Shopping and Fine Dining on the Cheap...

As anticipated, Pashmina Fest continued a bit on Friday with a trip to the Old Souk. This shopping center is in yet another cool building – this one looking genuinely old and sort of like a fort, rather than new and fancy like most of the other cool buildings around here – and features shops selling trinkets, rugs, and pashminas for much lower prices than you find at the Blue Souk. After lots of fun with bargaining (my favorite being Alicia talking a guy down from 130AED to 30AED on a nice pashmina) we walked away with a couple more pashminas plus really cool antique-looking flasks for me and Stanley.

On Saturday we headed over to Café Chic, rumored to be one of the nicer French restaurants in town. They have a set lunch where you can have 3 courses with a glass of wine for US$30, so it seemed to be worth checking out. First impressions are that they seriously don’t eff around at this place. The service is ridiculously attentive (almost too attentive, if that’s possible) and the staff were definitely doing their best to bring us a fine-dining experience to remember. Things started off with a plate of canapés:
The shrimp one was fairly mediocre (to me), but the other two were quite nice. At this point they also brought over the house Viognier that Alicia and I had ordered to go with our meal (Stanley was the driver, which meant no wine at all for him since there is a zero-tolerance alcohol policy for drivers here). I’m fairly particular about how I like my Viognier (I think I only found one during my two years in Australia that was made the way I like it..), and this one turned out to be exactly the kind of Viognier that I love. The servers also brought over an adorable plate of salt, pepper, and good French butter to enjoy with the assortment of fresh-baked bread they were offering. (I think Alicia hurt the nice bread man’s feelings by not letting him give her a second mini-baguette…)
There were two options for the starter. Alicia and I ordered the Tomato Gazpacho with Roasted Tiger Prawns, while Stanley decided to try the Baby Asparagus Mille-Fuille with Fresh Goat Cheese. Both of these dishes were pretty darn tasty. The shrimp were extremely flavorful and complimented the gazpacho, which was much richer than I’m used to. The goat cheese in Stanley’s dish was seasoned with herbs to give it a really bright fresh flavor. Good stuff.
The options for the main course were a Braised Veal Shoulder with Vegetables or Pan-fried Halibut in Butter with Fennel Comfit and Vegetables. Both of these dishes were… “good.” Were we to go to a restaurant and see them on the menu, we would not likely order them, but they were perfectly fine. A bit of a let-down after the strong start, but it’s hard to complain too much when things are so reasonably priced…
Finally was the dessert, for which we all selected the Chocolate Variation with Vanilla Ice Cream. The cake thingy was pretty good and the homemade vanilla ice cream was awesome. I love me some homemade vanilla ice cream…
After dinner they brought over a few little petit fours, which were OK (nothing special for the most part, although the sesame-coated cornets with pistachio and chocolate inside were pretty tasty):
All in all, it was a really nice experience, even if some of the food was a bit underwhelming. I suspect they do some really nice things here at dinner, when any one meat dish costs more than our 3-courses-with-wine deal, but such things are not in the cards on our budget at the moment.

After lunch we went over to check out Mall of the Emirates so I could see the (in)famous Ski Dubai (adorable kids in winter coats in Dubai!) and do a bit more window shopping.
This mall is also home to Almaz by Momo, a restaurant that has a juice bar with amazing fruit cocktails and also a really pimp shisha-smoking room.
We ordered some hummus with lamb and pine nuts while waiting for our (non-alcoholic) cocktails and Stanley’s shisha. This was very very good but not quite as good as the version we ordered at the other juice bar in the other mall last weekend. The lamb-in-a-bowl-of-hummus concept is pretty awesome in general, really, and is something I'm going to have to start doing at home.
Alicia and I weren’t up to ordering our own shisha, so we just shared Stanley’s mango shisha. It was really quite tasty, but I think I need to practice before I would be ready to order my very own rather than just stealing a few puffs of somebody else’s… For beverages (from left to right), Stanley ordered a Strawberry-Lemon-Chili concoction that was really interesting and spicy, I ordered a Blackberry, Vanilla, and Faux-Champagne thingy (also super-tasty), and Alicia ordered some crazy thing with kiwis and cucumbers that was surprisingly delicious as well.
In summary, just another weekend in Dubai filled with good food, gorgeous buildings, fun shopping (I know… That’s a fairly strange concept to me, too…), and good relatively lazy times hanging around in this super-cool city… Next weekend: Desert Safari!

An Administrative Note...

So, this whole thing with posting recipes was making things look a bit cluttered around here, and I really really really hate clutter... Thus, I've moved the recipes formerly posted here to a new location, and that's where I'll put additional recipes in the future. (I'll link to those recipes if they're for a dish I mention in a blog post here...)

So, yay! No more clutter! I don't know about you, but I certainly feel better...

Pashmina Fest 2008 and Other Adventures

This weekend once again featured a fair bit of shopping coupled with some delicious food. On Friday we set out for the secret liquor store located about 30 minutes outside of Dubai, where you can stock up at reasonable prices without even having a liquor-purchasing license. On the way home we stopped at a really beautiful beach. The water is so gorgeous here, and is about body temperature. Note the women swimming in their abayas on the right of the picture…

After an epic grocery trip, we headed over to Wafi for lunch and a bit of window-shopping. This is one of the most beautiful malls I’ve ever seen, with stained glass everywhere. One large area of the mall called the Khan Murjan is located underground, but with stained glass ceilings giving you the feel of being in a really cool old-world shopping center.
We stopped at the restaurant in the Khan Murjan for lunch. This was a covered restaurant last time Stanley and Alicia visited, but the roof had been rolled back on Friday because it was such a lovely day. Don’t worry, though: They kept the A/C cranked so we didn’t have to be burdened by the 90-degree (Fahrenheit) heat while enjoying our unobstructed view of the clear blue skies. We ordered a ridiculously tasty hummus with lamb and pinenuts, as well as a Turkish spicy lamb sausage and some tabbouleh. The meal also featured seriously awesome flatbread. The puffed pita-looking bread in the picture had a flavor and texture almost like a ciabatta and was super-delicious. (By the way, I am SO building a wood-fired oven in my back yard when I buy a house. You just can’t cook amazing flatbreads like this with lame indoor ovens that only go up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit… )

Saturday brought a trip to the Blue Souk in Sharjah, a massive shopping center in yet another beautiful building.
On the lower level were jewelry shops to rival the Gold Souk in terms of the massive piles of gold on display, but on the second level was what we were looking for: pashminas! Stanley and Alicia had considerable experience with rug- and pashmina-shopping from their time in India, but this style of shopping was new to me. Basically at any pashmina or rug shop you enter you will be warmly greeted and often offered coffee, tea, and cookies to make you more comfortable. You are then presented with piles and piles of whatever it is you are shopping for. As I explained what I didn’t want (no pink, nothing sparkly, no flowers…) they would delve deeper and deeper into the collection until they found things more to my taste (although they never seemed to register the “no pink” thing very well…). One such item, pictured on the far left below, wasn’t right for me (too shiny) but was exactly the pashmina that Alicia (who not 5 minutes before had said she would not be purchasing any pashminas on this day) had been looking for. There were some absolutely gorgeous ones that were far too nice (read: “expensive”) for a kid like me, but there were some good bargains to be had as well.
The second pashmina from the left in the picture was the first one I bought (it has sparkly things on it, but they’re not too garish…). Stanley was in charge of bargaining on prices for me, and he did a bang-up job. The middle pashmina in the picture is actually the totally awesome one that Stanley and Alicia bought for me in India (not entirely part of Pashmina Fest, but I thought it looked nice in the picture…), and the two on the left came at our final stop. The guy helping us there was adorably enthusiastic and helpful. We stayed for a long time looking through pashminas, and as we were getting ready to go he asked if we were interested in bed covers. I actually was, now that he mentioned it, so we waited as he went through his stash of bedspreads (No big flowers! Too sparkly! Ew, pink!) and I ended up getting a fantastic deal on my new awesome bedspread (which isn't acutally as bright/shiny as it looks in the picture below) along with the pashminas. We totally made his day, apparently, because he then proceeded to give Stanley a free wool scarf (which he’d tried unsuccessfully to sell him earlier, and which is apparently what the kids in Dubai are wearing these days…) and to give Alicia and I free hideously tacky clear plastic models of the Burj Al Arab. Awesome.
After 90 minutes in traffic trying to get back to Dubai, we stopped at Nalukettu, a South Indian restaurant in the Grand Dubai Hotel near Stanley and Alicia’s apartment. This was a lot of fun, since I’d heard great things about this type of food from Stanley and Alicia after their trip and now had a chance to try it myself. (We forgot to take pictures before digging in, so pardon the messiness of the food pictures below…). We first ordered Appam with Vegetable Stew (one of the dishes they’d been craving pretty much since the moment they left India). This wasn’t at all what I expected, but was really delicious. The stew has accents of cinnamon in the spice profile that are quite nice. Next up was a Kerala-style duck and a beef dish, both of which were flavored with beautifully complex spice mixtures and had a nice amount of heat. Our final dish was a Chicken Korma (which is North Indian, but sounded too tasty not to order). This was so different from any versions I’ve had in the US, and I really loved it. Again it was nice and spicy, and was made with cashews (yay!) instead of the almonds I’m used to seeing in kormas. All in all it was a delicious meal, and I think Stanley and Alicia may have found a new favorite neighborhood restaurant…
After Stanley and I went on one last grocery quest (bok choy, star anise, sesame oil, boneless skinless chicken thighs, and chicken stock all turned out to be fairly elusive this weekend) we finally returned home for a laid-back evening. Dinner was a Chicken Meatball and Bok Choy Soup with Noodles (pictured below prior to the broth being ladled over the top) which was a refreshingly light and healthy dinner after gorging ourselves on delicious Indian food at lunch. The meatballs (which I usually make with turkey) turned out better than ever for reasons that are not entirely clear, and the bok choy (which we did finally track down) adds a nice fresh crunch. This is one of those recipes that I think of as “simple” and make for myself for lunches all the time, but which actually takes a little over an hour to throw together and leads my brother to say things like “This is why I would never cook lunches for myself…”
Pashmina Fest may continue next weekend when we head over to the Old Souk for a look around. In the meantime, I’m reading another fantastic book (Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth), still enjoying taking it easy, and looking forward to watching the Bucs beat up on the Cowboys tonight.

Pretty Darned Content...

Maybe it’s the coffee talking, but I’m having one of those mornings where life just seems good… really good… I still have 12 weeks of being a woman of leisure before the start date at my new (awesome) job... I’m reading a fantastic book (Arkansas by John Brandon)… I have delicious coffee… I’m still basking in fond memories of last night’s dinner (grilled marinated leg of lamb with homemade pitas and tzatziki)… The airlines found the two boxes that I’d shipped to Portland containing all of my favorite stuff (which they’d previously lost and couldn’t find for a month)… The weekend starts tonight, which means fun adventures with Stanley and Alicia await… I’ve decided that if something goes horribly wrong with the election then I’m just going to move back to Melbourne, thus relieving any election-related stress that was starting to accumulate… It has become apparent that the Bucs are going to go 14-2 this season and win the Super Bowl in a romp… I may get to see a Ranchero Brothers show in LA with Steph in November… I just found out I get to go to my favorite place at the Oregon coast in December… The sun is shining… If there were birds, I’m sure they would be singing… Life, basically, is good.

Just wanted to share the happiness... In case anyone reading this is in a mental place where life isn’t seeming quite so totally and completely awesome at the moment, here are some pictures that make me smile on less contented days and which should put a smile on the face of anyone who isn't dead inside:

Out and About in Dubai

This weekend while Alicia was slaving away at work, Stanley took me out to see a bit more of the city. We started by driving out to check out a few souks, but ended up just hanging out for a bit in the gold souk. It’s pretty cool seeming so much gorgeous and/or hideously garish jewelry in one relatively small area. Being a bit poor, we mostly just window-shopped, although I did find a totally cute watch of high enough quality that I don’t seem to be allergic to it (as I am to the $20 watches I used to try to wear). I haven’t worn a watch in over 10 years, so I’d forgotten how awesome it is to be able to find out what time it is just by glancing at your wrist. Amazing!

After our time at the gold souk we decided the weather was more appropriate for hanging out in air-conditioned places, so we headed over to Souk Madinat Jumeirah, which is a gorgeous building housing a mall, residence, hotel, and restraurants. We wandered around a bit, took some pictures (including the obligatory touristy Burj Al Arab shot, and then stopped for lunch.
I thought it would be fun to try some “local” food, so we went to a restaurant in the building called Al Makan. This was definitely a mixed experience, with 3 really tasty dishes and one dish that led Stanley to comment “This is by far the worst thing I have ever ordered in a restaurant,” and me to wholeheartedly agree with him. First, the good… We started with an absolutely spectacular Greek salad (which I forgot to take a picture of). I’ve had many Greek salads in my day, and this was definitely one of the best. (I know, I know… Greek salad isn’t exactly “local” to the UAE, but we more than made up for that with the final item we ordered…) Next up was Manakeesh Lahm, a Lebanese pastry filled with “enhanced lamb” (we think “enhanced” just means “seasoned with delicious herbs and spices” rather than referring to any genetic enhancements, but you never know…). This was awesome, with the crispy toasty pastry wrapped around juicy flavorful ground lamb…
Next up was Shish Taouk Irani, which is chicken Tikka marinated in yogurt and saffron then grilled over charcoal to yummy charred perfection. The flatbread on top of the chicken in the picture is topped with a garlicky yogurt sauce that was great with the chicken. So far so good, right? We’re 3-for-3 with only one dish to go…
So, yeah… The menu had a section entitled “From the Heart of the UAE” and I thought it would be good to order one of those dishes to get a bit of local flavor. We ordered Al Harees Meat, which even the waitress seemed to think was a bad idea. She looked at us quizzically and then asked if we’d had it before (no) and if we understood that it was “puréed” (no, but that should be fine… thinking she just meant the meat was ground rather than being in steak form…). I have since learned on the interweb that Al Harees is “one of the most savoured dishes in the UAE kitchen and it involves a lengthy preparation,” and “is quite prominent during special occasions such as Ramadan, Eid and weddings,” so it seems like an OK thing to try, right? Right? So, here is a picture of the dish:
If you’re saying to yourself “Wait. That just looks like sticky puréed oatmeal with oil on top!” then you’re not far off on the final flavor profile... The first words to come to mind when tasting this were “glue” and “oatmeal”… After some discussion, we agreed it’s sort of like puréed oatmeal combined with paper maché paste and some meat juices. Apparently that’s not too far off, as I have since learned a bit more about this very special dish: “Al harees is made by cooking ground wheat in a pot with a pinch of salt, to which the meat is then added. The mixture is then left for long hours until it is fully cooked and the meat is completely dissolved into the wheat.” This is followed by several more long hours until the mixture reaches the “desired” consistency. Fantastic.

Restaurant learning experiences (e.g. If the waitress is horrified/concerned when you order something, maybe you should consider ordering a different menu item…) aside, it was a really nice day and I enjoyed seeing a bit more of Dubai. Stanley and Alicia are back at work today (thus leaving me with ample time for excessively long blog posts) and I should probably go get their dinner marinating so they can have a nice meal waiting for them when they come home… I’m still enjoying this time to myself during the work-week when I have nothing more pressing to do than to prepare some yummy food and mainline coffee…

Verre: Course by Course

As I’ve excitedly been telling many of you, we had a dinner reservation at Verre (Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the Dubai Creek Hilton) on Thursday. Before I get into the details of the food, I want to start by saying that this place was totally awesome. The only bad reviews I’d read about Verre claimed that the attitude of the place was too stuffy and the food was pretentious. I was happy to discover that the exact opposite was true. The vibe in the dining room was relaxed (unlike in some other “fancy” restaurants where you feel like you should be whispering) and the staff were friendly and charming across the board, especially the sommelier. The food was delicious and far from pretentious, focusing on high-quality ingredients prepared well. We went with the 7-course “prestige” tasting menu, and here’s how it went down:

Vine Tomato Minestrone with Basil Pesto:
This was a fantastic way to start the meal. It’s really easy to make a soup laden with cream taste impressive, but it takes a bit more skill to make something this delicate and simple turn out this delicious. The soup was an intensely flavored tomato consommé with perfectly diced zucchini, carrot, and tomato and a few small white beans. This was finished off tableside with a spoonful of basil pesto. The individual flavors were simple, but they combined to make a really lovely, complex dish. A great way to get our palates excited for what was to follow.

Pressed Foie Gras des Landes with Air-dried Duck Breast, Fine French Beans, Shimeji Mushrooms, and Toasted Brioche:
I think we all agreed that this was the star of the show. It’s hard to even find words for how amazing this was. I’ve said this before, but sometimes with food the first bite or two has you saying “Wow! This is SO good!!!” but you sort of stop noticing after a few more bites… For me the sign of a great dish is that every single bite makes you stop and search for new way to communicate how truly fantastic the dish is (just in case it wasn’t clear from your excitement about it after each of the previous 5 bites). The balance of flavors in this dish was remarkable and, when the time inevitably came to take the final bite of this dish, we were all sad to see an empty plate in front of us. (By the way, if you think foie is cruel, feel free to let me know and I can send you my personal treatise on why only vegans have solid footing from which to make such claims.)

Roasted Sea Scallops Served with Caper and Raisin Dressing, Cauliflower Purée, and a Reduction of Port and Red Wine:
I think a perfectly cooked fresh scallop may be one of the greatest foods on earth. I remember a few months in Santa Barbara where the mussel lady at the farmers’ market brought in fresh diver scallops. Steph and I brought those home pretty much every Saturday they were there. One of life’s great tragedies (notwithstanding the big-ticket items like genocide and famine) is that frozen scallops are so very much less delicious than fresh, leaving fans of scallops who don’t live near a great fish market to enjoy them only in restaurant settings. That being said, these were damn good scallops, and perfectly cooked. The dish was a bit of a puzzle, I felt. For my palate, the cauliflower purée complimented the scallops beautifully, while the caper-raisin dressing overpowered the scallops yet worked well to reset your palate between bites (thus making each new bite of scallop just as amazing as the last). Once I figured that part out, this dish was totally awesome.

Pan-fried Monkfish Tail with Lobster and Herb Risotto with a Shellfish Reduction, Wild Asparagus, and Sauce Vierge:
We diverged a bit on choices with this course, with me and Alicia opting for seafood while Stanley went with the duck (below). The monkfish was good, but the risotto really stole the show in this one. I’ve never had a risotto so ridiculously creamy, and the big hunks of lobster meat in it certainly didn’t hurt. The monkfish was essentially just a nice compliment to this beautiful risotto. My one small gripe on this dish is that I didn’t particularly agree with the wine pairing (we were having wines paired with each course, but this is going to be overly long without going into that for every course, so I’m just pointing out this one). The sommelier went with an unoaked chardonnay with lots of acidity and minerality to balance the creaminess of the risotto (which it paired with quite well), but these qualities made it a bad match (for my palate) with the monkfish. As long as sips of wine only followed risotto bites and not monkfish bites, though, it was all good.

Castaing Duck Breast and Confit Duck Leg with Pearl Barley Risotto, Baby Carrots, Cepe Mushrooms, and Port Jus:
Stanley ordered this dish, so I only have two bites from which to judge and will just say that that was some seriously delicious duck cooked to perfection. Another great dish, as far as I could tell…

Selection of Fine Cheeses with Walnut Bread:
This is the course that always kicks Stanley's ass in tasting menus. You’re just starting to get full, and then they bring you three (delicious) hunks of fat to eat. I, however, love the cheese course. I don’t know the names of the cheeses, so I’ll just vaguely describe them. The first (on the left in the picture) I could smell as soon as the plates neared the table (which is my favorite kind of cheese). This cheese was ridiculously creamy and possessed that amazing flavor that only the stinkiest cheeses can deliver. The middle cheese was firmer and tasted a bit like a strong high-quality parmesan (though a bit softer in texture than that). Tasty, but the only one that none of us finished. The third cheese was a beautiful strong blue. The flavor reminded me a lot of Saint Agur (my favorite blue cheese on the planet) although the texture was somewhat firmer. So very very delicious…

"Pre-Dessert" – Strawberry-Basil Granita served over Panna Cotta:
This was a perfectly refreshing course after the heavy cheeses. I love the strawberry-basil combination, and the panna cotta was light enough to compliment it beautifully without detracting from the refreshing, palate-cleansing purpose of the dish.

Mint Crème Brûlée with Strawberry Sorbet:
This is another dish that was a bit of a puzzle for me. On its own with the strawberry sauce, I didn’t particularly care for this crème brûlée… Immediately follow a bite of the mint crème brûlée with a taste of the accompanying strawberry sorbet, however, and you’re in business. I’m not a huge fan of desserts, but I liked how light and fresh this was at the close of a heavy meal.

So, there you have it. Our dinner reservation was for 10pm (Stanley works late and we didn’t want to have to rush too much to get there on time) and we were at the restaurant until 2am. Verre is no French Laundry (where the three of us dined along with Steph a couple years ago), but that’s not entirely a negative statement. The food can’t compare (I’m not sure the food anywhere really can), but you also don’t have to make such a hard-core effort to acquire a reservation and the (rightfully) reverential vibe at the French Laundry is replaced at Verre by a more casual and welcoming feel. We had a wonderful time, and I’m sure I’ll remember this meal (especially that foie course…) for a long long time…

One more thing...

Forgot to mention it in my Dubai post yesterday, but the other thing I've learned about Dubai is that they have really fantastic chicken in grocery stores here. I found the chicken that I got from my butcher in Melbourne to be far superior to the chicken I cooked with in the US, but the chicken here in Dubai blows Melbourne chicken out of the water. It's ridiculously moist and tender, even in preparations that have a tendency to potentially dry the chicken out. Given that I go through about 6 pounds of chicken every week in my daily non-traveling life (which I have been told is crazy and/or strange), awesome chicken is sort of exciting to a kid like me...

I'm getting a kick out of the grocery stores here, too. They have really fabulous bulk spice sections, and one called Spinney's even has a special Pork Room for us non-Muslims who might want to throw together some Carnitas for our friends who've been away from Mexican food for too long... Am I the only person who thinks grocery-shopping (particularly in new cities/countries) is super-fun? (I suspect I'm one of the only people who finds washing dishes super-fun... but it totally is...)

Morning Ramblings from Dubai

I've been in Dubai for almost a week now, having one of those really pleasant times that's hard to make sound interesting in any way... For the most part I've just been relaxing... reading a bit... watching some downloaded TV shows (most of them crappy, but entertainingly so)... wasting time on the interweb... Basically just taking time to enjoy all the stuff that there never seems to be enough time for when you have pesky distractions like a "job"... During the work week (Sunday-Thursday), I have the giant fabulous apartment all to myself while Stanley and Alicia are at work. I can't even explain how awesome it was to be able to unpack my backpack (into an actual dresser!) and put it away, knowing I won't need to re-pack for over a month... After traveling to a new city every 3-5 days for almost a month, it's a great feeling to just be able to settle in.

Salazmeyer has done a thorough job talking about what it's like to actually live in Dubai, but here are my first impressions as a short-time visitor (even though I pretty much didn't leave the apartment until the weekend): This is definitely a city under construction. I don't think we've been anywhere where you couldn't see a crane or some form of construction going on (view from one of the apartment's balconies shown below). Some of the projects in the works are pretty epic, some more practical, but there are things in the works pretty much everywhere you go.Summer has passed, which means it's fairly hot here but not in the humid way I was struggling to get used to in southeast Asia, so it's actually quite pleasant outside for the most part.
As far as culinary things go, we mostly stuck to delivery food during the first work-week since Stanley gets home from work pretty late and heading out for groceries at that point in the evening never seemed like a good idea. Plus, there's a place that delivers pretty fantastic gyros (which, honestly, I could probably eat every day for a few weeks before I began to get tired of them), so that makes delivery always seem like a good option. Checking out the local delivery places also allowed me to experience the Mexican Shawarma, a very odd yet delicious item. I have no idea why it is called Mexican (since the flavors seem Indian to me), and I can't even guess most of what's in it, but I highly recommend giving it a try if you ever stumble across it on a menu in your travels... especially if that menu is from a cheap delivery place with an absurdly eclectic menu...
On Friday morning we checked out a cafe called More for their famous Friday brunch. You start out with fresh-squeezed fruit juice, unlimited coffee, and your choice of breakfast stuff from the menu (I went with a very good Eggs Benedict (shown artistically half-eaten below), because I am incapable of ordering anything else if that's on the menu). From there they send you over to a table of interesting fresh salads and a hot foods "floating buffet" with lamb, beef, chicken, and veggie options. You finish with desserts and/or a delicious thin pancake with a sprinkle of fresh citrus juice and syrup. We spent about 2 hours at More, and it was a lovely way to kick off the weekend.
We got home a bit late from grocery shopping on Friday, so decided to order in (again) and kick back with a cocktail to watch a bit of DDR (known as So You Think You Can Dance to other people) Season 4 (which Stanley and Alicia tragically missed out on when it first aired). On Saturday we finally had time to do some cooking. I made up a batch of Scorching Chili Chicken for lunch. This is probably my very favorite lunch item that I cook (I make it about once a month in my regular non-traveling life), and it was nice to have a bit of homemade Emily-style comfort food. For dinner we went with another of my comfort foods, which is a Cauliflower, Chicken, Pea, and Potato Curry (shown below, served with a bit of yogurt, fresh cilantro, and extra chili flakes). We went fairly simple with the cooking this time around because I'm still working out what items are available in grocery stores over here. I think we'll get a bit more crazy next weekend, especially since we'll have a gas grill (or BBQ as you Aussies out there call it) to play with by then (god willing, as they say)...
Now that the length of this post has achieved the requisite ridiculously-long status, I will sign off to go drink some coffee and carry on with the serious business of enjoying my time as a woman of leisure...