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  • Cooofffeeeee?

    Dear diary,

    Today was a good day. I got up early to make dashi broth so that I could get a pandan infusion going. Then I went to Bar 9 where Ian greeted me and gave me some guest coffee: Honduras Las Moras CoE#4 2014 roasted by Nozy Coffee and described how it was roasted a little darker but not charry. I liked it. I want to go to Japan again. I then chose Bolivia Estanislao Pununi because I really liked it when Artificer made it. Still as sweet and bright, I really like this Bolivian coffee.

    Then I shopped and came home, realised I had way too much watercress and snow pea tendrils because all I wanted was two “arching” tendrils with pretty leaves for the dish I was going to make.

    I marvelled at the 200g sashimi grade Port Lincoln blue fin tuna I bought for $79.99/kg and was very glad I chose that over the standard cuts of yellowfin tuna; there was a marbling to the flesh that made it taste great!

    I cut up a lot of fish and made dashimaki tamagoyaki for the first time. It was a bit too sweet and kept breaking up when I tried to roll it, but the texture was there even though it was a chaotic swirl rather than orderly swirl. It also offset the fish very nicely in the chirashi that I made.

    My knifework isn’t great but I’ll keep working on it.

    My food actually tasted as good as it looked today, which was better than last week where it tasted worse than it looked.

    I’m thinking about buying truffle next week for a beef tartare and call the dish “black gold” because I had this hilarious and useless idea to add gold leaf to a truffled beef tartare. I think it’s too over the top, so I probably won’t do it.

    Then I went to my favourite cafe where I was so tired from so much food making that I couldn’t remember what I ordered. It was the house blend espresso. It explains why the Pedra Redonda tasted so different when I was given that after my first drink. I was surprised because I hadn’t ordered it, but I was thankful and appreciative because I was thinking of a second coffee. Then I was asked how much coffee I can drink, to which I replied a lot even though I recently broke my coffee immunity. I do believe I actually still have most of that immunity.

    I was then given two more coffees; I was essentially cleaning up their batch brew at closing time. One was an Ethiopia Aramo from Monastery Coffee which reminded me of the “sunniest” Yirgacheffes I’ve had. It was bright and fresh and smelled great. The other was the Santa Isabel which did pale a little in comparison.

    I am also proud of the chicken livers on toast I made for dinner. They were a bit bleedy so I didn’t eat it all, but the bits that I did eat were yummy.

    Now it’s bed time. I have to make azuki bean smash tomorrow morning and buy milk to make a matcha panna cotta.

  • Pretending to be a chef: Jewelled Sea

    Jewelled sea

    Tea cured ocean trout, shaved scallop, jerusalem artichoke crips, horseradish creme fraiche, finger lime

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  • Banner boy Freik

    This is so adorable right now I have to post it

  • Pseike

    She’s a psychopathic psychic! Aaaah

    It’s certainly fun to be playing around with photoshop again!

  • Vivid Sydney

    I remember every time Vivid was on, I’d be walking through the city thinking, “oh, it’s that light show event again.” This was the first time I decided to actually go look at everything, plus, I think I now understand how my camera works to take night shots. Also, with my camera and my phone synced, I could use the remote shutter to take steady pictures of things by placing my camera in awkward places! For example, there was one where I was holding the camera with my back to the actual building on display, but since I could see the view with my phone, I managed to take clear pictures!


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  • Sydney 2015

    Now that I’ve gotten most of the restaurants and cafes out of the way, it’s time to blog about everything else that happened in Sydney!


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  • Sydney Coffee Rush 2015

    Yep, a rush, not a crawl. Though I couldn’t actually rush because I was a little too enthusiastic about coffee, and managed to poison myself on my very first day of adventure! That was not only embarrassing as I couldn’t finish a meal at my favourite soba restaurant, but also had to battle to not collapse in the middle of nowhere!

    That aside, I think I will write this up by cafe in no order except in which they appear in my uploads!


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