BBQ Pork Buns

I have been wanting to share this recipe with you since our trip back home but I was just too lazy to do anything else apart from sitting on my ass every evening watching some Chinese dramas downloaded off the net :P For this recipe, I cheated by purchasing the ready made BBQ pork from a restaurant in Northbridge. You actually can achieve very similar result by marinating pork in Chinese BBQ sauce before cooking them, or even substitute the pork with chicken.

The following recipe with be enough to make about 12-15 buns.

For the dough:
500g plain flour
5 tbs white sugar
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp of instant yeast
1 tsp of melted butter
260mL of water

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl and make a center. Add the yeast and slowly mixing in the water with the yeast and work your way out from the center. Add in butter and knead the dough until smooth and set aside in a large bowl covered with damp cloth. Leave the dough for roughly 3 hours at room temperature or until at least double in size.

The filling:
200g of BBQ pork cut into small pieces
3 medium size mushrooms roughly diced
1 large brown onion diced
2 tbs cooking oil
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs chilli sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs tomato sauce
2 tsp sugar
small amount of water and starch mixture


Fry the onion with oil in a shallow pan until slightly brown. Add in mushroom and BBQ pork, fry the mixture for about a minute. Add in all the sauces and sugar. Lastly, add in just enough water and starch mixture to thicken the filling. Do not add too much water. Set aside to cool.

Remove the dough and knead it down again until smooth and you are ready. Roll a small amount of dough at a time using a rolling pin and gently fold the filling into the dough as shown in the below. Sit the bun onto a small round piece of baking paper to prevent it from sticking during steaming. Set aside for about 30 minutes at room temperature before steaming. Place the finished buns in a steaming tray and steam under boiling water for about 8 minutes.

Tip: Cooked buns can be frozen immediately once they cool down and can be kept in freezer for a few weeks or longer.

Century egg congee

Stuff you need (serve 4):
1 preserved century egg
1 salted duck egg
1 cup of rice mixed with a handful of glutinous rice (pre-soaked for 1 hour)
2 chicken thigh fillets (trimmed and diced) and marinated with soy sauce + sesame oil
1 shallot finely diced
spring onion and coriander for garnish
served with "chinese friend bread" or youtiao (optional)

This is a very simple and great tasting recipe that I would like to share with you. I must admit I don't think it's as healthy as your regular oat porridge lol! First, you boil the eggs and roughly diced them. With a hot pan, add oil and stir fry the shallot until brown, then add the chicken fillets. Add all the ingredients, including the cooked chicken into a large pot with 4 cups of water. You can substitute a cup of water with some chicken stock for more taste. I prefer to use pressure cooker because it will cook a whole lot faster. If you use regular pot, you will have to stir and porridge occasionally while cooking on low heat. Cook until the porridge is smooth and thick, you can adjust the consistency by adding more water to you liking. Add salt and paper to taste and serve hot with "youtiao".

Poppo Korean & Japanese Restaurant

Well, as expected, we didn't go to the ANZAC dawn service as previously planned because we just couldn't bring ourselves out of bed that early in the morning :P As a matter of fact, we woke up around 10am in the morning, that means we also missed the ANZAC parade in the city this morning! In the end, we decided to head down to city anyway to find something to eat. First we decided on dimsum but as we found out later, most dimsum places had literally queues long enough to put Saturday nightclubs to shame! Actually, we were surprised that most of the shops and cafes in Perth were shut today??! Anyway, we ended up in a tiny Korean/Japanese restaurant on Barrack Street called Poppo. We ordered a fried tofu (tempura tofu) as starter followed by our mains. Jin ordered a sashimi rice (something like seafood bibimbap) and I had a tempuro prawn don. Overall, the serving size was very reasonable and the food standard was on par with those of more expensive restaurants. But the most importantly, the total bill only came to under $30!

The Goose

Went down to Busselton for the long weekend and it turned out to be the perfect break just as we wanted albeit a really short one. We have passed through this tiny town numerous times in the past but we have never stopped overnight. As expected, most accommodations were fully booked for the long weekend but we were lucky to find a great motel room vacant near the beach. Unfortunately, we didn't take many photos as initially planned, partly due to the unusually hot weather I guess. This morning, we went to The Goose by the beach for some breakfast and what can I say, the photos speak for themselves! They were delicious and servings were rather generous too. I had the "Big Breakfast" and Jin had French toasts with grilled banana and bacon. MMMM :))

Just another year...

Not only a year is approaching the end, I suddenly found myself a year older as well. Well, actually I have stop counting since I clocked past 30 and I virtually lost count since (intentionally of course)! This year, we had a great dinner at Saowanee's Place in North Perth, not only a local award winning Thai restaurant, but also a kitchen headed by Dao, Jin's long time friend from tafe. We had an enticing entrée followed by paw paw salad, red beef curry, red duck curry with rambutan, beef salad and concluded with a marvelous mud cake from Cafe Mozart. Not only I am getting older a year, I think I also put on another kilo onto my expanding waist line too lol!

Eating and taking picture at the same time would be a skill worth learning :) Here is David with his new baby, a brand new Canon 7D with 50mm f1.4.

Thank you Dao, Lisa, David, Benna and my dearest Jin for the wonderful night.

유부초밥

Originally from Japan, 유부초밥 (yu-bu-cho-bab) is a Korean version of Inari sushi which basically is vinegar-ed rice stuffed in fried marinated tofu skin.

The steamed rice is mixed with a boiled mixture made of vinegar, sugar, salt and kelp (for flavouring only, removed before mixing with rice). The rice is then mixed with the rest of the ingredients which consist of
finely diced carrot, beef, crab meat and furikake.

This was my dinner and will be my lunch tomorrow at work :)

Escargot

Finally I got to eat snails! :) Actually I have tried a few variant of cooked snails before in various places but this by far I think is the best. Jin didn't quite like it because she reckoned it was a touch too oily or cheesy for her.

They look like your typical garden snails, hymm...I wonder how they will taste like lol! The restaurant that we had this was called George V on the famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Unfortunately, the main dish that I ordered, a steak burger, was virtually uncooked and tasteless. To add insult to the injury, I was charged 7 euro for a small glass of orange juice! I missed Hungry Jack or Burger King all of a sudden then lol!

Where has the time gone?

It's been more than a month since my last entry into my blog but the problem is, it felt like last week I just updated it. Am I going nuts or what? One good thing is, we are just one more week of sleeps away from our European trip!!

I know I am a little bit too late but for those who are here and didn't realise that yesterday us Chinese celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival; well, happy belated Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone! ...btw, my brother is one of them lol! We were planning to have some mooncakes last night but we just couldn't stomach them after having 8 pizzas at Little Caesars in Mundaring for dinner (they were 7 of us btw...so kinda not too bad hehe!)

So here it is, we are having one for breakfast!!

Addicted to Coffee

One for me, one for her :)

Today is only Wednesday but you know it is a "long week" when it feels like a Thursday or even Friday today! Work was pretty flat out in the past couple of days following the long weekend and I think I am just about to have enough!

Now.....
wonder how I make those patterns on my coffee? Well, I am pretty new at this as well but I don't mind to share it with you if you are interested. First, you will need an espresso machine with a steam wand of course. Don't have to be a fancy one because mine isn't. Start with really cold milk in a stainless steel jug filled to about 1/3 full. Colder milk allows you to "stretch" the milk a little bit longer without "burning" the milk.

Start with the steam wand's tip just breaking the surface of the milk. This will help draw in more air into the milk and you know you are doing the right thing when you hear the occassional "hissing" sound. Be careful not to add too much volume to your milk, about 10-20% is sufficient I think. After that, lower the steam wand slightly into the milk and continue "whip" the milk around the jug with the steam until the jug is too hot for you hold in your hands. Turn off the steam but keep the milk moving in the jug to avoid separation of foam from milk. Pour about 2/3 of the milk gently toward the centre of your espresso shot in your cup, then start from the outer edge, swaying the milk from side to side while drawing the jug towards you. Then pour the reminder in a straight line back towards the outer edge.

What I have found is that you have to pour the milk gently but fast enough (but not too fast) to prevent the foam from leaving behind in the jug. Too much foam is no good, and nor does too little. It's all about striking the balance and to achieve that, keep drinking coffee and practicing every single damned day!! :)

Another cup?

Actually in this one I kinda cheated a little bit. Because the coffee grind that I used was not dark enough, I actually dusted my espresso shot with some cocoa powder first before I pour the milk. I quite like the effect and the milk foam actually tastes quite good as well!

For latte art, the rounded base coffee cup supposed to be the best because it allows milk foam to produce better swirls with the coffee shot....well, a decent set of coffee cups is certainly on my shopping list next time :)

My very own Rosetta :)

Well, it might not look like much but it meant a lot to me for the countless practice pours that I have done in the past 2 weeks. I know I still have a very long way to go to make a decent pour but for now, this would do for me :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

p/s: My favourite grind at the moment is the Bin 75 hazelnut from Gloria Jean. It's a very mild roast with a hint of hazelnut, simply superb. And best of all, you can get them is Woolies or Coles!

Hot and Cold

Last week, my experiment with the Thailand fried noodle (Pad Tai) was apparently a success according to Jin and my sister-in-law :) This week I thought I might give the Thailand's hot and sour soup (tom yam kung) a go. Here is a simple recipe for the soup, it is actually quite easy to prepare as long as you have all the ingredients ready.

Ingredients:
1.25 L chiken stock
1 tbs Tom Yam stock/paste
4 kaffir leaves (whole)
2 stalks lemongrass, squashed
3 tbs lemon/lime juice
fish sauce to taste
1 large cut red chillli
2 tsp sugar
some straw mushroom
10 raw deveined king prawn

Boil the chicken stock, add the Tom Yam paste, kaffir leaves, lemon grass and cut chilli into the pot and bring to boil. Then, add the rest of the ingredients into the soup and simmer until the prawns are cooked. Add some sugar if the soup turns out to be too sour. Simple as that :) ....The soup is best served with cool air conditioning :)

Earlier today, we went out to Rick Hart and got ourselves an ice shaver. Jin was craving for "ice kacang" for a long time so finally her dream came true today! We gobbled up our first homemade "ice kacang" as fast as we made it and it was indeed a slice of heaven in a long hot week!

Happy New Year!

Jin's mum said your age correlates to how fast you are travelling through life. For instance, a 10 year-old child will proceed through a year at 10km/h whereas an old fart like me will be travelling more than 3 times faster! And that's a truely scary FACT! People always say end of the year is the time to reflect on the past and make new resolutions for the next. As time is running out faster than ever, it's hard to think of any significant accomplishment of the past year let alone making new ones for the next :) Well, shot less photos last year, got 2 speeding tickets (me and her each) and lost some money in shares are hardly called "achievements"!

We started new year with a big clean out of our backyard which was full of weeds and spiders. I must have killed more than 20 spiders (I hate spiders!!) and found one family (or colony?!) of mice near our gas hot water system. I caught three little mice but decided to let them go because they were just too cute (some might disagree) LOL! But we did go to Bunning this afternoon to grab some rodent bait so Jin can feel safe in the house :)

It was a extremely hot day today and the last thing we want to do was to turn up more heat to cook our dinner. Luckily, our friends Dao and Lek decided to come over and cook dinner for us!! A little intro, they currently work in a Thai restaurant and Dao is actually the head chef there and that could only mean a one thing, a restaurant quality meal at home!!

Happy New Year to all my friends and visitors to my little blog and all the best for the 2009!

Two slices of heaven

Well, we went back to our favourite pizza place again in Mundaring last Friday and it was again fantastic! The first of the two pizzas we tried was aptly named smashing pumpkins and the other was some sort of seafood pizza with huge succulent prawns (sorry...forgot it's name). Smashing pumpkins was the pick of the two, it was indeed the first slice of heaven for the week :)








The Second slice of heaven was found at the King Street Cafe in the city. I am a great fan of everything made from banana and the guys there at the cafe bake one of the best I have come across! They have two sorts of banana cakes, the regular banana cake and the baked banana cheesecake. The later one is the one to die for...trust me :)

Yorkshire Pudding

Yorkshire pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire but attained wider popularity. It is made from batter and most often served with roast beef, chicken, or any meal in which there is gravy served with it, or on its own. Gravy is often served alongside. It is often claimed that the purpose of the dish was to provide a cheap way to fill the diners - the Yorkshire pudding being much cheaper than the other constituents of the meal - thus stretching a lesser amount of the more expensive ingredients as the Yorkshire pudding was traditionally served first. (Source: Wikipedia)

Well, I guess it serves a similar purpose to rice or potatoes but to my surprise, they actually taste quite nice! Here is the recipe which I used to prepare ours last night :) The more complicated part was to get our roast beef done, which nearly cought fire in our oven hehe!

We had the puddings with roast beef, served with creamy mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower with tons of gravy....yum!!!

XXth birthday? :)

Yesterday was Jin's birthday! Don't even ask me how old I am, because I have lost count since I past the 30 mark! (but I am glad she is catching up hehehe!) Initially we were planning to go to Char Char Bull in Freo for dinner but then because of the gloomy weather, we decided to go somewhere closer to home. Four of us headed to Sienna in Leederville but to our dismay, the restaurant was full. After a rather lengthy discussion out in the cold, we decided to settle for Kailis Bro Seafood Restaurant at 101 Oxford St. Leederville. Price wise, the restaurant is not cheap by any standard, we were $175 poorer after that and we didn't even bother about desert or coffee.

Food quality was excellent I must admit. The cobbler that I ordered was very fresh without any "oily" feeling even though it was deep fried in batter. Jin reckened her battered Spanish mackerel was a little bit too dry but loved their chilli mussels. Dao ordered some herbs-clad snapper while Lisa had a bowl of pasta with blue crab meat. Lisa was happy with her pasta but Dao, being a rather talented cook herself, wasn't too convinced with hers :P The friendly service provided by the waiters and waitreses is something to be commended as well. A big downside is the noise level in the restaurant. It was higher than expected for a restaurant of this standard, making decent conversation a rather unpleasant experience. Apart from that, this restaurant is hard to fault and since I have been giving quite a few movie reviews so far in my blog, I will treat this as a review as well and award the restaurant 4 stars out of 5! Not bad at all!

What we had today :)

Getting fat...fat...fat...ate outside whole day today :) We woke up around 9am on this beautiful second day into winter and decided to have brekki at the Blue Duck in Cottesloe. We went there following one of my cousins' recommendation because of the great breakfasts they serve. Well, to tell you the truth, I think the food they serve is "so so". I ordered the Blue Duck full brekki while Jin is happy with just becon and poached eggs. Their menu can be found here. Although the brekki left much to be desired, the atmosphere of eating on the restaurant balcony next to Cottesloe beach made up for it.


In the afternoon, we went to one of the wineries in Swan Valley, the Fish Tail. It is a very small winery and therefore, you can only purchase their wines directly through their cellar. They don't sell their products through any of those liquor stores in Perth. I think we went there about 2 years ago and got some "Pink Salmon" and it was fantastic so we decided to go back to get more :) "Pink Salmon" is not your typical red wine because the red merlot grapes skin was only allowed to be in contact for 12 hours only to give that brilliant pink colour. The grapes were fermented in stainless steel container and hence, unwooded and the taste is crisp and sweet without the "dryness" of typical reds. Check them out next time you head to the Swan Valley and you will not be disappointment!

What I cooked for lunch today

Some people are more adventurous in cooking and some are not. Jin is the unadventurous type, everytime she cooks usually must be by the book...no mixing of multiple ingredients...no multiple sauces...no mixing pork with beef for instance...I know I know, doesn't sound very good mixing different meats together...well...you never try you never know. What I have here are two dishes I cooked for our lunch today, don't worry, not much "mixing" involved...just simple and I think nice :)

If you are interested, here is the recipe for the fish..the amount is just estimates, I just add in what I feel like and most of the time my dishes turn up ok. Oh yea... I like the number "2" :)

Fish fillet in sweet black sauce
what you need:
2 good fresh fish fillet (I used cobbler)
2 tsp ginger sliced in thin strips
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
2 small hot chilli finely chopped
2 tsp corn flour
2 tbsp soy sauce in same amount of water
2 tbsp sugar
chilli powder
pinch of rock salt
some spring onion and sesame seeds as garnish

Thinly coat the fish fillets with mixture of corn flour, chilli and salt to taste. Remember we are not making fish in batter or fish and chip, so do not use too much flour. Heat enough oil to cover the base of a large pan and fry the fish until lightly brown on both sides and remove to plate.
In wok, fry the ginger, garlic and chilli in 1 tbsp of oil until brown. Make sure the wok is hot, add in sugar, then mix in soy sauce and water. Put the fish back into wok for 1 minutes then remove and garnish with whatever you want :)

Not so productive weekend - is that unusual?

Last Friday night, we went to brother's house to babysit their 2 children..but we ended up bringing them to a chinese association/club in Karrinyup for a 3 hours badminton/exercise. Tell you what, I am paying the price of not having regular exercise, every muscles in my legs are killing me!

Dimsum...yes...haven't been to one for a long long time. I think we ordered the wrong stuff...it wasn't as good as I imagine..but I managed to take a few pictures...yea...testing the IS function of my lens...photos turned up great with minimal blurring even on a 1s exposure!

Dust dust dust!! It's probably the greatest enemy of most dSLR photographers. This is not the first time I have dust on my Canon's sensor, I have had something like a small hair on it before but this morning, I found one recalcitrant dust on my sensor that just refused to budge with my blower. Took me a while but finally, I managed to get rid of it by using Jin's watercolor brush :) On my last test, I am totally dust-free! (visible anyway)

Today, we are just finishing off our long overdued pot plants shelf that I started couple weeks ago. Jin will be in charge of painting after all the screws are in place :)

I am totally buggered...just can't wait for my one week break in this coming mid of May...at the meanwhile, looking forward to the Anzac day :)

Egg-O-Mania

Today is another one of those do-nothing day. Planning on how to spend our glorious Sunday, we went to Mandurah only to find ourselves trapped in a middle of a big autumn storm. But I do enjoy myself driving in heavy rain, escaping a few speed trap along the way.

We have lunch at one of our favourite restaurant in Mandurah, the Egg-O-Mania. If you like eggs or fancy a good omelette, this is the place to be! Our favourites are spicy Mexican omelette, Aussie steak omelette and Hawaiian omelette.

After a great lunch, there is nothing better than have a cup of home-brewed cuppuccino at home in a rainy day...well...a cup of tea or a cup of coffee in a tea cup..who cares :)