My favourite things..Part 1

McPingu and I both love to eat. I guess it's apparent from the piccies we took together. Well, for one most of them were food-related. :P Not that i minded at all..

Let's start from our 1st date..

We went to Hajime for Japanese ryori.

Camwhoring while waiting for our food to be served.

Hotate ninniku

We love love the scallops. They were fat and juicy and what's more..it was value for money at RM16 per plate.

We ordered 2 types of hotate (scallops) - hotate ninniku and hotate avocado - as i couldn't decide which one. I wasn't too impressed with the hotate avocado though (maybe it was because it was fried with garlic and i wasn't too keen with the garlicky aftertaste). It was maa maa desu (so so only).

Black spider maki and california cheese maki. Oishi desu ne!

Grilled wagyu beef

We were a tad bit disappointed with the foie gras maki. It was supposed to be a special maki but somehow the taste of the foie gras was overwhelmed by the other condiments. Pingu then told me he'd bring me to this French restaurant in Manila for 'to-die-for' foie gras. :)

Grilled saba. Pingu loves this fishy dish. Must be a penguin thing :P

Kurogama (black sesame) ice cream and pumpkin pudding

The dinner was pure decadent....Pure pure guilty pleasure :P

~*~*~*~*One week later....*~*~*~*~

I went to Manila during the Merdeka weekend. Yups, those of us having long distance relationships make the most of each and every long weekend we can get.

Prior to flying, I baked some cream puffs to bring over as a surprise for Pingu.

This is my very first attempt at baking cream puffs. Was kinda nervous they wouldn't turn out nicely.

Piped a couple of heart-shaped ones too as I was feeling kinda mengada creative :P

My very first batch of cream puffs. Not too bad eh?

*note to self: must brush tips to avoiding burning them.

~*~*~*Manila - Day 1*~*~*~

Bonifacio High Street

We had designer burgers at Brother's for lunch.






Love the juicilicious beef patty.




Pay close attention to the building behind me..





I stumbled upon Nuffnang's PH office :p Can you spot the Nuffnang logo?




It's the weekend, and you can see lots of ppl hanging out at High Street lepakking. Oh, I forgot, they have a term for it, it's widely known as 'Malling'.

At night, this is like the place for dog owners alike to bring their four-legged best friends out for a walk. I love it here.

Hmm..i wonder how I'm gonna be able to bring my 4 shihtzus out to play.. :P

Can anyone tell me what kinda orchids these are? These looked unreal :)

Bonifacio High St is like 5 minutes walk from Pingu's place. I love how convenient his pad is to most of the lovely hang out places. :)

Oh, have i told you that filipino's love to camwhore too? They do it everywhere and anywhere...anytime. When I arrived, I saw 2 pinoys camwhoring in the restroom at the airport upon arrival. Mind you, it was 5am at the time.

Next stop...Greenbelt

I've actually been to Greenbelt before. I was in Manila for a 2-week student exchange programme when I was 16. The programme was sponsored by both Rotary Club PJ and Rotary Club Makati West. Me and 4 other fellow Interactors had a swell time when we were here immersing in the culture and were being pampered like crazy by our gracious host parents.

Anyway, back to Greenbelt. The Greenbelt I went to at the time, was probably Greenbelt 1 and 2. They have now extended up to Greenbelt 5. So this place is huge now.


McPingu with his McGorgeous @ one of the more scenic walkways around Greenbelt.

Thought this was quite a nice picture of two girls prancing around playing to their hearts' content, without a care in the world. Their heads were bopping up and down and their hair were flying everywhere. So cute. :)

What a lovely gal. And she camwhored for me. awwwww.. :)

There's a lovely chapel in Greenbelt. It was time for mass and the chapel was overflowing with people. So, we hung out by the pond outside the chapel and I couldn't resist taking a picture of this lovely pair of ducks. They looked so in lurve, didn't they? (or issit just me?)

Dinner at this 'atas' French restaurant, Je Suis Gourmand

This is the place Pingu was raving about. The place for the to-die-for foie gras. Je Suis Gourmand is known for its delicious French cuisine and generous serving. Personally, i think each serving was big enough for more than 1 person.

I love how this place has an intimate setting and only has few tables inside and some outside (the smoking section). We were seated in a cosy corner that was not cosy enough to not hear what the other patrons were saying. Yeah i know, what an oxymoron. :P

This was taken using my lousy Casio Exilim

And this..using his canggih Canon SLR (fyi, i didn't do any photoshop here..mainly cos i dunno how)




Watch me operate his SLR. Dun play play :p




True to his words, this pan seared foie gras served on a bed of salad with reduced honey balsamic sauce was awesome! We ordered a serving to share and this was only my portion. Generous rite? Mmm..i am drooling again. I so miss this...

I had the cream based tomato shitake mushroom soup whereas Pingu had the white fish soup.

I wished I didn't order the soup though, cos i was stuffed after that. I couldn't eat when my main arrived.

Do penguins eat steak? I know one who does :P

My main. The prawns were perfect - so darn springy and chewy and ooh..let's not even get me started on the scallops. Yumm..

Only thing was, the pesto + buttery sauce made it very 'jelak-fying', i couldnt even finish a quarter of it.

For desserts, we had souffle with dark chocolate & grand marnier sauce.

I know i know, i told you i was stuffed, but i've got a totally different stomach for desserts :p. The souffle was superb i tell ya!

Je Suis Gourmand
G/F, Net One Center, Bonifacio Global City
Taguig City, Metro Manila
(02) 815-8801

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I shall post more later. Am having a tough time as blogger is pretty unstable/wonky at the moment. Just gonna post this and resume later. Till then take care, and stay tuned.

Happy weekend everyone! Muakisses ;)

xoxo
McGorgeous

Sangkaya Sunday!

I love to chill on Sunday. :)

I'm happy to say that i managed to get quite a lot of things done today.

Lemme see....besides having spring cleaned my room, i managed to try out this recipe for my fave Thai dessert - Sangkaya.

For those of you who're not familiar, sangkaya is in actual fact coconut egg custard.

My sunday sweet ;)
Mum and dad like the sangkaya too.

I saved so much. The ones selling here cost RM3.6 per piece. We can practically eat our hearts out. :P

I've googled around for a few recipes and I came up with my own.


~*~*~*Sangkaya recipe*~*~*~

Ingredients

1 cup coconut cream - i used reduced fat coconut milk
3/4 to 1 cup gula melaka (palm sugar)

5 eggs

1 pandan leave

1 small pumpkin (about 6 inches in diameter and 5 inches in height)

Method

1) Slice off the top of the pumpkin. Remove the seeds and most of the pulp.

2) Cut the pandan leave into small pieces, put into blender with about half cup water, blend well. Then squeeze blended pandan leaves and strain pandan juice through a sieve cloth.
3) Heat the coconut milk and palm sugar in a pot just enough to dissolve the sugar, creating a smooth mixture. Allow to cool to room temperature.

4) Beat the eggs. Mix with the cooled, sweetened coconut cream.

5) Add 3 tablespoons of pandan leave juice.

6) Strain mixture through a sieve cloth. Spoon out any bubbles that may have formed over the top.

7) Pour mixture into the hollowed out pumpkin. Steam over medium heat until custard is set. This will take approximately 1 hour, depending on the size and thickeness of the pumpkin. Let cool.

8) Slice the pumpkin into wedges as you would a cake. Store the rest in the fridge.

Bon appetit!

=)

My birthday 2009

As soon as the clock strikes 12am...

My family 'surprised' me with a birthday cake and song..


18th April, 12am

Bro wasn't able to celebrate with us as he had to entertain his bosses and clients.
Look at my doggies, all so eager to wish mummy 'happy birthday'.

Or were they more eager to eat the cake? :P

18th April, 7pm

Sis and i camwhored a bit while waiting for Chef to pick me up for dinner.

Chef and I had dinner @ Rakuzen, Plaza Damas.

Had my all time fave Chirashi sushi bento

Tempura and caterpillar roll

Sorry, I'm not posting any pix of Chef and I on that night. We didn't look good as we ended our relationship there and then. Dun ask me why...But no worries, I'm okay and we're still friends. Figure it's heaps better that way.




19th April, Sunday

My cheemuis and I celebrated my birthday @ our fave porky-dining place -Elcerdo.

Yups, this is the 3rd time we're celebrating there. Guess we're all porkaholics. :p

I'm so glad i had the girls to accompany that day...there's no other place i'd rather be than to nurse my wounds with my girlfriends. Surprisingly though, I was completely okay. As I've told them many times, I have a feeling i was over him weeks ago..Perhaps, I've really cried it all out that there's no more tears.

Again Werner looks different this time.





The creamy soup with bacon bits. Yumm..




Jamón Serrano



My fave crispy pork belly with lentil. MMmMMMmm..
The bomb the bomb!




This is a special made by Werner on that day for a function. It's not on the menu at all.

It's Hungarian goulash served with hand made pasta.





Here comes the cake pig cutting bit..

Oh, i just realised those piccies are with Carmen.

Werner was super nice, he sent his nephew (bless the man!) Andre to help me officiate the piglet cutting. Men, quick quick pass me those piccies as soon as you get back from Japan k?

For the meantime, let's just enjoy the suckling piglet.


Expression: Combination of - mildly stoned + very surprised




Hmm..i wish for.. ***** * **** ***




Love the lil piglet. It's now living happily on my desk. :)



Thanks gals! Love you all. muahhh




What? Mrs Edward Cullen? Who wrote that? Better own up. :P




Heaps of Topshop vouchers for me to spend. Woohooo. *grin*




We adjourned for drinks at Werner's opposite. We've always love the music and ambience here.

What's more? Each alcoholic drinks we ordered gave us a free tapas dish. Fantastic deal man!

I love their rose champagne sangria. It's yummilicious.





Thank you ppl!


From Theresa babe...
A pair of earrings + necklace set from Diva and a vintage leaf motives earrings from Opia (Spain).




From Joanne..

A jar of lovingly folded stars in a bling bling studded jar.




From my best friend, San.

I received this from Mich who just got back from Melby. Mich, Shukz and I caught up last Sunday @ La Bodega for updates and to 'nurse my wounds'. Thanks gals. Esp Shukz, thanks for staying with me, I really enjoyed our foot reflexology session at Morino Kaze. I really needed that girly chat.

San, these earrings are super classy la. Love it!
*sorry, the photos aint doing the earrings any justice. They are heaps shinier*



From Alice and Reena

Sweet Temptation lip glosses in the shape of cupcakes. L-R: Choc, Strawberry, Vanilla.

Oh, that's not a lollipop by the way, it's a lolly soap bar. :p

Thank you everyone, me loves you long time! ;)