Cooking Coq Au Vin

The man came home early one afternoon and started his research on coq au vin.

Ha! After all that interest in the coq au vin, I knew he was going to try cooking that at some point.

The Cooking Bible was laid out on the table. Except that it was opened to the page of chicken cacciatore. Obviously distracted by another chicken dish, he was trying very hard to decide which to cook.

In the end, coq au vin won. Into the dutch oven the chicken went.

I wasn't particularly looking forward to dinner. Chicken. Good lawwwd. At least, the sauce would cover up all smells and taste, hopefully. At least there were carrots and mushrooms.

Mixed together and slow cooked, the mirepoix, seasonings, mushrooms and all tasted appetizing and fabulous. There were potatoes and buttered basmati rice to go along. I was quite a happy girl without trying the meat. I poked around for chicken skin. Ha.

But the man made me take slivers of meat. Warily, I chewed it. Stewed in the sauce, the meat absorbed all its aromatic flavors and wine. So the meat didn't taste like chicken. Thank goodness.

I kinda liked coq au vin without the chicken. When slathered onto potatoes and basmati, that rich broth made such a wonderful combination for a homecooked meal.

Dancing At Home Club (After)

Don't know why the guys brought their mega-ass cameras with all the fancy add-ons for a simple pub gig.

Well yea, we haven't caught up in a while. But still it doesn't explain the huge bags lugged around. Was fun! There was a flash for my GrD too! Woots.

There was a queue to get into Home Club! Wah. We didn't realize so many people would come to see a cutie pie on the acoustic.

It was kinda nice to see a quiet gig at the club where we could actually talk in a more or less normal volume. Every time I'm there, ear plugs and shouting are necessary.

She is no Amanda Palmer. But better a night with a gig than none at all.

Not that I know anything about Emmy The Great. But as a singer-songwriter based in London, comparisons are inevitable to Zee Avi whose name is making the rounds on the internet now and many say her sound is very Morrisey. (Kikare + many friends, thanks for links on Zee Avi! Amazing how we guys share similar taste!)

Emmy The Great started off pretty tentative. Her voice was strangely shaking. It evened out and the confidence grew only in the final couple of songs. Rather listenable. We felt more like attending a gig at the uni pub. But well, this is what club gigs are about- if we're anywhere else, it's the same- £5 or USD10 for a first drink and discover if the act happening in there is any good.

While I'm not so into cutie sweet music, all the fresh stuff are great for the scene. And really, what's stopping our Singapore girls from doing the same? Except they will not be one of a knd like Amanda Palmer. :D

Photos In Hard Copies

I almost never print out hardcopy photos now. It seems kind of obsolete.

All the photos I have are stored in thumbdrives and external drives. Soft copies rock. I could do lots of magic with them on photoshop. It's so convenient to send them to friends if necessary. If the disks crash and the soft copies are lost, so be it. As much as I admire beautiful photos, angles, contrast, lighting and computer wizardry, I've learnt not to be so sentimental over them.

My camera takes more photos of inanimate objects than humans. Say for instance the recent vacation, out of like 2000+ photos taken, probably only <50 captured smiling humans.

However, I decided that printing photos at home would be too much of a bother. There're ink, paper, quality, alignment and whatnots to consider. I cannot be bothered. If hard copies are needed, I'd rather go to a printing shop or something, stick the thumbdrive into the machine and print all that I want.

That was exactly what I did last weekend. Went to the shops to print out plenty of photos to snail mail them to Aunt E in London. Aunt E loves photos in hard copies. So I extracted out a couple shots for her, squished them into 2 separate envelopes and popped it into the postbox.

Aunt E called to specially tell us that the photos are now safely sitting in her living room. She sounded so happy! I'm glad I took the effort. I didn't realize that such a simple thing as receiving photos would mean so much to her.

Album Launch :: Another Sunday Afternoon

(Click above edm invite for a larger image. Come pop in for a mellow night! And please hor, no need to wear yellow. :P For the band's facebook page, click here. For myspace, click here.)

OEH YOU THREE, don't say I not friend enough okay.

Le Bistrot 2009

The man had been flooded with work. His days hadn't ended earlier than 10pm. Tonight, he was determined to leave the office by 8pm. He asked me to go make reservations for dinner at an unpretentious quiet restaurant and I immediately knew where to go. This restaurant had slipped from the radar. It wasn't till riendel's recent tweet about Le Bistrot that I remembered it.

The man was extremely pleased with his huge serving of côte de bœuf that came with a rib bone. Le Bistrot made it beautifully medium rare, tender and very tasty. It's not easy to get a good côte de bœuf. Even The French Kitchen doesn't do it so well. We've eaten there a fair numer of times. We always know if the kitchen's in a hurry because it's telling in the food.

Yes, this little bistro serves better food than the crap at Parisian sidewalk cafes. I really don't like stylish Paris for this reason. I prefer to drown in gastronomic delights in Marseille and Lyon.

I love the dessert of dark chocolate mousse with cherry compote. Perfectly balanced betweden sweet-bitter and tart with a tinge of brandy, those fresh cherries made dessert so elegant.

By the end of a most wonderful dinner, the moon had risen a fair bit. This renewal moon was full, luminous and round. The night was cool and a breeze stirred. It inspired a stroll along the Kallang River to burn off those calories before the drive home.

Managing For Abundance, Not Scarcity

Last week, I read an article in Wired Magazine online. By coincidence, the colleagues talked about it too and stressed on how our IT systems aren't efficient enough. I rolled my eyes. That is exactly what I thought from day one and never saw any need to change that impression.

Our IT department seems to be made up of reactionary individuals who micro-manage and scrimp on everything. By itself, that isn't a bad thing. Financial prudence is good. IT systems take up a huge chunk of the operating budget. On one hand, lagging behind technology isn't cool; on the other hand, it's not possible to be playing catch up all the time, (Try catching up on missed tweets over a 48-hour period) but we need to know how to judiciously spend on upgrading the necessary aspects within our systems. Which essentially means, we need the IT department to be able to identify the big picture, not go burrowing into small holes and proudly proclaim them as 'achievements'.

I always send out random emails to the friends. (Not chain mails!) Like deep, meaningful articles. Ooof. Or crap jokes or B-grade videos, usually. (But you gotta admit Buffy kicked Edward's ass totally.)

So I sent out this mid-week hello email to the friends. Of course I also complained about my pathetic 55MB limit for office email inbox capacity. By the time 16MB is taken away for colors, anti-virus and watnots, only 39MB of usable space remain. It absolutely riles me when people send emails with attachments that are bigger than 1500kb. The last time someone sent me something with 20,000kb, it gave me ulcers. Archiving works and I do that religiously- immediately, daily. Heck, I work from my archive so that at any one time, the inbox has only 10 emails.

One by one, the friends saw it fit to reply to the mid-week hello email. They seemed to take GREAT delight in letting me know their (work) inbox quota. I realized most get above 150MB of inbox space. SOME get 500MB.

What??!! It is so NOT FAIR!

Finding Coq Au Vin

The man was insistent on having coq au vin for dinner. He had no time to look for it in Paris and there were too many distractions in London to focus on it.

He found it on the regular menu at Chalk. The chef promised to make him a good one for the evening. So we gathered the friends to the restaurant for dinner.

Full of casual easy vibe in a great locale, Chalk is one of our current favorite places for a good meal. The food is full of hearty homemade goodness. My only complaint- the portions are too big!

The man pronounced the coq au vin as delicious. The meat was supremely tender and simply fell off the bones. Somebody in the kitchen really paid proper attention to the sauce pan to cook the chicken in wine for 2 hours.

The breads and butter could be better, but I'm not complaining. We've too few choices of good bread and butter here. We notice that so many restaurants are using chervil now. As a garnish, chervil is indeed the new parsley. Its liquorice taste lends food a unique flavor.

Everyone's food was excellent. Likewise, the veal shank ossobuco was lovingly slow cooked to perfection. The friends were really impressed by the starter of ox tongue salad. My stomach space was filled up by saffron risotto and the niçoise salad.

A very good evening indeed.

Omakase @ Tatsuya

We could eat Japanese food everyday. Of course we have to sit down to a meal at Tatsuya. By now, the servers already know our individual taste, and even my preferred seat so that the light falls properly for photography purposes. Heh.

I stared at the snail. The kitchen probably just dipped it in boiling water and chucked it into the fridge to chill. Whatever. The snail looked so fresh till it felt so wrong. There was no way I was going to eat it.

It wasn't done in garlic and butter, but the man lapped it all up. He loved the taste. Quietly, I leaned over to the man and whispered to him to eat my snail as well.

"With pleasure, madam." He grinned. The carnivore even had a glint in his eyes. Watching him stab the snail to take it out of the shell whole made my stomach churn. Eioow.

I settled for the milder bamboo clam.

Omakase @ Kome

During our trip, we paid so much attention to dips, French cuisine and tasting menus at Michelin-starred restaurants that we did not bother with any sort of Japanese food- not even Nobu since we're already familiar with Nobu Fifty Seven.

The tastebuds and curiosity were all satiated while on vacation. So upon return to Singapore, we wanted another set of flavors and textures to keep the palete interested.

It was lovely to be taken out to Japanese dinners, starting with good-as-usual omakase at Kome with a bottle of Bowmore 17 y.o. There were so many courses till I forgot how many. Too stuffed. Luckily I only had a granola bar and green tea for lunch.

Till the next one, people.