Category: 空閑 / Leisure

New Year’s Eve Dinner

Tonight we had Suwa Hanzo (諏訪漢宙), head chef from Tokyo’s Harajuku Street Chinese restaurant Dongpo (東坡) flown into Taipei. He brought along several select cuts of Japanese raised Kobe Beef to prepare for us. To start off the dinner we cracked open a bottle of vintage Grand Vin de Château Latour Pauillac 1992. Dinner also included Caesar Salad, Steamed Crab, Steamed Broccoli, Creamed Ham and Corn Soup, French Bread with imported French Butter, finishing off with a dessert of Cheese Cake with Wax Apple accompanied by premium Alishan Tea. In about an hour we will ring in the new year with a couple of chilled bottles of Champagne R. Renaudin Réserve Brut.

(The above is all completely true and only somewhat exaggerated. Hanzo is my sister-in-law’s boyfriend and came to Taipei for New Year’s. His Chinese restaurant, while renowned for it’s ultra-spicy Mapo Doufu is only a two-person operation. He did indeed fly in today with Kobe Beef to prepare for us though. The bottle of Château Latour has been knocking around our house for at least seven years and nobody exactly remembers where it came from. However, that also means it had gone through a few hot Taiwan summers, so it probably wasn’t as good as it could have been.)

Christmas Eve Dinner

For some bizarre, in Taiwan not only are Turkey dinners sold for Thanksgiving, but also for Christmas as well. In my book though, Christmas dinner is not complete without a Christmas Ham. I don’t think Turkeys should get to hog two holidays. After some investigation, I was able to find that Florida Bakery offered a take-away ham dinner which we used for today’s Christmas Eve dinner. The dinner included:

– large pineapple roasted ham
– two cups of honey mustard
– yams
– large pumpkin pie
– two packs of tortillas
– one pack of tortilla chips
– two bottles of fresh salsa

We also bought a gingerbread house from Florida Bakery and I made mashed potatoes. Maggie also bought some roast goose.

I’m stuffed.

我愛台湾啤酒!乾杯!

Last night Taiwan Beer (台湾啤酒) sponsored a Forumosa Happy Hour at Alleycat’s Lishui Jie. Sponsorship involved Taiwan Beer paying the entire bar tab that night after 9pm. They also invited a couple of TV crews to come in and film the festivities. So at some point you may see me on TV saying “I love Taiwan Beer! Cheers!”

I got there early so I could get a table and some food before the festivities began. I was the first Forumosan there, but a few people started drifting in later. People really started arriving past 9pm and my table was soon filled up with people, and Alleycat was going around delivering beers in bulk. Taiwan Beer was paying regardless of the type of beer served, so most of us started out Hoegaarden. When the cameras arrived suddenly dozens of bottles of Taiwan Beer sprouted in the middle of every table.

Final count for me was 1 small salami pizza, 1 Caesar salad, 2 large Hoegaardens, and 2 small bottles of Taiwan Beer. That may have had something to do with sleeping past noon today.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Last year we did a take-away packaged dinner from Landis Hotel for Thanksgiving. It was pretty good, but the turkey was too big, the pumpkin pie too small, and the trimmings a bit limited as well. Still, bacon wrapped turkey… mmm!

This year we decided to take a DIY approach. We were going to get a goose instead of a turkey, but they were out of them for some reason so we got a Beijing Roast Duck (北京烤鴨) instead. We also got a LARGE pumpkin pie from the Landis. Then I made mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce (well I opened the can), and marshmallow topped yams for the trimmings. I thought about doing stuffing too, but figured we had enough already.

The duck was actually a pretty good substitute. It’s a bit like dark meat turkey, and went well with gravy and cranberry sauce. Best of all, we finished about 80% of the bird, so we won’t be cursed with leftovers. (Last year we had so much that we were feeding the cat turkey leftovers and still had to throw some out when it got ripe.)

All the other trimmings came out nice as well, and everything was well received by the whole family, except Emily who was a bit picky. The marshmallow yams came out a bit too watery, but that was a minor thing. I haven’t tried the pumpkin pie yet, as I’m stuffed for now.

Philippe Marc at Landis Taipei’s Paris 1930

Our house is right behind the Landis Taipei hotel which has a quite well respected French restaurant called Paris 1930, but we had never been there before. Recently I read in the paper that Chef Philippe Marc would be visiting for one week only. Philippe Marc is a student of top French Chef Alain Ducasse and is currently executive chef at the restaurant A.DUCASSE in Paris. This is not an opportunity that comes that often, so I asked my wife to join me for a dinner there tonight.

It was, as expected, quite a nice dinner. There were two set meals available, and I chose set 1 while Maggie chose set 2. I ordered a glass of house red wine which was quite nice considering it was ‘just’ a house wine, and we also shared a liter bottle of San Pellegrino. After our meal Philippe Marc and the regular Paris 1930 Chef Michael came out to greet each table.

Set 1:
Amuse Bouche (shrimp with caviar and green peas)
Semi-Cooked Foie-Gras with Sangria Sauce
Millet and Vegetable Cooked “a la minute” with Red Crayfish and Basil
Artichoke Cream Soup with Black Truffle Flan
Sea Bass Fillet with Endive and Sour Truffle Sauce
Roasted Veal Loin with Potato Cake, Green Asparagus and Port Sauce
Poached Pear in Syrup with Vanilla Ice Cream and Warm Chocolate Sauce
Coffee or Tea
Petits Fours (a plate of two Macaroons, two candied apricots, and one chocolate)

Set 2:
Amuse Bouche (as above)
Red Curry Crab with Vegetable and Romaine Lettuce
Pan-seared Scallop with Sea Urchin, Chopped Borage and Ocean Vinaigrette
Cream of Celeriac Soup with Truffle and Egg Yolk
Turbot Fillet with Yellow Wine Mousse and Green Asparagus
Lamb Saddle Stuffed with Kafta, accompanied with Chick Pea Puree and Tomato Confit
Golden Chocolate Tart
Coffee or Tea
Petits Fours (as above)

Philippe Marc will be at Paris 1930 through November 15.

Sunday

Sunday we went down to Taipei 101 (tallest building in the world) to go to Page One bookstore. Emily got a book about dinosaurs, Maggie got two travel guides, and I got V For Vendetta, Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind, The FairTax Book, Freakonomics, and Castle In The Air.

I was kind of pissed off to find that they now have The Tipping Point in stock in both trade paperback and pocket paperback. Last time I went there specifically looking for it and they didn’t have it, so I ended up ordering it from Amazon.com and ended up paying a lot more with the international shipping. Oh well…

For dinner we went to Chili’s were I had a Buffalo Chicken Salad (which I shared with Maggie), a chocolate cake with a huge scoop of ice cream on top (which I shared with Emily) and a large Stella Artois (which I didn’t share with anyone.

Bonanza

Today saw a bonanza of deliveries, with a bundle of US magazines from my mail forwarder, books and CDs from Amazon, and the aforementioned Fatboy Slim CD/DVD from CD Japan. Other CDs include Zero 7’s new release The Garden, Tina Dico’s In The Red, and Meshell Ndegeocello’s Plantation Lullabies. Books include The Tipping Point, Parable of the Talents, Against The Odds, and Learned Optimism.

Birthday

Sunday was my birthday, so Maggie took me to Wulai to stay one night at the Pause Landis Resort. We went to Wulai village first to have some wild boar and meatball soup at the usual places I like there. Then a short walk down to the next village where Pause Landis is to check in. In the afternoon we went (separately) to the group hot springs. Our room included dinner and breakfast. The dinner was good but a bit sparse, so we went over to 7-11 to get some snacks after. It was a nice quiet and relaxing weekend.