A Breaking Down of Days

ToTT, the all exalted kitchen wonderland

A series of baked experiments and starry-eyed dawns. With a few new buys and several bouts of angst or ecstasy. Dream journalling and paper perusing.

This ToTT place you see in the last picture above in the heart of Dunearn has all the most wonderful culinary equipment available known to man. Stocked up on ramekins, a stiff french whisk, French Food God Michel Roux’s book on all things eggs and goodness gracious lo and behold, a fine and hardy white hand-mixer. I took one look at its gleaming skin of fresh plastic and saw my name scribbled all over (for what on earth is sharing.) I’m the type who’d rather get down on my knees and scrub wood into dirt, but when it comes to something like omelette making, these things could make a ceramic plate fluffy.

The one downside: there was not one common non-stick baking spray. You can imagine how I scrutinised every shelf for one miserable spray can. The disappointment was mentally toxic.

Tried to hide the glowering response. That long, black, attractive face of mine.

But days.

You know.

Those things which melt and dissolve into months and years in shades of memory and perhaps a tinge of melancholy. Right, and you’re expected to have a better sense of self as the digits in your physical and mental age add up (or good heavens, multiply.)

Perhaps it’s the dim light and minor-key indie music that’s putting me in a disconcertingly nostalgic mood, the sort which leaves me feeling absolutely and utterly drained; not of life, but perhaps the present itself. When I merely can’t be bothered to pay attention to the common blusterings or happenings of the world around me and all that’s left are the tumultuous shadows of soft-edged memories and maybe even a little lament. Good lord, the past is pretty rousing in its shades of wondrous gold and somnolent greys.

‘Life is but a walking shadow’

Come on, March.

(I’d talk about the lovely March wind or accompanying emotions with glorified weather here but alas, that romantic aspect is much lacking in this ever-hot dredge.)

Posted on February 28, 2013February 21, 2022 by alexcrumb 2

A Very Fishy Ramble

Before I blabber on nonsensically, I would like to first tell you about the literature blog Ruru and I set up for the benefit of all literature-loving peers: sjiinookofbooks.wordpress.com. Belles-Lettres was a good way to go. A feminine start to our bright passion! So do go and support us.

So now. Gotta shout it from the rooftop, hollering till my lungs fail and collapse and dissolve into the dense air. Declare it loud and proud. Before I proceed, I must warn you that this post might be extremely non-sequitur, since my mind likes to twirl and fall off a direct one-way path.

I have a very, very fishy fetish. Quite literally, too. I mean I can be fishy at times habits and personality wise but this, my friend, is an entirely different matter altogether. Most people cringe at my ghastly penchant for any animal with an attached edible head and most importantly, brain. For who am I kidding, that’s the best part! No incertitude there I promise.

Little twins. These two guys look very similar, though really they aren’t. One’s from Sushi Tei and the other, Ichiban Boshi. I actually prefer the former, since it bore more crunch and sourness (two things which encourage a great deal of guilty pleasure whenever I do feel like ordering this.) Squeeze on all the lime and liberally apply some crumbled radish or ginger or both. Cast away the knives and forks and all sense of common dining etiquette. Crack your knuckles and exercise your joints a little, just to get ready for the task at hand. Smile and tuck in like how our ancestors did thousands of years ago. We were born to do it like savages.

One bite of fish head warmed and softened by an ooey gooey light grey brain and slighter darker pituitary gland plops angels in the backdrop of this harmonious dream, singing an ecstatic chorus of fishy glee and rounding out my senses, forcing me to even close my eyes just to savour the wondrous saliferous joy of fish head. Fish tail and stomach is good, don’t get me wrong, but the joy of popping those bulging eyes of translucent, wobbly jelly is simply indescribable. You eat around the perimeter of the head before cracking the very middle with your teeth and swallowing the tender chewiness of that brain. Carnal? Yes. But oh so painfully pleasurable.

And why on earth am I suddenly talking about this?

It got me thinking, as I sat down to another round of head gorging last night, as I sucked on crab roe and bit into a chicken head’s brain for the first time in my life. (I am now extremely proud to say that I, Alexandra Lim, am no longer a chicken head virgin.) Heads bring me such inexplicable joy and excitement it’s ridiculous, childish, absurd. Never mind the weird looks my friends give me, or the slight twerk in my heart as a little show of guilt whenever I imagine that animal as an unborn embryo cooped up in its promising shell before the first signs of cracking. But by gum I just love it. Not just me, of course. Many share the same fishy passion as I, though I’m pretty sure the majority don’t. It’s like the whole durian thing again. And may we all just admit that messy eating is the best thing ever.

But how do we really perceive something to be ‘odd’ or ‘strange’ in the first place?

Bring on the TOK (Theory of Knowledge) talks. I was listening to my ex-math teacher Mr S a few days ago, on human perception and ideals in realism, or how we assume things to be the way they are in the real world. Hell, we are humans with two eyes and a nose and mouth. But how on earth can we take that to be normal with our partial comprehension of the ever strange and glorious world which surrounds us, and which we face on a daily basis? All these shapes and silhouettes make up a minuscule fraction of what actually exists, that is, if we take all those scientific conjectures to be full-on true. Incredibly shattering just to think about this one side of a notion. We looked at the story of Helen Keller, who was an extraordinarily gifted woman in spite of being BDD (blind, deaf and dumb). But to her, this never was a disability, since she never could fully or freely experience the other three senses. She was trapped in a mental gate lock which only her helper Annie Sullivan could pull her out of, with unbelievable persistence made doable by the miracle of love. Nothing is strange or odd or a disability if one has never experienced the fullness of life without any shortcoming. We must be pretty miserable creatures since we only possess only 5 out of a possible 1000 senses. Just because we don’t live in darkness and can enjoy stuff like foie gras terrine.

Charles Baudelaire said that ‘strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.’ Looking at it one way, I like fish because ever since I was younger I’d crave the simplistic and pure white flesh of the red snapper or the juicy amber goodness of the common salmon. I saw no joy in much else, except peas perhaps, which my father would pour on the ledge of my high baby chair as a toddling duckling. Pick and mash and mush and happiness galore. Nothing strange about eating fish head, but maybe what gives it an odd edge is the fact that I find it almost to be just like a drug. I have to have it at least twice a week. Ice cream is similar, though not half as much as my love for fish head and gory bits and bobs which people pick out and happily leave on their little places. And I now come to my second honesty claim: I am a dreadful picker.

Can you imagine how annoying it is for me when I’m surrounded by people at a table who don’t lick out the bone marrow of chicken thigh bones or don’t polish up every little strand and nickel of fish hanging limply on their scales? It’s chaotic mental paranoia. I’m almost afraid that by not engaging in this OCD with bony bits, they might actually miss out on a fleeting taste of heaven. So strange but absolutely part of me. This is the sad way my mind works. Only natural to feel my brain cogs turn and clack when I see a pile of abandoned onions or half picked at fish or chicken bones. I become fretful and worried. I think I even started sweating once. No, Baudelaire, this is not a beautiful trait of mine, but I have indeed almost come to embrace it once or twice, as I feel so accomplished when I feel the fish head snuggling in the pit of my stomach, not gone pitifully to waste. But it’s sad how I only enjoy these leftover, unwanted nicks and nacks. As if by eating them comforts the inanimate things into knowing that no, they are never always abandoned.

So to me, this is normal, and to other people, strange.

To people who wear a lot of makeup regularly, such habit comes naturally, but i find it the oddest thing in the world to wake up at 5 every morning just to perfectly conceal that one red smidgen of a dot on your upper cheek.

People like white chocolate, but I (and Ruru of course) find it so one-dimensional.

People throw on a purple or green blouse or dress as and when they feel like it, but I just can’t bear to. Unless I actually feel an aggressive chemical connection, of course. Now that’s an exception. All these things I find strange, strange, strange, but the only thing which separates me from you is our perception of the world and all the existing things in it.

And I find the combination of familiarity in all the stored memories of my existence as well as a cold oddness inherently beautiful.

‘There is no excellent beauty that hath some strangeness in the proportion’ – Francis Bacon

Posted on February 23, 2013February 21, 2022 by alexcrumb 0

Engleby

It just can’t be possible to narrow down a myriad of wonderful things into one simple and (perhaps) comprehensive category. I usually blabber on about foodscapades and nice solitary leisure adventures at little cafes here and there, but tonight I’m looking at my dim lamp and the bordered book underneath it. My bookshelf is always there like a nostalgia-inducing grandfather, standing behind me every time I sit down at my desk, either blindly pondering something stuck in my mind or forcing myself to get down to some work, which I probably later enjoy getting lost in.

Back to the book.

It’s none other than Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, as you can see lying limply on my dark bedroom floorboards. I like that name. Engleby. I really just think of a fat mother eagle. Nothing too new and all the rage like 50 shades of whatsit parading its assets like a pretentious youngster on the front shelves of every bookstore. Not that I’ve read Shades of Grey before, though I’ve heard a good few nasty things about it. No no, not the open carnality of the story, just the manner in which everything is conveyed. I should cease to judge, but then again, what thinking man would willingly subject himself to lesser-than-awesome literary works? To experiment, yes. To nourish the soul, perhaps not.

Engleby is the young man featured in the story, and the way the whole thing ended literally made my socks shiver. The twist post-middle was dark yet becoming, wholly cruel yet frighteningly pleasurable. I enjoyed what I was reading because for once, the story did not continue like a placid diary of which initial the boom and pow dwindles to something ultimately quite expected and insignificant. If my dog dies then that’s rather devastating, however if my dog dies because he suffered heart and mental problems from excessive time travel through space, then the context shifts to capture my attention in a more enlightening perspective, albeit the obvious sadness to accompany such a passing. Back to the point.

Just look at Engleby on the front cover. Young, bright and free. Hands in the air, taking life as it hits him in every direction like the faceless wind running through spindly fields of wheat. Unbelievably bright, but suffers from slight social apathy and even an annoying tinge of separation and self-induced acceptance of a cruel, cruel world. Bullied, but still one of the brightest beings of his time. Went to Cambridge and became a journalist, only to later find out the hard way of his drastic mental problems. Read it for yourself and empathise with this man, before considering how you as a human being may have responded to his situation objectively, without any knowledge of his history beforehand. Nothing I say would make sense to you if you have not read it, but that is precisely my point. Non sequitur speech is this man’s specialty as well. Relish his stark cynicism and left of field verbal diarrhoea. Let him go on about the woman he loves before he murders her (cat out of the bag, meow).

Books like these needn’t ask for any rating. It’s there, it’s good, it must be read. A straightforwardly written piece, much unlike the ornate grandeur of classic literature which winds up and crushes a heart. This crushes too, I may assure you, though its content runs deep in a much more modern and relative fashion, giving the reader the chance to sob over some things human nature tends to overlook.

Posted on January 16, 2013February 21, 2022 by alexcrumb 0

Fresh Starts? And impromptu cafe babble

Little bits of nitbobs before I start.

This is the 31st of December, am I correct?

No, I can’t be.

Not the 31st, no. Can anyone actually put their head around that? Absurd. Ludicrous. More so than I have ever felt in the past few about-to-be years. Well the rain is beating hard and that always makes me feel more in tune with certain situations. But the surety of such a happening has crossed into the frightening zone, whereby I can no longer comprehend such speed. Honestly, the stuff that’s been digging holes into my awareness of the real world. Rapes, protests, Christmas, journalling, France, Instagram, Stephen King, then… School. Marvellous.

After a good Vinyasa 2 yoga session today, I hopped my way to the closest cinema (yes, that would have to be youth magnet Cathay Cineleisure) just to watch The Hobbit, the screening I am far too behind on. Somewhere in there the big-eyed, less than debonair fellow mentioned how time devours everything. You could say from a more morbid point of view how that is so painful yet true; it consumes every minute of our very being and existence. We are never spared in any state of our lives, wherever we are or whatever we may be doing.

Mind starved of some caffeine and protein, I settled down to have a solo lunch somewhere where I could oversee the hordes of angry bumper-to-bumper cars and savour the dim chill of splitter-and-pop raindrops.

See those little chocolate syrup worms at the bottom? On the menu, this had a little star next to it saying ‘highly recommended’. To me, that immediately translated into ‘this will actually have the taste of proper coffee and mocha and not be overly sugar-ridden’. Alas, what am I to expect? Having too high an expectation simply leads to inevitable disappointment. I shut my mouth, ordered the thing, gave it a chance. A slight let down with the (predictable) lashings of sugar sugar sugar, but it was a mocha all the same. It even had a dollop of ice cream, and I craved a few cold scoops.

I saw the fried egg so of course I had to give it a go. Good portion size as well given the price tag. It’s a perfectly symmetrical sun softly calling my name, eventually killing me on the inside if I ignore its all-day pleas. The tragedy of this is that I actually like to taste the cheese and mushroom in a dish. The rustic tang of swiss, the rubbery cut of buttered shroom. Minus copious amounts of mayonnaise and a half-tasteless medium patty (I enjoy mine rare.)

Ah yes, and minus the top bun and fries, for I can’t care for excess stodge lying around and disrupting the purity of good flavour. Have mentioned this before, but all that bread is just asking to dilute the taste of a nice burger, no matter how well done. I came here previously to have this darling bowl:

Like most such green mountains, the saviour would normally be the dressing, a perfect balance of sweet and tang, and sometimes some spice. Good thing these guys added fatty unagi and cold cut tofu to provide bites well worth the adjectives wholesome and refreshing.

But that was salad day. Today was I-need-a-damn-burger-and-some-bulk day. Along with a dose of hairy-footed elves, goblins and a hobbit. Sad to think how it all ends here, right now, humbug in hand, a little mascara smudged on my lower lid.

They say a new year’s a new start with fresh resolutions and a will to keep them. Going back to my past with all my tested trials, I will hereby predict that some will be kept, and some will (might, I pray) be broken. I’ll just sit here with Stephen King for the time being, propelled back to the 1960s with Ford Sunliners and manual Cokes, and be comforted by the fact that 2013 may indeed be to my liking.

Perhaps time won’t leave a sour aftertaste in its wake, even after devouring everything.

Life turns on a dime.

Posted on December 31, 2012February 21, 2022 by alexcrumb 0

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

It’s.

ALMOST.

That specific time of year again. And now, since getting my Nikon D3200, I’ve gone on a nonsensical happy-snapping spree.

Absolutely shameless, but I shall attempt to maintain some level of modesty here.

The thought of another big year, starting the IB with more fresh (sometimes acne-crusted) faces and a myriad of projects is mind numbingly intimidating. To celebrate the wonder of Christmas is humble annual tradition in the Lim house~

I’ve gotta son now, and his name is Connor. I suppose my habit of naming inanimate possessions is normal. I have a 6-year old anatomy model called Toby. Yes, very normal.

Oh the fluttery butterflies I get when I see a crisp fake tree. But yes, anyway.

This is just one of those excuses whereby I get to put my nose into the sweaty kitchen work and activate some elbow grease. I am a most pathetic cook and I only just learnt how to chop a bleeping garlic yesterday. Smash, chop off ends, snip snap snop. Mince, pivot, repeat and repeat. Total novice would be a famed title, to say the least.

The buffet spread really was magnificent. Divine, rich, glorious. All other suitable adjectives.

A slightly burnt sticky toffee date pudding, minus the treacle-like, thick toffee sauce

My mother’s signature dessert is her absurdly moist, dense and almost heavy sticky toffee date pudding. Nicely chewy. I enjoy things which aren’t particularly easy to nosh. This is it. Splendor within the process of eating it. Never a one-bite-and-it’s-gone sort of thing.

It’s a squashed brown tin with those wonderful burnt ridges which one would happily pick off the side of a plate. This was trial one and not the actual thing, since we happily starting shrinking mushrooms in pans whilst leaving the oven on a tad too long. It’s a beautiful thing really, to perfect this tart. And it can only ever be glorious when drenched in a rich and blindingly sweet toffee sauce, coupled with a scoop of good vanilla bean ice cream.

spinach and mushroom quiche at Goodwood Park Hotel

Durian puffs. Freshly piped and looking mighty pregnant…

Traditionally made in a food processor in this household. A good swig of each ingredient in the perfect ratio to make the perfect, decadent pate. Luscious, milky and almost sombre-looking (though entirely sophisticated). My favourite appetiser of all time. Needless to announce, I do love liver a hell lot.

Blue cheese stuffed dates, a surprisingly workable combination

What’s Christmas without a great hulking roast?

Get closer and you can even smell the bubbles in this mac and cheese made with gruyere and parmesan

NOTE: I’m flying off to Mougins, Southeastern France this Wednesday on the 12th. Family will be staying in the blooming countryside near Cannes, before we go to the Italian Alps for some serious skiing business (ah yes, did I mention my very first time?). It’s all fires and starry sweaters and hot chocolates with roasted, melting marshmallows. Dandelions and Michelin-starred restaurants and prosecco and psychedelic fields. Coming back from all the wintery goodness the day before Christmas!

The very notion of simply being at Terminal 3, before sitting on an airplane with best friends Dan Brown and Stephen King, is quite simply warm nostalgia flooding all the senses. I’ll be singing Strawberry Fields Forever on the way, whilst looking down at the ant-sized world beneath. Will also be attempting to finally finish my other reading pressies, including Vanity Fair given to me by my dear (and awfully crazy) lady friend Ruru(: Books are just the most priceless gifts out there, no?

I call it a diamond feeling. Prepping myself for movie marathons and deep stretches in between hours of being confined to a single, neckache-inducing seat. I shall return with a cornucopia of pictures, for no journey may have existed without prized evidence. Love adventures; to escape from routine and familiarity.

“Memory is the basis of every journey.”- Stephen King

Posted on December 10, 2012February 21, 2022 by alexcrumb 0

alexcrumb

recipes, catering, creativity