Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Playing with Food - Meiji Chocolate House

When Y and her husband R were in Hong Kong recently, we partook in a couple of delicious meals together, and they also kindly and generously brought me this fun gift - a to-be-assembled "house" made up of chocolate pieces. Y says that her (super cute, super well behaved 5 year old) daughter QB really enjoyed putting this together, and thought I might like to try it, and thereafter enjoy the chocolate, of course.

I decided to tote it along one afternoon when J and I visited his family, so that we could do it together with his two nephews (3 and 7).

As it turns out, I took more pictures than actually partake in all that much of the assembly as J did most of it together with the older nephew.

The end result was quite funny, nothing like the coordinated, put together piece pictured on the front of the box, but cute in a messy way nonetheless. Everyone had loads of fun heating up the chocolate "glue" that holds the pieces together, gingerly putting the pieces of chocolate together, and finally, gently plonking on the colourful chocolate pebbles and strawberry flavoured cones on the roof. And of course, at the end, it got torn apart as the boys greedily descended upon the chocolate to gobble everything up.

Thanks again, Y and R!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The burger from Wagyu


I'd been looking forward to the burger from Wagyu for literally, months, since the first time I had it for dinner. Finally grabbed L and A last Friday for a late leisurely lunch, eagerly anticipating the burgers we were all going to order.

Wagyu is a restaurant from the Castelo Concepts restaurant group, which also owns the quite delightful Oola up on Bridges Street, one of my favourite venues for lunch and dinner.

We made our reservation at 1pm and the place was packed and noisily festive when we arrived - everyone is taking the opportunity to have a nice long lunch at the start of the weekend, very nice. The restaurant is an all day dining concept, open from breakfast and all the way through, which means you can satisfy your burger or wagyu steak craving at three in the afternoon, should the urge beckon. They also offer a 3-course set lunch at a very good value HK$145, which we were briefly tempted by, but we came to Wagyu for the burger, and so all three of us ordered the burger.

I ordered mine sans vegetables, the way I usually like my burgers - just the wagyu beef and with cheese (3 choices of swiss, cheddar or blue). And requested for french fries (skinny) instead of the fat fries which was the standard side. L and A's fat fries looked nice and succulent, and they said they were very delicious. The bread was lightly toasted, fluffy warm white bap, which complemented the meat very nicely.

The burger was as good as I remember, with the juicy patty from wagyu minced beef, and even though I ordered mine well done for obvious reasons, it wasn't dry at all, and was juicy and flavourful, with a nice hint of cumin and spice. The fries were nicely done and I gobbled up every single fry, alternating between ketchup and horseradish dip, as well the whole entire burger, though I had well meaning intentions to perhaps leave about.... a quarter behind. Yumyum!!

Actually, on a side note, L felt that the blue cheese which was her choice of cheese was a tad overpowering, but my cheddar went nicely with.

A quick mention about the dessert I forced my friends to "share" with me (actually I ate about 95% of it) - the apple crumble consisted of more crumble than apple, the way I like it, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a light sprinkle of strawberry and apricot sauce, topped with a decorative gooseberry. The sauce baked into the crumble tasted very slightly reminiscent of the Teochew taro dessert orh nee and was not typical of what you'd expect in an apple crumble, but I felt its warm sweet gooeyness was well incorporated into the entire concoction.

A return visit please!

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Making chocolate pudding










Had 2 boxes of Valrhona dark chocolates squares in the fridge and discovered they were reaching the expiration in a few weeks - so decided to do something with them that would constructively use them up.

Used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen - followed the recipe closely except for pure vanilla extract - couldn't locate anything apart from artificial vanilla flavouring and I looked in four supermarkets.

Still very Valrhona chocolatey, and was a cinch to make.