food roundup

This week in brief


St Kilda

I’m starting off a new series – a weekly post that will collect up my twitter / instagram photos or little snippets from my week that don’t warrant a full post.

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Xmas 2010

Merry Xmas! Cisco the Christmas cat says hello! He spent Xmas morning underneath the Xmas tree, guarding the presents.

I hope everyone had a lovely day, full of family, friends and fab food. We had our traditional Orphans’ Xmas, though it was an unofficial Orphans’ gathering this year since my parents are currently visiting. Here are some pics of our day!
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Assorted eats

I know that I’m not the only food blogger who struggles with this. Basically, I eat more than I blog, which means I have a rather large amount of photos accumulated. In order to get through some of them, I’m going to cram several places into a couple of posts. After that maybe I’ll tackle the photos of food I’ve cooked but haven’t blogged?

Dead Man Espresso
Libertine – Suckling Pig Banquet
Auction Rooms
St Ali vs Vitasoy

Dead Man Espresso

Dead Man Espresso

We went to Dead Man Espresso with Maria and Daz a couple of months ago. They had a very short food menu on the weekend (I’m not sure if it’s different during the week) which was a shame. I suppose the focus is on the coffee? I thought my coffee was okay, but others weren’t that impressed with their coffees.
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2008 Orphan’s Xmas with the KKC

KKC Orphan's Xmas

This year, we had our usual Orphan’s Xmas with the Kiwi Kensington Crew – me and the Boys, plus Dany, Scott, Ben, Lisa and honorary member Nate.

Previous years have taught us we never have an appetite for a full meal, so everyone bought a selection of nibbles. As you’ll see, there was a fair amount of food, but considering the small amount of leftovers, we catered rather well.

KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas
KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas

There were ribs, smoked salmon on toasts, devils on horseback (prunes wrapped in bacon) and ham.

KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas
KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas

There were also chicken wings, chicken nuggets, cheese, olives, peperonata, roasted cherry tomatoes, marinated mushrooms, and leek and sundried tomato empanadas. PLUS, there were spicy koftas, a couple of dips, sweet & salty nuts, candied pecans and more cheese (most of which hasn’t been opened and will probably be eaten on NYE!).

KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas
KKC Orphan's Xmas KKC Orphan's Xmas

Moving on to the sweet stuff – gingerbread cookies, cherry tarts, almond crescents, chocolate dipped strawberries, plus fruit (cherries, grapes) and pavlova (not pictured).

KKC Orphan's Xmas

After a couple of rounds of eating, there was “cricket” in the park.

KKC Orphan's Xmas

As well as some board games – Operation and Cranium.

KKC Orphan's Xmas

The mess we created on the floor was VERY impressive. This wasn’t even half of it.

KKC Orphan's Xmas

Hopefully everyone else had a great Xmas too! Recipes for some of our Xmas food to come.

Food round up: Mostly Hobart

It’s time for another round up of food I’ve eaten – mostly from my trip to Hobart with Mum and Dad.

Mures, Upper Deck
Victoria Dock,
Hobart, Tasmania
Phone: (03) 6231 1999

Hobart food

Our first night in Hobart, we wandered around acquainting ourselves with the city. For dinner, we walked down to the waterfront and decided to eat at a seafood restaurant.

I had blue eye fillets, marinated in soy, honey, garlic, and ginger, char grilled and served with stir fried vegetables and potatoes ($31.50). It was okay – not great, not bad.

Hobart food Hobart food

Dad had fish and chips ($29.50), and choose to have his fish grilled. It was served with chips and salad. Mum had the baked blue eye served on borlotti beans, roast zucchini, eggplant and capscium with sweet corn puree and pappa di pomadoro sauce ($33.50).

Mako Seafood
Constitution Dock
Hobart, Tasmania

Hobart food

My Dad seemed to be obsessed with fish so the following night we had fish and chips. We went down to the waterfront again, and ate at Mako Seafood, which is actually a floating two level pontoon. Along with the fried stuff, you can also purchase fresh fish.

I had a mini fish basket – for $8.50 I got a piece of fish, which was trevalla, a prawn, scallop, calamari and small chips.

Hobart food

Mum and Dad shared a fish feast – fish, 2 prawns, 2 calamari, scallop, chips and salad.

Say Cheese
7 Salamanca Square
Hobart, Tasmania
Phone: (03) 6224 2888

Hobart food

On Saturday, after visiting the Salamanca Markets, we stopped for lunch at Say Cheese. I felt like eating bits and pieces, so I ordered an antipasto platter ($23). It was massive! The plate was loaded with cheese, smoked turkey kransky, button mushrooms, smoked octopus, eggplant, peppers, olives, sundried tomatoes, and dolmades.

Hobart food

I also received a large bread roll and crackers. It could’ve easily fed two people. Look how many crackers there were!

Hobart food Hobart food

Fortunately, Mum and Dad had smaller meals so they were able to help me out with mine! Mum had a smoked chicken salad and Dad had a smoked salmon salad.

New Sydney Hotel
87 Bathurst Street
Hobart, Tasmania

Hobart food

Nearing the end of our trip, we had dinner at a random pub. I had a MASSIVE peppered steak pot pie ($20). This thing was seriously gigantic, and it was all big chunks of meat. It was also quite salty, and I only managed half because I got rather tired of eating nothing but meat chunks. The chips were good though.

Hobart food Hobart food Hobart food

Mum had a small seafood and tomato pasta with rocket ($13) while Dad had fish AGAIN. He had the fish of the day ($28). Mum also ordered us a caesar salad ($10) to share – and thank goodness she did! I was grateful for the lettuce to break up the tedium of my pot pie.

Raupo Riverside Café
2 Symons St,
Blenheim, New Zealand
Phone: +64 3 577 8822

Raupo

In November, Alastair and I also made a quick trip to Blenheim. Last time we were there, we had breakfast at Raupo. On this trip, we found ourselves at a loose end and went to Raupo again for cake and coffee. We had a chocolate torte with white chocolate mousse and raspberries ($7.50). It was a sponge like cake, so wasn’t too heavy, and it was yuuuuuuuum.

Raupo

We returned again for breakfast on our last day. I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry (I’m not sure what was wrong with me – it’s very unusual!) and just had a couple of mini croissants with butter and jam (normal toast wasn’t on the menu).

Raupo

Alastair had pancakes with fresh fruit and yoghurt.

That’s it for this edition! I have been a tad slack with posting recently, but I have a couple of half written posts that I will try and finish this weekend.

Food I’ve been eating

Yey! It’s time for another food round up post (aka I’ve got a backlog of photos).

So what have I been eating? Well, it appears that eggs have been featuring heavily.

Boiled eggs

There’s been boiled eggs with toast soldiers.

Scrambled eggs

There’s been scrambled eggs topped with feta, cooked Gordon Ramsey style.

Scrambled eggs

And served on toast, of course. I really like toast! If I lived by myself, I could see myself having cheese on toast for dinner most nights.

It’s a good thing I have people to cook for!

Check out the video for Gordon Ramsey’s explanation on how to make the perfect scrambled eggs.

Savoury French Toast

More egg (and bread) – one weekend I made savoury French toast. I put some grated cheese in the middle of two slices of bread, squished the bread flat, and then dunked the sandwiches into an egg mixture before pan frying. Yum!

Speaking of French toast, I have a post coming up where I’ll tell you about the brunch where we had the most sublime French toast EVER. Also known as the brunch where I got blog outed!

Pot roast

Moving away from eggs, one weekend we had a beef pot roast for dinner. It looks strangely glossy, and I promise that I haven’t being doing strange things like varnishing my food to take photos. I think it’s glossy due to the gravy that I poured over.

I thought the meat was just okay – but the carrots and celery were super tasty!

Potato

With the pot roast we also had this potato thing. Sliced garlic was softened in butter in a frying pan, then I layered thinly sliced potatoes on top with more butter. After cooking on the stove for a while, the whole thing went under the grill to cook the top. Garlic, potato, butter… I would have to hang up my apron if it had turned out anything less than scrumptious. (Fortunately it was brilliant!)

Oxtail ragu

This is oxtail ragu on brown pasta. The last time I cooked oxtail, Alastair decided that it weirded him out and didn’t want to eat it (even though he’s eaten it before). Next time I make it, I’m going to take the meat off the bone and tell him it’s normal beef!

Quinoa

And finally, this bowl was the last of the quinoa I had in the house. I know quinoa is very nutritious, and I’ve tried very hard to like it – but I just don’t. So no more quinoa – huzzah!

Boiled eggs
Here’s another shot of boiled eggs, because I like it, and I need to take my mind off quinoa. Note the gooey yolk – perfect for dunking toast soldiers!

Meals other people have cooked

Jeepers. My entire weekend has been spent cleaning the house in anticipation of my parents’ arrival on Wednesday. Now, my house is not normally that unclean, considering we all work full time and we HAVE LIVES, but every time they visit they comment on how dirty it is. Obviously the house is clean enough to me, but not clean enough to them. Being Chinese, they have very high standards and nothing is ever good enough. Kidding! Kidding! That may be the stereotype, but fortunately my folks aren’t really like that. Just with cleanliness, apparently!

Since I haven’t had any time or energy for cooking this weekend, here’s a little showcase of meals other people have cooked! Y’all know by now that I love cooking, but it’s still nice when other people cook for me. 🙂

Derm's chicken curry

My Bro’s friend Derms visited at the beginning of this year. One night he made chicken curry for dinner (with some assistance from my Bro). I find curry terribly difficult to photograph, so I didn’t do the meal justice. We teamed the chicken curry with basmati rice, and it was fragrant, tangy and spicy. Visitors who cook are visitors worth having!

Bro's lasagne

And this is a lasagne that my Bro made one evening a while ago. He cooked up a rich meat sauce, and layered it with cheese sauce and lasagne sheets.

Bro's lasagne

It’s hard to go wrong with lasagne, and despite my Bro’s grumbles about the cheese sauce, there was nothing wrong with this lasagne. It was pretty ace, actually.

Roast lamb

When my mother in law, Annette, was here the previous week, she offered to cook dinner one evening. Alastair got to choose a meal, and he asked for a lamb roast. Poor lad, he only gets a few roasts a year from me! This is the roast lamb, perfectly cooked and tender.

Roast veges

Along with the lamb there were roast vegetables: pumpkin, kumara/sweet potato, parsnip and roast potatoes. The pumpkin and kumara had softened up and become sweet and slightly caramelised. A special mention must also be made of Annette’s roast potatoes, which were gorgeously crispy with a pillowy soft centre.

Gravy!

And she even made gravy! Proper gravy!

Roast dinner

Ahh, it was a good meal.

Blueberry & yoghurt

But that wasn’t all! There was also dessert – yoghurt sweetened with honey and orange juice and layered with blueberries.

Roast lamb salad

There was lots of lamb left over, so the following night we had the rest with some salad. The lamb was tender and garlicky, and the salad was thrown together from bits and pieces that has been hiding in the bottom of my fridge. Nom nom nom.

What I’ve been eating

It’s time for another “What I’ve been eating” post!

Grand Asia
Target Centre Arcade
236 Bourke Street, Melbourne

Curry beef noodle soup ($7.80)


Curry beef soup
The curry beef noodle soup was hearty, thick and tangy. It was perhaps a touch too sour.

Curry beef soup noodles
The meat was a tad fatty although tender, and the noodles were thick hokkien noodles (my favourite!).

Haninese chicken rice ($7.50)

Chilli sauce
I had been eyeing up the Haninese chicken rice during the prior lunch, so I made a trip back. It was served in a cute little boat shaped dish. Here you can see the chilli sauce and the ginger and garlic sauce.

Rice
The rice was okay. There was a bit of flavour, but also a touch too much msg, judging by the thirst I had afterwards.

Soup
Normally the soup that you get given is similar to flavoured chicken stock. Surprisingly, the soup was very good! As you can see, it even had bok choy in it.

Hainanese chicken
Here’s a shot of the chicken. The chicken was moist and tender and drenched in soy.

Cafe Bland

Cafe Bland
Our favourite cafe was closed this Sunday, so we went to another. We used to visit Cafe Bland, but stopped when they had a change of management. Recently they had another change of management, so we thought we’d give them a chance. I was feeling a tad seedy and ordered a schnitzel foccacia. It was SO bland – someone needs to learn how to use salt! I could not believe the total lack of flavour in the schitzel. Also, the foccacia had been toasted, and the lettuce inside had become limp and unappetising. The cucumber had also cooked and tasted awful.

Wedges
I ordered wedges, as I didn’t realise the foccacia came with chips. There was no mention of chips on the menu, and the waiter didn’t mention it when I ordered the wedges. Grrrr. Oh well, at least the wedges tasted of something! It’s hard to screw up wedges (thank goodness).

Noodle Kingdom
175 Russell St, Melbourne 3000
Phone: (03) 9654 2828

Lanzhou beef noodle soup ($7.50)

Beef soup
I was wandering down Russell Street recently, when I noticed a man in the window of Noodle Kingdom making noodles. It was so exciting! I went back a couple of days later and tried their Lanzhou beef noodle soup.

Beef soup noodles
The noodles were fresh and chewy, and the soup was fragrant and chock full of coriander. There was a lot more beef than I was expecting too. After I had finished all the noodles I kept finding slices of beef in the bottom of my bowl!

And finally, a few things I’ve been cooking.

Udon noodles

Noodle soup
It seems like I’ve been eating a lot of noodles recently. I had some chicken stock in the freezer, and dug that out to make a noodle soup. I threw in some fresh enoki, oyster and shitake mushrooms, as well as some silken tofu.

Noodle soup
A bowl full of goodness!

Vegie pattie roll

Vegie pattie roll
For dinner one evening I threw together some vegie patties, and popped them in a toasted roll with a yogurt and cucumber sauce.

Soba noodles with enoki and oyster mushrooms

Soba noodles
And finally, I had some mushrooms left over from the udon noodle soup night. I sauted them with some garlic and onions, then tossed them through soba noodles with mirin and soy sauce. It turned out rather brown (although I do quite like the photo), but it tasted good.

What I’ve been eating

I’ve been trying to play catch up with things ever since we got back. It took me six weeks, but I have finally caught up with all my RSS feeds. I had 1000+ items when we returned, and finally they’re all gone! Gone!!

I have a few food images that don’t warrant a full post, so here’s a quick pictorial of things I’ve been eating in the past few weeks.

Piadina slow food

Piadina Slowfood
57 Lonsdale St
Melbourne 3000 VIC
Phone: (03) 9662 2277

I had a leisurely lunch at Piadina Slowfood. It was a warm day so I was able to snag a table outside. I had the pan seared yellowfin tuna with green bean salad.

Coffee

The tuna was covered in sesame seeds and just seared so it was pink and moist in the middle. The beans and salad had just the right amount of a soy and ginger dressing. I finished off my meal with a caramelly flat white. What a lunch!

Grand BBQ

Grand BBQ
Target Centre Arcade
236 Bourke Street, Melbourne

Another lunch, not quite as leisurely, was yong tau foo from Grand BBQ. You can choose 6 pieces of yong tau foo, then make a choice between vermicelli, hor fun, hokkein or egg noodles. Finally there’s a decision on soup – clear, curry or tom yum. I choose eggplant, chilli, fish cake, fish ball, stuffed tofu and a dumpling. I didn’t realise that the chilli was a spicy one. What I actually wanted was a piece of capsicum but I had a moment of decision panic. Doh! I love chilli, but this was a bit much.

The only thing harder than deciding on the six items was finding a seat. They were busy!

Nasi lemak

Chillipadi
Shop OE7, Menzies Alley, Melbourne Central
211 La Trobe Street,, Melbourne
Phone: (03) 9663-5688

We had a late dinner at Chillipadi, where I couldn’t go past the nasi lemak. I loved the way it was presented, but it wasn’t quite as good as other ones I’ve had. The pickles weren’t as tangy as I like but the rendang was tasty and fragrant.

The George

George Hotel
139 Cecil Street, South Melbourne
Phone: (03) 9686 5655

I had a massive pub burger from the George Hotel. The meat pattie could’ve used a bit more seasoning, but the chips were surprisingly good. I don’t usually like thin fries much, but these were crunchy and moreish. I couldn’t finish the burger because I was concentrating on the chips.

Fritters

For dinner one evening I used left over brown rice to make rice fritters. I combined the rice with some grated vegetables, egg, a bit of flour and soy sauce, before shaping them into patties and rolling them in breadcrumbs. They were very tasty.

Beef stir fry

Another dinner was a stir fry of beef and cabbage with szechuan pepper. There was a bit too much szechan pepper and it numbed my tongue. Gak!

Fruit

And finally, I’ve been really enjoying some summer fruits – cherries, lychees, and raspberries as well as blueberries and mangoes. Delicious!