Hello, Hello! It's been a while since I last blogged and boy, I was really busy these three weeks at work. I've been really busy because the office is having a Christmas Decoration competition where we are segregated into 4 groups to decorate our office space! It was so hectic but it was really fun!

A wide view on how it our space looked like before the magic happened. This is the stage where we were all planning on what,where and how we should do to our little corner (not that little, quite big actually!)

We spent so many days on cutting, rolling snow balls out from cotton wool to everything!

Still at the beginning stages of assembling and rolling more snow balls. It looked easy but so much of time is spent doing all of these.

We got our ideas from pinterest and we came up with an awesome concept which is a cafe! Initially, we wanted to make it a winter wonderland cafe but the outcome of what we made in the end was waaaaaaaaay better than what we originally planned!

Slowly our Cafe comes to life!

Some flowers ain't gonna hurt no body. Samantha and I went flower shopping at Pasar Seni. Oh man, I really love flowers, the smell and the beauty of it :D

Our Cafe corner! We have been painting bricks for a week, the agony to paint these omg. We had to motivate each other to finish painting them bricks. I swear I thought I was gonna poop bricks and dream about painting bricks. D: 

More bricks! Look at our beautiful suspended Christmas tree, how can you not be fascinated by a floating tree? HOW CAN YOU NOT? Lol!

Have you seen our wonderful hand made Coffee Machine? Made by Michelle Teh, it is so amazing, really. 

Why of course we accept credits by social media likes, follows and shares! AND ALSO most importantly your precious VOTE ;)

We also got "awarded" from Trip Advisor and TimeOut KL okay? Your cafe got or not? :p

So dear friends and readers of mine, do vote for Reel Cafe Noms at http://dayre.me/timothytiah/Jz6xJf9p17 by commenting on the blog post :)

Xoxo,

Ophelia

16:34

I've been so busy for the past few weeks with convocation and everything that I was trying to find the time to blog about my recent visit to DC Restaurant by Darren Chin.

No words can describe the experience I had at this restaurant. I think it was one of the best fine dining experience I ever had. It's probably of the company I had to! Claire was back from The States and it has been over a year plus since I last seen her. I never knew it was her cousin's "Bachelorette" dinner until I was in the car with her but I knew her cousins were coming along. I ordered the 3 course meal, don't be fooled with the 3 course meal because you WILL have other dishes in between. I left the restaurant with a satisfying tummy and I was stuffed.

Meet Claire, my close friend from my Uni days. (HAH! I feel so old using the word from my Uni days LOL! I just graduated 2 weeks ago)

Okay back to what I was blogging about.

I really like the concept of the restaurant, it gives me the 'less is more' kinda vibe, a minimalist.

When we entered the restaurant we were greeted and asked to drink some cucumber kind of shot. Then we took a look at the private/event area.

This is where the chefs will work their magic right in front of you :)

Once you go up the stairs, you could peep through this window. Want to know how your food is prepared? Take a peek into this magical window. Lol. 

Every table had an iPod shuffle, you can listen to the introduction of the Restaurant to the theme/concept while waiting for your amuse bouche to be served. Okay, so first we got served with a basket of freshly baked breads with Pamplie "raw" unpasteurized butter by baker Jo. Baker Jo is really one talented baker/chef, well I would know because we were in the same class! In fact, all of them are talented :D There were a selection of breads but I forgot what it was :( However, the butter was something different. I've not tasted butter like that before.

For the first Amuse Bouche, we had Japanese pumpkin cream/anis emulsion/sago crisp/roasted pumpkin/pine needle soil/pumpkin oil/fried pumpkin leaves. The second was Mushroom 'farci' (stuffed) with cured duck & guinea fowl/chestnut puree/bitter endive salad/sliced raw mushrooms. Oh, I was in love with my second amuse bouche dish. I just love everything on the plate, probably because Duck and Mushrooms are my favourite food!

The first Amuse Bouche

The second Amuse Bouche

Then for the Entree, we were served with 100% wild caught fillet of "Kurau" (caught in Port Klang) Oh I saw the pictures on my Facebook, damn the fish was huge./razor clams with smoked olive oil/spinach puree/almond emulsion/Avruga caviar/toasted almonds/side accompaniment of brioche crisps/foie gras spread (it was on top of the brioche, EVERYTHING went so well together)/sliced almonds/pomegranate gel. Then a surprise Pre Entree was served, compliments from the chef...heheh...the perks of having chef friends..joking. We also had the Pre Entree which was the Grilled Gambas/Red pepper puree/sauce nantua/ "petit pois" (green peas) cream/caramelized baby onions/ buttered coco beans/parmesan tuile. 

The Entree - "Kurau"

I think I expressed my love a little bit too much in this blog entry because I was about to say I love my main course! It was wholesome and sophisticated. So I had Slow Roasted milk fed lamb 'en parmentier'/lentils du puy/sherry jus/side accompaniment of seared veal sweetbreads/onion glaze/grilled Eryngii mushroom with soy glaze/Porcini emulsion/rocket swiss chard salad. Honestly, I couldn't finish my Mains because I was already so stuffed from all of the previous dishes.

That was my first time I tried seared veal sweetbread. It was so soft that it just melts in my mouth and this was the accompaniment for the Lamb en parmentie.

It was just pure lamb goodness underneath them mashed potatoes. The sherry jus was too good that I can't get enough of it.

Okay before I go into the dessert section, how all of these courses work is that we get to choose from a:

2 Courses - Entree + Mains OR Mains+ Cheese platter or dessert

3 Courses - Entree + Mains + Cheese or Dessert

5 Courses - Well you get the whole thing!

Since I had the 3 course meal, I had a choice to pick between cheese or a dessert. Well, I really enjoy cheese so I pick the cheese platter. I'm also not much of a sweet tooth even though I bake a lot. They had this goat cheese marinated in brown sugar which I thought it was a piece of caramel fudge.

Preparing them beautiful cheese

Mmmm...blue cheese, my fav.

 Some parmesan cheese shaver which makes the parmesan shavings look like a pretty carnation flower

Oh, pretty cheese

Claire had the chocolate coulant, look at that chocolate just oozing out from the centre of the cake!

All full and happy :D

Thank you for the AMAZING dinner! Talented bunch :) 

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23:03

Gooood Morning! I am not suppose to be up this early on a Saturday but oh well.

So I attended the launch of Strongbow's three new variants of their cider on Tuesday. (Heeeey, I am on a roll with attending events, woohoo!) The launch was held 31 Square, Sunway Damansara. If I am not mistaken they have a cafe in there too!

I thought the set up of the place was really nice. I don't know, to me it felt like some posh event, everyone's dressed up and stuff. Luckily I did too! The weather wasn't too bad as well, yeah it did rain but at least it stopped after a while. 

A glass of the Strongbow  in a chilly evening..yum! I just really love ciders because it's sweet and it doesn't have that strong alcohol taste.

I got there pretty early, so they were still setting up the place because of the rain and they closed the door to the studio. Well I managed to peek through while I was walking around, and it looked like something fantastic was about to happen.

OH! The food was pretty good too! They had a Mason Salad Bar, Cheese platters and the meat station. I called it the meat station because they had Tuscan Style Chicken, Lamb Skewers (it was my favourite of the night) and some beef sandwich. Okay, while Samantha was busy doing some stuff, I just ate and ate some more. 

It was all good, the food went well with the Strongbow.

Meet Carrie a blogger! and Kai Xin on my right :) I had fun talking with these two. Yeah, my face was red after the first glass of Strongbow. Kai Xin kept saying "Ophelia, you're like a tomato" I wasn't drunk, I just get red really fast :( 

Remember that closed door? They opened it about 630pm and everyone was invited/asked to enter the studio. Luckily for being 150cm, I got pushed in front. Hehe, the perks of being short you know? Get to stand in front of concerts when I say I can't see a thing and I get to buy clothes from the Kids Department! Which I don't well not yet! Because I'm shy la! 

Okay, I side tracked a little bit. 

They introduce the three new variants of the cider by performances. The dancers danced according to the theme of the cider. It was really cool! 

Ta dah! Introducing the three variants of the cider: Honey, Gold and Elderflower. I loved everything from the cider, the performance and the set up of the whole thing.

After that, we were all taking pictures and walking around the studio to try out the new flavours. Sam got the Strongbow Apple Cider Honey, I had the Strongbow Apple Cider Elderflower and Kai Xin had the Strongbow Apple Cider Gold . Most of them loved the Apple Cider Honey but I really like the Apple Cider Elderflower. It has this nice sweet fragrant to it and it was smooth. Oh I would want one right now but it's 9:35am.

Strongbow Apple Cider Honey. This was really good as well, it's sweet and it has a really nice flavour to it.

Meet Yu Tson! 

The lights were shining from below, I thought it will make her look ghostly. Nope! 

My favourite cider of the night! Strongbow Apple Cider Elderflower! Flower power yo.

P/s: I should really invest in a camera. I don't which camera is good tho, I really like the NX Mini because of the effects and all or should I get a Sony? Gah.

xoxo,

Ophelia

WTF xoxo. 

09:50

I was looking forward towards Saturday the whole week because it's the day I usually bake. This whole week has been tiring for me with insufficient amount of sleep, it was a torture. Anyhoo, Leslie came down for a visit! So yeah, I took Leslie and Aimi for breakfast then we went for a short grocery trip to get ingredients for my Spiced Rum Apple Hand Pies.  

Initially, I wanted to make Peach Bourbon Hand Pies (recipe from smitten kitchen) but peaches are out of season right now. So I thought hey why not apple pie instead? I couldn't find the base of my tart mould so I decided to make it into hand pies instead.

I was at Tesco and there were different kinds of red apples. Leslie was telling which apple was the gritty, sandy feeling. I HATE THOSE KIND OF APPLES by the way because it feels like I'm taking a bite into dried up sponge. So I decided to buy 2 kinds of red apples for my pie, Fuji & Royal Gala.

Leslie and Aimi helped me cut the red apples, it was so great to catch up with them. It's been a year since I've last seen these two ever since Leslie went back to Sabah.

All peeled and ready to be sliced! I used a mixture of both apples because I don't want my apple hand pies to be just a sweet dessert. I always think it is better if there's like a mixture of a little bit of sour apples in this. 

I bought normal rum, so I spiced it up with some cloves, ground nutmeg and some ground cinnamon. A little bit of spice won't hurt no body ;) I sliced some apples to make compote, only this time my compote wasn't savoury. The last time I made savoury compote to accompany my pork burgers. 

I mixed fresh diced apples to my compote as my filling so there's a little bit of crunch to it.

I browned my butter so give it a little nutty flavour, I guess it my head it all goes well together. The rum, the spices, the apples and the brown butter. Oh yum! After I browned my butter I added in the cloves then apples! 

While my compote was simmering, Leslie and Aimi helped me with dicing of the apples. They marinated it in rum and some orange peel. Oh, it smells good!

We just realise we added rum everywhere! And no you won't get drunk having this. Don't worry. I had a few and I am still fine hahah.

Compote yourself away apples!

Wished my kitchen had an air-cond because the weather was so warm that my butter melted quite fast and I didn't even use my hands to mix the butter and flour together.

Pouring in the sour cream mixture into the bowl of flour and butter. Remember to cut your finger nails short or it's just nasty to get dough under your nails. Also, it will be hard to clean it and eventually you have to cut your fingernails.

The dough! It was so soft like a sugar dough ( dough that is usually used in fruit tarts ) I thought I added too much of liquid and I was really afraid of over working the dough. So I wrapped that up in cling film and leave it in the fridge to let it rest before I start rolling it out.

Marinated diced apples + apple compote :D

I continued on today because we went out for dinner last night. So I took out the dough and rolled it out quite thin, thickness of a 20 cent coin? Well at least, I tried to get it all with that thickness. 

Roll 'em and cut 'em with a ring cutter. Alternatively, you could use a medium sized jam jar. :D

I had to work really fast with this dough because it was so soft. After rolling it, I popped it right back into the fridge for a while till it slightly hardens. 

Then spoon up some of that filling and placed it in the corner. The ones I did above had too much of filling, so I reduced it a little before I close them up. 

It's like making baked curry puffs. LOL

I think if I never told anyone what I was making, they'll assume I'm baking baked curry puffs. The spiced rum apple hand pies were baked at 190 degrees celsius. 

Oh ya, I tested the pastry. I actually had a bigger piece to cut it BUT HUN ATE IT! when I told him not to -.- So the pastry looks like this! I was so amaze, I was like wow! okay it looks like 

puff pastry! Because of the layer/hollowness? 

Test, test it wasn't a failure woohoo! I was happy with the end product, it's just that I think made way too much of filling and very little dough. I decided to make an Apple Crumble with the remaining filling because my mom was hinting me to do so and there you go, no wastage :D

Rustic apples hand pies. Cheh....rustic.

For the filling:

Green apples

Fuji Red apples

Royal Gala Red apples

Cloves (just a few)

1/8 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

1/16 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg

4 Tablespoon of Rum

6 Tablespoon of Brown Sugar 

Butter

Honestly, I adjusted the flavours and the sweetness along the way.

For the pastry (I took it from Smitten Kitchen):

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

16 tablespoons (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1/2 cup sour cream

4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup ice water 

Well, that sums up my weekend! :)

21:58