A Few of My Favourite Things !

Over summer, I started stalking the Ben & Jerry’s van in hopes of scoring a free scoop of ice cream. How hard could it be given that the van would be trundling through the city streets and surrounds and I’m living right by the Yarra River. All I had to do was watch their Twitter space… well, I tried and I tried. I tried to get them to come to my work place, I tried to get them to come to my mother’s group, I finally managed to catch them at Alexandra Gardens where they were settling in for an evening of festivities only to be told that their ice cream had not frozen yet. What??? What kind of lame excuse was that? Don’t they bring them frozen already?

You can imagine what a surprise it was then when I was offered a tasting of the three new flavours available in the pint-sized (not quite 500g) tubs – Phish Food, triple Caramel Chunk and Half Baked. Yes of course I would love to taste them because as many times as I’ve come across Ben & Jerry ice cream stands in my travels, I have never once had a scoop of the stuff. Why not? Maybe there are just too many flavours on offer, defying me to choose just one or two.

So, there I was one Friday afternoon trying to feed my one week old newborn when a rep rocks up to my front door with a freezer bag. There’s no time for an immediate tasting when there’s a hungry tummy to be filled. Fortunately, my parents, brother and his girlfriend were coming to dinner that night – a ready-made judging panel.

Phish Food: Too sweet and marshmallow pillows making it too gooey. Total score – 55

Half-Baked: Too sweet and a preference was indicated for cookie bits instead of cookie dough. Total score – 59.5

Triple Caramel Chunk: Lovely crunchy bits (I especially liked the chocolate covered fudge!). The most popular out of the three with a total score of 73.

Triple Caramel Chunk was unanimously voted the favourite and the general consensus was that all three could do with less sugar. It is an American brand after all, so maybe the Australia palate is not used to ice cream that is so ickily sweet, or maybe it’s just my Asian-Australian family speaking!

If you’re listening, B&J’s, next time I’d like to try the iconic Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey flavours (cheeky grin). They always seem to be the ones getting a mention in books & movies. Are they the most popular flavours I wonder…

I’m heading to a surprise baby shower for a dear old friend this afternoon. I’ve just realised that I am without a car , it’s a windy Melbourne day and I have to carry a cake and present with me. Luckily, another dear friend has kindly agreed to pick me up on her way – whew, it really is blustery out there and I can just see a gust of wind snatching the cake box out of my hands and dumping it on the foot path.

We were told by J’s sisters to bring a dish so this is what I’m bringing:

It’s a four-layered cake (alternating hazelnut-buttermilk and strawberry-buttermilk) sandwiched with a Tokio jam and buttercream frosting as it holds better than whipped cream. I made two double batches of Nigella’s buttermilk cake, adding hazelnut meal to one double batch and strawberry puree to the other. The addition of hazelnuts has made the cake even better as it’s holding it’s moistness very well. I didn’t add enough strawberry though so the other batch is lacking in that soft pinkness that I was aiming for. I guess there’s enough pink in the frosting to make up for it. The baby blocks are sandwiched with Nutella. I’m not sure that it’s a very cohesive design but that may be because I made it up as I went along. I was going to make 3 baby blocks and have the last one sitting on atop the bottom two, but ran out of marzipan. Anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to close the cake box if I’d done that.

Off to join in those baby shower games…

I’ve been a slack little blogger! I have been doing the occasional surfing through the Australian blogs but honestly there are simply too many for me to keep up with everyone now. Of course, I’ve still been taking the odd picture here and there – either of something I’ve cooked or when I’ve been out for dinner. I just haven’t been putting any of it here.

Then this week, I took my 2 year old to Prahran Market and saw someone peeling apples in preparation for her demonstration of A Thousand Layered Apple Cake. I had seen her before on Masterchef and a photo from I can’t remember where, and just this week was reading about the gourmet sandwich bar that she and her husband were about to open up on Bourke St. It was none other than Jackie Middleton, who also confessed that she had fallen off the blogging bandwagon, although not nearly as badly as I had.

I’ve been distracted by all the things you do with a toddler but I have been doing some important baking which is due in 2 months. Yes, a rather long time in the oven isn’t it?

I got to do some cooking for little people this week as our playgroup has decided to do a foodswap on Monday. I figured that there would be a few meatballs and frittata recipes so I went with fried rice, cooked with peas, corn and good ol’ spam – the way I remember it from my childhood. I used to dash on some tomato sauce for additional flavour….. mmmmm. To accompany, chicken nuggets marinated overnight in yoghurt then dipped in beaten egg and flour peppered with five spice powder – enough to tantalise but not overwhelm delicate taste buds. Some of the chicken nuggets were dredged in dessicated coconut instead of the five spice mixture. Either way, they turned out great and one piece even obligingly too on the appearance of a drumstick.

There’s a bridge that runs from Flinders St Station to Southgate that I walk across all the time. I discovered recently that there’s a little area under the bridge that you can take the stairs down to and it brings you right up to the water level. It’s a great spot for watching the boats cruising past. WHile down there with my son, I noticed a little beach house building that was for hire.

It’s now been hired and transformed into ‘South Island Cafe’. Not a convenient location for a pram-pushing mum like me but a cool spot if you feel the need for a caffeine jolt part-way across the bridge. You’re not going to know it’s there unless you see the sign that they place just at the top of the stairs leading down. But now you know…

We have been awaiting the opening of Old Town Kopitiam in QV for the last few months, especially after spending a couple of weeks in Malaysia recently and reacquainting ourselves with the joys of kaya toast. Finally made it there for breakfast this morning, which actually turned out to be lunch when I couldn’t get out of bed before 10:30am. This also meant that we had to forgo the kaya toast in favour of something more substantial – roti chanai with curry sauce, Siamese Laksa and ban chang kueh. All great and we’re heading back really soon to try the rest of the menu.

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…