Belatedly, I need to relate my December activities before I start 2012.
As I had previously indicated, Hubby and I took Bean to Tokyo mid-December 2011. It was a great trip. We took a day to fly in, and a day to fly back out, technically-speaking, and so we had 4 full days in Tokyo. I'll do a proper descriptive on this soon.
At any rate, work was both full-on and full-stop near the end of December, as many people were on leave (as usual) but there were still deadlines to fulfill. Luckily for me, I have a great team above and below, and so things got done, albeit with a little bit of shoving.
We spent Christmas weekend with Hubby's parents and my little brother. There was a lot of food, and presents. Bean received a doll house, her 1st Sylvanian family, a Hello Kitty bag-making kit, and a WaWaYaYa, among other things.
For New Year's Eve, Hubby and I decided to do a 2-man degustation menu for both sets of parents, and all siblings. We were a table of 10 (minus one little brother who was at MBS livin' it large), and fed everyone til they could not move. The menu? It was ambitious, but just had to be done:
FIRST COURSE: Oysters on the half-shell, and a trio of salmon: salmon caviar and japanese butter-cream-cheese blinis, manuka-smoked salmon dressed with dill + balsamic + olive oil, salmon crusted with cracked black pepper. "Man Mountain" cold sake to go with.
SECOND COURSE: Cool japanese ham (from Tsukiji market) with nagaimo tororo + crispy-fried garlic, seared kurobuta bacon (from Tsukiji again) with sweet orange reduction. A crisp Reisling to go with.
THIRD COURSE: Boston lobster tails stir-fried with ginger + scallions + dark soy, a rich soup-broth with abalone + dried scallops. Finished off the Reisling.
FOURTH COURSE: Milk-and-dashi tamago to go with pan-seared foie gras + "secret" sauce. Opened the full-bodied Brunello that Dad bought.
FIFTH COURSE: Pan-fried Angus 200-day aged ribeye + bearnaise sauce, braised choysum. Finished off the red.
SIXTH COURSE: Liver sausage-flavoured claypot sushi rice
DESSERTS: Panna cotta tropicale, chocolate-chipped pavlova
We rang in 2012 with silly party hats (crowns) and party-poppers, while watching the festivities and fireworks at the Bay area.
......and in 3 weeks, we'll do it all again, to ring in the fiercest year in the chinese zodiac - the Year of the Dragon! (tempered by Water this year)
Comments