Of emails laden with pork lard.

There's a saying that goes 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts'.  I guess in today's electronic age, one gotta be careful also, of emails that butters/polish or 'pork-lard' a person up..

I received two of such emails recently, regarding work. I mean, I first gotta acknowledge this for myself. Counting this year, I have been involved in sales and marketing in the medical field for like 9 years already. Hence when I write a medically related article, I think like a sales and marketing person and look for points to highlight the benefits of the products. The key point here is to do it subtlely. Because an over-promoting article may be deemed unethical. And so far, I have not encountered much issues regarding the content from my clients. Except of these two. And frustratingly, anally, geram-ly, both email arrived in my Inbox on the same day! And sounding exactly like a carbon copy of each other!!


Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2: 

Sometimes I really wish that I'm like Doraemon with his magical pouch. That I have a magical computer that magically churns out article before one can even finish saying Voila! But it isn't like that in reality. A lot of research and time goes behind each article. The most important thing here is that every data that is mentioned in these articles are valid and properly referenced. It's not a simple "with your writing expertise" or even skills for that matter.

Deciphered: Weasel Coffee (?!) vs. Kopi Luwak

Disclaimer: I'm no coffee connoisseur. Hence whatever that I expressed here is purely based on my experience and personal taste. I believe coffee, like wine is as personal as underwear. Just as one man's meat is another man's poison.

When Hubs came back from his buddy's bachelor trip in Ho Chi Minh recently, he bought back like 4 packets of the Vietnamese version of Kopi Luwak i.e. Weasel Coffee. When I first saw the name, my first thought was "Who in the world name this as weasel coffee?!" Personally, I think it's like taking a mickey out of it.

According to Hubs, they were pretty good when he had them in the many cafes in HCM and found a place that sold the coffee powder at an affordable price. Anyway my interest piqued and decided to read more about it on the net. What I found out is that mostly the ones sold in Vietnam are so-called chemically simulated versions i.e. using various chemical ingredients to mimic digestive juices of the luwak to process the beans. Taste-wise when I made myself a cuppa, wasn't any different from a typical Vietnamese coffee that you would order from a Vietnamese restaurant. In fact there's a buttery taste to it which is rather overwhelming and more suited if the coffee is sweetened with condensed milk as how a Vietnamese restaurant normally prepare theirs. My conclusion is that this is no different from any mainstream Vietnamese coffee.

And as you can see from the packaging, the printing was also rather badly done that when I remove the many cellophane tapes, the brewing instruction was lifted off! I suspect Hubs may have got conned.

Over to Kopi Luwak. My first experience of this was at a dingy-looking coffee plantation in Bali. It's one of those tourist trap that my girlfriend and me signed up for. That trip itself was fine until we had to endure this coffee plantation visit. I half-suspect that it's probably somebody's small acre of land that they planted a few coffee plants and other Indonesian herbs, built a quaint souvenir shop and little cafe and with a trapped luwak, voila! a kopi luwak destination is born! Since we were there, for the heck of it, each of us bought a cup to taste. And it was disappointing. All I can taste was just bitterness that didn't get any better after adding sugar.

Spurred by all these experiences, I told Hubs, "Let's one day make a visit to the kopi luwak cafe in Grand Indo and buy ourselves a cuppa to solve the taste once and for all!" Well, before we made our way to Grand Indo, kopi luwak found its way to our doorstep instead! Through a friend, Hubs managed to get his hands on a few packets of kopi luwak from Sumatra i.e. those made of export.

And of course, with it, comes the hullaballoo of trying to find the elusive french press. Seriously, when we weren't looking for it, I see the coffee pot everywhere and when we were, it's so hard to find. Anyway, the day of reckoning was upon us when we made it a few weeks ago. It was lovely! The coffee is "kau" but without the bitterness that comes with earthy and full body coffee. I read somewhere the full flavour of the coffee comes out when served cold. The second time I made it, I deliberately allow it to cool down several degrees before taking a sip. And true enough, it tasted even better.

Let's just say I'm sold!

Eeek! Beginning to look like a junkie...

This is how my tummy looks like, after 26 days of injecting myself with hormones. And it's all because of sensitive skin. It's really itchy especially after I perspire or at night. Been trying my best not to scratch. Grrr...

Apparently I'm the only one having this kinda reaction. Most other women tended to have bruising. :( The good thing is everything is going smoothly. According to my gynae, I'm responding to treatment well and in his own words "The uterus lining is looking beautiful!" It tickles me everytime I hear him say that. LOL!

Being grateful...

I've got  confession to make. I used to think that Hubs tended to be melodramatic everytime he's back in KL and exclaim how clear or how much he misses the clear blue skies in KL. At that time, I was still pretty much based in KL and commuted every now and then to Jakarta. Clear blue skies were pretty much, ermmm, an every day happenin', if you get what I mean.

My recent 2 weeks stint in Jakarta somehow changed my view subtlely, I realised. While I was in Jakarta, every day I woke up to hazy skies and hardly any rain. There was only one night that it rained, and even that did not clear the skies the next morning.

And so when I reach KL couple of days ago, while in the cab making my way home, I was struck for the first time of how blue KL skies are and being grateful for clean air and clean skies for the first time. And that evening, this is what enthralled me and I captured on my iPhone - the silvery full moon against a backdrop of clear blue evening sky. Of course, I conveniently forgot that mid-autumn festival is around the corner and the Chinese in me believe that the moon is the prettiest at this time of the year. But having said that, I AM still grateful to be back in KL and witness the beauty in Malaysia that is untarnished by development.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival folks!

Up up and away @ Skye Bar Jakarta

Skye Bar is the latest F&B outlet from the Ismaya group. As the name suggest, it is situated on the 56th floor of Menara BCA at where Plaza Grand Indonesia Shopping Town is. We came here sometime in July this year, to meet up with Hubs's cousin and a few of cousin's friends.

We were there around 4pm on a public holiday and the bar area is already packed, with all tables fully booked. Jakartans are very hang-out folks - every new and happenin' cafe/bar/restaurants are usually packed to the brim in the first few months of opening. And Skye Bar is not exempted.

We end up sitting along the walkway like some of these folks in this picture, with a foldable small table open up for us to "mark" our territory! Lol!

 It's no brainer why Skye Bar is HUGELY popular at this moment. On a clear day (which is a rarity in Jakarta), it offers a beautiful skycraper view of the CBD area. It wasn't very clear that day we went. And this was the best I could do with my camera.

 Some night view of the city skyline...

And how the bar area looks like at night...

We had dinner at the restaurant as well. The main meals were pretty good but I thought that the desserts were unusual and memorable. I had the "Pineapple Nachos" where cubes of roasted spiced pineapple were tossed with pineapple marshmallow and chocolate coated nachos, and finished off with mint anglaise and coriander. I enjoyed my dessert, a surprise for me-self because i'm not a dessert person. The dessert just somehow comes together really well although individually they were rather odd. Another friend ordered the "Tape Creme Brulee" which is tapai of casava with palm sugar anglaise on the side. I had a taste of this and it too was very creamy and yummy!  Too bad no pictures of the food because the ones I took using Hubs's iPhone were accidentally deleted by him before I could download them. 

****

SKYE Bar Jakarta
Menara BCA - 56th Floor
Jl. M.H. Thamrin No.1, Jakarta

Eats: Beautika Manadonese Restaurant

Personally, I think introduction to Indonesian culture and food isn't complete without stepping into a Manadonese restaurant. And at Beautika, you definitely won't go wrong. Initially when Hubs brought me here a year ago, I was wondering how does a restaurant ends up with a name like Beautika. Well, wonder no more. Apparently Beautika had started off as a beauty saloon but has since converted into a restaurant that serves up authentic Manadonese cuisines that guarantees a very spicy and hot dining experience. 

As you can see here, a wide variety of vegetables, seafood and meats served up on bain-marie. What we did was to ask the server to recommend a few house specialty as well as Hub picked out what was good when he was here previously.

And this is what we ordered. Basically it's a lot of chillies. Clockwise: roa (a type of fish unique to Manado) in chilli paste, cumi (or squids) in another type of chilli paste, stir-fry young papaya flowers (which has a bitter after taste, but apparently it's one of their specialty) and bebek (or duck) in rica-rica sauce (just more chillies!) LOL!

I gotta acknowledge this though. Before I started living in Jakarta, I like my Malay food but that is just about it. However Jakarta changed my taste buds. I adore the various sambal and chilli paste that are used to cook meats and seafood in or simply serve up as condiments. If you are like me and adore your sambals, this is THE place to go. :)

 Certainly, Beautika has not forgotten its roots....

****

Beautika Restaurant
Jl. Hang Lekir No. 1, Kebayoran Baru
Tel: 021 - 722 6683
Fax: 021 - 739 6137

Eats: Omakase kaiseki @ Xenri

Last month, we got treated to an omakase kaiseki dinner by Lil' Sis because she got a mini reward for hitting her sales target. She took Hubs and me to this nice Japanese restaurant called Xenri at Menara Hap Seng.

Omakase is Japanese for "I'll leave it to you" which means that what we had that night was entirely decided by the Chef and based on what was fresh, seasonal and available that day. Kaiseki simply means a multi-course traditional Japanese meal, although at Xenri it was more fusion rather than traditional.

First course: Smoked duck salad with toasted peach in foie gras sauce. This itself blew us away. Absolutely *heart* the tender and smoky duck breast that was balanced with lightness and fruity taste of the peach and various salad greens.

Second course: Whelk sashimi, spotted shrimp marinated with grape fruit and kampachi marinated in yuzu. When this was presented at our table, again, we were bowled over by the presentation. Including the young couple sitted at the next table, coz they kept stealing glances at our way. Lol! The captain patiently explained what was presented at each course and taught us the way to eat this is to start with the lightest flavoured sashimi, followed by medium to the heavy flavoured ones. Which in this case was the whelk, followed by the shrimp and lastly the kampachi. It was just heavenly! The whelk was fresh and had a crunch to the bite, I loved the hint citrus from the grape fruit on the shrimp, while the kampachi was fresh and firm.

Third course: A consomme of sea bamboo, sea aspragus and seasonal flowers from some lake in Japan. This consomme was light with a hint of smokiness to the palate. I was rather fascinated by the seasonal flowers that were covered with a gelatinous layer as you can see in the picture below. 

Fourth course: Baked Tuna jaw marinated with yuzu miso, with junmai daikon. The tuna had a sweet and almost-caramel like taste with a tangy hint from the yuzu. The daikon which was marinated in junmai (rice sake) was a nice and light balance to the somewhat heavy taste of the tuna. 

Fifth course: Wagyu short ribs with deed fried gobo (burdock root). By the time we reach this course, Hubs and me were quite full, especially after the tuna course. This was quite rich in taste as well, and personally I didn't enjoy this as much as I would like.  

Lil' Sis fifth course. Since she had the wagyu short ribs on her previous trip with clients, Xenri offered her a different dish, which was French meltique beef with shishito. According to the captain, meltique beef uses the unique technique of inserting soluble oil into cuts of lean meat to baste the meat internally during the cooking process, which in this instance was just a simple grill. The beef was almost wagyu-like in texture and was nicely balanced off by shishito, which is a type of sweet Japanese pepper.

Finally the sixth and last course. Yanaka ginger custard with merlot reduction, Spanish melon, US cherries and persimmon. I would dare say that this is a very fusion and East-meet-West invention. Yanaka ginger is young Japanese ginger that was blended into the custard. A rather acquired taste but somehow everything worked together: the mildly sharp taste of the ginger, sweetness from the melon and persimmon and slightly tangy cherries.

It was a very memorable and highly satisfying culinary journey. No wonder Lil' Sis was telling me so much about this place after her first visit with her clients. :)

****

Xenri D' Garden Terrace
Lot No. 2-04, Second Floor,
Podium Block of Menara Hap Seng
Jln. P Ramlee, 50250 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: +603 2078 6688