serene’s posterous

Eu-Jin seems to particularly enjoy hacking at the fresh coconuts.  I am not complaining, since I get to eat fresh coconut water and tasty soft coconut meat.  These are young coconuts, so the meat is softer, sometimes almost gelatinous.

       

Green Bean or Mung Bean Soup supposedly has "yin" or cooling qualities, and is therefore best consumed in summer.  It has been cold and windy these past few days, but I had only green beans on hand (and no red/azuki beans that have the opposite "yang" quality), so I had to make do.

I rinsed and soaked half a cup of green beans overnight.  I boiled about 3 and a half cups of water with 2 pandan leaves (defrosted and knotted together).  Since I didn't have any dried tangerine or orange peel, I just threw in a few pieces of fresh tangerine peel as well.  Then I turned down the heat and added the drained green beans, cooking it for about an hour.  In the last 5 minutes, I added some rock sugar to taste, and fished out the pandan leaves and tangerine peel.  The first bowl I had plain.  I added coconut cream to the second bowl I had later in the day, for a Southeast Asian touch.

Adapted from this recipe.  I used finely chopped hazelnuts, reduced the sugar, and didn't bother with the icing or the shaping into perfect balls.  Eu-Jin likes the mix of the nuts and the mocha flavor, but I think they are a little too crumbly and rich.

This was a quick meal using the S&B Golden Curry sauce mix (available at Asian grocery stores).  I mixed the sauce with chopped potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, red bell peppers and broccoli.   For protein, I had some boiled shrimp.  This is a little unhealthy with the boatload of salt and fat in the sauce, but it tastes great with rice.

We ended eating Indian-Pakistani food for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday last week at 2 restaurants on opposite sides of the street.

On Tuesday, we ended up in Chutney because it came highly recommended by a person in the group.  I wanted to go to Shalimar but I deferred to him because I hadn't tried this restaurant and this place did look a lot cleaner and more pleasant to sit in.  Overall, I would say it was a disappointment.  The palak paneer and chicken tikka masala were a blended mess.  And the tandoori chicken wasn't all that tasty.

The next day, I insisted on going to Shalimar for lunch instead to prove that it was indeed better than Chutney.  It was certainly more crowded, and stronger smelling than Chutney.  We had to wait a while for a table, but we ordered first to save some time.  The garlic naan was miles better than at Chutney.  But the food, while tasty, was really greasy.  Maybe it was the dishes we got (Murgh Boti Tandoori, Bengun Bhujia - eggplant, Palak Aloo Methi, and Murgh Korma Shahi, together with basmati rice and lots of garlic naan).  I felt like everything was bathed in oil.  I also smelt terrible after leaving the restaurant.

I think Chutney was cheaper and cleaner, but Shalimar had the tastier but possibly less healthy food.  The free chai at both places was only so-so - not sufficiently strong.  But I definitely learned that two lunches in row of rich Indian-Pakistani food is not such a great idea.  Detox time...

I had wanted to bake these cookies ever since I saw them on this website.  Peppermint and chocolate, what's there not to like? I recently bought some peppermint bark from Trader Joe's (at about $10 for a 1 pound tin) and had the rest of the ingredients at home.  Unfortunately, these cookies didn't turn out all that well mainly because I didn't halve the recipe properly, and ended up with dough that was too wet.  They also spread out more than I expected in the oven, resulting in the cookies running together.  Next time, I will probably make the full batch (and freezing the dough I don't use), reduce the sugar a little more, and place them further apart!

   

A friend suggested this restaurant because it had won numerous awards - a wall full of them.  It was a perfect restaurant to go to because one of the group is a vegetarian, and the other friend and I are trying not to eat too much meat (because both of us read the China Study).  The restaurant had a large vegetarian selection so it was not hard to pick out dishes. 

We started with samosas, which were perfectly fried.  I loved that they had pumpkin fillings.  We then shared mixed vegetable red curry, praram phak (veggies, fried tofu in peanut curry sauce) and pad thai.  We also got brown rice (at a pricey $2 per person).  Everything was delicious, but I wished we tried the pumpkin curry instead.  The dinner ended being a little more pricey than I would have liked (due mainly to the exorbitant rice), but it was worth the trip there.  The tamarind candy given out at the end of dinner was pretty good too.

I was up in the city several days this week, so I had to opportunity to try some restaurants.  First up is Santorini's Mediterranean Cuisine.  We ended up there because it seemed relatively empty, and no one else in the group had a strong desire to try something else.  Bad choice.  The service was terrible.  The restaurant wasn't full, but it can't seem to handle the few groups of people there. It took a very long time to get our orders taken, and even longer to get our food. 

And when we got our food, we realized that they got our orders messed up.  One friend specifically asked for no onions, but all the wraps came with onions.  I had substituted the soup with more side salad (on the suggestion of the waiter), but my order came with the soup.  When I complained, the server took the soup away without adding more salad.  We were already a little late and very hungry, so we decided to just eat what we were given.

The food was also nothing to shout about.  The salad was drenched in the vinaigrette.   My chicken wrap was too sweet, and drenched in sauce too.  The other people in the group said that the gyros soup was horrible, and didn't touch the soup after a few sips.

I guess this time Yelp is right about this restaurant.

After our museum visit on Saturday, we wanted to have dinner at Shalimar in the city, but we were too early so it hasn't opened for dinner.  We ended up heading to Tai Wu in Foster City for comfort Chinese food and a spot of grocery shopping at the 99 Ranch Market next door.  We had salt and pepper chicken wings (tasty but unhealthy!), rock cod in claypot, and spinach+mushrooms.  It was a lot of food for the price, and we had enough leftovers for a complete lunch the next day.  Rice here is definitely better than at Queen House, and the portions are also larger.  It was a satisfying meal that made up for missing out on garlic naan at Shalimar, but I doubt we will make any special trips to Tai Wu since it is quite a distance from our apartment.

Yelp reviews

Unsurprisingly, we ended up eating a lot of McDonald's on this road
trip. It is everywhere, and just so quick and convenient while on the
road. I had the salads (wished it had spinach rather than limp
lettuce, and perhaps the side salad without the sauce drenched chicken
would have been a better choice), one egg McMuffin, a snack wrap,
coffee (it actually doesn't taste all that bad!), parfaits, and way
too many $1 hot fudge sundaes.