Taiwan Day 1

Wheeeew! I finally cleared my backlog of pictures to finally be able to write about this very Taiwan trip.

This Taiwan trip is very significant to me. It is my first self-planned, self-guided, no adults-meddling trip, though we did meet up with my mum (sigh...) since she's there on business (a completely different trip from ours).

This trip, in many ways, signify a growing up of sorts, a little self-discovery journey, of knowing myself a fraction better, and ofcourse spending within budget. I learned one important facet of life- tolerance and acceptance go hand in hand. In Sydney, living in such close proximity with a stranger, so much that it became a shadow of yourself, was uncomfortable. It put me on an edge, I could tolerate differences lousily, could not accept inconsistency. When in Taiwan, though for a short 6 days, being a shadow of my cousin and vice versa sure wasn't easy. But because she is my cousin, my family, I love her, I cannot dislike her nor feel adverse towards her. Therefore, by default, my capacity for tolerance grew and acceptance became a possibility. I just had to tell myself: well, she's like that. Then, I was comfortable again.

Why force someone to be like you when there can only be one of you?

There, our arrival in Taipei International Airport, terminal one. It's really small. From here, we took the bus (NTD 125) to Taipei station, to take the mrt to Beitou station, where our lovely resort is. It's 16 degree Celsius here!

At Beitou station, the deisgnated driver (funny, even though we were quite chumy, I never did ask for his name) of Maple Landis Beitou came to pick us up. Flight from Singapore was at 8am, we arrived in the resort at 4pm.

Maple Landis is sort of like a boutique resort, they aim for quality more than quantity. Naturally, the normal rates are quite intimidating to causal students like us. Fortunately, there is this package that allows you to enjoy the stay without paying rocket prices. NTD9800, 3 days 2 nights, for a double, inclusive of breakfast, evening dessert and hot spring. Sure, it's still more expensive than than normal business hotels, but for a little more, you get alot more back.

Behind me is YangMingShan (the room faces the lush greenery of a mountain, woohoo!), a personal onsen stone tub if you don't wish to mingle with the rest at the public one, the toilet, and our bed.

The public bath, which also faces the mountain.

One unhappy thing about this Taiwan trip was I fell sick. It was like having fever and not having fever at the same time, blahhhh. We immediately headed for the hot spring upon reaching the resort, using the public bath since I wanted to see what it's like. The hot spring facilities in Taiwan is more to our local taste. There's private stand showers, unlike the sitting public ones in Japan. Also in public mixed baths, there's a need to wear swimming costumes.

Us, after our baths~

The original plan that evening is to head down to Danshui for dinner, but because I was not well and not wanting to worsen my condition, we decided to feast on cup noodle, that we had the foresight to buy earlier, in the hotel room.

That's the uhh feast. Yan commented that she still prefer Japanese instant noodle. She's a cup noodle expert. The evening dessert delivered to our room, a chocolate canele and a cranberry biscuit. This canele trumps the canele in Singapore by Canele, the biscuit has a subtle tangyness to compliment the cranberries, short and sweet. I like!

That is all for the first night. I slept at like 7 or 8pm and Yan watched the TV to god knows what time. She enjoys media entertainment. Thank god for that, or else she'll be bored to death by me. :)

End.

Becasse

Stella and I promised the girls at French class that we will have dinner together at somewhere French after we got back from our respective home countries. Being enthusiastic foodies we all are, this promise was naturally kept. Which brought us to:
Bécasse

Winner – 2007 Restaurant of the Year – Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide
Two Hats Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide
3 Stars Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide
2007 Restaurant Magazine – Voted 96th best restaurant in the world

Modern French food and wine at a reasonable price in a comfortable, elegant location, we're coming~

The problem with not blogging with the current is you tend to forget the details. I will try my best. Therefore if there is any discrepancies, you have my apologies in advance.

The chef's offerings at the start of the course- amuse bouche. Goat cheese on something crunchy. I liked it.

Bread platter- a pumpkin and poppy seed roll, a sourdough and a straight dough epi. Bread was good, served warm.

That green wobbly looking cube there is emulsified olive oil with black truffle salt on it. Very cool though taste like ordinary olive oil. haha, they took the trouble to make cool-looking olive oil, very cute.

A grrenpea soup with a dollop of fresh cream, served cappuccino-style. I find it a little too heavy on the salt, otherwise it tastes great.

We opened a bottle of white wine (took the advice of one of the waiters) to go with our main dishes. Chardonnay was good, crisp and light, but it didn't go with our trotters, sadly.

Coffin Bay Pacific oysters, AUD3 each. I had two. They were clean and fresh, I like. I know it is not a very nice thing to do but I still do dream of Tetsuya's rice wine vinegar oysters once in a while, and compare it to every other oyster that comes in my way. Tets still the best!

Ballotine of pigs trotter stuffed with mushrooms and smoked bacon, confit celeriac and Savoy cabbage, olive oil potato puree and Modena jus, AUD49. I was not impressed. After all the excitement I worked up for Becasse, the trotter is in fact a little disappointing. Sure it was cooked well, but I didn't like the entire ensemble. I didn't reconised the trotter in the dish, perhaps by the lack of fat and soft cartilages. The vege was done rather chinese, like a stir-fry. Coming to a French restaurant, expecting French cuisine, then having Chinese,albeit French-styled, is like being told your Louis Vuitton is made in China.

A sorbet with passionfruit. Palatte cleansing, especially welcomed after the trotter.

Valrhona chocolate and caramel ‘cadeau’ with milk sorbet, AUD22. Very sweet.

Banana crème brulée with salted peanut brittle and milk coffee sorbet, AUD20. Not bad.

Heidi (c'est moi), Stella, Gabriella et Monique.

My verdict: overpriced.

End.

Graduation

LCB graduation night. 11th Feb, 8pm.

The entire process of walking up the stage to collect your cert, the speeches or the dux awards was nothing spectacular. It was long, it was boring and I was hell as excited. After all, I am a graduating student.

Big smiles! Edo and I holding up our huge certs like trophies.

Claire, Ja, Zara, Kimmy and I.

Ja, Kimmy, Heidi (me) and Seok.

Cynthia, Heidi (me), Nicole, Kimmy, Stella and Ja.

Teacher shots!
Chef Andre, the next head pastry chef, the funniest, the most encouraging.

Chef Gert, most racial-colour-blind and most able to take jokes. Chef Karin, like a "nazi" and most inspiring.

Nicole and I- attempt at self-shots.

Hungry fish, dead fish, kissing fish.

Eeeeepss!

Chill out at Max Brenner before returning home for a good night's rest.

End.

My Valentine

Oh my, oh my, I am so lagging in posts. Many things have happened, events passed, and I have yet to properly chronicle them in thee blog. Sighhh.... I was busy.

So I will pick up from where I left off. My first Valentine date with the Y-chromosome carriers. And I got flowers! (the guys were forced into it, haha. we, the girls, didn't want to look bad without the flowers.)

Sam booked a table for us at his restaurant where he recently was promoted to the head chef. And that's edo, stella and I. It was raining and freezing cold! Brrrr, Sydney experienced a freakish temperature drop, 40 to 11 degrees Celsius. Not in the picture: Ja, Cynthia and Denny.

The bar, salsa dancing area. Cynthia tried to teach me to dance salsa. Can't say I'm a natural dancer, but, hey! I did wriggle my butt as sexily as I could.

First course: tomato garlic bread with smoked salmon wrapped cream cheese. Nice!

Mojito. A good one.


Second course: Tuna cake. hmm, forgetable. Taste was alright, and it was a tad on the dry side.

Third course: baked scallops. This is wayy too dry. Blah.

Fourth course: chilli mushroom. I like this! Fresh mushrooms baked in tomato and chilli sauce with a layer of cheese on it. Yumm!

Fifth course: baked ganache with vanilla ice-cream. The menu reads baked ganache but it is actually a chocolate pudding. The taste and texture is similar to the chocolate tart filling we did in school, which was fantastic. Needless to say, we all liked it, which is something because all six of us are pastry students.

Bleeeehhhh. I'm eating and you're not!

End.

Heirloom Tomatoes

An heirloom tomato (also called heritage tomato in the UK) is an heirloom plant, an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) cultivar of tomato. - wikipedia.org

Which means they should generally be in cultivation for at least a hundred years. So let's take a look what the folks have been eating a century ago.

Red, orange, green, yellow, pink. As a whole, these tomatoes taste great. None of the mass-produced, powdery texture. I was quite surprised by some of the variety I have tried, I never thought tomatoes can be salty, like really salty. I quite like it actually. I thought it will go well in stir-fry.

Beautiful colours too. My conclusion: Folks in the past have it better.

End.