Avigayil Damm

So you’re single and your ambition to lead a healthy life has left you with too much bananas left over that you think are going to go bad tomorrow. You can’t give it away to anyone because you’re such a busy bee and are not on food sharing basis with your neighbours yet. (Yeah I know this is an extreme condition but just bear with me for now). Guess what, if you have coconut milk, palm sugar, pandan leaves, bread and eggs, (and raisins, if you like) you don’t have to throw away the bananas – you can make banana bread pudding instead!

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Once upon a time, my colleague asked if I could accompany her to buy a netbook since apparently she considered me as a technology-aware person. As a reward, she promised me a treat at the Outback steakhouse located in the same building as the geek mall. She really knows how to please me – with that kind of an award, it was an easy decision. So we went to the geek mall and looked around a little for options of laptops and netbooks. After comparing a few items, she made her choice and had her new gadget installed with an operating system and other extra applications from the vendor. Unfortunately that night she had some appointment with her friends so we rescheduled dinner for another time.

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It’s vacation time! We arrived today a little bit delayed; although our airline had previously informed us that the schedule was moved up by 20 minutes, we ended up leaving Jakarta 20 minutes after the original schedule. Talk about irony. (more…)

It was the 31st of December 2007. My then-partner-current-hubby and I and my boss had decided to spend New Year’s eve at Ritz Carlton’s Prime Steak House, for a New Year’s six-course menu dinner.

Since it was quite a long time ago, I don’t remember what we had, but what I do remember is this small bread (served in its tiny little baking dish) that they called roti sambal. Roti means bread and sambal is a mix of chilli which is usually served together with Indonesian dish. There are many different kinds of sambal, depending on the mixture. This bread was made with sambal terasi (terasi is dried shrimp paste) and it tasted really good. It was not very spicy actually so I thought it went well as a bread taste. It was also very unique as I never came across anything like this before.

See how small the bread (and the pan) is compared to my hand? It’s so cute, I had difficulties controlling myself not to snatch the bread pan. (I am crazy about small things) I may try to go back there and see whether they still serve these.

Since my hubby is away, I opted to eat everything that he would otherwise not have on his menu. One of them is Indian food. Although he doesn’t mind having them once in a while but such occasion is just too rare for me. So when I went shopping the other day, I took some ready made Indian food from the supermarket: beef curry, chicken tikka masala and nan parantha for accompaniment. It was quite practical to heat up too. I just popped the beef curry in the microwave for a few minutes, while the tikka masala and nan went into the oven for about 20 minutes (wrapped in aluminium foil). Yes, I do realize the instruction on the box said 7-10 minutes in the oven but I took the food out from the freezer so it did take longer to actually heat up.

The beef curry was good although not particularly special. It reminded me a lot of Padang beef curry (rendang) although it was much more rich in spices. The tikka masala was really nice, it was a bit spicy (as in chilli hot) but still tolerable. The nan was actually disappointing because it was not as expected. It was too plain and too fluffy, and tasted like ordinary bread. So next, time I will try the other tastes of India (I could see they had plenty to choose from) but I may just try to make my own nan. We’ll see.