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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

Friday 26 September 2008

Hoisin Marinade for Salmon

This is a very simple marinade that I use when I want a simple no-fuss but tasty fish dinner. It goes really well with salmon fillet, but would also work well with other types of fish and chicken and even pork. I call it hoisin but I use tian mian jiang (tenmanjan in Japanese, also known as sweet noodle sauce) which is similar to hoisin sauce except it's made with fermented wheat flour and is not as spicy as hoisin. A little internet research on tian mian jiang revealed that this is the proper sauce to serve with Peking duck, and not hoisin sauce. By all means, use hoisin sauce in this marinade recipe because tian mian jiang is not as easily obtainable as hoisin sauce is in most western countries (quite the opposite here in Japan). It's easy to whip up, quicker to cook, and definitely not as labour intensive as the bulgogi bibimbap I prepared last week! Rob loves it, more than the popular orange-miso salmon recipe on Epicurious that I'd tried out before.

To cook the salmon, I use the broiler equipment that is ubiquitous in all Japanese gas stoves, but panfrying, grilling or baking should work fine too.

Hoisin Salmon

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or minced
2 teaspoons chopped ginger
1 tablespoon tian mian jiang sauce
1 tablespoon mirin
A sprinkle of chilli powder
A tiny dash of sesame oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 salmon fillets

Method
Mix the marinade ingredients together, and coat the salmon fillets with the marinade. Let it marinate for half an hour unrefrigerated before placing skin side down in the broiler (you need to flip it halfway through, and this way you'll get a crisp skin). Be sure to place all of the marinade bits on the salmon before cooking - the ginger and garlic bits gets crisped in the cooking process which gives the fish a lovely flavour. It takes about 10 minutes to cook (5 minutes on each side) on high. Enjoy with creamy mashed potatoes and salad.

The finished product on the broiler grate:

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Homebaked wholewheat bread

The weather in Tokyo has started to cool down (thankfully!) so I've started using my combi microwave oven for baking and roasting again. As mentioned before, I've been making and baking bread from scratch ever since moving to Tokyo about a year ago. Having a breadmaker would be ideal, but there is just no room anywhere in this present apartment to place yet another kitchen appliance (for this same reason of lack of space, we don't have a rice cooker!). We'll be moving to a slightly bigger apartment in a few days' time, and hopefully then I'd be able to invest in a breadmaker and have lovely fresh wholewheat bread to eat at home! Here's the recipe that I use (if you've never baked bread before, this is a great tutorial for beginners):

Wholewheat bread

Ingredients
1.5 teaspoons dry active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/8 cup warm water (~37degC - a drop of water on your hand should not feel too hot)
1.5 cups plain bread flour
1.5 cups wholewheat bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter

Method
1) Dissolve the sugar in some water and proof the yeast. In about 5 to 10minutes, the yeast solution should be bubbly (if not, it could mean your yeast is too old, or the water is too hot or too cold).
2) While waiting for the yeast to bloom, measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and mix well. Melt the butter in the remainder warm water.
3) When yeast is ready, add the yeast solution, the butter and water to the dry ingredients in the bowl, and mix briefly with a spoon or spatula to combine the ingredients.
4) Remove spoon/spatula and begin kneading the mix. Add more flour if the dough is too wet to form a dough, or add more water if it's too dry and crumbly.
5) Knead for about 10 minutes until a smooth dough is formed.
6) Shape the dough into a ball shape, cover with a tea towel or clingwrap and let it rise until double in size (1 to 1.5 hours).
7) Punch the dough down, and shape and place into loaf pan if using one. Cover and let it rest for the final rise, which should take about an hour to double in size.
8) Bake in a hot oven (200degC) for approximately 40 minutes.

Saturday 20 September 2008

Bibimbap @ home

I have a tub of gochujang (a spicy Korean paste) sitting in the fridge, which I'd occasionally use but not often enough. So in a bid to use more of this Korean paste, I decided to try my hand at making bibimbap from scratch. Googling for bibimbap recipes brought up Bobby Flay's recipe on the Food Network website, and after a brief check with a couple of other websites, I decided that Flay's recipe was probably not a bad one to base my recipe on. The ingredient list is long, but I had most of the ingredients already in my kitchen, and the Japanese pears (aka "nashi pears" which sounds funny because "nashi" means "pear" in Japanese) are in season at the moment so most of the effort of this dish was having to individually stirfry the vegetables. You can of course opt not to use bulgogi beef, but a simpler beef recipe such as the one given on this website. In fact, you can do anything with this dish - use leftover vegetables, bbq meat, or don't use meat, whatever you like - it's your bowl, your dish, your food. I used vegetables that would give plenty of colour in the bowl.

Note: This is not exactly Flay's recipe as I've modified quantities and some ingredients (e.g. I substituted rice vinegar for the lemonade in the bulgogi marinade).

Bibimbap

Serves four

Ingredients

Bulgogi and marinade
400g beef (I used sirloin steak), thinly sliced
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 Asian pear (nashi), grated with juices
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon raw sugar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon chilli powder
black pepper
1.5 tablespoons rice vinegar

Gochujang paste
4 tablespoons gochujang (available at Korean grocers)
1 tablespoon sugar

The rest of the ingredients
Cooked rice
1 carrot, julienned
200g Bean sprouts
Leafies (I used hakusai aka Chinese cabbage), thinly sliced
Brocolli, cut into small pieces
6 shiitake mushrooms
4 eggs, fried sunny-side up
Sesame seeds
Sesame oil

Method

Bulgogi
Mix the marinade ingredients and add marinade to the thinly sliced beef and turn to coat. Marinate in the fridge for at least one hour or preferably overnight. Cook beef slices for 1 to 2 minutes per side on high heat in a frypan. Remove from heat and set aside until ready to assemble the bowl.

Gochujang paste
Mix gochujang and sugar well.

Vegetables and eggs
Stirfry the bean sprouts, your choice of leafies, greens and shiitake individually in some sesame oil and season with salt. Set aside until ready to assemble.

Assembling the bowl
Put cooked rice in four fairly large bowls. Place bulgogi (with juices from cooked meat) and vegetables on top of rice separately. Put egg on top. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and drizzle with sesame oil if desired. Prior to eating, mix all ingredients together with some gochujang paste to taste.

Thursday 18 September 2008

Chinese @ Cafe Eight, Tokyo

When Rob's collegue recommended this Chinese restaurant in Nishi Azabu (next to Roppongi Hills), I honestly thought that the main attraction of the place was the amusing inappropriate decor of breasts, buttocks and a phallic gong in the restaurant, and not the food itself (although they did say the food was pretty good). However, when Shan and Leigh gave their thumbs up for the food at Cafe Eight, I reconsidered my misgivings about this restaurant.

Certainly, the restaurant's interior makes one wonder about the choice for such decorations. I did take shots of said decor, but I think it's not very appropriate to post them on my blog. The service is as close to Chinese-style service as you can get in Japan - not much of the typical Japanese polite hospitality, more of the abrupt kind of service typical of not-so-high-class Chinese restaurants. That was fine by us since the food was so affordable! Cafe Eight's specialty is Peking duck (3680yen for a duck course), but since there were only the two of us, we didn't go for the course. As typical of Chinese restaurants' menu, there are a huge variety of dishes to choose from, with prices starting from as little as 200yen each.

With so much to choose from, but having no particular cravings or idea of what we felt like having, it took us awhile to choose a couple of dishes. We settled on Mapo Tofu (750yen) and Garlic Prawns (1280yen) to go with Chinese Bread (210yen) and some rice. We got the bread mostly because we were curious what they were (we were told by the waitress that it was "Chinese Naan"). The bread tasted just like the pancakes my mum used to make on some weekends for breakfast, which for some reason didn't taste like western-style pancakes. Perhaps it's because it doesn't contain baking powder, eggs or milk. The bread was good with the mapo tofu gravy and the garlic sauce. The mapo tofu was yummy, but quite oily. It was made with kinudofu (silken tofu) and a bit of pork mince which made it nicer than the one we had at Kakyoubei (it also wasn't as oily as Kakyoubei's). The garlic prawns were tasty and fresh but made for very messy eating - I went through so many serviettes!

Chinese Bread:


Mapo Tofu and Garlic Prawns:


Good, affordable, no-fuss authentic Chinese food.

Monday 15 September 2008

Baby Shower

A few months ago, when S suggested throwing a baby shower for me, I must admit that I didn't exactly jump at the idea. I'm not really one who likes attention nor being fussed over (hence never had birthday parties - my 21st was a small dinner with close friends and family) but S insisted she wanted to do it, and that it'd be fun. I only had a handful of people I wanted to attend, but a few couldn't make it because of the long weekend, and one of my close friends got pulled away at the very last moment for something she couldn't get out of. So it was a small gathering, but heaps of fun! Our hostess made delicious madeleines (plain- and lemon-flavoured) and kuro-goma (black sesame) cupcakes with matcha (green tea) frosting - impressively all were baked in her little toaster oven! She also did a fantastic job of organising fun games for our entertainment, some of which are described with photos below.

Food!

Games! We were all given paper dummies (i.e. pacifiers) to wear, and we lost our dummy if we mention the word "baby":

The person with the most paper dummies at the end wins. We also each had to bring baby photos of ourselves to play "Guess-the-baby-photo":

More games!! We also played pictionary and here's hubby drawing "spoiled child" - although he did a brilliant job, no one could guess that difficult one:

Another game was "Guess-the-baby-food", and it was not surprising that none of us got any of them correct! I can't believe people actually feed that stuff to babies!!:

A shot of the girls:

And with the wonderful host and hostess:

Thanks S (and L) for hosting this event at your gorgeous apartment! We had lots of fun :)

Thursday 11 September 2008

Revisiting old faves - sushi and Indian

Last weekend saw us revisiting a couple of favourite eat-outs in an attempt to enjoy these dining pleasures before bub's arrival in about a month's time. In Japan, unlike Australia, there are very few restaurants that admit children under a certain age, and choices to dine out with kids are limited to "family restaurants" like Denny's, McDonalds and a few other fast-food restaurant chains. I doubt that we'd have the time nor energy to dine out anyway for the first few months after the baby is born.

On Saturday, we went with friends to our favourite sushi restaurant in Tsukiji. Saturday was a good day for sushi at Zanmai - the o-toro (fatty tuna belly) was perfectly succulent, smooth and fatty (and not grisly and chewy like it sometimes can be), the Joh Anago (top quality seawater eel) was amazing as usual, the uni (sea urchin 'roe') was sweet with not a hint of fishiness, and everything else was as fresh and tasty as good sushi can get. It had been too long since our last visit (a month ago?). Friends of Kim who were visiting from America appreciated and enjoyed the sushi, and were pleasantly surprised at the total cost of their orders, because in the States, they'd have to pay more dearly for lower quality.

On Sunday, we had Indian food at our favourite neighbourhood restaurant, Nawab. Rob introduced this restaurant to his collegues, and they liked the food so much that they'd been back a couple more times. Although it's so close to our present apartment, it has been awhile since we dined at Nawab. We're about to move to a slightly bigger apartment in a couple of weeks' time, and we wouldn't be so close to Nawab then, so we decided to seize the opportunity to enjoy our favourite Indian restaurant once again. We ordered Chicken Biryani (1150yen) because I was in the mood for some, and the Ladies Lunch Set (1150yen) because it included two of the curries that Rob wanted. And, because Rob wanted to introduce me to this wonderful deep-fried Punjab bread called Bhatoora (500yen) - something he ate on one dinner occassion with his collegues a few months ago when I was still suffering from mild morning sickness and rich Indian food was the last thing on my mind - we placed an order for one. I was worried that we'd ordered too much food, and sure enough, our eyes proved to be bigger than our bellies (although at the end of the meal, our bellies were much bigger than before!). The Biryani was good with succulent pieces of chicken thigh. The curries in the lunch set were Dahl and Chicken & Cauliflower Curry, and they were scrumptious with the warm fluffy naan. The bhatoora was crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and very more-ish. Although we were already very full having eaten everything else, we kept picking at the bhatoora until there was only a small piece left. We were not disappointed and we walked out of Nawab satisfied and very full. And the great news is that when we enquired about bringing babies to this restaurant, their response was "Of course, we welcome babies!" This restaurant is a hidden gem and deserves more clientele on the weekends, but its location in this mostly business district means that it is more popular during weekdays with the working people than it is on weekends.

The salad that comes with the lunch set (but we got one each even though there was only one lunch set); and the Ladies' Lunch Set in which you could choose rice or naan, and includes a dessert which was fruit pieces in yogurt:


Chicken Biryani; and the crispy more-ish Bhatoora:

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Making Chai Tau Kueh

Not long ago, we ate one of my all-time favourite Malaysian food: Chai Tau Kueh which is a stirfried white radish cake made from giant white radish known as chai tau in the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, and daikon in Japanese. My dad makes a very good version of this dish, but unfortunately as with most Asian cooks, his recipe is only an estimate of this and that. I still remember Rob jotting down the recipe when my dad made chai tau kueh for us on his visit to Japan in March '07. Since then, we've been meaning to replicate this dish at home - or rather, Rob's been waiting for me to replicate this dish. Meanwhile I've been afraid to make a disaster of our favourite food because it is not an easy dish to prepare - unless you have the correct ratio of flour, daikon and liquid, you can end up with a too-firm or too-mushy cake. I think Rob finally figured out that it'd have to be something we do together, and opportunity came up three weekends ago for us to tackle this food project. We were lucky to get the correct texture (not too firm, not too mushy) on our first try, so the ratio of flour, daikon and liquid, and the steaming duration in the recipe should work.

This is just the basic recipe for making the white radish cake itself, and not the stirfrying process as we were not able to get our hands on all of the necessary ingredients for the stirfrying process. Extra seasoning can be added to the cake if you desire something like lo bak go (or luo bo gao in the Mandarin dialect), a dimsum dish of daikon cake containing dried shrimp and lap cheong (aka Chinese sausage). However, for chai tau kueh, the stirfry ingredients adds plenty of flavour and taste.

(By the way, just a bit of food trivia here. This dish is commonly called 'carrot cake' in English which is a misnomer because clearly it is not made from carrots. The mis-translation probably stemmed from the fact that part of the Chinese names for white radish and carrots share the same title. I'll use the Mandarin dialect as an example: white radish is called bai luo bo and carrot is given the name hong luo bo, with bai meaning white and hong meaning red.)

The finished product using the limited stirfry ingredients we had:


Serves 2

Ingredients
160g giant white radish (aka daikon/chai tau)
200mL water
120g rice flour

Method
1) Grate the daikon, add 50mL water to it and bring to a boil.
2) Meanwhile, pour the remaining 150mL water into the rice flour and mix well.
3) Combine the daikon mixture with the flour mixture and stir well to achieve a uniform consistency. Pour the mixture into a container (we used a round cake tin) so that a relatively thin layer (~2cm thick) is sitting in it.
4) Steam for approximately 20minutes or until the cake is set. Remove from steamer, let cool then remove the cake from its container.
5) Cut into small pieces.
6) It's now ready for stirfrying!

Thursday 4 September 2008

Haute Spanish food @ Sant Pau, Tokyo

To celebrate our four years, we splurged a bit on a lovely lunch at Sant Pau, one of the few restaurants in Tokyo to receive two Michelin stars. The owner and chef, Carme Ruscalleda, hails from Catalonia in Spain, and her other restaurant in her Catalan home town of Sant Pol de Mar has received three Michelin stars to date. She holds the honour of being the fourth female chef in the world to be awarded the coveted three Michelin stars. For some reason, Spanish restaurants are not as popular as French or Italian restaurants, so I've had little opportunity to eat Spanish cuisine. Hence I'm not very knowledgeable on Spanish food, let alone haute Spanish cuisine, so what I've written here is based only on the quality, presentation and taste of the food, and nothing about the authenticity of the dishes.

The open kitchen behind glass windows next to the restaurant's entrance:


The restaurant is located in central Tokyo, only about 15minutes walk from our apartment. It has an open-style kitchen (i.e. viewable to the public), which is great because I love watching in on the action and snapping away on my dSLR. You can also see the state of the kitchen, whether everything is clean and orderly. I must admit that I do hate being watched while I'm prepping and cooking, so I wonder how the cooks and chefs in the kitchen feel, especially when occassionally someone whips out a big chunky camera to snap away at them working? The interior of the restaurant is classy and sophisticated, with the perfect ambience for a romantic meal. The service was impeccable and faultless. The waitstaff were patient and very informative about the food we ordered. Our maître d' - Ms. Yasui - was very friendly, and she spoke excellent English and Spanish (and I assume Japanese is her native language) having lived in Spain for many years. At no point from the moment we sat down, did we feel rushed at all, and each of our courses were served in a timely manner. And since I was quite visibly pregnant, I received extra attention and care from the staff and was given a nice cushion to make my seat more comfortable.

The table setting with our drinks (non-alcoholic sangria for me, extra-dry ginger ale for Rob), l-o-n-g crispy breadsticks, and olive oil, butter and salt for homemade bread. The crusty bread and butter were so good, and our bread plates were quickly refilled as soon as it was empty:


From the menu, we could choose a-la-carte dishes (priced handsomely upwards from 6,800yen per dish), or go for the set menu which costs 8,000yen for the Menu Ejecutiv and 15,000yen for the Menu Pont (only at lunchtime), 18,000yen for the Menu Gastronomic and 22,000yen for the Menu Degustacio. I liked the description of the dishes in the Menu Ejecutiv, so that's the one I ordered. Rob took a bit more time to decide whether to go for a-la-carte or the set courses, but in the end he went for the Menu Pont. Since our orders had the same items for some of the courses, I will describe and post photos of the dishes per course rather than separate them into their respective menu titles. There were so many dishes, so do forgive me because I have forgotten details of some of the food.

Tapas #1 - cold salmorejo with scampo; Tapas #2 - beef carpaccio:


The first course was Delightful Tapas: The Micro Menu, which consisted of four little dishes:
- Salmorejo, escamarla i salvia - cold Spanish-style tomato soup (similar to gazpacho) with scampo (aka Norway lobster, Dublin Bay prawn or langoustine). This was refreshing, and the piece of scampo was fresh and sweet.
- Carpaccio de bou - carpaccio of raw beef slices. The beef had a delicious smoky flavour, and it was garnished with macadamia nuts, tiny amounts of grated daikon and herbs which gave a nice contrast of texture and flavour. This was perhaps my favourite out of the four tapas.
- La pera farcida de festa Major d'estiu - Stuffed 'pear'. This was quite cute and artistic - unfortunately I cannot remember what the 'pear' flesh tasted like, but the 'pear' seed was beef meatball, the 'stem' was chocolate, garnished with a mint leave and actual pear sauce. Good balance between sweet and savoury.
- Pastis de formatge, salsa verda de mel - Cheesecake with honey parsley sauce. Interesting pairing of cheese and herb, but it worked. It was a bit rich for me as a first course, but this was Rob's favourite of the four tapas.

Tapas #3 - meatball-stuffed 'pear'; Tapas #4 - cheesecake with honey parsley sauce:


Next came the starters. Rob's Menu Pont course included two starters, and mine came with only one, but after the plates and utensils for the first starter were cleared from the table and clean ones were laid out for Rob's second starter dish, the waiter also laid out a plate and extra utensils on my side to make it easy for me to taste Rob's additional dish. The first starter was Coca Sotsobre (upside down coca) which comprised of aji (horse mackeral), tomato and almond "ajoblanco". "Coca" is apparently a type of Spanish pizza, popular in the Catalonian region. I supposed the two flat pieces of crisp bread topping the plate is the reason for the title of this course (i.e. upside down coca). The two sauces - tomato and almond ajoblanco - were ingeniously contained in separate sacs (presumably made from using a combination of sodium alginate and calcium chloride, a popular method for making innovative edibles such as 'fruit caviar' and 'liquid ravioli'), and it was fun bursting each 'yolk' to have with the raw fish. Both sauces went well with the fish, but I particularly liked the garlicky ajoblanco.

First starter: Upside down coca with horse mackeral - as served; and close-up of the 'sacs' of tomato sauce and almond ajoblanco:


Rob's second starter was Escamarla Risotto (I don't have the exact title of the dish). The seafood broth was very umami, and the scampi (aka langoustine/Norway lobster/Dublin Bay prawn) was sweet, firm and juicy as only fresh prawns can be. It was good.

Second starter (in Menu Pont): scampi risotto:


The third course was fish, and Rob and I had different items in this part of the meal. The Menu Ejecutiv (mine) fish course was Seabass with fig and chutney sauce. The seabass fillet was cooked in fig leaves, brought to the table - still wrapped in the leaves - to be shown to me, then plated on a trolley table right beside our table. The fish was perfectly cooked, tender and juicy. The chutney sauce was slightly sweet and mildly sour which was a great accompaniment to the seabass. It was a well-excecuted dish.

Plating of my seabass; and seabass with fig and chutney:


Rob's fish was Amadai with curry sauce, nuts and spinach cake. Amadai is Japanese for "sweet sea bream" although it is technically not a sea bream but rather a red tilefish. Whatever it is known as, it is a very flavourful fish, and in this dish, the fish was presented with crispy skin yet tender and moist flesh which was a nice textural contrast. The curry sauce was mildly spicy, and it went surprisingly well with the fish. The 'spinach cake' was quite spongy, but I thought it didn't really do much for the dish other than providing another texture. The roasted pinenuts sprinkled around the plate gave a lovely crunchy aspect to the whole dish. Thinking about it, this course was really a dish of texture.

Crisped skin "sweet sea bream" with curry sauce, nuts and spinach cake:


The fish course was followed by meat, and both our meat courses came with Pluma of Iberian Pork with eggplant and coffee vinegar. According to our lovely maître d', the pluma refers to the part between neck and shoulder of the pig. It was succulent, flavourful and quite fatty, which meant that it was quite rich and although the pieces were pretty small, I needed Rob's help with finishing off my portion. I loved the eggplant, although Rob didn't really enjoy the usual mushy texture of eggplants (it's not one of his favourite vegetable).

Juicy morsels of Iberian pork:


After all that food, we have finally arrived at the dessert course. With Menu Pont (Rob's), you had the choice of having either two desserts or one dessert and the cheeseboard. Because I was already feeling quite full, I was thankful that my dessert course came with only one dessert. Rob went with the cheeseboard option, titled The Cheeseboard with Contrasts, and once again I was given a plate and cutlery so I could taste Rob's cheeses. There were altogether five types of cheese - French, Italian and Spanish - and each one was paired with a small morsel of something sweet. The strength (i.e. stinkiness) of the cheese increases as one progresses from the left side of the plate to the right side, and I felt that the sweet-somethings became more important as the cheese got more stinky. Details of the cheese and their pairings are provided in the caption of the photo below. I'm a fan of mild cheese, so I enjoyed the first two and fourth cheese. The third was goat's cheese, but I personally feel that it should have been placed fourth because it was pretty strong. The last one was the strongest, most foul-tasting cheese either of us have ever eaten - and that's saying a lot because Rob has eaten a wide variety of cheese. It was no wonder that such a small piece was served.

The cheese table was brought to our table to show us the uncut hunks of cheese. On the plate, from left to right: French Comté (cow) paired with vegetals amb vinagreta d'albercocs (vegetables and apricots); French Petit Agour (sheep) paired with escuma de remolatxa i vi dolç (peach espuma/foam); Italian Robiola Fia (goat) paired with poma cuita amb ametlla torrada (apple and almond); French Roblochon (cow) paired with cabell de xiribia amb panses (parsnip and raisin); and Spanish Cabrales (mixture) paired with financier borratxo de moscatel amb mel (muscat-soaked cake):


My dessert was Chocolate with Saffron, which contained two types of chocolate (a fondant and perhaps ganache) flanking saffron-flavoured ice cream. The chocolates were rich and decadent, pleasantly offset by the refreshingly floral saffron ice cream. Rob's dessert was Ikebana (ikebana is the name of Japanese flower arrangement), which was beautifully presented and garnished with real flowers, and the main flavours were coconut and mint which complemented each other quite well. The funny thing was that we both preferred the other's dessert, so we did a swap after a couple of bites.

Chocolate and saffron dessert:


Mint and coconut dessert:


Dessert doesn't mark the end of the meal - tea/coffee with confectionery does. To begin the final course, we were served with polo de piruleta, peach and cherry flavoured ice on a stick resembling a small lollypop. Next came xupito de formatge i taronja, a cream cheese and orange milk pudding - cream cheese and orange are an excellent combination of flavours. Finally out came a platter of delightful little bites which were not only pleasing to the palate, but also to the eye. They were all innovatively prepared, and they all tasted good, but our favourite was the chocolate crumble ball, which was very flavourful and contained crunchy little bits in them.

Cream cheese and orange milk pudding:


and the platter of sweet little bites:


Close-up of the little bites: left to right - bombo wasabi (wasabi-flavoured white chocolate with black sesame seeds); crumble de xocolata blanca (chocolate crumble); marshmallow d'oli d'oliva (olive oil flavoured marshmallow); sable breton (butter biscuit); xoco-croc, cafe, Bailey's (chocolate, coffee and Bailey's); gelatina de fruita vermella (fruits jelly). The middle glass held cruixent de pega dolça i sidral (some type of cedar-flavoured stick):


And with that, we come to the end of a lovely meal. Service was excellent, the food was great and the company (i.e. Rob) was wonderful. Sant Pau is a good choice for celebrating special occasions, and unfortunately the price tag makes it too impractical to visit regularly.