Sushi Yoshida

Last week, E and myself had lunch with E's friend, just back from a work trip in France. We decided upon Sushi Yoshida (tucked away in a lovely secluded area at 10 Devonshire Road), as we had heard good things about it from the Skinny Epicurean's blog and as it was also recommended by Singapore Tatler's Singapore's Best Restaurants.

We had the set lunch menus, which I have to say are priced at a rather premium rate of between $27 to $45. The chirashizushi set which I had, and E's sushi set both came at $38 each. But the quality was high, with very fresh fish, and a lovely slab of fatty marbled tuna (top left hand of photo above) which literally melted in the tongue!! The starter of soft-boiled egg with wasabi and dashi stock was a delightful surprise, being so simple and yet so delicious (and possible to try and replicate in the home kitchen). A good find indeed, though both of us agreed that Tatsuya seems to be a notch better.

Elephant Mooncakes

Have not been blogging for a long time due to an insane volume of work. Last week, I managed to take some time out to bake mooncakes (the Mid-Autumn Festival, where it is customary to eat mooncakes and drink tea, is coming soon). The mooncakes were okay, but not very succesful. Maybe I should stick to buying those from the big hotels next year! Apart from the traditional round mooncakes with wordings, i also made a couple of elephant and hippo mooncakes using cute cookie cutters just for fun.

Wrapup of a Busy Week

This week has been jam-packed with events and activities, some planned...others not.

1. Watched 2 food movies both set in a french restaurant: Ratatouille and No Reservations. GV Gold Class is quite an experience! Ratatouille is a lovely lovely movie, plot and characterization are just wonderful and nuff said abt the super-realistic rendering. No Reservations is a typical sweet American date movie, very good for destressing.
2. Ate 13 Oysters and 3 sea scallops at the Bar and Billiard Room, Raffles Hotel. Regretted over-eating in the car on the way back, as I felt quite sick.
3. Bought yet another pair of Ferragamo shoes at the sale. Hmm. That brings it up to 5 pairs. Checked out the Japanese steak chain Pepper Lunch for dinner that day, quite pleasantly surprised. Wouldn't mind another visit.
4. Fridge broke down (boo hoo hoo!) and bought a new fridge (yay!). Had to eat foie gras on toast for 2 consecutive breakfasts because I refused to let it go to waste.
5. Checked out NTUC Fairprice Finest at Bukit Timah Plaza. Not that impressive leh, but I did manage to find sea water from Japan! I guess it's for the purists cooks of ramen.
6. Ran 5 km in the Shape run.

Rather exhausting but exhilarating too. Think we'll have to take things a lot slower next week.

Run, Run, Run

I finally did it! Participated in and completed one of those mass 5 km runs, that is. Considering my low level of physical fitness (the most dreaded item in PE lessons last time was the 2.4 km run, and I always had to drag myself to the finish line in a half-dead state), today's run was a real accomplishment for me. Completed the 5 km in 44 min, not a great time, but I am happy that I did my best and pushed myself :-) It helped that I had the greatest cheerleader and supporter, who woke up at 5.30 this morning to wake me up, get my gear ready, make milo for me, drive me there and took lots of photos. (I am not in the photo above, by the way.)

Silkroad Restaurant, Amara Hotel

Lunch today with an old friend, at Amara hotel's Silkroad restaurant. I particularly like this place because of the excellent hand-made noodles (which I find better than Crystal Jade's) and modern (not stuffy) Chinese ambience which is not too pretentious either. The eight-treasure tea is a must try, especially to see the tea master showing off his skills in pouring the hot water from the long spout teapot. If one goes on Saturday night, there is a tea pouring demo with 16 different styles, very eye-opening!

Cheesecake for Mum's Birthday

I made this cheesecake late on Friday night / Saturday morning for my mum's birthday yesterday. She's not much into western pastries or food, but surprisingly likes cheesecake. I painstakingly wrote the letterings using melted dark chocolate and a toothpick, took about 10 minutes. This recipe which was passed to me by a lovely ex-colleague meiling, garnered rave reviews all round and requests for a next time. Will post up the recipe if meiling agrees! :-)

E and Chicken

I always get asked this question, "so who does the food preparation?". Answer is my lovely husband. I kid you not, E actually likes to cut up ("dissect") whole chickens from the supermarket and separate them nicely into their parts - ribcage, drumsticks, wings, breast meat. Hmm. Work-related syndrome? He does this every fortnight, when we buy a chicken to store.

So yesterday, E bought a chicken from the halal section but discovered mid-way through his "dissection" that 'the heart is still in there', 'the gallbladder is also not removed and is very large', 'lungs are not removed completely'. Methinks, it's good that E is the one doing all this stuff and not me then.

Nanbantei, Yakitori

Had been thinking about going to Nanbantei for some good yakitori (sorry, none of that tori-q nonsense please) for a few days, so seized the opportunity on Tuesday when E asked for dinner preferences. It was a good de-stressing activity from work to watch the chef deftly sprinkle salt over the grilling meats. I had the A-course ($34) with 12 sticks of yakitori, including a very yummy jumbo prawn and cherry tomatos wrapped in bacon. Our last trip here was more than a year ago, hope that we will not have to wait another year before finding an excuse to come back here again!

Nanbantei is at Far East Centre (? the one next to Grand Hyatt Hotel, with all the teeny bopper shops and fashion), on one of the top floors, either the 4th or the 5th.