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Dragon Year

2012-01-26T15:13:00.001+11:00

Today is the 4th day of Chinese New Year. For those who didn't know, it actually goes on for 15 days. 15 days of celebration with food, food, food and more food!

I did a count for Mr. and this year his 8th consecutive Chinese New Year away from his family. Not too bad for me but this year I missed home a lot. Why? A sign of getting old??

Pineapple Tarts
I also managed to get more organised and made some Chinese New Year goodies and cooked a few dishes for Reunion Dinner. Finally had more than a week break during Christmas period and I started making my 1st batch of Pineapple Tarts using the late Mrs Leong's recipe.

Pineapple tarts is a must for me every Chinese New Year. Without fail I will make sure to make some for self consumption. Mr. love them. It's not hard to make but just very time consuming especially on the jam. I always cooked the jam the day before and fridge it before used.

Me granting fresh pineapple using a very antique tool which I bought back to Melbourne during my most recent trip home. Not too sure is it available in SG as it's from Malacca. Super handy tool and made granting a lot easier and fast! I used to had this process but not anymore :D

1st batch of pineapple tarts consist of 6 medium size pineapples and managed to end up with more than 140 of tarts. I shared most of it with friends and keeping about 30 tarts for self consumption.

I did a 2nd batch the weekend before Chinese New Year again for some friends which missed out on the 1st batch and more for self consumption. This time round, I used Little Teochew's recipe for the base.

In comparison, Mrs Leong's base is firmer not as sweet while Miss Teochew is more "melt in your mouth" texture. Both are as good and really depends on individual preference.

Kueh Bangkit
I tried my hand making Kueh Bangkit. I love them and haven't had them for years! Totally clueless who to make it, I went to late Mrs Leong cookbook for help again. I was having doubt how it will result. But never expect it will turn out to be hard as a rock...LOL

Me frying the flour for Kueh Bangkit. Did I fry it long enough? Maybe not. But I definitely made a mess. Flour all over the floor, stove and onto me. Dough was too wet and I ran out of flour. :((((
In the end, I left the mixture in the fridge. Fried more flour and continue the next day. Guess that's definitely a no-no :(((((

Kueh Bangkit which I bought in KL. I would love a wooden mould but doubt I will be able to hid it from the strict Australia customs. Not going to even try.

Raw Kueh Bangkit. It took me quite a while to get the hang of using the mould. The dough kept getting stuck.

Freshly cooked Kueh Bangkit. Nice color, smell really yummy but too hard to even bite into...LOL
Definitely going to try them again. I'm not going to give up on them but not too sure when I will succeed.

Peanut Cookies
I made these just before Chinese New Year. @eiin was very kind to share her mum's recipe and I can't resist not to give it a go. Although it's really fast and easy to make, I still went lazy and used pre-grounded peanut which I had in the pantry. One thing for sure, I will toast and ground my own peanut next time. I strongly believe it will improve the taste and smell.

Reunion Dinner
We invited some friends to have reunion dinner together.

Yu-Sang from Red Hot Wok. This was really yummy. When we first saw how big serve this dish was, we were all afraid half of it not only to be eaten. But we all surprised ourselves because more than 90% actually went into our tummy.

For dinner, we had Yu-Sang, Prawn in Spicy Pineapple Gravy, Roast Duck and Soy Sauce Chicken, Mushroom with Broccoli and Vegetarian Fried Vermicelli. Missing on the table was Chicken Herbal Soup.

I cooked 4 dishes in total and I think I managed well. Started cooking Chicken Herbal Soup the day before and let it continue to cook in my trustable thermal pot. Took me less than 20mins to fried up the Vegetarian Vermicelli. Pounded the rempah for Chilli Prawn the day before and cooked the dish just before starting dinner. As Mushroom with Broccoli, the mushroom was braised in Chicken Soup and some seasoning a few days before and freeze till dinner day.

After dinner and all dishes done, another round of food started. This time round dessert: Bubur Cha Cha, Agar Agar and of course Pineapple Tarts and Peanut Cookies.

How did you spend your Chinese New Year?

New Year Day Dinner : Chicken Rice

2012-01-05T15:58:00.002+11:00

What did you have on the 1st day on 2012?
I had Chicken Rice which I cooked and made up the recipe according to my knowledge for this dish. I was surprised how the dish turned out. I cooked the rice, poached the chicken and the only store bought condiment was chili sauce. Initially wanted to serve the cucumber achar which I made few weeks ago but I already had sliced some fresh cucumber therefore gave up the idea.

When Cherrie saw the photo I posted on Instagram, she was very keen on trying and asked for the recipe. That triggered me of jotting it down on the blog, why not? I hadn't done it before. I had others asking how I cook particular dish and sharing it with others is good. Agree? So here it is.
Ingredient (for 2 big eaters)

Meat
- 2 Maryland
- Spring Onions, I used 3
- Ginger, about 5cm
- Garlic, 2 cloves unpeeled
- Salt, big pinch
Rice
- White Rice, 1.5 cup
- Ginger, 3cm diced ( I didn't finely diced them to make it easier for Mr. to remove them if he wants)
- Garlic, 2 cloves finely diced
- Chicken Fat
- Chicken Stock

Steps

While cleaning the chicken, remove the big chunks of fats and place it aside. Do not throw it away as it will be used to cook the rice later.

To poached chicken :
Boil a pot of water and add all the meat ingredients except the chicken. Add the chicken only after it start to boil. Turned off the fire after 10mins and leave the chicken in the hot pot. That will keep the chicken warm while rice is cooking.

To cooked rice :
With a non-stick pan on low fire, pan fry the chicken fat. This is to "squeeze" out the fat to become oil. Fat pieces will look dehydrated when all the oil get extracted. Remove the fat pieces and throw them away.
Used the freshly extracted chicken oil and fry ginger and garlic till fragrant. Then add rice and mixed everything together. Continue frying for a few minutes till all oil absored by the rice.
Transfer the rice to the rice cooker and add it chicken stock. Chicken stock used is the water that's used to poached the chicken.

Before serving, mixed some soy sauce together with sesame oil and poured it onto the cooked chicken.

Now I just need to learn how to make my own Chicken Rice Chili Sauce and it will be perfect!

Hope my instruction was clear enough :-)
If there's any way to improve it, let me know!

Still Korean if it’s not BBQ??

2011-12-02T13:13:00.001+11:00

Z popped into town for a very short trip. Date and time was fixed for a catch up but not the venue. We left the decision to J as he seems to be very adventurous recently, eating round the whole Victoria. City? Suburb? Singapore/Malasysian? Malaymas? Straits Café? Finally Trang was decided after back and fro a few messages on watsapp. Not of us has being to Trang except for J but all are up for a try.

We rocked up earlier than scheduled. Z noticed Trang doesn't have any exhaust fan hanging above their table and commented "Don't think we'll have BBQ". Told Z it's pretty common for Korean restaurant not to provide the fan even though it offers DIY BBQ. Being to 1 very recently along Chinatown and swear never to return again. This particular Korean restaurant used gas stove and hot plate for BBQ instead of coal. In the end, food was cooked soaking in animal fats instead of being dripped/drained off. Us being attacked by the splattered hot oil while dining. Not a very pleasant experience.

I was very glad that I don't have to go thru that here at Trang because they only served cooked food. Looks like they specialised in stews which I'm not really exposed yet. We left the hardest job to J which was deciding what to order. All 5 of us do not have any dietary requirements which definitely made the job a lot easier.

We started off with Korean fish pancake. It was tasty and big chunks of fish can be found. Felt it was slightly oily but without oil, how to make the skin crispy?

Kimchi soup arrived next, how can we not have it when having Korean? It wasn't too spicy with big cubes of tofu, kimchi. Think there's also meat, slices of pork maybe (can't really remember, was too busy chit chatting instead). We ordered another as there wasn't enough to go around.

Beef ribs stew was recommended from the staff. It's a very different stew from the rest as its sweet stew and not spicy. It was very sweet! A bit too sweet for me but the rest enjoyed it. It's a dish which is different, full of beef ribs and potato. I only had a sip of the soup to try. Beside the sweetness, it was the overpower beef taste/smell which I can't tolerate.

We also had a big pot of Korean style curry chicken? No idea what's its called on the menu but all of us felt it taste very similar to Singapore/Malaysia curry chicken but less spicy and with mushrooms, spring onions but without coconut. The chicken was very tender and falls off the bone.

Every single dish except pancake contains Korean noodle,hanja. Is it a must on stews?

It looks like a very popular dining place for the Korean. Although the place is small, it was fully packed when we left and with a queue outside the restaurant. Almost all table had a gas stove with a big pot of stew on the table and every customer had a bowl of rice in hand.

Sushi Train Fail

2011-11-27T16:06:00.001+11:00

Weather was hot and warm and I was too lazy to cook on a monday evening. Both of us were craving for something cold for dinner and sushi pop out of Mr. mouth. I like the idea too but where??? Majority of the Japanese restaurant closed on Mon, am I safe to say that? Some on both Sun and Mon. Can't complain much because they need their break too. Can only blame ourselves why we always crave on Japanese food on either Sun or Mon??

I came across Edomae few months ago while I was there for my hair cut. I saw the sushi train and did note the restaurant to give it a try next time. Suggested to Mr. since it's near as well. We did read the reviews on urbanspoon but still decided to give it a try even though it was bad. Never taste never know right?

We were the 4th couple when arrived. There wasn't a lot of different variety of sushi on the train. In fact quite a few dishes were all deep fried food.

Started off with Edamame which wasn't even lightly salted.

Next was spicy salmon roll. It was really spicy!!! I was suspecting whether the salmon was tinned salmon with chilli that are available in the supermarket. I made a wrong purchased before and it was too spicy to consume.

Don't really remember what type of fish this is. The fish was at room temperature and was kind of tasteless. Not fishy for sure but also doesn't taste fresh.

Unagi was very thinly sliced and rice was fully soaked with sauce. Rice roll breaks once we tried to pick it up with our chopstick. Rice roll was machine made and not handmade. Can't expect too much for the price.

Salmon was pretty tasteless again. Why?

Fried Ebi roll was done pretty well. Both of us was amazed as the few dishes before wasn't good.

Mr. ordered bubble tea which is green tea with milk. It tasted horrible! I tried it and told him to stop torturing himself. How did they manage to serve such a horrible drink??? Wonder if the waitress is attentive enough to sense something wrong when she clears the table. Doubt so!

Torched salmon sushi. Can smell the burned fish fat but why the hell dress the fish with mayonnaise? It spoiled the dish totally!

Mini roe sushi. I was amazed how skinny the sushi turn out.

Mr. ordered a fried pork cutlet curry bento. It was one of the better dishes we had throughout the whole dinner. The cutlet was crispy and curry wasn't too sweet.

Suggest to go for their deep fried menu if you are dining there. Don't expect too much from their service because it sucks! The waitress practically just dump the bento box and throw the spoon to us when serving. Definitely won't be going back again.

2011 Birthday Present

2011-11-27T14:38:00.001+11:00

On the eve of my birthday, I was chatting with my Sis, nephew and niece through Facetime. The kids made me a Lego birthday cake and sang me birthday song. It made me really homesick. I made me drop a few tears but I got back to normal pretty quickly as well. That's something I have to constantly adjust and get use to. Can't have everything in the world. I gain some and lose some.

Enough of all the emotion, back to happy event. Past midnight, I was still chatting with Sis and Mr. suggested I better start hunting for my present. Last year, he hid my present as well and it only took me less than a minute. That was because I knew what he was planning. Accidentally spotted him on KA website. This time round I was total clueless, I was shocked! In fact I spend 2 minutes repeating this question " You really bought me something? When did you have the time to sneak a trip to the shop?". When I finally believed him, I didn't know where to start. Although the current house is not extremely big but there's 3 rooms plus quite a bit of storage cabinets. Most important, I don't know what I'm looking for! How big or small is the present???

The kids got involved started giving me suggestion and asking where am I etc. It did take me a while as I'm expecting a small gift. Don't ask me why but that was the 6th sense at that moment. But I was wrong. The gift was huge and heavy! Definitely something from Matchbox when I spotted the wrapping style.

Same wrapping paper and ribbon as last year.

Kids were both excited when present was found and kept shouting for me to open it up quickly as they were curious too.

Did you manage to guess it right? It's a KA food processor. A kitchen appliance which being missing from my kitchen counter .

It was definitely a surprise. How did Mr. know I wanted one? I had never mention to him before. In fact I was still trying to come up enough reason to convince myself that I need one.

While admiring my new toy, Mr. again suggested to start searching for present #2. This time round I spend even more time reassuring that wasn't something he made up to give me a good work out before bedtime.

It was a lot harder to hunt for present #2. Again without knowing what I'm searching and already looked at all the highly possible areas, I hadn't left with much choices. I almost wanted to give up but Mr. said if I can't find it, it will go back to the shop :( No idea how true but I chose to believe it. Sister who was still online was helping by suggesting areas to look even though she had never being to my place before.

Finally I found present #2 hidden among all the unfolded packing boxes we had in the study room.

It's a Pasta Press attachment for my KA stand mixer!

Mr. know I being eyeing on a pasta machine and decided to buy this when he came across it at the shops. I was shocked how expensive it was when I surfed KA website the next day. Well I can't really scold him for spending so much right? Lucky it's only once a year. :P

Yesterday I finally had the time to study, learn and play with my 2 new toys. It took me awhile trying to figure out the food processor. It has a total of 3 bowls and 2 blades. A large working bowl which matches the big blade. A 4-cup small bowl which matches the small blade. What about the medium bowl? The mini blade is too small and the large blade is too big. After reading the manual at least twice, I finally figure out that the medium bowl is require only when using the shredding disc.

I made a batch of pasta. Using the food processor to make the pasta dough and the pasta press to make the pasta. I only play with 1 pasta disc out of the 6 which came with it. Felt I had too little dough to play with all. I wasn't feeling very confident too and had a Plan B as backup if I needed to.

It didn't take me long to feed all the dough thru the pasta press.

I didn't end up with lots of pasta as well. Just enough for dinner for 2 and Mr. night supper. It tasted alright but both of us felt the pasta was a bit too thick. Not too sure because of the type or because the dough. Need to have more play to find the answer.

I didn't follow the basic pasta recipe from KA manual book. Came across another recipe while I was researching on the pasta press before playing and decided to try that instead. Plus it was a smaller volume recipe. I tweaked it further by using just egg yolk instead of whole egg.

Egg Pasta Recipe
1 1/2 cups Italian '00' flour (original called for all purpose flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt
100g egg yolks (original asked for 2 eggs)
1 tablespoon oil
Enough water to mixed into a dough (original didn't state water but mine seem too dry)

Red Wine Chocolate Cake, Rotweinkuchen

2011-11-21T20:36:00.001+11:00

Chocolate and red wine, combining both my favourite sinful snack and alcohol together I know it will be silly of me to give this a miss when I saw it on Sarah's blog few weeks ago!

iPad with Sarah's recipe on the benchtop.

As my birthday falls on a Saturday and I decided to bring in a cake on Friday to share with my lovely colleagues. I bet they won't say no to a slice of red wine chocolate cake for morning tea. It's also a good chance to start the "rule" back in the office. The birthday gal or boy has to bring a cake to work for morning tea. But we kind of stopped after shifted to the new office location. Felt it's a good excuse to allow all of us to mingle around and chit chat.

Before I left to attend my weekly exercise session, I had all ingredients measured and laid on the beach top to bring down to room temperature. I did tweak the recipe slightly as I didn't have any vanilla sugar in the pantry. I never buy them therefore I substituted with vanilla extract.

Cake mixture in my newly bought bundt cake tin. It only cost me $20 from Wheel and Barrow at Doncaster Westfield. Just found out from the website that it cost double the price. Definitely a steal.

It was my 1st time using a bundt tin and was afraid I will have problem getting the cake out after baked. So I greased the tin with butter and coco powder instead of flour. White flour don't match with chocolate cake. That also explain the different colour tone on the cake surface. I was very glad that I didn't go lazy on that step because the cake just popped out straight as I over turn the cake tin.

I went all the way and glazed the cake. But I sucks at glazing :(
I didn't add enough icing sugar to the glaze, the mixture was too thin. Glaze just flow thru the cake and dripped onto the plate below. In the end, I kept scooping the glaze from the plate and spread across the cake trying to cover every single area.

Cross section of the cake. Can't really see the glaze. But it definitely didn't spoilt the taste and texture of the cake. Everybody loves it! Some just felt in love when I told them it's a red wine chocolate cake without even tasting it. M loved the crust of the surface, not sure what cause the slightly crunchy crust. The cake tin or glaze or combination of both? Some commented how moist the cake was.

This is definitely a keeper and a winner!!!

Some of my colleagues are already scratching their head what to bring on their coming birthday....hehe

Braised Pork in Soy Sauce Bun - 扣肉包

2011-11-13T20:17:00.001+11:00

Braised Pork in Soy Sauce,扣肉 is one of many Mr's favourite dish. Every time Mr is back in Singapore, Mummy will definitely cooks this dish for him. When I found the recipe in the late Mrs Leong Yee Soon cookbook, I was happy and determined to give the recipe a try.

Bought a few cookbooks from Kinokuniya during our stay in Singapore. Because our baggage was so over-weighted. I hand carried all of them home to Melbourne. Am I crazy or what? Bought the whole collection (box of 6) of Mrs Leong cookbook.

Bought a beautiful piece of pork belly from Victoria market few weeks ago. Just perfect for this dish.I started cooking the night before having the dish. I tried sticking to the recipe as close as possible to accurately test the recipe.

Following it step by step. Pounding garlic and shallots as finely as possible.

After slow cooking on the stove for more than 2 hours.

The next day after cooled.

The instruction didn't state to sliced the pork and continue to cook in the sauce again but I did it as that's what Mummy always does. Letting the pork to soak in more of the amazing gravy. As I had left the dish over night to cool, a pretty thick layer of oil had formed and harden. I couldn't help to scrap and dump it away. I'm just trying to be more healthy :P

Sliced pork ready to be place back into the pot of gravy. I continue to let it cook for at least another hour since I need to get busy with the bun.

As for the bun, I started mixing the ingredient and let the dough raise 1st thing in the morning. But it wasn't looking good after proofing for 2 hours. It doesn't seem to have raise double in size. In fact I don't think it had raised at all. :( I was disappointed. No idea what went wrong but I always don't have much luck when it has to deal with yeast.

That didn't stop me from continuing the next step which was splitting the big dough into hen egg size and roll them flat before brushing some oil and fold it into 2. After steaming for 15-20 minutes, it looked pretty good for a 1st timer if I may say so myself.

Hot steamed handmade bun

The final product

Separate the bun, place a slice of pork in between and drizzle a bit of gravy on top of the meat. All ready to be enjoy :)

I'm very happy with the flavour of the pork. Initially I was afraid the end product will be too salty as the recipe required a few tablespoons of dark soy sauce. Although it's dark soy and not light soy, there's still quite a bit of saltiness in it. I also did add a tablespoon of dark caramel sauce to sweeten the pork. This recipe is definitely a keeper and most important Mr loved it.

Dead Man Espresso

2011-11-06T11:56:00.001+11:00

It had being a few hectic weeks since we got back from our long vacation, getting back into the routine. It wasn't hard to be back to work mood as both of us were flooded with job to be done. We didn't even managed to get our 1st weekend off to catch up with Melbourne breakfast and most importantly coffee which we missed so much! Mr. shift was scheduled on the weekend while I was allocated to help out in another project as my colleague was away.

But we did manage to check out Dead Man Espresso the week after :)

Planned was to meet up with R and L for breakky, catch up with all the gossip and envy them with our vacation stories. I had a few cafes in mind but I left R to chose. The breakky menu attracted R. To avoid the crowd and as R was required to work that night, early breakky was decided.

Dead Man Espresso at 9am on Saturday morning.

Soy cappuccino + cafe menu

Mr. normal cappuccino

The coffee was alright. Felt it was a bit too milky but pretty good considering we haven't had any decent coffee for almost 8 weeks! L had a chai latte to start with but felt it was a bit too weak.

Rosti - herb and potato rosti with poached egg, avocado and smoked salmon (choice of between salmon or bacon)

It wasn't easy to decide what to order. I want almost everything listed in the menu. Finally decided on rosti. Rosti was crunchy and full of herb but sadly too salty for my liking.

BLT - pork belly and spinach puree on brioche with gazpacho

Mr. BLT was very fatty, rich but very nice! Pork belly was soft with lots of fats. There goes dieting.

Looking back at the picture, realised the serving wasn't big. I could easily fit in another toast. But all 4 of us liked what was ordered and served.

p.s photos were taken using my iphone4. I totally forgot about my point to shoot camera.

Eat Like the Local

2011-10-01T13:22:00.000+10:00

I’m at the end of my Seychelles vacation sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to depart for Singapore. Although it’s my 2nd trip to Seychelles, I enjoyed my stay and learned. Unlike the 1st trip that was filled up with diving, we managed to tour Seychelles capital Victoria, and also the whole island.

I found a fresh food market in Victoria, Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market also known as Victoria Market. Market has always being my favourite place to visit when I’m travelling. When there’s fresh food, there must be cooked food around as well. Where else to hunt for the most authentic local food other than the fresh food market?

Selling salted fish. Got very tempted to get some but I didn't

Homemade chilli. Don't be fooled by the colour! It's extremely spicy!

Freshly caught fishes.

Along the stretch of street leading to the market is filled with shops. There are some small-scale provision shops that sell a tiny amount of cooked food, which are either deep-fried, or cakes and a few burger buns and pizza bread.

I tried an egg roll, which looks like a spring roll but filled with chunks of eggs and a bit of potato. The skin was pretty tough, took me a few minutes to chew it into pieces before swallowing.

I also tried a vegetable samosa. Though it was only filled with potato, it was tasty. Tasted very similar to curry puff in Singapore and the skin wasn’t as tough as the egg roll.

I also found a local take-away shop next to the market that we stopped and had an early lunch. It’s similar to Singapore economical rice which 1 can chose from the range of cooked food on display. We wanted to eat what the local eat and felt that’s the best way to understand their living culture. But we didn’t manage to follow them exactly. Talking to the locals, we found out they usually will take away rice or noodle plus one or two dishes. As for both of us, we went crazy and had 3 different dishes excluding rice/noodle. The lady who served me was a bit shocked. She replied the box is already full when I ordered the 3rd dish.
Fried Noodle
Fried Rice
Braised Pork Belly
Sweet and Sour Chicken
Fish
Vegetable with Beef
Soya Chicken
Vegetable with Pork
Chicken Wings

Mr. take away box had rice with curry chicken, braised pork belly and stir fried vegetable with chicken. Curry chicken was yummy and pork belly was soft and flavoursome.

As for mine, I had fried noodle with sweet and sour chicken, soya chicken drumstick and stir fried vegetable with chicken. Soya chicken was tasty and juicy. But the fried noodle was too saltish for my tastebud.

Lady also added some mixed salad into the box. There are a few salads for the customers to choose from.

Each lunch box costs $85 Rupees. Expensive? Absolutely not comparing the price we paying in restaurant and hotels. It’s only slightly more than $5 Euro each. It was the cheapest and most satisfying meal we had in Seychelles.

Pope Joan

2011-09-23T21:25:00.001+10:00

The weekend before we started our vacation, Mr. managed to schedule himself off work. Knowing we will be missing our caffeine, we decided to pamper ourselves with some good food before spending the rest of the day packing and cleaning the house.

We heard quite a bit about Pope Joan but had never managed to give it a try. That morning we started slightly later than planned, usually tends to start the day early to avoid weekend morning crowd and get a parking spot without much trouble. Silly us, didn't even know there's a "car-park" opposite the cafe for the patrons. It was only till halfway thru the meal that I saw the banner at the entrance of the car-park.

Cafe was pretty packed at the front when we arrived. Got a table for two outside under the shelter. Although weather was slightly cold, it wasn't a bad spot considering the area was fitted with heaters all around.

As usual, Mr started his meal with normal cappuccino and mine on soy cappuccino. Coffee was a pretty big serve and above average. But won't loved it to be more fragrant.

Roasted Pork Sandwich Cuban Style

Mr. had a sandwich and it was yummy. The herbs used was strong but not overpowering. Descent serve of meat which wasn't dry. He was hoping to squeeze in a scone after that but was too full to fit in any.

Beaten Egg: Baked Egg with Smoked Onion, Beetroot and Chard

I wanted something different/not my usual and picked the beaten egg. I was surprised how sweet this dish was. Guessing it's the sweetness from both the beetroot and onion. It's nice to go with the toast that came with the dish.

There were also some sweets on display available and I was hoping maybe I could ordered 1 and share with Mr. But sadly we were both too full from our individual meal.

Salted Caramel Macaron

But we did manage to take-away a macaron for later. The filling wasn't hard and tough. Shell wasn't too crunchy. But felt the caramel wasn't saltish enough. The filling was creamy and buttery. Comparing the macaron with some of the others available in Melbourne, it's consider small and pricy. But the appearance attracted us and it's 1 of our favourite flavour that's why decided to try it. Looking at the number of macarons displayed on the plate, think there a limited number of macaron per day.

Does Wee-Bix used to come in mental container???

Chicken Rice or Pad Thai?

2011-09-23T00:41:00.002+10:00

Who would expect Chicken Rice to be served during breakfast? I wouldn’t!

While holidaying in Maldives staying in Anantara Kihavah Resort, not only can we find chicken rice in the breakky menu. There’s Char Siew (Sweet BBQ pork), Roast Duck, Roast Pork, Pad Thai, Char Kwai Teow and many more to chose from.

We haven’t being travelling a lot but this is the most extensive breakfast menu we ever came across. After 4 breakkys, I can say I didn’t manage to try every single dish and I looked forward to breakky daily.

I will let the photos to do most of the talking in this post, as I always believe photo says a thousand words.

Our 1^stround of breakky on the 2^nd day by the beach.

Other than the basictea or coffee, there are also 3 different juices to choose: Watermelon, Orangeor Pineapple.

Can’t resist placingthis photo. It’s so cute to find a teapot in clothing. Wondering am I able to find it inMelbourne.

This is the roastingsection with Poached Chicken, Roast Duck, Roast Chicken, Roast Pork, Char Siewto choose from. It’s served with chicken fragrant rice. Mr. tried it in the 1^stmorning and felt missing component in the rice. Although a lot of herbs wereused, the taste was still far away from the authentic Hainanese Chicken Rice.The chilli was spicy but would be better with a bit more lime and garlic.

The Thai section serving freshly fried Pad Thai and Char Kwai Teow.

We tried both and theywere both really delicious. We could taste the wok hei on the Pad Thai andvegetables weren’t over cooked. The stock used in Char Kwai Teow Noodle Soup was full of flavour. Vegetablewas quickly stir fried and added into the noodle soup.

In the same area,which I forgot to take a photo, is also the egg section. Sunny side up,scramble egg, omelette ect can all be cooked upon order. Baked beans, hash brown, bacon, sausagecan also be found by the side.

This is the Spreadsection. All types of spread for toast can be found on this table.

3 different types ofbread to chose for toast. This is 1 of the section which I didn’t touch on atall throughout the whole trip, knowing I can make up for it once I’m back inMelbourne.

Pancakes and Waffleswere freshly made in front of us too. We found the waffle smell really nice butend product wasn’t crispy enough. On our last day, we requested it to be cookeda bit longer. It was heaven with 100% maple syrup and sprinkle with almondflakes. It was crispy on the outside and still fluffy and soft on theinside. I love how deep the squaredent was, it’s able to hold on a lot of syrup. Chef made 2 waffles, 1 for Mr. andanother for me.

This is the NoodleSoup section, which the menu is change daily. Sadly I can only recall Fish BallNoodle Soup and Wanton Noodle Soup, don’t remember the other 2 mornings menu.

The Congeestation; same as the Noodle Soup section its change daily as well. ChickenCongee, Beef Congee, and Lamb Congee etc. Do find it strange to have chilliflakes as 1 of the condiment. Maybe they can add in spring onion?

This is the Cheesesection. All kinds and types of chesses are available.

There’s also a HUGEvariety of cured meat and fish which some taste too saltish for our liking butsome which we just felt in loved with.

There’s even a Saladsection with fresh mixed vegetable and freshly cut carrot, cucumber, capsicumand tomatoes etc. Different salad sauces and wide range of olive oil, avocadooil and balsamic vinegar to finish the DIY morning salad.

There’s also a widerange of nuts and dried fruits as condiment for cereal, porridge and mueslis.

Plain Yogurt, Yogurtwith fresh Plums and Yogurt with fresh Passionfruit to chose from.

Of course there’s awide selection of Maldives local breakfast/curries.

All the curries arechange daily as well. This is only 1 morning cooked food section.

Seafood Curry

Biryani Rice

Cauliflower and Potato Masala
Dhal Curry

Maldivian Fish Curry

Our favourite is Tuna and Coconut Sambal eaten with Roti. It’s actually tuna flakes mixed with a bit of coconut, chilli, shallots/onions and lime. It’s a bit spicy and sourish. It’s great with roti/chapatti. We 1^st had it while we were still diving on the boat. Being our must have breakky since day 1 in Maldives. I’m going to try recreating this dish when I’m back in Melbourne. Not sure how it will taste if I use canned tuna instead. Got to ask my colleague for help in making fresh roti/chapatti.

Finally, the Fruit section.

Fruit platter wasconstantly topped up and freshly cut.

Bet I ate my 1-yearworth of papaya, dragon fruit! I missed this two fruits so much. When I wascraving and couldn’t find any papaya on my last day at the resort. The stafftook the trouble to look in the kitchen, cut it up before bringing half apapaya to my table. Felt so <3!

Not always good food and good experience

2011-09-15T20:09:00.001+10:00

We are into the 4th week of our vacation and both me and Mr being eating non-stop everywhere we go. We usually tend find hawker food when we are in Singapore, as it's quite impossible to find authentic Singapore hawker food in Melbourne. Plus it's cheap and delicious.

We don't always ended up with nice food. As mention in one of my previous entry, we revisited one of the Japanese restaurant which we used to frequent. But we were so disappointed.

3 dishes that we ordered at Sushi Tei to start ,

Cha Soba, cold green tea soba - was served within 5 minutes after placing the order. Definitely pre-cooked and stored in the fridge. It was also over cooked.

Aburi Sushi Moriawase, halved boiled sushi assortment - sushi rice wasn't firm, breaks when picked using chopstick. The sushi assortment were just laid on top of the sushi rice without even using any wasabi. Sushi assortment wasn't fresh.

Tsukuba - Sushi slices wasn't fresh nor firm. It cost us S$54 excluding 10% service charge and 7% GST.

After we paid the bill, we took the escalator up to level 4 food court and ordered a plate of Fried Prawn Noodle. Tummy felt satisfying after that.

After the terrible restaurant experience, I wasn't very keen to give any other restaurant a try till few days ago when both of us went to Marina Bay Sand (MBS). It's one of the casino hotel in Singapore. It also contains quite a few fine dining restaurant including the very well known Waku Gin which by Tetsuyu.

After making enquiry and flipping thru the different restaurant menu, Mr decided to make a booking for dinner that evening at Hide Yamamoto. We were looking forward to dinner as we spend the afternoon shopping at MBS. Didn't dare to set to high expectation as well.

But it turned out to be terrible and we walk out of the restaurant even without having a drink!

When we 1st arrived, 1st impression was alright with all the staff greeting us as we enter. Drink and food menu was being shown to us upon seated.

Mr. was in the mood of a mocktail and me a cocktail, Lychee Mojito. A young guy was serving us and Mr. made an enquiry regarding mocktail as it wasn't in the menu. Noticing how the waiter couldn't understand what Mr. was asking and noticing he was asking us questions in Mandarin. I decided to make the enquiry using mandarin.

Both of us do speak and understand mandarin but when it comes to food we are pretty clueless what's the exact name for most of the food names and ingredients used. As the result, we are more comfortable using english.

The waiter came back to us after checking with the bartender but we couldn't understand what he meant. It's either his mandarin is too power or our understanding is too poor. Mr. gave up and decided to order a coke instead while I sticked to my cocktail. Order was repeated to him twice before requesting him to serve drink 1st while we decide what to eat.

He came back few minutes later and asked "lime?". I was totally confused and repeated our drink order again. This time round a colleague of his was nearby and asked what she can do to help.

Told her about our order and she started informing us cocktail wasn't available as they were in the mid of changing the menu. Something else wasn't available too which I don't remember and only sake and soft drink was available.

I wasn't happy. Told them to give us for a few more minutes. Once they left, both of us decided to walk out.

If they couldn't even get our drink order right, how could I expect them to serve me the correct food?
If the drinks wasn't available, why was it still on the menu? Why wasn't we informed when the menu was presented to us?
If the waiter can't speak English, why didn't he ask his colleague who knows, to serve us instead?
Is that the standard for a fine dining restaurant?

We did feedback to the MBS customer relation and hopefully they message get pass and the restaurant can improve the service standard.

Macarons seem to be popular in Singapore as well. We sees them everywhere we goes. Mr. was craving for one and bought a Hazelnut macaron from The Icing Room. It was BAD. The shell was hard as a rock and tasteless except sweet and more sweet. Only took a bite and dump the rest into the bin without delay.

SEA Restaurant at Anatara Kihavah, Maldives

2011-09-11T16:29:00.000+10:00

Underwater aquarium isn't a unfamiliar place for majority of us. But what about underwater restaurant?

Anatara Kihavah Resort, Maldives offer a very unique dining experience; dining with fishes. This is the newest resort in Baa Atoll and was chosen as our charging base after spending a week on MV Orion diving.

3 restaurants and a bar are located side by side. Salt which serve Asian style food, Fire for Japanese and of course Sea. Lastly Sky bar which we frequent for pre-dinner drink.

Both of us were constantly looking out for the restaurant but didn't manage to find it till the dinner night. The entrance was allocated inside Salt. We could see the building structure before we proceeded in.

Booking is required as it's a very small restaurant. It accommodate 16 guests per night and max 18 guests if in a group. For our dinner night, it was full housed but the night before there were only 1 couple. Everybody must had chosen the BBQ buffet at Plates including us.

Sea offers both lunch and dinner. Lunch is a set lobster theme menu and dinner a 4-course menu with wine pairing. We went for the later even though Mr. doesn't drink all for the name of experience.

Gorgeous gorgeous restaurant!

A different feel and view during the day. Lighting was definitely better and a clearer view on the reefs, corals and fishes. This was taken the next day after lunch service as we were curious how the reef and restaurant will look during the day.

We were welcomed by the crew, follow by welcome champagne and appetiser. Mr. took a sip and loved it. I enjoyed it too. Too bad I didn't manage to remember the name. I don't exactly recall how the appetiser taste as I was a bit overwhelmed by the restaurant setting and collection of wine on display.

The table setting with my welcome drink on the extreme right.

Bread served warm was light and fluffy. Couldn't get enough of it.

4 course dinner is make up of 2 appetiser, 1 main and 1 dessert. Each course, there's 2 dishes to chose from. We were advised to chose alternate dishes so that we can try every single dish.

1st appetiser

Medallion of local lobster, fresh basil with fennel and citrus salad - lobster was not overcooked as it's still tender. Slight bitterness in the fennel salad.

Palm heart tartar with yellow fin tuna and salmon caviar - black pepper coating the tuna were too coarse. Granted ginger can be tasted in the mashed palm heart. Felt it was a over peppery and spicy dish. Can't taste the freshest of the tuna at all.

2nd appetiser

Pappardelle with foie gras and black truffle - Mr. loved the pan-fried foie gras. The pasta was al dente. But did find quite a bit of oil left in the bowl after finishing. 1 of the better dish for the night.

Risotto with morel mushrooms, duck confit with parmesan wafer - We didn't even realised there's duck in this dish till I'm writing this entry. Flavour is there but the rice is mushy. The rice looked too long for arborio rice. Did question and feedback to the waiter when asked. We were told guests complained the rice were not cooked when it was al dente. Sound like recipe was tweaked to please majority?

Garlic crusted coral reef fish, roasted baby artichokes, chef's garden cherry tomato pesto - fish was cooked perfectly. It was still very moist but I wasn't a big fan on the pesto and artichokes. Pesto tasted from bottle.

Oven roasted tenderlion of Black Angus, celeriac puree, marinated radicchio with aged balsamic reduction - Mr. loved his steak medium rare and tried requesting as it's usually served medium. Waiter informed us he will check with the chef but never get back to us. Lucky the beef was still tender and juicy. Mr. doesn't like the balsamic "mixed" in puree but I quite enjoyed it.

Tiramisu "al Cucchiaio" - Best dish for the night. Tiramisu was very light. Coffee flavour ice cream was nice. There wasn't a strong dose of coffee in the Tiramisu though. But do able to taste a hint of liquor. Both of us were fighting for the last spoonful.

Amarene chiffon pie with cherry and almond ice cream - Mr. enjoyed the ice cream more than me. Felt the almond was too strong for my taste bud. The pie was average which I ate most of it.

We were both pretty impressed how both desserts were plated. Both were executed beautifully with the used of sugar art.

As I know very little about wine except of drinking it, I decided to not include them. Do drop me a note if you are curious and I can add them it.

Table was spaced near to each other and restaurant do get a bit too noisy when full. When one was wondering what's the name of the fish accompanying the dinner, he/she can find it in the book provided titled Maldives Reef Fishes. Service was good, little details were being put into consideration. The only disappointment was the food even though fine ingredients were used. For the price, maybe go for lunch instead for experience?

With or Without Soy

2011-09-07T16:54:00.002+10:00

Shira Nui has being our top few favourite japanese restaurant especially for sushi and sashimi. We had introduced a few close friends including my parents whom all loved the food served.

Few weeks ago we made a booking for Omakase style sushi. Our 1st Omakase sushi experience had being very memorable. Both missed it terribly.

Did notice changed in crew, new sou chef working side by side with the head chef (should be the owner), a new waiting staff as well. Service was still friendly, fast and efficient.

To totally enjoyed the dining and not felt being hurried, we booked the 8pm sitting.

Complimentary deep fried fish served with pickle was served as a appetiser.

We were the 1st couple to arrived and start but the last to finish dining. In total each of us had 14 pairs + 1 sushi. That's a total of 58 pieces of sushi for 2 person. A lot? I actually ate the exact same amount as Mr. The amount of rice used on per sushi was very tiny, that was my excuse :p

All the comments below was made depending on my memory as no notes were taken. Apologised for not being able to recall every single pair.

Lightly pan-fried Salmon seasoned with Shichimi tagarashi sushi . One side is "cooked" and the other totally raw.

Lightly blowtorched Mackerel with minced ginger. A bit fishy but the ginger helped.

Beef sushi never failed to satisfy my taste bud. One of Daddy's favourite!

Fatty tuna belly which is full of GOOD OIL.

As the chef served the sushi, he will informed the diners to have it with soy or without. Guess it's still up to individual whether to follow or not.

Fresh and creamy Uni sushi. Was told the uni was from Tasmania.

Some white fish (kingfish?) which was pre-marinated.

Grilled Oyster with Japanese Mayo. Would prefer it with less mayo but I still enjoyed it.

Tuna with slightly spicy chilli sauce. Interesting taste.

Tuna tartare. We were lucky to be the only couple who tried it.

Lightly blowtorched salmon belly.

Eel with Roe. Loved how the roe popped in my mouth.

Tuna mixed with Uni and blowtorched. Creamy, fatty with a unique taste.

Complimentary fruitty sobet for palate cleansing

Comparing the photos taken previously, there's a slight change in menu. Guess different fish in season during different months. Different ingredients available daily. That's a good sign meaning chef do take into consideration what's the best available.

Risotto Fever

2011-09-06T17:28:00.000+10:00

Both Mr. and I wasn't very adventurous in food when we were back in SG. Lack of time due to work. Lack of money due to pathetic pay. Lack of choices. For special occasion or felt like pampering ourselves after all the hard work was Sushi Tei. We did recently revisit Sushi Tei during our vacation in SG but was so disappointed with the food that we ended up in food court for 2nd dinner. More on that on a later post.

Mr. felt in love with risotto and introduced me when I came to Melbourne. I felt in love with it too. I even learned how to prepare and cooked it. Getting there but still can't compare to restaurant.

Tutto Bene is our favourite risotto place after I discovered thru Sarah's blog. But we haven't being back for ages when there are so many places to try in Melbourne. 1st visit was in 2007 and 2nd visit 2009. We must had visited more more but can't recall. But did notice the menu doesn't change much at all.

We did manage to get a table on a Saturday evening without any booking which was rather surprising as we were turned away in the past. Maybe because of the court case created by the ex-chef? It didn't stop us unless the food standard drops. Did feel the service need to be improved.

To satisfy our craving for risotto. We ordered 3 main risotto to share between both of us. 2 Classici (classic) and 1 Di Pesce (seafood).

Funghi misti - Mixed wild mushroom, Parmigiano and aromatic herbs
Fragrant and creamy.

Risi e bisi - Fresh peas, pancetta, shallots and Parmigino
It's full of pea flavour but taste delicious. Those who doesn't like pea might want to miss it.

Granchio con pomodoro e peperoncino - Blue swimmer crab with tomato and chilli
Slightly spicy, fresh and can taste the sea.

All 3 risotto tasted different. Guess was they used different types of stock depending on the ingredients used. Different cheese as well?

Dessert special for the day - Tiramisu
It was light, coffee and liquor mixture was well balanced and lady finger was soaked with just the right amount of liquid.

Hmmm when will be our next visit? No idea especially I just found a great place that serve squid ink risotto.

A Awful Breakfast Experience to start the Vacation

2011-08-27T09:19:00.004+10:00

Seated near Gate 16 while waiting to board A380 to start of my vacation. Decided it was a good time to write about the horrible breakfast we just had at Café Vue.

Mr. had checked their opening hours a few days before to make sure we were able to had our daily dose of caffeine before we were up in the air. As many know, there wasn’t much choice in Melbourne Airport. Café Vue might be the best choice as they served breakfast as well.

“Café Vue” was lighted in pink neon light; all passengers proceeding to the individual gates will not miss it. There were only 2 staffs when we walked in at 0715. A waitress on the floor and a male barista. Not a good sign as the crowd was starting to build.

I was in the mid of walking up to the counter to make my order when I saw the menu and grabbed two. The waitress did manage to get around taking our order with an expressionless face.

Mr. ordered an Atlantic Egg Benedict while I chosen Corn Fritter with 2 coffees and a glass of juice.

Both breakfast were served together followed by our coffee. I wasn’t impressed with the corn fritter on 1^st look. It looked like hash brown with very crispy skin and overdone. We also noticed both plates were stained, oil and water marks all over the plates.

When Mr. cut into his poached eggs, both yolks were way overdone! The buns were cold. His coffee was not even lukewarm and it tasted horrible! He says the coffee was way worst than what it’s served in hospital (worst than hospital food). He only had 1 sip and pushed it aside.

The avocado that came with the corn fritter was too sour. I can taste a bit of herb in the corn fritter (fennel/cumin) but I can’t taste the sweetness of the corn. Fitter was very crispy but also dry and oily. Did the chef deep-fried the corn fritter as a to re-heat? My soy cappuccino was so-so and with a ugly presentation.

The best out of all was in fact the freshly squeezed orange juice. What a great way to start a long day ahead of us.

I’ll be catching a few flights during this vacation; writing might be the best method to pass time also to pen down this vacation experience.

2nd Chance?

2011-08-22T22:42:00.001+10:00

Kumo Izakaya is the latest addition to Melbourne Food and Beverage industry. It was only 2 weeks old when I popped on a Tuesday night. The building looks amazing and it stands out among all others along the street. The restaurant decoration in both interior and exterior looks very polish and grand. The designer cover every single detail regardless how tiny it is.

I like the tableware and it's available for purchase at the restaurant. It doesn't come cheap. Wonder will they feel the pinch when their staff breaks them? Or the staff have to pay for the damage?

We arrived 30 minutes early than expected but that wasn't a problem as it was pretty empty. Got seated and served really quickly. Up to this point, the impression I had was good. But sadly it stop there.

Might be due to large number of serving staff available that evening, we were being questioned every 2 minutes whether were we ready to make some order. The over attentiveness being to irritate us.

Mr. was driving plus he doesn't drink therefore ordered a mocktail : Elderflower Cloud - Elderflower Syrup, Peach Bitters, Mint and Basil topped with Ginger Beer

The rest, we shared a bottle of Sake - Kizakura Nigori. It's very sweet but smooth. I like it.

To start, we ordered 6 dishes to share. Was advised that we might to double every dish as each potion was catered for 2. Lucky we sticked to our order.

Wagyu Beef Tataki with Tosazu
Beef tasted very average without much marbling and soaked with light teriyaki sauce. The attention to detail was poor, execution was lazy because it tasted like a very commonly prepared dish which can be done by anyone. It shouldn't command a premium price.

Seared Scallops with Butter and Soy topped with Bonito Flakes
The scallops were cold, bland and tasteless. It doesn't taste like what it claim to taste.

Sashimi Jo-moriawase Premium Chef's Selection (26)
Another disappointing dish with the half of the scallops wasn't fresh, tasting weird. In fact other than the scampi sashimi, all the rest of the sashimi wasn't fresh at all. This dish cost us $50!

King Prawn Fry Wrapped in Potato with Green Tea Salt
The potato was very crispy but the prawn was overcooked. It wasn't fresh, dried and had a fridge smell. It was frozen prawn that they used?

Assorted Kushimori Chicken Skin, Thigh and Breast Skewers
The chicken skin wasn't crispy. It tasted like it was boiled and then very lightly grilled. It wasn't pleasant to eat. The breast was way overcooked, very dried and tasteless. Even for the thigh, it was dried.

Housemade Black Sesame Tofu Tempura
The skin was very crispy but the black sesame tofu tasted weird. It wasn't smooth and with a slight hint of black sesame. Another disappointing dish.

To save the night, Golden Field was picked to continue with our night dinner. Before we left, we had to spend 5 minutes trying to grab any staff attention to get the bill.

Other than the drink, there wasn't a single dish we enjoyed. It was definitely over priced! Will I give it a 2nd chance 6 months later? Seriously no idea especially with so many restaurant out there to pick.

p.s. we did feedback about the food. he looked surprised by our feedback. maybe it was his 1st time receiving negative feedback?

Diving in Sipadan 2010

2011-08-17T22:31:00.000+10:00

I know this is a food blog but diving is another passion of mine therefore decided to shar it here.

I finally got around to upload some videos taken during our vacation last year. Found them while clearing the memory card for our upcoming trip. As some of you might know. Mr. and me are both active divers. Mr. never fail to plan our annual vacation revolving around diving.

Last year, we managed to dive in Sipadan, Mauritius and Seychelles. Very soon we are departing for our 2011 diving trip. This time round I will try to blog as we travel. No idea how well I'm going to cope :P

School of Jacks

Turtle

Both video recorded on 15th Sept 2010 by Mr.

Izakaya Den

2011-08-02T20:41:00.101+10:00

Our dining experience at Izakaya Den started with flying colours but ended unpleasantly. Continue reading if you like to find out why.

As we were attending a farewell drinking session later in the evening, we decided to grab dinner in the city before. We were counting on our luck as we didn't have any reservation made at.

1st pick was Izakaya Den as it had being on Mr. edible wishlist for quite awhile now. Mr. roughly know where it's situated. We knew it's underground and kinda of hidden but we still couldn't find it at 1st. We went onto google map using our iphone and realised we were actually standing right in front of the entrance. Oh man do I felt stupid :-/

There was already a line formed when we got to the restaurant. Was informed there will be about 20 minutes wait and was offered clean towel for refreshment and menu.

Menu was rolled up and bounded using colour rubber band. I mistaken the longer roll for food menu but it was actually drink menu.

As Mr. doesn't drink, he ordered Nettai Nippon - passionfruit, fresh lime, basil,shiso,dash tobasco. It was very refreshing with initial taste of strong basil and ending with tobasco. It also had a bit of crunch from the passionfruit seeds.

I started with Onoya no Kabosu - Kabosu is japanese citric fruit like yuzu, sweet and aromatic. It was very smooth, tasted both sweet and sour. In fact it doesn't taste alcoholic at all.

We were seated at the bar, in front of the grilling section. Bar section on the left and hot food section on the right. It was a good spot, I always loved to watched the chef going thru the docket and prepare the food. I could even see the bartender prepare every single drink order.

Sweet Corn Kaki-age
It was served with green tea salt? But do go easy on it. This dish was flavorsome enough to just had it by itself. It was filled with lots of sweet plump corn. It was deep fried till very crunchy but not oily.

Char Siu
I enjoyed this dish a lot more than Mr. He felt there was too much honey in this dish. But the pork slices were cooked till very soft and practically melts in the mouth.

Kingfish Sashimi
Mr. felt it was a very refreshing dish but I felt the dressing was too sour. It was a waste to cover the sweetness of the good fresh fish with so much citric.

Fried Black Rice
Although it was a very simple dish made up of a bit of oil, small serve of black rice, egg and a pinch of salt and pepper as we observed the chef frying every single plate. It was also a dish that surprised both of us. I like the individually separated gains of rice and the bite of it.

Wagyu Porterhouse served with pickled cauliflower
I loved the cauliflower. It was crunchy, fresh, sweet and sour.

This was a piece of meat! But can I complain that it was too small? It was 1st grilled and finished off in the oven wrapped in foiled.

Barramundi Fillet with Hajikami
It was grilled very nicely and juicy.

The chef in-charged of the grilling section was very attentative regardless whether was it beef or fish fillet or whole fish head or vegetable. She gave them all the same care and attention. I loved watching her cooking with love.

Up to this point, we both were happier with the food we ordered, the service but all went down hill from here. As we both still had tummy space to fill. We ordered two more dishes waited for more than 30 minutes and nothing in sigh. The kitchen had definitely slowed down as most of the guests were either all done with their meal or had most of their ordered dishes in front of them.

We began to feel puzzled and wondered whether did the waitress missed our order as she seemed very busy just now. We had a check with the waitress whether had the chef began preparing our dish but she only came back to us after 5 minutes and said we will need to wait for another 5-10 minutes if we still want the dish.

I wasn't very happy at that point because the table next to us placed their order after ours and they had all their 5 dishes served before us. How did that work? I suspected that the waitress didn't punch in our order into the system until we checked with her. But she still gave us excuse that the kitchen was busy which wasn't what we saw.

Mussels
Nothing special and felt the mussel wasn't fresh. The mussel wasn't fat instead it was pretty small.

Marinated Scallops
Presentation was pretty but that's about it. Scallops was a bit dry. I wasn't sure were the scallops cooked. The lotus roots were crunchy. But the whole dish was pretty bland.

Black Sesame Brulee
Lucky the dessert didn't disappoint us. There was a thin layer of burned sugar and strong flavor or black sesame. It was still soft and not over baked.

We were very disappointed with the last two dishes but lucky the grilled dishes made up for it. Did it live up to my expectation? I don't think so or because I read about them too much and had too high hopes?

Duchess of Spotswood

2011-07-10T18:06:00.000+10:00

Duchess of Spotswood was chosen for this weekend breakky venture. We had never being to Spotswood but there wasn't a slight hesitation to wake up early, follow by a 45mins drive across the city to get there.

There were already quite a handful of reviews available on Urbanspoon. My personal favourite food blogger, Sarah was one of them who wrote it beginning of the year. I know I can trust her :-)

As the opening hours was not listed on Urbanspoon, I resorted to twitter to check what's is was for the weekend. Whoever was maintaining the twitter account impressed me. It was answered within 20mins.

In order to avoid the peak human traffic, we reached Duchess of Spotswood at 9am on a sunny Saturday morning. There wasn't a queue yet which was a good sign to us meaning we don't have to wait. But there's wasn't many seats available inside the cafe. In the end, we shared the communal table which a group of grannies and grandpas.

We were offered menu, water and coffee once we settled down. Decision time while waiting for the coffee.

Both our coffee was served lukewarm. I would loved it to be served hotter. It wasn't strong nor very fragrant but it had a a very nice after taste which was lingering in the mouth after every slip.

I chosen Breakfast of Champignons which consisted of Potato and Barley Hash with Field Mushrooms, English Stilton and Poached Eggs

Deconstructed Breakfast of Champignons

The poached egg were perfectly done. Mushroom were juicy. I, myself isn't a fan of English Stilton which was melted on top of 1 of the mushroom. It didn't bother me too much, I just scrapped it off and placed it aside. As for the hash, it was fried till very crispy on the outside. One can taste the barley but not a much as it looks like there's wasn't much barley used in it. Something starchy was used to bind both ingredients together. Felt a bit too much was used and can't taste the texture of the barley and potato. Towards the end was just sticky.

Mr. went for Duchess of Pork which was Crispy Pig's Jowl with Fried Egg, Rich Truffle Sauce and Sourdough Toast. This dish was our favourite. Egg yolks were still runny and Truffle sauce wasn't too overpowering. Pork was amazing, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. With just a fork, you are able to pull it into pieces and it melts in the mouth. It wasn't dry, fatty or oily.

For that piece of pork, we will definitely be back.

Kueh Dadar - Coconut stuffed Pandan Pancake Rolls

2011-07-08T21:51:00.000+10:00

I was craving for Kueh especially after reading Fatbooo's blogpost on making Ang Ku Kueh. AKK was 1 of the many food item which I definitely have when I'm in Singapore.

Due to limited ingredients in my pantry and time, it wasn't possible to make AKK last weekend. Took out all my Singapore/Malaysia cookbook and ended up with 2 choices. Oneh-oneh or Kueh Dadar. I left the decision making to Mr.

I did tweak the recipe because

I didn't have any fresh granted coconut but I had desiccated coconut which I need to finish and decided to improvise.
I didn't use Pandan Juice as I was lazy and felt it was a waste using 40 leaves for just 5 tablespoons of pandan juice. Plus fresh Pandan is not easily available nor cheap in Australia. Pandan essence was a good alternative.
I only had half the amount of desiccated coconut required for the full recipe. Therefore I halved the recipe. Recipe said 20 Kueh Dadar which will be too much for us to finish.
I also didn't have enough coconut milk so substituted with coconut flavour evaporative milk. Healthy option too :-)
Although I halved every ingredient, I totally forgotten to halve the amount of flour. I only realised when I was mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients for the pancake mixture.
In the end I had to add more evaporative milk to thin the mixture. I just went with my feeling and stop adding milk till the mixture was watery enough to make a thin slice of pancake.

To make Filling:

Ingredients (clockwise): Sugar and Salt, Coconut, Water, Pandan Leaves, Palm Sugar

Combined everything together and cooked till coconut absorbed all the liquid. Mine turned out to be dried. I blamed it on the desiccated coconut used.

To make Pancake:

Ingredients (clockwise): Sugar & Salt & Baking Powder, Egg, Pandan Essence, Coconut Milk, Flour

Combine all ingredients by whisking till batter smooth.

Spoon 3 tablespoon of batter into a pan and spread the batter into a think pancake. Transfer to a plate once cooked and repeat with the remaining batter.

This was taken on my 3rd pancake? It definitely wasn't pretty! I was having a bit of difficulties trying to make it as thin and even as possible. Practise makes perfect. Towards the end, I was getting the hang of it.

To assemble, lay the pancake, place 3 tablespoons of filling and roll, tucking in the sides (just like making springroll).

Took me about an hour from start to finish. Although it was dried due to the filling, it was flavoursome. It wasn't too sweet and fragrant with coconut and pandan.

I will try to make it again but must 1st get hold of fresh granted coconut and make sure I follow the recipe more closely.

Chez Dre

2011-07-05T21:52:00.001+10:00

It was planned to spend our weekend morning at Port Melbourne to run some errands. 1st thing in the morning, I popped into our local news agent to grab a copy of The Age Good Cafe Guide 2011 at $5 which was on special for the day only.

It was announced days ago that Chez Dre was awarded Best Bakery Cafe by The Age Good Cafe Guide 2011. Chez Dre also scored the highest - three cups according to the guide. As we had some time to spare before our appointment, Mr suggested to get a coffee from Chez Dre.

We were kinda of expecting a crowd as huge as St. Ali as it was already after 10am. But coffee ended up became full breakky as there wasn't a queue. We were seated in less than 5mins. While waiting for the waitress to organise the table, I went round taking some photos especially on their dessert display fridge.

5 different flavours of macarons were available before we left which we didn't get any. Tried Chez Dre's macarons before and wasn't impressed therefore decided to skip it.

4 flavours of Eclair available : Vanilla, Chocolate, Coffee and Salted Caramel.

We had a vanilla eclair and salted caramel take away. Can I suggest to improve the packaging for take away?? The eclairs were placed on a very soft cardboard acting as the base and covered with a clear plastic bag. Surely they can afford to pack them in a more solid box? At least easier for customer to handle them while walking thru the crowded market.

At a price of $7.50 for a eclair, I do find it expensive. Well, if it's good, it's worth it. But to our disappointment, we didn't enjoy neither flavour. Salted Carmel was just buttery, can't taste the saltiness. Vanilla was slightly better but still no wow factor.

Andrea Reiss (Dre) in action that morning.

Mr. normal cappuccino looking very pretty!

My usual soy cappuccino.

The coffee was only above average. It wasn't too milky but it wasn't fragrant nor strong. We definitely enjoyed St. Ali coffee more.

I had the Stuffed Mushroom with Walnut and Spinach, Housemade beans and Herbed Crouton. I liked the crouton which was very crunchy and stuffed mushroom but sadly not the beans. There wasn't much flavour in the beans and I preferred my beans to more soggy, saucy and soft. But that's just me.

Mr. had Smoked Ham & Gruyere Cheese Grilled Sandwich Topped with Bechamel Sauce and a Fried Egg on Top. The combination of grilled cheese with the bread used was a match. Bread was crunchy and fragrant but the slice of ham was just too pathetic. Potato on the side was soft and full of herbs although not much can be seen.

Overall, breakky was good but wasn't fantastic. Price was quite reasonable.
Will we return? Doubt so as we still enjoy St. Ali when compared.

Cafe Vue at Heide

2011-07-04T23:53:00.000+10:00

How often does Melbourian wakes up on a weekend with a clear blue sunny sky in the mid of winter? We were lucky enough to have such weather on Saturday and decided to make full use of it by starting the day with breakky at Cafe Vue at Heide.

Heard so much about Cafe Vue but had never stepped into 1. Cafe Vue at Heide was chosen out of the 4 in Melbourne solely because of location. It was nearest to us and situated in a park. We could sit out and enjoy the sun after breakky.

At 1130 Cafe Vue was pretty packed, almost full in the dining area. We were seated at the alfresco area. 1st impression wasn't great to start with. After finally making our order, I went into the dining area to take a look. There was a fridge displaying the desserts - 10 different types of slices and tarts, also macarons.

While photo-taking, overheard a gentleman making a complain to the waitress at the counter. He spend 45mins waiting with nothing being served to his table. I can see he was pissed, who wouldn't?

Started to doubt whether was it a good choice picking this cafe. Any chance leaving the cafe with a empty tummy? Hmmmmm

We started taking note of the waiting time and after 20mins, they finally served us our coffee! They were both average coffee. Not too sure why it took them so bloody long. Hand roast and manual grinding the coffee beans? Coffee wasn't served with sugar as well. Mr. had to self-served himself at the coffee bench for sugar.

On the left, Mr. normal cappuccino and right my soy cappuccino.

Breakky was served after more than 30mins from making the order. The bonus was at least it arrived.

I ordered Scramble egg on Sourdough Toast with Wild Mushrooms. I seldom have scramble egg and wasn't sure what make a good scramble egg. But I kinda like this as it wasn't too creamy. As told there were 5 different types of mushrooms in this dish.

Mr. ordered a French Onion Soup with was BLAND! There wasn't any actual flavour in the soup. Can't even taste the stock if they actually used any.

Mr. also ordered Chicken and Porcini Mushroom Pie. The pie was filled with chicken, chicken and more chicken. Chicken pieces was a bit dried. I suspected chicken breast meat were used. There wasn't a single slice of porcini mushroom found. The potato and pea puree was surprisingly good.

Also had a Pear Tart to share. The tart base was crunchy but the filling was hard. I can taste almond in the filling.

We were fairly disappointed at this point by the service and the food. While Mr. was paying the bill, I was spending more time observing the macarons on display. They looked colourful with feets but different. Basic flavour and the only flavour that stand out was Bubblegum.

We decided to give it a try and got a Coconut with White Chocolate. Peeping in from the tiny holes on the shell, it looks empty in the middle. But I was wrong, it exceeded our expectation. It was both crunchy on the surface of the shell and chewy on the inside.

Still wondering how the coconut manage to stay white after it was baked in the oven. Anyone know the trick?

Will we return? Honestly, doubt so.

Red Cup Cafe

2011-06-21T10:47:00.000+10:00

Those who stay in Eastern suburb especially Doncaster, Doncaster East, Box Hill, Nunawading, Donvale will know it's pretty hard to find a decent cafe for breakky without venturing too far. I'm quite familiar with the area partly because my work office used to be along whitehorse road and presently staying that area.

When I 1st spotted Red Cup Cafe, I was pretty happy as it looked promising. A bright red vespa parked out at the front of the shop daily. I take that as a indication that's it's open for the day business.
I had never managed to step into the cafe and give it a try as I always ended up with Asian breakky as Box Hill had so much to offer. Finally last week, Mr. and me decided to have a go. Never try, never know attitude.

The cafe was pretty packed considering it was on a Friday morning. Mr. had his usual cappuccino and me soy cappuccino which I didn't remember to take any picture. Nothing special just a ordinary cup of coffee.

While deciding what to have, we both did notice the price of each dish was rather high. At least $16+ for a plate of breakfast from memory.

Mr had Mushroon, Feta with Onion Jam on Toast - Onion Jam made the dish very sweet which was nice. Mushroom was pretty well cooked, still juicy. Main star of this dish was definitely the jam.

I had Smoked Salmon with Spinach and Poached Egg on Crumpet - not sure what I was expecting but when I saw the dish, was kinda of disappointed. Charging $18+ for such a small serve. Lucky it had more than a slice of smoked salmon.

We were even more shocked when we paid the bill. Coffee cost us $4.20! $0.50 more for soy. $4.70 for a cup of coffee!!!! That's the most expensive coffee I had in Melbourne!!!! OMG. Spend almost $50 to give this cafe a chance but definitely not going back. Guess I'm to naive to think that it will be nice and reasonable by looking at the crowd. People who eat there must be pretty rich/desperate! I will either continue to stick to Asian breakky or do a bit of drive to nearby surburbs.

Where is the most expensive coffee you had? And how much was it?

Two Asian Kitchens by Adam Liaw

2011-06-17T13:14:00.000+10:00

I wasn't into Masterchef from the 1st season and never got suck into the 2nd either. Did watch a bit on the 3rd while having dinner for the past few weeks but can't say I enjoying it or not. Too much drama, too much crying. Let's just says it's a ok dinner table program for the moment.
I got very curious after all the fuss on twitter when Adam Liaw's 1st cookbook was out available on the shelves. I hadn't add any new addition cookbook onto my collection for quite a while and was keen to go thru the recipes in this cookbook. When I finally managed to find 1 in Big W, I bought it. It was the cheapest I can find at Doncaster Westfield. Plus we do love Singapore/Malaysia/Japan style food. Majority of our meals are Asian cuisine so do see myself using the recipes more than the rest of the cookbooks I owned. Maybe? Or just another excuses???

The 1st dish I tried was Fire Chicken (bul dak).

I did change the recipe slightly as my pantry didn't have some of the ingredients and I could find any nashi pear and was too late to try pop into a Oriental supermarket to get some nashi pear. I also tone down the spiciness just in case. The amount stated in the recipe seem to be too much for both of us to handle.

Differences in my version of Fire Chicken

I had some chicken drumstick in the freezer so decided to use them instead of whole chicken. Too lazy to chop the whole chicken up into pieces.
Ran out of sake (no idea how did that happen as I'm always well stocked). Never bought korean rice wine before so I substitute with japanese rice wine which I found in the pantry. What's the different? Honestly totally clueless.
I used korean corn syrup instead of honey/rice malt syrup/mul yut (korean malt syrup). Assuming this is a korean style dish can't go wrong substituting ingredients with korean stuff right?
To ensure the dish is not going to be too spicy, instead of using 3 tbsp of chilli powder, I used 2. Skipped the red birds eye chillies.
I do know korean like to use nashi pear for sweetness when marinating meat. I'm guessing nashi pear acts the same in this recipe. Since I can't find any, I replaced it with onion. Adam told me on twitter that apple should do the job as well. Why didn't that occur to me?? hmmmm.

This recipe is a keeper for me. Both of us enjoyed the dish. Reducing the amount of chilli into this dish was a smart call because this dish was still a bit too spicy to have it on it's own. But great having it with white rice.

2nd dish I tried was Seafood Char Kway Teow.

This time round, I sticked to the recipe especially on the sauce. Did use my own version of chicken stock. Stir-frying this dish using a cast iron wok brings so much wok-hei flavour to the dish. With my homemade chilli paste, it taste even better than some of the others sold in restaurant.

3rd dish I tried was Beef Rendang.

This dish was my contribution for the Adam Liaw Cookbook Feast which was orgainsed together with a few friends. Each of us was to pick a dish from the cookbook, prepared it and eat it together. Great idea especially able to test out a few recipes in 1 sitting.

Additional dishes we had for the night:

Black Hokkien Noodles
Nasi Lemak
Green Tea and Pea Corquettes.
Mango Pudding
Pearl Pudding
Nine Layer Cake (Kuih Lapis)

I'm not going to include the above mention dishes as I'm not the one who prepared it. Not sure did they stick to the recipe or not.

I did try to stick to the recipe on this dish as well. Might had added a bit too much turmeric for the base paste. As there's a few friends who can't take spicy food at all, I decreased the number of red birds-eye chillies from 6 to 4.

The beef was so soft and melts in the mouth after the long duration of cooking. It smells fantastic guessing because of coconut but it wasn't as flavoursome. Something was missing but I can't pinpoint what it was.

The 4th dish I tried till present was Black Belly.

I was suprised how simple and easy this dish was. Very nice caramelisation on the pork which I like.Mr. loved it too.

The 5th dish I tried was Gong Bao Chicken which I can't find a picture off!!! ARGH!!!
As usual, I decreased the amount of dried chillies but I will increase the amount of sichuan peppercorn next time I cook this dish. I prefered to have cashew nuts in my Gong Bao Chicken so I replace peanuts with cashew nuts. But as for the sauce, it was much taster than off the shelves bottles ones.

Just remembered, I also did the Chilli and Garlic Oil which I didn't take any picture. It was spicy and serving it together with my egg noddles.

I did make full use of this cookbook right?

En Izakaya

2011-06-13T00:07:00.001+10:00

It's a long weekend in Melbourne but Mr being working night shift since Friday.
"Let's head out for dinner tonight" was what he said when he got home this morning. He was planning to try out Melbourne new hot spot Chin Chin and in order to make sure we get a seat, he planned to arrive at 4pm even though it open at 5pm! But we didn't manage to leave home till 5pm due to some car issue. Got to change the plan last minute as it's pretty slim in getting a table straight without waiting.

As we aren't keen on steak as we had Culter & Co. lined up next weekend, decided to go for Japanese and started web surfing for a new spot to try. Came upon an article on Agenda "Top 5 for Japanese" and we picked En Izakaya partly it's not located in the city. Felt we had higher chance of getting a table and guess we were right.

When we arrived at 7pm, the place was less than half filled. But gradually it was fully packed as the night goes on. Did notice the crowd was made up of majority matured locals.

We started the dinner with Miso Soup with Tuna and Tofu. Didn't managed to take a reasonable picture of this dish. The tuna pieces were fresh and firm. Soup wasn't too saltish too.

Next was A selection of salmon sushi. The sushi was very well cooked and seasoned. It was sweet and not over sour. The seaweed was still crispy which also indicate it was freshly made and rice wasn't wet which prevent the seaweed from turning soggy.

We also ordered a bowl of rice each and were disappointed it wasn't short gain Japanese rice. Considering the price they charged, we felt it was pricy.

Braised free range Otway pork belly flavoured with soy, mirin & honey - then flamed
The gravy was really sweet, full of honey. But the meat was so soft and it just melts in the mouth. I did enjoy this dish considering I'm not really a pork person.

South Australian Coffin Bay oysters served natural and tempura battered

Very nicely executed, I can still taste the sea even though it was seasoned.

Nothing amazing but it didn't feel oily even though it was deep fried. Majority of the dish almost all came at the same time. Table even ran out of space to fit in all the last dish. We both were busy taking photos and tasting. By the time we had this dish, batter had gone a bit soggy.

Soba noodles marinated in a cold soy & mirin broth - with wasabi coated cucumber, zucchini & tomato. This is a dish perfect for summer as it's served cold and taste very refreshing. Wasabi wasn't strong, was totally opposite. I would loved stronger and more wasabi. Come summer, I will definitely try to re-create this dish in my own kitchen.

Queensland spanner crab omelette with shiitake and shimeji mushrooms
Omelette was nicely done, still slightly soggy on the inside with chunks of spanner crab meat and mushrooms hidden inside.

Thinly sliced grade 9+ wagyu beef blade flamed and served on wasabi coated silk tofu
This was the dish of the night. Wasabi was very lightly coated on the tofu. Wagyu beef was very thinly sliced, lightly seasoned and cooked. Beef was still soft and not chewy. The combination just works.

Our tummy could fit in more after all the above dishes and got the waitress recommended Seared momen tofu and miso infused eggplant oven baked as the final dish for the night.
The tofu was deep fried, crispy on the outside but silky soft on the inside. Did felt there was too much miso coated on the tofu. Egg plant was soft, creamy with the skin still intact.

They had two desserts for selection and we decided to order one each. There's always space for dessert + dessert is another compartment in the tummy.

Soy Panna Cotta with Red Bean
This was the preferred dessert out of the two. We were trying to figure out what was actually the white strip looking ingredient but was totally clueless! Did an enquiry and found out it was actually a kind of japanese vegetable like white radish. Not very sure it was the original taste or it was pickled. Panna Cotta was soft, Red Bean was sweet and Vegetable was slightly crunchy and sour. I actually enjoy it and finished more than half by myself.

Green Tea and Banana Ice Cream
Can't really taste the Green Tea as the Banana as overpowering. Still trying to figure is it banana essence or real whole banana was used in this dessert. But did taste slight sourness in between the banana so maybe lime as well?

Felt this was a more modern style of Japanese food. Not something which we usually go for as both of us preferred more traditional Japanese etc sashimi and sushi. But we still enjoy tonight dinner a lot.

Rockpool Revisit

2011-06-11T23:02:00.000+10:00

Our virgin dining experience at Rockpool happened 2 years ago and was lovely which I never get around to write about it. My folks were in town a month before my Big 3 and I decided to celebrate it early by bringing them to Rockpool. Daddy who don't usually eat steak enjoy it so much and Mr. just fell in love with David Blackmore full blood wagyu.

3 weeks ago, we celebrated Mr. birthday at Rockpool and he finally got his hand on his favourite steak. This dinner was planned and reservation made months ago. All 3 of us being looking forward to it for the whole week. We even started studying the menu online.

We started the dinner with Sourdough Bread which I love. Love it even more when it's serve warm. I could easily eat a few more slices but got to leave more space for all the good food coming up.

Since there were 3 of us, we ordered 3 Entrees. 1 Pasta, 1 Cold Bar and 1 Hot Starter.

Pasta : Hand Cut Linguini with Spanner Crab and Spicy Prawn Oil
Slightly sour, strong aromatic from kaffir lime leaves, fresh spanner crab, al dente linguini. How do you not able to fall in love with this pasta dish?

Cold Bar : Crudo of Hiramasa Kingfish, Ocean Trout, Blue Fin Tune and Coorong Yellow Eyed Mullet with Horseradish, Coriander, Lime and Lemon Flavoured Oil
Fresh, Fresh, Fresh.

Hot Starter : Wood Fire Grilled Quail with Smoked Tomatoes and Black Olives
The quail was very nicely cooked. I was surprised how juicy it was when I cut into it.

For the main, we had 3 different steaks. Mishima, Ranger Valley Dry Aged and David Blackmore Full Blood Wagyu.

They were very attentive. The kitchen had all the 3 steaks pre-cut before serving to us as they knew we will be The steak was also served in a very hot plate. All 3 different cuts, 3 different breeds, same cooking method and 3 different taste. Having all side by side helps identifying which 1 we prefer. All melts in the mouth!

We also ordered an additional main after our entree as we felt we could take in more. We chosen Spicy Mussels and Saffron Stew with Wood Fire Grilled Seafood and Aioli.

Seafood were fresh, not overpowering saffron. Serving with toast enable us to soak up the stew and enjoy it without missing a single drop.

Couldn't resist ordering Onion Rings for side. OMG it's the best onion ring I have so far! Even though it was deep fried, it wasn't oily. It was very fluffy, crunchy and crispy on the outside. Rockpool onion rings win Maze onion rings hand down!!

After dinner, it's dessert time!!! Mr. had coffee while the two gals had tea.

Love the tea set especially the tea cup. It's double layered.

We were also served caramel popcorn.

We had 2 desserts to share. Creme Caramel and Passionfruit Pavlova. Surprisingly all 3 of us enjoyed the Passionfruit Pavlova more than Creme Caramel. Pavlova was light and fluffy. Both desserts were massive and we couldn't finish it at all.

It was a lovely night catching up with fantastic food. But service was a bit let down. It was my 1st time being served by an asian in a fine dining restaurant. I'm not being racist as I'm an asian myself. But throughout the whole dining, can't helped being felt she was rushing us to finish the meal and leave. She spoke so fast that all of us can't even get what's the special for the day. When we asked for a glass of hot water after dessert, can't helped but felt she's irritated by the way she answered us. Previously dining service was definitely a lot more professional.

Would I return, oh yes! Maybe next year on Mr. birthday?

Jools's Favourite Beef Stew

2011-05-22T19:44:00.000+10:00

I have totally lost track on the cookbook challenge. I'm being too busy during weekends and recently very poorly organised. Plus all the extra time travelling to work doesn't help at all. I'm so behind that I'm not sure should I still continue or skip the themes I miss. Plus I will be away for 7 weeks in 3 months time. Definitely don't see myself stepping into the kitchen during the 7 weeks other than helping mum to do some cooking or washing. But I did mention to Mr. I'm thinking of documenting our vacation journey as I didn't manage to do it last year. Even suggested to split the load. I can concentrate on food and he on diving + places we travel. Should we? Good idea? Hope with IPhone + IPad + Macbook we won't have any more excuses :P

Back to food, last month we already experienced some cold weather in Melbourne. During such weather, I always hope to have a hearty meal and stew will pop into my mind. It's easy to cook, minimum preparation, just dump everything into a big pot, slide into the oven.

Found this recipe from 1 of the Jamie Oliver's cookbook that I owned. I was wondering which to try as there are two very similar recipes in this book. In the end, chosen this because I had never cooked parsnip or even tasted them before. A good chance to give it a go.

Cookbook : Jamie's Dinners
Author : Jamie Oliver

Jools's Favourite Beef Stew
serve 4

Olive oil
A knob of butter (skipped it, don't think it makes too much different)
1 onion,peeled and chopped
A handful of fresh sage leaves (got it from my herb garden)
800g stewing steak or beef skirt,cut into 5cm pieces
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Flour, to dust
2 parsnips, peeled and quartered (might had cut it too small )
4 carrots, peeled and halved
1/2 a butternut squash, halved, deseeded and roughly diced
Optional: a handful of Jerusalerm artichokes, peeled and halved (skipped this as well)
500g small potatoes
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1/2 bottle of red wine
285ml beef or vegetable stock (does beef cube count?)
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated (ran out of lemon at home)
A handful of rosemary, leaves picked (got this from my herd garden as well)
1 clove of garlic,peeled and finely chopped (Australian garlic which I love!!!)

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Put a little oil and your knob of butter into an appropriate sized pot or casserole pan. Add your onion and all the sage leaves and fry for 3 or 4 minutes.

Toss the meat in a little seasoned flour,then add it to the pan with all the vegetables, the tomato puree, wine and stock, and gently stir together.

Season generously with freshly ground black pepper and just a little salt. Bring to boil, place a lid on top, then cook in a preheated oven until the meat is tender. Sometimes this takes 3 hours, sometimes 4 - it depends on what cut of meat you're using and how fresh it is. The only way to test is to mash up a piece of meat and if it falls apart easily it's ready. Once it's cooked, you can turn the oven down to about 110 degrees and just hold it there until you're ready to eat.

Think I overcooked it, left it in the oven for too long. It was a bit too dry when I pulled it out from the oven. Both of us prefer to have more gravy for our bread. Plus most of the vegetable were all mashed up. Can't find any pumpkin, can only see pretty small chunks of carrot and parsnips if you notice on the 1st photo. It's still a nice and hearty stew regardless. Will try experience more stew recipes this winter :-)

France-Soir

2011-05-17T14:40:00.000+10:00

I heard so much about this place, the history, the French Onion Soup, Steam Mussels, Cream Brulee etc. But haven't had much luck getting a table (earlier table). The place is constantly packed regardless of day and time! Yes, I wasn't organised enough but with friends not finishing work on time 99% of the day(Yes! Even worst on weekend) contributed a lot for disorganising :P

Sunday night wasn't any different. It was a pretty last minute confirmation that we were going France-Soir for a "farewell" dinner. Made the booking in the afternoon and earliest table available for 8 was at 9:30p.m.

I had to break my own rule for not staying out late on Sunday night. Because as I need to start my day very early on weekdays, I try to sleep early on Sunday night and be fresh on Monday morning so that I can survive thru the long week. But I definitely didn't regret breaking my own rule!

It wasn't easy to decide what to order. I want to try almost everything! In the end to avoid wasting food, Mr and me decided to order 2 Entree, 2 Main and 1 Dessert.

Mr. and me definitely tasted more than we ordered but I'm only going to write the dishes we ordered.

We started the dinner with the famous French Onion Soup and Grilled Scampis with Lemongrass.

Soupe a l'ognon gratinee - The soup was deep brown colour, thick with lots and lots of onions and melted cheese on the top. It was full of flavour and not too saltish(I like it). I generally find that soup served in cafe and restaurant is too saltish for my taste bud. Every spoonful was filled with lots of onions! I was beginning to wonder how much onions do they used for each meal service? How many onions were in that bowl of soup? I hope the onions were all peeled and sliced by machine. Doubt any kitchen hand can handle so much peeling and slicing of onions in 1 day.

Langoustines grillees a la citronelle - Scampis were very fresh and cooked to perfection with a hint of lemongrass. I even ended up using bread to sock up all the sweet delicious juices left on the plate.

Mr. had the usual: Medium to Raw Steak with Wild Mushroom Sauce. It also came with a basket of skinny chips which all of us can't help but kept helping ourselves into it.

Cote de boeuf (Rib-Eye)

Wild mushroon/cream

Rib-Eye Steak - The steak was more medium rather than medium to raw which Mr. loved and preferred but that didn't spoilt his meal. It wasn't too char grilled on the outside which I liked. The steak was still very tender and full of flavour. Mr. definitely enjoyed his steak a lot.

I had the Half Roasted Duckling with Orange Sauce. I was between choices and told myself I wouldn't go wrong with Duck. French makes fantastic duck isn't it?

Demi-Caneton roti, a l'orange - The duck was cooked perfectly! As you can see from the picture, it wasn't dry and still pink on the inside. At first I though it's going to be hard trying to debone the duck drumstick. But I was totally wrong! The meat just fell off the bone. I didn't feel any slight oiliness in this meal even though duck usually contains a lot of duck fat/oil under the skin.

We did order 3 sides to share but I only took 2 as the other was Butter Lettuce with Blue Cheese Dressing. I don't take blue cheese so I left it out. But others enjoyed the salad a lot. France-Soir is very generous with their blue cheese.

Green Peas, Carrot and Bacon Lardons , Sauteed Mushrooms - Don't be deceived by the look. Although the peas doesn't look appetising but it taste delicious! The Mushroom was fat and juicy. Both sides looks easy to prepare but I doubt so. The easier/simpler it is, the more challenge it is to make it taste better.

Finally we ended the dinner with

Creme Brulee - It was served in a pretty shallow flat dish. The sugar top crust wasn't very burn unlike other places. Is it because we were the only table left? But that didn't affect the silky smooth creamy creme brulee. Someone even pointed out the sides wasn't over cooked unlike a lot of other creme brulee we tried. I totally agreed. There isn't any texture different if you compare the creme surrounding the sides of the dish and in the middle of the dish. Anyone has any clue????

It was Great Food and Fantastic Company! Service was pleasant although there was a man who was drunk, singing out loud in restaurant but that didn't spoilt our lovely dinner.

I can't wait to go back and try more of the other dishes!

Cacao Macarons

2011-03-31T21:52:00.001+11:00

Even since falling in love with LuxBite's macarons, I also started buying non LuxBite's macarons when I come across to give it a try.

Mr. and me were at Doncaster Westfield few days ago and saw Cacao store which not only sell chocolates but also macarons. We bought 4 in a box and took it home. It happen we had a few LuxBite's macaron which were bought on weekend. So we decided to have them together to have a comparison. But we only managed to get thru 1 each.

On the left is LuxBite Salted Caramel and on the right is Cacao Salty Caramel.

We were pretty impressed by Cacao's macaron shell. It was crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. But the filling was disappointing, the name says it all. It should be salty but I didn't taste any salt in the filling nor the shell at all. Did the chef forgot about it? The caramel do taste creamy. A lot more buttery when compared to LuxBite, I can even smell the butter! Definitely like LuxBite Salted Caramel more than Cacao reason being LuxBite is saltish enough, not too much nor less. Mr. likes Cacao shell as the sugar bring in a bit of crunch when you bite into it.

The other 3 flavours which we got at Cocao were Mint, Passionfruit and Hazelnut Praline.

Mint shell was pretty and shiny as it was sprinkled with sparkling powder to beautify it. The filling was actually white chocolate infused with mint? It smelled and tasted like spearmint but chocolate and mint didn't blend together. On the 1st bite, I taste the mint and follow by the white chocolate. Taste was totally independent of each other. Towards the end, it was just too sweet for me to handle. Can macaron be too sweet? I know it's suppose to be sweet especially it's made up of so much icing sugar but this is the 1st time I felt it sugar overloaded just by having 1 macaron.

The colour of Passionfruit macaron shell was nice as well. Not too bright but it does looks like a ripe mango rather than a passionfruit pulp. As for the filling, it was chocolate with passionfruit taste. This flavour didn't work for me at all! Can't really taste the passionfruit nor really smell it. :-(

I had both the Mint and Passionfruit flavour while Mr. had the Hazelnut Praline. I was still at work when he had it. Therefore I can't really write much but he did say it was pretty good.

Hunt for macaron continue.......

Cookbook Challenge (Outdoor) - Whole Grilled Fish with Curry Paste

2011-03-29T22:15:00.000+11:00

5th Cookbook Challenge Theme is Outdoor.

Dish chosen : Whole Grilled Fish with Curry Paste
Cookbook : Holiday
Author : Bill Granger

I had always wanted to try this recipe ever since I got this book but I have no idea why I waited so long. In fact when I saw the 5th challenge theme, this dish popped up immediately. Barbecue/Grill definitely link to outdoor.

This recipe stated it serve 4. But with only 2 of us, we didn't had any problem finishing up the whole fish. We love seafood maybe that's why. Plus I didn't serve it with rice as suggested. I roasted some potatoes and pumpkin with home grown rosemary instead.

Ingredients
1.5kg Whole Snapper, cleaned, gutted and scaled - I'm not sure how heavy this snapper was. The picture looks strange too because I had all the fins cut off.

2 tablespoons Red Curry Paste - This is the curry powder used to cook fish. I have another curry powder specific for meat and it's the same brand but packaging in green instead of yellow. I'm not too sure what's the different between the curry powder for fish and meat but was told by my FIL I should have both in my kitchen. I just follow his instruction.

1 Lime, sliced, plus 1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons Grapeseed Oil (or other light-flavoured oil)
Sea Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper

To Serve
Steamed Rice
Lime Wedges

Using a sharp knife, make four or five diagonal cuts in each side of the fish. Push the lime slices into the cavity of the fish.
I also placed some lime slices in the diagonal cuts.

Mix together the red curry paste and lime juice and spread over both sides of the fish. Leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes. - I used more than the suggested lime juice. I didn't manage to marinate for at least 30 minutes. I was running a bit behind time.

Arrange two large pieces of foil slightly overlapping on your work surface and drizzle with half the oil. Put the fish in the middle of the foil, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with the remaining oil. Wrap the fish up well in the foil, then wrap another layer of foil around it.

Preheat your barbecue or chargrill to medium-high. Cook the fish 7-8 minutes on each side, or until the flesh shows white and firm through the cuts you made. Serve with steamed rice.
The weather wasn't suitable for barbecue therefore I popped the whole fish into the oven and finish it off by grilling it.

This is a really simple recipe. Most important is the freshness of the fish. It wasn't too spicy nor too sour even though lime was used. Both of us enjoyed this a lot and it was something different from my usual way of cooking fish.

Hare and Grace

2011-03-28T18:25:00.000+11:00

It was Friday, Mr. just finished his week of night and was awake when I got home. Me in the mood of spending some quality time together while Mr. was feeling of heading into the city. Withins minutes, we were both dressed and on our way to the city. Without any reservation on hand, the planned was to walk around and check out some restaurants and were hoping it won't take us to long.

On the way, H recommended Hare and Grace after I requested some suggestion on Twitter. Knowing H, we knew we won't go wrong with her suggestion. Off we go to Hare and Grace after we parked our car. It was a pretty decent walk and discovered the other part of the city which we rarely explore.

Guess who I saw once we stepped into the dining room???? Adriano Zumbo!!!! It was the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival so it wasn't surprise to see him in Melbourne. I'm able to recognise him as I being catching his Zumbo show on SBS online for the past week. No, I did not ask for a autograph or a photo as I felt it's very rude to interrupt him and his friend. He definitely deserved some privacy.

Back to the food. We spend quite a bit of time deciding whether to go for 3 course banquet menu which cost $90 pp. Mr. was interested in trying the steak grill and he also questioned about the 3 course banquet potion. The waiter told us Chef is pretty generous and doesn't allow us to walk out without feeling full. After much hesitation, we went for 3 course. Save us the trouble of picking what to eat. Sometimes it's good to just sit back and relax and let someone do the thinking for you.

We started the meal with bread and butter. I love the butter as it's really light and sprinkled with hazelnut powder. I'm guessing the butter was pre-whipped. It's different from all the other restaurant I being so far.

We had 3 dishes for entree.

1st entree was Braised Red Peppers in their Juice

This dish surprise us. It was really refreshing and light. I was served cold and red pepper was sweet. It's not a dish either of us will chose so both were happy the chef picked it.

2nd entree was Braised Pork Ribs

The meat was braised for a long time because it just melt in your mouth. Do find this dish a bit heavy to be a entree. Flavour was nice but strong.

3rd entree was Scallops Garlic Aioli Herb Breadcrumbs

We had 2 scallops each and it was our favourite dish of all! The herb combination wasn't overpowering, breadcrumb was crunchy and scallop was fresh and cooked beautifully.

At this point both of us were feeling full which was unusual. We were struggling to finish 2 mains and 1 side.

1st Main was Roasted Founder Milk - Fed Mussels Potted Shrimps

This dish tasted light with a hint of milk in the gravy. All the seafood was really fresh.

2nd Main was Braised Beef, Beef Tongue with Vegetable and Mash Potato.

I don't really remember the taste of this dish. I should have kept notes using my iPhone. But this dish left a deep impression on Mr. He even wanted to go back and try their steak. I do remember it's another dish that melts in the mouth. The beef tongue had a pretty firm texture, it was my 1st time eating beef tongue so not too sure what to expect.

Side was Beetroot, Green Strawberry Salad

It was my 1st time eating a unripe strawberry. It was very crunchy but also sour! As for the beetroot, nothing special just normal beetroot.

Up to this point, we were very happy with the meal and definitely enjoying. Can't wait for dessert to be served. We were served with 2 desserts.

1st was Lemon Liquid Tart Sesame, Lemon Passionfruit Juice

2nd was Blackberry Trifle Tahini Custard Macerated Sponge

Both desserts were so beautifully presented! We don't even want to dig into the dish. BUT when we had our 1st mouthful, we were very surprise and very disappointed :-(

In the end, I was the only one finishing both dessert. I reckon I had more than 80% of them. Mr. found the lemon tart too sour. I felt it was meant for someone who loves eating fresh lemon pulps like me. As for the "tart pastry", it wasn't really a pastry made from flour and butter. I think it's made of sesame and it taste bitter if you had it by itself. I wasn't a fan of the "tart pastry" and left it out.

Mr. didn't like the blackberry trifle as well. The sponge was soaked with really strong hard liquor(suspect vodka). As Mr. practically doesn't drink at all, the strong liquor smell and taste turn him off. I can only taste the alcohol and nothing else :-(

Although the dessert was a letdown, I believe we will return and try other dishes and desserts. Service was fantastic and we were very well taken care off. The waiter was definitely right. We left with such a full tummy which will explode any min.

Paella in the Park - Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2011

2011-03-09T20:34:00.001+11:00

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2011 had started 5 days ago. After staying here for 5 years, we finally got our act together and attended some of the events. Today is Day 6 of the festival and I already managed to squeeze in 3 events (planning to write all). But there isn't any plan to attend more till the end of festival.

Paella In The Park was the 1st event we attended. It was held at Bridges Reserve in Coburg last Sunday 3rd March 2011. Mr. loved Paella and it had never occurred to me to give it a try cooking in my own kitchen yet. Just felt it's a dish not easy to master.

Melbourne was blessed with fantastic weather during the weekend. The day was hot, sunny, clear blue sky without a single cloud in the sky!!!! In fact I found myself with a tanned line that evening by just sitting in the sun for 2 hours.

Without entry fee required + nice weather + outdoor venue + live entertainment, it was a very family friendly event. The crowd was already building up when we arrived at the venue with H, our new found friend + makan kaki.

There were quite a few stalls set up but all by Spanish Gourmet Caterers. This was the 3rd time that I came across to them. 1st was the Suzuki Night Market at Victoria Market and 2nd was Johnston Street Fiesta. There were a few varieties of paella available : Squid Ink, Pork and Mushrooms, Chicken and Chorizo, Vegetarian, Seafood all selling at $10 per plate.

Lucky there were 3 of us, we were able to split the job of getting the food. Each of us with a paid coupon in hand, queuing at individual stall line to buy our chosen paella.

With team work, we were able to combine the jointed effort and tasted all 3 different paella side by side. My attentive Mr. got me and H a glass of ice cold Sangria each.

I got the Seafood Paella.

Mr. Vegetarian Paella.

H got Chicken and Chorizo Paella.

Make a guess which one stand out the most. It was the most unexpected Vegetarian Paella. It was sweet. We got another plate to share after finished all 3. The most disappointing was the Seafood Paella. Couldn't taste the "sea" in the rice till you take bite on the mussel. As for the Chicken and Chorizo, it had the strongest taste of all. Think it's because of the chorizo. Overall, it wasn't too bad.

With our full tummy, we found a nice spot in front of the stage and waited for the live performance, Flamenco to start. Spotted a coffee stall next to the stage and bought a cup of coffee to try. We were hoping for Spanish coffee but it only served Italian coffee. The nice coffee did make up for it.

Cookbook Challenge (Love) - Flourless Hazelnut Chocolate Cake

2011-02-25T23:45:00.000+11:00

4th Theme for the Cookbook Challenge is Love. Honestly I was a bit stuck with this theme. How am I going to link the food with Love? Something which I love eating? A dish which uses a ingredient which I love?

I started seeing others who written about the meal they cooked for Valentine day. I didn't cook anything special. Just steak with 2 sides which all the ingredients were purchased from the Farmers Market the day before and yes I did try new recipe for the 2 sides but I didn't manage to take any photos. So fail big time :-(

Then it occurred to me, I haven't got the chance to blog about the birthday cake which I made for myself. It was the 1st time I used the recipe. It's a bakecook which I seldom used. I used my birthday present to make the cake which I loved! The present was from my lovely husband. Should fit in the theme right? Or it's still consider cheating??

Mr. kept requesting me to bake my own birthday cake a week or two before the actual day. That is actually pretty unusual! Being together for more than a decade, he had never made such request even for his own birthday. Smell something fishy!!!

A few days before my birthday, I accidentally saw Mr. checking out the KitchenAid website. A stand mixer as gift??? That was my guess as he knows that's one of the many kitchenwares I wanted to add to my kitchen but price was holding me back.

Two days before my birthday, Mr started to hint me about the gift. He even allowed to let me search the house and I can open it if I find it. But he never expected me to find it in less than 1 min!!! Although the house area is pretty big but areas to hid something from each other is pretty limited.

With just a big box + super heavy, I knew it must be the KA stand mixer!!!! Yeah!!! Finally I own it!!!! Plus I love the bright red colour!!!

As there's isn't any discount, Smatchbox gave a free cookbook and offered Mr. the latest edition KitchenAid cookbook. I had flipped thru the book but hadn't got around to try it. What surprised me was it didn't contain much baking recipes at all! A handful of bread making recipes and rest were mostly cooking recipes.

It didn't take me long before having a play with the new toy. On my birthday eve, I baked a tray of chocolate cupcake for work. I was falling in love with my toy. I was learning about my toy.

On my birthday, I started immediately baking my birthday cake once I got home from work. I even managed to document the process.

Cake for the occasion : Flourless Hazelnut Chocolate Cake
Bakebook : Crave a passion for chocolate
Author : Maureen McKeon

Ingredients
300 g chopped dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
7 large eggs, separated
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
115g caster sugar
80g ground hazelnut

Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Butter a 23cm (9 inch) springform tin or deep round cake tin and line in with baking paper.

Melt chocolate and butter gently in a heatproof bowl over hot water, ensuring that the base does not touch the water.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Using an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks for 1-2 mins, or until pale and thick and ribbons form when the beaters are lifted out of the mixture.

Using clean beaters, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the sugar, then continue beating until the mixture is stiff but not dry.

Combine the egg yolks and melting chocolate mixture and beat gently. Using a rubber spatula, fold half the meringue into the chocolate mixture, then return this combined mixture to the remaining meringue. Add the ground hazelnuts and fold in gently until combined.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50-55mins, or until the cake comes away slightly from the side of the tin. Allow to cool completely in the tin before turning out.

The cake actually raised a lot during baking. Lucky I laid the baking paper above the tin height as you can see from the photo below. But it started to sink once I took it out from the oven. What did I do wrong?? Over mixed?

It looked all fine when I turnover the cake. Yes it looked ugly but it taste really nice. It was still moist inside :-)

We had it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Just the way we like it.

Cookbook Challenge (Rice/Noodles) - Chicken Briyani

2011-02-25T17:04:00.002+11:00

3rd Cookbook Challenge theme is rice or noodle. I kept pestering Mr. to pick a recipe from the pile of cookbooks I owned. In then end, he chosen a dish which I had cooked and even wrote before. Does it still considered a challenge??

This time, I did follow the recipe pretty strictly. Included all the herbs even though knowing Mr don't like them. I did went through the end product and try picking all the herbs out.

As usual, I didn't use any tomato puree. I used a lot more tomatoes instead.

I didn't colour the rice and still wondering why the rice turned out brown.

Maybe because the shallots were burned?

Every time I cook, I spend ages in preparation. Just like baking, I like to wash all the ingredients and chopped them up, placed them into individual bowl/plate, placed them all next to the stove before turning on the heat. Totally opposite from Mr.

This time I managed to shot more photos during the cooking process.

Frying ginger, garlic and chillies. I added red chillies this time to more it more spicy.

Waiting for the tomatoes to break down. It did take a while.

With the chicken pieces added in.

I did have it in on the stove for a while to thicken the gravy. Knowing Mr. loves the gravy, I did increased the liquid ingredients amount.

Frying ginger and garlic for the rice.

Added in the pre-prepared shallots.

With all the herbs and rice without liquid

Liquid added in. I cooked the rice on the stove instead of rice cooker. I had never done that before. No idea what trigger me to give it a try. Lucky it turned out fine.

Cookbook Challenge (Citrus) - My Mother-In-Law's Madeira Cake

2011-02-12T00:08:00.000+11:00

I should be working on my 3rd or 4th cookbook challenge but I'm so disorganise that I only manage to finish the 2nd challenge. But it's better to be late than never right? Hopefully I can catch up, work on the 3rd challenge next week and 4th the week after. Wish me luck!

The theme for the 2nd challenge is Citrus. I love this theme because I jus simply love lemon and lime. Do you know I can actually eat fresh lemon and I enjoy it. Especially when having fish and chips, I can squeeze the juice onto the fish, peel away the skin and eat the pulps away.

For this challenge, I chosen My Mother-In-Law's Madeira Cake by Nigella Lawson How To Be a Domestic Goddness. I'm visiting a ex-colleague tomorrow and felt this will be a great gift. Not nice to turn up empty handed.

I added more lemon and poppyseed into the basic recipe. So it can also be consider as Lemon Poppyseed cake. I have never came across poppyseed till I stayed in Aust. Bought a pack of poppyseed and kept it the pantry but never managed to use it till now. Poppyseed is actually banned in Singapore, I had never seen it available. In fact, a SG blog which I followed experienced Central Narcotics Bureau knocking on her door and confiscated all her poppyseed. Is it really necessary? It's for own consumption anyway.

Did a taste test just now when it had cooled. Smell lemony but find it a bit dry. Quite crunchy on the outside. Taste a bit like pound cake, guessing due to the amount of butter used.

My Mother-In-Law's Madeira Cake

240g softened unsalted butter
200g caster sugar , plus extra for sprinkling
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
210g self raising flour
90g plain flour
23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and lined

Preheat oven to 170 degrees.
Cream butter and sugar, and add the lemon seat.
Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of flour for each.
Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and,finally, the lemon juice.
Sprinkle with caster sugar (about 2 tablespoons) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour. (mine was done before 1 hour)
Remove to a wire rack, and let it cool in the tin before turning out.

Variation:
For lemon poppyseed cake, add the juice of another half lemon and a tablespoon or two poppyseeds. I added two tablespoons.

Three Bags Full

2011-02-09T22:38:00.000+11:00

Three Bags Full
60 Nicholson Street
Abbotsford VIC 3067

We visited Three Bag Full on Melbourne Cup day after our monthly marketing at Victoria Market. During the visit, we were seated directly under a huge painting and behind the painting lies a story. Apparently the owner discovered a really old 1930's Melbourne Cup tipping graffiti on the wall during renovation and I was amazed that it was very well preserved. We even had the honour of viewing it.

As usual we started off by satisfying our caffeine addiction. They definitely served good coffee.

Mr. and me both aren't coffee drinker till we walked passed Jasper coffee at Fitzroy on Brunswick Street few years ago. The strong and fragrant coffee smell actually attracted us to walk in and purchased a cup of mocha. We enjoyed the coffee so much that we ended up buying some coffee beans, a stovetop espresso maker, a electric milk frother to whip the milk and a thermal mug. It was full on from then and no turning back. We are so spoiled till unless we know it's going to be good coffee if not we won't even bother paying to get some.

Mr. had the Egg Benedict with Smoked Salmon. The eggs were poached to our liking and the hollandaise sauce was very different from the others. It's not overpowering and doesn't feel sick when had it too much.

As for me, I had the Ricotta Hot Cake with Poached Pears, Berries and Rhubard. It was my 1st time having ricotta hot cake and also rhubard! It's also a dish I wouldn't create in my own kitchen because I'm not confidence to. Not knowing what to expect, I actually enjoyed it a lot. Did felt there was too much ricotta cheese and left some aside. But guess that's just me not having the habit of taking much cheese.

Did noticed the crowd started streaming in even though it was a great day for sleeping in! It didn't take long for all the seats to get occupied.

We are starting to adventure into breakfast and hope we can cover more new cafes this new year.

Papaya Pog Pog

2011-02-07T22:09:00.000+11:00

Papaya Pog Pog

12b Balmoral Ave

Springvale 3171

Papaya Pog Pog is our current favourite Thai restaurant. I discovered this place quite some time ago on Kat's blog and took up the recommendation and gave it a try. Next thing we know, both of us fell in love with the food they served. It the only Thai place we visit for the past months when we have craving for spicy, sour, sweet Thai food.

Yesterday we bought another 2 friends, R and K with us to Papaya Pog Pog. More people = more tummy space = more variety of food :P

Started the dinner with Thai Fishcake. Not very sure is it homemade or store bought but all of us enjoyed it. It actually tasted very similar to Otah which available in Singapore/Malaysia.

R being visiting different parts of Thailand for the past years for vacation. I ended up asking her whether she find the food served original. Although I being to Thailand twice but that's almost 10 years ago. Honestly speaking I can't remember what authentic Thai food taste like. But she actually find them very authentic.

R even attended Thai cooking lesson on her most recent trip and bought back a cookbook with her. We are still trying to organise a time slot and try cooking Thai food in my kitchen.

It was my 1st time trying the Vegetable Green Curry. **Sorry for the blur photo

This curry wasn't very spicy but I was rather surprise by the sweetness. R told me it's suppose to be sweet. I don't recall finding green curry sweet at other Thai restaurant. It's very appetising and nice to go with white rice. Plus there's a huge variety of different vegetable in this dish.

Thai Fried Rice, Chicken smell so fragrant. All 4 of us can smell it once it's being served on the table. This dish is definitely fried using a very hot wok because you can actually taste the "wok hey".

We also ordered Fried Quail which was very crispy and still juicy on the inside. I can even chew on the bones that's how crispy it was.

Tom Yum Soup which we ordered medium spicy. It's spicy, sour and full of flavour. Love it! It's a must have on every visit. At the bottom of the bowl, I always find lots of coriander roots

Another must have is Pad Grapow. We usually ordered pork but yesterday we had chicken. It's a very simple dish but Papaya Pog Pog did it perfectly, full of flavour. Mr. and me always order a serve each so that we won't fight over it. I did try creating this dish at home but there's always something missing. Maybe because my stove fire wasn't big enough.

Individual served of Pad Grapow

The last dish was Nard Nar which we discovered during our last visit. A dish which is very similar to Hor Fun but taste very different. It's another dish which you can taste the 'wok hey'.

All of us also had a Ice Coffee each. The coffee is a killer! It's strong but not too sweet.

We all enjoyed the dinner a lot and we definitely over estimated our tummy space as we almost couldn't finish all the food ordered. Almost rolled out of the restaurant after the meal.

The other dish which Mr. and I tried during one of our visit was Pad Thai. But we find this dish a bit disappointing. It was too dry to our liking and too oily. Or was it suppose to be dry??? Or maybe I should give it another try just incase it was a miss previously? Should I??

Guest Writer Reviewing LuxBite

2011-01-24T23:05:00.001+11:00

Yes. It's Mister doing this blog entry.

After these years of blogging and the amount of food we had eaten, this is my 1st entry in wifey's blog. I am doing it because i have encounter something special...it's call Luxbite.

Before i start, be warn: this is my 2 cent review of the food from LuxBite. It's honest, genuine and it's how i feel everytime i had their desserts.

It all started with wifey's twittering...' l wanna go try this dessert place called LuxBite'

So one fine sunday, we went to Luxbite and fell deeply and madly in love with the macarons...and the every desserts they make!

First up, we had the FerreRoll Rocher and 3 macarons, Kaya Toast, Watermelon Yoghurt and Raspberry & White Chocolate. The ferreroll rocher was soft, great texture and fulls of nuts and flavour. Compared to burnetti's cakes Luxbite's win hands down. The cake's flavour was perfectly persevered and not overly spongy , likely due to Luxbite's storing and fridging of their cakes.

Honestly, l haven't tasted a macaron prior to LuxBite's although l do come across them before. Luxbite had a huge variety of macarons on offer...too many for us to try on 1st go. so, we got another 8 to go..that was how good it was.

Luxbite's variety of macarons got us hooked and wanting to try all of them. Their macarons, take for watermelon one tasted just like watermelon! It's amazing that the taste can be so preserved in such a condition. i am never a fruity taste person as l often opt for stronger tastes such as chocolate, vanilla in whatever l eat (l am such boring and old style foodie)

But LuxBite's fruit macarons (such as passionfruit, rose & lychee, blue berry, raspberry & white chocolate) are so refreshing, you wouldn't feel having 3 macarons by itself being too filling nor starchy. The macarons was not too chewy or hard, just right with an equal amount of the filling to match. A perfect dessert to end your already filled or empty stomach.

Do not be deceived if u think Luxbite's all about only macarons.

Carmel slice with a salted caramel macaron. thick caramel with nice coconut underneath.

Green Tea Cream Brulee. U gotta be really creative of think of this flavour! The brulee was well done with a fairly strong taste of green tea (wasn't too strong for us although we did read it wasn't for the faint-hearted!). The cream was very fluffy but firm thanks to the solid glass.

OK. THIS IS MY FAVOURITE: Mango TriLova! oh my god! i cannot describe how it actually tasted but it would do so much injustice to it! i begin such a mango-hater this actually got me hooked i had this 3 times already in a span of 1 month speaks volumes about it. You can distinctively taste the mango, macadamia nut and the fresh coriander in there and it all so well compliment one another. What a superb dessert it was!

The apple crumble. Definitely separate from the type of apple crumble u eat outside..this crumble is without a hard crust but make up with lotsa crumble and apple.

Our latest was the mango cheesecake. The cheese-cake is really fluffy and that mint added added another level of taste testing your palate. This combination make this cheese-cake so refreshing to have..so unlike those that make you bloat at the end..this tasted guilt-free...seriously!

Ok..this 4 maracons is the Australia day's special. Kudos for thinking of such filling, vegemite, rocky road, caramel and chocolate freckles ....the level of creatively by Yen and Bernard, the mind behind LuxBite (besides happy!) is so amazing..however though we think the vegemite tasted slightly funny..maybe it's weird to have vegemite macaron?? Out of so many macarons, vegemite comes last for us..not sure what you all think? rocky road caught us by surprise! It got the most refreshing taste of the 4.

Nevertheless you get to appreciate the level of creativity LuxBite offers. Their dedication to decorating the place, storing of their macarons and cakes to the nice container for their macarons, speaks volumes about them trying it make their macarons and cakes a great experience. it is hard to find such high end quality hand made desserts in Melbourne.

Luxbite is now truly my favourite place to satisfy my craving for desserts compared to my older favourite 'The Dessert house' in Boxhill....l wouldn't mind driving that 45mins...it will be worthwhile in the end and so is this blog entry.

Cheers,
Chee

Pineapple Tarts Revisit

2011-01-24T21:39:00.000+11:00

Wow looking thru the blog entry, I already had 2 entries about CNY goodies, pineapple tarts.
Twice in 2008 and once last year. But I didn't make any in 2009, too lazy and trying to control my diet. Well it didn't really works isn't it?

This year is no surprise, I baked a very small quantity compared to last few years. But the number of pineapple I used was actually the most! How did that happen? *scratch head*

For the pineapple jam, I'm back to the traditional granting method, drained it on a sift and follow by cooking it on the stove. When I did it on friday night, the end product was so little that I was shocked. I can't even produce 30 pineapple tarts with that amount. Is it because the pineapple I chosen were too ripe?

The next morning, I went pineapple shopping again. This time round I ended up with another 2 pineapples which looked ripe but they were not when I cut into them. But they were more easier to grant and produced more.

I wasn't required to stand in front of the stove stirring for a long period this time round because each batch of pineapple jam wasn't big quantity. As for the jam, I only added raw sugar when it's almost ready. That's how Granny, Aunt and Mummy used to do it.

From memory, Aunt's recipe for the pastry is 1:1 ratio of flour and planta (Malaysia margarine) with a few tsps of water to bring everything together. I haven't being using planta for years! Anyone know is it available in Melbourne?

This time, I'm trying The Little Teochew's recipe. The only different I made to the recipe was the amount of icing sugar. I used 4 tbsp instead of her 6 tbsp as I'm afraid it will end up too sweet.

I'm very happy with the end result. Mr. loved it. It's not too sweet overall, jam cooked till dry enough and the base is "melt in the mouth" pastry which I'm being hunting! I will definitely make it for my family if I got the chance. I always specially made them for my sister who's a pineapple tart lover like me when I was still staying at home.

Gaswork Farmers Market and St Ali

2011-01-17T23:26:00.000+11:00

This weekend was a weekend well spent! 1st stop, Gaswork Farmers Market. I heard about it but never being there. Since we running low on fresh food, decided to pop in and take a look.

Find that Gaswork Farmers Market is very different from Nunawading Whitehorse Road Farmers Market. Gaswork space area is a lot bigger, more variety of different stuff. Looks like the stall holders are totally different too. Thought it will be almost the same and stall holders just go around to different location each week.

Anyway we did mange to get quite a bit of food : eggs, baby carrot, white radish, tomatoes, cucumber, Australian garlic <3, 2kg bag of royal blue potatoes (used for last night mash potato, yum!!), 1kg of cherries (used for cookbook challenge), 2 pack of steak (nice) and also 3 bags of dried fruits.

After marketing, both of us were hungry and Mr asked where should we go for breakfast. I suggested St Ali since we were already in that area. We never being there but I heard about it very often and was 1 of the place I always wanted to try. Lucky I had the address handy in my iphone.

We got there before 10am and there was already a queue. Mr. was surprised! He always thought only Asian will queue for food. Plus we had never actually queue for breakfast but we decided to wait hoping it won't be too long.
We were 4th in the line when we arrived but the couple in front of us decided to give up in less than 5 minutes and the 1st group was being served. Which means we were 2nd in the queue and got informed we should be able to get a table in 10-15mins. It wasn't long before my name got called :-)

We started off with coffee as usual. It was a good cup of coffee! Pretty too. Well St Ali is known for their coffee isn't it? I even got a pack of house blend, chompy for my stovetop. Coffee at home was running low as well. I haven't tried it yet, maybe tomorrow morning but it smell really fragrant.

Cappuccino

The breakfast menu was different from the usual cafe. We had a bit of difficulty deciding what to try. Mr. chose Poached eggs on sourdough, beetroot and red cabbage relish, smoked salmon, rocket and dukkah.

Mr. loves the combination while I love the beetroot and red cabbage relish. It's slight sour but very appetising. The poached eggs looked overcooked but once Mr. cut into it, I know it was actually cooked to our liking.

I decided to go for something sweet which is Sweet french toast with pepper spice rum, pineapple and coconut. I was craving for french toast and was glad I sticked to it even though I'm not keen on coconut. The french toast was crisp on the outside but very soft and fluffy on the inside! When I first saw the dish, I had doubt it will fill me up but I was definitely wrong! But it's so nice I could fitted in a 2nd serve :-p. But I find it too sweet for me but the pineapple does help to equalise the sweetness.

We definitely enjoy the breakfast but no idea when will be our next visit. Opps just realised I haven't write about Three Bag Full which we visited on Melbourne Cup Day and also Hardware Societe which we <3 <3 <3

Cookbook Challenge (Stonefruits) - Cherry Tart

2011-01-16T16:22:00.004+11:00

After being active in Twitter, I being following my favourite food bloggers on twit. It has definitely increase my interaction with them :). I also learn about the 2011 The Cookbook Challenge when the organiser are twittering about it. Decided to join when I learn about it.

The 1st Challenge theme is Stonefruit. I'm slightly behind as the 2nd theme just started yesterday. Hope I'm able to catch up and finish all 26 themes for my 1st blog event challenge.

Without planning, I went to Gaswork Farmers Market yesterday with Minister to do some marketing. Bought a kg of cherries which is fresh and sweet! Both of us are not a huge fan of cherry but just couldn't resist of getting some after tasting. It occurs to me I could do something with it for my cookbook challenge. With quite a few cookbooks I had in my collection, I knew I won't have any problem finding a recipe which involves with cherry.

Presenting to you, Cherry Tart from Bill Granger Holiday

This is definitely a dessert which I will not try if not for this challenge. It's also my 1st time making tart and instead of making 1 big tart to 8-10 people, I divide all the ingredients into 3 and make 2 small individual tart.

See the strips of baking paper under the pastry base? I seem it being done on some cooking program and tested it. It really make it so much easier to remove the tart from the baking tin.

Mr. loves the pastry and me too especially it's so easy to make! No food processor involve, no cutting in method, just a big bowl and wooden spoon. As for the cherries, I pitted it using a chopstick which I learned from Not Quite Nigella. It works very well! Thanks for sharing NQN!
The tart didn't even manage to cool totally before Mr. and me started digging into it.

Cherry Tart
Serve 8-10

Pastry
125g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
90g caster sugar
175g plain (all-purpose) flour
a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons almond meal

Fillings
170ml cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
550g cherries, halved and pitted (fresh are best)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease a 24cm round loose tart tin. To make the pastry, stir together butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and salt and stir to make a soft dough. Transfer the dough to the tin and press evenly into the base and side of the tin with your fingertips. Put the tin on a baking tray and bake fore 12-15mins, or until the pastry is slightly puff. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the almond meal over the base.

Meanwhile, to make the filling, whisk together the cream, eggs, vanilla extract and sugar. Add the flour and whisk until well mixed. Arrange the cherries, slightly overlapping, over the pastry base and pour the cream filling evenly over the cherries.

Return the tart to the oven for a further 40-50mins until the filling is firm. Leave to cool and serve with cream or ice cream.

Going Healthy - Salads

2011-01-14T22:37:00.000+11:00

Work being crazy for the past month. That's why I gone missing after the Bake A Difference event. Long hours, no weekend, no public holiday, night shift, dealing with shitty people etc. I almost throw in the white flag due to stress level and now I just can't wait to be over and never to deal with those unreasonable people again.

Enough of my complains, back to FOOD!
Minister and I started on salad diet again. We started beginning of last year and kinda of stop when the weather got colder.

Hope to gain some advantage thru the salad diet

Maybe lose some of the weight we gain during our 6 weeks vacation
Save $ for 2011 vacation
Make full use of the "Salad" recipe book which I bought from SG
Save time coz it's suppose to be simple and fuss free

As I haven't had the time to cook much for the past few weeks, a lot of the fresh food I bought got wasted. During the last marketing trip, I only bought what's required for the 3 different salads I planned to reduce wastage. Guess this will be something I hope to be better for 2011.

I got Minister to pick out 4 salads from the recipe book. That's going to be his work lunch and dinner for the next 2 days.

1st was Marinated Chicken Salad which I had for dinner at work. While I was mixing the dressing, I find that the recipe required quite an amount of red wine vinegar. I couldn't even test taste the dressing without choking! Lucky I manage to remind Minister not to pour all the dressing in one shot as I know he didn't fancy his food being too sour. It was prepared the night before. I packed the fresh mixed green, dressing and dressing all separately and chilled in the fridge. Don't like soggy salad. I actually heat the dressing and chicken before mixing everything together.

I'm rather surprised by this salad. In fact, I think I like it. It's slight spicy, sour and sweet. Plus it's a hot salad instead of cold.

Next was Mixed Seafood Salad. Got some fresh mussels and cooked prawn (was on special) from Coles. Used the squid rings which I had in the freezer. Cooked everything, mixed in dressing and chilled in the fridge. This salad take a bit of time and effort in preparation as I insists on getting mussels in shell, scrub and clean before cooking them in white wine. I could have gone the easy way out, getting cooked mussels or raw but without shell. I did wanted to get raw prawn as well but the cooked ones were on special.

I just had this salad this morning with some cos lettuce. I was doubting the amount whether will it actually fill my tummy up. But it did and I had a banana just to last me thru the afternoon.

Dinner for tonight was Salmon and Lentil Salad. Does anyone know whether am I able to find tinned cooked lentil? No idea why at the back of my mind, I thought I'm able to find cooked lentil in tin. But I definitely didn't have any luck finding them in Coles. In the end, bought a packet red and green lentil each. Read the instruction on the package and only soaked the green lentil overnight.
Boiled both lentil, pan-fried the salmon, mix them together with some cos lettuce. Mixed the dressing and packed them separate. This is a cold salad and it's pretty refreshing. Down side is the dressing actually contain mayonnaise which I try to avoid. But it did cut the fatty, oily taste of the salmon.

I got lots of entry which I need to catch up on! I haven't even write about my experience at Taxi, Maze, Charcoal Grill on the Hill and LuxBite!!! I haven't being cooking anything new nor trying out new recipe except for trying to make macarons which I fail terribly. Should I blog about it???

X'mas Gift- Bake A Difference

2010-12-14T12:49:00.001+11:00

Host by Penny

Organise by CSR

All donations goes to Mission Australia

After all the baking, slicing and dipping, it's time to pack and share it with all the lovely friends around us. I popped into the local $2 shop and manage to grab a roll of cellophane and few rolls of beautiful, Xmas theme ribbons. I would love to pop into the op shops and try find some jars/container/plates/bowls but due to my poor time management, I just got to make do with what I have on hand. Hopefully next year I will get my head around it earlier.

1st, I make cellophane bag using the cellophane sheet and some sticky tapes.
Pop in some biscotti and seal it with ribbon.

Next, I cut the big sheet of cellophane into big square shape. Layer the cookies into a cone shape and place in the the middle of the square shaped cellophane. Gather and secure all the edges using ribbon.

All the biscuits are all ready to be deliver.

I would have got around baking more if I got more time and also manage to figure out how to get them deliver fast. I always believe it taste the best when it's fresh.

Almond and Pistachio Bread

2010-12-12T20:35:00.001+11:00

Decided to try a Margaret Fulton's recipe while I'm having trays of Chocolate Mocha Cookies lining up waiting for their turn into the oven.

I heard about Margaret Fulton but didn't own any of her cookbooks. When I came upon her X'mas Iphone application, I decided to download. It's not expensive and it's a good guide for me what her recipes are like. I find them really easy, simple with very minimum ingredients required.

Although there aren't a lot of recipes on the application but there's quite a few I would love to try. Just the X'mas treats category, I'm already having hard time which to chose.

6 ingredients are required for this recipe.

3 egg whites
1tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup whole almond
1 cup plain flour (sifted)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup pistachios (shelled)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Grease a small non-stick loaf bin
Beat egg whites until stiff without being dry, then gradually beat in the caster sugar
Continue beating until mixture is thick and glossy
Fold in the rest of ingredients, mixing well
Turn the mixture into prepared tin
Bake for about 30mins until pale golden and firm to touch

Leave to cool in the tin then turn out wrap in foil
Place in refrigerator and leave overnight. This helps to cut thin, even slices
Cut into thin slices and place on an ungreased baking tray

Bake in a preheated 180 degrees oven, until pale golden and crisp

These are very addictive! Super crispy/crunchy because I sliced it very thinly. Over baked the 1st batch therefore a bit too brown. But the subsequence trays were a lot better.

This is my 2nd entry for Bake A Difference event. More information can be found from blog Jeroxie.

Chocolate Mocha Cookies

2010-12-11T16:16:00.010+11:00

My very lovely minister bought me 2 toys for the past 2 months. 1st was a Iphone4. I being using company provided mobile even since I stepped into Melbourne. The pro is I don't have to worry about mobile bills. Cons is I can't really sms oversea especially when it cost $0.50 for each sms on telstra. Getting my own mobile line means I can contact with my oversea family members, friends without needing to think 3 times! I started to play with my Iphone quite a bit and had a page with all the food related application. This is where I came upon this recipe.

The 2nd toy was my birthday present. It's a KitchenAid Standing Mixer!!! I have being eyeing it for ages!!!! But as all the housewives know, it's a pretty expensive tools to have in the kitchen. I'm always itchy to play with my toy. Constantly thinking what can I bake with the limited time I time which I will be free at night.

Came upon this event "Bake a Difference" few weeks ago while surfing Penny Jeroxie blog and signed up. I almost forgot about due date till other bloggers started submitting their entries and mention it on twitter.

After work 1 evening, alone at home and craving to bake. I decided on Chocolate Mocha Cookies to give it a try. It was already 10pm when I switched on my KA and started putting the ingredients together.

Creaming 1/2 cup unsalted butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar

While KA is doing it job, I was busy mixing 2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules (I used a bit more and pounded into powder), 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt together.

Add in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 egg once mixture is light and fluffy.

Add in the flour mixture after egg is well blended into the mixture.

Divide the dough into 2, wrapped with waxed paper and chill until firm. I chilled mine till the next day as it was getting too late to bake.

The next evening once I got home from work, I took the dough out from the fridge. Found it a bit too hard to roll therefore left it on the bench top for it to soften before rolling it and cut with my X'mas theme cookies cutter.

Popped them into the pre-heated oven at 180 degrees for 10mins and it's all done. The whole house was filled with nice coffee fragrance during the time.

As you can see on the 2 previous photos. The recipe dough actually holds it's shape really well. There isn't much different comparing the unbaked and baked cookies.

Did find the cookies a bit too plain looking. Plus don't think Chocolate Mocha Cookies are really X'mas treats. I was lazy and sucks at decorating using icing. Therefore decided to try dipping them into white chocolate. I always have the tendency to link white colour with X'mas. Guess that's because of snow :)

Toblerone Chocolate Cheesecake

2010-11-23T20:48:00.048+11:00

What we are cooking today on Nigella Lawson's twitter is chocolate cheesecake. That reminds me of the Toblerone Chocolate Cheesecake which I made few weeks ago.

Minister handed me a piece of A4 white paper when he got home from work 1 day. Written on was a recipe for cheesecake. A very motherly colleague of his knew that he loves cheesecake so wrote her favourite recipe and gave it to him. I'm guessing she knows I bake and cook?

I promised him that I will make it and bought the ingredients. But I didn't get around to try it and off we went away for 6 weeks with the cream cheese sitting in the fridge.I finally got around making it after being back for 2 weeks.

I did alter the recipe a bit. 1st was the base, Digestive biscuit was used instead of Chocolate biscuit. Don't ask me why but when it comes to cheesecake base, I will definitely use Digestive biscuits. 2nd, I didn't really bother measuring the butter. I just used what's needed to bring all the crumbs together. 3rd, I only had 1 Philadelphia cream cheese in the fridge so I halved the recipe. Even better since there's only 2 of us and we won't end up stuffing ourselves with cheesecake. 4th, I melted the whole bar of Toblerance chocolate and reduce the sugar instead.

Maybe because it's not my 1st time making a no-bake cheesecake. Therefore I know what to expect thus dare to change the recipe. The cheesecake turn out perfect! Not too sweet, very smooth and just the right size for us!

Recipe : Toblerone Chocolate Cheesecake
1 cup plain chocolate biscuit crumbs
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 x 250gm Philadelphia cream cheese (@ room temperature)
3 teaspoons gelatine dissolved in 1/3 cup boiling water
3/4 cup caster sugar
100gm Toblerone - swiss or dark chocolate (melted)
1/2 cup cream

Mix biscuits crumbs and butter. Press into 20cm base springform tin and chill.
Beat cream cheese until soft.
Add gelatine mixture, caster sugar, melted chocolate and cream. Blend till smooth.
Pour mixture into crumb base and chill (2-3 hours / overnight)

Wedding Banquet

2010-11-16T21:01:00.297+11:00

The purpose of popping into Singapore during our recent vacation was not only to visit the family, it's also to attend my BIL's wedding. It's the "1st" wedding event for Minister's family. Although we got married way before my BIL, we had a totally opposite wedding. I We wanted something totally different. Without family members, without customary, without grand wedding banquet, just a small wedding ceremony with 10 friends at Treasury Garden follow by a lunch at Windsor Hotel.

I haven't attend a Grand Chinese Wedding for ages! I almost forgot what it's like. After the day ceremony, the night dinner banquet was held at Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. As expected(the usual), the dinner didn't manage to start on time. While every family member were busy being a host, Minister and me decided to start the night with Pre-Dinner drink at the bar downstair. I know it seem very rude but we need a break from all the happening. Plus there's no alcohol being served during cocktail session! So just got to dig into our pockets and get some ourself.

Minister had the usual Lemon, Lime Bitter and I went for my favourite Lychee Martini. I ended sharing mine with Daddy that totally changed his initial thought of Lychee Martini. He tried creating t the comfort of his own home few days later.

Including my parents, we were assigned to be seated at the VIP table. As VIP table, the setting was different from the rest. We also had the luxury of having all dishes being divided and served instead of a whole. Actually Minister and me preferred to help ourselves to the dish but guess coz of the centre piece, they can't actually do that.

In the past, the banquet consist of 10 dishes! These days it's only 8. After spending half the night waiting for all the guests to turn up, the dinner finally started at 2045!

Dinner started with Appetiser as the 1st Dish. Deluxe Chinese and Japanese Combination Platter which made up of Roast Duck, Water Chestnut Shrimp Roll, Salmon Toast, Squid and California Maki.

Next was a Soup : Braised Shark's Fin with Assorted Seafood

Sorry I didn't manage to capture a photo of this dish. Not because I'm too hungry or it's too delicious. It's because I didn't try this dish. I had stopped eating shark's fin for more than 5 years now. Ever since I started diving and learned live finless sharks being dump back to sea to die slowly, I swear not to touch shark's fin ever again! Plus it's tasteless!!! Still no idea why it's considered a chinese delicacy???

A Poultry dish was next : Steamed Chicken with Whole Garlic, Quail Egg, Button Mushroom in Brown Sauce.

4th was seafood : Deep Fried Crispy Filo Prawn Roll served with Passion Fruit Sauce. This dish left the most impression on me. Initial though the crispy strip was vermicelli but coz it's not in white so I ruled that out. Only realised it's filo after I checked the menu. As this is a deep-fried dish, the sauce really helped to remove the greasy feeling.

Vegetable was 5th : Braised Duet Mushroom and Conpoy with Seasonal Vegetables. Opps just realised I forgotten to take a shot of this dish as well. Oh well, I don't even remember how it looks like now. Must be a very ordinary dish.

Fish was 6th : Steamed Fresh Seabass in Preserved Yellow Bean.

7th was Rice : Fried Glutinous Rice wrapped in Beancurd Skin served with Mixed Salad. Felt this dish was pretty special coz it was individually wrapped. Bit strange to be served with salad but I still eat it though. I need my fibre.

To complete the dinner was definitely dessert : Sweetened Yam Paste with Gingko Nuts and Pumpkin Syrup. This is my favourite banquet dessert! It's not a easy dessert to make. Heard the old traditional way of preparing was to cook whole peeled yam (taro) in the pot. Constant stirring till the whole yam cooked and melted in the pot. How long will that take??? Don't asked me! Not sure which restaurant still cooks it that way.

By the time we finished dinner, it was closed to 2300. It was end of night for us. Daddy, Mummy, Minister and me cabbed to The Fullerton Hotel to have a post dinner drink at Post Bar. They have a huge variety of sling to chose from.

I went for the Peach Sling. Daddy chosen Singapore Sling. Minister from memory is Pineapple Sling. Mummy went for cocktail instead. It's great ending the night with a drink, rest and relax catching up with my parents and de-briefing for the night.

Scones 2nd Try

2010-08-22T11:45:00.055+10:00

Minister got 10 bottles of jam from Miss Maple 2 weeks ago. You will be wondering how can we possibly finish them??? It's actually for my family :) Dad bought some back after his trip few years ago and everyone in the family loves it and were fighting for the last bits. We are travelling very soon and decided to pack some back with us.

Yes!!!! Finally we are going for our 2010 vacation!!!! It will be our longest vacation and packing being a big headache!!!! Too much to bring and too little baggage allowance. Really need to learn how to travel light. Hopefully I can really document down the journey + most important the food and try blog some entry about it.

Back to the scones, I tried baking some again :) This time round, I tried a recipe posted here. Instead of ending up with 30 scones for 2 of us, I only use one-third of the ingredients and ended with 10 scones.

It's a really easy, simple recipe and I loves it! As i don't usually stock buttermilk in my fridge, I uses milk and add a bit of vinegar to make into buttermilk. I also try not to handle the dough too much as I'm afraid that will make the scone hard.

Minister really got hooked onto scone and kept having craving. I baked another batch of scones again on Thursday and this time round, I bought some buttermilk from Coles. It definitely makes a different. It smell really nice. As for resulting had scone because of handling too much, I think I'm wrong. I definitely "played" with the dough quite a lot more this time and I still end up with really soft scones. Plus it raises quite a bit too.

Scones

2010-07-10T17:02:00.085+10:00

"I'm craving for scones. Should we drive to Miss Marple tomorrow morning?" Minister asked this morning.
"I can try bake some scones if you don't mind being my guinea pig. I have never tried baking scone before. But can't expect me to produce ones which are the same as Miss Marple." I warned.

Scones served with Miss Marple Jam without Cream

Few hours later at 3p.m. "I'm really craving for scones. Do you want to bake some and we have it for afternoon tea?? We can have it with Miss Marple Jam" Minister asked.
"OK" I answered. Entered the kitchen with my How To Be A Domestic Goddness bake book in hand. Pre-heated the oven while I measured the ingredients. Mix everything together to form a dough, keeping in mind not to over work it and be gentle unless I want to feed my Minister with rock hard scone instead. Rolled the dough flat and cut into round shape using a cutter. Pop into the oven for 10mins and hot, delicious scone is really for tea.

It's my 1st time making scone and was really surprised how easy and fast it was! The recipe called for cream of tartar and that's the only baking ingredient which I never used nor buy. Went online and manage to search for substitute using baking powder. Felt it shouldn't really matter or make any different by substituting as it's just to make the scone light and fluffy. I also halved the recipe as I don't think we will be able to finish 12 scones as what Nigella stated. In the end, I still ended up with 12 scones. Most probably because I rolled the dough too flat. Reminder to myself: To have higher scone, don't roll the dough too flat.

"You like it?" I asked after Minister took the 1st mouth-full.
"Oh Yeah!" He answered as he went for the 2nd scone.

Success!!!

Ban Mian

2010-07-03T19:20:00.069+10:00

One stone kill two bird, I'm actually cooking Mei Cai Kou Rou with my favourite pot and making use the time to update my blog. OMG looking thru the entry, I have being blogging lesser and lesser. I have taken so many food photos, tried a few new places but not discipline enough to sit down and write about it. Reckon it's not going to get any better. Especially with my 6 weeks vacation coming soon.....seriously overdue especially for Minister! Hmmmm maybe it's still a bit to far to start counting down.

Read Jeroxie entry on Ban Mian and realised I had never blog about this dish. Mum used to cook this dish very often when I was really young! During then it wasn't even popular and couldn't be found in the hawker/coffee shop. I always thought it's a very traditional Hakka dish like Lei Cha. In my teens, I started hating this dish same as Lei Cha. Frequency of Mum cooking it also decreases.

As I got older, I began to appreciate both dishes. Lucky for me, Minister's family is also Hakka and he loves both dishes. Both of us grew up practically eating similar Hakka dishes.

Ban Mian is a simple and nice dish which I tend to cook when I have chicken stock in my freezer. Mix some flour with water to form a dough and either by hand flatten some dough and tear into pieces or using a rolling pin roll it flat (thickness depend on individual) and cut into pieces. As for the side ingredients to go with it really depends on what I like and what's available. But 1 ingredient which is a must is Ikan Bilis (Anchovy). To us, it's not Ban Mian if there isn't it.

Muffins Or Cupcake?

2010-06-16T21:09:00.052+10:00

Muffin or Cupcake? What is the main different and how do I know I did end up with muffin when I use a muffin recipe and cupcake when I use a cake recipe?

I baked another batch of Chocolate Chip Muffins on Queen's Birthday before I get on to prepare next day lunch box. Found another Nigella's recipe which is fast and easy from Sarah's blog link. This recipe uses oil! Hooya! I'm just too lazy to weigh the butter and melt it or take my beater out and beat butter and sugar together.

All it need is a wooden spoon, a large mixing bowl and a measuring cup. I start by preheating the oven while gathering all the ingredients. Place all the dry ingredients into the bowl and combine all the wet ingredients into a large measuring cup. Pour the wet into dry ingredient and mix everything together using the spoon. Think most important while making muffin is try not to over mixed the batter which I find it extremely hard! Lumpy batter = Good muffin.

Minster love the muffins. Anything with chocolate chips, he will like it. Easy to please right? I took 2 muffins to work and gave 1 to my colleague. He had it for tea and send me a sms after praising it's a nice muffin. I didn't tell him it's a muffin. Does it mean I manage to achieve the correct texture of a muffin? Or cupcake is still not such a huge thing here down under?

Comfort food - Mince Chicken with 3 Eggs(salted egg, century egg and egg) Congee

2010-06-15T21:07:00.063+10:00

Congee with You Tiao(chinese donut)

Congee is definitely my comfort food. I love love love congee, a bit of white pepper, drizzle a little sesame oil and I can have 2 HUGE bowl at a time. Though it's my favourite food, it's definitely not for Minster. It's one of the few dishes which he dislike. I even have to force him to have congee when he's sick. But recently he's beginning to accept it and able to finish a reasonable potion by himself. c")

There's a huge variation in congee: Teochew style, Cantonese style. Different country has their own different way of cooking congee too.

My favourite is cantonese congee. White rice is cooked till it's totally dissolved. Texture of the congee is smooth, like thick liquid. It's not easy to achieve that consistency. Long hours constant stirring standing in front of the stove is required.

My trick to shorten the process but still able to achieve that is to

# 1 - Use broken rice

# 2 - Soak the rice as long as possible (Best is overnight)

# 3 - Use my tiger thermal pot!!! It not only save on gas bill, it also save me a lot of time from standing in front of the stove and also chances of burning my congee is zero.

I also like to cook it with chicken stock if available instead of water to make it more flavoursome. I also like to diced up carrot, potatoes and dump everything in while cooking. It makes the congee sweet and I'm having my fibre intake.

Salad

2010-05-25T20:57:00.045+10:00

Mister have being having quite a bit of salad when I was away. He got hooked onto salad and requested them almost very alternate days. To cut down on our carbohydrates, we started having more salad each week and limited ourselves to 3 dinners with rice a week.

I started trying out new fresh greens to spice up our salad. Adding all kinds of beans is another method which I did.

Prawn and Calamari Salad

1. Marinate some Calamari with Sweet Thai Sauce and Lime.
2. Grilled some fresh Prawn with shell intact and marinated Calamari and set aside.
3. Cooked some sweet peas in boiling water for less than a minute. Drained and set aside.
4. Poached an egg in boiling water for few minutes. Peeled and set aside.
5. Mixed diced tuss tomatoes, cucumber and canned corn with some olive oil.
6. Placed everything on a bowl/plate and served.

Another salad which I did was Boiled Sweet Peas and Snow Peas + Diced Cucumber, Carrot, Tomato, Avocado and Apple + Fresh Sprout toss with Macadamia Olive Oil served together with Pan Fried Salmon.

Popiah But Using Rice Paper Roll

2010-05-25T20:05:00.114+10:00

I did something different and special for dinner last night. It was popiah but instead of wrapping with the traditional popiah fresh skin, I used rice paper roll. Mainly because I couldn't find fresh popiah skin in down under. Only available at the oriental supermarket are frozen spring roll skin which I find them too thick unless deep fried.

As filling, I stir-fried some granted turnip and carrot with some light soya sauce, sugar,pepper and dark sauce for seasoning. I also prepared some shredded omelette and bean curd and steamed chicken thighs.

It was my 1st time using rice paper roll. I had ordered Rice Paper Roll numerous times at Vietnamese Restaurant but had never tried wrapping it myself. Oh man, it wasn't easy on my 1st try! Maybe because I wet the rice paper roll in hot boiling water instead of warm water which caused the paper roll to soften up too fast. As a result it stick together as you can see above. But subsequently I got the hang of it very quickly.

To assemble:

1. Spread some sweet dark sauce and homemade chilli paste on the paper roll.

2. Pile on omelette and bean curd, follow by lots of cooked turnip.

3. Topped it with some shredded steamed chicken.

4. Wrap and served.

I lost counted how many popiah we had but both of us enjoyed the meal very much and I will definitely make it again with something different as filling.

Liz's Version of The Rock's Favourite Chocolate Chips Cookies

2010-05-01T22:36:00.062+10:00

I was itchy to bake for weeks and finally found time last week to bake cookies. Plus I could test out our newly bought camera.

I found a recipe from Sarah's blog and decided to give it a try. But I did some changes to the recipe.

Liz's version of The Rock's Favourite Chocolate Chips Cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup caster raw sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
2.5 cups rolled oats, ground to fine powder in a blender
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
chocolate chips
nuts

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
Add eggs and vanilla, beat well.

Mix in flour, oats,baking powder, baking soda.

Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. I used all kinds of nuts I can find in my pantry.

Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls, flattening slightly and baked them in a 180 degrees preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.

I really like this recipe. Love the idea of grounding the oat and mixed it in. The cookie turn out to be slightly crunchy and also chewy. I was initially afraid that it will turn out too sweet but it didn't. CL just requested to bake another batch but just with chocolate chips.

Food I Tried/Eaten During My Trip

2010-04-27T22:02:00.000+10:00

I actually started this post few weeks ago but didn't manage to finish it at all *sigh*. Reason being I'm too busy or am I too disorganised or I'm too lazy??? Too lengthy???

Well all the photos posted on this entry all taken during my latest trip to Singapore. Spending more than 2 weeks, I in fact didn't satisfy a lot of my craving! I can't believe I didn't eat much at all.....not much appetite. Mostly due to the extreme heat and humidity and also without CL :P. Note: I didn't manage to take all the food I eaten during the whole duration of the trip.

I spend the 1st 3 days hiding at home eating my favourite chef homecook food, spending quality time with my family members and doing a lot of catching up with them.

My 1st outing was to CityLink, Marina Square and Millennia Walk with my best friend,her hubby and godson. We had lunch at a Japanese place at MS. Honestly I don't remember the quality of the noodle because I was busy talking...hehe. The dessert was pretty nice though, a good mixture of red bean paste with two different types of rice balls. But the service was shocking! The place was almost empty as it was early and a lot of families were still doing their house visiting instead of shopping. The waiter who served us can't even hold a basic english conversation. I had difficulties conveying my order to him. I never expect that in a restaurant in the city with a high chance of tourist walking in.

The next day, I met up with my best friend again and this time she bought me to the newly open Ion at Orchard. We had an early lunch before starting to shop. I had a short tour around on the million dollar renovation food court at the basement (is it really necessary??? food taste nicer??) before we decided to try the Katsudon which 8-days magazine recommended. The tonkatsu was very well done, not dry inside and super crispy outside. Plus it's not soak with oil even though it's deep fried. As for the curry, nothing to shout about.

Basement of Ion has a lot of food stalls selling quite a huge range of food. 50% are japanese style food. We shared some Takoyaki. They were definitely different from those I used to have. These were huge, filled with ingredients, not tough inside. I also bought some japanese steamed rice cake for my Godson and also nephew. Mum told me Truman loved them.

Cai Fan(vegetable rice) for lunch, Dad and me went to get takeaway before we popped into Sis's place. This is CL's favourite, a huge choices of vegetable, meat, seafood, tofu, curry, eggs etc for you to chose. We packed 4 packets of rice each with 3 different combination of vegetable and meat. In total it cost less than S$10. Good budget!

Daddy also bought me and Mum to Zion Road market to have the famous Char Kway Teow. I also ordered some Satay to share because I had craving for Kueh Tupat. I also ordered a huge glass of freshly squeeze sugar cane juice with lemon. I had so many glasses of sugar cane juice during that 2 weeks.

I never fail to have my Gui Ling Jao and herbal tea after my visit to Guan Yin Ma Temple at Bugis. I'm a strange creature because the more bitter the herbal tea is, the more I enjoy.

Chinese style pancake (Mi Jian Kueh) is another favourite snack/breakfast of mine. I did tried making them, passable but a lot of room for improvement.

Daddy and me also went to have Nasi Briyani and Indian Rojak at Little India Hawker Center. I loved Indian Rojak and so far have no luck getting them in Melbourne. It's a hassle to make as it consist of too many different ingredients plus I feel that the sauce is the most critical.

I walked past the hawker center and I couldn't resist to pack a packet of Chicken Rice even though I'm meeting my ex-colleague for dinner later that evening. It's a popular store and there wasn't any queue. Fantastic! Bought 2 packet, 1 for myself and 1 for daddy. It only took me 5 mins to finish it.

Muffins, Chocolate Chips and Berries

2010-04-20T19:21:00.044+10:00

I got a bit sick of cereal plus weather being too crazy, extremely cold 1 week and warm the other. Almost half loaf of bread always end up in the bin because we didn't manage to finish it before expiry date. I need something different to start my day so I tried baking muffins.

I started off using Nigella How To Be a Domestic Goddess book but instead of baking Blueberry or Baklava or Banana Muffin in the book. I followed the basic mixture recipe and mix in Chocolate Chips to half the batch and the other half frozen Berries. 2 different choice of Muffins in 1 bake!

Not sure how many breakky I will end up. CL already eaten 2 of the Chocolate Chips Muffins.

Ayam Nasi Briyani

2010-03-31T17:14:00.016+11:00

I'm now in bed, suppose to be resting but got woken up by a phone call. Since I'm awake, might as well make use of the time. Post a entry and go back to sleep.
This is the Ayam Nasi Briyani I tried from the newly added cookbook "The Best of Singapore Cooking". It's the 2nd recipes I tried and I loved it!

This is the picture taken from the book. It looks yummy isn't it? Comparing the appearance of the Chicken dish, it's quite different. Guess that's most probably I didn't really follow the recipe very closely.

For this entry, I'm going to post the recipe on. I love going to food blogs not only to look at photos, finding out where the good foods are. I also love to hunting down recipes and try it out myself. So why not start posting recipes on my own blog too. Right? If I need to cook when I don't have my cookbooks with me, I can just refer from my own blog. How easy is that???

(A)

1 thumb-sized piece ginger
3 cloves garlic
4 green chillies (left them out during marketing)

(B)
1 handful mint leaves (skipped, because he doesn't like it)
2 stalks coriander with roots,rinsed (skipped because he think this is poisonous)
2 tomatoes,cut in eighths
2 tablespoons tomato puree (instead of opening up a big can of puree and used only 2 tablespoons, I put in more fresh tomatoes)

(Seasoning)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon msg (skipped, I never cook with msg)

1.6kg chicken quartered (I used 6 chicken drumsticks)
225g Ghee or 112g butter with 112ml oil (I used butter and definitely didn't use that much!)
1 teaspoon dry chilli powder mixed to a paste with water
1 level teaspoon garam masala
170ml evaporated milk mixed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 112ml water
285g shallots, thinly sliced

Marinate chicken pieces with 1 level tablespoon salt for 1 hour.
Heat a large saucepan with half of the ghee. Fry shallots till golden brown. Set aside.
Fry (A) till fragrant. Add chilli paste and garam masala, then add in (B), seasoning and 1/2 milk mixture. Stir-fry till oil bubbles through.
Put in chicken pieces, fried shallots, remaining milk and oil. Cook over high heat for 10 mins,
Reduce heat to low and cook gently till chicken is tender. Drain chicken, keeping oil to cook the briani rice.

(C)
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
4 shallots, thinly sliced

(D)
5cm cinnamon bark
8 cardamoms,lightly bashed
6 cloves

600g Basmatic rice, washed and drained (I didn't measure my rice, I cooked closed to 2 cups. Enough for dinner + CL next day lunch)
55g ghee (I used butter instead)

(Seasoning)
1 chicken cube
1.5 teaspoons salt
1.1 litres boiling water

(Colouring)
Mix 1 teaspoon yellow food colouring with 0.25 teaspoon Rose essence (skipped, because I didn't have any in my pantry) and 4 tablespoons water

Heat wok with ghee to fry (C) til lightly browned, add (D) and stir-fry for 0.5min. Add in the remaining oil and rice. Stir in pan till oil is absorbed into rice.

Pour n the boiling water and seasoning. Cook rice in electric rice-cooker till dry and fluffy. Do not stir while cooking.

Remove lid and sprinkle yellow colouring mixture over rice. Continue to cook for another 10mins. Remove from heat. Loosen rice,mixing colours evenly.

The rice was really fragrant. The whole house was filled with the fragrant smell while the rice was the the rice cooker. As for the Ayam, the gravy was a bit too watery. Maybe if I use tomato puree, it will have thicken it. But I like the taste, not too spicy, can still taste the sweetness of the tomatoes. As it used evaporated milk instead of coconut milk, it very different from Curry Chicken, not heavy. Overall, I feel it's a more healthy alternative.

Went Crazy at Kinokuniya, Singapore

2010-03-08T16:34:00.184+11:00

Flipping back thru the past entries, I realised I have being blogging lesser and lesser. That's not because I ran out of restaurants I tried and love, or I ran out of recipes which I tried. It's because I ran out of time! I have being busy with work, trying to juggle 2-3 people workload by myself, running around like a mad dog trying to cater and please all the different project in-charge. It's not easy especially at the end of the day, it seem like workload is piling faster than clearing.

I didn't even manage to blog 1 entry in the month of February!!! *faint* I made some pineapple tarts just before CNY and also flew back to Sing the day before CNY eve to attend to some family matter. It wasn't fun having to hunt air ticket the eve before departure, dumping personal belonging into suitcase + trying not to miss out anything and also dumping all my messy work hoping someone will help me pick it up when I'm away.

The last trip back was more than 2.5 years ago. Because it was such last minute decision trip, I didn't really informed anyone except my family members and my best friend. For 2 weeks, I spend a lot of time with my parents, sister, nephew and my newly addition niece. It was great! I really bonded very well with my nephew on the 2nd week. I also managed to meet up some friends who being keeping in touch with me. I know there are some friends which I missed out but time wasn't on my side. Learned about the current lifestyle of Singaporean, what are the difficulties my fellow mates are currently suffering etc. It definitely triggered the citizenship question which has being in my mind again. This trip has actually help me to make a decision. Now it's only action.

Just before I left for Sing, I came to learn about a set of food manga which I read it from here. I know I won't have much luck since the only Kinokuniya Australia is in Sydney and never seen Borders carrying manga. Plus even if they do, it might cost a fair bit. So when I was shopping at Orchard, I went to Kinokuniya to try my luck as I only remember the cover and don't exactly remember the exact title at all! I was lucky!!! I spotting 1 of them once I'm at the manga section and got help to find the rest.

I only picked 1 out of 7 to have a go and see whether do I like them that much that I will carry them all the way back to home. I really did!!! Even my sis was reading it.

Whole set of Oishinbo. I just finished the last book : Joy of Rice last night. I learned a lot about Japanese food thru the 7 books and wondering is there a full version (100 books) in Mandarin coz I don't understand Japanese.

In every beginning of a book, there is a recipe related to the book theme with step by step instruction. Definitely something in my list : Things to Try.

On my 2nd trip to Kinokuniya, I went crazy buying books! If it's not because of the baggage limitation, I will have got more!!! Already both 2 story books at Melb airport before I departed.

I also got a Singapore/Nonya style cookbook titled The Best of Singapore Cooking by the Late Mrs Leong. I did tried finding Singapore/Malaysia style cookbook at Borders but it doesn't carry a huge variety. This cookbook cover from Nonya food to hawker food to Kueh to dessert. So far I had tried two recipes and both turned out really nice (I will blog about it on my next entry).

The next book I got was introduced by a lady which I met at Kinokuniya while I was comparing two different cover of Julie and Julia (just checking they are in fact the exact same content). I love the movie and had watch it twice, 2nd on the flight to Sing. The lady told me My Life in France by Julia Child with her nephew is a much better book to read instead and she highly recommended it!

Costing only S$13, how can I not drop in into my shopping bag??? Definitely I can fit in into my carry-on baggage.

Pineapple Tarts

2010-03-08T16:19:00.019+11:00

Liz's home made Pineapple Tarts

I managed to baked some Pineapple Tarts to satisfy my craving. Didn't really spend much time hunting down a recipe to try. There are tonnes on internet as everyone baking them. It didn't take me long to make. From memory, I spend about 4 hours starting from measuring the ingredients to last tray of pineapple tarts out from the oven. I ended with 130 pineapple tarts....not too bad right???

Craving = 2 Huge Pineapples sitting on the bench top

2010-01-30T21:23:00.000+11:00

Even though I haven't being blogging, I still faithfully reading a lot of food blog every night. I started to have craving for pineapple tarts since last weekend after spotting some Chinese New Year goodies at the oriental supermarket.

It got even worst after spotting a homemade pineapple tart on Jeroxie food blog!!!! I decided to make some pineapple tarts this year!!! I didn't have any last year from memory. Plus there are friends who I can passed some too :).....dun need to finish everything by ourselves. This morning after exercising, I went to nearby vegetable stall and bought 2 huge pineapples. But they are still sitting on the bench top as I'm too tired and whole body aching to move let alone cook into jam which is a long process. Planning to do it tomorrow morning if not my CNY goodies won't make it in time.

Wish me luck in finding the perfect recipe!

Chocolate Snowcap Biscuits

2010-01-30T18:14:00.042+11:00

I know I haven't being blogging at all. I had a few busy weekend for the past few weeks. Wedding to attend, CNY festival at Victoria Street, BBQ on Australia Day follow by firework, watching Australia Open and also catching up with friends etc. I also being trying to do my housework during weekday evening after work and dinner.

This morning I attended my 3rd training session with Step Into Life. Both me and CL had signed up and committed 2 sessions a week. We haven't being exercising for more than a year now and it's really tough to get that back into our routine and the body is taking time to adapt to it. We realised how badly our fitness is after the 1st session. It;s something which I hope I'm able to continue even if my workload increase. *finger cross* Plus it's a great way getting to know more people especially when all stay in the surrounding suburbs. I'm definitely enjoying it but I'm exhausted and aching all over now. :(

I manage to squeeze in some baking last week after work. CL was scheduled night shift the next day and just nice to bring in some freshly baked goodies to share with his colleagues. Came upon this recipe when I was flipping thru a newly addition cookbook which was a X'mas gift from Zac.

End product on the left and on the right unbaked product

I had all the ingredients in my fridge and pantry and I reckon it won't take the whole night. But I was totally wrong!!! All because I didn't read the recipe detail enough! While beating in butter and sugar, I realised I'm required to fridge the dough for 2 hours! It was almost 8pm by then and there is no turning back. Told myself I just got to fridge till the max duration I can afford then. In the end, I did manage to fridge it for almost 2 hours and as the result, I ended up going to bed late. But it's all worth it because the biscuits are delicious!!! Firm, slightly crunchy surface and soft inside. The texture is almost like cake. The recipes stated 12 biscuits but I eneded up with 3 times more! I must have made them too small. My biscuits didn't cracked as much compared to the photo and I didn't coat a thick layer of icing sugar before baking. I was really afraid it will turn out too sweet.

Ladies final is starting soon. I will try to blog a bit more soon.

*faint* I got so much back entry still waiting to be done.

Class???

2010-01-06T19:45:00.000+11:00

I'm still battling whether should I start taking some short courses. I'm not talking about courses for work but cooking and baking classes. :P I did start searching for such courses more than 2 years ago but a few factor put me off till now.

Location - I don't used to drive. Even till now, I'm still confine although I got my driving license and own car. I don't explore areas, places by myself. If I'm going out with CL, he's definitely the driver. I'm hoping I will gain my confidence and start exploring Melbourne myself.
Cost - It's not cheap to take up short courses. A 4 hours cooking course costs almost $300. How much do I have to fork out each year to attend those I'm interested??? This year should be save, save, save! Planning for a long vacation (4 or 5 weeks) in Sept to LaLa Land to see my family and also to attend CL's bro wedding. We are also targeting to at least visit 2 asian country. Sipandan? Maldives? Thailand? Vietnam? Cambodia? OMG!! We have so many places which we would love to travel!
Will I gain??? - I guess no can guarantee I will learn something and enjoy the course. If I chose 1 and start with it, will it give me a better idea what the course install???

I'm still thinking, thinking, thinking...hmmmmmmmmm

Roast Pork with Crackling

2009-12-31T18:48:00.035+11:00

Last dinner for 2009, we had Roast Pork with Crackling. As I mentioned in the previous post, it was my 1st time making this dish.

I reckon it turn out pretty good for 1st timer. The meat was a bit dry, crackling a bit too saltish. But the crackling was a huge success!!! It's super crunchy!!!! CL even asked for more after finishing everything.

In fact I'm pretty amazed by the taste because I didn't marinate the meat before popping into the oven. Only a layer of fennel + salt on the skin and a bottle of white wine after an hour in the oven. The taste was pretty unique, none of the "pork" smell or taste which I'm terrific off. I'm someone who doesn't order pork if I have other choice except for BBQ pork or Sweet and Sour Pork. If there's slices of pork in my noodle, I will either not eat it or pass it to CL. But if it's homecook pork dish, I have no problem with it. Strange? I admit.

Therefore I was a bit scared when it was cooking in the oven. Lucky it turn out way better than expected.

Cookware Purchased on Boxing Day

2009-12-31T18:47:00.002+11:00

This are the two cookware which I purchased during Boxing Day sale. I had tried using the 20cm fry pan and I love it. As for the wok, it's kept safely in my storeroom at the moment. I will only take it out when my current wok start giving way which I reckon won't be too far away.

1st Time

2009-12-31T14:56:00.000+11:00

I'm roasting pork belly with crackling. It's definitely my 1st time doing this dish. I wanted to try it long ago but I'm pretty scared because it looks hard. So far after more than an hour in the oven, it looks promising. Just got to wait and see I guess.

Wish me Luck!

2009 Boxing Day Shopping

2009-12-26T14:01:00.000+11:00

Ho ho ho ho!!! CL and me just got home from Doncaster Westfield. Got there after 8am to report for boxing day shopping. Spend 5 hours and ended up with a gigantic hole in his credit card our pocket.

I manage to buy a really nice jacket!! A pair of shoe and half year supply of intimate apparel. CL manage to buy some tops which we happened to hunt them down by luck.

I added some cookware for the kitchen again. This time a 20cm Jamie Oliver pan and a Jamie Oliver wok. Will post the photos up later.

Simply Spanish

2009-12-13T16:44:00.003+11:00

During my parent's visit, we bought them around for international food cuisine : italian, thai, indian, vietnamese etc. The recent trip, we introduce them to Spanish food.

Simply Spanish at South Melbourne Market is the only place we being to for paella. I'm still hunting for other alternative to make a comparison. But at the meantime, we are enjoying the paella served here.

Simply Spanish served 2 types of paella. 1 is the big pan paella which they cook outside the store. We always have that, cost $10 for a box take away. They seem to be pretty popular as they have two big pans cooking at the same time. I even experience having to queue and wait as the demand was high. The other kind of paella is the small size seafood paella (enough for 2) which will take them 40mins to cook after ordering.

Since there are 4 of us and with time to spare, we ordered 1 serve of Big Pan Paella and another Seafood Paella all to share. Good chance to try taste what's the different between the two.

Big Pan Paella

The Big Pan Paella was 1st up since they just finished cooking the 1st pan for the day. It has a mixture of mussels, squids, chicken pieces, chorizo etc. Dad and Mum enjoy the dish too :-)

While waiting, we also had Chickpeas with Spinach. The chickpea is cook with some spices. Can't really remember what spices but I like the dish. We also had some complimentary bread with olive oil.

As for drink, I tried their Spanish Coffee. It's very unique! I'm guessing the milk on the bottom of the glass is condensed milk. But the ration of milk : coffee is just right! It's not too sweet and the coffee is strong. At the end, we ordered another 2 glasses. 1 for CL and 1 for Mummy.

Spanish Coffee

It didn't really seem that we waited very long for the Seafood Paella. Think because we being eating non-stop plus chatting.

The Seafood Paella potion is huge. Definitely able to feed more than 2 people. The prawns are huge and fresh!!! The taste between the big pan and seafood is quite distinguish. Guessing because both are cook with different stock.

Seafood Paella

Both paellas are winner to me. But if time permit, I will go for the Seafood Paella coz I love seafood more than meat.