Avigayil Damm

It was the morning of my birthday when I got a phone call from Harvest cake shop asking me to describe how to get to my home. A few moments later, a delivery person arrived, bringing the most awesome package I have ever received, with a note attached “Happy birthday Hesti! Love, the Scotts”

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Last Thursday, we had to stop by at a hyper mart to buy a big bin for our household waste. Due to the typical traffic in Jakarta, we arrived at Pejaten Village a wee bit late, so we were hungry by the time we got out of the car. So we decided to have our dinner there and then. (more…)

I don’t really know what is the big deal about turning older. Lots of my friends dread their birthdays, saying, “Oh I am sooo old!”. For me, it’s a day to remember I have been blessed yet another year.

And that day is today. This day I turned 33 years old. Or maybe I should say. this day I will turn 33 years old, because I was actually born at 23.15 so I am not 33 years old yet. But anyway… today was quite special.

It started with my colleague arriving in the office, carrying a birthday cake for me, which we cut and shared with other colleagues later in the afternoon. Then I went out for lunch with my boss, as we had a lunch meeting to discuss my work and the future. The day ended with dinner with my hubby at Brasserie in Kemang.

The chocolate cake was really good. If I remember correctly, my colleague got it from Dapur Coklat, but let me check with her again and I will update this post. In the afternoon she actually put on a candle on the cake and forced me to make a wish and blow the candles. Good thing she only put one candle on, otherwise the cake would have been on fire.

The lunch with my boss was at Loewy’s went pretty well. We talked about the possibility of an earlier departure since my hubby and I didn’t know when and where his next posting will start. We also talked about many other things, but most importantly (at least in relevance to this blog), the food we (or at least I) ordered was good. Actually from a posh restaurant like that, I expected more but I guess I probably also chose a more down to earth menu: chicken pot pie. So although this time the food was not so impressive, I would give it another shot. Since the dish came covered with puff pastry I took a picture after I have gotten through some of the pastry.

In the evening, as I mentioned before, my hubby took me out to Brasserie, a restaurant we used to frequent quite often when we first met. There was something about this restaurant though, that made us stay away for quite a while (according to the floor manager, we haven’t been seen there for over two years). And come to think of it, the last time we came here I think was on 10 March 2007 which was the first day that I introduced my then boyfriend (my current hubby) to my parents. So yes it has been two years, even more. The reason is, there is always something about the food. Although it won’t ever taste bad, but then the meat would either be not so tender, or there will always be small hiccups that drags them down a notch from being perfect. We must admit though, that they are very good in making chocolate mousse, and so far we have never found any other restaurant serving anything that could beat them in this category.

Since we knew the floor manager a little, she came and chatted a while to us. Somehow our conversation led to my hubby’s birthday and then led to the question on when my birthday was. Being caught in the spot (and I have actually lost the ability to lie), I had to tell her it was today. She congratulated me, and then took our orders and left us in peace. Or so I thought for a while. My hubby ordered fillet mignon, which he said was ok but not special, and I had the lamb chops, which tasted ok but was not so tender. But we enjoyed it nevertheless, and of course we could not leave the place without ordering their delicious chocolate mousse.

Just in the middle of enjoying our dessert, the floor manager came out with the whole staff (even the kitchen and the parking staff) to sing ‘happy birthday’ to me and presented me with a small chocolate cake. Since we were already very full, they were more than happy to put the cake in the box for me to bring home. It was a very nice surprise and quite heart warming.

So that was how my birthday this year went, and I am quite happy with how it turned out to be. And to top it all off, my hubby presented me with a very nice present: a Canon EOS 450D, which I have been eyeing for a while. I will certainly now start to learn more about photography, and put an end to the miserable photos on this website.

Oh and in case you wanted to visit any of the restaurants mentioned here, here are their addresses:

Yesterday, we stayed up pretty late, because we took a nap that was longer than planned so we were not tired or sleepy at all. Of course that did not stop me from complaining when a call woke me up at 8 this morning. It was my sister, giving me bad news about a family’s loss. So we naturally spent half the day today at our family’s place, extending our condolences.

It was a particularly hot day today and I felt drowsy, so when we arrived home I took a little nap to wind down. As soon as I woke up, I went straight to the kitchen to prepare tonight’s meal: Salmon en croute.

I followed a recipe from a local women’s magazine, Femina. It’s quite simple actually: I used 2 salmon fillet (each approximately 250 gr) although the recipe asked for one large fillet. With the help of my hubby, both fillet were skinned. Then it’s seasoned with salt, pepper, dill, and lemon juice before it’s fried for a few minutes. For the filling, I stir-fried one finely chopped onion until fragrant, then added 150 gr chopped button mushroom, and coarsely chopped spinach (about 200 gr), and seasoned it with salt and pepper. There are of course other recipes for the filling, but this is the one I tried for now.

Now comes the time to arrange them onto the puff pastry. I used ready made ones, available in some supermarket’s freezer section – try Kemchicks Kemang, that’s where I bought them. The puff pastry came in quite thick sheets, so I rolled them out to make them thinner and at the same time adjust the size to be able to cover the salmon fillet. Then the salmon is placed on the pastry sheet, topped with filling, and the pastry is rolled to cover it. The outside of the pastry is brushed lightly with one beaten egg to give it a golden finish when baked. There is a video on how Gordon Ramsey rolls salmon into the pastry here. Of course you don’t have to hop restlessly as he does while doing it. Watching his video sort of made me nervous actually (because of his hopping), but he does present it nicely (and easy to follow).

Anyways, after only 30 minutes (10 minutes less than the recipe, since the salmon I used are in smaller size) at 200°C in the oven, the salmon en croute looks ready to eat! Yummy!

Although we ended up eating too much of the salmon en croute since it was so delicious, we still managed (or more like forced ourselves) to have a very thin slice of chocolate cake from yesterday with whipped cream on the side, and black coffee to help with the digestion. The whipped cream (and the extreme thin slice) helped tone down the dryness of the cake. Since I need a lot of exercise with pictures, here is another shot of the cake.

It didn’t really dawn on me until after breakfast that today is Saturday, the day where I usually sit down, browse through my recipe collection, make up a one-week menu and its shopping list, and then go groceries shopping. Only when my hubby mentioned some things I needed to put in my shopping list did I realize this crucial fact.

So I sat down and browsed through my recipes again. I have decided to give some old recipes a go, combined with something new for variation. As for today, I actually already had something in mind: I was going to try and make some chocolate cake for tea time, and then Chinese beef and asparagus with oyster sauce.

I took the recipe for chocolate cake from epicurious.com again, because I was looking for a very simple and basic chocolate cake – which in the end was not simple to make at all! As many of the reviews of the recipe said, the cake turned out a little bit too dry and crumbly, so I serve it with generous heaps of chocolate frosting – which also resulted in twice as much as needed. I still have some leftover of the frosting, and am trying to find out what I could use it for.

While the cake was baking and the frosting was cooling down in the fridge, I prepared dinner. The recipe was taken from Periplus Mini Cookbooks series, titled Simple Stir-fries. And it is as simple as it claims it is. As per recipe, I marinated 500 gr of lean beef fillet in soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine, for at least 15 minutes. According to the recipe, I was supposed to stir-fry the asparagus and beef separately but I didn’t want to complicate my life. So what I did was, after stir-frying 3 crushed garlic until fragrant, I added the beef (all of it in a big wok) and stir-fried it until the beef changes colour, and then added the asparagus and cooked them covered. After a few minutes, I added the stock, oyster sauce and remaining rice wine and boiled it until the sauce was reduced. It was basically ready in the same time that the rice was ready (about 15 minutes). And that’s the kind of cooking I like.