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.

Eton Mess, the Apartment

Also known as dessert for the lazy sugarlover, because it's just meringue, strawberries, cream, and more meringue, slopped together with minimum effort and maximum sweetness. And because it contains almost all of my favourite dessert ingredients (sorry, chocolate; you're on the favourite dessert ingredients list but didn't make it into the Mess) and because it sent me straight into a very potent sugar shock, it is also my kind of dessert.

Though it may also be my kind of dessert because of its inherently sloppy nature that I may or may not share, because I may or may not try to be neat and organized, but recent living arrangements may have resigned me to the fact that despite my well-intentioned and best efforts I am just not; and I may or may not make messes and am terrible at housework and will, against better judgement, stuff too many clothes into too few drawers and dump my belongings wherever I feel like it and like sloppy desserts and am not ashamed. MAYBE.

This Much I Know

(Thanks PP! Though ultimately traced back to the Observer)

Iman, Aspiring Dictator/Feta Cheese Lover, 24, Kuala Lumpur

- I miss blogging. Though I fell, and hard, for the seductive wiles of twitter, I miss having the freedom to ramble on for more than 140 characters at a time. I have thus returned in a prodigal-son-like manner. Little foodie blog, mama has come back! Cue fanfare and joyful anticipation... or maybe not, because I may get bored and stop doing this in about a week or so.

- I know blogs and twitter and myspace and facebook status updates are manifestations of how grossly narcissistic the human race has become, but my god I like writing random things and releasing them into the random spaces of the internet and I do not apologize for it. Also I am not GROSSLY narcissistic as I don't use facebook or myspace (anymore and at all, respectively), I am merely as harmlessly narcisstic as the next blogger/twitterer.

- The best comfort food is spaghetti bolognese. Though this may only apply to me, because that is the food I most associate with my childhood. And that, in turn, is because my sisters and I were brats who would not eat rice more than three nights a week and spaghetti was the easiest alternative food.

- Growing up is nothing like I thought it would be, and all the insecurities and flaws that I thought would magically disappear when I turned 21/started working/graduated college/moved to KL have instead been magically magnified. Dammit!

- The most important thing to have in the whole world is an open mind. The most important thing to know how to do in the whole world is how to balance your own opinions with keeping an open mind.

- I find it hard to forgive wilful ignorance paired with rude behaviour. I'll let it slide if you have the misfortune of being afflicted with one or the other, but I pretty much automatically hate you if you are both.

- Yell at pervert misogynist douchebags on the LRT, because if you do not, the regret will haunt you forever. Also they may be perving on some other unsuspecting person that they may not have been perving on if your yelling had successfully scarred them for life.

- To-do lists make everything easier, more manageable, and will save you from jumping off Level 37 of Petronas Twin Tower 2 due to stress. When in doubt, list it out.

- Running in heels is one of the most useful talents a woman can have. Applying make-up in a moving car with only the aid of a compact mirror is another. I consider it a huge achievement that I have mastered them both, and yes, I say this in all seriousness.

- I am (evidently) not great at this whole This Much I Know thing, because I don't think I know anything of great consequence, but I do know that everyone would go crazy with the chaotic state of the world unless they kept their eye on the ball. Find your ball, and keep your eye there. Mine is a goose who is a crankypants in the morning, but I graciously overlook that as he performs his ball function.

- Everything is kismet, and if that thought doesn't make you feel don't-worry!-be-happy! and a-okay, then the last resort is always dessert.

Christiano Ronaldo is a Pumpkin Pie

I haven't done a football-cake inspired comparison in a while although I've been thinking about this particular comparison for a few months now.

Pumpkin pie: kinda yuck, kinda leathery looking.



Christiano Ronaldo: kinda yuck, skin kinda leathery looking.

C.Ron wondering whether his manhood is still intact after 4-1 drubbing by Liverpool over weekend. It isn't.

Portuguese Ikan Bakar; Uptown

Portuguese Ikan Bakar at Uptown, or: What I Ate While Being Serenaded by Guitar Toting Hippie at Food Stall.



(Shout out to Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which in my opinion is the most awesome movie title EVER. That is totally unrelated to this post, as per usual. I apologize: I am evidently a failure at staying on track. I was talking about the Dr. Strangelove movie last night while explaining my very convoluted and evidence-backed dissertation on the central theme of Watchmen to goosey, who is, unfortunately for him, the favoured receptacle for my half-baked ideas on life, the universe and everything. So now I have the movie in my head, because the war room scenes in the Watchmen were just like the war room scenes in Dr. Strangelove, minus crazed character with phantom hand. Also now I am talking about Watchmen again. I apologize again! I have an obsessive personality and inability to STFU! Also I blame this on the book, which I started reading last night. Actually I blame this on a colleague who somehow persuaded me to buy the book during lunch yesterday although I had made up my mind to be patient and wait for a copy from goosey's brother.)

Anyway! This guitar toting hippie sang, specifically, Hotel California and Wonderful Tonight and Belaian Jiwa and a bunch of other old songs of which my faulty memory does not permit recollection. And maybe it's because these were the songs that I used to coerce my father into playing for me on his guitar every night before I went to sleep (I am very capable of making up my own bedtime stories, but am not too proud to request for help on the bedtime song front) when I was young enough to get away with such extravagant coersion, but as soon as he started playing his songs and I got my ikan bakar the night became a little bit balmier and a little bit prettier. It is surprisingly romantic being serenaded by an aging bohemian while eating in an outdoor food court of questionable cleanliness on a sultry KL night with my kind of comfort food, baked fish and rice, in front of you, and a gooselike significant other all to yourself. I very much recommend it.

Must mentally step away now from hybrid happy place of my bed in my bedroom in bungalow in Brunei at 12 years old seeing father's silhouette in doorway holding guitar, and random food court in Uptown with fish and goosey, and return to the excel spreadsheets that are chanting my name in ominous tones.

Spicy Prawn Olio Spaghetti; Bianco

You know that feeling when you're pressured into eating something you don't really want to eat but then feel compelled to not only pile on copious amounts of whatever you are eating but also lick the plate clean upon finishing? Usually occurs when grannies, elderly makcik auntie types and temperamental chefs, all of whom cook the food in question, are around?



Yeah that's sort of what I felt when I ate this pasta. I actually wanted to try their kung pao chicken pasta which was the special for the month, but when I ordered it, the waitress was like, "Really? Really you want to try that? The chicken? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?" like I was submitting a Final Answer to the Million Dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or I was about to read out my "I Do" vow in a wedding to a mass murderer who would surely kill me on my honeymoon or I was about to sign my soul away to the devil or something.

So I got understandably freaked out by her creepy questions and in my state of freaked-out-ness somehow ordered the dish that she recommended in lieu of the kung pao chicken. And then because she recommended it and kept coming over to check if I liked it and how fast I was eating it, I felt pressured to scarf the whole thing down although I felt fairly ambiguous towards it.

Which really brings to head a couple of key issues:
a) the trick to getting me to do something is to confuse me and make me doubt myself. Definitively ordering me to do something will not work, and if she had ordered me to order the spicy prawn olio pasta I would have been like NO who do you think you ARE, my MOTHER?! (though not even my mother orders me around precisely because she is aware of the trick that I am in the midst of revealing)
b) did the kung pao chicken really taste that bad or did she just want it for herself?

Makes you wonder, right?

Meat Buffet; Carnaval Churrascaria

Have been severely neglecting blog as of late. In fact if blogs were children I'm sure I'd be hauled in for some blog neglectment charge and have custody yanked away from me and end up as a distraught working mother who isn't able to juggle the responsibilities of career and childcare. Then again if blogs were children I'd also be a single parent raising a gluttonish plain faced toddler with an extraordinarily precocious vocabulary so maybe there's a reason people don't use that analogy.

Anyway! Went to Singapore, ate gratuitous amounts of food, and caught up with my mother and assorted other family members. Because I forgot to upload Singapore pictures, however, this post will not be about the food consumed in Singapore.

Instead, here are pictures from Goosey's favourite restaurant in the world. Before you get any misleading ideas about how fabulous this restaurant probably is to deserve such a lofty title, you should know that the only reason it is his favourite restaurant is that it is: a) all you can eat, and b) an all you can eat MEAT BUFFET. Which means you have many chunks of meat, on skewers, presented to you at your table (so you don't even have to walk, which makes it BETTER than a regular buffet, at which one is regrettably forced to keep getting in and out of one's seat in order to get more food).

I can't remember how many different types of meat I had because I am unable to say no to most foods and so just said yes to all the skewers of meat offered to me and thus completely lost track of what I was eating, but curiously enough given that the place was practically an abbattoir, I remember that their garlic bread was particularly good. Or maybe my stomach just couldn't differentiate between chicken and beef and lamb anymore and became unusually grateful when it met up with some carbs.





This rampant carnivosity reminds me of that line in Watchmen (yes I apologize, I cannot stop talking about this darned film, mostly because it left me intrigued and dissatisfied as to its overall message. Did it INTENTIONALLY blur the lines of morality to the point of complete obscurity or was there a message that was lost in translation from comic to film? Was it condemning or condoning violence as a means to an end? What the hell IS it saying about humanity and which character was the closest thing to an everyman protagonist and once you pin down which character it was you then open up a whole new can of wormy questions about what the film says about mankind, because pretty much every character was royally and sociopathically messed up and devoid of compassion. It's like the whole movie went round and round arguing with itself and beating itself up--and oh, the violence and gore and how it was juxtaposed with all the hippie counterculture music that was the soundtrack, cue more brain confusion--and I'm left dizzy and wanting to watch it again), where the Nite Owl tells Rorschach, "No, no, Ozymandias" (who, by the way, for the smartest man in the world funnily seemed to have overlooked the fact that the poem that was partially transcribed onto the base of the Egyptian statue in his lair in the Antarctic, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my my works, ye mighty, and despair!", is an ode to hubris and the impermanence of glory. Which means that, duh, you are asking for trouble if you have it engraved on a symbol of power in your evil hideout) "isn't a bad guy, he's a vegetarian!" And Rorschach is like, well, Hitler was a vegetarian.

That aside actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the pictures I posted. I just wanted to talk about Watchmen, which, despite my very long and bracketed rant, I am very much intrigued by. In fact most of the time, if I like something, I will be intrigued by it and want to argue about it or with it endlessly (other examples of this: feminism and my boyfriend, respectively). If I have no bone to pick with it, I probably do not like it. Curiously contrarian perhaps, but you have been forewarned.

Now I have gotten the Watchmen off my chest and can resume my day. As you may resume your activities also.

Salmon Quiche; Coffee Club

I had a lovely little lunch yesterday: just me, a salmon quiche, a caesar salad, iced water (I am finally paying heed to the advice of my mother, who called me on Valentine's Day to wish me the very romantic greeting 'Happy Valentine's Day and for the love of all that Valentine's Day stands for PLEASE cut back on drinking fizzy drinks because I read your blog and you are SO going to have diabetes one day'... which is coincidentally a variation of the greeting that she wishes me on every major holiday) and a book, Twilight. On an unrelated note, I have come to the conclusion that I am in love with Robert Pattinson of the sexy-bloodsucking-killer-Edward-Cullen-of-Twilight fame, and not the sexy-bloodsucking-killer-book-character Edward Cullen of Twilight, because the literary version is doing nothing for me.

So I finished lunch all content, musing about Robert Pattinson's jawline and wondering whether his book version has a beautiful jawline too, when a random idiot guy hooted at me while I was walking back to the office, presumably because I was alone. Which thus forced me to give him the middle finger: the only appropriate and non-criminal response I could think of at the time. And that is the story of how my lovely solitary lunch was ruined. Thank you, misogynist asswipe. I REALLY enjoy it when strange men disrespect and hiss and holler at females. You REALLY know how to impress a lady. It's not the first time and it won't be the last, but you spoiled my lunch and if I were a salmon quiche I would throw myself at your face in angry protest. Unfortunately you will have to settle for a middle finger. Just as I settled for being in a bad mood after lunch.

Popeye's Chicken; Taman Tun

Near the top of the list called Random Things That I LOVE LOVE LOVE But Nobody Understands How I Am Able To Muster That Much Passion For Said Things, jockeying for a spot alongside: Jeopardy (I love Jeopardy. LOVE WITH ENTIRE HEART. Am COMPLETELY enamored of the little blue BOXES OF KNOWLEDGE. I love Jeopardy so much I tend to speak in excited upper case letters when I discuss it, and also answer ALL trivia in QUESTIONS ala Jeopardy. For example the question "What is the capital of Finland?" Would receive the answer "WHAT IS COPENHAGEN!!!" from me); tempeh goreng and ikan bilis and feta cheese (just writing about them at the same time makes me want to cry tears of happiness); popped collars (I know, I know... they're passe and an accurate indicator of douchiness. But like a moth to a flame, I just can't help myself); dispensible pop music (current favourite song being My Life! Would Suck! Without! You!... you stay eloquent, Kelly Clarkson); heated debates (I like yelling out my opinion in a forceful manner and I do not apologize for it); Arsenal FC (my love runs a deep dark, Arsenal-home-jersey-coloured red and is, obviously, unaffected by the fact that they have disappointed me and every other Gooner miserably this season); libraries and the smell of old books (it's like an unhealthy but academic fetish), is: Southern style biscuits.



I LOVE BISCUITS. Despite the fact that the rest of the world uses the word "biscuit" to refer to a cookie and in America biscuits are, perplexingly, baked bread. Biscuits melt in your mouth. Biscuits are a beautifully light shade of golden. Biscuits are hard on the outside, but soft and buttery on the inside. Biscuits are like the embodiment of HUMANITY: however hardened the exterior, it is still just a cover for the warm, rich, fuzzy goodness of the interior (why yes I AM an idealist, why do you ask).



I haven't eaten biscuits since KFC at Cornell (I used to request to be taken there on date nights, no joke) so when Popeyes opened in Taman Tun and I heard they were serving biscuits I was understandably over the moon. And then I ate Popeye's biscuits. And they were weird and salty and not soft enough or warm enough or EDIBLE ENOUGH. And now I'm just pissed off. I am never going to Popeyes again and I stand by my word on this. You don't just play with a woman's emotions, serve it to her, let her eat it, and then let her down, Popeye. You just don't. I intensely dislike you, Popeyes of Taman Tun. INTENSELY dislike you.

Cupcakes; Cupcake Chic

It is a scientifically proven fact (alas, I do not have the link to the scientific study that proves this fact; but this is not because it does not exist and I just made that fact up to start my post on a witty but regrettably completely fictional truth, it's because I'm too lazy to search for it) that eating cupcakes will increase the dopamine levels in your brain by 75%, thus making you 65% happier. (The remaining 10% of the happiness levels were lost during dopamine transmission because I belatedly realized that eating cupcakes would only further inflate my already recently inflated ass. This is a true fact. The junk is accumulating in my trunk. My lovely lady lumps, posterior, are... umm... getting lumpier? On the plus side my ass sounds like a flotation device when I describe it and also feels cushiony and is quite pleasant to sleep and sit on.)



My beloved Rum & Raisin cupcakes (3)
Naughty & Nice cupcakes (vanilla cake, chocolate frosting) (2)
... and a Fortune cupcake (vanilla cake, orange & chocolate frosting) (1)



If you're wondering what a vanilla cake with a slice of orange on the bottom and chocolatey orangey frosting tastes like, the answer is: crap. The Naughty & Nice was good (solid grades, but no valedictorian award) but the Rum & Raisins were, as always, perfection, and were TOTALLY worth their significant contribution to ass size.