Indulge...

Mr Amzar giving thumbs up on my flapjacks and Cocopops crunchy. haha good pose man... he is our future engineer!
Making pralines.
Close up.
This is not close up.... KING Strawberries from the states.
compare that with normal strawberries. Beautiful when dipped into chocolate sauce. Sweet, not so tangy, juicy! I dont believe it grows naturally. hehe American can do anything and its nice to food lover.

Spiced Indian lobster with tamarind juice, penshawari rice. From Laze.ez Signature Restaurant Birmingham. Trying out Fennel. It was first time using Fennel. I tell you what, It's certainly beautiful aniseedy fragrant. Once roasted you know it can't go wrong.
As a compliment for my trout dish. Simple, rustic nothing PONCEY! Pub style food which i think suits bruneian diners. That Manggo salsa tops it all. It gives sharpness to the dish. Love it!
My princess usual morning malay typical breakfast. Prawn egg fried rice with unsalted dried anchovies.
Since we had Fish curry head sauce leftover, I made some simple glass noodle rice with trims of trout, carrots, celery and scrambled egg. more rustic and such filling dish.

Done and dust it...

I finally completed my trainning. So much as wanting to become a chef. I look forward to introduce beautiful ingredients and cooking techniques to my family and friends. It has been great experience coming to France, well not quite but England :). Attending college itself won't give you that much knowledge as it is more technically done(unless you want to become what i call MANUFACTURED CHEFS then thats fine). I've ventured out in order to extract more food knowledge. I don't mind giving away recipes. I just wonder why is it such a big deal to give away simple recipes. It's funny especially in Brunei, most chefs think they have 'secret recipes'. What alot of rubbish!. As Marco Pierre white said, *You can't have secret recipes unless you have secret ingredients. By taking that into heart, I thought, so what if they have secret recipes, There are millions of dishes to offer. Thats one funny thing about food industry in Brunei. People hardly tells thier 'secret recipes'. Maybe the market is too tight hmm... could be the reason too.

I still believe with dedication and no "hot hot chicken shit" (malay proverb for a person who talks alot but no actions) I can turn my gardener into making good desserts or pastas. Being a chef is big commitment. So dear Bruneian young chefs, dont expect too much respect,dont expect too many breaks, dont expect short working hours. Keep it going and try to produce quality stuffs and that what matters. what I like about being a chef is that the more mistakes you made the more you get to learn. If you think you have been commis chef far too long, fight your way up and venture into another world. Let's show to our people that Bruneian chef are as good as other foreign Chefs! haha.

here are more pictures...

Im addicted to it. Whelks. A dash of cayenne pepper and tabasco sauce and malt vinegar. Orgasmic! Expert says it has hugh in iron. It has sea smell and can be quite rubbery.

Oeuf a'la neige.[OUFS ah lah nehzh]; it's poached meringue. Served with custard and toffee syrup.
Squid linguine with lamb

Marinated Salmon fillet with honey and grain mustard. Pomme puree and beet dressing.

Apfel Streusal. It's German.

Random pictures from Mandarin Oriental

Fancy some 5 star selection of cheese?

Selection of cheese. Price at 60 Pounds. yeaaa I know.....

New on the menu. I think it's called Apricot delice. It has white chocolate mould with creme pat and crunchy candied nut inside.
Oriental mandarin Apple crumble with raspberry.

Sweet pastry sticks for garnishing cremme brulee.

Brioche fillings of creme pat, orange confit and pecan nuts

Energetic chef at work. Chef wilfrado
The Oriental Brioche

Petit fours. Fudge, raspberry jelly, flapjack, chocolate crunchy, macaroon, madeline, dacquoise, muffins, lemon meringue mini tart and nougat.
moulding a chocolate for gifts

Mise place for Carrot cake. I dont like grating carrot this much.

Preparing the tins

Carrot cake mixture.

wallah
Mini tart casing, Just Baked.

Some weekend activities at home...

I made some mashmallo together with chocolate brownie cake.

This was very nice I cooked at my aunts place. Boneless Rosemary chicken

Day 3

Hello Chef Cooper. I just thought you wanted to know how am I coping. So far it had been great and yesterday I had the chance to learn chocolate tempering. It was not easy. the interesting part was scrapping the temperature checking. Melt it to certain degree temperature and it must be accurate. We did white chocolate slabs for Raspberry milliefuille.

Fantastic! Chocolate tempering

Anyone want wants to become a Chef? You can start peeling the Apples!

I was making Apple Puree. Once cooked, I had to put in a muslin clothes to extract the excess liquid.

Doing my mise en place for Raspberry slab. This was the ingredient making the sponge layer. Whats so interesting about this was that we need to use Raspberry which had been dried and grinded which of course turned into powder.

The Raspberry Powder.

The Oriental Mandarin Hyde Park. It use to be called the Hyde park Hotel. Marco Pierre White got his 3rd michelin Star here.

Some of the afternoon tea desserts we prepared. Raspberry Milliefuille and Baileys Opera.

SCONES! Lots of fats! We made jam rom scratch. It can't go any fresher than that. I was disappointed when I found out Empire Hotel in Brunei uses manufactured Croisant and bread rolls.

This shot was taken from the Foliage with One michelin star to its name.

Cold Kitchen preparing Blueberry souffle' with basil puree, Blueberry jelly, Ice cream and fresh mint crisp.

Finally in London

this morning, the smell of London at 7.30 a.m. Walked up the underground stairs out to knightsbridge. Beautiful hotel sits right at the opposite... Mandarin Oriental Hyde park. Im lucky enough to be able to get my trainning here. Im glad the chefs are friendly. I was so excited but I guess i was a little bit off. I kept forgetting stuff. hopefully things will get better starting from tomorrow. I miss you love. teruk eh, I was not fit. I was quite behind and slow. Id do a comeback tomorrow.

pol'