Hai Tien Lou @ Pan Pacific

As it's been a long time since Stevie's ah ma and us went out for a nice meal, Stevie decides to bring ah ma out for dim sum when aunt say she might not be cooking on saturday.

The restuarant that came to my mind is Hai Tien Lou as i was browsing through the web recently and saw quite a number of good comments on the restuarant.

We ordered the usual dim sum items, tried their Deep-fried sea perch wrapped in vermicelli, crispy glutinous rice and finally the famous and highly recommended Hai Tien Lou Trio of Treasures.

My favourites: Si-Chuan style dumpling and Deep-fried sea perch wrapped in vermicelli.

And....the rest is Disappointing. It is probably the worst dim sum restuarant i have eaten. Usually when i am trying to compare restuarants, i will have my doubt as to which restuarant or which items taste better in the different restuarants. But without much thought, Hai Tien Lou just did not make the cut compared to the other dim sum places i have been.

The steam shrimp dumpling which is my favourite dim sum item was just terrible. The shrimp is lacks the bouncy texture and the dumpling skin sticks all around my teeth after chewing them. The steam carrot cake is not as nice compared to Wah lok and Victor's kitchen.

The pan fried rice flour roll is also not as tasteful as Victor's Kitchen.

Lastly the Trio treasure, prawn is not bouncy and the deep fried flour is soo hard, we had to cut the prawn up into mini pieces for ah ma to eat. The duck skin is crispy, the meat is tough and since there is no sauce to go with the duck, the meat taste quite bland. The crab meat marinated in sake is ok.

Was there too high expectation due to all the great comments on the web? I doubt so.
Maybe everyone is just too pre-occupied with the 37 floor view that the restuarant offers. Well, when the mood is good everything taste good as well.

Stevie's first dishes in the new house

Finally, it is the weekend and Stevie have some time to cook.

His friends are coming over and so he decides to cook lunch.

Menu:
Vegetable
Honey-grilled chicken wings
Stir fry Pork ribs with oyster sauce
Fish, coriander and century egg soup

Pork Ribs with black pepper and honey

Mum rarely cook nowadays as she is too busy and too fickle minded to cook a proper meal. So she cook soup every other day. To have better flavour soup, she will always buy pork ribs or spare ribs to boil. However, none of us like to eat the pork after as it is usually tasteless and tough. I always thought it was a waste of food to throw the pork after.

Recently, i cook one of mum's soup: Pork ribs with melon soup. Looking at the pork ribs, i thought maybe i shouldn't throw it away. So instead of throwing it, i marinated it overnight and "wah la" another dish for dinner.

Ingredient
- Cooked pork ribs (boiled)
- ginger (sliced in stripes)
- spring onion (chopped)
- black pepper
- light soya sauce
- sesame oil
- honey

1. Marinate the cooked pork ribs with the above ingredient
2. Leave them overnight in the fridge
3. Before cooking, take the pork ribs out from the fridge and leave it at room temperature for 1 hour
4. Fry garlic and stir in the pork ribs together with all the seasoning. As the ribs are coated with honet, stir constantly to prevent burnt. After 3-5 mins, pork ribs are ready to serve).

Above can be cooked with lean pork meat instead of pork ribs. The cooked pork meat can be stirred into congee to provide extra taste to the congee.

Century Egg and Pork Congee

Our first meal in the house....is congee.

Since we still do not have a rice cooker yet and the simplest dish to make is congee, this is the first dish that i whip up in our new home. Stevie was quite disappointed that i didn't wait for him to cook the first dish. But with him going back to work right after and having plans during the weekend, it will be weeks before we can start using the kitchen. How can i resist for a few weeks before using our beautiful kitchen?

I've always loved to eat congee esp those that the rice is cooked until it explodes and you cannot see a full grain of rice and century egg porridge is the ones that i loved best.

Ingredients
- rice
- pork lean meat
- spring onion
- chinese coriander
- spring onion
- ginger
- Century egg

1. Marinate the pork with light sauce, sesame oil and corn starch
2. Wash the rice and leave it soak in water for 1 hour
3. Boil the rice in chicken stock for 45 mins stirring occasionally and topping up the stock when the porridge dries up
4. Add salt to porridge
5. Put in the pork 3 mins before serving the porridge.
6. Serve the porridge in bowl and add chinese coriander, spring onion, ginger and century egg.
7. Add light sauce, sesame oil and pepper to taste.

My Wedding Day

The wedding day is finally over and everything went as planned, thanks to all the Sisters. The Brothers did their part as well except being sporting for the gate crashing. Well, at least they all woke up on time and even arrived early.

Haven't get to see the video yet on the gate crashing but i can just imagine Stevie trying to do everything himself. When Stevie came in to lift the veil, his stomach is already churning and getting upset after the weird concoction he drank and had to go to the loo twice. Happy he didn't got angry or throw any temper throughout the whole day even with his upset stomach, having to wake up early without enough sleep, playing along for the gate crashing, wearing tux on such a hot day, and having to do all the traditional stuff.

The banquet passed by in a flash. Trully, the wedding banquet is for the guests. I don't recall feeling any romantic moments during the banquet at all, which i do feel when attending others wedding. When the couple do their bridal march and when the montages are played, i will always feel touched.

But for my wedding, I missed 2 out of 3 of the montages as i was outside the ballroom waiting to do my march in and in fact i think i won't feel anything even if i get to see all 3 montages since it was done by me and i have already seen them umpteen times (Maybe Stevie will feel differently cos he only seen them once). The bridal march is weird, everyone standing while we enter. I cannot imagine why some gals wants to have this and wished that their room is long enough so that they can walk longer. Halfway through, i couldn't stand it and have to ask stevie to walk faster.

Well maybe it is one of those things where if you've done it, you think that it is a waste of time and if you haven't you will regret it. So i'm glad i did it still.

Great compliments received from guest on banquet. I thought the food was just alright but the fish is delicious. Yummy!! Was hoping tos get a second serving. The serving of the food seems a bit small. Still felt hungry after the banquet. Good thing the hotel served us tea and i couldn't resist eating the pastry. Looked so pretty.

Overall i really like Mandarin Oriental. The ballroom and decoration is all glam and the food is not too bad.

Getting Married!!

It's been a long long time since my last posting.

Too busy and any free time is for me to relax rather than looking at the computer.

My laptop is dusty and sitting in the corner of the room making a comfy home for spiders…hahaha.

Past few weeks have been relatively busy.

Planning and organizing for house moving, shopping for the house and wedding

As we have been planning for a while, we were not in a frantic mad rush but there are many misc stuffs we need to constantly remind ourselves to do and re-check whether there is any loose ends that are missed out. Might not be the same for Stevie as he has work related stuff to settle. After 1 week of battling, it is now calm sea after stormy weather.

Just finished moving into our new home which is almost fully equip except for a few small items which we have yet to purchase. After non-stop nagging from mum, we cleaned the house over the weekend, as we need to do our "Ann Chuang" on Monday. My bones nearly shattered the next day and I wonder why there are so many mirrors and glass in the house. After staying in the new house for 1 week, love our house even more (should find a solution for the cleaning though).

Monday Stevie came for the gift exchange and the "Ann Chung". After so much hassle and preparation for this day, the event seems to be more of a procedure. Even though each items and action have their meaning, but the procedure seems to pass fairly quickly. Finally, our bed sheets are fitted in and our room looks complete. Mum bought a lovely bedside table lamp for the room. Although the lamp is for the wedding, we might continue to used it for a year or so.

Wedding preparation is also almost done. We confirm the guest list, seating arrangement and the actual day schedule. Makeup artist, Photographer, driver and hotel have been updated on the schedule. Tonight will be meeting the "Sisters" to do a briefing on the day events. Then, tomorrow will be handing off all my work and I can enjoy the rest of November.

Woo hoo!!