A Few of My Favourite Things !

This cake almost gave me a heart attack but it all turned out well in the end.

After taking it out of the oven and allowing it to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, I proceeded to lift the cake out of the tin, using the baking paper which I had layered underneath, and onto a wire tray. Next thing I know, one corner crumbled and fell off, with the rest of it threatening to do fall to pieces too.

Oh no! Did I not have enough eggs in the recipe?

I managed to get the rest of it onto the tray and left it overnight, praying that it would be okay to ice the next day.

First thing in the morning, I gingerly touched the cake to find that I had made a wise decision in leaving it alone. I would have had to cut the square cake into a rectangular form anyway so the missing corner gave me a good starting point. The cake was iced with whipped cream then decorated with desiccated coconut (dyed blue) and mango cubes to resemble a Swedish Flag cake.

As you can probably guess, it was for a birthday celebration and my friend, H, so loves sharing her Swedish heritage that it was the most appropriate cake I could think of making.

I must have been on a roll with coconut-mango that weekend because mum’s birthday cake ended up being a coconut, mango and passionfruit pavlova. I think I must be looking forward to the sunshine and blue skies!

I finally got to eat at Cumulus, 9:30pm last Thursday night…and I was smitten!

My photos are all dim and blurry so I haven’t taken the trouble to upload them here. My favourite dish of the night was the scallops wrapped in speck, capers & raisin vinaigrette. This was followed closely by the crispy school prawns sauteed with chilli & garlic – imagine having a bowl of these in front of you while watching the Saturday night movie! – then tuna tartare with crushed green pea salad (my husband’s favourite), the boudin noir, smoked tomato & parsley salad and finally the silk purse from a slow’s ear, ravigote & green sauce.

As you can tell, I was already delighted with the meal so far however I was also getting quite full so skipping dessert wouldn’t have bothered me in the least. However, my husband overruled me and ordered two – the coconut sago, meringue, coconut sorbet and the petit fours (hazelnut chocolate, salted caramel) – and boy am I glad that he did! The coconut sago turned out to be one of the loveliest desserts I’ve had in a long time. So much that I popped into Laguna the next day to buy a pack of sago to recreate it at home.

One of the best aspects of the meal for us was being served by the staff at Cumulus. Not only were they knowledgeable but they actually appeared happy to be there, somewhat of a rarity these days in the customer service field.

Here’s my version of the Cumulus dessert. Sago drizzled with coconut milk sweetened with a palm sugar syrup served with softly whipped egg white and Serendipity’s Coconut & Kaffir Lime sorbet:

This post is SO late that the lovely Suj’s “I’m in my 8th month of pregnancy” tummy has become a gorgeous 2-month old daughter. I’m not sure where her appetite is at these days but during her pregnancy she was indulging her hormonally-directed food cravings with varied meals of Nandos, Hungry Jacks and Yum Cha. This very belated post is about a meal she & hubby had back in April this year. Thanks for your contribution!

Today Ben and I finally thought we would try out a relatively new place in Glen Waverley on Springvale Road called Yum Cha Inn. We checked out the menu, and it seemed an interesting concept where the yum cha menu is on a sheet of A4 paper and you get to select how many serves of each item you would like to order. The idea then is your order is made up for you and brought directly to your table, so the food is nice and hot off the steamer, stove, oven, etc.

So Ben and I went through the list and picked our favourites like the “siu mai”, and “har gow”, “char siu sow”, “loh bak gou”, another scallop dumpling (my Cantonese fails me here) and custard tarts (“dan tart”). And proceeded to wait in anticipation.

And we waited.

And waited.

Finally a dish appeared about 30 minutes later, it was “ham sui gok” and I thought, huh, did we order this? Perhaps we did, perhaps my English interpretation of “char siu sow” was actually “ham sui gok” so I thought ok, never mind, we’ll accept the dish. And we ate it. It had just the right amount of pork filling inside, not too much and not too little. The pastry was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with a delicate sweetness that offset the savoury filling.

And then we waited again.

Finally another two dishes appeared, a green-coloured dumpling dish and another with beancurd. Now I was definitely certain I didn’t order these and so we checked with the wait staff, and sure enough it wasn’t our’s. My heart sank as I realised we’d have to wait again for the rest of our meal.

An hour after we had walked through the door, I finally asked about our order and made it quite clear that the wait had been unacceptable. We were assured our order was only 2 minutes away and they apologised for a mix up in the kitchen. Strike 1, they had not kept the customer informed regarding the unusual delay.

We finally got our dumplings and remaining order, except the “loh bak gou”. Upon enquiry we were told they had run out of that particular dish. One would have thought that they would have informed us earlier so we could order alternatives. This was strike 2. Our “char siu sow” then surprisingly made an appearance! We were informed the “ham sui gok” we had earlier wasn’t actually our’s. Oh well, so be it, they had made the mistake and it was not our fault that we had already eaten it. Pretty sure they charged us for it anyway.

When we did make alternative orders of “char siu bau” and the lotus wrapped steamed glutinous rice to replace the “loh bak gou”, the order only took 5 minutes to arrive at our table, proving that the 50 minute wait was simply unnecessary.

Apart from the terrible wait time, the food in general was only fairly average. The highlight was the very flaky pastry on the custard tarts which I loved.

The restaurant gave us complimentary drinks and took 10% off our bill to compensate for the very long wait we had to endure. However needless to say it will be a while before we will venture into Yum Cha Inn again.

Thanks to Ed, we were saved from having to pay the $30 entry fee to the Taste of Melbourne. I’m guessing that there must have been a lot of complimentary entrance tickets floating around as there was a large sign outside reminding people to validate their free tickets prior to entering. Despite getting in for nothing, we still spent $60 on the “crowns” in order to purchase food so not a cheap lunch but a good opportunity to have a little taste from each restaurant.

Friday afternoon turned out to be a great time to go as we didn’t have to queue at all. The busiest stand by far was the Press Club/Hellenic Republic & Maha one, probably as a result of George’s high profile after Masterchef Australia. Or possibly because it was three stands in one. Indeed, as we waited for our Lamb Kustilji we continually heard ‘Masterchef’ or ‘George’ being dropped in every conversation. The man himself was there behind the counter but he didn’t seem especially friendly. On the other hand, Shane Delia was all smiles and “yalla, yalla!”, welcoming everyone to their stand.

Maha’s Lamb Kustilji: crispy lamb ribs, roast nuts & spices, lemon & yoghurt. A really fun, stand up & eat kind of dish.

The Press Club/Hellenic Republic & Maha stand:

We had a quick chat to the lovely Frank Camorra at Movida, who recommended his slow-cooked cuttlefish with chorizo & chickpeas. I personally would have preferred to try the braised beef with spanish paprika, saffron & potatoes but A. happily slurped down this dish.

I was really excited about Nobu’s black cod with miso, having read so much about it. And thankully, it was everything I expected and more.

One of my absolute favourite “sandwiches” is the char siew pau so when I saw Circa’s BBQ She Wagyu, steamed bun, pickled carrot, spring onion & hoisin I was imagining a classy cross between the humble char siew pau, pekind duck pancakes & banh mi, if that makes any sense at all! It had good strong flavours and came SO close, but in the end it just wasn’t quite there yet. Maybe it was the steamed bun not having the right texture – it was neither fluffy enough for a pau nor crunchy enough for a baguette – or maybe there was too much of the hoisin sauce…something.

Our next stop, Verge, for the milk chocolate delice, coconut & basil, salted caramel popcorn which looked so beautiful I couldn’t go past it. Rich, rich, rich! (whisper: actually I preferred the brownies below)

Lots of stands that you could sample goods at, chat to the producers. We didn’t have a lot of time away from our son but even so we managed to do two rounds of the Exhibition Building and covered most of these. We bought outstanding brownies from Dello Mano, a Brisbane-based company. Each 50g little square was $6 but pretty delish, although
A. loyally agreed that mine were as good if not better =)

There are actually queues forming in Melbourne! We are used to seeing queues in Paris or Tokyo but today, for pretty much the first time we remember, there was a queue to get into Koko Black in the Block Arcade and the new Lindt Cafe on Collins St. The Lindt store is so new that it hasn’t made it into their website yet.

The Lindt Cafe is set in a beautiful building – high ceilings with a little balcony that runs along both sides and across the back of the second storey, book cases set along the entire length of it. My idea of heaven really – a chocolate cafe below and books above. I wonder if you’re allowed up there. Anyway, no cakes or chocolates this time as I’ve tried a few from the Sydney store. But the macarons (which they call delice) tempt me and so I ask for the hazelnut, milk chocolate and roselli. As an afterthought, I say “You should give me the broken passionfruit one too” and they do. Mmmmmmm, thin crunchy shell with a chewy interior then the creamy ganache.

I’ll make them soon, hon, I promise…

Can you be nostalgic for a time & place that you’ve never known? I’ve heard that Beirut was the ‘Paris’ of the Middle East in its heyday and citizens who have since moved from Lebanon wax lyrical about its beauty and liveliness. Having now made my first (whirlwind) visit to Beirut, I wish I had known her in her prime. I loved the hospitality of the people, the mountain-to-sea aspect, the contrasting fashions of the various religious groups. I would return in a heartbeat.

My first walk was along the promenade to the Raouché (Pigeon Rocks):

The American University of Beirut:

You don’t see female taxi drivers very often there (in fact, she was the only one I saw) and our driver so SO unimpressed that a woman was driving:

The first batch, made with three orange sweet potatoes, were terrible – dense, chewy. All because I followed the recipe from Yoshoku too closely. The recipe called for 300g flour to 1.2kg sweet potato and although I had only used about 220g of flour, the dough was already too dry.

Then, I only had one sweet potato left but I was determined to give it another go. I added one egg yolk, a tablespoon of grated parmesan and a few sprinkles of flour. Voila, lovely, light gnocchi! Pity about the terrible photo though =( My mum reckons that this is similar to Abacus Beads (a la the one Poh made in Masterchef) which is a food of the Hakka people.

An oldie that I’d forgotten about (blush)…

Chickpeas and chorizo are not the most asian of ingredients are they? but they do cook well in the old claypot regardless!

We were facilitating The Marrige Preparation Course a couple of weekends ago which meant that I needed to prepare a quick and easy lunch that could be had between a couple of the sessions that were being held on Sunday. I took inspiration from a recipe Matt posted late last year, one that had been on my mind since that time, and threw together a chickpea and chorizo hotpot.

Using my trusty chinese claypot, I fried the chorizo with some garlic and onion, added some passata, tin of chickpeas and some spices then simmered for 20 minutes. It was as easy as Matt had promised and absolutely delicious with crusty white bread. Best of all, the claypot made it easy to transport.

This place deserves a post of its own. Serving the kind of food that we travel for, Ibu Oka in Ubud is patronized by locals as well as tourists. They do one dish and they do it incredibly well – Babi Guling. You point to what everyone else on the communal table is having and it’s plated and served in about two minutes flat. Help yourself to the prawn crackers in the basket and everything just gets tallied up at the end of your meal.

Too good and had us licking our lips for the rest of the trip. It’s a pity we didn’t get to go back for seconds =(