Thursday, April 23, 2009

3rd sem candid



24th april 2009

happy birthday mr shah!
happy birthday jesse!

bile tgk blk semua pics folder,

college, D' MIIM. baru perasan. sem 3 plg bnyk snap pic.
hurm. so...meh imbas kembali.
few of candid pics of my classmate.
back to 2008 =P



time nih. kte org ade class sampai mlm. bln puasa.
habis je class ptg, sume lari g bazaar ramadhan.
dkt je college dgn bazaar setiawangsa.
seronok! berbuka ramai2 dlm class.

hydar, acab & wan tomot. erm. hydar nih, sgt berjiwa seni.
acab? jiwa glemer. haha. leh tahan jambu n jiwang.
wan? hehe. nmpk pendiam. tp mcm2 gossip die ade.

zikri, si editor yg sgt hebat. n mcm2 die taw. gempak~
ain n no'en. kawan rapat n gile2.

di sebalik tudung hijau mira ni, adelah CIK ADE SUKMA.
ramai student ckp die kachak yg amat. hehe.
die tnggi gile2 n mmg sebijik muke cartoon slamdunk.
ajar Malaysian Studies n mmg sgt sempoi + lawak.

bobo n cik hafizul. bobo tu student DIJ [journalism].
1 group utk SCP [single cam prod] utk sem ni.
cik hafizul ajar kami 2 sem. hehe. ni pon best.
slalu kenekan kte org n kte org kenekan die jgk.
owh...tp cik hafizul ske kasi bny keje!

yg berdiri dr kiri, ecah, kak fiza, waed n ema.
yg ddk atas kusi tuh mas. bkn nangis. berlakon je.
ecah nih blur2, mcm mas jgk. tp both bnyk ckp.
kak fiza plak loghat utara die blh tahan pekat.
waed? best student journalism yg nak kawin da...
ema? dr dulu sampai skrn x besa2.

yg berdiri tu zana. hurm, pendebat yg hebat. hehe.
dr kiri duduk, syafiq, fuad, leon n zikri.
leon terlindung dek zikri. huhu. nih pun berlakon.
'i hate smoking'

maya, feeqa, sofia n jesse. maya mmg cantik sgt3..
inner n outside beauty ok. cantik, baik gile plak tu. dr sabah.
feeqa ni makin lame makin bergaye. beauty with brain.
since die nih top student utk broadcasting.
sofia pon dr sabah, comel2. putih melepak! 1 umah dgn jesse.

ito, fae, acab, hydar, amin n wan.
kalo x de mereka? mmg senyap sunyi kelas.
haha. sume nye ade perangai gile masing2.

feeqa, lin, anna n salmiza. anna n feeqa tuh bff.
lin? slalu tman sy g kolej utk sem nih since umah dkt.
anna nih. gelak besar gile n sgt la comel n lawak.
salmiza? die antare senior dlm kte org.

bebdk journalism. haha. ini presentation radio.
die org mewakili sinar fm. mmg comel habis la.
n antare da best. ske tgk. siap menari2 lg mule2.
bkn senang nak carik rmbt afro tuh! hee.

time ni dkt rumah anna. beraye d umah die. mmg jauh ah.
dkt klang. kte org da kebulur time otw g umah die. haha.
mmg licin sume mknan. then sume da cam ular sawa.
leon siap urut dkt kusi tuh n sume buat cam umah sdiri.
n dpt duit raye! haha



well. bnyk lg. mmg best. bnyk kenangan.
3rd sem, d mane kte org indoor n teori semate - mate.
and tgk teater same2 dkt KL PAC [performing art center]
best best best! =]



Gerald Anderson!



A month ago I had this whole day photo shoot with Marian Rivera as our talent for SM Residences. It was held in SUMMIT Studio and Jay Tablante was our photographer. Surprisingly I am not posting my pics with Marian Rivera, instead my photos with Gerald Anderson! He was also having his pictorial on the other part of the studio and when I got the chance I called my client from SM and took her photo with Gerald and after that she took these photos. Still, I can't get enough of Gerald because he was nice, cute and irresistible that's why I called the Account Supervisor and took their photo and had my photo again. 'Til next time Gerald or I might just find another Gerald in Ho Chi Minh :-)

I love the warm hugs...

hugs,
joanie xxx

Dance Lesson for Mei

24 april 2009, kamis

Bulan lalu Mei ikutan percobaan dance lesson di sebuah tempat kursus. Tempatnya dekat ama Grand Fuji Matsuyama, cuman terpisah gedung, di lantai 4. Kursusnya cuman seminggu sekali 1 jam, jam 17.45. Sayang jam nya itu menurut gw ga begitu cocok, coz jam makan malam kan?? Jadinya mesti cepet2 kasih makan seblom pergi les, kalo gaaa....bisa ga makan malem, soalnya pulangnya dah kemaleman, die da ngantuk. Mei biasa bangun pagi jam 6 n tidur malam jam 8 an.

Ini tempat kursus, bukan cuman ada dance lesson aja, ada balet lesson, bahasa Inggris untuk anak n dewasa, kursus menggambar buat anak, ikebana buat dewasa mpe cooking juga.
Jadi kepingin ikutan dah...hhihii


Teman dance Mei ada 4 orang, pesertanya ga begitu banyak, pas deh, jadi ama Mei ada 5 orang. Gurunya cowok, masih muda, pinter dancenya. Dance kali ini hip hop, jadi banyak acara loncat loncat n gerakan kaki. Seneng banget da ikutin gerakan senseinya. Semoga aja tetep berlanjut nih lesson, soalnya anak2 kan suka cepet boring...hehehe

First City Harvest, then narcissism

April 23

Yesterday was my birthday, so it seems like a good moment to be briefly narcissistic. I would have been narcissistic last night, but instead I attended a fundraiser for City Harvest, a very nice organization that tries to feed New York's growing ranks of hungry people. Since I am the opposite of hungry, navel-gazing was simply out of the question.
My boss, Pam Parseghian, and I were last-minute guests at the American Express table. Some people find it undignified to be invited to events at the last minute, but as American Express' restaurant liaison, the always dapper Hans Lindh, pointed out, NRN and American Express have a good relationship.
Besides, it’s not exactly a hardship to sit with good company (Hans, a couple of editors from Food & Wine — which as you might know is owned by American Express — and other good people, including perhaps the greatest publicist on earth, Daniel Boulud’s own Georgette Farkas) and be moved by speeches and videos about feeding hungry people.
In the picture above and on the right, which Pam took, are (left to right) Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin with Hans and Georgette.
New York is in the grips of the worst recession in memory, but the attendees of the dinner seemed to be doing all right. One of them bid $45,000 for a dinner for 26 people to be cooked by Eric Ripert in their home. When auctioneer George McNeely and the recently crowned Miss USA, Kristen Dalton from North Carolina, asked people to raise a hand if they wanted to give $500 to City Harvest’s Drivers Fund, for the people who deliver the food, 55 people raised their hands. That was more than 10 percent of the audience, and of course it means they raised $27,500, just like that. Those are the drivers, above and to the left. Pam took that picture, too.
here’s a link to some more pictures of the event.
Here’s another link,
and here’s a third one.

Okay, and now a little narcissism, in the form of my next poll.
Food Writer’s Diary readers were not too excited about my last poll, asking them what the biggest trend was in Spanish cuisine in the United States, but the results were conclusive:

Ingredients from Spain 0 (0%)
Peasant cooking 1 (9%)
Molecular gastronomy (Ferran Adrià and others) 0 (0%)
Tapas 9 (81%)
Traditional dishes 1 (9%

So let’s talk about me, or more accurately, my blog. My next question is, which type of Food Writer’s Diary entries do you prefer most?
Obviously, comments are welcome below as well.

Braised Beef Short Ribs

Here’s a question for you: what do Geert Wilders, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Straw Dogs and beef short ribs all have in common?

Any ideas? Yes, you at the back? Correct answer! They have all, at some point, been banned from Britain by the government.

Thanks to the BSE crisis – a result of abhorrent farming practices – for two years between 1997 and 1999, it was illegal to buy or sell beef on the bone.



Steaks were fine, burgers likewise, topside and rump all legal but a request for forerib or shin of beef would be met with sirens, a lock down and a near instantaneous crack SWAT team swooping in to make arrests.

Even after the ban was lifted, getting hold of beef short ribs was harder than quoting Darwin to a Jehovah’s Witness without being interrupted. As a result this dish has probably been on my ‘Must Cook’ list for longer than any other.

Short ribs have never managed to segue their way into the British collective culinary consciousness in the same way they have in France or the States. Ask for short ribs here and you are likely to walk away with pork rather than beef.

But that seems to be changing. Finally. Whilst it might still necessitate a special request to the butcher, you will likely to be able to source them rather leave empty handed. And this, I can now affirm, is a good thing. A great and wonderful thing.



Why? Because this is quite possibly the tastiest cut of beef imaginable, not to mention being one of the cheapest. For the price of a small piece of fillet, you could buy enough beef to feed at least eight. An entire slab of short ribs will set you back about 15 quid and that will feed a small platoon.

After some lengthy discussion (‘no, not rib of beef. No, not pork spare ribs.’ Et cetera et cetera) I finally managed to secure a good sized chunk with no clue as to what to do with it.

It was one of those trips to the butcher when I just went a little crazy and named all the pieces of meat I could think of that I’d never tried but always wanted to: Marrow bone, pork hand, lamb breast. They just kept coming. I’d only gone in for half a pound of mince.

But there it was. The biggest piece of beef I’d ever seen and no idea how to cook it. who to turn to in moments like this? Hugh? Gordon? Nigel? No. This was clearly a Keller moment.

For a cookbook that is notoriously complicated, there are moments of sublime simplicity in Keller’s The French Laundry book. His Parmesan Baskets with Goats’ Cheese Mousse is an exercise in near effortless minimalism. And a tasty one at that.

And so it is with his braised beef short ribs. The beauty of slow cooking is that you can let the ingredients – and the oven – work for you. People tend to avoid slow cooking because they see numbers like ‘4’ and ‘5’ followed by the word ‘hours’. In an era where we are time short, this seems like an extravagance.

But with slow-cooking the actual hands on time is close to zero. Some peeling, some chopping, some browning and then that’s it. You’re free to go.

And when the final result is so extraordinarily tasty it almost feels like cheating.



After separating the ribs along the natural lines they were seasoned liberally with salt and pepper, lightly dusted with flour and browned in a little vegetable oil closely followed by a crude mirepoix of leeks, carrots and red onion.



The whole lot went into the biggest pot I could find and was covered with red wine (choose a butch one, something with balls like a new world Shiraz or Cab Sauv), and half chicken and half beef stock (homemade beef, chicken from a cube).

Instead of a lid, Keller recommends a cartouche with a whole cut into the middle so that’s exactly what I did - a circle of greaseproof paper placed over the top of the bubbling mass which then went into a cool oven (125 degrees C) for four hours.

After twiddling my thumbs, doing a crossword, getting impatient and finally falling asleep, it was ready. Sort of. This being Keller there was still a fair amount to do. I’ll admit now I didn’t follow him to the letter. I went a little off road from here on in but it was getting late and I wasn’t trying to retain my Michelin Stars.

The meat was removed from it’s tasty bath and left to cool while the cooking liquid was drained and reduced by about three-quarters. While this was all going on I diced up some carrot, parsnip and swede and cooked them off in salted water.

‘Looks like school dinner vegetables,’ said the Girlfriend. I bet Thomas Keller doesn’t have to put up with those sort of comments. But she was sort of right.

The meat was cut into cubes fried off in a smidgen of butter and then added to the reduced sauce along with the veggies.

Anything rich, saucy and meaty, for me, shouts out for mashed potatoes (or pommes puree seen as we are going all haute cuisine) so we knocked up a swift batch of lazy-mash (put potato in microwave. Cook. Mash with butter, milk and seasoning) and then sautéed some spring greens.



The dish was topped off with a small disc of bone marrow, fried after being rolled in seasoned flour and then, finally, it was time to eat. And it was well worth the wait.

This is food so tasty that it makes you want to sing from high on the rooftops. It was revelationary in the finest and truest sense and all I can now do is urge, plead and beg you to go out immediately, find and cook some beef short ribs and then go forth and spread the word.

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