31st Oct Weekend

We are back to routine this week. Both of us back to work and CL on night shift during the weekend. That also means I'm going to have a lot of free time during the day while he's catching up on his beauty sleep. What's my favourite way of spending the time other than trying new recipes cooking/baking.

I always want to try making Sausage Roll especially after I spotted a Pork, Veal and Pistachio Sausage Roll on my Bill Granger Holiday cookbook. With puff pastry in my freezer, a new pack of pistachio in my pantry, a pack of mince beef which I just bought on Saturday marketing; I guess sausage roll should be a good idea for CL's supper. Something different plus I can finally try the recipe.

Pistachio Sausage Roll

The sausage roll turn out really nice but could do with less spices. The recipe call for 2 teaspoons of cumin, 1 teaspoon of coriander for 1kg of meant. "800+g of mince beef" was in my brain when I'm mixing in the spices with the cooked onion. But I was wrong! I only had a 500+g of beef but there's no turing back :(. I prayed it will turn out alright. It did! CL says it taste a bit bitter but that can be easily solve by having them with sauce (chilli, ketchup etc).

I also made a No-Kead Bread. I came to know about No-Kead Bread more than a year ago thru food bloggers entries. I always wanted to try but I do not have a cast iron pot or anything which has a lid that is oven proof. After reading Sarah latest entry, it occur to me I can try it now! I spend 17hrs on the 1st proof and it look promising. When it comes to shaping, I'm totally lost and I suck at it. It's definitely a long wait from mixing the ingredients till taking the product out from the oven. But it's worth the wait.

My 1st No-Kead Bread crust is really hard but soft on the inside. Is that suppose to be? It didn't look as nice as Sarah's. I coated the bread with too much flour, will need to cut that down next time.

No Knead Bread

I will be trying this recipe out a few more time to improve on my bread making. Plus I'm trying to resist myself from baking cake because CL will only eat 1/4 at most and I ended up finishing them myself. As a result, I gained a lot of weight. =(

Time to try losing some weight now.

Traditional Hakka Dish

Both CL and me have Hakka background. My mum is a Hakka and his dad is a Hakka. Lei Cha the traditional Hakka dish is no stranger to us. Both our families cooked it since we were young. Especially during the 7th day of Chinese New Year, my granny will cook 7 different side dishes and invite all the neighbours, relatives and families over to eat it.

During my folks recent visit, Mum cooked Lei Cha for us as we miss it a lot.

Tea leaves, peanut, basil and sesame seeds are ground together into a paste using a pestle and mortar looking equipment instead of using a food processor. The paste is mix with hot water to serve as soup.

The mortar is actually a huge bowl with really rough surfaces on the inside and the pestle is a wooden stick made from a particular tree trunk. During grinding, tiny bits of tree trunk are mix in and that result a different soup taste from grinding the ingredient using a food processor.

I don't have the correct equipment therefore I decided to give the soup a miss. I don't think I will ever able to bring it into Melbourne as wood is not allow into Australia.

Back in Singapore, I love eating Lei Cha with puffed rice which we buy from Malaysia. The puff rice look just like rice bubbles. Grandpa's neighbour own a factory that makes it in Malacca. As we can't find puffed rice, Mum cooked garlic rice to go with the vegetable. Lots of garlic are mince, fried and mixed with raw rice before cooking.

As for side dishes, Mum cook

Choy Sum

Cabbage

Leek

String Beans

Bean Curd
Peanut
Dried Shrimp, Sweet Dried Radish and Basil

The way I eat it is scoop some garlic rice into my bowl, place a big spoonful of different vegetable plus bean curd and some dried shrimp, dried radish, basil and a handful of peanuts. MIX EVERYTHING together and it's ready to be dig in.

I cook it again last night and I spend 2 hours just washing and chopping up the vegetable. I know I'm slow. It's a very simple dish but too long preparation time required.

Ayame

CL found Ayama in The Age Good Food Guide 2008 which we had. We decided to give it a try and manage to reserve a table before we left the house. The place was pretty empty when we arrived. There was a table of 10 boys/guys and we were the 2nd table.

From memory the menu was not huge, craving for the night for us was sashimi. I was pretty determine to make sure I have space for dessert at end of the meal, therefore we decided to order a main size of mixture of sushi & sashimi, a main size of mixed tempura, a bowl of rice for CL to go with his tempura.

My initial impression was the restaurant was managed/owned by HK. But during the wait, we notice 1 of the guy from the table of 10 was chatting with the chef and waitress (guessing boss and wife) in Japanese. I'm definitely wrong about their origin....hell knows why I thought they are HK. Later part we found out that the guy was in fact making order for his mates! He's definitely a regular, able to order without looking at the menu at all.

We started the meal with a complimentary appetizer. It's really refreshing, crunchy, appetizing but can't figure out what actually it is. Answer we got for the waitress was POTATO. Half cooked potato maybe?

Next was Mixed Sushi & Sashimi. Nothing to shout about except their California roll. When I 1st saw it, I was disappointed that the roll was so badly done. It's not even totally sealed, not rolled tightly. But after the 1st bite, I know it was done on purpose! Their famous california roll is so crunchy!!!! The chef had placed loose tempura batter in as filling. Rolling the sushi too tightly will crash all the batter hence lose the crunch. It's such a brilliant idea using the loose tempura batter since it's going into the bin anyway.

As for this dish, we smelled it when it was served to the table next to us (10 boys/guys). CL made a enquiry on it and the waitress told us it's a cold dish. Beef was chilled and sliced and serve with salad. It's a popular dish and very nice. We decided to try and it's really amazing! Very beautifully presented, the dressing on the beef is different from the dressing on the salad which is hidden under the slices of beef. Although we find the salad dressing too saltish, we still like the dish.

Final dish was tempura. The serve was huge! All the vegetable ( sweet potato, carrot, eggplant...can't remember what else)tempura came in pair plus 3 giant prawn. It wasn't soaked with oil, nicely battered (not too thick).

As for dessert, choices was limited. We settled for Green Tea Ice Cream served with Sesame Cookies. It's a nice combination of two. The cookie is nice and covered with white and hint of black sesame seeds.
Does anyone has any idea where can I find such cookie????

Excuse : Folks came for visit

Sorry for the lack of blog post for the past 1 month......My folks were here for visit cum vacation. In fact I just got home after sending them to the airport after a slightly more than 3 weeks stay.

I have so much of catching up to do!!!!

A reminder to myself......back dated entry to be done

1> Ayame

2> Tutto Bene

3> Kangaroo Island Vacation

4> Traditional Hakka Dish

5> Spanish food at South Melbourne Market

6> Good Life in Adelaide

7> Rockpool - My advance birthday dinner

8> My Surprise Birthday Present from CL --- Most important!!!!

9> Homecook food by Dearest Mummy and Me =)

OMG.....starting to wonder how long that is going to take me.....hmmmmm

Golden Dragon Palace

Golden Dragon Palace Restaurant is one of our favourite chinese restaurant. It's not a budget restaurant but the food served is really delicious and service is good. It's near our place and no problem getting a car park. I had never blogged about this restaurant despite of being there quite a few time now. That's partly because I always tends to forget having my camera with me.

They also served Yum Cha daily starting from late morning to late afternoon. I had bought my guests from Singapore (parents, my best friend) for Yum Cha and all of them enjoyed it a lot.

Last month, after a long day at work we decided to pamper ourselves. Spend some time together and have a good meal. Golden Dragon Palace Restaurant immediately came to our mind because we knew it will not disappoint us.

We started the meal with San Choy Bow (chicken). Loved the sweet sauce which comes with it and pines nuts which is used to garnish the dish.

CL had his usual Hot and Sour Seafood Soup.

Another of our favourite dish is their Peking Duck. The wrap is soft, duck is meaty and with together with the sauce it's one of the best Peking Duck dish we had in Melbourne so far.

Stir fry chicken, duck, prawn with cream& egg. This dish is under the chef recommendation section on the menu. We had tried quite a few dishes under the chef recommendation and it always impressed us. Same for this dish. It has a very unique taste, not traditional chinese food style.

Yong Tau Fu (Bean Curd stuff with Seafood paste). Although this is a very ordinary dish, they manage to do it really nice. The seafood paste is firm, not saltish and it didn't get separated with the bean curd when we use our chopstick to pick it up. We didn't manage to finish all the dishes so we had half of it take away for lunch the next day.

As for dessert, we had red bean soup which is complementary. Red bean soup is a dessert which I don't really eat but I actually loved this a lot. I always end my meal at Golden Dragon Palace with this regardless how full my tummy is.

Mei Cai Kou Rou (Pork with Preserved Vegetable)

The 1st dish I cook with my newly purchase 27cm Oval French Oven is Mei Cai Kou Rou (Pork with Preserved Vegetable). It's a Hakka dish which I learned from mummy and I haven't cook it for quite some time.

The size is just right. I'm amazed that the content doesn't get overflow when boiling even with the lid fully closed!

Last night, I cook a pot of Korean style beef soup with my 20cm black French Oven. Opps I didn't manage to take any photos. I will try to remember next time. :)

Dinner tonight will be grilling some thinly sliced beef and pork purchased from Suzuran with the square skillet. Yummm.....can't wait!

Le Creuset

The title says it all! I just own a Le Creuset cookware.

Not one, not two but three pieces!!!!!

The plan before we left the house to Doncaster Westfield was to search for the best bargain on a Le Creuset skillet grill. I never expect to find it at DJ + a 50% discount! I'm definitely getting it.

As DJ having promotion on all Le Creuset cookware range for 30-50% discount. CL decided to let me buy more since I have being "eyeing" it for so long.



After some discussion especially on what size to buy, what color, what shape etc. We finally came to a decision.


A blue 27cm Oval French Ovens, a black 20cm French Ovens and a 26cm square skillet grill.