I'm in Paris - so I've been eating croissants, kougn-amman, raspberry tartes, eclairs, macarons, crème brûlée, etc. (and one or two savory things). :eek: Home tomorrow. The diet starts Tuesday. :)

I never thought I'd say this but...I wish I was you right now :p

I subliminally inspired you.;)

Looks very good.

Singapore Holland Drive food center - Teochew Kway Chap.

This was the video I made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArTMPS-vKcc

Kofi Annan? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Annan

Plain and Simple Singapore Shenanighans with Hokey Pokey Sauce and Hunky Dory Vegetations and Tawdry Hoo Ha Sprinklings .... with lot's of Rioja. I might have exeggerated that a bit.


http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...7484348554.jpg

I keep looking at your posts in this thread and the thing that comes to mind is whether you are adopting?

I don't know how to take that .....:D

Anyone can cook. It just takes glutinous, greedy determination. :)

Yes, anyone can cook. But how did you come up with the variety of cooking you do? Do you use cookbooks for ideas or just wing everything?

Thanks.

No, not really. I have a really big library of cookery books but I never read the recipes I look at the pictures. They are motivational rather than instructive to me. Most of the books are of more obscure cuisines. The only time I've used recipes is to understand more about the ratios in breads, and when I went through an extended period of learning about batters. I also studied deep fat frying for a while and ended up reading quite a lot of academic stuff including an impressive phd thesis. So the sources of technical info is varied.

I'm really inquisitive and also painfully a perfectionist. Not bothered too much about presentation as you can tell. All of my learning comes from traveling. Our travel largely revolves around learning about cuisines that interest me. Once I decide I want to perfect something I work out from taste what I think is in it and how it is prepared and how i can reproduce it. Once reproduced i refine it to our taste. To me there is no such thing as authentic because all food is transient and never definitive. I can construct taste in my mind in the way many can see the effect of mixing two colours say yellow and blue to make green. I seem to do that with flavours. I find that cooking fills a need because it is something you never ever perfect. It can always be improved. I also find myself mulling over odd combinations which I then try. recent one for example was merging apple strudel with baclava and ended up with something that to us was gorgeous but I had clearly never seen. Some things I do simply to see if I can do it, like sourdough which I don't really like that much. I also made a Sachertorte recently just to see if I could. Often I never try it again. Just do it to see if I can.

As we get I get older we're finding the desire to travel is reducing and We're finding we rarely eat better when away from home.

We're still spending around 6 weeks a year in Singapore where most of my learning is coming from.

A simple peasant lunch.

Seabass with far too much caper hollandaise with stove top roast potatos with cracked black pepper and Marldon salt .... and by special request petit pois. With Bredon Champagne.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...765C474853.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...7CE42535B5.jpg

Please take it as it was meant, an extreme compliment in the guise of a bit of a quip.

"Anyone can cook." I suppose this is true. I am a scientist, molecular biologist, and my wife tells me that someone who can do that can surely mix some food items together and make a meal. And to an extent I can. But in cooking, as opposed to science I think, I lack creativity. Also, I lack presentation ability with food.

I think to, for an American, well, at least for me, the scenery and omnipresent wine in your pictures notches things up just a little, but a critical bit to elevate the meal to a higher level. Americans tend to throw stuff on the table without the presentation and wine to make the meal the quiet celebration that it should be. Your pictures point that out very clearly.