Olympus C 820 L Camedia Digital Camera

Cleaning and clearing my apartment has its advantages apart from chucking old and redundant stuff out of the household; today I found my very first, digital camera again. Thought I lost that beast permanently and like from nowhere, it surfaced again in its full glory, in working condition!

While living and working in Manila, the Philippines back in 1997 I brought the camera in Hong Kong for close to US$ 1000! that time. With 810’000 pixels maximum it was the latest digital camera on the market.

Great memories those pictures, pre-opening of the Peninsula Hotel Bangkok, heard ship in opening the hotel and the parties in Bkk town. We had such a blast! Bangkok, a misterious and wonderful city, the city of angels as they say but I have not found mine, yet.

My team during the pre-opening

Deep concentration!

I am very pleased to appear in a super foodblog like WhiteJacket in Singapore by Chef, Blogger and Gourmand extraordinaire Benjamin. Please visit his excellent Blog and read his wonderful stories!

click here for  WhiteJacket

This week I had to do a product shooting for S who had a project of Thai food presented in a modern way. Now, Thai food has a long history, not much had changed over the years and certainly not presentation. (We are very lucky for that) However since Thai food has become so much popular around the world a few individuals have tried to fuse Thai cuisine with other cuisines like French, Italian, Spanish and even Japanese. More often these fusions are a complete failure since all these cuisines have their distinctive flavors and methods of cooking. Perhaps the only way to fuse other cuisines with Thai I can think of is in the presentation; Thai served like Tapas or small individual courses, Keiseki style.

Tom yum is characterized by its distinct hot and sour flavors, with fragrant herbs generously used. The basic broth is made of stock and fresh ingredients such as lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lime juice, fish sauce and crushed chili peppers.

In Thailand, tom yum is usually made with prawns (tom yum goong), chicken (tom yum gai), fish (tom yum pla), or mixed seafood (tom yum talay or tom yum po taek) and mushrooms – usually straw or oyster mushrooms. The soup is often topped with generous sprinkling of fresh chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves. In Laos, tom yum is typically made with fish or chicken, but freshwater prawns are also available.