Salad for Lunch

I'm packing a salad to lunch tomorrow, but cos it's something I haphazardly threw together (and was too lazy to head to the supermarket near my haus) I'm not too excited about it. Instead I'm reminiscing of this totz yumz salad I made a few weeks (maybe months) back! Man it was yummy. I was super excited about making it because back then I'd been having this insane craving for salad. Who craves salads anyway? Must have been all my OL (office lady) friends in the CBD instagramming their salad lunches, but because my office only has the requisite mixed rice stalls and fish soup stalls, well, I had to make my own to bring to work. I was inspired by this recipe here from 101 cookbooks, a really cool blog with great healthy recipes and pretty photos, but so damned healthy I feel a bit sorry for the author. I wonder if she misses eating fried chicken and cheesy pasta... 

The point is that she talks about how her salad holds up through the day and that's exactly what I was looking for in making a salad to bring to work-- it needs to stay crisp and fresh, but yet have enough goodies in it to make me stay full. 

I used mostly organic produce for my salad, except the avocadoes, olives and mushrooms, all of which are harder to get them organic in Singapore. I used a mix of baby kale, romaine leaves, broccoli heads, sliced celery and carrots, plus organic chickpeas which were cute and tiny!

As for the salad dressing, this one's a keeper! My mom taught me how to make her amazing salad sauce years ago but that one is an olive-oil-balsamic-vinegar-secret-ingredient-mix that can sometimes be a little boring, seeing as how I've been having it for yeaaaaaars, and I've always had a thing for creamy salad dressing anyway. I guess I'll start alternating between them!

Miso Dressing:

1 large clove garlic, smashed in a pestle and mortar
1 tablespoon white miso (brown miso is fine too)
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or any other light vinegar
pinch of ground cumin
1/3 cup plain yoghurt

The original recipe called for heavy cream but it's salad! How can I put heavy cream into a salad?! If I had sour cream I would have substituted with it but I just added a little more yoghurt. Eugh so easy and delicious wehhh I wish I was having this for lunch tomorrow!! 

Tada isn't that a beauty. I also added in some penne, about a handful just cos I love my carbs. And of course some toasted pinenuts because they are delicious. Sliced in the avocado just after I tossed it so it wouldn't become avo-mash. 

Clearly I overestimated the size of my tupperware... 

Ok now I'll have to make this again soon. jtong cooks yall! 

Sakura Showers

Waddup earthlings I'm back. Been bitten by a blogging bug but that's good I guess. Despite how OCD I am about blogging chronologically I've given up hope on ever finishing my documentation of 2012. Yep moving on, look what happened in 2013!! Impulsively booked a Tokyo trip up to join my parents despite my mother's fears of radiation, and we planned it such that I would be able to catch the full bloom of Sakura or the Plum & Cherry Blossom trees. Unfortunately, there's an asshole known as global warming lurking around, and this year in Tokyo it got really warm about two weeks too early and the blossoms, well, blossomed!! I was seriously devastated about missing the Hanami, but luckily managed to catch the very last of the spring flowers.

I left Singapore on a Thursday night at 9pm, reached Tokyo at 5am (deer lawd), took the train to our apartment and fell into bed after a quick shower (mum and dad were in Takayam since they left for Japan a whole week earlier). Woke back up at 1pm, met up with our Uncle Allan who lives in Tokyo and headed out for our fave tempura lunch. After which we walked to Yoyogi Park, and there I was devastated to see Sakura flowers not on the trees but on the floor! WHAT. Luckily me and my sis decided to hightail over to Shinjuku Gyoen instead to see if their flowers were still holding up. And holding up they were!!! We were so excited we spent about a good 30 minutes in front of the first Sakura tree we saw that was covered in white flowers. 

Usually during full bloom the trees have no leaves at all, but since they bloomed early the leaves all came out. It's much much prettier when it's just flowers erupting from their branches. 

Love love love this shot I managed to capture! This young (and very pretty) mom was dressed in some kind of traditional Japanese costume, not a kimono obviously but she was carrying her baby and lifted it up to the flowers, singing very softly while her baby gurgled with happiness. It felt like I was intruding a bit but a moment too beautiful not to take a shot of. 

It truly was a perfect day, blue skies and amazing weather, Sakura trees still in bloom, and a shower of white petals drifting like snow whenever a breeze blew past. To me this is the true epitome of Spring-- how your chest expands and swells, your breathe catching in your throat when you get the first glimpse of a shimmering tree of flowers in the sun. 

Morsels

So rarely do I go for dinner at any restaurant that already has hype around it and yet come away satisfied. But alas Morsels it seems you are my new favourite diner, can't wait to bring more friends+family back to you, and that indeed is a true mark of an amazing restaurant. I first saw it while walking along the streets of Little India here in our sunny Singapore, scurrying along the five foot pathway to avoid the swelling heat. My parents run a boutique hotel right around the corner, and I decided to give the quaint little diner a few months to settle it's teething problems (which any new establishment is bound to have). Finally last week, I made dinner plans to meet my RGP gang as a late birthday get-together for our newly minted Doctor Sim at Morsels on Mayo Street.

First off let me just say how much of a BITCH parking is around there. Of course you could wing it and park illegally, but I would not like to add an additional $70 to my dinner bill kthx. I did a little bit of research on the internet: what to avoid and what are the must haves, and thankfully every single item we ordered was delicious.

First up, the Hokkaido Scallop Ceviche (not keh-viche but se-vi-che). I was a little underwhelmed by the flavour, but fair enough it was refreshing and a good appetizer to start with. I am sadly, very much allergic to tobiko so we had our version without it. I suspect it is much more delicious both in taste and texture when it does come with tobiko. The tortilla chips it came with were a little greasy, but it's home-fried, so I'll let that one pass. The fried brie cheese balls were really melt-in-your-mouth and I kept wishing I didn't drive because they would have been divine with beer hehe! The steamed clams in fig's broth? Absolutely ace. Steamed just right in a sweetish savoury broth that tasted like the ocean (in a good way) with wakame and kimchi. I need to bring my mom here so she can taste it and recreate it at home. Only gripe I have was that the sliced French bread that came with it to dip was not toasted and unfortunately felt a little bit stale. The two minutes it would have taken to toast the bread would have made this dish a 10/10. Trio of skewers, everyone's fave was the pork! But if you don't HAVE to have meat, you can easily skip this dish.

Under the mains page, we ordered the pulled pork pasta in a spicy pesto sauce served with sour cream. I love anything sour cream so this was really a favourite as well, the mild heat of the sauce balanced out with the coolness of the sour cream. The portion is small but the price matches it at $14, but it's the right amount for a tasting table. By the time the fish came out to our table we were too full to truly appreciate it, but when the squid ink risotto was set down, we dug right back into it. Easily the best dish of the night, creamy flavoursome risotto, with salted egg yoke sauce (tobiko on the side for my non-allergic friends), topped with the softest octopus you will ever taste. The only time I've had octopus this delicious I was in Cyprus 10 years ago. But this dish, truly the piece de resistance of Morsels. The charred, smoky flavour that really explodes in your mouth when you have the first bite of octopus will keep people going back for sure. I remember reading online and everyone was grumbling about the portions being abysmally small, but to me everything was just perfect. You'd want to eat as many things as possible, to have a whole range of flavours, and you can only do that if the portions are smaller. As for the price, our total bill for four girls came up to $200+, including one alcoholic beverage for one of our alcoholic friends (heheheh) which we all felt was incredibly reasonable for both the ingenuity and quality of the dishes. Stay exactly the way you are Morsels, don't change! 

Now for the more important part that is #allmyprettyfriends

Eugh in love with Sarah's eyebrows!! 

Teehee love this photo! Merelda was trying to help Ness straighten out her fringe to much resistance hehehe <3

 I still can't believe we've been friends for 14 years. What the hell where did our youth go!?