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