whippin’ up a storm
when i was living “by myself”, it seemed awesome to whip up strange stuff. i think, it’s more that people found them strange than I actually did. it seemed second nature to chuck the “right” amount of this and that sauce in, and ingredients, and know that it would turn out good anyways.
When i moved in with Waife, i was always worried. Worried that he would laugh when i accidentally burn my food, or be utterly mortified at the way i cook or at my “recipes”. I started buying recipe book after recipe book - but failing even worse. some of them turn out to be the ugliest stuff that i have ever created, which makes them in a bigger FAIL category than burning stuff (and not to mention totally inedible).
The entire experience did teach me one thing though: vegan sausages WILL make me throw up, and throw up bad.
However, i bought the Silver Spoon, to learn Italian cooking. It did utterly overwhelmed me, i will tell you that much. and I have barely made past the pages based around risotto.
but what it did teach me was this: the most fundamental of cooking wasn’t learning “traditional” recipes or even getting through recipes. It was learning how flavours work with each other, build on each other and making a whole MEAL.
So, while i didn’t throw the book away, i just bought some chicken, broccoli, carrots and corn - and those were my bentos for last week.
they are not that great or inspired, but they are a good and slow start back into cooking for myself. i mean seriously? what the hell was i thinking. cooking.. for…myself. he doesn’t have to like it or be incredibly impressed.
Funnily, Waife was impressed with some of my efforts (some of those that didn’t join a bento box anyways), and even tried them. the great part of learning all these: he showed me how to do them correctly too. so it wasn’t entirely a waste ^_^
bouncyanticipating
some random updates.
The fire next door was quelled, about 1.5 - 2 hours after it started. we didn’t nose around to ask what happened, but it’s not hard to guess considering the amount of damage done to parts of the house. the insurance guys came around, as well as, i guess, the landlord. as of this moment, they are all gated up now but no one seems to be harmed.
i think a large part of me almost feared for my life, but i didn’t know what to do. i wanted to save my cat and my bunny, and it was the only thing that ran through my head, because i assumed, from the one glance, that it was our house.
Brisingr came out a few weeks ago, and i bought it and bought the TY beanie commemorative of it. I know, and understand many people who think that christopher paolini has about as much talent and originality as a piece of rock - particularly since his essential storyline is pretty much the same as half of the fantasy books out there.
but i like fantasies, and i like a “different” feel of personalities and names. and so, i still enjoy it. sucks though that i have hardly the time to read it.
I did find the time for some easy indulgence though. a little chat with Paingasm Mike’s friend pointed me in the right direction with regards to food, exercising and me. In the last year and abit, since i moved in with waife, it was like my brain and body, who were slightly starved in the year prior to that, suddenly realised they could eat. as a whole, i didn’t “know” how long this would last, and also, “I” wanted to enjoy as much food as i can since i can now.
so i ate and i ate.
So, it’s back to bento-ing for me. it’s a little hard to crack bad eating habits, but i am on… day 4 right now, so slowly, i should be able to ease myself back in. obviously, i am just “starting” back, so nothing’s quite as varied as they were growing to be previously. not to mention, it seems i have lost some of my bento equipments T_T
that’s not to say that i didn’t indulge, on a smaller scale.
as for what i would do after graduation, frankly i am not sure. alot of the jobs i want to do and am eligible for are “citizens only”. I kind of want out from hospitality, at the same time, with such a visa standing, where i am not sure of whether i would be approved or not, it’s also hard to find a full time job that would accept me.
furthermore, there’s lots of gray areas about some things, it seems pretty complicated. perhaps i will just stay put until my visa’s granted. ^_^
giddyeating out =/= having the best
The crisis has been averted! somehow, miraculously, my phone appeared! i went to pick it up off fyshwick - so now it’s in my hands! yay!
At any rate, tonight, we decided to treat ourselves for once and go out to eat. My laptop’s been fully paid off and now it’s mine, all mine! so this was my idea of a celebration.
The thing with eating with chefs is that they are incredibly sensitive to bad food (well they should be, they should know when their food is going bad/tastes off). The good thing about eating out with Waife is at least he doesn’t start a complain going - we just don’t go back to the restaurant ever again.
Since we live around the corner from Braddon dining area, we decided to drop by Kitschen. This is not a choice because, oh it’s so near. There’s 2 reasons behind that choice:
1) i have ate there once before, just a quick lunch, and the scallops for the scallops salad was so beautiful. and the pasta too!
2) delissio, the other restaurant just the next block down, was visited before. we had to do take-away as waife had just ruined his ankle then. our house is no more than 10 mins away from them. but by the time we reach home: the risotto turned out to be uncooked while the prawns for the same risotto were overcooked. The seafood pasta was off. all in all, a huge never-to-be-visited-again. The coffee and chai latte were extremely beautiful.
I forgot to bring a camera along again. here’s a few background to this visit:
- waife and i visited this restaurant before. The first time we visited, we waited 20 minutes before we got our entrees (chorizo salad and a soup) - where the chorizo was burnt.
- we both ordered lamb shanks off their specials board. 10 minutes after we have received our entrees, we were told that there were not enough shanks to do both our orders. we were, at that time, the second customers in the restaurant for a monday dinner shift. Waife, starting to look irritated, decided on something else.
- an hour after we have ordered, our meals finally arrived. it was nothing special that i could pay a lower price for and get it somewhere else. wasn’t that impressed.
the only good thing about it all was the canolli i bought at the end of the night. the service was pretty average: your usual hi, orders, 2 bite check, byes.
however, i remembered my wonderful scallop salad lunch there, not to mention later on i secretly bought waife pasta from the restaurant to which he found was surprisingly good. so tonight, i insisted he at least try the scallop salad. I even tried to suggest to waife that perhaps they were undergoing a change of kitchen staffs - shit happens you know.
It was embarrassing.
The salad of the scallops salad was burnt (it’s a cooked salad with pine nuts and bacon). worse yet, it left a lingering charred taste in all corners of your mouth as the bits and pieces lodge themselves around the niches and crannies of your mouth.
He ordered gnocchi, to be safe, while i ordered chicken fettuccine, also to be safe. His gnocchi was undercooked with little crunchy pieces of potato all over it, albeit the sauce was wonderful. my chicken fettuccine was bland, saved only by the crack pepper that i chucked over it.
I was so embarrassed to say the least. I was so insistent that it was a once off thing, and i was proven wrong. he was so unhappy at the end of the dinner, i didn’t know how to make up for it since he didn’t want to eat anything else thereafter.
mind you, waife thinks it’s rude to complain about a restaurant’s food so he wasn’t about to say anything. when asked, he mentioned that the sauce was beautiful, albeit the gnocchi was slightly undercooked, but so beautiful so wonderful etc etc.
but we won’t be back again. i will miss the scallops, because i do like scallops, but that lingering charred taste in my mouth - i don’t want it there no more - and i am one of those people who actually like burnt food!
The thing is, and this goes for Delissio too, food like risotto, fettuccine, gnocchi aren’t too hard but also aren’t too easy to cook. Once they have prepped for the night, all you have to do is to throw it in, 20 minutes or so, bam you’re out. when it gets busy, of course it would take longer - but you want quality too. Basics food like that are part and parcel of any italian restaurant.
The fact is, they failed in producing them at a minimum level of quality, and that bombed. the worst is having such a good restaurant location and fucking it up…. but hey, they have a decent clientele size. if the customers can’t tell good from bad, they can still prosper… no?
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