Tiramisu; Jerudong Park Polo Club

Who goes home, eats the homecooked food that she loves so much yet is incapable of reproducing because she can't cook to save her life if ever she were to participate in an event in which one must cook savoury meals to save one's life (it could happen, okay), attends her sister's wedding vow ceremony and wedding reception with yet more albeit not home-cooked food, and then very cleverly forgets to take pictures of anything?

That would be me.

Though I did get to take a picture of the tiramisu at the wedding reception. You might not see it at first glance (because this dessert is like one of those really trippy optical illusion pictures of coloured landscapes that my third grade teacher Mrs Gibbons used to show her class, wherein one little third-grader at a time would shout out that they saw all manner of elusive objects camouflaged in the landscape, when all I ever saw was.... a picture of a coloured landscape. I was so traumatised by being such a failure at seeing things in these kinds of pictures, so agonised about why, why, WHY I did not see these things that everyone else seemed to see, was there something wrong with me, was I not looking hard enough?!, that I used to join in and lie and say I saw all those things too. When I didn't. I confess, Mrs Gibbons: I was a optically challenged competitive little third-grader), but in fact:
1. Those two letter Ss in the background are actually biscuits trying desperately to be kissing swans. My sister, who picked the menu, confirmed that they are biscuit SWANS, people, SWANS, while I can confirm that they are doing a poor job of being swanlike, because if anything, they look like kissing snakes;
2. That little teacup of what looks like black coffee is actually tiramisu; and
3. That dark imposter of a teaspoon is actually a chocolate, urm, teaspoon.

Okay, so perhaps hidden object #3 is, upon further scrutiny, not so hidden and kind of obvious, but seeing as I have historically had problems with seeing what is always so annoyingly explicit to everyone else (I'm not still bitter about this at all, no no), I was pretty awed by this tricky little tableau.



And after I ate my dessert with my chocolate spoon, I ate my spoon! How many times in your life can you see your sister get married AND type out that sentence? (Rhetorical question as I have two more sisters, both of whom seem matrimonially inclined, and can foresee many more edible utensils in my future, now that I know of their existence.)

Pandan Tiramisu; KL Convention Centre

Things One Should Know About Me In Order To Properly Understand My View on Pandan Tiramisu:

1. I freaking love tiramisu, but feel very strongly that because it is so classic, the urge to improvise to differentiate makes it all too easy to fuck it up completely (shout out to Dome of the horrifically crap tiramisu)

2. I am a big fan of fusion (theoretically, at least), as mixing one good thing with another good thing should in theory produce a good squared thing (shout out to algebra)

Cases in point: Malay-Arab-Persian weddings with traditions/costumes from both (shout out to my cousin and new cousin-in-law!!!); fusion food

3. I freaking hate Malay desserts, and most Malay dessert ingredients (pandan, coconuts, santan, gula melaka, durian-as-a-dessert-ingredient-not-as-a-fruit, rice-as-a-dessert-ingredient-not-a-savoury-food, yam?! corn?! red beans?! What would possess anyone to stick these into a dessert?!)

Given the illustrious and super enlightening list above, it makes sense that my view on the pandan cheesecake I ate several days ago is (still, several days later) very bemused. On the one hand I kept eating it because my mind was like score, tiramisu in a martini glass! On the other it was like dude that is PANDAN and it's GREEN.


So I only ate half. Too pandan to finish and too tiramisu not to eat. BEMUSING.

Tiramisu; Nero Vivo, Bukit Bintang

Mmm tiramisu. I am constantly in search of the perfect tiramisu; an idea which, like Utopia, a Discrimination-Free World, Stilettos That Do Not Kill Your Feet and Make You Want to Die, and Arsenal Somehow Miraculously Winning This Year's Premier League, is maddening elusive and yet enticingly ideal. You think you reach it/achieve it/bought it/are going to see it materialize THIS SEASON, respectively, but then, no, no; cicaks pop out of nowhere/sexism rears its ugly usually-male head/the beautiful shoes that you thought were The Ones (The Two?) turn out to be just as painful as the rest/Arsenal dash your dream, yet again. So it is mighty heartening to stumble upon something that IS real and almost-perfect and in your grasp. Especially when you can eat said real and almost-perfect thing and are grasping a spoon while it's in front of you.

The tiramisu equation usually goes a little something like: Tiramisu equals many ingredients equals so many variations equals so many ways to screw it up beyond belief (in fact I no longer eat at Dome because I despise loathe and ABHOR their tiramisu) but also equals, occasionally, so many ways to get it right while being innovative.



THIS is innovative, and was done right. Creamy tiramisu in a biscuit bowl, with a side drizzling with passionfruit sauce (the drizzling seems a bit random to me as well; but it worked because it was perky, unexpected and aesthetically relevant). Doesn't quite make up for sexism and racism and blisters on my feet because I insist on wearing heels to the office every day and the depression with which I resign myself to the fact that Arsenal will not win the League this year, but I'll take my little pleasures where I can get them.

Tiramisu; Alexis

Not such a fan of chopped nuts on tiramisu, so I don't know about this, Alexis. I may be partial because I'm not really a fan of nuts in general. They make my teeth nervous.


Also they make me feel like I'm a starving child in a developing (third world is not p.c. anymore) country and the white humanitarian missionaries are like 'we come bearing food!' and then they give you nuts which are supposed to be healthy and organic and full of fiber and my impoverished developing country mother, who possesses an abundance of common sense if not worldly goods, is like 'dude we could have picked these off the plants ourselves'. But we eat the nuts anyway because neo-cultural (and religious) imperialism has permeated even the realm of food. They also make me feel (at the same time) that I'm a vegan lesbian with blond dreadlocks who sews her own clothes and underwear, and only bathes once a week in an attempt to save water, and survives on a diet of nuts and seeds and organic toothpaste. Once in a while, and thankfully not often, eating nuts also makes me feel like I'm a squirrel. And squirrels just FREAK me out cause they're all twitchy and conniving and glassy-eyed, which is how I would imagine animals on crack would behave, since that's how all the humans (okay, there's only been one) on crack that I've seen have behaved.


I mean, I don't know if that's a sign of a hyperactive imagination or whether I just really dislike nuts. I still eat them, and I ate this cake, which, other than the nuts, was decent. I especially liked the random bloody pool of raspberry sauce on the plate. I have this theory, that I've put a lot of thought into, that if you put whipped cream on any kind of dessert, your food will taste 70-85% more delicious, and in comparison your waistline will only expand by 2-5%. I won't go into the details but there is of course a dense and convoluted mathematical formula for this theory that I painstakingly constructed on an excel spreadsheet (aka the canvas of my working life), involving a regression of the happiness levels of a sample population (me) against how much my waistline has expanded after I ingest whipped cream. Anyway, the common sense that my imaginary developing country mama has, as well as economics, dictates that we should therefore put whipped cream on everything dessert-related because the trade off/payment is negligible (what is 2% really? If you round down like all politicians and analysts and fund managers do with statistics then it becomes zero). Anyway my point is raspberry sauce makes a similarly compelling argument for Things to Always Put on Desserts. I need to construct a mathematical formula for this theory too, of course (you didn't really think I pulled all this out of my ass, did you?) but hmmm food for thought.

I have no idea why I just wrote such lengthy drivel about nothing in particular. I'm hungry.

Brunch; Diva, Soho, New York

Who has tiramisu with brunch? I DO, and don't judge, I'm on vacation and it was very stressful watching the Spain-Sweden game.



(My) Mozzarella Omelette

(Danny's) Blueberry Waffles

Pretty tiramisu

MORE DONUTS; J.Co

The Crunchy Crunchy/my new favourite donut. (It has dethroned my former J.Co favourite, the Tiramisu, which I am getting sick of; partly because I've just realized the donut actually tastes nothing like tiramisu and the only reason I like it is the copious amounts of whipped cream it houses.)

Ten points for the intriguingly repetitive name: CRUNCHY CRUNCHY. Saying the name out loud forces me to open my mouth and mime a chewing motion, which makes me hungry, which makes me want to eat donuts, which means I will go to J.Co and order the Crunchy Crunchy, which means that when people ask me what I ate for lunch I'll be all, "Oh, the Crunchy Crunchy," which means that the whole process will then repeat itself in a neverending donut-shaped spiral of delicious neverendingness. Those people at J.Co are real crafty bastards.

Tiramisu; Angus House

Memo to Dome (yes, another one, bear with me): THIS is what a tiramisu should taste like. It should have the capacity to make me so excited about eating it that I forget to take a picture first (hence the chopped off tip of the slice of cake where I dug in to start eating only to realize that not only should I wait for other people to start their desserts too, but I should also discreetly try to take a picture). Sorry, lunch buddies. It was the tiramisu anticipation, I'm not usually devoid of manners and etiquette.

Tiramisu; Dome

The most tiru tiramisu (couldn't resist) I have ever (half-)eaten. I wouldn't have such an issue with an oversaturated pudding masquerading as a tiramisu if it were at least edible, but memo to Dome: 99.9% marscapone cream and 0.1% coffee + ladyfingers does not a tiramisu make. It makes, instead, a soggy, fatty, lardy dollop that will incite people who are particular about their tiramisu to write meaningless tirades about it.