Konepan – Kantan Tanoshii Pan Tsukuri

Do you remember quite a long time ago when I bought a cute sandwich press set from Japan for our little cousin Niki?  Remember when I invited her and her little brother Toto to our house for a sandwich making session with her (our) new toy?  If you cast your mind back (or if you can’t remember I don’t blame you cos it was ages ago, you can read about it again here to refresh your memory) I showed you two nifty kids’ cooking gadgets that day.  We only tested the sandwich press but I promised that I would let you know once I’d tested the bread making set.

Well, that was way back in July last year.  How time flies!  I’ve been meaning to find time to invite the kids round again to test out the Konepan set but life kept getting in the way.  They have been over a couple of times since last July but during those times we did other activities as I was probably feeling too lazy to do something as involved as bread making.  Even then though, now that I think of it, we don’t really see enough of them.  Which is sad because Toto absolutely loves GM and I think Niki sees me as a female role model, besides her mum of course.  Mums are always the best, we all know that =)

Anyway, I finally invited them round again this Saturday before they’re due to leave next weekend for their summer hols abroad.  These are really cosmopolitan kids we’re talking about who spend practically every summer abroad, absorbing cultures of other countries.  Or perhaps more accurately, creating havoc in far flung lands hahaha.

The Konepan set comes with a mixer and other baking equipment including a small measuring jug, a little rolling pin (that’s the red stick thing at the bottom of the pic) and some moulds.  It even provides a recipe book with a basic recipe for bread and lots of handy illustrations teaching the user(s) how to make the different shaped bread as seen on the box.  Cos obviously we were dying to make all those cute breads!!

Here’s little Niki mixing all the ingredients in the little mixer.  Their recipe makes 6 buns.  They tell you to put all the ingredients in the mixer and turn the handle round clockwise 80 times, and then back anti-clockwise 80 times.  At the end of this you let the dough proof for an hour, like normal bread recipes.

Unfortunately, either my limited Japanese comprehension skills or my yeast let me down.  Either of these are likely to be honest.  What we ended up with at the end of all that churning that Niki did was a very soggy dough which I tried to rescue with extra flour.  It looked really dodgy but I tried to have faith and still stuck it in a warmish place to proof anyway.  But by the end of the hour it still hadn’t risen so I decided to chuck the whole mess and remake the dough using a more trusted recipe off the net.  By hand.  That mixer just took too long!

This is Henry the elephant.  As you can see, my dough wasn’t great because I don’t think my yeast frothed up as much as it was supposed to but we could at least work with it so I decided to take a gamble.

Henry with a tan!  The dough rose beautifully in baking!  What a relief!  And I have to admit, a pleasant surprise (I was almost sure it was going to be a failure).

Mr Piggy before his tan.

Haha!  Doesn’t he look cute?  He looks so dopey.  In fact, I think after baking he stopped looking like a pig and more like a bear.

Miss Bunny with her ears stuck on with egg wash.

Konnichiwa!  Miss Bunny’s shape didn’t change much during baking, this was probably because she was on the left side which is the more constant side of the oven.  All the baking that is on the right side of my oven always ends up warped or cracked or darker due to it being the hotter side.

Aww look at him!  Do you remember seeing a cone as part of the equipment that came in the Konepan set?  It’s for making conical breads, like lemon horns and also a very cute standing up bear bread.  Or so I see on the Konepan box and recipe book anyway.  What we were meant to do was shape the bear then refrigerate the whole thing plus cone for 10 minutes after which it was meant to be a doddle to just slide the dough bear off the cone.  Well nope.  I had to practically push him off so he ended up a bit wrinkly.  And really sorry looking hahaha.

But look how handsome he turned out!!!  We named him Fred.  Well Niki and I did anyway – Toto named him Fred the Fatty hahaha.

Mr Piggy and Fred in containers, ready to be transported to other homes.  The kids liked the taste of the bread and wanted to share with their mum and GM’s mother so we gave them one each.

My verdict on the Konepan set:

It’s a lot of fun.  It’s frustrating and quite silly and things won’t go well, but that just adds to the fun and that’s what we aim for when we have activities with kids right?  The kids will have a blast with it and I think the adults will too.   The best bit was seeing how the shapes we made turned out!

Baked Goods Sunday

Actually I didn’t bake that much today.  We ate loads of baked goods though.

I’ve come to realise that I really really like baking.  The way I feel for baking is different from how I feel about cooking in that if I screw up my cooking I get really frustrated and grumpy and kind of resent doing all that preparation work to produce a piece of crap at the end of it whereas if my baking goes wrong I just feel a bit disappointed but curious as to why it didn’t come out right.  More often than not I’ll seek advice as to what I’m doing wrong and attempt the recipe again.  Cooking is more of a stressful activity for me whereas I bake for fun!  Perhaps after Di wins Australian Masterchef she can open a restaurant where she does all the dishes and I’ll chip in with desserts!  Hahaha.

Don’t those vine tomatoes look gorgeous?  I was surprised to find them at our regular supermarket because the tomatoes there are normally anaemic to the point of greenness and aren’t very sweet.  For really good tomatoes I have to go to a really cheap supermarket which has a fantastic fresh fruits and vegetables section.  That’s all I ever buy from there, nice fruits and veg and nothing else because all their brands aren’t what we’re used to and I’m a creature of habit.  Haha.  Oh actually I also get salami and potato salad from there.  They have lovely potato salad.

I bought some ready made puff pastry sheets recently and had to use them up before they went off so for breakfast today I made balsamic vinegar pancetta (Italian cured meat) and vine tomato puff pastry slices.

They turned out very tasty.  I prepared them with tomato puree and some chopped garlic on the base and they turned out perfect.  Puff pastry sheets are fantastic!  They’re so convenient and easy to use.

After our puff pastry slices GM and I had dessert.  The bread rolls were bought pre-prepared – all I had to do was bung them in the oven for 10 minutes and they came out brown, crispy and hot.  Another fantastic item!  I’m never buying pre-baked baguettes again; why have cold baguette when you can do this in 10 minutes and have hot rolls?  I love these rolls.

But the real star of the pic isn’t the bread rolls….. it’s that jam next to it.  GM’s uncle came over recently remember?  Before he came over he asked me what I wanted from Paris and I said I wanted some jam, specifically those made by Christine Ferber whose jams are world renowned.  I had to limit myself to three jars since I didn’t want to impose too much on his luggage allowance but now I wish I’d asked him to buy more.

Because this jam is everything I’ve heard and more.

Out of the three jars I chose to open the Confiture Ispahan which Christine Ferber makes for Pierre Herme, a really famous French pastry chef.  The Confiture Ispahan is lychee, rose and raspberry flavoured and previously even though I knew Pierre Herme’s signature macaron was the Ispahan I’d had no desire to try it since I dislike raspberries and don’t much care for rose.  However, most of the foodie blog writers I read seem to love it so I thought “Okay, let’s see if it’s really that good” and got GM’s uncle to buy me the jam (since it would have been quite hard for him to not sit on the macaron coming over on the train haha).

Well the jam.  I don’t even know how I can do it justice with my words.  I don’t think I can.  It was exquisite.  Not gloopy and over gelatinous like your bog-standard jam but smooth and light.  I could have almost drunk it like a soup.  And the flavours: I never knew lychee, rose and raspberry would go together so well.  On first taste the lychee was strongest but later on the raspberry came through with a subtle hint of rose.  It was so beautiful I nearly sank to my knees in thanks.  Well okay that’s a bit much but you get the picture.  Haha.  It was certainly moreish; each swallowed mouthful left me with such a delicate hint of fine, fruity fragrance that it made me feel like I needed to have another, just to seek out the different notes again.  But invariably I’d swallow the next mouthful too quickly to really do the jam justice and would need to have another.  And another.  And another.

You know a food is good when after eating it the first thing I think is, “Jo and Di need to try this”.  And this is exactly what I thought this afternoon.  Unfortunately, I can’t bring food into Australia!

Later on in the evening I decided to bake a cake.  Just for fun.  Remember the strawberry cake I made recently?  This is the blueberry version.

This cake turned out even better than the strawberry one but my fruit sank to the bottom again.  I will be making this again soon to try out a new method I’ve learnt to prevent fruit from sinking.

From tomorrow onwards I will be back on my healthy eating plan.  I’ve made some exciting plans recently and need to shape up!

Food Diary

Brunch – Pancetta and vine tomato puff pastry slice

Dessert – One wholemeal bread roll and one mutigrain bread roll with butter and that gorgeous jam……

Dinner – Thai green curry with rice.  I made another curry because this is GM’s and my favourite dish of the moment.  Today’s was vegetarian though.  Very good but spicier than the ones I’d made previously!

Dessert – Two slices of my very gorgeous blueberry cake.  We ate it warm this time and it was really really good.  I love this cake.

Drinks – English tea, water

Exercise – None!

Strawberry Tarts

I’ve had such a busy day!

I’ve been feeling like I was playing catch-up all day.  My lack of time and tardiness  were probably compounded by GM and I having a really long lie-in in the morning.  We like to sleep really late on Friday nights, just because we can, but that invariably means that we get up later than usual on Saturdays and in today’s case we got up a lot later than usual!

We did loads of grocery shopping this morning in preparation for my dinner party tomorrow.  I am NOT looking forward to the cooking I have ahead of me.  Sigh.  My cooking is seriously really hit and miss.

I fixed us a late lunch of mee siam.  This is from one of those kits that you can get at chinese supermarkets.  I used the chicken rice set last year and it was so good that I bought a mee siam set to try – I hadn’t had mee siam in years so I thought it’d be nice for a change and for nostalgia’s sake.  I’m happy to report that the mee siam kit is also very good!  I love that brand of seasonings, it’s so easy to use and everything tastes so authentic.

After lunch I set about making my fruit tart to bring over to GM’s parents’ place tonight.  I promised them mango puddings a while ago you see, but remember I left my fridge door open last week and they melted in the heat?  I thought I’d make good on my promise of giving them some kind of dessert and I’ve been wanting to make a fruit tart for ages AND bought myself a new tart tin recently so I decided they were getting strawberry tart.

In addition to the big tart I also tried making little puff pastry tartlettes with ready bought puff pastry, just for fun.  They looked really sweet unbaked but once baked they weren’t as pretty, unfortunately.  And they tasted only alright, they’re missing something.  My everything made from scratch big strawberry tart on the other hand was pretty good.  The only thing I’m not happy with is that I had to roll the pastry really thin because my recipe was for a 9″ tin and I have a 12″ tin… I know, why don’t I check the recipe and increase the ingredients or buy a smaller tin?  I like making things difficult for myself, that’s why!  So if you’re thinking my tart looks a bit skimpy on crust and pastry cream you’d be right!  Since my pastry cream recipe was also for a 9″ tin.  I must say though that the pastry cream was delicious, the best I’ve made yet.  I’m definitely going to use that recipe for all custards from now on.

Everyone told me my tart was really nice.  Whether they were just being polite or not, I don’t know.

Jo and Di requested pics of my shopping last weekend.  This is one of the pairs of shoes I bought, I love them.  They’re really really comfy!  I also bought another pair exactly the same in a bronze-y colour.

Food Diary

Lunch – One huge bowl mee siam with fried tofu and boiled egg

Snack – 6 little strawberry tartlettes

Dinner – One third of a pizza with some salad

Dessert – One slice strawberry tart

Drinks – English tea with skimmed milk and water

Exercise – None!

I baked a cake when I got home from GM’s parents’ house.  It looked really good when I took it out of the oven and smelt gorgeous.  Not sure what it looks like now since I haven’t checked it, might have sunken for all I know.  Anyway I was too lazy to take a photo of it but if it holds up well and I remember, I will take a photo of it tomorrow!

Summertime Japanese Lunch

I’m having a lot of nice lunches lately!  I think it definitely has something to do with the summer season and the lovely weather we’ve been having lately.  Everybody’s always more social when the sun’s out and I think this is because sunny skies make people happy!

Today we went to Nobu Park Lane which has one michelin star.  All of us had the £28 bento box which consisted of (clockwise from left):-

Sashimi salad with Matsuhisa dressing (Matsuhisa is the owner’s name, the dressing was kind of like a sesame oil vinegarette),

Assorted sushi,

Rockshrimp tempura with ponzu (I don’t recall seeing any ponzu with my shrimp!),

Black cod with miso (one of their signature dishes.  I enjoyed mine but some of my friends found theirs overly fishy) and oshitashi (spinach salad with bonito shavings),

Vegetable spicy garlic with rice (basically stir fried veg in some sort of chilli sauce with rice which tasted buttery and garlicky to me), and

Miso soup (not in photo).

Some of us ordered sake.  I had a selection of four cups of fruit sakes, from left: strawberry, lychee, pineapple and mango.  The mango one was the best but I didn’t enjoy it very much overall so I won’t be ordering it again.  Also, I have to say that the waitress who seemed to be in charge of drinks as she was the one bringing us all our sakes and such was really rude.  When she gave me my selection she actually looked at me and said, “Is this yours?” I was looking at her in bafflement and I said, “Well what is it?”  Does she expect the diners to pick out their own orders?  Are we meant to know what everything looks like?  And she kept trying to clear my friend’s jug of sake when it was clearly still pretty full.  Very bad service, especially for a michelin star restaurant.  I can safely say it’s the worst service I’ve received at any michelin star restaurant yet, and by saying that I’m including the service we had to endure from the other servers as they were all pretty bad, just not as bad as the one with the drinks.  I enquired about the omakase menu and one waitress just said, “It’s the chef’s choice”.  Well I know that already since it says that on the menu!  I had to specifically ask for the individual courses before she would list them for us and even then she did it without good grace.

For dessert I had a chocolate bento box which consisted of a flourless chocolate fondant served with green tea ice cream.  This was good but the chocolate cake was very rich and I couldn’t finish it.

My friend had the fuji apple crumble which was seared fuji apple with sesame oil, light wasabi toffee, peanut ice cream and coconut crumble.  When I tried it I didn’t actually taste any wasabi toffee but maybe I just didn’t get any in my spoonful.  This was okay.

Another one of my friends had the tofu cheesecake with malaga ice-cream and mandarin jelly.  We didn’t like the ice-cream much but I thought the cheesecake was okay, although it had quite a rough texture.

Yes, this is a dessert!  This one wins for “wow” factor.  It’s a mango katsu which was mango, coconut udon, earl grey and yuzu broth.  I tried this and I wasn’t aware it was an earl grey and yuzu broth because I just didn’t get those flavours from it.  The coconut udon was quite interesting though.  The batter of the mango cutlet was exactly like that of a pork cutlet and my friend didn’t like it very much.  It tasted really oily.  But like I said, top marks for concept, creativity and “wow” factor.

Was this a good meal?  I’d say no.  I’ve definitely had much better Japanese food, michelin star or no michelin star.  Apart from the miso cod I didn’t like anything else in my bento very much; it was all quite subpar to me, especially the badly fried shrimp tempura which were greasy and quite soggy and the stir fried vegetables with rice which just screamed “cheap stomach filler” to me.  Well at least they didn’t give us a bunch of beansprouts eh?

We all agreed that the desserts were definitely better than the actual food but even then I felt it was a bit style over substance.

The service left very much to be desired; dismissive, non-communicative, no attention to detail and haphazard.  The only good bit of service we received was at the end when we asked for the bill.  Hahaha.

Am I being harsh?  Maybe I’m a bit picky?  Well I suppose it’s fair to say I am picky.  But I am picky because I am well-informed, having dined out extensively and at quite a few michelin star awarded establishments.  I know the standard to expect and, frankly, I didn’t receive anything quite up to this standard this afternoon.

In my previous post I mentioned the tasting menu at Nobu as being of better value than that of Marcus Wareing’s.  I stand by that.  When I had Nobu’s tasting menu previously it was of good value although I can’t comment on what it is like now as I didn’t have it today.  Indeed on that occasion I enjoyed Nobu’s food, even if I didn’t think it was spectacular.  Back then I would have rated the food a seven and a half out of ten.  However, this time I would award the food a five out of ten; edible but not particularly enjoyable.  The service was already not very good when I’d visited Nobu previously but back then I would have given their service a seven out of ten – efficient without warmth nor likability factor but this time I truly have to give their service a two out of ten – the “I think they’d rather you take your money somewhere else” award.

Want to have Japanese food?  Save yourself the money and aggro and pop down to Brewer Street and eat at Tenten-tei instead.  It’s not posh but at least it doesn’t have pretentions and you’ll get good, honest food and some smiles for much less ££ spent.

Anniversary Lunch

Happy Anniversary to us!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Happy Anniversary to GM and I……..

Happy Anniversary to us!!!

*(^______________________________^)*

FINALLY after three years, GM and I managed to remember our anniversary.  In previous years we’d get a phonecall in the evening from GM’s mum and the following conversation would ensue:-

GM’s mum:  Hi! =D  What did you get up to today?

Us:  Nothing…………………. why?

GM’s mum:  It’s your anniversary! D=

Us:  ……………………….. oh.

Hahaha.  But this year I made a note in my diary so we wouldn’t forget again and GM and I took the afternoon off to celebrate over a spot of lunch at Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, a two michelin star establishment.

I met GM outside his workplace (which is very near mine) and we strolled in the beautiful sunshine to the Berkeley.  I love summer! (^_______^)

We were planning to have the lunch menu for £30 per person but in the end we decided to have the tasting menu for £90 per person.  I felt a bit guilty spending that much money on lunch in this sort of financial climate but GM justified it by pointing out that we were celebrating 3 years’ worth of anniversaries at one go.  So, okay! =D

The tasting menu consisted of 9 little courses, if you count the amuse bouches and pre-dessert.  I’m sad to say it made me really bloated because even though the courses were small, it was just too much to eat in one sitting.  So halfway through the meal I started getting gastric pains =(

And this is what we ate:

1)  Amuse bouche: hummous with croutons and confit of foie gras triangles.

Thoughts:  The hummous wasn’t what I was used to, but then it was a 2 michelin star concoction, not a £2 tub from Sainsburys! (I have to confess I actually prefer the Sainsburys……)  Croutons were a bit salty.  I enjoyed the foie gras triangles, but then I always like foie gras.

2)  Bread:  a choice of four breads including Swiss brown and sourdough but I chose the honey and potato.  GM chose the unsalted butter.

Thoughts:  The honey and potato bread was very good, very moreish.  Wonderful texture, chewy bread, crispy crust and slightly sweet aftertaste.  The unsalted butter was a bit unspreadable, I ate it in a slab!

3)  Amuse bouche again:  cold pea soup topped with warm cheddar cheese foam and parmesan breadsticks.

Thoughts:  The parmesan breadsticks were attractive aethestically, being really long.   The soup was really good, especially when you got both the cold soup and warm foam in the same mouthful.  Interesting and delicious.

4)  Pan-fried foie gras, rhubarb, Lapsang tea, gingerbread, quince jelly.

Thoughts:  The pan-fried foie gras was set atop a rhubarb compote and the two really complemented each other.  Apart from that I wasn’t sure what the gingerbread, tea and quince jelly added to the dish.  It didn’t gel for me so I ate the foie gras with the rhubarb and ate the rest of the elements separately.

5)  Honey soused red mullet, Burrata, piquillo peppers and tomato.

Thoughts:  This was another tiny little dish.  There was a tiny sliver of langoustine meat on top of the two little fillets of red mullet which was really delicious.  Burrata is a type of cheese that is not dissimilar to mozzarella and it was gorgeous when eaten with the little sunblushed (?) tomato topped with a slice of garlic, best bit of the dish for me.  I could have eaten a whole lot more of just Burrata with tomato.

6)  Roasted and marinated quail, white onion fondue, butternut squash and baked potato.

Thoughts:  We got two quail breasts on top of sauteed white onion, little (really cute) butternut squash balls with pumpkin (?) seeds, butternut squash puree and accompanied by a baked potato foam.  I was very excited by the thought of baked potato foam and it was interesting whilst being exactly what it was meant to be – a creamy foam that tasted of baked potato.  I liked that.  This dish was one of my favourites as all the elements were very tasty (in particular the butternut squash puree) and worked well together.  However, I think we could have done with less quail, maybe just one breast instead of the two, as it was just a bit heavy even if the dish was tiny.

7)  Scottish scallop, charred asparagus, sauce Matelote.

Thoughts:  Matelote sauce is a red wine with smoked eel sauce which they poured over the scallop.  I didn’t like this sauce at all as the smoked eel had a really unpleasant, fishy taste.  In fact it pretty much spoilt the dish for me.  They should have just left out the sauce and left us to dip the scallop in the asparagus puree if we needed a bit of moisture.  Other than the Matelote sauce, the scallop was garnished with two very thin slices of either uncooked or very underdone cauliflower.  That wasn’t too pleasant neither.

8)  Main courses:  Cumbrian lamb, braised belly, spring vegetables, caraway spatzle

OR  Anjou pigeon, poached and roasted, baby navet, pigeon casserole, glazed morels.

Thoughts:  I chose the lamb.  I expected the mains to be of substantial size since they were, you know, the MAINS.  But they turned up in little portions, just slightly bigger than all the taster dishes we’d had previously.  My lamb was alright, not fantastic but of a good standard.  My favourite bit was the artichokes.  GM let me try his pigeon which I thought was very good.

~  There was an optional cheese course for a £10 supplement after this.  We were too full so we chose to skip it. ~

9)  Pre-dessert:  chocolate and raspberry gateau and a passionfruit jelly with lemon creme and lychee vodka sorbet.

Thoughts:  I didn’t enjoy the little gateau nor it’s accompanying dollop of creamy concoction.  However, I loved the passionfruit jelly, lemon creme and lychee vodka sorbet.  It was tart but not overly so, tangy and refreshing.  Lovely.  I couldn’t really taste the vodka in the sorbet though, they put too little in for drinkers like me hehehe.

10)  Desserts:  Warm chocolate moelleux, banana jelly, banana ice-cream

OR   Granny Smith apple creme, spiced brioche crisps, popcorn, salted caramel ice-cream.

Thoughts:  I chose the chocolate moelleux.  I liked the presentation of my dessert, especially the little squares of banana jelly.  When I first popped a square into my mouth I was so surprised by the intensity of the banana flavour that I exclaimed to GM, “Oh my god, this is fucking good!  Try it!” which made him laugh.  The chocolate moelleux looked like a disc of chocolate cookie but once I cut into it, it was all gooey and chocolatey inside.  Overall I enjoyed this dessert, especially the banana jelly.  I also tried some of GM’s dessert of apple creme and I didn’t like it, mainly because the apple creme tasted very much like, err… when I had too much red wine recently and it had to come back up.  Yikes.  But I really enjoyed his salted caramel ice-cream.

11)  Bon bon trolley.

Thoughts:  After we were done with the menu we were offered coffees and teas, which we declined as my gastric was starting to spasm at this point.  Any more food/ drink would have pushed me over the edge I think.  Any more food/ drink other than the bon bons that is!  They wheeled around their lovely bon bon trolley which was an impressive looking two tiered contraption with around 5 or 6 kinds of different truffles in glass bowls.  I asked for a selection and was given 1) salted caramel, 2) white chocolate and cassis, 3) peanut butter and jelly, 4) chocolate ganache (?), 5) one covered in nuts, 6) Turkish delight and 7) another which completely skips my mind.  I had one bite of each and my favourite was the salted caramel, which is saying a lot as I normally detest caramel.  The white chocolate and cassis was also nice.  The rest were unremarkable but I must give the peanut butter and jelly a special mention because at first bite it was awful, rank even.  I didn’t like that one at all.

OVERALL EXPERIENCE:  Well obviously GM and I enjoyed ourselves – it was an afternoon off work and we were indulging in one of our favourite pastimes, what’s not to like? But let me break it down for you.

The decor of the place was a bit dark but I think if we had visited in the autumn or winter we would have felt right at home, it’s just that stepping out of the bright sunshine made it seem like we were entering a more severe environment than it actually was.  We were given a table next to the window, however, so we can’t complain.

The service was good, almost impeccable apart from one waiter who very nearly flung my pan-fried foie gras on the table at me.  I will excuse him and chalk it down to flamboyance and flair as I couldn’t figure out if he was indeed being flamboyant or if he was a bit short and rude.

The food was also good but I would say that we have had better at other similar establishments, both in terms of quality and value for money.  I felt the tasting menu wasn’t very good value considering we’ve had tasting menus at Claridges, Hospital Road and Nobu and the portions were substantially bigger at all of those restaurants.  I suppose it was a blessing in disguise that the portions were so small today bearing in mind my gastric was already struggling to keep up, but at times I felt like we were eating off side plates.  Also, at £90 per person I just expected more, at least something on par with its rivals.

However, even though I’m citing some negative points to this afternoon’s meal, all together they weren’t enough to mar the afternoon for us.  We had a nice time, the weather was good, we finally celebrated our anniversary and even managed to get home two hours earlier than normal.  All in all a good result!

You might have noticed that this post is very wordy and has not a single picture in it.  This is because I didn’t bring my camera this afternoon, I didn’t think I would want to take any photos!  Anyway, if you miss the photos and want to see some, I am going to Nobu this Sunday and Yauatcha next Saturday so I’ll try to bring my camera then!