I always find lunch the easiest to challenge myself, to try something new. Breakfast is usually hurried, and I’m usually not very hungry in the morning, so I stick to old favorites that will spur up my appetite and refresh me for the day. Snacks are usually the stuff I’d like to have for every meal (oatmeal, sweet potatoes, etc) but are restricted to only snacktimes for the sake of variety. And dinner…I’m usually too tired by the evening, and lack motivation to get adventurous in the kitchen. So that leaves lunch as the meal in which I try to step out of my routine foods and try something new and have fun in the kitchen at the same time.

These days, I’m trying to add different protein sources into my diet besides eggs. The thing is, because I only started cooking at the start of my ED, I seldom had any experience cooking meats and stuff because at that time I was shunning most animal products (too much fat and calories!) But now that I am trying to recover from ED and normalize my relationship with food, I’ve decided to slowly incorporate different protein sources.

Yesterday’s choice was pork. I had been eyeing the pork section of my local supermarket for a while, but had not had the guts to purchase it until now, just telling myself, “Someday…” But then yesterday I finally decided it was time and that I was going to put that “someday” into action.

I didn’t have any recipe to start out with, but imperiously decided to just rely on my own culinary common sense to cook it. I decided on my favorite marinade again, the one I used to marinate my mushrooms and onions here: soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, sake, ginger and garlic, pepper. I marinated the pork tenderloin in this mixture with some mushrooms and onions for about an hour.

Then I pan-seared it both sides on a skillet over high heat, then popped the whole thing into a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 7-8 minutes. Here’s the result:

It smelled really really good! The marinade really soaked into the meat and made it extremely flavorful. Unfortunately, the meat was rather tough! I think I probably left it in the oven for too long. Maybe next time I’ll just skip the whole oven thing altogether. Thankfully, the tried-and-true delicious marinade saved this otherwise mediocre piece of pork into something quite delicious.

I had this pork tenderloin adorned with a piece of fried egg. Honestly, what better garnish is there than a perfect runny fried or poached egg?

I also had some raw carrots and cucumbers on the side. Altogether:

I should probably have checked out some pork recipes before attempting to cook one, but was still pretty pleased with how it turned out. I still have a bit of pork left, and am brainstorming for my next porky meal. Anyone have any good and easy pork recipes?

I had lunch today out with Liwen, Wengang, and Kristine, my dear friend from Penang. We went to Sakae Sushi restaurant, a popular Japanese chain restaurant in Southeast Asia, at the Changi Airport.

I just love Japanese cuisine. I never appreciated it much back in the U.S because most Japanese restaurants only offered the same old sushi and sashimi. But the Japanese restaurants here in Singapore have so much more options!

Anyway for starters we had some steamed edamame…

And two different types of sushi:

I ate only one piece of sushi, the one on the right wrapped with fried bean curd skin, because I have an aversion towards white rice. Truthfully, I really did not want to eat it, but didn’t want to dampen the atmosphere by refusing it (since everyone there is well aware of my ED). Ack, I hate being pressured to eat something…

For the main meal I ordered two a la cartes…The first one was saba yaki (fried mackerel):

This was a pretty large piece! And so freaking delicious! It came piping hot and still sort of sizzling in front of me. I dug into it with greedy chopsticks, and found the skin to be perfectly crispy, and the flesh delightfully flaky and juicy. I’m not going to lie: I was freaked out by the obscene amount of oil swimming out of it! Mackerel itself it an extremely oily fish…so did they have to bath it in oil to cook it? But I pushed these ED fears aside and still managed to finished every scrap of it.

I also had a Sakae chawanmushi (steamed egg custard with mushroom and fish cakes):

Haha, you didn’t think I’d have a meal without some kind of egg included, did you?

It’s crazy that America doesn’t have this outstanding dish in their Japanese restaurants! Or at least, not the ones around my area. But this is seriously my most favorite Japanese dish. It is so smooth, so flavorful, so rich and fun to eat! You just dig into the soft savory custard with a tiny spoon and slurp it down, and find little treasures (mushrooms, fish cakes, crabmeat, chicken, etc) hidden inside the custard!

Hmm…It seems like I’ve been having Japanese cuisine each time I eat out! Which is weird because I never really used to like Japanese food that much. Which is your favorite cuisine and why?

Oh, and quick product review today:

I had a few squares of this last night (HUGE ED fear= chocolate so yay me!). The Lindt Excellence dark chocolate, chili flavor. Interesting, no? I was expecting something really exotic, but it just tasted like the basic dark chocolate…with a faint spicy kick at the end. I was really proud of myself for challenging myself with chocolate…but chocolate-fanatics are gonna be flabbergasted with me because I found out I don’t really enjoy chocolate that much after all! But at least I gave it a chance again…

Have a great weekend, everybody~

Related posts:

1. Penang Recap
2. Smiled down by the Japanese cuisine gods
3. Porky for dessert
4. Dine out fresh, dine in leftovers
5. Sushi on a Pizza

Tagged as: chawanmushi, chocolate, eating disorder, eggs, fear food, fish, Japanese, pork, product review