Traditional Hakka Dish

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for side dishes, Mum cook

Choy Sum

Cabbage

Leek

String Beans

Bean Curd
Peanut
Dried Shrimp, Sweet Dried Radish and Basil

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

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

Ayame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excuse : Folks came for visit

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

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

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

1> Ayame

2> Tutto Bene

3> Kangaroo Island Vacation

4> Traditional Hakka Dish

5> Spanish food at South Melbourne Market

6> Good Life in Adelaide

7> Rockpool - My advance birthday dinner

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

9> Homecook food by Dearest Mummy and Me =)

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

Golden Dragon Palace

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

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

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

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

CL had his usual Hot and Sour Seafood Soup.

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

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

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

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

Mei Cai Kou Rou (Pork with Preserved Vegetable)

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

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

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

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

Le Creuset

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

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

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

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



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


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

So Ang Moh Style

"Today dinner so Ang Moh" that's what CL said when he sat at the table.

I did nothing fanciful, just used what I had in the freezer + pantry. Mince beef + mince chicken + onion + egg + corn flake crumb = meatball. Packet of meatball gravy from IKEA in the pantry + milk = gravy. Jam from Miss Maple in the fridge. Some mash potatoes and greens. Altogether is my own version of IKEA meatball.

As I had served the greens in 1 plate, smash potatoes in 1 bowl, meatballs in another plate. CL felt yesterday dinner was so ang moh style. Scooping from 1 plate to after another, piecing his dinner together in front of him was rather unusual. Once he took some chilli sauce from the fridge, the ang moh style gone as I told him. LOL. Very typical of him having chilli sauce with almost everything. A friend of ours even laugh at him having steak with chilli sauce! It's something which can't be change.

Chocolate Cake

Yeah! I finally found the picture!

Thought I lost it but turn out I didn't look hard enough and detail enough. Plus I think I need to change my filing system for the photos.

This is the Chocolate Cake which I tried months ago mentioned here. Definitely going to bake for daddy when he comes, he loves cake. Bet he will enjoyed it a lot! As for mummy, I need to start looking into Butter Cake as that's her favourite.

Steak Sandwich + Pumpkin Soup

Last Saturday I was called back to work in the morning :(. Client was running production slightly longer than expected and I got to relieve my colleague so that he is able to spend some time with his 2 kids (fair). I was actually looking forward to meet up with Lynn to do some baby shopping before she pop. It's so hard to slot her in with my current messy, last minute, all over the place schedule.

Even though I was pretty tired after work, I was hoping I could cook something simple and nice for dinner to de-stress. YES, cooking is actually a relaxation therapy for me. Shopping for clothing is actually stress for me!!!! Plus we have being eating out for the past few nights and getting sick of outside food covered with lots of msg + salt.

I had defrost the steak that morning. I could just have salad and steak or with roast pumpkin. That's very usual typical dinner which we have. Not very interesting dinner so I came up with having Pumpkin Soup with Steak Sandwich.

I had homemade chicken stock in the freezer and all the ingredient required. Plus I had a few avocados which I need to try finish before they go bad. All I had to do was pop into Coles on my way home and get some bread + fresh salad.

My version of Pumpkin Soup. Honestly I have no idea should it still be consider as Pumpkin Soup or Vegetable Soup. Because pumpkin wasn't the only ingredient. I also put in carrot, onion, celery. I was very surprise it turn out to be very sweet. It was really comforting to have a bowl of hot soup for dinner during winter.

Juicy Porterhouse Steak bought from my favourite butcher in Victoria Market. The steak was perfect! Not too cooked for CL nor too rare for me.

My version of steak sandwich made with porterhouse steak, rockets, avocado and roasted capsicum.

It was such a simple, easy and nice dinner that both of us enjoyed a lot. I'm more determine to try make more western style soup rather than my usual Cantonese, oriental soup.

Nice Breakky and Stroll by the Beach

This morning was spent having a nice breakfast at St Kilda Gallen Cafe, follow by a stroll by the beach. It was our 2nd visit to Gallen Cafe. It never failed to impress us!

Although it was still pretty early when we arrived but we got the last available table. We started the morning with a huge cup of strong mocha.



CL got tempted with their Pumpkin Scone serve with butter and relish. It's very special having scone with their relish. The combination actually turn out really well.

I had sweet-potato, basil and fetta hash browns with spinach, poached egg, and relish. I'm beginning to appreciate relish a lot more although I still find the taste slightly strange.

While CL had his Egg Benedict. The poached egg is cook to prefection, served with the sesame bun plus hollandaise sauce.

A wonderful breakky, stroll by beach and a lazy afternoon in front of the telly, it's such a great way to spend a weekend with my love.