三杯雞 (Three cups chicken)

Another one of those traditional chinese dishes that I love but M hates. My mom gave me this recipe when I was in my chinese cooking phase, before I got my French cookbook and starting exploring western cuisines. My initial experiments with this dish were not that successful, I fried the chicken for too long before adding the sauce. A breakdown in communication as I thought my mom said fry the chicken till its completely dried. Lets just say the end product wasn't that good. At least, I have learnt from my mistakes. Anyway, fry garlic cloves and ginger slices in sesame oil till fragrant, add in the chicken and just fry it till its brown on both sides. Add soya sauce, sugar, chinese wine and simmer till the chicken is cooked. Mix in some spring onions and serve with rice. The three cups is referring to 1 cup of soya, 1 cup of chinese wine and 1 cup of sesame oil. I am assuming that the cups are quite small. Its actually quite cute, the names of these recipes.

La Tasca

Went to catch The Departed at the cinema near our place. Had lunch at a La Tasca branch there, a Spanish Tapas bar and restaurant franchise. What I like about this place is that you can just order a few tapas, get a few drinks and just chill out there for a while especially with the view of the West India Quay outside the restaurant. We ordered chicken croquettes, potato bravas, deep fried king prawns and aubergine with cheese, tomatoes and herbs. We ate all that with olive and sun dried tomato bread. The thing about franchises is that you can expect, at the worst, average food so in a way, you are hedging your bets by not trying some fancy restaurant which you may not exactly like. For example, Sabor. The food was alright. I really like the potatoes bravas although M didn't like it as she wanted the potatoes to be crispy. We had no issues with the chicken croquettes and the aubergines. M didn't like the prawns as she found it too small. She obviously hasn't stayed in the UK long enough as its quite difficult to find the real king prawns that you see back in Singapore. All in all, we were fine with La Tasca.

http://www.latasca.co.uk/

As for the movie, I really enjoyed it and I think its better than the HK version primarily because the dialogue in Infernal Affairs is too cleaned up, the policemen and the triads don't sound like people from that side of the line. But The Departed, the language is gritty and hopefully true to the culture of the Boston police force and the Irish mobsters. I am not too sure which ending I prefer though. M likes the HK ending.