17.04.13

I have been a very distracted soul lately. In the past few days, I have been organizing my documents (and computer files in general), I have been thinking of my trip to Japan (not so much Malaysia cause I know what to do in my own country), I have been thinking about getting ready for co-op, I have been thinking about moving out of my house here in Guelph... I SHOULD be thinking more about finals and studying. >_<

Going back in time. I did my first final last Tuesday. Later that day, I met up with my Guelph-Malaysian friends for what you may call a celebration dinner! We waited for the bus to head downtown and it was POURING RAIN! I was not prepared whatsoever clothing wise cause when I headed out for my exam it was bright and sunny and beautiful. Anyhow. the 6 of us, me, Nabila, Young Xin, Youjia, Agnes and Yu Hang went to a cute little restaurant called Bin 23!

I ordered the grilled calamari with Poblano pepperonatta and citrus butter for appetizers. Turns out I should've read the description more closely cause I was hoping for it to be an easy to share dish but no it wasn't! Regardless  the texture was perfect and it tasted pretty good! For my entree, I got the grain fed chicken with root vegetable empanada and rosemary jus!

This dish was definitely a celebration in the mouth! I hardly order roast chicken dishes in restaurants cause most of them are either too dry or too plain. This one was deliciously succulent and I really loved the empanada, more so than the chicken actually! Thank you all for the great evening, definitely made me feel like I'm back in Malaysia again for a night!

Then last Wednesday I went to faculty dinner, which I already blogged about here! Haha why can't I eat like that everyday? Time to go earn myself some money. Anyhow over the weekend, I actually tried a new method of cooking: slow roasting. I had this odd cut of pork loin that had numerous layers of fat in between, so I was thinking of a braised pork recipe. So indeed, I marinated the pork with soy sauce, plum sauce (courtesy of Chinese takeout restaurants), white wine and garlic! I actually left it in the fridge for quite a while. Then I blasted it into an oven at 450 for 10 minutes, and then reduced it to 250 after for about 45 minutes?

The end product was TWO dinners! Dinner #1 consisted of the pork that came out of the oven 55 minutes after cooking, served with rice and veges!

Dinner #2 was my first attempt in making ramen. I didn't have any ingredients suitable to make ramen broth (I've been trying to clear out the food that I have) so the broth was just nappa cabbage, onion, and soy sauce =_=. For the toppings, I had steamed bok choy, a ruined onsen tamago (half boiled egg - ruined cause I dropped it =_=) AND the pork slices! I had sliced the pork into relatively thin slices, and reheated them in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes (a little longer wouldn't have hurt)... TADA

I had WAY too much topping for the amount of noodles and broth I had. Kinda sad. Aside from the failed broth and the failed egg and the not so Japanese toppings, I would say the pork was AMAZING! It basically tasted like Char Siu (cantonese style barbecued pork) hahaha so proud of myself for making it! HAHAHA! *vain-alert*

In a blink of a post, it is now Wednesday and I have completed not one but THREE finals. My homerun final will be Friday morning at 8.30am WTF, so wish me luck! I'm not sure but I have a feeling the next time I blog I will either be in Japan or Malaysia, so see you all halfway across the world! Here's a last photo of yesterday's sunset!

Listening to "Rose" by Lee Hi
Images by Me