fish

Off to China for some time, see ya later!

mules

goals

stem

Well, its bound to happen. After cooking for all these times, my first serious kitchen injury: chopped ⅓ of my nail & some skin off my left ring finger. Fucking squash "orz

Surprisingly it didn't hurt for the first 30s or so, was fine enough to toss the offending piece of squash and my cut-off nail into the compost before body started feeling shock. Very light-headed, both hands were numb, and body temperature increased. There was a lot of blood. But what actually hurts the most is when the disinfectant was applied, that really hurts ;_;

Unfortunately the first set of gauze that was applied stuck to the wound surface, so ripping that off couple of hours later caused a lot of bleeding again "orz And then some more bleeding throughout the night, surprised that the blood haven't clotted by now. Overall a lot of blood "orz

Lesson learned is to buy non-stick dressing. And will be stocking a first aid kit wherever I live.

yakult

Since Easy Go is no more, Coco's grapefruit yakult is my new favourite bbt. It's especially refreshing after eating too much bao:

Juicy Dumplings: unappealing lighting but delicious 生煎包

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Cookings last week:

I finally made miso soup properly, with soaking the dashi ingredients and adding in miso at last. Unlike my usual and absolutely opposite method ha... It does taste different, more like the sea and more clarity in the flavour.

A meal of pork & fennel polpette from Polpo on spaghetti, salt-wilted brussels sprout salad, french lentil salad and bouikos from Honey&Co.

Peanut butter paprika cookies...I read the title of the post and instantly decided to make it due to the flavour combo. It's good but not mind-blowingly so.

The scones...are not a success. It taste fine and its tender, so it passes as a scone at least but I think I under-baked them so they're too fragile. They're also too pale in color, even tho the chocolate scones had cream brushed on top. The blueberry scones also absorbed the sugar topping, so there's no delightful crunch :( The lesson learned is not bake on a tight schedule.

motion

Another item(s) on my list if by chance I win the lottery jackpot:

Van Cleef & Arpels's poetic complications: zodiac lumineux virgo / a day in paris / day and night coccinelles / poetic wish

Too bad (or good in that I'll never actually be tempted to buy them) that they're all 38mm, which I consider too big for my wrists. So they'll be really expensive decor that I probably need to buy extra home insurance for.

66

The silver lining to chilly weather, aside from knitwear and layering clothing, is drinking darker tea in my favourite tea cup.

2002 liubao "803" via YS

I had this tea with my family last evening and it was evident how much my taste deviated from drinking tea in the last couple of years. My mom considers this tea on the edge of drinkable due to its strong dirt flavour, whereas I thought it was an enjoyable crisp wet leaves flavour xD Although having it today in the setup above, that clay pot pretty much removed all of the dank flavour and just left some mineral-y notes...and some woody notes at the end if I try really hard.

parsley

After another maintenance cycle after another year with these monks 

year 2

year 1

Perhaps the lighter color show scruffs more easily? I haven't spent nearly as much time maintaining my black boots.

roll

My concern over word choice is perhaps above average. My previous epiphany in this subject is independence vs individuality, and my current epiphany is that content vs complacent is a matter of self awareness. Ok this one isn't too much of an epiphany since its fairly obvious from the words' definitions.

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"Desperation fosters creativity" is the cousin of "necessity is the mother of invention", or at least the underplaying truth to the trope of the starving artist? This bout of anxiety has currently filled 5 journal pages whereas the usual can be fit into 1. I hope I'll still think these ideas are good when I wake up tomorrow, whenever that'll be since I've been turning the light back on and writing another page.

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Stella's Ultimate Coconut Layer Cake

I did not sleep well last night, was stressed about making my first layered cake. It's Stella's recipe, so I know I'm in good hands, but still.

It turned out okay, I'd give it 7.5/10

I skipped the white chocolate ganache since I couldn't find Valrohna's Dulcey and am not up for slowly caramelizing chocolate. Just to contradict myself, I did make toasted sugar. Also skipped the toasted coconut flakes since Jeff isn't a fan.

This was really time consuming. Solely because my hand mixer is under-powered and it took forever to 1) cream the butter & sugar, and 2) whip the meringue. In fact I was legit scared that my hand mixer's motor will break due to overheating while whipping the meringue. Stand mixer plz ;_;

Frosting the cake also took a while, because I'm inexperienced but also because the cake layers don't align. I wonder what the tricks are to having cakes with straight sides. The tall cake pans did help a lot with having a flat top, I barely had to level the tops. Pipping buttercream also needs some more practice. Appearances aside, the taste is great and super coconut-y, as promised.

Next...to tackle the opera cake @_@"
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Bonus milk tea pot-au-creme, which has such a luxuriously creamy texture.

recipe via Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi

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smoked

I've been cooking on Fridays and loafing otherwise.

An impressive Honey&Co meal if I may say so, unfortunately it doesn't look too good shot from bird's eye.

Featuring, from top to bottom and left to right:

• Baba ganoush 
• Octopus in meshwiya sauce & celery salad
• Green tabbouleh salad
• Matbucha sauce made into shakshuka 
• Beef (and pork) kofta
• Israeli couscous (but made with bulgar wheat)
• Bukhari bread

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Bonus pork shoulder ragu, made in the oven this time. I actually prefer stove top since it turned out too liquid-y this time.