These past few days have been gut-wrenchingly hot; I feel like the heat has sucked all the water and life out of me. To rehydrate, I made peach sherbet, recipe courtesy of Fethiye from Yogurt Land, which is so simple to make you don’t need any culinary skills whatsoever. (Are you listening, K??) I’m serious, it’s just blending and freezing! Surely, you can do that?

Summertime Peach Sherbet
(Makes one tub)

• 1 can (825 g.) of peaches (I used canned peaches but you can basically use any type of fruits.)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 Tbsp. orange juice or lime juice
• mint for garnish (optional)

Mix the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil to make syrup. Let it cool. If you use canned fruits, you can alternatively use the syrup from the can although the taste might be more diluted.

Spoon only the peaches into a food processor, add the orange juice or lime juice and the syrup. Blend until it becomes a smooth purée.

Pour the fruit purée into a container or a tub and freeze overnight or until it has frozen thoroughly.

To serve, scoop out a few scoops and garnish with mint.

See how easy it is? Just four quick steps! And step four isn’t even a real step! Now you can enjoy your own sherbet all year round! (Am I beginning to sound like Martha Stewart yet? At least I didn’t say, “And don’t forget to watch The Apprentice with Martha Stewart!”)

Categories: Recipes
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It’s the hottest month of the year in Thailand right now and as I was strolling through the supermarket, I spotted pumpkins. Golden yellow pumpkins, sitting innocently on the shelf. I used to hate pumpkins as a kid. I didn’t like liver, bell peppers, or eggplants either. Isn’t it weird how my dislike for these foods transformed into fondness over the years? So when I saw those pretty pumpkins staring up at me, what did I do? I got the crazy urge to have hearty pumpkin soup. Hot soup, right in the middle of summer! What’s a girl to do but to give in to her temptations? So the nice golden pumpkin came home with me and by that evening, was turned into a deliciously creamy soup!

This would’ve been a better recipe for winter time but as Thailand has no real winter, I suppose hot soup doesn’t seem out of place even in the summer. It will be a perfect dish for little J, who’s probably very lonely and cold during the winter days in Aussieland.

Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup
(Makes one big pot)

• 1 kg. pumpkin
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 3 tsp. garlic olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 4 cups vegetable stock
• 200 ml. cream
• 1 large onion
• a pinch of paprika powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 180°C. Peel the pumpkins and cut into bite-sized pieces.

In a baking dish, coat the pumpkins with the garlic olive oil and place unpeeled garlic cloves on top. Bake until pumpkins soften, about 30 minutes. Remove the garlic cloves and peel them. Set aside.

Finely chop the onion. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat and add the chopped onions. Brown them slightly and season with salt and pepper.

Add the roasted pumpkins to the pot. Pour in the vegetable stock and season with the nutmeg and ground cinnamon. Let it simmer on low heat for another 30 minutes.

Blend the pumpkin mixture with the garlic in a food processor in batches until it forms a smooth purée. Transfer the purée back into the pot.

Add the cream to the soup and simmer on medium low heat for 10 minutes.

Ladle the soup into a bowl and sprinkle with a pinch of paprika before serving.

I used golden pumpkins for this recipe so the soup came out yellowish instead of orange. The roasted pumpkins and onions gave out a natural sweetness, and the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg was so inviting and comforting I wish I could’ve shared them with you. (Well, I could if you decide to make this soup.)

Categories: Recipes
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I remember vividly one particular birthday present I received from my parents when I was a kid. I woke up on my birthday to find a big Sylvanian doll house, complete with furniture and accessories for the Sylvanian families. Oh, how I loved that house…it was my most prized treasure and I was attached to that toy set for years!

Sylvanians at Play: One of the Sylvanian doll houses on display.

Imagine how I felt when I discovered The Sylvanian at Central World Plaza. The inner child in me begged M to take me there everytime we walked past the store but the answer was always “No, it’s for kids”. (What’s wrong with that anyway? I still go to Toys “R” Us, as do my friends. I bet secretly you do too!)

My wish was finally granted when I went to have a long lunch at The Sylvanian with AB. I was giddy with excitement as soon as I entered the restaurant/toy shop. Rows and rows of doll houses were on display along with characters from the Sylvanian families. The restaurant was spacious, with play areas for children and a little internet corner. The beige-colored chairs and the white walls with light blue swirls made me feel like I stepped into a Sylvanian playhouse.

There were lots of mouthwatering items on the menu and they’ve even got cute names for the dishes. After surveying all the listed dishes, we settled on Picnic Roll and Corn Crunch for appetizers. It took us a long time to decide on a main dish, but the Classic Beef Burger was a must. We then opted for the Citrus Chicken in the end (it was between Citrus Chicken, Sunrise Chicken, and Herlequin Pork Roast) but decided to share our main course.

The Picnic Roll (120 baht) looked like Vietnamese spring rolls (the fresh ones, not the fried ones) but this rice paper was stuffed with small chunks of avocado, ham, cucumber, carrots, and crabstick. It came with a sweet ponzu sauce and although the sauce smelled heavenly, it was a bit of a letdown because I could taste the beginnings of staleness start to creep in.

Corn Crunch (120 baht) is The Sylvanian’s version of nachos but as it goes with many restaurants in Thailand, they use deep-fried roti instead of tortillas. How it can be called nachos without tortillas and melted cheese is beyond me, but I should’ve foreseen this. Instead, the word “nachos” and “salsa” just jumped out at me and the Thai interpretation of nachos just slipped my mind. This “nacho” came with three dipping sauces – the tomato salsa as promised, a sour cream dip loaded with crabstick, cheese, and cucumber, and an assortment of dried shrimp, little barbecued pork cubes, chopped shallots, and peanuts. The salsa and the sour cream dip I can understand, but the assorted dried ingredients are usually eaten with the Thai miang kum. So I guess this really was meant to be nachos à la Thai. The sour cream dip actually tasted pretty good although the salsa was a flop and the roti excessively oily.

The appetizers alone made me want to forget the main dish altogether but then the Classic Beef Burger (140 baht) came and even though the cheese wasn’t oozing out of the burger like I expected, it didn’t taste half as bad. In fact, I liked it the best among all the dishes, including dessert. This double decker cheeseburger came with crispy bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, gherkin, and red onion. Instead of ketchup, the burger was drizzled in Thousand Island sauce and as soon as I took a bite, it dripped with hamburger juices. Yum!

The Citrus Chicken (180 baht) was the last dish to arrive. Since it prevailed over the other chicken dish and the Herlequin Pork, we expected it to be scrumptiously delicious. The grilled chicken came smothered in orange sauce and gravy, with side vegetables of cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, asparagus, and tomatoes. So how did we like our winning chicken dish? AB said it, “…tastes like marmalade” and I thought the grilled chicken was too dry, the sauce did taste like marmalade; I liked that there were a lot of vegetables, but this was definitely NOT a winner, as we had presumed.

We were stuffed after eating all that but AB suggested we get dessert “over with”, since we were already comfortably seated. Don’t we just sound like two lazy couch potatoes…at least we only ordered one Sylvanian Banana Boat (115 baht) to share. I’m still not sure what the difference between this banana boat and the banana split is. I think it’s the two strawberry-flavored Pocky sticks and the Oreos sandwiched in between the ice creams that made it a “boat” instead of a “split”. At any rate, we quickly consumed the whole thing and agreed that two hours  was way too long to be sitting there listening to Old MacDonald and his farm animals “moo-ing”, “oink-ing”, and “cluck-ing”.

The Sylvanian
Central World Plaza
6th Floor, Central Court
Ratchadamri Road, Pathumwan
Bangkok, Thailand 10330
Tel: 02-613-1666-7
Open: daily 10:30am-9:30pm

Categories: Restaurant Review
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