Midsummer House is a restaurant in Cambridge, which is widely considered to be one of the best English restaurants outside London. Clarice and I went on Saturday for lunch, and had their 3 courses for 55 pounds deal.

It was wonderful! Great service, delicious, inventive food. It's definitely the most "cheffy" and experimental restaurant I've ever been to. (And here, that's a good thing!) Foam, for instance, is not something that I've tried before. And I loved the way that the champagne and grapefruit foam was dispensed from an awesome contraption that looked like an old-school perfume bottle.

Here are the photos...



Olives

Champagne and Grapefruit Foam

The Foam Dispenser

Butter

Sourdough Bread

Amuse Bouche: Pea Foam, prawns, seaweed jelly

Clarice's Starter: Pigeon

Sarah's Starter: Smoked Eel, Crispy Pig's Trotter & Smoked Foie Gras

One Delectable Mouthful

Clarice's Main: Sea Bass

Sarah's Main: John Dory, Tomato Risotto, Sauce Nero, Squid, Crispy Bacon

Pre-dessert thing: Sorbet, pineapple & fennel salad

Sarah's Dessert: Peanut Parfait, Biscuit, Banana Sorbet, Banana Marshmallows

Clarice's Dessert: Lemon tart, lemon madelines, lemon cake, lemon meringue, lemon sorbet

On Thursday my friend Clarice & I had a picnic on Erasmus lawn at Queens College, Cambridge.

We had gorgeous fresh raspberries and strawberries bought at the Cambridge Market, a fab hunk of blue cheese which Clarice had brought back from Paris, a baguette from Sainsbury's, and some absolutely wonderful macarons from Pierre Hermes, also carted back from Paris by Clarice. (Stay tuned for a post about the macarons!)



























It was so sunny, a fabulous day for a picnic!

Later that evening, we had penne bolognese at Clown's, a family run Italian place in the town centre - very cheap and delicious!















After that, we got a crepe at Art's Picture House (a cinema) - the names of all the crepes are puns on film titles. We had a Malteaser Falcon - malteasers and butterscotch sauce on a crepe. Yum!

Quite excitingly, on the plane from Singapore to London, one of the available meal options was designed by none other than scary super chef, Gordon Ramsay!

It was salmon with pancetta peppers, boiled potatoes and herb butter.

Gordon Ramsay's Fish

It was quite good, as far as plane food goes. The sturdy texture and strident flavour of the salmon is perfect for in-flight food, which has to withstand long storage, and quick reheating.

So now I can say that I did sample Gordon Ramsay's food on my trip to Europe. And it was included in the price of the ticket. Woo.

Monday night in Singapore was hawker food time. Wahoo! I miss this stuff so much when I'm at home! I went to Newton Circus with my mates Nat and Mark.

Lime Juice - the perfect drink for a hot day.

Here's Mark.

Fresh seafood stall

Gai laan

Gong gong

Swordfish

Pickle

Inside of Gong-gong

Hokkien Mee

The stalls...

I arrived in Singapore last Saturday at about 5:30... and 2 hours later it was margarita time! I met up with my friend Germaine at Cafe Iguana (at Riverside point, opposite Clarke Quay) for nachos and margaritas.

You can get the margaritas in all sorts of fab flavours; we had peach. As for food, it was nachos and chicken chimichangas (like burritos, served with rice). Perfect for soaking up that alcohol!

Yesterday, as I was busily potterying about the kitchen making , tuna tataki and steamed rhubarb pudding, I got a text message from my good friend Adriana, whose birthday it was that night.

Something along the lines of...

I'm so stressed out cos my work friends were told they shouldn't bring a cake which was their initial intention and now i have no cake :S

Well, it was Sarah to the rescue with a quick batch of coca-cola cupcakes. Adriana wanted cupcakes, because the club where she was having her birthday does not allow knives or forks.

So, these are exctly the same as the last time, but this time I made a double batch, and waited for the cupcakes to cool down before applying the icing. And as an interesting note, I only made a single quantity of the icing (ran out of icing sugar, you see), but it managed to cover all the cupcakes, with one carefully spread teasponful of icing per cupcake. In fact, I think it works better with slightly less icing, as the icing is quite sticky and messy. Furthermore, both cupcake and icing are sickly sweet. And any more of that sugary, sugary icing would make kids extremely hyper, or induce some sort of hallucinatory dream in adults.


24 cupcakes

I let the icing on the cupcakes set in the fridge, then packed them into a couple of ice-cream containers, and thence into a paper bag for easy transportation. All in all, it took about 1.75 hours to make the cupcakes, including the hour required to bake them (2 batches at 30 minutes each). So it was quite a time-efficient exercise, I must say.


2 boxes

And here we are at the club... eating cupcakes in a club. How novel!


in chaise lounge


cupcake in club


it's a cupcake


hitomi loves cupcakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIANA!