FRESH Thai Green Fish Curry and Sweet and Sour fried fish

Boxing day usually consists of a hangover, a bloated stomach and a cold turkey buffet... Not this year! This year I visited Phi Phi Island, Thailand, for the Christmas break. On Boxing Day we hired a fishing boat in the morning, with the aim to catch our lunch.
After a successful catch of a few snappers and what I think was a Pompamo or Permit, we returned to a little shack where the fish was transformed into the most amazing Thai Green Curry with lots of fresh Basil and a Sweet and Sour with Tomatoes and Bell Pepper. Overall it was a fantastic experience.

Japanese Udon Noodle Soup and Tempura Prawns

I visited a new Japanese restaurant, called Bento Box, on Baghdad Street. We were given a complementary starter, which I don't know the name of, but it was a Mushroom jelly, with a few pieces of Chicken in the bottom of it. For my main I had Tempura Prawns and a Udon Noodle fish soup, with Seaweed and kamaboko, which is japanese fish sausage.

Carrot Cake, "Chai Tau Kway" 菜头粿

You may be thinking, "this ain't no Carrot cake fool!", but it is Chinese Carrot Cake, well, Hong Kong Carrot cake actually from Luk Yu, in the Food Opera, Ion Centre. I am still not sure what the exact ingredients are??? After a bit of research, it looks like it is a baked cake, which the main ingredient is a root vegetable, such as White Carrot, Turnip or Radish, with fish added, something like dried shrimps. Once baked it is cut in to chunks and fried with noodles. The end result is something that I think tastes and feels like slice fried scallops. It tastes great!

Design Bridge Christmas Dinner

Venue: Novus, Singapore's National Museum.

Menu: See picture.

Great Food!

Lor Mee 鹵麵

Lor Mee is very popular in Singapore. Lor Mee refers to the thick yellow noodles in this thick starchy gravy. I particularly like this dish, because of the variety of ingredients. Wontons, fish, fish cakes, eggs, squid, beef, it's all thrown in there! Chili's and Vinegar are added for that extra kick.

Kangaroo in Australia

A 7 hour flight from Singapore and I am in Sydney! So, I had to be a typical tourist and try a Kangaroo steak. Very enjoyable, it reminded me of Venison, tender beef with an irony taste.

I had the steak medium rare, on a bed of mash potato, topped with asparagus, courgettes, charlottes, garlic cloves and a red wine sauce.

In between bridge climbs, catamaran trips, gigs and chilling on the beach I also indulged in some familiar western treats, such as beef pie, mushy peas and gravy and a full english breakfast or 2.

Durian!

Regarded as "the king of fruits" in Singapore, I had to try it!

First of all, the smell. Some people love it, they smell a very sweet sickly smell, whereas there are some people that say "it smells like the armpit of a corpse!"

The husk has very sharp jagged points to it and you have to hack through it to access the fruit.

So, you will see my reaction to the fruit on the video, but here it is in writing.

It has a consistency of butter, with fibrous flesh running through it. You are meant to pick up the large stones and suck the flesh off, whereas I opted for a spoon! The smell changes from it's lingering sickly smell to a more spicy smell as it gets closer. The texture is creamy, with occasional firmer nutty parts. Finally the taste... It taste like a sweet garlic butter, it has a spicy feeling to it that the locals describe as "heaty".

We unfortunately only managed about 1/4 of it, which is a shame for it's $20 price tag. We gave the rest of it to the locals in there. They said they couldn't believe it when they saw a couple of Westerners eating Durain, describing us as brave but still managing to laugh very hard at us as we walked away.

Cheese and Wine at the Wine Connection

To Celebrate Rachel's Birthday, a group of us went to Wine Connection, Robertson Quay and enjoyed a variety of Red wines, cheese, meat and dips platters, all polished off with a chocolate birthday cake and couple of bottles of sparkling pink. Great night.

This place is also very good value, we averaged $25 per bottle of wine and the platters were about $20 each.