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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

Tuesday 30 May 2006

Ishikawa-ken?

Ooo exciting times! In two months time, I'll be somewhere in Ishikawa Prefecture. Where is that?, was my first question. To tell you the truth, I wasn't too excited initially. It looked very inaka (i.e. rural). I wanna get out of Perth to somewhere more exciting, not a place that could potentially be smaller than Perth (although Rob pointed out that you can't get more isolated than Perth!). I was pretty apprehensive about my destination on the day I found out (the consulate told me that they don't have an exact placement for me yet) so I went to my Jap class that evening last week in a sorta subdued mood. I was even wondering if this is really what I want. Apparently about 70% of JET placements are in inaka sorta areas so I shouldn't have been surprised by my placement but I guess I was really hopeful. Plus my main concern about inaka placements is that we won't have internet access and Rob will either be miserable staying with me or he would just come over for short holidays (in which case I would be miserable).

Anyway, after having a chat to Akai-san (our Jap tutor), I was quite encouraged. Akai-san confirmed that although Ishikawa is quite inaka it's not so bad - a few hours away from Tokyo and Osaka on the train. Plus you can get internet anywhere in Japan and minimum connection is ADSL (Akai-san then started bragging about Japan's superior technology). Ah, we had nothing to worry about then! Ishikawa prefecture is on the western (Sea of Japan) side of Japan. The big cities like Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka etc are all on the eastern (Pacific) part of Japan, so that was the first downer. The up side is that we can learn skiing in the nearby mountains in winter and the beach is not too inaccessible for the warm summer months. The capital city of the prefecture, Kanasawa, has a population of half a million and that was the second downer but I pointed out to Rob that the population actually living in the Perth is definitely not the 2 million which includes the population in all the suburbs surrounding Perth in >30km radius. Akai-san said that Kanasawa is definitely bigger than Perth.

The more I thought about it, the less iffy I felt about my prefecture placement. Living away from the big cities means that rent is not so costly, and the cost of living would generally be cheaper. Sure, there would be hard-to-get comforts that would even be harder-to-get without the big city conveniences but hopefully we would at least get good access to fresh produce. In addition, the whole "japanese experience" would be better away from the westernised cities.

Besides, why should I even be complaining? As I mentioned previously, I am so blessed to have gotten into the JET program considering I have no proficiency or expertise in the language, history or culture. I have to say though, I am still quite apprehensive about the fact that food is pretty pricey in Japan - I've been spoilt with the variety of food and fresh produce here in Perth and I wonder how I'll cope with that aspect of living.. Ah, it's all part of the experience, isn't it? Besides, in order to get into the JET Program, I'd been selling myself as being very adaptable - I guess it's time to prove that I'm not a liar!

Thursday 25 May 2006

Hoisin-flavoured beef with baby corn and mushrooms

It's true that I'm not a big fan of red meat. Why? Well, because I think red meat (particularly beef and lamb) has a strong smell. But I find that if you season and cook them properly, they can actually be quite tasty. Except for lamb - it's a lost cause ;P

Believe it or not, I sometimes find it difficult to cook something, and when flipping through my recipe books and magazines fail to give me any good ideas, I fall back to improvising with whatever I have in the fridge and pantry. This particular one turned out pretty good, and (if I may say so myself) I actually enjoyed eating the beef!

I marinated the beef in vinegar and cornflour because I heard that they help tenderise the meat and keep it tender during the cooking process. This has always worked wonderfully with beef, but not so much with pork and I don't really know why. I have never cooked lamb so I can't say if this method works with lamb. I heard that the vinegar/cornflour thing is how the cooks in chinese restaurants keep their meat tender. (Well, I like to think they used vinegar/cornflour and not some other weirdo chemicals..)

With the dried mushrooms, if you forgot to soak them overnight (or don't have much prep time), chuck them in boiling hot water and let them soak for 30minutes.

Ingredients
500g beef, cut into strips

Marinade
1 tabspn soy sauce
1 tabspn hoisin sauce
1 tabspn cornflour
1 tabspn vinegar
1 tabspn mirin
1 tspn ground ginger
1/2 tspn dried chilli flakes
pepper

1 medium onion, thinly sliced into rings
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped or minced
1 tspn grated ginger
1 tabspn of hoisin sauce
6 dried mushrooms, soaked overnight in 1 cup water (reserve water) and sliced
1 can of baby corn, drained
water (enough to deglaze and make a little bit of gravy - maybe 1/2cup?)
soy sauce and pepper to taste

Method

Marinate the beef strips in the marinade for a few hours, overnight if possible. In a medium hot saucepan/wok, stirfry the onion until they are soft and almost (but not quite) brown then add the ginger and the garlic. Stirfry for maybe half a minute, turn up the heat and add the beef and sliced mushrooms. Stirfry for a further couple of minutes, then deglaze with the water, add the hoisin sauce and the baby corn. Keep cooking until the beef is cooked, taste and add soy sauce and pepper if desired. It's yummy served on rice with veges.


Monday 22 May 2006

Take a chance

Today, my younger sister Honey left for Malaysia quite suddenly. She'll be there for a year with her own dreams and goals to pursue, one of which is to become this year's Miss Malaysia/World ;). Heck, she's already in, so all she needs to do is win the competition! A tip Hon - brush up on your Bahasa Melayu!

I find it pretty ironic that we're leaving Perth so shortly after my older sister Lynn returned to Perth after living in Sydney for the past few years. I guess it's our turn to (in Kelly Clarkson's words) spread our wings, learn how to fly, and break away. Standing at the airport saying goodbye to my sister, I realised that in a couple of months time, it shall be me that will be farewelled.

I went to one of my good friends' hens night last night, and although there were about 20 of us, I was the only one invited from our circle of friends (the rest were her friends from her church, so I felt really privilege and exclusive to be invited!). Many were astonished to find out that Shona and I have been good friends since primary school and someone asked me how I felt now that Shona is getting married. Although I'm already married and was the first amongst my friends to get married, I didn't really relate well to the whole "wow we're all growing up and getting married moving on to the next stage in life" etc until I myself started going to my friends' weddings. With Shona, she's my oldest and probably the dearest friend I have, and to be honest, I felt both happy and sad at the same time (she probably felt the same when I got married too!). Happy for obvious reasons, but sad that all we shared in our childhood will only ever be happy nostalgic memories now and nothing more. All those walks on the school ground during our recess and lunch breaks, yakking about stuff girls yak about. It's really hitting home that we are all growing older.

My point is, you're only young once. Seize opportunities with both hands so that you don't look back later on and feel regret that you didn't do enough.

More dress ups

This Sunday, my church had their mid-year Faith Promise, and the service had an international theme - there was a prize for best dressed in a national costume. Not many people dressed up, but my family did, and Lynn won the prize for her cute kimono costume. My dad and Ian wore Chinese costumes, Honey wore a cheongsam, Faye wore a cheongsam top and I used the top half of my mum's baju kebaya (the skirt was a bit too big for me). Seth had on the top half of this cute japanese outfit (like a kimono). My mum is still overseas so she didn't get to join in with the dressing up..



Friday 19 May 2006

Creamy Mustard Chicken and Mushroom Casserole

Had leftover cream from when I made the chocolate cake for my friend's engagement bbq, so I decided to make a creamy sorta dish. I don't use cream much in my cooking, and I have never made a casserole before, so this was certainly an experience.

It turned out quite yummy actually, considering that I am not too fond of creamy things. In fact, this tastes quite similar to the chicken filling for the filo parcels I made before using plain yoghurt. I like yoghurt more than cream, and it is a lot more healthy than cream, so I'll keep that in mind the next time a savoury recipe calls for cream.

Ingredients

600g skinless and boneless chicken breast fillets, each piece cut into thirds
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced/chopped
250 gm mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup cream
1 tbsp mustard
3/4 cups chicken stock
juice from half a lemon (save the lemon rind for use later)
salt and pepper to taste
parsley

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Brown the chicken in 2 batches, with some olive oil in a pan and set aside.
2. Fry the onion and garlic in 1 tbsp olive oil until soft.
3. Add mushrooms and cook until soft, and the liquids are slightly reduced.
4. Add cream, chicken stock, mustard and lemon juice and bring to a simmer.
5. Add the browned chicken to the veges and bring to a boil. Season to taste with pepper and salt, then remove from heat. Add the lemon rind to the pot.
6. Transfer everything to a casserole pot (with lid on) and place in the oven for 45 minutes.
7. Stir through parsley

Serve with mashed potatoes and veges. I made mashed the potatoes with some chopped bacon, chopped garlic and chives - it was quite a nice change from plain mash. There was enough leftover casserole for two more meals - I served it with fruity couscous for one meal, and plain brown rice for the other meal. I can say with certainty that this dish goes well with couscous, rice and mashed potatoes. I'm sure it'd go well with pasta as well.

Thursday 18 May 2006

The weekend past

On Saturday night we went to our friends' engagement bbq (I met Adele during our first year doing Engineering at uni, and Rob knew Chin from high school - yep it's the whole Perth-is-such-a-small-place syndrome - it spun me out when I found out that our then-boyfriends knew each other). After the bbq we went to a friend's 25th party which had an oriental dress theme for his party and Rob had this idea to arrive dressed as a monk. He shaved his head and shaped his beard as best as he could to play the part and his efforts paid off - Rob received a better response to his costume than he'd expected.. I think the only thing out of place on his costume is the fact that he was using a very nice gold shirt with the "double happiness" symbol on it which I don't think is very monk-like. (The shirt was given to Rob by my sister on our wedding day). But no one noticed that (they were far too tickled by Rob's costume to notice) and I think he pulled it off quite well.

We'll let the photos speak for themselves..

At Adele's house: her friend helping draw those dots on Rob's forehead using my eyeliner and Adele and her parents looking on. Rob received lots of attention from all the amused aunties and uncles and from everyone else at Adele's. Surprisingly, no one knew how many dots should be drawn on his forehead, not even the older folks..






At Thad's place, Rob was requested to pose for photos and he gladly obliged.




Posing with my friends garbed in kimonos and swords:




Amy brought along an extra kimono, and my friends played dress-up on me:






Tung and co arrived without any costume and he was brave enough to not only wear the kimono, but to dance and pose for the cameras.




Thanks Thad for giving us the chance to play dress ups! We had fun :)

Monday 15 May 2006

Moist and rich chocolate cake

Did I mention how much I love making desserts, sweets and cakes? I was organising my journal entries and realised that I have more sweet recipes than savoury ones.. I believe part of my enjoyment in making them is seeing people enjoy eating them - I find my reward for my efforts there. Pity I don't enjoy eating these rich desserts as much as I love making them.

This is quite a rich chocolate cake, however it is not as rich as the Death by Chocolate cake I made before. I used the standard recipe my mum use for her delicious butter cake, but I used additional flour, some cocoa powder and dark chocolate to make it a moist chocolate cake. I also made ganache to ice the cake. I brought this cake to a friend's engagement bbq, and it was quite well received. In fact, Rob enjoyed the cake so much that he personally went around to pass out the cake =)

A couple of notes:
1) Apparently the butter should not be melted as it changes the texture of the cake. Just leave it out of the fridge at room temperature for a few hours.
2) I didn't use cooking chocolate - I used the ones that you eat. I compared the ingredients of the Nestle cooking chocolate and their 'candy' variety (those plain blocks) and there isn't much (if any) difference between the two, except that the cooking chocolate is more pricey for some reason).
3) Also, it's better to melt the chocolate in a double boiler, or if you don't have one, improvise like I do and use a bowl (with a high-ish neck to prevent steam getting in the bowl) in a pot of simmering water. Just make sure you don't get any water/steam/moisture of any sort in the chocolate otherwise it will seize and render the chocolate quite unusable.
4) Apparently due to the high sugar content of ganache, you don't need to refrigerate it. Which is a plus because storing the cake in the fridge will dry the cake. So it's best to store the cake outside the fridge and invert a large bowl to cover it. Unless of course, if you have great discipline and the cake isn't finished off within the next couple of days, then it's best to store in the fridge.

Ingredients
¾ cup (170 g) butter, softened at room temperature
¾ cup (170 g) sugar
3 eggs
2 cups (230 g) plain flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 tablespoons water or milk (my mum's recipe doesn't call for this, but I used more flour than she does)
50g dark chocolate, melted

Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Grease a cake tin (I used a 20cm springform round tin) - I never understood why some recipe say to line AND grease the cake tin - a bit of an unnecessary overkill I think. Cream the butter with the sugar then add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time, mixing well between each egg. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and mix well. If the mixture needs more moisture, add some hot water or milk. Stir in the melted chocolate, and pour into the cake tin. Bake in the oven until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean (around 40-50minutes). Cool the cake, remove the crusted surface and frost/ice with the ganache.

Ganache
Heat 1/3 cup of cream (I used whipping cream) in a saucepan but don't let it boil. In the meantime, grate or finely chop 120g dark chocolate. Remove cream from the heat and stir in the grated/chopped until smooth then let it cool before frosting the cake. To test that it will thicken sufficiently, transfer a tbs of the frosting into a chilled cup and place in the fridge for 15 minutes. If it is too thin, add some more melted chocolate. It it is too thick, add a few tablespoons of cream, stir until smooth, and test it again.



Friday 12 May 2006

Pork with Shiitake Mushrooms

This is my first time cooking shiitake mushrooms. I've been curious to try shiitake mushies for awhile now, and my dad gave me a packet of dried mushrooms he brought in from Malaysia which gave me a reason to try them. My parents use dried mushrooms in their cooking, and I love the flavour that these mushrooms impart in the dishes. Like with any other dried stuff (eg dried apricots, sultanas), the drying process draws out and concentrates the flavour of the mushrooms, so you don't need to use much to get the flavour. You need to soak the mushrooms to reconstitute them, and don't throw away the soaking water! The water that the mushrooms have soaked in is called shiitake dashi, which is probably the easiest stock I've ever made!! This is a very simple recipe which is probably not worth a blog entry, but this is the first time I've used shiitake so don't mind me!

A note - in most of my recipes I don't measure out the ingredients - I go by feel.. so the measurements given are only approximate. And in case you don't know, the cornflour and vinegar used in the marinade for the pork somehow works to keep the meat tender. It works for beef in stirfries too.

Ingredients
500g pork fillet, cut into bite-sized cubes
1 tabspn soy sauce
1 tabspn cornflour
1 tabspn mirin (sweet sake)
A dash of rice vinegar
some pepper
50g dried shiitake mushrooms (approximately 10)
some oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced/chopped
1 tspn ginger, chopped/grated
1 tabspn oyster sauce
1 tspn sugar

Method
Marinade the pork with the soy sauce, cornflour, mirin, rice vinegar and some pepper for a few hours, overnight if possible. Soak the mushrooms overnight in 1-2 cups water, or soak the mushrooms in 1-2 cups hot water for 1 hour. Gently squeeze the mushrooms, save the stock and slice the mushrooms.
Stirfry the chopped onion with oil on high heat until soft. Add the ginger and garlic and stirfry for another minute. Add the mushrooms and the pork and stirfry for a couple of minutes until the meat is browned then add the mushroom stock to deglaze the pan. Add the sugar, soy sauce/salt and pepper to taste. Serve with rice and veges.

Thursday 11 May 2006

Baked risotto

I have cooked risotto a few times before, but this is my first try at a baked version. I can see the appeal of doing a baked risotto - you leave it cooking in the oven rather than going through the tedious process of standing at the stove for 20-30minutes stirring and adding stock and stirring and adding stock etc etc. Usually I am all for easier recipes but in this case, with risotto, I think the traditional route is better. It's quite important to check the cooking process of risotto because it is so easy for the arborio rice to overcook and turn into a mushy mess with a consistency not unlike porridge. The original baked risotto recipe said to put the risotto in the oven for 30 minutes. When I took it out, the rice was still not cooked. So I put it back in the oven for a further 10 minutes, which was fine. However I used a pretty heavy ceramic baking dish which holds the heat very well and it continued cooking the leftover risotto while we were enjoying dinner. Let's just say that whilst the leftover was edible, it wasn't very pretty looking..

This is my first time using thyme and I can't say I like the herb very much. It tastes very medicine-y. Rob doesn't think it tastes that way and said he liked it in the risotto. Thyme has a familiar somewhat nostalgic taste so maybe I am associating it with an unpleasant childhood memory? I don't know.

Anyway, like the risotto recipe I posted before, you can use pretty well any ingredients you want to. The original baked risotto recipe didn't have mushrooms, but I thought mushies go so well in risotto so I added it. The important thing with risotto is to have enough stock for the rice to cook.

Ingredients
2-3 tablespoon olive oil
1 leek, thinly sliced on the slant
600g chicken fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 cups arborio rice (uncooked)
4-5 cups chicken stock
mushrooms (as many or little as you want)
1 tabspn dried thyme
Parmesan

Method
Preheat oven to 150C and place a 5l oven proof dish with a lid in the oven to warm.
Heat the oil in saucepan over medium heat, add the leek and cook until soft.
Add the chicken and cook, stirring, until lightly golden.
Add the rice and stir so it is well coated with oil and cook for a further minute until rice is translucent.
Add the stock and bring to the boil.
Pour the mixture into the warm ovenproof dish and cover.
Place in oven and cook about 30 to 40 minutes, stirring halfway through.
Remove from the oven and stir through the thyme leaves and season with salt and pepper to taste.
If desired, sprinkle with extra thyme leaves and shaved parmesan & serve


Monday 8 May 2006

Chocolate Date Loaf

I tried something different with the date loaf recipe I posted a while back. I added 1-2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and some choc bits and it worked really well. I cut down the sugar by half to 1/4 cup and the sweetness was just right. It was like eating chocolate cake (nice and moist) but without the buttery grease and unhealthy saturated fat. Even Rob (who's not fond of dates like I am) loved this!! Cocoa powder without the choc bits works as well..

Jean's chicken curry

I've stopped calling this my mum's curry because it doesn't taste the same as the ones she makes. Honey told me on the weekend that my mum uses tomato sauce which is missing from my recipe, but somehow I think it's more than just tomato sauce. Her curries are always a richer colour than mine. Maybe she cooks hers longer, or perhaps she uses far more cooking oil than I do? Rob likes my curries, and I guess they are okay in their own right if only I could stop comparing it to my mum's! She uses chillies, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and curry leaves fresh from her garden so maybe that's the difference! I did add paprika too which is not something my mum does..

A thing about curries is that they are better the next day, so cook it the night before to allow the flavours to develop overnight. I think the trick is to let the curry cook for quite a while to let the flavours to emerge and mix together. I like to use potatoes and/or other starchy veges like pumpkin because I feel it gives the curry some body, if that makes sense. Use chicken on the bones with skin on (any parts) to give that extra flavour and sweetness to the gravy. I used drumstick and wings, but in future I'll stick to drumsticks and/or thighs simply because there are more meat to skin/bone ratio. I add the coconut milk towards the end of the cooking process because my mum does it and I think her reason was to prevent the coconut milk from curdling. Oh, and another important thing is not to cover the pot tightly after adding the coconut milk, even after the heat is turned off otherwise the coconut milk will curdle (so I'm told).

The curry is great to dip bread/naan/chapati/roti paratha into.

Ingredients
8 pieces of chicken (~1kg) - if possible, cut into smaller pieces (eg cut one drumstick into two or three pieces)
2-3 tablespoon of curry powder for meat
1 tsp paprika
2-3 tablespoon oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped/minced
fresh chopped chillies or dried chilli flakes (to taste - I use lots)
2 lemongrass stalks, cut into ~3inch lengths and bruised
500g potatoes, cut into biggish pieces (so that it doesn't disintegrate in the long cooking process)
water
curry leaves
kaffir lime leaves
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 cup coconut milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Methods
Add some salt, pepper and enough water to make a paste with the curry powder and paprika, and coat the chicken with the curry paste. Marinade for at least a few hours if possible. Heat some oil in a large pot, put the onions and lemongrass in and cook until onion is browned and lemongrass is fragrant. Add the garlic and chilli and 'roast' for a minute. Add the chicken and stir for a couple of minutes. Some of the curry paste will stick to the bottom and brown, but don't worry - it will come off later when deglazing - just make sure it doesn't burn. Add the potatoes, stir to mix with the chicken, then add enough water to cover the chicken and potatoes. Bring to a boil then turn down the heat to a gentle simmer. Don't forget to scrape the bottom of the pan - roasted spices are good. Add the curry and kaffir lime leaves and the tomato sauce to the pot, cover and let the curry to gently simmer for 1 to 2 hours (coming back to it occasionally to check on it). When the chicken and potatoes are cooked, add in the coconut milk and stir. Add salt to taste.

Serve with rice and veges.

Thursday 4 May 2006

Fried Rice

I'll give you a homework for the next time you visit one of those authentic Chinese restaurants in say Chinatown or in the suburbs (you know, the ones that Chinese/Asian people eat at - not the poshy expensive ones that are targetted towards the non-Asians). Take a look around, and observe something - most of the non-Asians in the restaurants will order fried rice to go with their dishes whereas most of the Asians will order plain steamed rice. Why, you may wonder, is this the case? Not trying to put anyone off ordering fried rice, but rather encouraging all to make your own, fried rice is a great way to use leftover rice and dishes. Most of us Asians know this fact so we order freshly steamed rice in favour of, uh, freshly fried rice..

Anyway, I notice that many people seem to think that there are some secrets to making fried rice. There really isn't. Fried rice is so simple to make and all you need are a few basic ingredients and of course leftover food from last night's dinner. It isn't involved like risotto or rice pilaf or paella where you use uncooked rice, so this means that you can quickly whip up a fried rice.

I shall remove some of the enigma surrounding fried rice and post up a recipe of one I recently made. A few notable notes to take when doing fried rice:
1. The rice needs to be already cooked, preferably overnight, otherwise you'll end up with mushy fried rice.
2. I've found that brown rice works just as well as white rice, if not better. Most of my fried rice using white rice have turned a bit mushy whereas brown rice tend to hold the shape and moisture during the frying stage.
3. Anything goes. Feel free to experiment and use any ingredients you have on hand but obviously use a bit of sense. For example, I don't think leftover bolognaise or pasta sauce will go very well in fried rice. But then I would have to wonder why you were having pasta sauce with rice for last night's dinner..

Ingredients
1 tabspn oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped/minced
1 tsp ginger, chopped/grated/minced
chilli to taste (optional)
some 'luncheon pork' aka spam, cubed
Some frozen chopped mixed veges (carrots, beans, peas, corn)
leftover brown rice (enough for two people)
leftover meat dish (I used leftover chilli bean beef) and/or eggs
soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt and pepper to taste (go easy on the liquid stuff otherwise you'll end up with risotto-like consistency)

Method
Heat oil in a wok and stirfry onion over high heat for a couple of minutes until onion is just turning brown. Add garlic, ginger and chilli and stirfry for maybe another half minute before adding the spam. Continue stirfrying for a minute or two until spam is cooked. Add the mixed veges and turn down the heat to medium high and stirfry another minute or two until veges are cooked. Add the rice and any leftover meat, breaking up any clumps and stirfry to mix well with the other ingredients. If using egg, add the egg to the rice mixture and stirfry til cooked. Add soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt and pepper to your liking.

Wednesday 3 May 2006

Incontro

We met up with a friend of mine and her boyfriend for dinner on Saturday at Incontro Restaurant in South Perth. Rob and myself wanted to try this restaurant because we've been hunting down places that does good paella and I heard that this place served the stuff. Rob had great paella at a cafe a couple of years ago, but when we attempted to try the place for this dish, the cafe changed their menu. I've only had paella once a few years ago at this Spanish restaurant in the Beaufort Street cafe strip nearby our place, but it wasn't that great, which would explain why the restaurant closed down eventually. And guess what? Our search continues, because as luck would have it, Incontro removed paella from their menu only two weeks ago :( I'm quite surprised at the lack of Spanish restaurants around the Northbridge and Perth area. Anyone has any recommendations for good paella?

Anyway, Incontro is situated on foreshore of yuppy South Perth. Undoubtedly, you pay for the view, and we try to avoid places like these because it is the taste of the food and not the view that is important to us (and we like to make certain that most of what we pay is for the food, not the view :P). The quality of the food served at this restaurant was pretty good, but I would expect no less for the prices they ask (actually, I borrowed a friend's Entertainment Card so the bill was less dear than it should be). It is a yuppy restaurant, so whilst the service, presentation and the atmosphere were very good, the serving sizes of the dishes themselves unfortunately left a lot to be desired (literally). You can get nicer food elsewhere for better price and at a quantity that is more pleasing to the stomach.

It was lovely to catch up with Rie and Irwan - I can't believe it was almost a year ago when we last met up. Admittedly, time just goes by so quickly that you lose track of it. Thanks guys for letting me take photos of your food!





Mains

Rie had this dish called Crustacea ($39), and it had various sorts of shellfish, grilled and served on potato mash. Rie thought it was nice, but probably a bit overcooked.


Rob and Irwan both went for the Lamb Tagine ($36), which was accompanied by a lengthy, and probably unecessary, explanation of what a tagine is by yours truly. This was served on couscous which was somewhat dry. The lamb was stewed in a fruity sauce but Rob was disappointed that he didn't find any fruity bits in the gravy. Other than that, he was happy with it. Not a big fan of lamb, I thought it was quite ordinary. It tasted like lamb. Yay.


I ordered Salmon ($34), stuffed with couscous and served on some vegetables. It was nice, somewhat different to the salmon I've had at other restaurants. The skin was left on and crisp-fried. I don't think the couscous stuffing worked very well with the salmon though. The fillet was too thin to put much stuffing in. Innovative idea though.


Desserts

I can't remember the names of the sweets we ordered. They were around $6.50-$7.50 each. I'm not much of a dessert person, so I went for ice-choc with soy milk instead, which was $5.00 - 50c more for soy milk. I don't see why it should be 50c extra. Sigh. Life with lactose-intolerance is gonna be that much more expensive.

Rie had this mangoey, white-chocolatey dessert, which she said was nice, but the white chocolate coating was too sweet and it got a bit OTT after a while:


Irwan went for the 'Oreo' cake. Basically a chocolate cake with a cream-cheesey-cookie-kinda-filling and a thick layer of ganache. It was huge. Irwan had trouble finishing it, so gave maybe 1/2 of the slice to Rob, and even Rob had trouble finishing that portion.


Rob had the 'Cone', which is basically pastry with a custard filling and topped with nuts. He was kinda disappointed coz he thought the cone was nut-filled (a case of misunderstanding what the waiter said). It was nice though.



Overall, it was pretty expensive. If you want the view, you're better off coming during the day rather than at night. If we'd known that they had taken the paella of their menu, we probably wouldn't have come to Incontro. That said, this would be a nice place to bring a date if you want to impress and have $$ to spend. It was great catching up with my friends though :)

Tuesday 2 May 2006

Relationships and marriages

The topic of marriage came up a couple of times last weekend with different groups of friends. Strange as it sounds, Rob and I are on a mission to convince as many people as we can not to get married. Hehe, we're even enjoying the weird looks we get from friends when we say "Don't get married!" because we ourselves are married. If u think about it, getting married is done for everyone else but yourselves. You're asking the government for permission to be legally recognised as a "unit". Being the anarchist that he is, Rob isn't very happy with the legality/government part of getting married. We even seriously considered doing the wedding without signing the legal documents because that wasn't essential for me - the important part for me was the public declaration to our peers of our commitment to each other. Although in hindsight, it was a good thing we went through the legal route because Rob can easily obtain the Spouse Visa for the duration that I am on the JET Program.

The wedding is also a very expensive party you throw for everyone else (hopefully you'll have as much fun as your guests do). I am all for parties and celebrations, but the wedding industry is out to milk all the money they can. We went non-traditional when planning our wedding, which saved us a lot of money - it ended up costing us around $5-6000, which is not that expensive compared to many others, but you'll agree that it is still a lot to spend for just one day.

Need more convincing? The roots of marriage is sexist - the woman is the property of the man: first her father, then "given away" to her husband. Rob likes telling people that marriage is like legalised prostitution (I think he likes saying that mainly for the reactions he gets) - exchanging sex for money and security.

So why did we get married? Pressure from my family and Christian social groups. It is important to me for my peers to accept my relationship with Rob, regardless of Rob's choice of religion (or lack of due to his agnostic values), and I felt that it could only be achieved if we got married. And if it wasn't for me, Rob would be very happy not getting married. So it comes down to pleasing others but yourselves.

My point is - we don't need marriage to validate our relationship. Isn't it far more romantic to be together because you want to, and not because you signed some 'contract'? BTW, we were both conscious not to do the whole "til death do us part" in our vows because we don't want to break any promises made to each other further down the track. That's not to say I endorse divorce, but I don't endorse the idea of two people being miserable together out of obligations. My younger sister said that once she makes the commitment to get married, she'll make an effort to work out any problems to avoid divorce. That's where I think the problem lies in this society - people have the mentality that you can fool around until you settle down and get married. For me, when you commit to a relationship, you should commit to giving your 100% to working out any problems, regardless of whether you're married or not.

Just a note, I thought that we had a very nice wedding. Even Rob had a good time, but I think that was mainly because it wasn't very traditional and 'wedding-y'. It's nice to have friends tell me that they really liked our wedding - how it was so laid-back, casual and very us. And I was so chuffed when a friend of mine who recently got engaged asked me for advice on wedding planning because she liked ours so much.

I'll close on this topic with this quote we had on our Order of Service at our wedding:

Our love is strengthened by knowing that each of us could survive on our own if we wanted to... but realising that more than anything We choose to be together.