Pages

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

Friday 31 August 2007

Show & Tell

Here are some shots I took over the past few weeks around New York city.

Downtown Manhattan

Photo 1: View of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge (background) on South Street;
Photo 2: This bronze sculpture is dubbed the "Wall Street Bull" or "Charging Bull", located in NYC's Financial District near the Stock Exchange. This sculpture is considered as a symbol of the 'bull market'.



In TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street)

Photo 3: In City Hall Park with the City Hall in the background. I took shots of this scene (fountain in the foreground, building in the background) on three separate occasion, and photos turned out bad for various reasons. We happened to walk by the park at noon on a clear day, and the lighting was perfect.
Photo 4: Inside St Paul's Chapel opposite the World Trade Center site. This church played a major role for the recovery workers at the WTC site following the 9/11 event. IIRC I think this is the oldest church in NYC.



Midtown

Photo 5: Inside Grand Central Terminal, a National Historic Landmark. It has a beautiful ceiling which doesn't show very well in this shot.


Photo 6: A few blocks away is the Rockefeller Center which is another National Historic Landmark (although you wouldn't have thought so since the complex looked quite modern). There is a gilded statue of Prometheus in the Center.


Photo 6: We encountered a little strip of Japanese shops and bookstores near the Rockefeller Center (or perhaps it was inside the complex?), and this omiyage shop made us miss Japan.
Photo 7: Just for fun.

All good things come in threes...

... or do they? With our 3 years' just gone, I would like to believe that gaining 3kgs in a mere 3 weeks is not a bad thing! I suppose it didn't help at all that we ate at three restaurants (there's the three again!) in a span of four days last weekend - Malaysian, Mexican and French food aren't exactly the healthiest cuisines! I guess I can no longer eat what I want without gaining weight like I used to when my body ran on a metabolism of someone who cycled more than 16km a few times a week for transport. Frankly, I am quite afraid of going back to the way I was a few years ago, but I'm not about to starve myself - there are still so many restaurants to try! Besides, starving makes no sense for a foodie, especially one whose mood depends on her blood sugar level. Instead I try to hit the fitness room regularly for both weight training and cardio. I'm hoping to have good gains with my weight training before we leave NYC in a month's time.

Oh, the woes of a foodie...

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Three years



Wow, has it already been three years since we got married? To celebrate the occasion, we had dinner last night at Café des Artistes, supposedly one of the most romantic dining spots in NYC. I hear that wedding proposals is not uncommon in this restaurant, whose dishes also don't come cheaply. It is also quite a historic site having opened its doors more than 90 years ago.

Indeed, there was a romantic ambience in the air - the lights were dim and the wall murals of the 'wood nymphs' (aka naked chicks) were probably meant to help the mood. Service was exceptional and attentive, as to be expected from a restaurant of this class. As you probably can tell from the name of the restaurant, Café des Artistes serve French cuisine. We ordered our drinks (a spicy tomato juice aka "virgin mary" for me and a ginger ale for Robbie) and flipped through the menu. We opted for their prix fixe (fixed price) menu: a 3-course meal for $35 (excl tax, tips etc).

Both the first course salads (Summer Salad and Watermelon and Prosciutto Salad) were nice, but nothing worth noting. The Shrimp Linguini was quite salty and almost too cheesy, and while the Tarte Flambee (with fromage blanc and sweet onion) was nice, it was not too memorable. The dessert course proved to be the best part of the dinner: Exotic Mousse Cake and an assortment of Sorbets. The mousse cake's mango, passionfruit and pineapple flavours mingled well together, and the smooth and rich texture was quite pleasant on our tongues. The sorbets were berries, pear and guava, and all three were delectably smooth and almost creamy-like with the taste and textures of the fruits they were made with.

Our bill came to $100, including tips and taxes. Our verdict? Given the restaurant's reputation (and prices), we felt that the food was its shortcoming. However, if a romantic atmosphere is what you're looking for, then Café des Artistes excel very well in that. For me, the taste of food is far more important than atmosphere, service and even cost, so this experience was unfortunately not so unforgettable. We had a lovely time though, and enjoyed a leisurely walk through Central Park after dinner.

Tuesday 28 August 2007

Total Lunar Eclipse

I hardly ever post announcements on my journal, but I thought this was a worthy event. There will be a total lunar eclipse on the night of Tuesday 28th August '07. Pacific areas will get the best views of the moon turning red including America, Japan and Australia. SpaceWeather.com has more information on this event, including a map. If I calculated properly, the eclipse will occur very early in the morning in NYC (5am) and in the evening for Australia and Japan.

Malaysian @ Skyway, New York

If I had to name one cuisine that we missed the most in the past year living in Japan, it has to be good authentic Malaysian food. Whilst I adored the beautiful subtlety of Japanese cuisine, I craved the spicy, robust and greasy flavours that I grew up with (both in Malaysia and Perth). In my travels around Japan, I still have yet to encounter one restaurant that serves Malaysian food. And I've lamented over the fact that 'Chinese' food in Japan leaves the tastebuds a lot to be desired. This, of course, explained our frequent Malaysian and Chinese eats when we returned to Perth for a visit after a 9-month absence.

One of the specific requests I made from the ever-so-helpful NY-ers on egullet was a recommendation for a gooood Malaysian restaurant. Indeed, after being told that Malaysian food is not very well represented in this city, and after a disappointing visit to the first Malaysian restaurant we saw in NYC, we almost despaired at not eating good Malaysian chow before our return to New York. When an egulleter recommended Skyway Malaysian, our hope was restored! We even had the opportunity to meet the said egulleter, Michael, whose knowledge of the Malay language, food and culture put me to shame. (And he lived in Malaysia for only 2 years in his tweens! Compared to me who was born and raised there for 11 years! I'm ashamed *hangs head*)

The restaurant was medium size, unpretentiously decorated, and friendly service (I think it helped that Michael is a very frequent patron). Prices were good and serving sizes of the dishes were generous, as should be expected from a Malaysian restaurant. The taste of the food came close to what we were looking for, although none of the dishes ordered was particularly spicy (perhaps they thought we couldn't handle the heat?). We ordered Assam Sotong, a large Hot and Spicy Crab (the most expensive at $22), Ipoh Roast Chicken and Beef Satay to go with all three varieties of rice we also ordered: plain, chicken and coconut (the coconut rice is very fragrant and tasty).

The squid in the Assam Sotong was really tender, had nice vegetables like okra (aka 'ladies fingers') and the 'assam' sauce was the right balance of sweet and sour although it wasn't as spicy as I'd expected it to be. The crab was messy eating, but was really deliciously fresh (we saw it alive just moments before).

Assam Sotong; Hot and Spicy Crab:


The Ipoh Chicken, with the sauce, was a nostalgic reminder of my childhood. And the Beef Satay was very good - perhaps the best satay I've had outside of Malaysia. I think the satay sticks were meant to be an appetiser dish, but it was the last dish to arrive at our table. It was well worth the wait though.

Ipoh Roast Chicken; Beef Satay (came with 6 sticks):


The bill came to $50, which is quite reasonable to feed three (two of whom were men). We were actually surprised that we managed to finish all four dishes, but I was pretty full! And we also fit in some bubble tea at Michael's favourite bubble tea cafe after lunch too!

You know, eventhough Malaysian cooking may not be as pretty as French or Japanese food, it's damn good tucker and doesn't cost very much!

Friday 24 August 2007

Indian @ Chola, New York

Indian cuisine is one of Rob's many favourite food to eat, and we may have found an Indian buffet spread that beat our old favourite in Perth. Apparently, Chola is Zagat-rated as one of the top three Indian restaurants in NYC. I wasn't even aware Chola served a buffet lunch when I booked a table for Sunday lunch, however, after being seated, we were asked if we wanted the buffet or order from the menu. Naturally, we wanted to first find out the price of dishes and see if the buffet would work out to be a better value. A brief look at the menu showed that main course dishes were between $15 and $25, which are quite reasonable. I wanted to have a good dining experience here, and thought that perhaps the buffet was not going to provide for that, but when I asked the floor manager which dishes he'd recommend, he said the buffet "is the best". When we asked for the price of the buffet, we thought we'd heard him wrong when he said $13.95 (excl tax) - but when the bill came, sure enough, the buffet deal was cheaper than one main course dish!

It's a nice "fine-dining" restaurant, and 90% of the staff in the restaurant were Indian. The floor manager had a very thick Indian accent, so I have no doubt that the food is authentically prepared. Service was also good. I'm not sure if that was because I took out my camera to take photos of food (after asking for permission, of course), but I really cannot fault the service at Chola. The buffet table was also closely monitored and any nearly-empty containers (for lack of a better word) were always topped up.

The buffet spread included the usual favourites like Lamb Rogan Josh, Madras Chicken, yummy Chicken Biriyani and Gulab Jamun (sweet dumplings which they called cheese dumplings, but back in Perth it's called milk dumplings). There were also numerous dishes that I wasn't familiar with (the Indian names didn't help much either) like Sambhar and Dal Makhani (black lentils). Including all the rice and breads, there were at least 15 hot dishes.



At the table, we were given a few things not available on the buffet table like Tandoori Chicken, grilled naan bread (oh, how I tried so hard not to fill up too much on the naan), Masala Dosa (crepes filled with potatoes and peas - which was delicious, by the way), Indian-spiced crispy munchies and a really yummy chickpea/yoghurt/tomato-ey salad-like dish. We also ordered Mango Lassi which was very tasty in all its mango-ey goodness.



As we all know, Indian food is so rich that it didn't take long for us to fill up quick to the point of bursting. Man, how many times have I said we ought to avoid buffets? The bill came to around $40 (excl tips) - I'd honestly expected to spend more than that for much less food. So why is this better than our experience at Red Turban? There was more variety in the flavour of the dishes - more different types of spices and ingredients were used, and there were also many dishes that we tried for the first time. Oh, and it's also cheaper!

Indeed, all this good eating is responsible for the extra 2kgs I'm carrying around since coming to New York three weeks ago. It's just as well that I've been able to get back into weight training for the first time in the past year - hopefully my body is utilising all this eating to form muscles, not fat!

Thursday 23 August 2007

Three weeks gone in NYC

Has it already been three weeks since we arrived in NYC? Still, it's not long enough for us to be familiar with the following:
*Keeping to the right hand side of the footpath
*Tipping
*Not using the metric system. Pounds? Miles? Inches? What are they?

At least they speak English here!

It's been quite wet in New York this week, and it's actually quite chilly. Kinda hard to believe it can get this cold during summer - yesterday's maximum temperature was only 15degC! That's colder than an average winter day in Perth! Forecast for the weekend is for really warm weather though, so I really ought to enjoy this cool weather while it lasts.

It's strange not having to work - this is my first time in 3 years not working full-time since graduating university. I thought I'd probably get bored, but so far I've managed to keep myself quite occupied and happy. However, I still have not touched my Japanese books nor used my guitar very much - I was hoping that I'd have more time on my hands to study more Japanese and learn more tunes to play on the guitar! Not working also means that there is the expectation that I'd get all the boring errands done. Rob used to work at home, and I was always asking Rob to do the errands that needs to be done during working hours since his schedule used to be a lot more flexible than mine. Now he's on the other side, asking me to get all these things done!

When Rob's working during the week, I spend a significant amount of time planning our weekend activities and researching worthy restaurants to visit (I'm relying a lot on NY egulleters). It's like before when I'd plan our itineraries for our travels, except now our 'travels' occur every weekend! You'd think that two months is a long enough time to explore the city, but Rob only has weekends free, and that is not really that much time if you think about it. I'm determined to try as many different cuisines as I can before returning to Japan!

Anyway, since I'm updating my journal, I thought I'd post some shots I took on our visit to Central Park on Sunday. Central Park is massive for a city park, and we only had time to see a part of Central Park.

Lots of horse-pulled carriages in Central Park. Unfortunately, it means that the smell of manure abounds in the air particularly around the borders of the park where a lot of pick-ups and set-downs occur and horses just hang out.


A part of the park called "The Mall"; and a big fountain at "Bethesda Terrace"


Lots of people hanging out around the fountain, which means it's a great place for a couple of guys to find audience for their stunt shows:



Considering my initial apprehension about staying in NYC for two months, I find myself quite enjoying my stay in NYC. Come October, I will be sad to leave (I think a big part of this has to do with having to deal with jet lag again).

Wednesday 22 August 2007

Classy French @ Chanterelle, New York

Chanterelle is a French restaurant that comes highly recommended by NYC foodies. It's a classy restaurant, with great service, wonderfully presented dishes, and (*ahem*) a nice price to boot. With plenty of raving reviews and recommendations, I did not hesitate to book a table for two. Alas, being a popular restaurant, I couldn't book dinner for Saturday on such a short notice, so lunch it was. As with many restaurants, the lunch menu at Chanterelle is rather limited, but the lunch "prix fixe" (i.e. fixed price) meals are a great way to sample some of the restaurant's dishes, at less than half the price.

The restaurant is beautifully decorated, with a romantic feel enhanced by the lace curtains and chandeliers. It would be a perfect venue for a traditional wedding. We were treated with attentive and professional service, and we were made quite comfortable. For $42 per person (not including tax or tips), we received three courses, including coffee/tea and truffles to finish off. One thing we have noticed when dining in New York is the NY-ers' tendency to name the main course entrée (this Wikipedia entry verifies this observation). Appetizer is the term used to describe what we know as entrée. Interesting, no? Photos of Rob's meal are a tad blurry - I think Rob wasn't as concerned with good camera-work as he was with eating.

After placing our order for drinks (tomato juice for me and ginger ale/soda for Rob), we were served with an amuse bouche - salmon mousse with salmon roe atop black bread. (I nicknamed this one oyako-pan (Japanese for "parent-child bread"), since it's like oyako-don, a Japanese dish of chicken and egg on top of rice - both the 'parent' and its egg are served together.)



My appetiser was Soup of the Day, which was a cold zucchini soup with chickpea croutons. It was very tasty for what seems to be a vegan dish, and the crunchy chickpea added a nice contrasting texture. Rob's appetiser was Crisped Soft-shelled Crab with Wilted Aragula and Citrus Vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was refreshing and complemented the slightly oily crab quite well. Mmmm yummy :)



My entrée aka main course was Spiced New Zealand Snapper Escabeche, served on a bed of green beans and a delicious sweet and sour salsa. The liquid surrounding the food was a delicately flavoured oil. The snapper was plainly presented with a crisp spicy coating, and the flavourful ingredients did very well to dress this dish up. Rob's entrée: Brined Berkshire Organic Pork Loin with Coarse Mustard, Muscat and Ginger, with leafy greens and hash.



Then it was dessert time! I had an assortment of sorbets, with peach, apricot and raspberry with a lovely butter cookie. You can taste that real fruits were used in each of the flavoured sorbet. I liked the texture of the apricot sorbet the best - the fruit flesh lends a nice gooey creamy feel to the sorbet texture. The other dessert on the prix fixe lunch menu was a Local Sweet Plum, Almond and Crème Fraîche Tart with Port Plum Ice Cream. Rob was concerned that the alcoholic taste would be quite strong in this dessert, but he needn't worry. I just loved the play of colours on his dessert plate.



And if there weren't enough sugar and fat in our desserts, our waiter served us some white and dark chocolate truffles to indulge in. Rich, chocolatey goodness:


Rob thought that the serving size was too small for him, whereas I thought it was just right. But then again, I do have a smaller appetite than Rob. Overall, this was yet another lovely dining experience in NYC, with many more to follow, I'm sure.

Sunday 19 August 2007

Rollerblades: new hobby?



On our day out today, after a lovely lunch at a wonderful French restaurant (review to follow), we went shopping for and purchased some pricey "high end" (in the words of the sales assistant) rollerblades. We are getting tired of walking, but buying bicycles to get around in New York seem quite impractical since we have to think about transport back to Japan (where Rob's bike is awaiting his return). Plus we can easily carry our rollerblades on the subway. And it's something we hope to use to get around in Tokyo.

So, our new hobby will be rollerblading. Ought to be interesting because neither of us have ever rollerbladed before, and Rob gets nervous whenever we go ice-skating. But practice makes perfect, right? And who knows - rollerblading may become something we do a lot and actually enjoy doing, much like riding our bicycles everywhere and becoming a bit obsessed with our bikes when we bought new bicycles a few years back. Wish us luck and not so many falls and injuries! (We're spending a few hours in Central Park tomorrow, and we'll be breaking our new toys in.)

Friday 17 August 2007

Colourful "melting pot" city

One of the things I'm loving about New York city is the diverse ethnicities and races I see around me. Of course, something like that is to be expected in a city this large, but after coming from a relatively homogeneous scene in Japan, I readily embrace this city of 'melting pot' of cultures. I've mentioned briefly before about New York's massive Chinatown; nearby is Little Italy, which actually used to be a lot larger, but was eventually (inadvertently?) taken over by the Chinese. Rob tells me that this was what happened back in Perth. I guess the migration of Chinese to other countries helps the population problems in China, huh? But I digress. Other than Chinese and Italians, there's also the Spanish Harlem, Little Brazil, Korea Way and K-town, just to name a few. If you think about it, it's cute how NYC have certain districts of types rather than a huge sprawl and scatter (eg Financial District, Theatre District, Shopping District, Meat-packing District and so on).

After our pizza 'dunch/linner' on Saturday afternoon, we took a slow (long) walk back to our apartment. We went through Little Italy, which is basically a section of Mulberry Street lined on both sides with Italian restaurants, gelato and sweet carts plus lots of people traffic. The street was really crowded, and surprisingly long.

Coming in from NoLIta (North of Little Italy):


One of the first street carts we encountered sold nougat and various Italian cookies/biscuits. We love nougat, but we've never had the opportunity to have a non-packaged, presumably freshly-made, nougat. They were selling for $8 for 1/2 pound and that was the amount of nougat we ate in a span of two days! And I think I ate the bulk of it too since Rob didn't pack any with him to work. We also tried their aniseed, nuts and lemon-drop biscuits, which were yummy, but not as yummy as the yummy nougat!




Prior to our 'dunch/linner', we were in the Chelsea area, so following one of the many useful advices from NY eGulleters, we took a look at the Chelsea Market. We browsed through many of the bakeries and shops, and the rugelach at Ruthy's caught our eyes. Neither of us have had this pastry before, and curiosity caused us to buy four types to try. Quite delicious, and I'm sure it won't be our last encounter with this Jewish pastry. We tried the original, chocolate, apple and choc-raspberry - I reckon the original one tasted the nicest.

A whole shelf devoted to rugelach at Ruthy's; and the ones that found new homes in our tummies:


We also bought some bread at Amy's Bread, a favourite with the New Yorkers (the semolina fennel and raisin bread is pretty good). At Amy's, we could also watch the bread being kneaded, shaped and baked.



And at one of the Italian goods store, we saw a huge 3kg jar of Nutella! Oh, how I miss Nutella - we'd boycotted it a few years ago when I'd spied "partially hydrogenated oil" in the ingredients list (you know, with trans-fat being bad for you?). However, a bit of research reveals that Nutella made in Europe do not have that evil substance, which explains why the chocolatey Nutella stuff in that store was less viscous than what I'm used to. So three cheers for re-introducing (European) Nutella into our diet!




There's still a lot of New York to explore, lots of restaurants to try, so keep an eye on this livejournal for updates!

Tuesday 14 August 2007

Pizza @ Lombardi's, New York

New York-style pizza is apparently quite well-known (so says Rob), and Rob said I had to give them a try. From my brief research, the main difference between the pizza culture in New York and that of in Perth (and perhaps all of Australia) is the preference for coal-oven baked pizzas over the traditional wood-fired pizzas. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most of the pizzerias in New York have coal ovens. I personally prefer wood-fired pizzas, but I was game to give coal-fired pizzas just for the sake of comparison and experience.

I searched online for the best places to go to for pizza in New York City, and found that Lombardi's in Manhattan's NoLIta (aka North of Little Italy) received consistently good reviews, and is voted on several sites, forums and books as one of the best 10 pizzerias in New York. Lombardi is also the first pizzeria in the United States, having been established more than 100 years ago in 1905. So then naturally, Lombardi's is also perhaps the most popular pizzeria in NYC on a weekend.

Popularity = crowd, and with that in mind, we opted to drop by mid-afternoon at 16:30pm to avoid both the lunch and dinner crowd. Upon arrival, it became obvious that this place also has a 'mid-afternoon' crowd, as we had to wait 5-10minutes for a table. Crazy, huh? It's not a space issue either, because the restaurant is huge, and there must be at least 3 different dining areas. Considering the size and crowd in the place, service was still quite reasonable (hence the waiter received his tip). On the way to our table, we walked past the bustling kitchen, so after we'd placed our order, I snuck a few shots of the action in the kitchen. Here you can see them use the coal oven, which I assume to be the original one, judging from the "1905 Lombardi" emblazoned in the tiles.



The menu was simple. The standard pizza has fresh mozarella, San Marzano tomato sauce, romano and fresh basil as the toppings. Two sizes: an 18" ($17), and a 14" ($14.50). And a list of 10-15 toppings that you can add such as tomatoes, meat balls, anchovies, peppers, more cheese etc ($3 for 1 topping, $5 for 2 toppings, $1 for each additional topping). We ordered a 14" to share with 3 toppings: olives, grilled peppers and pancetta (Rob actually wanted more toppings, but I told him that it might be best to keep it simple).

As you can see, the 14" was pretty big and was plenty for the both of us:


Thumbs-up points: the fresh mozarella was really good, and it's obvious that high quality ingredients were used. The toppings weren't as greasy and oily as what I'm used to, and we attributed that to the fresh mozarella. The base was dense and chewy, whilst the crust was baked crisp and chewy - a nice contrast. The pizza base was thin, so you can taste the flavours of the toppings.

Thumbs-down points: Unfortunately, thin crust also meant that it was quite soft towards the centre of the "pie", not helped at all by the fresh mozarella which has a higher moisture content than other cheeses. I like to pick up and eat pizza slices with the crust first, but because the centre was so soft, removing the crust would remove the slice's source of stability and make it impossible to eat without making a mess. So to eat the crust first, I had to put the pizza slice on the plate and use a knife and fork. I'm not a big fan of soggy anything (that's why I don't really like bread pudding and badly made filled pastries like profiteroles and eclairs) so this was the main negative IMHO.

Overall, I liked the pizza. Good quality ingredients were used, and I like the fact that it wasn't greasy at all. And it wasn't really that soggy - the good points far outweigh the negatives. However, after trying this coal-fired pizza, I still stand by my preference for wood-fired pizzas. Give me crisp, crunchy pizza crusts and bases anytime!

Saturday 11 August 2007

First Broadway musical experience

Rob came home yesterday evening from his office with tickets to watch a show in Broadway. It was also our first time using the famed subway in NYC. The Broadway theatre district was very bright with lots of lights and huge screens on buildings. The people traffic in Broadway on a Friday night was indeed a sight to behold, yet annoying.

The show is called Avenue Q, a comedy musical that won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2004. Most of the characters are puppets, and the musical is said to be inspired by Sesame Street. But far from it being a kids' show, this hilarious musical deals with a lot of adult issues, and is certainly good for lots of laughs. This entry in Wikipedia gives a good outline of the musical. The cast was a group of very talented people, both in terms of acting and singing. We both enjoyed it very much, and was very lucky to have gotten free tickets ($100 each!) to the show.

Mini-lasagne

With my love for lasagne (see this post for a teeny spiel on it), I'd always wanted to try making it from base; on the other hand, I didn't want it to become one of those it's-so-simple-to-make-let's-not-get-it dishes when we go out to eat at Italian restaurants. And truly, like most pasta dishes, it is quite a simple affair making lasagne (if you don't make the lasagne sheets by hand, of course). Simple, but it does take a little bit of time since you have to make the meat sauce, bechamel (white sauce) and then assemble them together in layers. Rob loved it, so the effort was well worth it. Don't let the time factor put you off because it is quite yummy.

The meat sauce was basically my spag bol recipe without all the veges. And bechamel is basically a simple roux made from butter/oil, flour and milk. I bought the only lasagne sheets I could find on the shelf at the groceries store: "No boil lasagne" - these ones cook with the moisture from the sauce inside the dish, so you gotta make sure that the sheets are covered with sauce (unless you like crunchy lasagne, which actually wouldn't be a bad recipe idea!). Since there are only two of us, I made the lasagne in single serves using ovenproof bowls. This recipe is for 2 servings, and the quantities can be doubled or tripled (or more) to fit into a large oven dish.


Ingredients

meat sauce
250g mince meat (of your choice)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
a splash of milk
1x410g can of crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon sugar (to cut the acidity of the tomatoes)
salt and pepper to taste

bechamel
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
a pinch of ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

dried lasagne sheets (as needed)
shredded mozarella cheese (again, as much as needed)


Method

meat sauce
1. Prepare the meat sauce by sauteing the onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat for a few minutes until softened and cooked.
2. Add the mince meat and milk, and cook while stirring until the meat is browned and has absorbed the milk.
3. Add the crushed tomatoes and sugar, bring to a boil and let simmer for 15-20 minutes.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

bechamel
5. At this point, preheat oven to 180°C.
6. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan over medium-high heat.
7. Add the flour and cook while stirring for 1 minute. Remove from heat.
8. Slowly add milk, stirring until the mixture is smooth.
9. Return to heat and continue cooking while stirring for 5 to 10 minutes or until mixture comes to the boil. Add a pinch of ground nutmeg to the white sauce, and season to taste.

assembling
9. Put 1/3 of the meat sauce at the bottom of two ovenproof 2-cup capacity bowls, then top with a layer of lasagne sheet.
10. Spoon over half the remaining meat sauce, dividing equally between the two bowls.
11. Top with one-third of the bechamel and spread evenly between the two bowls.
12. Repeat the pasta, meat sauce and bechamel layers.
13. Top with the final layer of pasta and spoon the remaining bechamel over the pasta sheets, spreading evenly.
14. Sprinkle (liberally) with cheese.
15. Bake the lasagne, uncovered, for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pasta is tender and top is golden.

Yummo :9



(Unfortunately it's not a very photogenic dish. And Rob came home 2 hours later than expected, it was sitting for a long time in the warm oven so the top was very brown)

Wednesday 8 August 2007

Sights around downtown Manhattan

So, looks like taking melatonin is not much help for my jet-lagged induced insomnia. Well, here's to hoping I will not get sick from the lack of sleep! In the meantime, I may as well give you a look-see into what we got up to last weekend.

On Saturday, we mostly explored around the city on foot. Our main goal for the day was to see Chinatown, which is a fair distance from our apartment on Wall Street. First, I brought Rob to the South Street Seaport, which I'd encountered the day before. It's a historic site with lots of restaurants and specialty shops. We encountered a pretzel specialty shop, and I had a taste of my first NY pretzel - a much larger, softer and sweeter version of the ones I'm used to in the pretzel packets I used to buy in Australia. This pretzel cost us $2.50 - compare to the pretzel you can buy from the street stands for $1. It was pretty nice though, and Rob said it was much better than the one he had on his first trip to NY.



There are a few ships docked at this seaport, and this photo is of the Peking.


On the way to Chinatown, we saw a large building in the distance which we'd correctly guessed was the City Hall.


Photo 1: In one of the parks along the way, we saw squirrels! So cute! Haha, I did the typical tourist thing and took photos. The locals must've rolled their eyes at the sight of me taking photos of a very common creature.
Photo 2: A small section of Chinatown, which is home to over 150,000 Chinese, making it one of the largest Chinese communities outside of the Orient. Streets were packed, and I've never seen such a large Chinatown before!



Malaysian food is not very well represented in NY, so when we saw a Malaysian restaurant called New Malaysian, we stopped by for a bite to eat. We ordered hofun (called 'chowfun' here) and nasi lemak along with some ice chendol and ice lychee. I wasn't very impressed with the food - both dishes were too salty, and the sambal in the nasi lemak was made like a sweet and sour condiment! Furthermore, the drinks were made far too sweet - in fact I got mine changed so that it wasn't too sweet, but it got a bit OTT after a few sips. The meal was such an overload on my tastebuds, but I guess if that's what the demand is, that's what they'll have to give. Serving sizes were generous, as to be expected in US. Not so authentic, and I miss good Malaysian food! We paid about $20.



It was a good day, considering how tired we were from jet lag. Hopefully this weekend we'll have a bit more energy!