I’m rather enjoying the styling on the 2008 Mazda 2, which blows all the other entry level hatches out of the water in terms of aesthetic save the Renault Megane. Overall, it still wins simply because it’s way cheaper the Megane. Recent, good reviews of its driveability also make it hard to beat.
I just saw one parked on the kerbside near my place and the first thing I can say about it is it’s small. Not the most remarkable in size (the Honda Jazz in comparison is almost an SUV) but it makes up for that with visual character. The lines running down the flanks all the way to the boot door really make it look sharpish. Its like a Yaris wearing Dior Homme circa Hedi, only way better. Which reminds me of another plus. Its not going to be half as common as the stuff you see out on the roads. Interestingly, the design of the car is inspired by Enzo Mari’s Ameland paper knife which might somewhat explain the sleek yet aggressive lines. Certainly cuts clean for me.
The chinois, that conical sieve named after the Chinese hat of the same shape is one of the many essentials in a French kitchen. When I first learned that, I immediately thought about dumb black and white American movies which stereotypically has some pidgin speaking “oriental” played by a white guy, with eyebrows shaped for the slanty eye effect. Must be that Chinese film course I took a couple years ago bearing down on me. I didn’t use a chinois today but at one point, I did a double take looking at one because of what I cooked earlier.
I still remember the Cognac hitting the pan, bursting into an orange column, a bunch of emotions running through my mind as I fumble around with a typically Australian screwcap. Coq au Vin is one of those Frenchiest of classic French dishes and I had dumped an entire bottle of cheap Aussie grog into the pan, lifting the sediment off the bottom and washing the saute cuts into a swath of purple. The sauce made gritty by bits of mushroom, onion and bacon breaking down into almost indeterminable little pieces. As I stick a clumsily fashioned heart-shaped crouton on top of my dish, I’m reminded of the odd weekends I spent at the house of my mother’s mother.
Chinese families like to stick together, gigantic groups hoarding together frequently to meet up, catch up but most importantly, eat up. One thing my grandma was great at making was Hong Zao Ji or a Red Wine and Ginger Chicken served with Mee Sua, a kind of vermicelli noodles. Basically, all I did as a kid other than fight over the NES and Mario was to fight over the bright red soup with the sourish chicken and flavour soaked noodles.
On the one hand, we have one of the European mother cuisines, with one of its famous dishes, an alcohol laden pile of purple. On the other, arguably the mother cuisine of Asia, with one of its myriad dishes, an alcohol laden red riot. How do they compare? Well, to be bloody honest, quite damn similar, which then leads me to wonder about the spread of humanity and cultural exchanges from Asia to Europe. I’m hardly insinuating that Hong Zao Ji has got the smallest smidgeon of anything to do with the creation of Coq au Vin but by my tastebuds, the flavours are strikingly coincidental.
Its really interesting to see how both dishes compare in makeup, presentation, texture and flavour. Both are informal dishes, not the prettiest by a long shot even if the bizarre colors would have you thinking otherwise. Both are textural, Coq au Vin as I described before and Hong Zao Ji made so by the natural lumpiness of the fermented glutinous rice wine and ginger. Both carry a tang that cuts through the oily chicken. Both form a colorful crust like surface on the chicken, with tender white flesh hidden within. Both delectable in their own right.
I suppose it doesn’t take too much for some brilliant chef to decide that putting some swig in with some chicken would make a great dish. Still, its wonderful how two separate cultures are each able to create such similar dishes with next to no input from each other that share such close flavor ties.
I suppose it is a small world after all.
Today was the culmination of a desire to get out of the city walls and its claustrophobic atmosphere. I drove up to the Hunter Valley, famed Shiraz and Semillon region of Australia, just 2 hours from town. The change was dramatic not only because you notice how wide the freeway is compared to Sydney’s roads which barely fit their buses and strangely allow for Hummers. A quick lowering of the windows reveals clean, crisp and cool air. Sydney’s not really a smokestack by any means but the outskirts are just that much fresher.
I managed to visit 4 or 5 wineries and accidentally swallowed quite a bit of wine. Still, I was never above the legal limit. I spat out a bucketful too though. There’s breath analyzer’s in some of the wineries which I think is cool.
There’s actually a pretty decent variety of wine in the area, with large wineries, smaller family run ones and new boutiques trying to buck the trend. Myself being a wine quaff not buff, I can’t tell you what’s good/bad but I’d say if you’re anywhere around New South Wales, you might as well hit the valley for shits and giggles.
I went with a good mate and we were like the only 2 Asians in a 200km radius. Next to everyone asked where I came from, what I was doing etc etc. Which is cool cos these old Aussie folk were pretty nice. The great thing about the cellar doors here is the fact that they are so friendly about it all and you can basically try almost everything for free. They’re keen to tell you about their product and wine in general and there’s really no right or wrong at all, just friendly environs aided by copious amounts of fermented grape juice.
If anything, this has only confirmed my lust for a car of my own. Somewhere, a lonely 1980/90s BMW 3/5 Series is waiting for me. Will definitely return with more driver buddies to try more next time. Salut!
When I came over to Sydney, I realized almost immediately that I would have quite a bit of spare time so I knew I needed to find something. Hopefully something productive. I canceled my account with World of Warcraft after I came over, in part due to a crappy wireless net connection and a 12Gb monthly limit but also because I wanted to hopefully commit myself to a newfound life and work hard at something for once.
My answer to this dilemma was to join the gym. One of my mates crowed on about pumping iron in his spare time so I thought, why not? (no homo) I checked out the place and was immediately won over not by the fact that the salesguy facetiously told me I was getting a special deal (I am actually paying half of what my friend is paying. Shh!) but by the inviting oblong of azure, partitioned by lines of navy. Other than haggling over my subscription fees, the only other thing I didn’t close my ears to was “heated pool”.
I suppose “taking the plunge” works perfectly in this sense. The last time I stepped into a gym was because I had to as part of my stint in the military. That was well, 6 years ago. Hahaha. So I signed up and shopped for Speedos, goggles and a yellow swimcap and thought about how gyms are full of fat people, sexually ambiguous men and seemingly hot but dull women. I was the odd one out, the shy and reclusive intellectual who is devilishly handsome and modest. And handsome. And heterosexual. No homo. For real. I am not frute swagz. No seriously. I liek grils.
Pounding (I forgot how one actually plunges… ouch.) into the water reminded me of a lot of great times I spent in swimming pools back in Singapore, whether in school or the one near my old house. I remember the first time I ever touched the water. I was petrified and wondered why the hell my parents signed me up for swimming lessons. Suppose its sort of like a throw you in the deep end, watch you fight to live kind of thing. I’m so glad humans can’t fly. I grew to love it though and spent many a weekend morning kicking and bubbling my way from floating and breathing through to making an inflatable out of pajamas and lifesaving.
Now, I am able to rekindle the joys of my childhood and discover something new as well. On the one hand, swimming regularly (2-3 times a week) gives me damn good exercise. On the other, I get the chance to think clearly. With my ears submerged underwater, there’s nothing else quite like it. You feel closed off from everything, only squiggly boop boop bubble noises and the gentle crashing of waves. Its like those stupid tapes people buy, only real. I suspend myself, give in to the water. I think of everything, from food to girls to music and life. I philosophize and fantasize. Where once, I tried to hold my breath and do push ups underwater, I now dream and relax, listening to the sound of my heart beating after a quick sprint. Its an amazing, back to the womb sensation. My only wish is to swop the fat people, who invariably and inexplicably love to throw their wobbly bits into the water, with the hot women. I am the only wobbly thing that should be allowed in the pool aside from delectable feminine floatation devices from said hot women.
I love how I’m reminded of that “taking the plunge” thing. You’re forced to swim or die. If you survive, you discover something new, kinda like Jacques Cousteau. In the water, its a chance to enable your body in a free-form fashion. You fool around, somersault underwater, touch the bottom, dance like a chicken, sing with bubbles or fart and watch the bubbles. You never do this shit on dry land. Imagination and discovery combine in the most wonderful way. I now realize why people created ridiculous metal suits to walk on the bottom of the ocean.
And now, I end this tiresome treatise with some stupid humor referencing the title. I give you FOTC’s Foux De Fa Fa.
It’s at 1:16 in case you miss it.
Dreams come to me unwittingly. I never plan my life in calculated steps. Instead, I like to live spontaneously and collect dreams. Which means I think wistfully about grandiose, abnormal or absurd things to do but procrastinate and do nothing.
Part of the problem is financial of course but slowly, I realise I am able to achieve my little dreams step by step. Some are simply crappy material wants like my now baggy A.P.C. New Standards which have lived up to the 4 month mark without being washed. Another is my very recent purchase of a hat.
Sometimes, the dreams I aspire to experience for real come suddenly. This one came just as I decided to post this today. I was actually craving for a flavor really. Forest fruits in particular. Something about berries in tandem just gets my taste-buds rocking out. So I got some forest fruits flavored muesli bars which worked a treat because I just chomped one down. As I’m typing this, my tongue is gleefully picking away at the last remnants stuck on my teeth or some disparate nook due to my relentless chewing. I was a cow in my past life yes.
Ok, back to the dream. My newest of new, insipid, bland and ridiculous dreams, is to travel to Germany, somewhere next to the Rhine or in it, who the hell cares. I just want a goddamn forest, lovely greyish brown woods, misty, dull dark greens in summertime and a flowing river. There, all I’m gonna do is spend an afternoon picking wild berries, wearing lederhosen, my straw trilby, a pint mug in hand and a knapsack on my back. Val-deri, val-dera!
Of course, inside the knapsack would be a bunch of friggin sausages and a special reserve of select trappist ales. Sorry Germany, Belgium wins the beer race for me but I will pack German sausages. Also, some good cheese and rye bread.
This won’t be to the hypnotic rhythms of The Happy Wanderer in my ears because I’d probably start killing myself after the 27th val-deri. So it’ll have to be something like Cinematic Orchestra or some such, maybe Bela Bartok mysteriously piping through the forest. Which now reminds me how I also need to get a nice pair of Redwings for this hike.
All this from a bunch of berries combined. I wonder what I’ll want to do when I eat spacecakes.
…Captain Haddock so proclaimed in one episode of TinTin, referring to the Kingdom of Syldavia and their export of mineral water, the antithesis of what defines a drink for our dear captain. I used to agree with him too.
I never took to mineral water as a kid. Sugary soft drinks would always come up trumps. I was more into coffee and tea too, anything with a bit of flavour as long as it wasn’t boring old mineral water. A large part of the problem was that the mineral water available when I was a kid in Singapore tended to be crap tasting, deceptively vile liquids and I also lumped them in the same category as distilled water. Also 100% of them weren’t bubbly. In fact, there’s a file in a drawer in my head that contains this list of waters. It’s labelled “Do Not Drink!”.
I have taken to mineral water now though and find myself wanting to try more and more different labels. The sparkling variety is my thing. I just can’t do plain because I wouldn’t be able to differentiate with tap. Plus, what’s life without some bubbly. I have at least deduced that there are discernable flavours in mineral water but I have to cling onto something more.
Singapore has only a few of the most famous brands brought in. My faves were Gerolsteiner and San Pellegrino. The former comes from Germany and I find it particularly salty in taste compared to any other I’ve tried. It’s also naturally sparkling. The spring where they bottle the water has naturally carbonated water. The latter is Italian and found anywhere that serves fine food all over the world. Its clean and crisp and I find it quite balanced, making it perfect as a palate cleanser.
Over here in Sydney, the market is distinctly Italian and my personal fave now is La Galvanina. It comes in an attractive clear glass bottle and the deal clincher is the price, at under AUD$2 a bottle. San P. in contrast is over AUD$3. It tastes just as clean and crisp, with maybe a slightly chalkier character. For me, its an excellent everyday drinking water. I’d still use San P. in gourmet dining situations but to quench my thirst and as an alternative to Coke, La G gets my vote.
So why drag a fictional, bearded comic character into this? Quite simply, just so the next time someone asks me what’s my poison, I’ve got an unconventional answer on the tip of the tongue. Cheers Cap’n!
Filed under: Food
What I’m referring to is now in my belly digesting amidst a festering pool of gastric juices having a festival in my honour. That’s really a Thai style fried rice known as Khao Kluk Kapi Kung or Fermented Shrimp Paste Fried Rice with Prawns. Lime wedge optional.
The typical way it’s served in Thailand is with a bunch of other sides and usually sweet pork instead of prawns. I was just lazy to cook up the egg and veg and decided that I needed a cholesterol boost tonight and cooked off close to half a kilo of prawns.
I also made a sauce with some more shrimp paste, dark soy, lime, sugar and chilli.
The only disappointment was the rice, because I didn’t wanna waste what my housemates had made, I used it to make this dish. Unfortunately, the rice was soggy as hell, I had to fry it for 10 mins to try to dry it off and by then, it was a clumpy mess. Which is why I tried my best to hide everything with the prawns on top and a distracting lime cheek.
Gonna try to perfect this next time with proper rice, grilled prawns, julienned omelette and some roast capcicums, maybe some apple or cucumber for crunch.
Here’s a link to a recipe to know roughly what I did. It even has a step by step pictorial guide. I just went by feel though, didn’t refer to it but its similar. Mine’s more minimalist is all. (Excuses excuses…)
D&D fans might recognise the title. That’s the name I keep giving my latest object of lust, this black on black ceramic 6 inch chef’s knife from Kyocera. This baby is made of ultra hard ceramic, second in hardness only to diamond, which means its harder than steel so you can essentially get an edge that is super sharp. I keep ogling at it when I walk past the knife shops. It just looks so damn cool.
It retails at about AUD$220 but I found it online at $140 which is actually really good for a knife. The only reason why I haven’t bought it yet is because I’m not quite swimming in cash but moreso because its a ceramic knife. The drawbacks are that its brittle and you have to be quite a lot more careful with it.
I already felt the pangs when I dinged my 9 inch Wusthof trying to cut through some duck bone. I’d sharpened it the day before with a stone for the first time so I guess I made the edge super thinned out and sharp but soft, so it dented slightly near the heel. So I’m not about to throw a buncha cash on a beautiful knife only to damage it and cry. Obviously, I’d never touch bone with a ceramic knife but I can be lazy/careless at times.
Sharpening it is also a pain. Its goddamn ceramic, so you can’t steel it and I really have no idea if any stones will work well at all or just damage it. The retailer told me you never have to sharpen it but that’s just bollocks to me. It will suffer from wear and tear and you will lose performance. I do know you can send it to Japan and Kyocera will do it for free but that just sounds really troublesome. That’s another drawback to a ceramic knife.
Still, I did try it out at least. Cuts through a tomato like nothing, cleaner than the other knives I’ve tried in the store. Felt so damn light as well. Another great advantage is that ceramic is chemically inert. Nothing will corrode it and it will not taint your food at all. It is dainty at just 6 inches but that’s the kind of knife I’m into at the moment, a smaller and more agile tool for more precision. They can’t make the knives too long due to the brittleness of the material. 7 inches is the longest chef and they have an 8.25 inch long sashimi knife. There’s also a series of Damascus style ones, white blade on black hilts and a special edition white on pink hilt which is so damn cute I told my girlfriends about it.
Maybe the fact I keep thinking that its a Black Blade of Disaster is some sort of evil portent that I should never wield the Kyocera ever. Or maybe that’s just my wallet whispering to me. I can’t decide. I do know I will use this for home use in the near future. It just looks so damn cool.
When I’m hungry and lazy to cook, I opt for a kebab. There’s just so many decent kebab places in Sydney, its like their cafes. Almost.
Ok, I’m exaggerating about the decent bit but the idea’s still the same. Kebabs have become my go-to fast food. No I don’t eat Macca’s as the locals call it. Its a doner roll thanks. With the Lot and cheese. Bit of chilli and garlic/sour cream. Yes crispy please. That’s been my mantra on more than one occasion.
Or if I’m feeling like it, I’ll get a lamb shish roll. Now that’s luxury. In terms of time that is. Buggers take 10 minutes to cook but the burnt, blackened edges of lamb cubes with tender flesh inside are quite delightful for the amount you’re paying which is always under AUD$10 for a roll. Yes AUD$10 is a “cheap” meal here in Sydney.
Of course, kebabs are nothing special. Its Turkish fast food; veg, meat if you want, copious amounts of sauce rolled into a crispy bread shell. Its the combination of flavours that makes it interesting to me even if its so commonplace and low brow. Still I think you’d struggle to think of another fast food that employs the right amounts of the 3 food groups and happens to be tasty. I also don’t think you’d have anything like tabouli or hummus either.
Tabouli’s a brilliant herb and tomato salad which is cool cos I’m eating fast food but I get a little bit of gourmet. The hummus is important as well. It helps to hold the food onto the roll as best as it can plus enhance the flavour. When that roll gets toasted up, the juices mix around with the hummus and that’s the delicious goop that keeps slurping out when you chomp into one. I have no idea if kebabs around the world have tabouli and hummus or not but I scoff at people who order kebabs without it when they can. Kinda like that dude today who ordered after me. “A little lettuce, onion and tomato please.” Wimp. Its tabouli+hummus or bust baby.
To go along with satisfying my impatient taste buds and stomach, I picked up some other things chomping down kebabs around the city as well. One is a sweet tooth for Baklava and the other’s a burgeoning interest in Arabic/Turkic/Middle Eastern cuisine. Pistachios, syrup and filo take the cake though. In fact, pistachios just might become my new coconut.
Also, because I think subconsciously, I might have been influenced by Jemaine Clement when he first sang “The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room” in the debut episode of Flight of the Conchords. Which explains the title for this post and represents an excuse (I do like them yes.) to dump another stupid video on my blog and make up for content/post frequency deficiencies.
Take it away Jemaine!
Ps. Skip to ~2:10 for the kebabs.
Just so you know, today saw the start of the Incu garage sale. Located at a top secret bunker somewhere in Surry Hills, it carries on until Sunday @ 276 Devonshire.
I arrived at something like 10:05 (5 minutes after opening), just as the weather decided to take a piss and the place was packed. Its a pretty small place. Girls on the left and boys on the right, although quite a few ladies were picking over the guys stuff as well.
Tees and polos went for $20, shirts at $40, shorts/sweats $30, jackets $80 so prices were ok I suppose. I picked up a light blue/gray Marc Jacobs denim jacket, gray Trovata shorts and a black Trovata sweater. All the good stuff seemed to be in other peeps hands although there were many more boxes unopened. Top superfuture field agents report that they opened them on the hour mark.
I don’t really think there’s anything amazing, although 2K tees on the cheap is not a bad deal. Might head back tomorrow though, somehow just feel compelled and bored.
