Thursday 24 March 2011

what a day

Let me start with Tuesday. After work I rushed home (bumping into Wen Chean on the way - she was just leaving the gym) to make chocolate brownies. I was already really hungry but didn't start to eat dinner (edamame and miso soup) until I put the first batch of brownies into the oven. Having made brownies using this "best-ever" recipe (see previous post) a few times, I now have a few ideas to improve the recipe. 1) add 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence to enhance the smell and flavour; 2) baking time should be 40 mins (45mins was a little too much - starting to get a little dry); 3) the ratio of dark chocolate and milk chocolate could be adjusted to personal taste. About the dark/milk chocolate issue, personally I love dark chocolate (honestly I eat dark chocolate exclusively - you'd never see me eating anything with less than 60% cocoa), but I understand it could a bit too bitter for people who prefer milk chocolate.

Anyway after I finish baking the brownies, I took a shower, packed my bag for the next day and went to bed at around 11pm. On Wednesday morning I got up at 5am. Why? Because I had to catch the 0700 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston. I got to the office 15 minutes before the pre-arranged 10am time. I was the only candidate there to take the e-tray assessment that particular day so it was nice not to have any disturbance. I had just about enough time to read through all the e-mails, attachments and select the appropriate replies. Then I wrote the e-mail (as the written assessment), although 50 mins was just about enough. In the end I didn't have much time to make notes (for the subsequent interview).

Between the assessment on the computer and the interviews I was whisked away to a fancy lunch with an associate. She was incredibly nice and throughout lunch I discovered that we had quite a lot in common (including a common friend!); she studied Japanese (at Oxford though) and she did the IB diploma at a boarding school in Hertfordshire.

After lunch it was the e-tray interview. I was interviewed about the e-mail I composed in the written assessment. The interviewer happened to be a Chinese lady from HK who shared the same surname as me. The interview was obviously carried out in English, but I guess I was clear in the explanation and justification of my written piece so she didn't really ask me that many questions. We had some time left before the partner arrived so we just chatted about Japan and HK. Then the partner arrived, after I introduced myself and talked about university and part-time jobs and internship, he asked me only a couple of competency questions, the rest of the time was him talking about his career so far. He asked me "why Osaka" and I told him about my past experience in Kansai and how I like the people from Kansai. I guess that pleased him 'cause he's actually from Hirakata (大阪府枚方市)! At the end of the interview he walked me out of the building and we had a very short conversation in Japanese about Osaka.

I left the office at around 3.40pm and didn't know what to do next. I had planned to meet Piotr in Tower Hill at 6pm so I still had plenty of time. I didn't want to go anywhere on the Tube 'cause I'm afraid someone would call my mobile and there wouldn't be any reception. Yesterday was really sunny and unusually warm so I decided to walk from Chancery Lane to Tower Hill. On the way, about 40 mins after I left Chancery Lane, I got a call from the first interviewer and she told me that I'd been successful - in Cantonese! It was really noisy on the street but I managed to pick up words such as "congratulations" etc...but afterwards I kept thinking whether I was making things up in my mind or not. (When I got home at midnight I saw the e-mail in the inbox.)

Yesterday was a really long day. I got up at 5am and didn't get home till midnight. Adrenaline really kept me going. I had two dinner dates and was talking basically the entire day. When I got onto the train at 9.40pm and sat down in my seat, I was still a little bit jittery, but then half an hour into the journey I suddenly felt really exhausted and fell asleep (most people were asleep). So many things happened, and I really couldn't believe how a person's life can be changed in just one day. I guess I'll be flat-hunting in June and rejoin the Londoners.

Tuesday 15 March 2011

がんばれ日本。私もがんばります。

Today I made an online donation at Red Cross UK. As insignificant as it is, that's all I can do right now. The closer I follow the news feed, the more I read about the terrible things happening in Japan, the more I want to be there. Having studied the language for over 5 years, having lived and studied there, this is a country I've grown to love. I'm (still) not a Japan fanatic. I don't blindly love everything about that country. There are certain things and people in Japan that bug me. But all the good things about it have created an intangible but strong tie between my mind and that rising sun.

I remember writing in my UCAS personal statement, that I hoped to enter diplomacy or journalism as a profession. Although at the moment I'm heading towards a different career path, I don't think I'll ever give up that aspiration, especially not now. I might have been unsuccessful at this year's Fast Stream selection, but I will try again in the future. Seeing footages on the TV and reading articles in the papers about everything that's happening in Japan, the voice in my mind keeps saying "I should be there - reporting the news or helping with the search and rescue". I didn't study Japanese so that I could experience a natural disaster, but knowing the language makes me think that I should be there utilise what I've learned and hopefully help someone in need. Making a donation doesn't satisfy my feelings. Having said that, it is still important that we all make a small contribution - people of the Tohoku region are living with lack of food, water, electricity in the freezing conditions. They need all the help they can get.

Monday 14 March 2011

best-ever brownies


Seriously, this recipe makes the most amazing, moist and decadent chocolate brownies, ever. Roomie Wen Chean makes this from time to time and I pestered her until she gave me the recipe. It's from BBC Good Food. Today I made it for the first time, since it's Megan's birthday. Personally I don't like white chocolate (it's not chocolate!), I replaced it with milk chocolate so altogether I used 185g of dark chocolate and 100g of milk chocolate. The use of dark chocolate and golden caster sugar and 3 eggs make this brownies incredibly moist and fudgy. I've seen recipes that uses no real chocolate (using cocoa powder instead) - come on! how can it be chocolatey without real chocolate? Strangely, the chocolate brownie recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery has similar ingredients to this one from BBC Good Food, but I remember the last time I used the Hummingbird recipe the brownies came out quite greasy...maybe it's the way the ingredients were incorporated?



Andrew says his flatmate James and his sister make the best brownies, I don't know if mine have the deliciousness to rival his favourites. We shall see...

P.S. In addition to the replacement of the white chocolate, the baking time needed to be extended to around 40-45 mins. 25-30 mins is simply not long enough.

Saturday 12 March 2011

Sendai

That's really everyone and anyone could think about the past couple of days. I don't know anyone from the Tohoku region, but I think my parents have some friends from Sendai. I don't know how they're doing. My friends in Tokyo are well, which I'm very grateful for. Natural disasters on such a scale are always devastating, but as this has occurred in a country very dear to me and many of my friends and family, it's especially heart-breaking.

I was actually in Sendai this time last year. I was travelling alone and took the very long journey to Miyagi prefecture because I wanted to visit Matsushima Bay, one of the 日本三景. Not only was I impressed by the natural beauty of Matsushima, I also came to like Sendai the city very much. It's cold (weather-wise), but the people are very nice and stylish, and the streets are beautiful and full of greenery. Not to mention they're famous for sea urchin and oysters.





These photos would look very different now...

Friday 11 March 2011

sundried tomato stuffed mushrooms

For dinner I had a Quorn savoury eggs and lettuce salad, and sundried tomato stuffed mushrooms. The first one is just something I make every now and then, when I'm hungry and don't want to cook. Just throw the savoury eggs and lettuce together, add splashes of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pinches of salt and pepper and voila.



The latter - sundried tomato stuffed mushrooms - is from a recipe I found on smittenkitchen.com, a food blog which Morgan, my flatmate Wen Chean and myself have grown to love. The dish is not difficult to make although it takes a bit of an effort to make the stuffing. The result is really satisfying though. Healthy, delicious...and I love every bit of the ingredients: mushrooms (first roasted for 10mins to extract the moisture - you know how soggy mushrooms can get when they get cooked), sundried tomatoes, breadcrumbs, parmegiano-reggiano, parsley, egg yolk...all stuffed into the mushroom cap and become little balls of heaven. This dish makes a great canapé, or you can did what I did, eat 7 of them as dinner...

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Lent

Lent '09 - I gave up Facebook.
Lent '10 - I gave up caffeine.

This year I'm giving up meat. I'll be a temporary vegetarian - for 40 days (plus Sundays). What will I be eating then? Hmmm... I'll probably start exploring and trying out recipes from 101 Cookbooks, the beautifully written and illustrated foodie blog.

My weekly grocery shopping list would look something like this:

Dorset Cereals raisin-free muesli (I eat this everyday for breakfast. It has replaced bran flakes as my favourite breakfast food)
Berries (blackberries, raspberries, blueberries... whichever one's on offer. I add berries to the muesli and together it's my favourite meal of the day)
Chicken thigh fillets
Salmon
Prawns
Tofu
Lettuce
Baby avocado
Tomatoes
Nuts (almonds, pistachios, soya nuts - all unsalted)
Semi-skimmed milk
Flat-leaf parsley
Coriander
Basil
Chinese leaf
Aubergine
Cheese (parmigiano-reggiano, blue stilton, gruyere, goat cheese etc. whichever one I feel like that week)
Pak choi (I'm still very Chinese at heart)
Quorn savoury eggs (sounds disgusting and they don't look that appealing either, but I just really like eating them)
Mushrooms (portobello, shiitake, chestnut etc.)
eggs

I've given up red meat as a new year resolution anyway, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much of a transition from no red meat to no meat. I just have to give up chicken, fish and other seafood for ~40 days. Will need to make sure I get enough protein from eggs, milk, cheese, tofu and beans though.

Monday 7 March 2011

the bare necessities

Since I started working at the shop/restaurant, I've had 3 customers asking for my phone number and asking me out for coffee/dinner. Flattering as it may be, it really baffles me that on all 3 occasions, I was wearing glasses, no make-up and very plain clothes...so how did I manage to have 3 different guys to ask me out? I have no idea. Although I gave out my phone number to two of them, I never went out with any of the guys.

I only wear make-up for special occasions, interviews, birthday dinners and parties etc. But on those occasions I have never been asked out or flirted with (although to be honest I'm not really sure what flirting actually involves...not much experience in that area). I remember when I went to get a hair cut when I was in Osaka, the hairdresser (a Japanese guy) said he was really surprised and he found it really rare that I was a girl who had absolutely no make-up on. Japanese girls are always fully made-up, many with fake lashes and contact lenses that make their eyes scarily big.

So when I was web-browsing the other day, and found this article on Marie Claire US. Do men find women with no make-up more approachable? I always feel that a little make-up is better than none. Although I feel comfortable without make-up (and that's my look for most days), I always feel a little make-up can boost a girl's confidence and enhance her appearance. Maybe I should turn this into a little social experiment, and see how make-up affects one's chance with the opposite sex. It wouldn't exactly be a valid/reliable experiment, since I have so little practice/experience with the opposite sex...

Sunday 6 March 2011

Tarte aux pommes

My brother, Sam, keeps asking me to make this dessert, even though I've never made it before. It's just that he really wants to try it but he doesn't bake. He cooks (paella, roast chicken etc) all sorts of food and he's pretty good, but he never bakes. No idea why. Anyway since we've now entered into his last week in Manchester (the secondment at the Manchester office is ending soon), I've decided to indulge him and his laziness.

I have a couple of recipes by Julia Child and Elizabeth David, but in the end I settled with one from the internet - Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour. This is a food blog written by a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. The result was pretty good and quite similar to the photo in the original blog. Although next time I'll skip the 30ml of water, the apples were juicy enough on their own. It wasn't too sweet and I just love the smell of the cinnamon sticks!


Tarte aux pommes is not difficult to make, but it does take time and effort. Peeling and slicing 6 apples (the recipe said 7 but I found 6 to be sufficient) is quite time consuming.


For lunch, I made my own version - the lazy man/woman version of chicken cacciatore. Basically, I had 3 very ripe vine tomatoes I had to get rid of, and had no onion, thyme, white wine or white wine vinegar. This is the quick and simple version -

3 large, ripe tomatoes. Blanched, skinned and diced.
3 pieces of chicken thigh
bay leaf
a few cloves of garlic, crushed
sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper
dried basil
tomato puree
olive oil

I just pan-fried the chicken thigh and garlic until it was browned on both sides, then added all the herbs, spices, tomatoes. Then I put on the lid and cooked until the chicken is thoroughly cooked and the tomatoes become a mushy paste. Voila, a very quick lunch.


Okay I know it doesn't look very appealing...

Wednesday 2 March 2011

02032011

Last night I was browsing on the internet and found out that SOAS had already sent out all the JLPT results in the post. So this morning when I left the flat for the 10am class, I saw the Royal Mail van right outside the reception (where our pigeon holes are). First thing I did after class was go back and get my mail - and there it was, the big white envelope saying "please do not bend". I passed! The score is not great though, and somewhere in my mind is thinking that I should retake this exam later this year to try and get a higher score. Hmm...



As a token of thanks to the tutors and lecturers who helped me with the speech contest and postgraduate applications, I made a chocolate cake - the same one I made for Seb's and Wen Chean's birthdays. Now that I've made it 3 times, I can definitely tell that the first one I made for Seb was the best one. That time I realised that the amount of ingredients was too excessive so I reduced it proportionally, but then it didn't taste or look as good. So next time I shall stick to the original recipe (from The Primrose Bakery cookbook).



In the afternoon got a phone call from my parents. They were calling to congratulate me on the JLPT, and then it spiralled downwards into the usual - heated discussion about my plan post-graduation. I would tell you all the details here, but that just makes me even more upset and angry. So I won't.

Sometimes I feel like I'm enjoying life, but that doesn't happen often. Most other times I'm distressed over dissertation and graduation, and the mess that my personal life is.

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Sideburns and wet breeches

The man of the moment is of course, the newly crowned king best actor at the Academy Awards, Colin Firth, a.k.a. Mr. Darcy.

Having been educated at an all-girls school, where Pride and Prejudice is a set text in the GCSE English Literature curriculum (and was voted the most popular novel every year during the seven years I was there), my girlfriends and I have been fans of Colin Firth since watching the classic BBC adaptation. Although for me, it wasn't the wet shirt (which millions of women in this country seem to be obsessed with) scene that "sealed the deal", it was the scene when Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle) visits Pemberley, Mr. Darcy intently watches her playing Mozart's "Voi che sapete" (from Le nozze di Figaro) and oh-my-goodness Colin Firth's glowing face -


In Year 12 I shared a room with Sarah, who hails from Seattle, and we shared a mutual passion for Colin Firth/Mr. Darcy. We even had a noticeboard dedicated to pictures of Colin Firth in our room, so impressive that it got mentioned in the nationally published The Good Schools Guide:


Of course I own a DVD copy of the mini-series, and I watch the entire series (6 episodes, 5 hours in total) at least once a year. The last time I did the P&P marathon was last spring, in my room in Osaka with Larisa and Morgan and big bowls of microwave popcorn. That was a lovely afternoon.

Apart from Pride and Prejudice and The King's Speech, one of Colin Firth's finest work must be A Single Man, which earned him his first Oscar nomination (last year). While I have yet to watch the film (there are way too many films I want to watch but haven't had the time to do so), - and read in some reviews that the film looked more like a very long perfume advert - the praise for Firth's acting was unanimously acclaimed.

Another art house type film that Colin Firth did, and one that I had actually watched and liked, is Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's quite a slow-moving film, but the subtly portrayed attraction and sexual tension between Firth (who plays Vermeer) and Scarlett Johansson is incredibly lascivious.

Obviously Colin Firth is also remembered for many often romantic, but not so Oscar-worthy, comedies such as Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually. Incidentally both of these films also starred another British export in the name of Hugh Grant. Today I read an article on the Telegraph website, which amused me greatly, where the writer compared Firth and Grant (who are actually born a day apart):
Firth is the movie star Hugh Grant could have been if he a) gave the impression of loving acting, and b) actually did some.
A bit mean, but so true. I really liked Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. But he seems to play the same character in every single film he starred in - himself.

At the many ceremonies where Colin Firth's acting was honoured with many awards, you can see him being accompanied by his classy and beautiful wife, Livia. Apparently she owns an eco-fashion store in Chiswick. Since the success of A Single Man last year, she's been using all the red carpet opportunities to showcase eco-friendly fashion in front of all the cameras. "The Green Carpet Challenge" has been covered by Vogue UK. Not only does Mrs. Firth look absolutely stunning, the man himself also looked rather dapper and handsome in a Tom Ford suit.



(Photo source: Vogue.co.uk)

my smitten kitchen

following yesterday's fantasy about the perfect dinner party, today I'll illustrate how my dream kitchen would look like...

first of all it'd be something like Meryl Streep's in It's Complicated, where it's a combined open kitchen/dining room. Plus I want exposed bricks and hardwood floors (although tiles would be easier to clean).


I'll need two full-sized ovens (plus grill) and a double-door fridge. And plenty of shelves for all the spices and ingredients. Actually come to think of it, Nigella Lawson's kitchen (featured in her shows) is pretty dreamy too.

I've found more lovely photos on Elle Decor (an amazing website of the US magazine; the UK version of the magazine doesn't have a website!) -






(Photo source: Elle Decor)