Xmas and a Birthday lunch at The Line

Every year during the Christmas period, the usual pre-U class mates will try to meet up for lunch. Ya, that's how "young" we are - from pre-U not JC ;-(. The lunch was today at The Line and it happened to be one of the guys birthday also! Happy Birthday G! We all had an enjoyable afternoon doing the usual catching up and teasing one another on our body shapes and recommending health supplements etc etc.

I usually do not go for buffet food but some food items were good. We all love the satays, laksa, cakes and cheese. And as usual with buffet, I am suffering from overeating .... sigh .....


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Blogging from iPhone

Just downloaded this iPhone application for blogging from iPhone. If you are seeing this, it means it's working! ;-). Now I found 2 ways of blogging via iPhone - one via email n now this via this application.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Indian Lamb Stew

It may not look neat. But this is the best lamb stew I ever eaten.
Made by a friend's Sri Lankan maid. Always look towards this dish
whenever we are invited to eat. Fantastic with champagne.

Bottarga

Two years ago, I was introduced to a Greek version of bottarga.  Bottarga is supposedly a poor man’s version of caviar but it is by no means “cheap”.  This Greek bottarga is produced from grey mullet roe. It is packaged in a “bar slab” and coated with natural bee’s wax.  It can be dehydrated and grated and thus can be kept much longer.  It goes very well with salad and pastas.  This is an “acquired” taste; either you like it or hate it – as with most delicacy.  In the mouth, it has lots of sea flavour (i.e. fishy ;-)) and at the same time full of berries.  I tried it on scrambled eggs and loved it.

Siglap

osh, Siglap area has changed so much. I have not been to this area for quite some years. There are now many eateries but it looks like the local food still attracts a lot more people. Need to check with my friends who stay around here on the good dining places. A number of condos is coming up. They are mostly low rise not like those at the nearby East Coast. It may be due to plot ratio. It's a nice area to live in.

Australia Trip - Nov 2009 – Part One

Ya, so sorrie. I have not been disciplined enough to keep up to date on this blog.  It has been a struggle to keep up with work and I have been kind of lazy.  Hope to put in a couple of entries this coming two weeks on my Aussie holidays last month.

We decided to go down south for our holidays as both of us have not been there for far too long.  It was also good that our buddies will be in Melbourne at about the same time.  Thus we decided to go to Sydney for the first week and cross over to Melbourne during the second week.

Trying to get SQ seats to Sydney was surprising easy and we managed to purchase two-to-go tickets for a good price.  It was a red-eye flight and after landing we headed straight to the train station to catch the 2 hour train journey to the Blue Mountains.

We stayed at Lilianfels in Katoomba for the 4 days that we were at Blue Mountains.  This is the most expensive hotel in the Blue Mountains.  The hotel is nice and is only a very short walk to the viewing gallery of the Three Sisters.  The hotel is old but is well kept and modeled after the “Victorian” style.  But I would like to try out the nearby Echoes Boutique Hotel which is more modern the next time I go there.  Echopoint has bedrooms that are right at the edge of the Blue Mountains.  Hmmm…wonder if there are earthquakes there.

We rented a car and drove ourselves to Jenolan Caves.  The drive took about close to an hour and I had to drive through relatively steep and narrow downhill roads when reaching Jenolan Caves.  I nearly thought that I had taken a wrong turn.  There were close to 10 different cave tours and they were all guided tours.  Looking at the rock formations brought back memories of my last cave tour over at Mulu National Park in Sarawak and there was at least some 15 years ago.

Other than Jenolan Caves, we spent the rest of our stay on shopping over at Leura, doing some tracking and exploring restaurants.

Though we stayed in Katoomba, we spent quite some time over at Leura.  We did not like Katoomba as we felt it was getting too commercial.  Leura is a small time and is very friendly.  It has just two row of nice little shops.  But these shops have their own specialties.  There is a Christmas shop that sells Christmas stuff all year round; a candy shop that stocks all kind of candies and a small bookshop that has the type of books that I like.

For food the locals know best.  I checked with one of the staff over at the Megalong bookshop to recommend restaurants that he personally will go and makan.  He recommended two places which turned out to be really nice - Cafe Bon Ton and Pins.  We loved Pins.  

This lovely little place is run by a Scottish husband and a Japanese wife – Simon and Keiko.  The style is Japanese-European fusion and the dinner we had was real pleasing both to the eye and taste. 

 I was quite surprised to find such quality of food at Leura; a small little town right up the mountains.  

Café Bon Ton is modern Aussie food and is also good. Compared to what we had at these two restaurants, the  two-hatters restaurant over at the Lilianfels Hotel was over-rated and we had to pay a lot more L.

We had take away roast duck and pork for lunch last week. It was
really good. Try them out if you have not ;-)