Instant Chicken Rice!

I was at Chan Brothers one Sunday, was doing my normal Asian ingredients shopping. Time to stock up my instant noodle again (especially my dear bf started eating instant noodle now). I saw a 'rather' new packaging on the shelf, when I said it is rather new, I mean it could be in the market for a long time but I have just came across it.

I have always been very skeptical about instant rice and porridge, never thought they would be nice, I prefer fresh, fluffy rice. Anyway, I decided to buy one to try. I think it costs around $2, can't really remember.

So I took it to work one day and prepared it during lunch time. All my colleagues were very curious and couldn't wait to see whether it would turn out allright.

The instructions given were to soak the rice in boiling water for 5 minutes then pour out the mear from the seal foil pack and put the container into the microwave, heat it on high for 2 minutes.

After the initial 5 minutes, the rice was half cooked! I was so excited and thought, hey! this could turn out good. BUT I was sooooo disappointed when I pour the meat out, only 3 pieces of chicken! 3! THREE! Can you believe it? The rest were bits of carrot and bake beans!

I didn't have my phone with me so I couldn't take a pic. :(

It tasted OK, but bloody disappointed with the freaking 3 pieces of chicken. I ate only half the rice because there weren't enough chicken, carrot and beans.

Verdict: NOT going to buy it again.

Silly Me

I wrote an entry about Seoul Korean - Northbridge but posted it to my other blog! Click HERE if you are interested to read that.

Vegetarian Noodle

Every 1st and 15th day on the luna calendar, I am a vegetarian. I will only eat vegetables, bean or eggs. For the previous 15th day, I decided to make vegetarian noodle. Something very simple and yummy.

Ingredients:
half a carrot - shredded
4 chinese mushrooms - shredded
handful of shredded cabbage/chinese cabbage
2 cloves of garlic - diced

Sauce:
1 tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
2 tspn dark sauce
1 tspn fish sauce
salt and pepper
1 tspn sugar
150ml water

1 packet of noodle (egg noodle/yee mee/instant noodle)

Brown garlic, put in carrot, mushrooms and cabbage. Stir fry till carrot and cabbage are semi soft, put in noodle. When noodle is getting soft, stir in sauce. Coat noodle with sauce, then add in water, cover the lid and simmer for 5 -10minutes. You may adjust the amount of water depending how much gravy/sauce you want with your noodle :)

Curry Laksa @ Asian Cuisine

I was craving for curry a few days ago, so when I had a chance last Thursday. I dropped by at Asian Cuisine on Collins Road to have a bowl of curry laksa. :p

The curry was very flavourful, very tasty. I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, my favourite curry laksa is still the one @ Northbridge food court, it is more expensive tho, $14 per bowl if I am not wrong.

Unfortunately, I got very thirsty after eating this curry, I think they used a lot of MSG. :(

Asian Cuisine do serve other yummy food like Wonton Mee, Fried Squid, Curry Ckicken Rice, Sambal Fish (my favourite), Mee Siam and Char Kuay Teow.

Asian Cuisin on Collins Road, Willetton.

Close every Monday and Tuesday

Pretty Agar Agar and Konyaku

I love agar agar, jelly, konyaku jelly since I was little. I can eat agar agar as my meal, crazy I know! Agar agar and konyaku are such easy recipe that no brainers could make them as well. Anyway, made these for Karen's engagement party as I was busy house hunting so I could only make something as easy.

I tried to mix sago and agar agar together, they turned out very well, the sago were transparent so they made some pattern on the agar agar. As for the agar agar, I just used the pre-mix and added coconut milk in it.

Made the konyaku with pre-mix as well and added lots of fruits to make them as colourful as possible. I get very happy when I see colourful (naturally) jelly. :p

SG Food Tasting 2 - KFC Hot Devil Drumlets

They were sooooo Yummy! We walked past a poster and I told Matt, "I am sooo going to try this!"

So when we walked past a KFC, I insisted us to go in, I wanted only a box of drumlets. I ordered the Thai Spicy drumlets.

They were sooo good, so juicy, so crispy, no tasty and oh so FATTENING, Matt let me have 2 and he had 1. I don't why they don't sell this in Perth! Why! WHy! Why!

SG Food Tasting - PIZZA IN A CONE

Yup, that's right. Eating pizza in a cone. When we walked pass the stall, Matt actually stopped to look at the menu and so did I. As usual, I was all excited, trying to look around the stall, checking the oven they had. The oven has a mini conveyor belt and several holders are placed on the belt.

So I approached the guy manning the stall, asked him what's he selling. He said PIZZA IN A CONE. Matt wanted to try and I was extremely curious, so I ordered one, one of their popular flavour - chicken curry; East meets West. Hahaha

Ahhhh... so the cone is actually a pizza base, then they put all ingredients in the cone then top with cheese, then placed the cone in one of the holders and the cone will pass through the oven on the belt. When it reached the exit, it was cooked!

I couldn't remember how much was the pizza, but it was only a few SG dollars, maybe $4.

IT WAS YUMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CHEAP, CONVENIENT AND YUMMY! We bought the pizza from Takashimaya food court.

I spoke to the man while waiting for the pizza, I told him I want to take the franchise back to Perth. He passed me a business card immediately. Hahaha... I think this has potetial in Aust market. Aussies love pizza, and how convenient to be able to eat pizza like eating an ice-cream for only $3-$4 each?

Anyone interested in a joint venture?

Red Cray Restaurant

I went to this restaurant with my parents, uncle and aunt, and a family friend when my parents visited Perth in April. Hahah.. and I am only writing about this in September :p

The food wasn't too bad, but wasn;t as good as I have expected. However, this restaurant is always so busy and if you want to dine there, you have to make reservation 1 week in advance (at least). We got in last minute thanks to my cousin who works there.

It was my shout that night and the bill came to about $250.00 after staff discount, thanks again to my cousin. So it was about $60 per person, mind you, that's because we ordered the most expensive dishes in the restaurant. We ordered 2 executive seafood platters, dad had lobster and with risotto, uncle had steak with lobster.

This is the executive platter that I shared with mom. The platter is meant for 2 persons. Mom doesn't take butter nor cheese. So she ate most of the lobster while I eat the cheesy fish.

Dad's lobster and prawn risotto. I didn't think dad enjoyed the dinner as he doesn't fancy seafood and he loves having rice for dinner. He asked me what's risotto, I told him it is rice, short rice... haha he didn't like it. He said it tasted funny. I told him not to touch his food till I took a pic of it, he asked me why must I take pic of all the food he eats. Hahaha...

Red Cray Restaurant

Sandringham Central
86 Great Eastern Highway
Belmont

http://www.redcray.com.au/profile.html

Sweet and Sour Pork

Wow.. I have been so slack with my food blog. I have so many pics in my folder but I was so lazy to blog about them :( I fail as a food blogger ><

Anyway, made this several times and tasted pretty good. :)

Excuse the bad picture, think my hands shook again :(

Ingredients:

400g Pork (chops or tenderloin), pound the meat then slice

2 onion

1 large green capsicum

Canned pineapple cubes

Marinade:

1 tsp light soy sauce

1/4 tsp dark soy sauce

1 small egg

1 tbsp tapioca flour/plain flour

Sauce:

3 tbsp tomato sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1-1/2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tbsp vinegar

1/4 tsp salt or to taste

1/2 cup water

Marinate pork for a couple of hours.

Fry the pork slices till it is golden brown. This is a healthier way. I did try to deep fry the meat and taste good as well.

Slice onion and sauté till softened.

Add in capsicum. When capsicum is slightly soften, pour in the sauce ingredients. Bring the sauce to boil.

Return meat to the wok and add in pineapple.

Cook till the meat is covered by the sauce. Dish out and serve with rice.

Yum!

Dragon Palace Restaurant

I was craving for dim sum last weekend, but Matt didn't feel like it on Saturday, so we decided to have dim sum on Sunday instead.

Sunday morning, I woke up at 10am and kept hassling Matt to wake up and remind him that he promised to have dim sum with me. He couldn't resist my pastering, and finally woke up and took me to Northbridge.

As we've expected, all the dm sum restaurants were already packed at 11:30am. We wanted to go to Jade Dynasty as I think their dim sum is good and service staff are extremely efficient. Matt was frightened by the waiting crowd, so we detour to another restaurant. Then we decided to try this new restaurant called 'Dragon Palace', diagonally opposite ATO.

We were given a number and was told there would be a 15-20 mins wait. So we sat down and waited....waited. Finally we got to be seated, we were seated on a stage.

I think the stage is meant for wedding dinner, blablabla... Anyway, I was concerned that we wouldn't get any food as all the carts were moving on the floor below the stage! The staff assured me they will bring the food up.

Then we waited over 20 mins for our tea! We started eating (even finished a few plates) before we were given our pot of tea! We had to ask 3 different people for our tea, and finally the 3rd person got us our tea...tsk tsk BAD SERVICE!

HOWEVER, the food was good. Yummy and juicy dim sum..... but the service really did put me off. Matt knew I was fuming because he said my face said it all...hahahaha You know me with customer service. ><

Anyway, the food isn't cheap. For example, a small plate (smaller than other restaurants) of fried squid tentacles cost $5.90. (o.O)

P.S. while waiting for our table, we checked out their menu. :p the dishes aren't cheap at all. Hehe must try one day to see if the dishes are as good as their prices.

Address: 66 Francis Street,Northbridge WA 6003
Cuisine: Chinese Price: $40-$55 Entree & Main
Phone: (08) 9227 8882 Fax: (08) 9227 8008

Arirang

Last Saturday, Matt and I were bored and the weather was freezing. I couldn't think of where to have dinner, then it striked me that I had always wanted to try Arirang, Korean BBQ.

So I got their number from the web, and made a booking for 2. When we got there, we could smell the bbq, smelled divine and I warned Matt that we would get very very smelly haha

We were seated on the first floor where no one was cooking, so Matt got very concerned if we would be the only table that was going to cook, i told him "I dont care! ME gonna cook!". he just laughed and then I realised he was a Korean BBQ virgin! Hahaha lucky he has me now, take him to try different cuisines. Matt is a pretty conversative eater, not very adventurest especially when it comes to Asian delecacies like chicken feet, 'fatt choy' (hair looking vegetables), tofu and etc.

We ordered a normal banquet and a seafood banquet, with the attempt to try different food on their menu.

Normal Banquet $28.50 per person

entree

A delectable combination of:

Honey Chicken
lean skinless chicken pieces battered + pan-fried till golden in a honey soy sayce. Absolutely heaven!

Mandu
seasoned pork and vegetables dumplings fried to perfection. served with a soy dipping sauce.

main course
A combination platter of our finest BBQ meats including:

Duk Bulgogi
lean chicken fillets, marinated in our sweet soy sauce.

Bulgogi
fine slices of lean beef, marinated in our sweet soy sauce.

Deaji Bulgogi
finely sliced belly pork marinated in our hot chilli sauce.

Main meals are served with rice, miso soup, namul [seasoned vegetables], kimchi, dipping sauces and lettuce leaves. Cook the meat over the charcoal grill, place the meat, rice + dipping sauce in a lettuce leaf and consume with delight!

seafood banquet -$33.50 per person

entree
A delectable combination of:

Honey Chicken
lean skinless chicken pieces battered + pan-fried till golden in a honey soy sayce. Absolutely heaven!

Mandu
seasoned pork and vegetables dumplings fried to perfection. served with a soy dipping sauce.

main course

A combination platter of our finest seafood including The freshest fruits of the sea: chilli squid,scallops, mussels + king prawns served with our special tangy dipping sauce. Main meals are served with rice, miso soup, namul [seasoned vegetables], kimchi, dipping sauces and lettuce leaves. Cook the meat over the charcoal grill, place the meat, rice + dipping sauce in a lettuce leaf and consume with delight!

To be honest, I prefer the normal banquet compare to the seafood one because the marinated taste so good! Matt doesn't eat pork but he loved the pork they served. I like the pork and beef. The honey chicken was so yummy! We love them, and I gave Matt an extra piece because he was starving haha... I must learn how to make that chicken. The chicken is not like those honey chicken you get from those Chinese rice stall that is covered with batter. Those side dishes like the pickled vege and potatoes were yummy too, they served this plate of cucumber, they weren't pickle cucumber, just normal cooked cucumber, tasted so yummy. Matt does not eat cucumber very often, he doesn't like the slippery texture, but he liked this particular cucumber. :p

We had 2 drinks each and Matt had a coffee after his meal, the total bill was $88.00. I think it is pretty ok. Not cheap, but we felt that it was worth it. Good food and service. Just hope that the portion can be bigger.

Matt had fun eating and cooking at the same time.. hahaha. In the end, both came out smelling each other and commented how divine we smelled.

Apricot Yogurt Cake

I have lots of yogurt left from making the non-bake yogurt cake. So I found a recipe online to bake a fruity yogurt cake. I chose this Apricot Yogurt Cake because I thought the sour apricot will make the cake quite interesting and the feedback on the recipe were great.

I made a mistake while baking this cake, so the outcome wasn't as good as I have expected but definitely edible and not sweet AT ALL.

It will be a great dessert for my aunt and she is diabetic.

Recipe as follow:

300g canned apricot halves, drained, sliced
125g butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups self-raising flour
175g Apricot yogurt

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease base and sides of a 6cm-deep, 20cm (base) springform cake pan. Line with baking paper. Pat apricot dry with paper towel.

Using an electric mixer, cream butter, caster sugar and vanilla until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
Stir in flour and 1 tub of yoghurt until well combined.


Spoon half the cake mixture into prepared pan. Smooth surface. Top with apricot. Spoon remaining mixture over apricot. Smooth surface.


Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand cake for 5 minutes in pan.

Remove from pan.

Place on wire rack to cool.

Too pretty to be eaten

I ordered some cupcakes from here for my father for Father's Day gift. Ordered 2 dozens in total, 1 for my father and 1 for my nephew. Alice was very nice, she took some pictures and emailed them to me. The cupcakes are so pweeeettttyyyyy.....

Chilled orange Yogurt Cake

This cake is by far my favourite, it is very light, healthy (no flour, no cheese), appetising and super yummy!

I will post the recipe when I have time :p

Sorry, I know the photo quality is pretty bad ><

Buttered Prawns

I cooked buter prawns over the Foundation Day weekend. I love prawns and especially buttered prawns. I found the recipe from Cooking Momster, I followed the recipe and the prawns turned out fantastic. It wasn't difficult at all to be honest, just a little patience is all you need when cooking the butter and milk together. Everyone said the prawns were yummy!

This is what it looks like when you mix the milk and butter together. Becareful, this mixture get burned easily, so keep the heat low and keep stirring.

This picture is taken from Cooking Momster, I forgot to take a picture of my buttered prawns, but they look the same (I swear!).

Recipe is as follow, again, the recipe is taken from Cooking Momster.

Ingredients :

500gm fresh water prawns (I used frozen king prawns, I don't know what fresh water prawns are ><)

1 tbsp corn flour

3 tbsp butter

1/2 can evaporated milk

2 sprigs curry leaves (I used fresh curry leaves from the garden)

1 tsp chopped chilli padi (I used normal chilli, the super hot ones from my aunt's garden)

1 tsp sugar

Method :

1. Coat the prawns with cornflour.In a pan of hot oil, stir fried the prawns till it turned orange colour. Dish up and set aside.

2. Melt butter in a pan. Pour in the evaporated milk.

3. Stir fry at low heat till it dry up and formed granules.

4. Then add in sugar,curry leaves and chilli padi and fry till fragrant.

5. Add in prawns and mixed well.

Banana Cake - AGAIN

Matt loves banana cake. He asked if I can bake it again, so here it is. I am getting sick of baking banana cake now, I can mix everything and put it into the oven in less than 20 mins.

I will try some non-bake cheese cake tomorrow, that's if I can get a big round baking dish tomorrow.

Wish me luck ;)

Choc Cake and Creme Brulee

We had dinner at Victoria Station to celebrate Yumi's birthday. Victoria Station is located in Burswood Hotel, right next to Yu Chinese Restaurant.

I ordered the steak with wine sauce, coz I was told their steak is superb. I love the sauce, but my steak was overcooked. They offered to redo one for me, but I was simply too hungry. It was the first day after Day Light Saving was over, so everyone was starving.

Complimentary cake for the birthday girl, looked like a normal choc cake but tasted nice. I liked it :p

Complimetary dessert that came with the steak, I like creme brulee but this was so rich and after the steak, I couldn't eat all of it :(

Overall dining experience: 8/10

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

My FAVOURITE spring roll in the world! Nope, You can't get them in any restaurant because they are home made. My ONLY Vietnamese friend, Binh made them ( I think his mom's recipe???) They were fantabulous!

Think they have mince pork, prawn and some vege.. I don't know the exact ingredient. But they are definitely yummy!!!

Apple Crumble Cake

I baked this cake the other day and got the recipe from www.taste.com.au . Wanted to bake an apple cake simply because I had too many apples at home and nobody planned to eat them.

I did change the recipe a little, mainly reduced the sugar amount. That's something I learned, I always cut down the sugar amount when I follow western recipes. ><


Ingredients (serves 8)
2 apples
2 tbs lemon juice (I recommend use only 1tbs, 2 was too sour for my liking)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
250g caster sugar (I used only 180g sugar)
250g unsalted butter
1 2/3 cup (250g) self-raising flour
4 eggs


Method
Preheat oven to 180°C (not fan-forced). Grease and line base of a 23cm springform cake pan.
Peel and core the apples, and cut into segments. Toss the apples in lemon juice and half the cinnamon, then set aside.
Take 50g each of the sugar, butter and flour, place in a bowl with the remaining cinnamon and rub together with your fingertips.
Place eggs and remaining sugar in an electric beater and beat until very light and fluffy. Melt remaining butter and pour into egg mixture. Sift in remaining flour, then fold in carefully until combined.
Pour into the pan, and carefully lay the apple slices over top. Sprinkle with the crumble mixture and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. ( I always rely on my skewer)

Fried Udon

I love udon noodle, they are smooth and very yummy when you cook them in the right soup/broth. This time, I decided to fry them instead, just so it was easier to bring it to work.

This is a very simple recipe indeed, something I decided to cook to bring to work the next day for lunch.

2 packets of Udon
4 medium size mushroom (soak in hot water)
300g mince meat (pork or chicken. I used minced Turkey meat, strange I know. Saw the meat in Woolies and thought why not, since Turley is healthier than Chicken and Pork)
1 tbsp Oyster sauce
1 tspn soya sauce (to marinade the meat, with some pepper)
1 tspn fish sauce
1 tspn sugar
1/2 cup of water (put more water if you want more gravy)
2 (big) cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of dry shrimp (minced)

Brown garlic and shrimp together. Put mushroom and meat in till meat is semi cook. Mix sauce with water. Put noodle in then sauce. Fry all together. Put the more water in to simmer if desire (I don't find that neccesary because the Udon that I bought was pretty tender). If you would like some classic noodle colouring, put in some dark sauce to get the Hokkien mee effect. :)

Stir fry till meat is fully cooked, try the taste, add some salt and pepper if needed.

Viola!

The whole process shouldn't take more than 30 mins incl. preparation.

Braise Pork

I love, love this dish but I would only eat the lean pork. Unfortunately, the best type of meat for this dish will be the fatty part of the pork.

Whenever my mom cooked this, she would put in a few pieces of lean meat in there for her and me :p. While my dad would get all the fatty part, apparently after the long braise, the fatty part would actually melt in the mouth, I haven't tried that yet and I am not looking forward to it.

Went to CC's place for dinner one night and I suggested to bring a dish. It's been a long time since I ate pork, so I thought I would cook something with pork in it. And.... decided to try my parents' recipe for the first time.

The end result was ..... VERY YUMMY! Oh well, I am not sure what did my friends think but I thought the pork was very close to my parents' braise pork, just mine was a bit more salty, I knew I put a lil too much oyster sauce.

Recipe:

600g of pork (the portion with a bit of fatty part attached)

6-8 medium sized mushroom

3-4 eggs

1 medium garlic (sliced)

1 tbspn oyster sauce

2 tbspn soy sauce

1/2 of water

Method:

Soak and rinse mushroom, cut mushroom into halves. Boil the eggs to prepare hard boiled eggs

Slice pork into thick slices or cubes. Brown garlic with 1 tbspn of oil. Put in pork and mushroom, then all the seasoning and water. Braise everything till pork becomes tender.

When the eggs are ready, shelled then put them into the braised pork. Simmer it for aother 15-20 minutes, keep stiring so that the eggs are well coated by the gravy.

Note: Make sure you taste the sauce before putting it into the pot, as you braise the meat, the sauce evapourate and thicken thus the sauce will become more salty. Keep that in mind.

Banana Orange Cake

This wasn't the first time I baked a banana cake, but I would say this was by far the most successful banana orange cake I ever baked.



I chose to use a round baking tray this time thus the baking time was over 1 hour compare to the normal 45 minutes. The cake turned out to be very fluffy, moist and the fragrant was fantastic. Matt gave it 2 thumbs up, so did my colleagues at work :)

This ia called a Banana Orange Cake because I used a banana cake recipe then added some grated orange zest and fresh orange juice.

Banana Orange Cake
250gm SR flour
220gm sugar (I used only 180gm and it was sweet enough)
240gm butter
5 eggs
1 tbsp condensed milk (I used skim milk and it was fine)
2 tbspn fresh orange juice
3 bananas
Orange zest (you have to determine the amount, I used 80% of one medium orange)

Beat butter and sugar together till it is white and creamy, mix in eggs, blend flour in slowly.

Add in milk and juice, then banana. You have to mash the banana, but I never over mash them as I like the banana cake with chunks of banana in them :p.

Grate orange zest into mix.

Coat the baking tray with some oil or butter and pour the mixture in. Bake for 45 mins - 1 hour at 180 degrees, depending what type of baking tray you want to use.

You may want to start checking if the cake is ready once it reaches 45 mins by poking the centre with a fork, if the fork comes out clean, it means the cake is ready. :)

P.S. Of course, you can simply void the orange bits to bake just a banana cake, replace the orange juice by another 1 tbspn of skim milk.

Fish Cake

Made this yesterday, made these fish cakes for the first time. Simple and delish when eat it with sweet chilli sauce.

I was looking through the stuff in the pantry and happened to find all these ingredients, so tada!

Took them to a friend's house, everyone said they were delicious, or maybe they were just too hungry. :)

Tuna Fish Cake

2 tins (small) tuna
3 medium potato (mash the potato)
1/2 medium onion (diced)
1 tspoon parsley
pinch of mix herb
2 eggs
salt and pepper
fresh bread crumb

Mix mash potato, onion, parsley, herb and 1 egg together. Put in salt and pepper to taste, you may put in some chilli powder for the 'kick'.

Shape the mix into small shapes (round or rectangular), glaze with egg (the other egg) then coat it with bread crumb.

Pan fry in shallow oil till they turn golden brown.

Serve with Thai sweet chilli or spicy mayonese :)

P.S. Taste good either hot/cold

Lunch at Zushi Bento

This was my lunch on Friday at Zushi Bento, Centro Galleria.

I was craving for something soupy because it was only 23 degrees that day with cold breeze.

I abandoned my homemade packed lunch, Ham & Cheese Sandwish and opted for this Spicy Coco Udon.

The soup was yummy but the udon was overcooked, the udon was so soft. The pan fried chicken fillet was alright, just the taste was pretty plain.

While I was eating, a lady sat at the next table kepy asking what I was eating ad how did it taste. The lady was eating terriyaki chicken bento, with her HANDS. Yes, she used her hand to pick up the food and put in her mouth, totally ignored the cutlery that was given to her. ><

Overall rating for this udon, 3/5. Pretty disappointed, but I got my warm soup fix for the day. :)