Jazz in the Domain

One of our favourite events during the Sydney Festival is Jazz in the Domain. Since I won't be able to make it to the Symphony in the Domain this year, we went all out preparing for Jazz.

We got there nice and early and picked our usual spot away from the crowds so we can make an easy exit.

The spread!

Would you believe that this was intended to feed 2 people only???? We ended up feeding about 5-8 people with this!!

Our antipasto plate

Dried apricots, grapes, pesto, anchovie stuffed olives, semi sundried tomatoes, duck pate and Gus's first Hungarian contribution in 8 years, salami! hehe

Cheese and bacon puffs

I know they don't look puffy, but they did in the oven! This is basically a super concentrated cheese and bacon roll, without the bread! An absolute favourite of the kids!

Mediterranean puff

This tastes like all the best toppings on a pizza without the base! Heaven! The adults generally like my vegetarian version than the bacon version. Me? I love both, which is why I always make both!

Havarti, double cream brie and quince paste

Honey almonds and salted cashews

S's lovely choc orange cupcakes!

Choc dipped apples and strawberries

I have not made these in years! They certainly don't look anywhere as good as my previous batch since I made these under the influence of alcohol..... *cough* I love choc dipped strawberries, but I think I like the choc dipped green apples more. I love the contrast of the crunchy sour apples with the soft sweet chocolate. I just can't believe how much I made!

Rum Balls

I don't usually eat rum balls, but these were really nice and mild. Good work Cherry!

Bistro CBD - Fixed Rate Feast

Part of the Sydney Festival is a special deal at a number of restaurants for lunch. I had originally chosen to go Wild Fire with a friend, but they were renovating only week we could both make it. So we picked something a bit closer to work, the 1 hat Bistro CBD. The Sydney Festival Special was for an oven roasted spatchcock and a drink for $25. When I went to their website, I saw a Fix Rate Feast special. 2 courses for $30, or 3 courses for $40. Since I didn't want to drink that day, I opted to pay a little extra and have 2 courses instead.

Wholegrain sour dough

Tian of Crab, avocado, herb salad and citrus chilli dressing

I didn't taste any chilli in the dressing, but it was a nice dish overall. I just wished it was more citrusy!

Duck Sausage with pickled red cabbage and pea puree

I ordered the duck sausage, and whilst it was really nice, I'm not sure having this in a 1 Hat restaurant was any different from what I can get at a quality butcher. I was certainly stuffed to the brim after eating this though!

Salmon with parsnip skordalia, spinach and pomegranate dressing

The Salmon was cooked to perfection. The skin was ultra crispy, and all I wanted to do was peel the whole piece off and eat it like a potato chip! Except it would've been weird AND rude if I reached over the table and took the whole piece of skin from my friend's plate!

Bistro CBD
Level 1, 52 King St
Sydney
+612 8297 7010

http://www.merivale.com

Fixed Rate Special
2 courses for $30
3 courses for $40

Our Xmas feast

For the last few years, we've had a massive xmas. This year is no exception with a total of 121 presents under the tree!! That's right, 121!!! It took me a good hour to stack everything under the tree. All my years playing tetris finally paid off.

The littles ones giving me a hug to thank me for all the presents I got them!

All of my nephews and neices have figured out that I am Santa. I guess they can consider me that as I buy about half of the presents under the tree. I also hide all the presents until they're asleep xmas even before I bring them out and stack them under the tree. They love waking up and running up to the tree to see how many presents are stacked under it.

So what did I get this year? I actually got stuff I love!! Firstly, I got the new Canon 980 IS IXUS camera. 14.7 mega pixels of goodness! The new Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food cook book and a new Takoyaki pan! Woohoo!!

Oh YEahhhhhhh

My neice also used up their entire fortune of $40 to buy me a butterfly necklace. When my sister offered to give her extra money to buy the xmas present, she insisted that she wanted to pay for the whole with her own money. She also made me various jewellery boxes as well. What I didn't know was that on the day I came home with a new pair of dangly earrings from Prouds I bought for my neice, was the same day she went to Prouds to get my xmas present. She was so grateful and shocked that I bought her something from Prouds (which in her eyes, costs her entire fortune), that the next day, she dragged my sister to the nearest florist to buy me a bunch of flowers. Awwwwww!!!

Once all the presents were unwrapped, it was time to get the party started. We fired up all the BBQs, yes, BBQs. We had 3 BBQs going. One BBQ had 2 hot plates and a grill. We borrowed the specially made satay BBQ stove I got for my brother in law last year as a xmas present and I bought a mini weber like one to make my BBQ Pork.

Here are the none meat dishes:

My special tabouli

My extra light coleslaw

My sister's potato salad

Mum's singapore noodles

My bean salad that makes you go toot toot!

Dad's home made nem nuong

I couldn't get a decent shot of this as people were eating them faster than we were cooking them. The tray barely makes it to the table with people grabbing a few sticks as the tray goes past them.

Vietnamese and pork sausages

This is what happens when you let the guys man the BBQ. We also had quails, steaks, pork chops, lamb chops, chicken wings and ham and pineapple skewers. I didn't get photos of that since I was too busy eating and manning my own special BBQ. Besides, people were walking right up to the BBQ and grabbing the food straight off it!

My BBQ Pork

I bought a mini weber like BBQ with the domed lid so I could roast some BBQ Pork for the day. Lets just say, this got the double thumbs up from my parents! We basically used to make our own BBQ pork for the restaurant, so if they approve, it means its good enough to sell in a restaurant! haha

All sliced up

My secret punch

Chocolate cake ice cream sandwich

Wild Japanese Strawberries

The kids were basically raiding my strawberry plants in between bites! Although tiny, these strawberries pack and intense punch in flavour. Savour one at a time. MMmMMmmm

The rest of the day was spent playing Wii, singing Karaoke, eating leftovers, snacking and drinking. Lets just say, a few people ended up passed out on the floor and we left them there til the next morning......

Bento madness!

With all the family here during December and all the xmas preparations I had to do, there was basically no time to do any fancy bentos. Most of these are from late November to early December.


Left: Nam Yu (Fermented red beancurd) stewed potatoes, boiled rice topped with nuts and lentils marinated in chilli oil
Top right: King Prawn and scrambled egg stir fry
Bottom right: Carrot and cucumber salad


Impromptu Bibimbap - bugulgi beef, sauteed carrot, beansprouts, shitake mushrooms and lettuce (I didn't have any spinach)
Fresh mango

Left: Cold Somen (To be served with zaru soba sauce), bunny egg and ham rolls
Top right: Greek Salad
Bottom right: Beans, asaparagus, carrots, semi sundried tomato and ham rolls

Left: Leftover Valencia Paella from Encasa
Top right: Oranges and cherries
Bottom right: Cherry tomatoes, cucumber and sliced goats cheese. I dressed this with a little raspberry balsamic vinegar


Top left: Lamb Kofte
Bottom left: Raw baby corn, cucumber and cherry tomato salad
Right: Cha Soba, mandu, snowpeas and boiled cocktail potatoes

Top left: Cucumber, snow peas and cherry tomato salad
Bottom left: Pan fried chicken and wedges with bbq seasoning
Right: Chilli fried rice with baby corn, beans, peas and tofu fish


Top: Fake crab and omlette roll, home grown beans and cucumbers, snowpeas, cherry tomatoes and boiled cocktail potato
Bottom: Tomato fried rice with diced vegetables and grilled Toulouse sausages

Top left: Teriyaki chicken and mandu
Bottom left: Blanched home grown Choy Sum
Right: Sliced cheong fun (Rice noodle roll). I bought along a container of udon soup to eat this in. I love sliced cheong fun in soup to replace normal noodles


Left: Cut veggie box of home grown beans and cucumbers, carrots, beetroots and cherry tomato and bocconcini skewers
Right: Turkish style bulghur and paprika chicken

Left: Salami and lettuce roll (I figured it was the easiest way to pack lots of lettuce into my meal without making a salad). Cherry tomatoes and cucumber
Right: Turkish Bulghur and beef rissoles

Left: Not the most pretty looking, but definitely tasted fantastic. Lamb kofte on rice with pan fried garlic mushrooms and eggplants
Right: Garlic eggplants, cherry tomatoes, home grown cucumbers on a bed of home grown lettuce. (Definiately making the most of our garden!)

Despite my bento efforts dwindling to nothing, but I can tell you, its about to make a MAJOR comeback! A few months ago, I sent my sister in Singapore a VERY long email asking her to go to Daiso and help me stock up on everything that can possibly be used for bentos. And this is what she brought over:


MUhaUAhaUAha Bento heaven! The only thing was that she didn't buy me a bento box! Well, she bought me a tinyyyyyy little bento box which is barely enough for a snack (Considering I'm not good at packing the box tightly). But besies that, I've got every kind of sauce containers and bottles, countless types of rice moulds (star, heart, triangle, round etc), dividers and even a new thermal hankerchief like thing for the bento box.

I also cleared out all my food supplies in December to make room for my sister's cravings, so I'll be building all of that up again over the next few weeks. So hopefully there will be a few new variations to my bento repertoire.

Xmas goodies

I picked one of the hottest days in December to do my annual xmas bake. With 36degree heat at 10am in the morning, and the oven being on from 10am-8:30pm that night, lets just say I was more than a little hot, tired and cranky. But, in the end, I managed to get everything done. However, I was so busy I didn't get a chance to take photos of everything I made. Plus I was forever covered in flour and sweat and I didn't want to destroy my camera forever.

Cranberry and pistachio biscotti

Clockwise: Cranberry and pistachio biscotti, peanut butter cookies, shortbread, rocky road, orange and almost biscotti

The great thing about having a big family, is that I sat everyone down at the end of the night to help me start wrapping! There were over 60 packages to sort, wrap, tie and decorate. I did manage to finish before midnight which was a good thing! I kept everything in my room as I was worried the kids would eat everything, so it meant I woke up smelling the bakery in my room ;)

Top right: Pineapple and strawberry jam

Too bad my strawberry plants didn't have strawberries before I made the jam, otherwise it would've been home grown and home made strawberries. But then, my neice was raiding the strawberry plant every day and there was barely any left for me to eat! Same goes with my raspberry tree. I managed to get 2 whole raspberries off it before the kids ate everything!

One of my big plump sun riped strawberries

A 28th birthday with flying photos

Since me and Will don't get our annual overseas trip together this year, we decided that we needed something to make up for it. I booked a room for the two of us at the Novotel at Brighton with our own private balcony with a view of the beach. This was part of Will's birthday celebration and we thought we should live it up!! It cost a bit, but it was well worth it! Since Brighton is only about 10mins drive from Kogarah, we figured we can both drink our asses off and just cab it back to the hotel at the end of the night.

King bed

The view from our balcony

We dumped our bags and headed out to grab a Souvalaki Pita roll just like we use to do in Mykonos to line our stomachs. I mean, we had already been drinking for about an hour!


And drinking means insaneness, and insaneness means we needed to do a mail drop.....

What's that in his hands?

The same thing we had scattered all over the hotel:


Want a closer look?

Oh yeahhhhhhhh! Its like my 2007 B'day all over again!

Kaan dropped by to help pose with the photos

We catch a cab to Chelsea's restaurant in Kogarah. We walk up to the reception where we get stopped by security and told to wait for the manager. Next thing you know, about 4 people are running up and down the stairs like it was a code red alert. Gees, what did we do?? About 5mins later, the manager comes running down to let us into the restaurant. A heap of mezze was already on the table when we arrived, so I could dig right on in.

Hummus, babaganoush, labna, fetta, bean salad etc

Spicy chicken wings - Which tasted surprisingly asian?

And...spring rolls?

My drink...

Their drink...

Which was coke with our smuggled in vodka! Kaan gave me alcohol poisoning from all the vodka he was serving me! Between the 3 of us, we finished 1.5L of vodka!! Things started to get a bit out of control after that, which was a bit strange as only the 3 of us were drinking??

I think it was still alive.....?

Next thing you know, we had photos flying through the air!

That's one disgusted look

I had everyone on the table go: ?What was going on? What's happening? What's this??". It was like I was surrounded by 20 Karen Walkers. Luckily I got saved when the birthday cake came out!

We had to make a minor correction

Eating from the new plate

The plate

Some time during the night, a belly dancer came out and it was all downhill from there onwards...

Still "soberish"

Smashed, drunk, fairly sober

We basically got kicked out of the restaurant at 2am, except we couldn't get a cab. We asked the owners to call us a cab, and instead of calling the taxi company, they called a friend to see if they could drive us. Damn, this is sounding a lot like that time in Pammukale where we got stranded? Except we didn't have our 30kg suitcases with us. We eventually flag down a taxi, even though I almost had to throw myself onto the road to get it.

We get back to the hotel where I go to the toilet to get changed for bed. I come out 5mins later and Will is completely passed out.

The morning after was NOT pretty...

We had 2 shots of coffee to cure ourselves

Hidden big breakfast

I grabbed myself a big breakfast which had bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs and toast. Except you can't see any of it as its covered by the eggs and toast.

Tomato, eggs and toast