Sasa Review (post renovation)

Last night we finally got a chance to check out Sasa at Jln. Kayu Aya No.78 (Ex Laksmana) Seminyak for the first time after their renovation. The dining area still looks the same except a bit of a paint job and some new tiles adorning the walls. The important question is how is the food. We always worry that food quality would suffer after their temporary closing, but thank goodness that was not the case. I think even though their dining area was closed for a while, their kitchen remained open, offered delivery service.

We ordered our usual dishes to see if there is any difference between pre-renovation and post-renovation. For appetizers, we ordered three dishes Guazzetto di Vongole, Funghi Marinati, and Fritto Misto Italiano. We always considered Guazzetto di Vongole, which is sautéed clams with white wine, cherry tomato and garlic croutons, their signature dish, and the flavor was exactly the same. The Funghi Marinati, which is chilled grilled oyster mushrooms, marinated with olive oil, lemon, garlic, and parsley, wasn't as sour as before, but the flavor was more or less the same. We tried Fritto Misto Italiano, mixed of deep fried rice balls, eggplant, croquettes, mozzarella in Carrozza, and deep fried zucchini julienne, for the first time. That particular appetizer was all right, but the zucchini julienne was especially delicious. The coating was salty, but the vegetable was sweet which made a really good contrast.

For dinner, I wanted the meat ball pasta, but they were out of that. Instead I got my usual Penne alla Siciliana (penne, eggplants, mozzarella, parmesan and fresh basil in red sauce) which was as good as before. Wid got one of their special, which was shrimp and spaghetti in a white wine sauce. He liked the flavor of the dish (the sauce was infused with the shrimp flavor) and the pasta was generous, but he was sad the amount and size of the shrimp was a bit lacking. Our out of town friend tried fettine alla Pizaiola, which beef escalops cooked with tomato sauce, flavoured with oregano with small roasted potatoes on the side. I didn't try that dish, but our friend thought it was delicious and scarfed it down.

For dessert we had tiramisu and creme brulee, both still the best on the island.

Overall, dinner was excellent. Food was great. Service was all right. We had a wonderful time, and we're definitely happy that one of our favorite Italian place has reopened.

We also ordered to go pasta with ham and mushroom in cream sauce for the bebbeh. She had some of the reheated pasta tonight and she loved it. That dish also taste the same as before.

Sasa Reopened

Our favourite Italian restaurant Sasa was closed for renovation earlier this year, but it seems like they have reopened again. We still haven't had the chance to check out the place, but we hope to go there soon because we are craving for some delicious Italian food. Hopefully their dishes are still awesome and I will post a review soon.

We also were in Singapore late April, and we have dined at some really good places. I will also have to write up a review or two soon.

Review - Cafe Marzano

Out of curiosity Wid and I checked out Cafe Marzano (Jl. Kunli No. 7, Seminyak, Kuta) about a week ago and we went back again just a few days ago. The inside reminded us of Cafe Felix in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most of the clients were Italians or foreigners, and we kept seeing boxes of pizza ordered for delivery or to go, which looked like a good sign.

The first time we ordered pizza, seafood pasta, bruschetta, fresh apple juice, and coke. Out of all the Italian places we tried in Bali, this place has the best pizza. The thin-crust pizza is crispy (well, first one the crust was a bit wet probably because it was baked first before the pasta was done) and loaded with generous amount of cheese, sauce, and toppings. The flavor reminded me of pizzas from family pizzerias in US. What makes this pizza better than the rest is the quantity and quality of the cheese. According to Wid's brother, the cheese and Italian meats (pepperoni and ham) are imported from Italy. Unlike the other pizza here, it's rich and a bit oily but not greasy.

The seafood pasta was excellent also. This is the first time in Bali I had pasta that's actually cooked perfectly al dente. The seafood sauce was fresh and bright. We're really impressed by the fact that the food is not complicated or overly fancy yet very flavorful. As for the bruschetta, I really like the home made bread they used, but the sauce was a bit on the dry side. I think this was the weakest dish we tried out so far.

The pizza was so good that we went back a few days later and ordered another pizza. This time paired with the house white wine, it was made the pizza better. The white wine (I guess it was pinot grigio) really enhanced the flavor of the pizza, especially the cheese and green and red pepper, by adding a note of fruit flavor. Plus the wine help cut through the oily taste of the pizza. For dessert we ordered a small nutella pizza which did not disappoint us. Again, the crust was thin and crispy and it's loaded with lots of nutella, fresh whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles.

Depending on what you ordered, the food is a tad more expensive than places like Warung Italia or Massimo, but the price is still very reasonable. Appetizers are between 25,000 rp to 40,000 rp. Pasta and other main courses run from around 20,000 to 42,000 rp. Pizza from 25,000 rp to 60,000 rp. Overall, we are very impressed by the pizza and pasta and I hope to check out other items on their menu soon.

Whale Fossil in Vineyard

I suppose you can file this under "when science and food collide." BBC reported that whale fossils were found in a vineyard that produced "the famed Brunello de Montalcino wine" in Tuscany. It's cool that the owner of the vineyard is happy with the discovery, and that the scientist are careful not to disturb the terraces when they do their exacavation.

I love the quote from the owner, Cristina Mariani, and the blur at the end of the article:

"It reminds us "that this rich soil is composed of nutrients and minerals deposited millions of years ago," she says. "It's that special earth that gives complexity to our wines."

So, if you are lucky enough to ever taste a Brunello, just savour it for that extra moment, and remember that beneath the old vines that produced it - there was an even bigger old whale.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Eggplant Lasagna

I cooked dinner for the family on Nyepi because I was rather bored with the usual stuff. On the day of reflection we cannot show any lights from the house so I had to start cooking early before the sun sets. I decided to make an eggplant lasagna because I'm been itching to try something a bit new with my usual lasagna.

First I started with the red sauce which had tons of garlic, onion, beef, parsley, basil, and tomatoes. While the red sauce is simmering, I made bachmael sauce and grilled slices of eggplant with olive oil. The red sauce came out really, really good because I let it simmer properly for an hour or so. Bonnie sat by my feet the whole time. I guess she thought that I was cooking for her. I then assembled the dish, but since I didn't have enough the sauces and eggplants, I only managed to incorporate two layers of pasta. Oops. Next time I'll use three cans of tomatoes instead of one, and I'll probably use about 3/4 liter of milk instead of half a liter. Also, I'll use four or five of the Asian eggplant instead of two. I sprinkled some dry oregano on top. I let the lasagna cook for about forty minutes at 175 C.

I really liked the taste of the dish though I'm still sad that I didn't put as much pasta in as I wanted. Mami like it that way actually since she said all the restaurants usually put too much pasta and not enough sauce in their lasagna. Papi liked it so much that he actually ate the dish without having to ask for rice later. He then had another slice for the next day's breakfast, and he was sad when last night we told him that we ate the rest of the lasagna for dinner.

Ugh

Ugh, had nasty ass tuna carpaccio that smelled way too fishy and tasted gross too. Wid and I eat had a piece and decided that it was too nasty to finish it. If I wan to eat raw fish, it better be sashimi quality. I don't want to get food poisoning from bad fish. Still, it was less scary than beef carpaccio. I'm certainly not about to eat raw beef especially with the mad cow disease and all. No prions to infect my brain, thank you. Luckily, the waitress took the dish away and let us pick another apeptizer to replace the bad fish. The replacement was pretty nice--slices of crusty bread smothered with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and mushroom (though the mushroom tasted too watery/earthy like the soup).

Spaghetti with sauteed eggplant chili tomato sauce was good. Must steal that idea for home.

Aligo Olio

I've been very lazy about cooking recently. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's taking care of Bonnie, or maybe I've been spending way too much time playing Final Fantasy XII. A few days ago, Wid's mom, her brother's family, and I went to Warung Italia for lunch. I like that place because of the nice food at a very reasonable price. I got the gnocchi which was ok, but I still like their selection of canteen food more, like the crepe in bachmael sauce and the potato salad. While we were eating, mami commented that the aligo olio tasted different from other Italian restaurants in the area, and she wondered out loud if we can make this at home. I'm no expert on aligo olio have never heard of this dish until I came to Bali, but from the look and taste of it, it seems like it's prepared in a similar way as spaghetti carbonara (heat the "sauce," cook the pasta, and combine).

Yesterday for lunch I decided to try out this dish. Our cook actually makes a decent version already, but I wanted to experiment. I wanted to see if what I deducted based solely on my observations would produce the same result. While I waited for the water to boil to cook the spaghetti, I minced a lot of garlic and then cooked the garlic and a bit of the hot pepper flakes in olive oil and butter until it was golden brown in a wok. I guess it was like deep frying garlic, like what we do with fried shallots... Once the spaghetti was cooked and drained, I combined the spaghetti with the garlic and oil mix, add more pepper flakes and salt, and cooked the pasta on low to medium heat. I then transferred everything to a pre-warmed bowl.

Wid and mami seemed to like the dish. Mami thought it was very garlicky, which is what she wanted. Wid thought it tasted different but better than the ones in the restaurants. I told him I used butter. Hehe. Mami said next time I should try soaking the garlic in oil for a few hours before cooking for better fragrance.

Spinach Pasta

It seemed like such a long time since my last food experiment, but it's kind of hard to cook when Bonnie our puppy and kids (not mine) follow me around. Last night I tried to make spinach pasta using the recipe from Jacques Pepin's The Complete Techniques. First part was boiling the spinach. I really should have taken out the hard stalks right in the beginning, but I forgot local spinach has very fibrous stalks so I ended up removing the bits after boiling the veggie. I squeezed the boiled spinach dry and chopped it up. Next part was making the dough. I ended up using a lot more flour (semolina/high gluten mix) than the recipe called for because the dough was so wet (that's what happens when I live in a tropical island). My well of flour leaked so I got eggs and oil all over the place, but I recovered from that. After letting the dough rest, our cook took over because she's the noodle expert in the house. We had the dough cut into fetuccini size, but the pasta was too thick. The cook said that if it was thinner, then the noodles would stick to each other.

In the end, the noodle didn't turn out as well as I liked. It looked like green, home-made udon than pasta. The noodles were too chewy. I think the problem is two-folds. Maybe I should have used another flour combination (semolina/high gluten/all purpose). Also, the noodles really should have been thinner (flatter) or make it small like angel hair. Oh well, at least the taste was good. Food for thought.

For the sauce again I used Pepin's recipe for bachmael sauce. The sauce turned out much better than my previous attempt. I made a flour and butter mixture which is then whisked into boiling milk. After the sauce thickened, salt, pepper, and nutmeg were added for flavoring. The sauce tasted great and had no lumps. Thank goodness at least one recipe worked.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Happy New Year!!! Wid and I celebrated the start of the new year by getting sick and me banging my finger on a door.

Last night we decided not to go to his bro's house for dinner because we're still not feeling well. I tried to make spaghetti carbonara. The recipe is from my Italian friend Lia, who has been very helpful in answering questions I had about Italian cooking. It's pretty interesting that you have to be pretty organized or else you cannot work fast enough to make the "sauce" properly. While the spaghetti was cooking, I cooked chopped bacon in a bit of olive oil. Once the spaghetti is almost done, I poured the water into a bowl to warm it up and transfer the pasta to the frying pan with a bit of the bacon grease. To the pasta, I added the cooked bacon, four beaten eggs, a bit of garlic (don't know if that's Italian but Wid requested it), salt, and pepper. I mixed everything together on low heat and then poured the mixture into the warmed bowl. I then sprinkled quite a bit of parmasen cheese (sorry, Lia, I couldn't find any goat cheese like you recommended) and stirred again.

The spaghetti carbonara was really tasty and rich. Not quite comfort food in our book, but it certainly was enough as a meal. I'll definitely make the dish again, but I'm rather scared by the amount of cholestrol it contains. Hahaha.

Italian-style Meatball

This dish was made back in October 20, but I've been neglecting this journal because of lots of family activities and then the death of our favorite dog. Now I have a bit of catching up to do.

It seems like spaghetti and meatball is more likely an American invention than an authentic Italian dish, but it's still mighty tasty in my book. This was my second attempt at making meatballs, and I feel that I was more successful with this batch than the first trial. I pretty much used the same recipe as last time to make the meatballs, but I put more care into combining the ingredients and forming the meatballs so that they didn't fall apart this time. The sauce is the usual that I learned from an Italian friend of mine.

Massimo and the Ravioli

Last night the entire family invited our doctor friend and his family to dinner at the Italian restaurant Massimo in Sanur. We've gone there quite a few times in the past few months already because the food is just as good, if not better, than the more expensive The Village, which is just down the street from this restaurant. Apparently, Massimo, the chef and owner of the restaurant, was the chef of The Village before he took all of his recipes and opened his own place. This restaurant has very good value because the price is very, very reasonable and the food is very good. Oh, the complementary fried dough and super thin bread sticks are always good and fun!

Last night we ordered tons and tons of food (from appetizer all the way to gelato). Many were very good, but I'll just mention what I ordered instead to save some space in the blog. For appetizer we shared salmon on toast (I think they were calling that bruscetta but it's not really), pizza, caesar salad, and sausage with blobs of ricotta on toast. Wid and I had the salmon on toast before and it was really fresh and full of salmon flavor. Caesar salad was surprisingly light because it's not drenched in dressing. My favorite part of the salad was actually the thin slices of parmacean cheese. The sausage and ricotta on toast wasn't that awesome because they kind of skimp on the sausage. I'm not a big fan of ricotta anyway. The pizza was good, and we expected to be good because when I saw the cooks making the pizza at the front of the restaurant, they put generous portion of quality cheese on top. This is something you don't very often in Indo. Most of the cheese sold here are tasteless, smelly (in a bad way) crap.

For entree, I ordered the spinach and ricotta filled ravioli in tomato sauce. I was pleasantly surprised by the dish because the huge amount of spinach stuffed in each of the ravioli. Each bite was so full of spinach flavor that I think they made the mixture and stuffed the ravioli right before cooking it. I would definitely get this dish again.

For dessert I got the strawberry gelato. It was almost like a sorbet. The taste was decent, but it had a strange after taste. I think the other flavor I tried in a previous time was much better (chocolate kiss).

Overall we all ate way too much but everyone seemed to have a good time.