Dearest IMK friends - my apologies I never got around to visit all of you last month! It was a whirlwind April, my last hurrah trip to Australia and Japan, let's see what we ate in our travelling kitchens..
Starting in Australia..
This segment should be renamed In the Great Outdoors but then there would be approximately a million pictures so I'll stick to the kitchen..
We had a musical evening at my dad's place - played the Schumann piano quartet and the Borodin string quartet with dear old friends. Potluck afterwards with lots of yummy food that I somehow didn't take a photo of except for the Uncle Tetsu cheesecake that I always associate with Canada
Some Sicilian sweets that my friend brought all the way from Munich to Sydney! (and a random Japanese puff)
Lots of bitter melon dishes because they grow well in my dad's garden!
A simple soba lunch at my friend's place with seaweed, egg, corn and smoked salmon
I went up to Newcastle to stay with my elderly music friend for a few days. We played a lot of piano duets and piano: violin duets during COVID to survive and how strange to think that is all past us. My friend came to visit us with her husband who is retraining to become a pastry chef. These were made by him, look at that amazing lamination!!
Yummy quiches and a steak pie from Bakers Den bakehouse in Swansea. One thing I miss living in France is the pies..
Our last dinner at my dad's - home made Chinese style pies with chive and egg, "vegetarian chicken" - a kind of tofu fake meat, fava bean mash as a homage to my grandmother and some other vegetable side dishes
Bye bye Australia for now!
Our last Malaysian snack before getting on our flight to Tokyo, nasi lemak and an excellent curry puff.
Off to Japan...
So I do actually have approximately a million photos of everything we ate in Japan but here are some highlights. S was invited by the University of Tokyo to give a lecture and so we made the most of his invitation by tagging along as well. The UoT Komaba campus is like a calm green oasis away from the hustle & bustle of Tokyo, but just a couple of metro stops from Shibuya. It was an incredible holiday and I'm really glad we decided to go!
One of our delicious convenience store lunchboxes - 3 types of rice (clam, red bean and dried fish), with vegetables, mackerel, square omelette, a meatball, spinach and pickles. All this for about $6 AUD!!
Another convenience store lunchbox with a side salad - we scoffed this down while G was having a nap. Look at that old school phone in the background!
Who can go past a cold soba for breakfast? The soft tofu in Japan has the most amazing texture and G gobbled it up everyday. Who would have thought an Italian-Chinese baby would eat plain tofu out of the packet with no sauce and nothing
I LOVED eating at the university cafeteria - it was so down to earth and downright delicious. Here you see our salmon rice bowl and a ramen with lots of vegetable side dishes. And cold tofu for G of course.
Another cafeteria lunch. That soft cooked egg with okra is amazing.
Fried eggplant and gyoza and a simple izakaya near the campus
We also caught up with my high school friend who happened to be visiting Tokyo at the same time. We went together to the azalea festival at Nezu shrine and found this little place nearby for a soba lunch, here with oyakodon. Imagine this tiny place the size of a shoebox, us perched on tiny stools, G on my lap and all of a sudden he decides the most fun thing in the world is to help me dip my soba in the sauce!!
Dessert in a traditional teahouse - the top one has a scoop of sakura flavoured icecream! The other components are smooth red bean mash, toasted red beans (savoury), mochi and fruit, on a bed of konyaku jelly which was quite plain and to be eaten with the brown sugar syrup on the side. Delectable!
We also made a detour to get these adorable Totoros from Shirohige's cream puff factory. I got talking to some people outside and apparently it's a real pilgrimage for Totoro/ Studio Ghibli fans.
Our last dinner in Japan at a specialised eel restaurant. It's so famous that it has its own eel farm. The fish just flaked apart at the slightest touch and the rice was perfectly cooked and soaked in the sweet-salty sauce. The broth was made from eel liver - strange but tasty. It even came with a small red bean mochi dessert. Definitely the culinary highlight of our trip and a big bang to go out on.
Back in France...
When we got back to Paris S had a special surprise for us - he had bought this super fancy Easter egg from Bernachon, the famous chocolatier from Lyon who has a Paris store just up the road from us. We walk past there all the time but it's too fancy for everyday. I've never had a chocolate egg that is weighed by kilo before (an eyewatering 130 euros per kilo)... but anyway, it was the smoothest chocolate I've ever had and if I could send you all a sample I would.
The inside was filled with chocolate fish, egg, chicken, shells, all Easter themed! It even came with an explanatory pamphlet, as if we need one of those to eat chocolate...
And after almost 8 years, Barney finally died while we were away. Not sure why because I have left him unfed for longer, so I tried to revive him for over a week while we ate all our emergency freezer bread and had to resort to supermarket bread. But luckily I had given some of him to a friend so I resuscitated him from her Barney. He's back!
I also discovered this amazing pale ale on a hot summer's day, apparently award winning
I leave you all with this curveball that is actually kitchen related I guess. Here is my adorable monster eating cherry tomatoes off the vine at my dad's. He never used to eat tomatoes before (only as sauce) but now he's the biggest fan after seeing how it actually grows. He even learned to not eat the green ones!
A bit of contemplation now - I've been in France for almost two years and it has been the most transformative time of my life. New country, new language, left my old job, sold my house in Australia, had a baby, being unemployed, the whole specialist requalification process, finding a new job.. it's just all hit at once in a short time and it has been so so tough, but this is the stuff that life is made of, right? During these two years I've religiously done IMK every month almost as a certainty that I knew in my life. It gave me a kind of solace to see that my life was passing one kitchen month at a time. I don't know what the future holds, since I'm going back to work next week - perhaps I'll continue joining in every month or perhaps it'll fall by the wayside with the new chaos of our life. But in any case, I thank all of you, especially Sherry for hosting, for sharing part of the journey with me, for all your encouraging words along the way and for celebrating my successes and survival. Eat together soon xx
