Greyhound Café

Everyone in Thailand knows not to take mall restaurants seriously. After all, these are dismissed, rightfully so, as overpriced when their food is mediocre at best. The bang for the buck factor is even more salient in a country in Thailand where cheap, delicious hole-in-the-wall eateries abound. Sadly, these restaurant often overcompensate with decor clearly targeting at well-heeled diners and young people in general.

This is why spaghetti with Italian sausage (180 baht) at Greyhound is a pleasant surprise. With generous so generous and ingredients so fresh, this dish can only be described as robust. From the perfectly al dente spaghetti to the flavorful chunks of tomatoes, everything is done to perfection.

Spaghetti garlic & oil

Spaghetti garlic & oil or 'aglio e olio' is a perfect dinner for a Saturday night in where you don't want to do more than just throwing a few things in a dish. That's basically what aglio e olio is. You cook minced garlic in low-heat olive oil (extra virgin for rich taste). Then throw in cooked pasta al dente. Finally add salt and pepper to taste. As a finishing touch I find it refreshing to have a few plumb juicy cherry tomatoes that can nicely round up the plate.

Photolog

Pizza for dinner!

Bought frozen chicken bbq pizza (thin & crispy) from supermarket. Generously added ham, cheese, and tomatoes for extra yum. I'll make one one day! Shouldn't be that complicated right? What you need is a pre-made dough and then whatever toppings you like, which in my case would be bacon, cheese, (insert one meat here), and bbq sauce! yumm...grr...seems like my stomach is growling again.

On another note, the BlackBerry camera is not bad at all. given enough light and all, it is in fact pretty good at micro-shooting.

Goose-huggers

My friends wanted to eat French tonight and we knew of a place in Farringdon, so we met at 7 and headed over...much to our disappointment. lots of people gathered about outside the restaurant yelling through megaphones and stuff. obviously they are animal rights activists protesting against foie gras. whoa friday NIGHT, what are the chances? too bad for the restaurant (and us), no one dared to go in. quite a scene.

otherwise Comptoir Gascon is a nice reasonably priced restaurant and i consider going back in the future, but not for foie gras. i like the taste of it but not crazy about it. i don't condone those who eat them, nor do i blame them.

Sth i'd totally eat for breakfast.

Blueberry Waffle Breakfast Sandwich

Breakfast sandwich with two eggs, two sausages, ham, string cheese and bacon between two blueberry waffles glazed with maple syrup.

via thisiswhyyourefat.com

Moules, frites, et biere...

How Belgian. i first had this when i was in Paris two years ago. since that was a chain restaurant (Leo..sth), it was cheaper than what we had tonight. Belgo is in fact a chain, too, albeit a little more upscale. The mussels are fresh but the overall taste (Provençal: tomatoes, celery, and other ingredients) was okay. i preferred the Thai green curry style my friends got, though (people over here co-opt lots of thai cusine into their food, from "Belgian" mussels dish to potato chips). However, the chips are really nice (crispy on the outside, juicy soft on the inside: see image) and the beer (St.Feuillien Blonde, 7.5% alc.) is good, too.

As a devoted vegetarian Mimi had to miss out on the mussels.

This place is crowded even on a Monday night. but then this is Covent Garden we're talking about.

Some of the mussels weren't "cooked", that is they're not all that firm but i ate them anyway. hope i won't get food poisoning later tonight haha. but my sturdy Thai stomach is immune to all kinds of things.

penne al salmone affumicato

and i'm in italy again :)

pasta has been my staple for the past three years but i didn't get creative with my recipes until recently (thanks to a proper kitchen). i got the recipe above from a survival guide for american students when i visited tran in rome. easily the simplest of all. plus my love for smoked salmon. not bad for the first try although the salmon is too cooked, and thus barely different from, well, salmon. next time i'll put salmon in last because i want to retain that raw smokey smell. and onions more finely chopped please!

i'll be in italy again one month from now! talk about how time flies...

Because i was craving smoked salmon so bad and London is the best place to do grocery-shopping (second to Paris, bien sûr)

I made myself a bowl of salad! so simply yet homey. I stopped by Sainsbury's at 11pm on my way back and got a bag of crispy lettuce, Scottish smoked salmon, and vinaigrette dressing. and voila my supper at midnight! kind of gratifying but i wish i had bought bacon, crouton, and cheese to top it off. Also, Sainsury's "sweet balsamic" is not all that great actually. I should have bought normal balsamic vinaigrette. But i just can't help but pick everything that has "sweet" in it. Oh well. But don't you just love those crispy juicy cherry tomatoes. Believe it or not i didn't discover their bursting their bursting deliciousness until this summer! not a veggies person here, so kind of tried to avoid them the whole time.

Seriously look at how perfectly boiled the egg yolks are. I totally could have done just with two semi-hard boiled eggs, white rice, and soy sauce. Those would make perfect comfort food.




Back at Brown my supper, if any, would be unhealthy carb-loaded noodles with 2-3 hard boiled eggs. Now that i have a decent kitchen to myself i think salad is a much better choice. ultra healthy, ultra Posh.

小籠包

I like chinese food so much it's not funny. i generously allowed myself to gain five whole kilos during my two months in Beijing last year. my cheeks were much chubbier than they already had been becos man is Chinese food there so awesome. i'm a sad excuse for being Thai, for i despite spicy food to death. and thanks goodness I live in Bangkok where good chinese food is usually within a walking distance. ok i lie, how about a reasonable driving distance? so it's never a problem for me when i have a sudden craving for chinese.

One of the fast food-style Chinese restaurants that i like to frequent is Shanghai Xiao Long Bao. They have a bunch of branches throughout Bangkok and fortunately a few of them are conveniently located close to where i usually find myself at. malls, that is. Needless to say their specialty is xiao long bao (小籠包), literally "little basket bun" or as i prefer to call or illustrate it to the uninitiated "dumplings with soup inside." The chain has been around for a while and attracting more and more curious eaters who want to find out what a soup dumpling is like. And recently, the restaurant introduced a new creation nicely adjusted to Thai tastebuds by injecting Tom Yum (Thai style hot & sour soup) in place of normal clear broth. Of course, I didn't hesitate to order a basket...much to my disappointment ack... Thai people are too creative for me, what with satay burger at McDo's or Tom Yum pizza at Pizza Hut. I dunno, I just prefer the original xiao long bao with normal soup inside. Thai spicy soup doesn't go well with Chinese dumplings dammit!(although i gotta say the McDo's satay chicken burger is rockstar. so was the pork burger from years ago that used sticky rice as bun. too fresh.)

Anyways, so on top of the xiao long bao we also ordered a bunch of dishes to eat along, the photographic evidence of which is as follows. but guess who was enough of a retard to forget to take a sole picture of, uhm, xiao long pao? ok lah, i'll make up next time. on a sort of related note, i was the only one at the table to eat rice with chop sticks! a habit i picked up from China. overall, i found the food that day to be unusually salty. i don't see myself going back again until...i have my next xiao long bao craving attack. click for full effect.

My pad thai plate revisited

As promised below are pictures of the ultimate best pad thai on the planet and the woman who makes it possible. click for full effect.

Legit.

up close

Maman et moi

Tao buying lemonade on Thayer St.

My pad thai plate

Off to Saraburi for the weekend for my grandma's birthday. The weekend's highlight is i'll get to eat pad thai cooked by my mom as much as my stomach can stretch (a lot i tell ya). clearly food is the reason why i've been hitting the gym religiously since i've been back. still need to work off 2 more kg. but this weekend is a legitimate hiatus. will post a picture of what legit pad thai should look like. 

Another recent adventure... 10 minutes ago in fact.

Hi,

A sweet-tooth that i am, a meal without desserts to top everything off is never quite satisfying. So tonight, after I finished my home-cooked pasta with string beans and chicken franks (now that sounds very home-cooked), I dashed like a mofo right to, well, ABP in hopes of finding sugary buttery goodies. Too bad they don't make palmier cookies anymore, because that's by far my favourite ABP snack.

Fortunately, tonight ABP debuted Monkey Bread. I didn't even know it was a monkey bread. well, with my non-American/Western upbringing i had never heard of "monkey bread" before in my life. To be honest, I'm not particularly about this hazelnut monkey bread, because I think the bread is a little too dry and flaky. But the thickened caramel kind of does the trick nonetheless. So i decided to look this up on Wikipedia a moment ago and this is what i found:

"Monkey Bread, also called Hungarian coffee cake and bubbleloaf, is a sticky, gooey pastry served as a breakfast treat. Recipes for the towering bread first appeared in American women's magazines and community cookbooks in the 1950s. It is made with pieces of sweet yeast dough which are baked in a cake pan at high heat after first being individually covered in melted butter, cinnamon, sugar and chopped pecans. It is traditionally served hot so that the baked segments can be easily torn away with the fingers and eaten by hand."

ps: The picture below comes from www.nancy-kitchen.com,
which looks very different from what i just had.

Just so i remember the day

Food is always the highlight of the day, any day. yesterday, however, i started to feel that my self-indulgence was getting to me.

lunch: chinese food (sweet&sour chicken and spare ribs)

dinner: more chinese food
8PM: friend brings left-over pad thai from faculty club.

11PM: coffee-run to starbucks on Thayer St. one grande white-chocolate mocha whose calorie and sugar content is immeasurable. and much to my surprise (and joy), since they were closing at 12, they started to give away left-over bakeries. of course, i did not hesitate to take my favourite: the glorious succulent Apple Fritter:

Which totals to some 450 calories. yea i basically ate every 3 hours yesterday. and this morning i cooked an omelette using 4 eggs. somebody save me.

Ideal Meal

Look what i had for dinner the other night. Heaven. I was craving greasy fast food so bad. No, I lie. I always crave fast food. plus, it was late (9:30PM) and I was too lazy to cook. so fast good was the best solution/excuse. I went down to Eastside Pockets and ordered buffalo chicken fingers and fries which amounted to a total of 9.50 dollars! pretty insane for fast food (and in fact for what i got) but nonetheless did it for me. fast food always works wonders.

So yeah, the quantity is pretty big but as a fast food hog I finished them all. so yummy lah. While the guy must have thought I was a weirdo or a desperate college student, because people go there to go wraps, kabobs, and other middle eastern take-aways. so after i'd finished ordering this, he had to take out a huuuge bag of frozen fries and chicken fingers which had been stored in the fridge since who knows when. But i don't care. the fries were ultimate killer. the chicken was a little meh...soggy. I guess they dipped them in the hot sauce or something. but that said, quite an indulgence.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

It's funny to think of something you took for granted when you were little but all of a sudden this little something became something of interest when you're much older. I honestly don't remember the last time I felt "excited" to eat cupcakes, let alone to want to bake some. My grandma was a huge baker and she would bake us all kinds of goodies, mostly cakes, cookies, curry puffs and other Thai snacks. As with anything, I was too young to care back in the days, only to be upset at all these could haves and should haves my life now lacks. Like, what if I had taken chemistry or physics in high school. hah.

I'm growing all the more fascinated at how so many people seem to find comfort and inspirations - artistic and culinary alike - in cupcakes. I think it's the simple pleasure, the quick fix, or something to fill the void that baking cupcakes provides. You will be stunned to realize how simple it is to bake cupcakes. You will also be even more surprised at the variety of cupcake recipes. The traditional cupcake, at least for me, was this ridiculously simple recipe where you just spread frosting/icing on the top of, well, cupcakes. And if you want to raise your creativity up a notch, you change the color of the frosting to something not to oconventional. Something additional is bordering on the realm of muffins.

And clearly as a sworn food lover I was wrong at best, outdated at worst. Thanks to le chef extraordinaire Alissa, I was introduced to this savory recipe "Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcake." I mean I'm never a fan of chocolate, but marrying pumpkin and chocolate chips is genius. Snacks that have pumpkin in them are just divine already. This reminds me of one Thai pumpkin snack. You beat pumpkin with sugar and...coconut milk (?) and a few other ingredients. And then, instead of baking in an oven it like cupcakes, you put the mix in cups made with banana leaves, and then steam it. I love the chewy doughy texture of the pumpkin; it adds something exra to your chewing experience. HMMMM. Heaven.

I've put up here a few pictures from the baking night for you to see/appreciate how enjoyably easy it is. Well, easy for me to say since I didn't do much haha. But yes compared to cheesecake, custard, and other fancy baked goodies that I've seen and helped other people cook, this is a true piece of cake. Oh I almost forgot to mention that we also made cinnamon frosting to top it off. Man if the pumpkin cupcake I split into two halves could make sound, it would go oooomphh.. For real.

Au Bon Portions

Food, Fashion & Lifestyle

I've been meaning to write an entry on the latest invention of one of my favourite eateries Au Bon Pain for quite some time. And tonight seems like a good opportunity since I don't want to start reading Walking since Daybreak and later write a "serious book review", as my European History professor puts it, quite yet. So what else, if not this form of procrastination which obviously starts to get to me, can make you feel fulfilled, self-righteous, and less guilty at the same time?

"Au Bon Portions" is ABP's latest culinary line that features some fifteen selections packaged individually in a tiny transparent plastic box. "Lunch box is cool again" is the tag-line that conceptualizes the campaign. As with its other preceding promotion lines after its recent face-lift, the "coolness" of the Portions boxes oozes from the great variety of selections ranging from a set of cheddar, grapes, and crackers which mimics a fancy cheese&crackers plate, to Hummus & cucumber. These individually packed boxes clearly respond to the demand of people who enjoy the on-the-go lifestyle and want to have the freedom to mix-and-match food items that a conventional-sized lunch would not allow. Whether what you look for is a side-dish for your salad/sandwich or some late-afternoon bites, the Portions are certainly the way to go.

I was swept away the minute I saw the shelves of Thayer St. ABP fully stocked with these tiny boxed small plates which literally gleam like a chic luxury item, an edible precious stone. I can't help but nod at ABP's unyielding creativity to marry luxury with affordability, and thus make all their bistro-style offerings pleasingly customizable. To delve in further I in fact think that the tomato wedges, crackers, asparagus, etc seem to be casually thrown in yet look effortlessly artistic in all their miniatured beauty. Yet another addition to the food fashion industry. On a closing note, below are the picture of Thayer St. ABP I took a while back. Cheers.