1. Make sure the cream cheese is at room temperature. Line the cake tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Put biscuits in a plastic bag and roughly crush with a rolling pin.
3. Melt butter in a saucepan on slow heat and mix with biscuit crumbs.
4. Pour biscuit mix to the tin and press down gently to make the base. Preheat
oven to 170’C.
5. In a bowl, add cream cheese and beat till soft with an electric mixer. Add the rest of the ingredients in order, mixing each one thoroughly before adding the next ingredient.
6. Continue beating until the mixture thickens. Pour into cake tin. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes until top is golden brown. Remove and leave to cool.
7. Once cooled, remove from tin, discard lining and leave on a rack to cool completely.
Having only started eating raw fish at the ripe age of 23, I would be condemned to call myself a Japanese food expert. In fact, it was not until recently that I have learnt the subtle difference between sushi and nigiri. All that being said, I beg you to listen to me on this one – do NOT waste your time going to Morimoto.
The only thing I remember coming out of Morimoto in the Meatpacking District in New York is the interesting waiting staff and a bill that broke my wallet, burning the biggest hole in it than any other Japanese restaurants I’ve been to in the city. What I mean by interesting, my friend M has the definition, “like walking into a Benetton commercial”, and she did not mean to cause any political distress with this. What she meant was actually quite the contrary - although Mr. Morimoto was doing everything in his power to create a staff body with as interesting a variety as possible in terms of height, weight, ethnicity and gender, what he has somehow forgotten to address is their attitude and knowledge of food. As bubbly and cheerful as they might appear, they exude an air of, either “I’m so cool I’m working at Morimoto, here’s your food and don’t expect me to know anything about it apart from its name,” from the tattooed, peroxide-blonde guy with a 6, 8, or was it a 10 pack?!, or “I’m at your humble service. I’m so grateful I was given the opportunity by the kind Mr. Morimoto to work here. I’ve tried very hard to remember the name of this dish so please don’t ask me anything else about it, please…” from the small, lanky Indian guy with the shy smile. We did exactly as we were assumedly told. We ate quietly and did not ask any questions. When the girl at the reception came round the fifth time asking us how everything was, we just politely smiled and nodded. We did not know what else to say.
In all fairness, the food at Morimoto was not bad at all. Tuna tartar, nigiri, wagyu beef, lobster… all the essentials, or typical, were there. But as an Iron Chef with a Tadao Ando designed interior in your restaurant and a $190 omakase menu, you better have something more to show before I’ll come back to you again.
I know it must be blasphemy to some, like the way I don’t like chocolate (please don’t kill me), but I’ve never liked Meg Ryan, or any of her films for that matter. Not Sleepless in Seattle, not You’ve got Mail, and definitely not When Harry Met Sally. In fact, I’ve never even seen When Harry Met Sally, but I’m pretty much sure I won’t like it given my distaste for Billy Crystal and the Meg Ryan-genre of films. For me, she’s your average neighbourhood woman with mediocre looks and even more mediocre acting.
Hence I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself quoting When Harry Met Sally while trying to convince PJ to come to Katz’s Deli with me.
“Forget Shake Shack! (I did not feel like queuing in the rain in Madison Square Park that day) Katz’s Deli is so much cooler, it’s where Harry met Sally! (Did he? Or did they just eat here?)
PJ, obviously a Meg Ryan fan, was immediately bought. So we raced through the rain on the Lower East Side and into the crowded dining hall of Katz Deli - forever packed, forever busy, and it is so for a reason. Katz's is the oldest delicatessen in New York City (established 1888) and the only place in town that still carves all its pastrami and corned beef by hand (apparently it makes a huge difference, but I am not one to tell). I was told that the ritual of interacting with the countermen is one of the great New York experiences, but busily trying to battle the hordes of people looking for a table I gave this grandiose task to my friend PJ, who, with his history of chatting up strangers to the point where he was invited to an ice cream date at Serendipity with a mother and her young daughter (who were customers sitting at the next dinner table), took an instant liking to the countermen in front of him. He came back boasting about free pastrami he was given to try.
One table in the middle of the dining room bears an inconspicuous paper sign taped to its surface: "You are sitting at the table where Harry met Sally." In the background the security guard is doubling up as restaurant manager, handing out tickets and rounding people up into organized lines to ease congestion that is blocking the doorway. The pastrami sandwiches are tasting delicious, with cheese and onions oozing through the soft bread, and we are feeling very, very happy.
My friend E did not remember she haggled with the Halal food proprietor outside a club on the Lower East Side that night coming out from K’s birthday party. Haggling? In NYC?! Perhaps it might help to know that she’d come straight from working too long a time in Shanghai.
“You have to have Halal in New York,” E said, half tripping over her own shoes as she tried to balance herself on the sidewalk with chicken rice in one hand and lamb on the other. Obviously, her haggling did not work, but it did not prevent her from asking, in all her charms, for “extra white sauce AND extra hot sauce”, which almost set our tongues on fire.
E did not quite remember what happened that night the day after, but I sure did, thanks to the rice. So like a good foodie I tried to track down the best of its kind, and who better to ask than my friend little K whose profile on Facebook is, conveniently, a picture of herself swimming in a bowl of Kimchi Chiggae? In all secrecy, like passing down a kung fu move in the mountains of Shaolin, little K bestowed upon me the location of her favourite Halal vendor like a true master, and added, “In general, you have to look for the big carts - the bigger the better. Even better still if they have colourful lights. And of course, if you see a long queue, that’s always a good sign.”
I did not quite guard that piece of information with my life as I had intended, and was giving myself a hard time for having left that paper at home the other day on my way out from MOMA and for letting my mouth water from the plain wondrous smell and fair sight of a Halal stall not far from it. I decide to give it a try anyway. After all, the line was pretty long for four in the afternoon.
Honestly that was one of the best things I have had in New York. The lamb was flavourful, the chicken tender, the rice cooked just right, and the mixture (in the right amount) of white and hot sauce, perfect. It came hefty in a takeaway box, like how all comfort foods should be.
I eat this all in the soothing afternoon sun at home, and when I finally managed to drag myself away from it, pulled out that piece of highly confidential paper – as it turned out, I had serendipitously found the best Halal stand in the world this afternoon.
Coming in to our 7pm reservation, the first thing I asked the Blue Hill reception was this, “I know our table’s ready, but I really want to meet Boris the Bear. Can you tell me where I might find him?”
“You mean, Boris the BOAR?” asked the manager. “I’m sorry to break this to you, but he’s no longer with us. He used to be our stud, everybody wanted to come in and see him, but he’s now several tons of Italian sausage, and they’re really tasty!”
First of all, it was kind of embarrassing to mistake BOAR as BEAR. Second of all, Boris is NO LONGER? I found that somewhat disheartening. But then again, there was something about that tone of voice, or was it something about the farm, or the beautiful barn and the multi-coloured sunset looming over it, or maybe it was just everything put together, that made it seem ok. So it is kind of scary that the star of Blue Hill got chopped up and made into sausages, but you can almost be sure that he lived a happy and much loved life before. I don’t know, is this a twisted thought?
We arrived for dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barnes, about 45 minutes away from Manhattan, at 6.30pm, and practically did not get out of there until 11.30pm – a five hour long dinner (mind you our reservation was supposed to be for 10pm, which meant that we would have been eating till 3 in the morning if not for the last minute cancellation from a fellow guest) – exhausted but perfectly happy. In short, I was ready to announce Blue Hill my favourite restaurant in the world.
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Eating at Blue Hill will completely distort your vision of what dinner at a restaurant is supposed to be like, and I am not simply talking about distortion in the sense of an egg-like creature made of carrot juice and a jelly substance a la El Bulli style. What I am talking about is the heart and soul behind restaurant cooking. There is no menu per se at Blue Hill. Instead you are given a list of fresh ingredients gathered on the day from local farms within a couple-miles radius from the restaurant, all of which practice artisanal organic farming. The result of this respect for the land is creations such as “eggs laid fresh today from free range chickens paired with mushrooms gathered by the local forager” (complete with the waiter bringing you eggs in a nest and mushrooms on a tree bark to inspect in Cantonese-seafood-restaurant-‘Here’s the fish you ordered Sir its just over a pound hope that’s ok’-manner). Did I mention that the first hors d'oeuvre we had was vegetables (amongst them baby carrots, celery and a tiny sour fruit which in fact was a baby green tomato) sitting on a bed of needles? Fresh from Blue Hill’s backyard, of course.
My little pet dog - that was what my takeaway Shack Burger resembled when I left Shake Shack at Madison Square Park yesterday. Walking down Fifth Avenue in the comfortable, autumnal breeze, I was treated with friendliness like never before from "Wow! You bought Shake Shack? I'm so jealous!" from the pretty Club Monaco saleslady, to "Oh-my-God (in Janice-Chandler's worst nightmare-from-Friends style)...Shake Shack, my favourite!" from the gay guy from J Crew, and conversation flowed from there. Did I mention that New Yorkers love dogs?
"When I first moved here, I felt like a tourist, until I brought my little Mango here form Korea," my friend Jin mused. "And then everything changed. I felt like I finally became part of the city, and Mango helped me achieve that because EVERYBODY loves dogs in New York. One time, this really hot guy whose dog was socialising with Mango came over..."
Today, Jin had Mango on her leash, and I had Shake Shack in hand. We felt like two queens bees.
NOTE: The lines here are long throughout the day, but nobody minds the wait. Pretty park, happy people - just about how I'd love to spend my days in New York, everyday.
All independent travelers must have tales to tell about being conned on their trips. Some are small, some big, and some stories perhaps so horrifying they leave a scar on the traveler forever. Perhaps it is not the degree of "cunningness" displayed by the con that distinguishes between evil and rather harmless cons, but rather the maturity and experience of the traveler, or even the traveler’s attachment or sentiment for the destination. For me, for my first time, it was both. It was a story of love and deceit in Hangzhou, China - a long, bitter story. But I will leave that for now and tell you about little cons you might experience in Siem Reap.
Kompong Phhluk is about an hour away from the famous monuments of Angkor Wat. Rarely visited and very much living under the shadows of its neighbouring temples, Kompong Phhluk is nevertheless one of the most haunting and yet beautiful places I have visited.
First of all, the journey to Kompong Phhluk itself was a long and laborious task - which could have been prevented if not for the fact that we wished to avoid the stupendous feeling of being "conned". When brought to a tourist office and asked to pay $100 by our driver for a boat ride in Chong Knea and to Kompong Phhluk, we declined adamantly and decided instead to search for our own boat when we reached the pier. At the pier it was another 30-minute negotiation under the scorching sun, during which we felt like idiots being watched and conspired against by all the boatsmen and taxi drivers on the pier. Eventually we were offered US$60, and gladly took it – we had no energy left to argue.
Chong Kneas is the more famous and accessible floating village en route Kompong Phhluk , where everything, literally everything, happens on water. It was around lunch hour on the day we visited, and hordes of small boats were carrying parents and their children to the floating village school, where I could see small children playing basketball at the back of the school in a small court encased in a wire mesh.
On reaching Kompong Phhluk , our minds were blown away. Kompong Phhluk is an otherworldly place reminiscent of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. Though the village itself was dry when we visited (a more rewarding time to go is during the wet season), it is not hard to imagine what it would be like when the water levels of Tonle Sap rise. All houses here are built on soaring stilts 6 to 7 m high, and during the wet season water laps at the wooden supports while chickens, pigs, even crocodiles bob about in floating rafts.
The village was dry, but the “forest” next to it remained immersed in water. Paddling slowly through it, I had a feeling of being in a Venetian Amazon, where the aftermath of a horrible hurricane had engulfed the whole of the rainforests in South America.
We were encroached by children once our boat reached dry land. Children with US$10 notebooks, children with US$5 pens… all begging us to buy from them so that we can “distribute” to the schoolchildren in the village. “Notebooks at home don’t cost this much!” I argued, but it was a half-hearted argument from the very beginning. “Are you Cambodian?” the girl with the pink hair clip and big smile had said. “I thought you’re Cambodian because you look so pretty!” Argh... great, Nana, she had you right there. “Ok fine… I’ll take the notebooks, and the pens.” I have a weakness for children.
And so we walked, or inched, or fought, through the village with notebooks and pens in hand, distributing them through the sea of hands so dense I can hardly see whom I am actually passing them onto. Children as young as one or two years old were amongst these hands. I wondered whether they even knew how to read or write.
This is the bizarre but beautiful village of Kompong Phhluk , where children run about with you as you marvel at the stilt-supported bungalows, as you walk past piles of dried shrimp airing in the sun, as you get lost, and eventually need to pay them another US$20 to raft to the next door village, Kompong Kul, the only village accessible by road.
Well, if I have to be conned, at least let it be somewhere memorable, surrounded by the beautiful laughter of children.
Itinerary
Stayed
Hotel de la Paix
Sivutha Boulevard
Siem Reap
Cambodia
Tel: + 855 63 966 000
Fax: + 855 63 966 001
e-Mail: info@hoteldelapaixangkor.com
One of the best hotels I have stayed in – a cool combination of art deco and traditional Khmer design. One of best things about the hotel is its fine dining restaurant, Meric, headed by French chef Joannes Riviere. The food is excellent, a perfect blend of French sophistication and Khmer tastes, and the hanging day beds a delight to dine on.
Meals
1. Meric Khmer Tasting Menu
- Sweet Corn Salad with Crispy Pork Fritter
- Green Star Fruit Salad with Grilled Beef
- Roasted Chicken with Rice Wine and Prahok Sauce
- Braised Prawn with Pumpkin and Lemon Basil
- Stir Fried Calamari with Green Peppercorn
- Pork Rib Sour Soup “Jungle Style”
- Assorted Khmer Sweets
- USD31++
2. Sugar Palm
This is apparently the place where food and beverage managers from nearby five star hotels come to feast. Serves old-fashioned, flavorful, and hearty Khmer food on the second floor of a spacious wooden house with a beautiful balcony. The restaurant has a warm and inviting ambiance with subdued, covered lighting.
3. Breakfast at Psar Chaa, or Old Market – the butchers and produce sellers will be in full force, peddling dried fish, fruit stacked in neat pyramids, and freshly pounded kroeung (an herbal paste used in many dishes). Pull up a plastic stool at one of the food counters and order a bowl of baay sac chruk - superthin pieces of grilled pork served with white rice and a tangy cucumber and ginger salad.
Other Activities
The Legend of Angkor Wat – a musical
Do NOT watch this show set amidst the backdrop of the Angkor Wat – sounds tempting, doesn’t it? Do not be fooled, this is one of the cheesiest, most unimaginative shows on earth.
If you can, avoid the spas and massages here at Siem Reap - they are nothing compared to what you get in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand… you name it. If you must, go to Bodia Spa, at least it is clean and pleasant.
I suppose I am just not the Nyonya* kind of girl. Four months in Singapore, and I have already pretty much depleted my interest in the local food. Chicken rice, laksa, bak ku teh, roti pratas (remember to pronounce it the Singaporean way – roTI plaTA (emphasis being on the capital letters)) - all that was very tempting in the first 2 weeks, but two weeks was pretty much how long it lasted. Like Singapore itself, these foods now seem to me lacking a soul. They seem sterile, clinical, generally just lacking some sort of “oomph”. The various chicken rice stalls start tasting the same to me now, and my excitement for roti pratas fast fading as I begin to reminisce the delicious “zhua bing”s (“clench” pancakes) you get in Taiwan instead.
What I do love about dining experiences in Singapore (and Singapore in general), however, is the space. Restaurateurs in Singapore let their imagination run wild with spaces like Rochester Park (think Graze, a posh restaurant operated by the same people behind JIA hotels, and Min Jiang – the latter recently opened an outpost in London’s Royal Garden Hotel on High Street Kensington), the Botanical Gardens (think Halia, a Robinson Crusoe sort of restaurant nestled amidst the ginger and orchid gardens) and the old stables in Bukit Temah (think Mimolette, a restaurant-cum-bar with a colonial setting tucked within the Turf Club), while the latest fascination came from Braise in Sentosa. Housed in an old train station (which has now relocated to just two minutes walking distance away), Braise is the brainchild, in conjunction with a Chinese restaurant in the ground floor, of entrepreneur Dawn Teo. I was bought immediately. The slanted high ceilings reminded me of a Tudor building while the interiors were bright and minimalist. Everything was sleek and clean in keeping with the latest trends in restaurant design, yet Braise managed to distinguish itself by little thoughtful details like a small trench filled with water flowing underneath several tables (which can almost double up as a study with their “desk lamps”), a private beach, attentive staff and of course, good food.
The first thing that came to us was of course, bread, and you can almost decipher the good dining experiences from the bad ones by their breads. If the bread is good, most probably the rest of the food cannot go too wrong either. In this case my theory worked perfectly well and we were very happy with our foie gras, terrine of crab and …some kind of duck – here the only problem was that we were not entirely sure what kind of duck we were eating since the manager Frank was strangely vague in describing it.
All in all, Braise is the perfect place for a quiet dinner or even brunch and dinner parties if you want to listen to waves paddling up the shore, see stars gazing down upon you after a most satisfying meal, or generally, just to get away from the hustle and bustle of it all. Frank will be right there to pick you up at Palawan Beach.
*Peranakan and Nyonya are terms used for the descendants of late 18th Century Chinese immigrants to the Nusantara (Indonesian archipelago) region during the Colonial era, especially the British Straits Settlements of Malaya and the Dutch-controlled island of Java and other locations, who have adopted partially or in full Malay customs.
Ask me for one word to define Marrakech and I give you “maze”. Everything here is hidden in an ever-winding labyrinth of yellow mud walls and endless shops selling exactly the same merchandise. Not that I am complaining about these shops, in fact I love them irrespective of their less than innovative choice of stock. But that is just me, a sucker for exotic Moorish designs which remind me of Arabian Nights, stories that used to fascinate me so much as a child. Be prepared to be lost, haggled (I liked in particular what the NY Times said about haggling in Marrakech– “Haggling is essential. So is your poker face: feign indifference, affect a cool exterior and occasionally exaggerate outrage at counteroffers”. Having lived in China however, I have had plenty of training), harassed (see story about finding out way to Le Foundouk below), and I guarantee you will be intoxicated by a world of sights, colours, smells and just that tinge of danger.
Day 1
On the night we arrived in Marrakech our driver dropped us off outside the walls of the Medina (which means the “old market”) where an old man with a pushcart came to collect our bags. By then it was already 10pm, shops were closed and the Medina was still and quiet, apart from the occasionally hazardous looking loitering youths, which you will see plenty. We twisted and turned down countless alleys for about five minutes. Just when we started to panic, even devising an escape strategy which involved me hitting the poor man on the head with my SLR camera and Sandy poking him in the eye with her umbrella, we reached Dar Mouassine.
Operated by a French couple, Dar Mouassine is just one of countless, literally, countless, high quality Moorish inspired boutique hotels in the Medina. That however, does not take away the charm of the hotel itself. Stepping into the Dar my whole body started to shiver with excitement. Everything about the house fascinated me. The zellij (Moroccan ceramic tilework)-covered open courtyard, the painted ceilings, the bejeweled, perforated brass lanterns, even the sound of the fired crackling. I was in my dream house.
Nothing can complete me without food, however, and what better way to end our first day in Marrakech than North Africa’s most famous market, Djemaa el Fna square. Exploding to life after dark, Djemaa el Fna square is lorded over by the illuminated minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque. Oceans of revelers come out to dine at sizzling food stalls and soak up the carnivalesque atmosphere conjured by monkey handlers, cobra charmers, drummers, acrobats, musicians, soapbox preachers and folk-medicine hawkers. We tried a Moroccan flatbread filled with potatos and herbs, braised aubergines and grilled meat skewers, finishing the night eventually with a glass of Moroccan mint tea stuffed to the brim with fat mint leaves and a big, chunky lump of sugar, and fresh-squeezed orange juice (a mere 3 dirhams) from one of the myriad fruit carts.
Day 2
Before commencing our battle in the Medina we decided to check the main attractions of Marrakech off our list. First in line was the Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakech's most prominent landmark about 100m west of Jemaa el Fna.
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