Saturday 28 September 2013

Galle: Cafe Town

This will be the last of my posts on Sri Lanka. As you can tell, I've stretched it out so that I can pretend that I am still vacation-ing.

We arrived at pretty Galle after a gruelling 7 hour bus ride, which saw us standing for a vast majority of the journey. This was due to the arsehole of a fellow tourist and his family who decided that their bags and asses were more important than fellow human beings. When the lady refused to remove her bag from the chair to allow a little Sri Lankan child or her weary mother to sit down, I almost morphed into an angry bear and mauled her. Key word - almost. Thankfully, this sweet local guy offered to sit the child on his lap for a part of the journey so that she could rest her legs.  

Anyway, we were famished after that ride and headed straight to the forts for food and a place to lay our heads. We settled on Crepeology, which served what resembled wraps instead of crepes. But to-mah-to/to-may-to right, and so I proceeded to wolf mine down in record time. 


The Galle fort area was littered with cool cafes, hippie joints and expensive restaurants, and reminded me of a fellow UNESCO town, Luang Prabang in Laos. I guess that is the look and feel that UNESCO likes? *shrugs*

Nevertheless, I enjoyed strolling along the walls, taking in the salty sea breeze and the sounds of waves crashing upon the shore, with my companions at night. The next morning, we woke up to catch the sunrise, which we unfortunately discovered was in the other direction!





Our time in Sri Lanka was not enough and we didn't make it to the beautiful beaches for crab. So we made sure we got our asses down to the Ministry of Crab once we got back to Colombo for our flight home. 

Ahh, Sri Lanka. I will be back! 
Finishing off our Sri Lankan adventure at the Ministry of Crab.

Sunday 22 September 2013

Matcha chocolate swirl bread

Sundays are great days to bake bread as I can pack some for Monday breakfasts at my work desk. Bread making is tedious but rewarding when the end product turns out according to the recipe. I have struggled with getting the dough consistency right and have been getting help from all the great bakers online. So apparently my mistake was in not giving the dough enough kneading time. 

The online baking community has also exposed me to novel bread making methods. I have just tried my hands using the tang zhong (汤种) method, which makes bread soft and fluffy, on a matcha chocolate swirl loaf. 

Since I do not have a thermometer, I had to stare at the bowl of bread flour and water as I stirred it while it slowly heated up on the stove. For a moment, I was panicking because my mixture took a while to develop the "trails" and thickness that many baking gurus advised. Thankfully, the lines developed soon after and I quickly set it aside to cool to room temperature.

The other steps were easy breezy (except for the kneading! Oh boy did my arms get a good workout).

Babies set aside to rise
These guys passed the finger test after 40 minutes.
Pre-oven
I used this recipe for my bread. 
Mmm I love the smell of baked bread!
The only problem with this beautiful bread is that the matcha taste was not obvious enough as the chocolate flavour overpowered it. I may just bake matcha bread without another flavour swirl the next time.

So, I have half my original portion of tang zhong in the fridge to use up and I am already planning to bake some cheese sticks! Yum tum. 

Saturday 21 September 2013

Up high in Nuwara Eliya

Having been born and raised in a consistently warm and humid country, a change to a cooler climate has always been a welcome relief. The tea plantation area of Nuwara Eliya provided that break from the tropical weather that left us sun burnt in areas that we neglected to block from the sun.

We dropped off at drizzly Nuwara Eliya without a room booking and promptly settled down for tea and started frantically searching for a place to lay our heads. Thankfully, we found a reasonably priced and available guest house, by the name of Chez Allen, with an eccentric and welcoming owner. Allen, who looked like Bob Marley, came by to pick us up in his pick up and recommended a great driver for touring the tea plantations and the waterfalls. 

The pretty Post Office where Allen swung by to pick us up.
Cold and hungry! Food at Chez Allen.
We stopped by two factories, Labokelie and Mackwoods for a tour of the factory. It was an eye opener seeing how the humble drink had its origins, and the processes involved in getting it from plantation to the cup. We ended our tour with a pot of the finest fragrant Orange Pekoe tea. Life is good.
Single estate tea leaves ready to be shipped out.

Nuwara Eliya is known as Little England as it was a sanctuary for the British during Sri Lanka's colonial days. I'm starting to detect a trend here with the Brits and their love for hill country retreats.

The next day, we abandoned our initial plan to hike at Horton's Plains due to the crazy expensive entrance fees and went trekking around Nuwara Eliya because Allen told us that the hike to the highest village, Shantipura, would be a two hour easy hike. (An aside: entrance fees to attractions in Sri Lanka are really high as compared to that in other countries, and I could not help but feel a little underwhelmed by the places).

While the views up high were gorgeous and worth the physical exertion, the hike was definitely not easy, nor did it take us two hours! 
Hiking up above the town.

Monday 16 September 2013

Nutella espresso rolls

It has been a long time since I unleashed my inner baker. But after lurking on countless baking and food blogs, this particular recipe gave me considerable impetus to start baking once again.

While I look to bread as a comfort food of sorts, baking bread has never been my forte since I never know how much time to leave the dough to rise. Thankfully, these rolls were rather simple to make and filled my kitchen with a delightful aroma. Ahh, coffee and chocolate. These go together like milk and cookies.

These babies don't keep well so it is best to devour on the day of baking!

And now that I managed to succeed with an easy bread, I can hardly wait to try another bread recipe this coming Sunday!

Ingredients that were readily available at home
Before the babies entered the oven
Best eaten fresh out of the oven!

Sunday 8 September 2013

Handwritten with Love

"Babyiest, see as many sunrises and sunsets as you can. Run across roads to smell fat roses. Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it. Think of yourself as a silver rocket – use loud music as your fuel; books like maps and co-ordinates for how to get there. Host extravagantly, love constantly, dance in comfortable shoes, talk to Daddy and Nancy about me every day and never, ever start smoking. It’s like buying a fun baby dragon that will grow and eventually burn down your f***ing house."

I love traditional hand written letters, which are sadly, a disappearing thing these days. Naturally, the wonderful site, Letters of Note, remains one of my favourite bookmarked sites.

Lately, I stumbled upon a great letter written by Caitlin Moran to her daughter via another blog that I frequent, A Cup of Jo.

It is funny and inspiring. When I decide to join the childbearing crowd, I too would love to write such tender loving letters to my kids.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

Cultural Triangle

Due to its central location and proximity to Minneriya National Park, Polonnaruwa was chosen as our base to explore Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle, which consists of the ancient cities of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya.

The journey from Colombo to Polonnaruwa saw us on board the local bus, which was a crammed and unpleasant six to seven hour ride in the familiar tropical heat. Nevertheless, it took us to our destination for cheap.

After befriending a tuk tuk driver who won our hearts by recommending a cheap place for a big lunch, we decided to tour the ancient city with him; a rather good idea on hindsight since the oppressive heat called for minimal walking. The ruins at Polonnaruwa resembled other World Heritage Sites in Southeast Asia such as the Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bagan in Myanmar, but for a much dearer entry fee. It is crazy that we had to pay US$25 to $30 to enter each of the ancient cities! So unfortunately or fortunately, we had to give Anuradhapura a miss due to the lack of time.





Still, Polonnaruwa was enchanting and the Buddhist images brought me back to my undergraduate days sitting in a lecture on religious art. Our tuk tuk driver was as tired as we were baking under the cloudless day but pushed us on to cover a majority of the sites.

After a tiring day under the sun, we decided to look to Trip Adviser for dinner recommendations and stumbled upon Priyamali Gedara. While I usually take Trip Adviser recommendations with a pinch of scepticism, the top place to dine in Polonnaruwa was a deserving one! The farmer host and his family really showed us true Sri Lankan hospitality. That was, without a doubt, our best meal in Sri Lanka.

The spread at Priyamali Gedara
The next day, we set off to Sigiriya to climb the lion's rock, blessed with great weather that made climbing the 1200 steps to the top a little more bearable. (I am starting to realise that the weather affects my appreciation of a place). If I were to choose only one ancient site to visit in Sri Lanka, it would be Sigiriya. The view at the top was truly breathtaking and I was content to find a spot to sit and enjoy the strong winds.


Well preserved painting of nymphs.
The view at the top.

Monday 2 September 2013

Current Read

"We wander around in search of a plausible centre. We long for a plausible crucible of significance, for somewhere, anywhere to go in order that we may touch the essence of the genius loci, but in the absence of alternatives we usually end up listlessly touring a museum, ashamed of ourselves for the strength of our desire to go back to our hotel and lie down."

- Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton