Posts Tagged ‘steak’

The Brasserie at Schiphol Airport

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Still related to our short trip to Denmark, we flew back to Indonesia with KLM, so automatically we stopped at Schipol Airport. Since we had a long five hours stopover in Amsterdam, we had plenty of time to walk around and we even took a nap at Yotel located at Lounge 2 near the food court of the Schiphol Airport. By the way, If you’re looking for a place to nap when stuck in transfer at Schiphol Airport, Yotel is the place to go. They have small sized bedrooms that are arranged and decorated in a way that gives you the experience of a first class airline cabin from EUR 65 (for four hours).

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Dinner at Outback Steakhouse

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

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 :D – 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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Dining Out: Steak Tenderloin at Gourmet Garage

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Yes, it’s the fourth time that I am actually writing about Gourmet Garage. It’s obviously a place that my hubby and I like going to, not only because they are the only place (or the only one we know of so far) that sells prime beef (wagyu), but also because so far, the food we had there at their restaurant had been to our satisfaction. It’s only natural that we come back to the place we like, isn’t it? (more…)

Chocolate Fudge Brownies and Lamb with Rosemary Sauce

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

As usual, Sunday is cake day. A few days ago, I set my heart on making brownies, but the easy way: Betty Crocker style. This morning, after breakfast, I thought since I was already busy cleaning up the kitchen after our meal, I may as well stay a while and make the brownies and have it done with. So that I did.

Of course, using Betty Crocker instant brownies package made it all easy. I only had to add one egg, half a cup of vegetable oil, and some water. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to prepare, and before I could spell ‘chocolate fudge brownies and lamb with rosemary sauce’ backwards, the brownies mixture was ready for the oven. :P

Since it would take about 25 minutes to bake, I figured I would use that time to prepare the rosemary sauce for tonight’s lamb leg steak. Usually, we would use Gravox ‘lamb and rosemary’ instant sauce, but for some annoying reason, no supermarket in Jakarta (at least not the ones I frequent) sell them anymore. So I had to find myself a recipe and make it myself. For that, I did a lot of Google search, and decided to try this recipe from Epicurious. Originally that sauce recipe is for chicken but that was the only recipe I could find that I thought was easy to make and did not require ingredients that would be difficult to obtain.

Image107The chocolate fudge brownies turned out to be very fudgy (well no surprises there), and since I felt like today I did something better than usual (by baking cake in the morning as opposed to later in the afternoon), I rewarded myself (and my hubby) with freshly baked brownies, served with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and a sprinkle of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Yummy!

The rosemary sauce turned out to be a little bit too sour, even after I modified it by adding 100 ml more of cream than the recipe required. I guess I will continue to search for different rosemary sauce until I get the best one.

Dining Out: Cafe de Paris at La Codefin

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

So the workaholics stayed in the office until 19.00 today. Automatically, none of us were in any mood to cook anything. Actually when we were leaving the office, I told my hubby that the food today (pasta with smoked salmon) would be easy and would only take 11 minutes (as per description on the pasta wrapping), but on the way home my hubby suddenly changed his mind and offered to eat out in Kemang.

Image079Originally we were going for Burger King (yes shame on us, junk food two nights in a row, but we needed some feel good food after the hectic day), so we went to the one place in Kemang where they opened shop, Codefin. When we arrived there we spotted Cafe de Paris, one of the cafe that we liked but were missing when they closed in another area in Kemang (Plaza Kemang 88). So we ended up eating there instead.

I remember once Peder ordered steak with ham and cheese, and I remember how much he liked it because it tasted good and it was medium cooked exactly as he liked it and the meat was tender. So I went for that this time. Unfortunately that was a mistake because this time the meat was a bit dry and tough.

So we thought we’d get some dessert which would get us onto the good side. We ordered one chocolate mousse to share. When it arrived, it looked very familiar. I once tried to make chocolate mousse and it was a complete disaster. It turned out to be slightly fluffy on the top (as it supposed to be) but very gooey on the bottom. :P And that was exactly how this chocolate mousse was. The only difference is that my version didn’t use as much rum. So we decided, the best chocolate mousse still belongs to Brasserie (another restaurant in Kemang).

Another thing that was highly annoying about today’s experience is the ridiculously loud music that was playing from the ground floor and could be heard from the restaurant which was on the first floor. That’s something I really don’t understand about the Indonesian way of presenting ‘accompanying music’. See, in a concert, a band should be playing loudly because the concert is all about the band. But when you go to a mall or a cafe, the music presented should only be a side kick, and should not disturb the true purpose of the place.

This was what happened last night: the band that was hired to play in the ground floor, in a lobby, to a mix of people who are sitting and enjoying their meal suddenly became the centre of everything. The speakers were too loud and too powerful for the small area it’s supposed to cover. Their voices were not really good, and it was so horrible when they held their notes, thinking “I’m so good I can hold my note this long” while their voices were cracking and unstable. So not only were we forced to just sit and eat without being able to talk, we also had to endure the not-so-good voices which was not entertaining at all. So… in the end it was not a ‘feel-good’ experience. But you know what was good? I was in the company of the man I love who loves me back, and we’re married. Isn’t that convenient? :D