an hour before we needed to leave the house, that it would be a good idea to attempt mochi. Something I’ve never made before.

I made a batch with one recipe and wasn’t very happy with it, so then did a search for another recipe to try again. Meanwhile, time was tick tick ticking… oh the STRESS.

But happily, the second batch were awesome. I used peanut butter as a filling and I was really happy with the texture and softness of the skin. I made more today so I could take proper photos. 😀

Here’s the dessert spread for matcha party – it was pretty incredible.

My other contribution was homemade matcha “Kit Kats” which were so embarrassingly easy to make considering the other things on the table – macarons, chiffon cake, panna cotta, brownies, opera gateaux, swiss roll…

I didn’t follow a recipe (seriously it’s so easy) but if anyone is interested – all I did was melt white chocolate, stirred in matcha powder (until I was happy with the flavour… I think I used a couple of heaped teaspoons) and covered wafers in the chocolate and let it set.

There’s better instructions if you need them at I Dream In Chocolate.

Might go eat a mochi now… 🙂