A Few of My Favourite Things !

Here is what I did this morning – the Sussan 10km Fun Run! I was pretty chuffed to (a) complete the whole 10k without stopping to walk; and (b) come in at just over 54min. Although my husband often questions why they would name events like these ‘fun runs’, I have to say that it really was fun to be running on such a beautiful sunshiny morning along the St Kilda foreshore and look out onto the blue, blue waters. So, how was your morning?

After completing the event, we headed to Baker D. Chirico, an artisan bakery on Fitzroy Street, to pick up a loaf. There are many delicious-looking treats just waiting to be had: lemon creme brulee, strawberry custard tarts, almond biscuits, baby meringues, little flourless chocolate cakes. We left with a loaf of rye bread and a slice of pear custard tart for my hubby, who sat reading patiently while waiting for me to complete the run. The loaf was just out of the oven, and we waited (im)patiently for it to cool before cutting some slices to have with lunch. Mmmmm, talk about yummy bread – so moist and fragrant.

Summer is here! (kinda) We’ve had some really warm, summery days in Melbourne of late although we’re currently experiencing a cool change – that’s Melbourne for you. We were wilting under the heat at 31C just several days ago, and our cats have been getting completely sun-drunk.

For dinner tonight, we had some homemade chicken char siew bao, which A loved because it had real chunks of chicken in it! My mum will be very impressed to hear that I made the dough from scratch according to the recipe for Leavened Dough from a book called ‘Making Dumplings’ by Amelia Liang that she had brought back from Malaysia for me. I kneaded together 250g plain flour&250g wholemeal flour (it’s what I had), 40g sugar, 2 tsp dry yeast mixed with 260-280ml warm water and 1 tbs baking powder, then added 20g oil. The dough was left to proof until doubled in size before using to wrap the char siew chicken. It was left to rise again for 30 min before being steamed for around 15 min. I can tell you that it was delicious and a lovely change to be able to identify the type of meat that you were ingesting- LOL! (Sigh – just had a look at my photo of the bao and realised that I prob should have placed it onto a diff coloured plate…)

I also cooked some eggplant flavoured with miso. I started by heating up some chilli flakes then stir-fried the diced eggplant until softened before added the usual mix of shoyu, mirin, sake and sugar. After stirring through for a few minutes, I added some instant miso soup mix (hey, it’s what I happened to have in my pantry) before dishing it up.

Ed and Sarah above

Some guy and Jamie below

This post is a little tardy given that our Melbourne Food Blogger dinner was held the Wednesday before last, but better late than never, right? Anyway, Ed and Sarah had already posted about the night so it wasn’t like anyone was really waiting for this post to be posted, but I thought I’d load up the photos that I took on the night anyway cos they turned out pretty well.

Suckling pig (above) and chinese broccoli, aka kailan (below) from the Supper Inn – always a great place to stop by for a late supper (or at any time, really!).