Unboxing

Finally the parcel arrived, my first yanagi knife, 27cm Masamoto Hon-kasumi. did not expect the knife to be wrap in such a big box but i held on to it walking home happily.

Inside the box was the knife and a Korin catalog of other knives they sell, what a lovely work of art, fully hand craft blade and handle with a perfect center balance. testing the knife on a piece of paper feels awesome, listening to the paper shred and watching this beast tearing the paper in a clean cut, awesome simply awesome tool added to my repertoire.

hispanic fiesta

Anguila
Smoked eel brandada with sorrel, crispy tocino and fresh truffle

Anchoa
Hand filleted Cantabrian Artisan anchovy on crouton with smoked tomato sorbet

Bomba
Catalan Potato bomb filled with chorizo

Buey
Rost Biff wagyu with tocino de cielo, potato crisps, pickled garlic and black garlic

Carillera de buey
Slowly braised beef cheek in Pedro Ximenez on cauliflower puree

Bocadillo de calamares
Calamari sandwich with Basque guindilla and mayonnaise



Monday night, rainy week, a little slow, a little lazy to cook and home, decided to dine out with a couple a friends, the place was Movida Terraza, one of Frank Camorra's few tapas bar in Melbourne. Tapas were appetizing and the slow braise beef cheek i ordered were nothing much to look at but was amazingly tender and tasty, smoothers cauliflower puree i ever had.
Bomba's, i would never forget this dish, as Marion from Masterchef Australia beat the creator of that dish himself. Its a cute dish, little deep fried ball with sauce on top, i can eat a few of these as a meal:)

Felt a little Mediterranean recently because i have a few spices sitting in the drawer waiting for me to cook with it. So i thought of cooking a kebab. What a simple easy dish to put together, marinate the meat, chuck it in the fridge, prep the vege and prepare some skewers ,done. Well i thought i had some bamboo skewers at home so i opt to use toothpicks instead. It was easier than a Chinese stir-fry.
To accompany my ... cocktail kebabs were couscous with raisins and wonderful fresh herbs grown in the garden and a dollop of sour cream,mince garlic,paprika. Garnish with a citruses layer of sumac spice. Sour, lamb, couscous hmm. i gotta make this more often.

Its funny how sometimes when disaster strike and things turn out even better then what you've expected. for example these Grissini i've baked, i begin with too much water and had ran out of flour, leaving me no choice i continued kneading a very moist dough and let it prove till double its size. an accidental recipe that turn out prefect nice happy and moist, just the kind of dough i've wanted to work with.
Top up with seasoning of salt, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and Togarashi. i know, cheese and Japanese spice is a match made in hell, but i was delicious. saltiness from the cheese and a little heat from Japanese spice actually compliment each other.

bought my first betta fish from a sunday market

this would make a cute tattoo relating to my career.

driving in the outskirts of kota kinabalu. what a clean refreshing view of greens and mt.kinabalu