food_porn [vanessafrida]

I have heard a lot about Justin Quek's restaurant in Shanghai, and I just had to try it when I was in Shanghai.  Everyone has raved about how this Singaporean has raised the bar of gourmet dining in Shanghai.  Dad purchase his cookbook for me when he was there last year, and I have tried his lobster laksa...and can i just say....it is the best laksa i have ever tasted.  I modified it though...i used Sri Lankan Mud Crabs instead of Lobsters due to cost.  Click here to read about it  

For main, I had a spiced roast duck breast.  The presentation of my dish was just out of this world...very articistic...and the portion was still very decent, so that was good.  Big plate with a decent amount of food...excellent...no big plate small portion sort of thing.   The duck was still pink...juicy and the marriage different spices used blended really well together.  The potatoes were great too!  Personally I do pay a fair bit of attention to how the potatoes are done.  It can't be too floury and dry.  It has to have flavour, a firmish texture with a nice finish.  Justin did great!

Click here to read more about the food.  Eg:  Foie Gras Xiaolongbao (Foie Gras Chinese Dumplings)

literaryquotes [oftquoted]

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Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato - this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was nothing but a prism that refracted their lives. He searched out things, he collected things. He was an abashed man, an inheritance from his father. Born in Abashed, Ontario. What did the word mean? Something that suggested there was a terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn't leap. Something hollow, so when alone, when not aligned with another - whether it was Ambrose or Clara or Alice - he could hear the rattle within that suggested a space between him and community. A gap of love.

pp. 157

literaryquotes [b_r_tt]

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This is part of the my favourite poem, i only put the first few lines of the begining stanza's then the last stanza

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
  Uncoffined – just as found...

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
  Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
  The Bush, the dusty loam...

Yet portion of that unknown plain
  Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
  Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
  His stars eternally.