A Few of My Favourite Things !

I can’t do wontons.

What I mean by this is that I cannot wrap wontons in the traditional way, that ‘money bag’-style. When I have tried, they would just look like I had squished the top together and taste too much of dough in one spot.

I don’t know where or when I pick up this wrapping style but nowadays my fingers automatically shape these tortellini-looking wontons.

You won’t see them looking like this at your local yum cha restaurant but they taste GOOD, and have a better texture, in my opinion. These dumplings were filled with a mixture of minced pork, roughly chopped prawns, shao hsing wine, shoyu, sesame oil and seasoned to taste. I usually form a couple of tiny meatballs and cook them up so that I can check the seasoning before wrapping the rest.

This entry is my submission to the ‘Waiter, there’s something in my… dumplings’ event that Johanna, The Passoinate Cook, is hosting.

Like most of you, I think about food a lot. What we’re going to have for lunch, for dinner, what I’m going to cook for tomorrow, for the next day, for the next week. But most of all, I think about all the desserts that I would like to bake, the biscuits that my work colleagues are going to love, the cake I would like to share with my friends. There are so many goodies that it’s always difficult for me to settle on one thing. My mind is always leaping here, there and everywhere trying to decide what to bake next.

So this month’s SHF challenge from Jennifer, to post about our most craved dessert, just about had me tearing my hair. How to choose? How can anyone be expected to choose??? ARRRGGGGGG!

To be honest, I don’t actually have one dessert that I crave with a passion above everything else. When faced with a dessert menu, I normally chicken out of having to make the final selection by pointing out about 3 choices then leaving it to my husband to order.

But I remember one cake that mum used to bake when I was in primary school that I had the greatest fun eating. An INDONESIAN LAYER CAKEthat I could savour slowly by peeling off and letting each fine layer melt in my mouth. This cake takes the baker 2 hours in front of the oven to bake so the only ones I’ve had recently are not very good store-bought ones.

It was time. I browsed through several recipes on the internet and got mum to read hers to me over the phone. Making a couple of alterations here and there, I mixed together the batter and brought a stool over to the oven in preparation. For this time-consuming cake, a spoonful of batter is ladled into the baking tin and grilled, then the next spoonful ladled on and grilled, and so on until all the batter is used up.

Based on my internet research, each layer should be grilled for 5 to 7 minutes - WRONG!!! My cake turned out completely overdone and burnt in some sections. Imagine my disappointment after spending 5 hours baking this THING! I couldn’t let it defeat me though so I tried it again the next day. This time, I listened to mum and only grilled each layer for a mere 2 minutes, taking me around 2 hours in total - PERFECTION!

The result 36 eggs and 25 layers later…

It’s not a flashy look-at-me-I’m-so-gorgeous kind of cake but it is buttery and perfect for a pick-me-up at teatime. Especially if you eat it layer by layer.

My father-in-law has the most amazing green thumb. Or should that be green thumbs? Whichever it is, I love visiting his backyard to admire the fruit trees bearing loquats, pomegranates, apples, lemons and the vegetable patch filled with a variety of tomato, cucumber, chilli and capsicum plants. They are his pride and joy and he loves sharing the fruits of his labour with us.

Recently, we received a couple of eggplants which I steamed over simmering water for about 15 minutes. While the cubes of eggplant were cooking, I boiled down a simple sauce based on a Kylie Kwong recipe of soy sauce, malt vinegar, Shao Hsing wine, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, salt & pepper.

Plate the eggplant, sprinkle chopped spring onions and thin slices of chilli, then pour over the sauce. Absolutely delicious with some white rice!

This is my entry for Heart of the Matter 4 which is focussing on vegetables this month. Head to Joanne’s for the roundup!

Well, the Chinatown part of Russell Street seems to coming good these days! A new restaurant has just openend up a couple of doors down from Noodle Kingdom where we have been getting our fix of Traditional Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup every couple of weeks - sometimes the noodles and sometimes the soup alone.

The new place is simply named ‘Wonton House’ after the chef’s specialty so that’s what we ordered. The Hong Kong-style congee was also highly recommended. We chose the traditional pork and century egg version but there is quite an extensive list of around 12 or 15 choices.

What can we say? Excellent golden wonton dumplings floating in a tasty chicken stock. The congee was smooth, warm and comforting and they didn’t skimp on the good bits.

I almost typed in Anzac Cookies, but that would have just been SO wrong as these biscuits were originally baked during WWI by wives and mothers for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers. Luckily I caught myself in time and wisely used the term ‘biscuits’ instead. Anyway, a rose by any other name and all…these taste pretty good!

Something that Neil wrote reminded me of a story from my quick visit to the local supermarket a few weeks back. Occasionally the checkout staff wil not know what a certain fruit or vegetable item is, especially if they are of the more exotic variety for a supermarket item - pomegranate, persimmon, starfruit - and that’s okay with me. This evening, the girl reached the last item in my basket, a bulb of baby fennel. She waved it at me and stated “This is garlic, right?”

That makes me sad.

On a different topic, we visited the Good Food Show last Friday and can I just say what a disappointment that was? $25 per person for entry but there was nothing new to discover. Like others, we tried to purchase individual Boscastle pies but they were only selling them in variety packs, we were rushed out of the Nestle Noir tent after sampling one piece although there was no line, there just seemed to be a general lack of enthusiasm from those manning the stands.

One funny thing though was the Asian stand selling Jasmine rice. They were giving out samples of rice served with a red curry and one woman came up and said “Can we have some curry without the rice? My husband doesn’t eat rice”. You can imagine the look on the server’s face!

This is how we celebrated a friend’s Hen’s Night some weeks ago…

The hot pink pigeons nesting in the tree caught my eye this morning and made me smile! It’s such a cheery look. On the left, you can see a waterwall that has become a casualty of the increasing water restrictions caused by the prolonged drought situation. Instead of just turning off the water, they have cleverly created a feature that captures the grim situation we are facing.

We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary yesterday with dinner at Comme Kitchen. Getting there 20 minutes early, we started off with drinks at the very noisy, echoey bar filled with snappily dressed young men. A sparkling and a cocktail in hand, we ordered the salt cod croquettes which only took 5 minutes before arriving. A squeeze of lemon and we cut into the crisp golden exterior to reveal the soft creamy cod and mash. Great to have with our drinks while chatting at the bar. Most groups ordered the french fries with aioli, which looked and smelled so tempting that we wanted to reach over to fork some up while heads had turned away.

Later, seated in the relaxed and smallish dining room (about 12 tables), we started with one of their specials and one off the a la carte. The vongole, crab broth, chorizo, sherry and parsley is a lovely, warming dish although I found it on the salty side (A. didn’t mind at all!). My entree however was one of the best dishes I’ve had in some time - roasted quail with 12 year old balsamic, grapes and steamed king edward potatoes. The waiter description was “…quail with 12 year old balsamic grapes…” but somehow I found it difficult to believe that the grapes were that old. Perfectly cooked quail and amazing flavour!

We selected both mains from the specials board - pan-roasted blue eye with artichoke veloute, broad beans and baby fennel and the wagyu rump with truffle mash, slippery jack & pine mushrooms - and a mixed leaf salad, apple cider dressing and toasted hazelnuts. The fish and its accompaniments were wonderful, as were the truffle mash and mushies. Would it be a terrible thing for me to admit that I’m not really into wagyu though? We’ve tried wagyu in a few different places and time and again have commented that it’s too rich and ‘meaty’ in flavour. i feel awful saying this seeing as wagyu is meant to be top of the range, but give us Black Angus anyday.

To finish, the warm quince and almond tart with vanilla ice cream. The pastry chef was kind enough to accommodate A’s request for ‘Happy Anniversary’ to be piped in chocolate across the edge, a much appreciated gesture. My spoon went to the icecream first and to my surprise, it wasn’t vanilla but honey! Did someone confuse one for the other or did they run out of the vanilla? Well, it didn’t matter to us because it was great and we were tempted to ask for more (cheeky grin!)

Highly recommended and I cannot wait to return!

Comme Kitchen

+61 3 9631 4000

There’s an ongoing debate as to what exactly is a brownie - a cake, a cookie, a sheet cookie, a bar, a slice? But a brownie sits in a separate category all together. It should be denser than a cake and fudgier rather than light and fluffy.

I trawled through a large handful of recipes trying to decide which would produce a great brownie but most of the recipes I came across used baking powder. How could this produce a dense and fudgey brownie? Dissatisfied with the results of my search, the only solution was to create my own recipe.

Using a few of the recipes as a rough template, I reduced the amount of flour and sugar and left out the baking powder altogether. The chocolate and butter was melted over simmering water and the rest of the ingredients mixed in with a wooden spoon. By not beating the eggs, sugar and butter, I managed to avoid aerating the batter and this resulted in a dense, fudgey, amazing brownie…oops, blondie. I forgot to mention that I mainly used white chocolate instead of milk or dark.

It was great straight out of the oven and we’ll find out tomorrow how it tastes after sitting overnight.

Cin’s Blondie

200g white chocolate, roughly chopped
150g butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups pl flour
1/4 tsp salt
50g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1/2 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped

1) Melt 1/2 white chocolate & butter in bowl over simmering water. Remove from heat.
2) Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla essence
3) Mix in flour&salt mixture
4) Fold in rest of chocolate and almond pieces
5) Bake in 20cm square tin at 160C until skewer comes out clean but with crumbs. Don’t overbake.

Of course, you can’t enjoy brownies or blondies on your own so I have to share this recipe with the rest of the Brownie Babes over at Myriam’s place.