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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

Thursday 17 September 2009

Our Cooking Project #5: Strawberry Cheesecake

Last weekend, we had the honour of spending time with a gorgeous Japanese family at their beautiful home. We met this lovely family almost two years ago on our trip to Hakone, and we kept in touch and have met up a couple of times. It's great having these cultural encounters as we can exchange and share more about each others' culture and language. They really are a wonderful gracious hosts and we all enjoyed the company along with homemade temaki sushi lunch. The two little girls have grown so much, and they had fun playing with our 11 month-old.

The lovely home prepared spread. We loved the tasty chicken salad, and the fresh seafood. It was fun eating our individual temaki sushi as we made them:


Rob and I prepared a Strawberry Cheesecake as our humble contribution to the meal, and we followed this recipe I posted up almost four years ago. I would have ideally used fresh strawberries to top the cheesecake (as done by Rob's mum here), but it is not winter, the season for strawberries in Japan (strange, right? Strawberries at their peak during winter), so I made a glaze using gelatin and the remainder syrup from the can of strawberries. We also can't get granita biscuits here, but the Carr's Whole Wheat Crackers was a very good substitute.





We are off to the airport in a little while for a trip to Malaysia and Sydney for two weddings in my family two weeks apart, so I won't be able to post anything up for a couple of weeks or so. Please do check back in a few weeks time as I will be sure to have lots and lots of photos to post about Malaysian food and other eats we will have.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Vietnamese @ Vietnam Frog, Tokyo

I seem to be having a lot of lunches with my friends lately, haven't I? Last Friday, I met up with Kim who I haven't seen since last Christmas. In that space of time, she'd finished her third year contract with the JET program in the rural Noto (where we first met as newbies in the program three years ago), and had found a teaching position in Chiba at the exact same school I taught at when we first moved to Tokyo two years ago. It's actually kinda freaky how it worked out like that.

We'd planned to go to K-town to have some Korean food at a favourite restaurant, but the 11 month old boy got his first fever a couple of days beforehand, and although he made good and quick recovery, I didn't want to go too far away from home. So we headed instead to Vietnam Frog in Shiodome City (same building as Rob's office), which is significantly closer to home than Koreatown is. Kim has quite an extensive knowledge of Vietnamese food (she hung around a lot of Viets back home in the states) so I asked her choose the dishes to order. The waitresses were donned in the traditional Vietnamese dress, and I'm guessing the interior was Vietnamese-style, but Kim said that the menu is very Japanised. She saw a few dishes that bore some resemblance to the authentic version and we ordered those that she said were good when prepared the authentic manner.

The Bánh Xèo (Vietnamese crepe) was delicious - crispy pancakes stuffed with slices of fatty pork, shrimp, bean sprouts and cabbage served with lettuce and a vinegar dip. Kim said that usually more variety of green leafies are eaten with this dish, but the bánh xèo was pretty good in her opinion.

Crispy delicious Bánh Xèo and a close up of its innards:


We also ordered the Beef and Mushroom Stirfry (I didn't catch the Vietnamese name that Kim mentioned), which was your standard stirfry dish of beef chunks with piman (green Japanese capsicum/pepper) and enoki mushrooms in an oyster-sauce based gravy. The beef was tender and flavoursome, but not really anything to set it apart from other Asian-style stirfries. The other main dish we got was the Vietnamese Curry (if I'm not wrong, it's called Cà Ri Gà in Vietnamese). To be honest, I had no idea the Vietnamese also has curry in its cuisine - this is how little I know of the culture (I don't know why, but I didn't think Vietnamese cuisine contained anything spicy). This one wasn't very authentic - the karaage-style deep fried chicken was a dead giveaway that this was a very Japanised version of Vietnamese curry. According to Kim, the gravy tasted a little bit like Vietnamese curry, but also very much like Japanese kare. It was tasty, but it lacks a certain spicy oomph, and the deep fried chicken was the dish's weakness. Now I'm curious to try authentic Vietnamese curry!

Stirfry Beef; and Vietnamese Curry:


We couldn't resist ending the meal with something sweet, so we shared a tall glass of multi-layered Black rice and Mung Bean Che. The crunchy black rice grains didn't taste like it had been cooked, and Kim said it was probably just soaked to soften it. It provided a nice texture to the dessert. It also contained cubes of banana and sweet potatoes in a sweet coconut milk base. It was yummy, but I'm still very partial to the Malaysian ais kacang.

Che:


Although this wasn't a very authentic experience into the Vietnamese cuisine, it was a good experience because it has opened the door for me to cuisine beyond the typical and ubiquitous pho. And catching up with a good friend is always a plus.

Saturday 12 September 2009

Our Cooking Project #4: Olive and Rosemary Focaccia

We're not doing a bad job at keeping this cooking project alive, are we? Last weekend, Rob and I once again joined forces in the kitchen to make this Olive and Rosemary Focaccia at home. I had a look at a few focaccia recipes, but this time I decided to make things easier for me and just stick to one recipe rather than adapting my own one from several different recipes. The Olive & Rosemary Focaccia recipe on the taste.com.au website seemed relatively simple to follow, with a relatively short list of ingredients.

Since there were only two of us eating this, we halved the quantity to make a smaller focaccia, used bread flour instead of plain flour, and didn't bother with blooming the yeast because we used the instant type which was put directly in the dough. We also didn't have fresh rosemary leaves and used dried rosemary instead, which we mixed into the dough (rather than sprinkle on the top as suggested in the taste.com.au recipe), and then we sprinkled a mix of dried "Italian herbs" (sage, basil, oregano) on top of the dough prior to baking. In addition, we halved the amount of salt specified and didn't sprinkle salt on the dough. Other than these variations, we didn't change much from the recipe. Our focaccia turned out really well (was salty enough too), and it was so delicious that there was not a crumb of it left the next day. Certainly not for the carbophobic!



Olive and Rosemary Focaccia

Ingredients

310ml (1 1/4 cups) warm water
2 teaspoons (7g/1 sachet) dried yeast
2 teaspoons caster sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
450g (3 cups) plain flour
1 teaspoons sea salt flakes
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves (or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried rosemary)
2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs (sage, basil, oregano)
20 pitted kalamata olives

Method

1. Combine the water, yeast, sugar and 2 tablespoons of oil in a small bowl. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 5 minutes or until frothy.

2. Place flour, sea salt and rosemary in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in yeast mixture. Use a wooden spoon to stir until combined, then use your hands to bring the dough together in the bowl.

3. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Brush a bowl with oil to grease. Place dough in bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 45 minutes or until doubled in size.

4. Preheat oven to 200°C. Brush a 20 x 30cm Swiss roll pan with 2 teaspoons of remaining oil. Punch down centre of the dough with your fist. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 2 minutes or until dough is elastic and has returned to original size. Press into the prepared pan. Cover with a damp tea towel and set aside in a warm, draught-free place to prove for 20 minutes or until doubled in height. Use your finger to press dimples into the dough. Brush with remaining oil and sprinkle over dried herbs. Press the olives into the dough.

5. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden and focaccia sounds hollow when tapped on base. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Monday 7 September 2009

Revisit: Tom Yum @ Tinun, Tokyo

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with my heavily pregnant friend for lunch at Ikebukuro. Last year we would meet up every Tuesday night for Lifegroup at this location, and I was the pregnant one, so it was kinda strange to be in such a familiar surrounding yet during the day with her being the pregnant one instead. I now belong to a young mums' Lifegroup so we don't get to meet up very often, and this lunch was a long overdue catch-up session. It was a very last minute thing and we didn't have any plans on where to lunch, so we just headed to the restaurant level of the Metropolitan Plaza to have a look-see. We weren't wandering for long before we came across her old favourite, Tinun Noodle House, and we made ourselves comfortable there.

I've previously written about Tinun before, and nothing has changed. I ordered the Prawn Tom Yum with kuey teow noodles, but I'd forgotten that it came with only one prawn. I should have gone for the deluxe version like I did last time, where for 200yen extra I could get three extra proteins in it (pork, wonton dumplings and egg). Nevertheless, I enjoyed the kuey teow noodle soup for all its spicy sourness, and this time I had my dSLR with me to take a proper photo. Yum :)

Tom Yum Noodles:

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Celebrating our 5 years, @ Harmony, Tokyo

Where has the time gone? It really doesn't seem that long ago when Rob and I, on a fine but chilly Perth August day, stood on the grass at the Quarry Amphitheatre and wedded in front of our beloved family and friends. We have experienced so much together in our years together, and I do not regret a single moment - yes, even the not-so-happy times. As I had reflected on our anniversary last year, every year had been exciting times for us, and this year is no different as we see our gorgeous little boy thriving really well and giving us such joy and delight as he approaches his first birthday. At this point in my life, I feel blessed and very fortunate, and I don't know what the future holds for us but I certainly do wish for many more blissful years with Rob and my little family.

This year, we celebrated the occasion at Harmony Specialty Restaurant at the Royal Park Shiodome Tower. We needed a nice place that would serve good food for an occasion but would also be fine with babies, and I figured that the lunch buffet at a good hotel would satisfy those points. Of course I would prefer a fine dining restaurant, but unlike New York, many fine dining places here would not accept reservations with babies. The restaurant has several options to choose from when making your booking including set courses and a-la-carte. The buffet option is very popular on weekends; in fact I think Harmony is just a popular choice in general because it was packed! There are two lunchtime services - 11:30am-13:00pm and 13:30pm-15:00pm - giving diners 1.5 hours to eat all they can, which is more than enough time even when you have a baby with you too.

Rob and I took turns looking after/feeding the baby and grabbing food. 1. This was a view from our table of the queue at the buffet spread - can you see Rob? (Hint: look for the only white dude looking in my direction.)
2. My turn at the buffet table - open kitchen to the right
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At 24th floor, the restaurant has quite a view of the city, and I imagine the night lights would be just gorgeous (not to say that the daytime view is unattractive, but Tokyo IS a concrete jungle after all). Service was professional and there was always someone to ensure our water glass is always full. Food was constantly being replenished because there were so many diners, so the food didn't get a chance to get old sitting on the table.

3. View from our table - I did say concrete jungle, right?
4. Towards the end of the first lunch service, there was no queue at the buffet table and I had a good view into the open kitchen. I like seeing where my food gets prepared (the hustle bustle and how clean it is) and I reckon more restaurants should adopt this concept
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The food was of good quality, and I can't think of any dish that I was unhappy with. Everything was prepared well, and I like the effort put into presenting the food nicely, even though it is buffet-style. There were a few dishes prepared and cooked to order, like the steak and the house specialty, the Foie Gras Omelette.

5. First plate - Hors d'œuvres and salad: (clockwise from the left most glass) Scallop & Pasta Tartare Sauce, Ginger-flavoured Pudding with Water shield, Japanese-style Salad with Seaweed, Mozzarella and Tomato on Bread, Thai-style Noodle Salad with Prawn, Smoked Salmon, Kabocha (pumpkin) Salad and Garlic squid with Brocolli. All was tasty, especially the pumpkin salad.
6. Second plate - hot dishes: Cold Pumpkin Soup (because I couldn't fit it on my first round), Vegetable Doria (creamy rice bake, a Japanised Italian dish), Steamed Salmon with Ravigote Sauce, Basil-stewed Pork, and Sauteed Shrimps. The doria was delicious in all its carby goodness, the stewed pork was really tender and the shrimp was bursting with briny juices and had a lovely light crispy coating.



6. Harmony's specialty dish - the Foie Gras Omelette: chunks of rich buttery and fatty duck liver inside an egg omelette and drizzled with truffle sauce. That's one way to glamourise the humble egg. It was yummy, but oh-so-rich and I was glad I shared the omelette with Rob otherwise it would have been a shame to waste such an expensive dish.


There was quite a wide range of dessert available, and thankfully most of them were not too rich or heavy which allowed us to indulge in more than we really ought to. Just as we were about done eating our hot food, the omelette chef disappeared and in his place was another chef sautéing pineapple chunks in a frypan. It turns out that he was preparing a Piña Colada-style Dessert (sans alcohol): caramelised pineapple with coconut ice cream complete with mango sauce. On the dessert table, there were fruits, sorbet, pastries, egg pudding, banana creme, coffee jelly, strawberry shortcake, and so on. We particularly enjoyed the plum tart. In the tea and coffee corner, there was a coffee machine to make several types of coffee such as espresso, cappuccino and "American blend" coffee (?!). Perhaps I should start gaining an appreciation for coffee so I can take advantage of the coffee service at nice places like Harmony.

7. Piña colada Dessert - a tropical delight!
8. Round one of the dessert selection (sorry, I'm not a dessert aficionado so I won't even attempt at labelling the desserts)
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It was a good dining experience, and I ate too much, like I always do at buffets despite chastising myself every single time for overeating (to tell you the truth, I'm actually quite scared of buffet-style meals because I just don't have discipline around food, and would much prefer a set course meal). The 10 month old was a well-behaved angel, and we all had a good time.