Sydney Madang and Mizuya Japanese Restaurant and Karaoke for Dessert!?

I had stupidly bought tickets to The Lovely Bones on the day of the Australian Open Mens Finals! ARGHHH!!! Luckily, the movie was supposed to end around 7:30pm, so our plan was to run to the nearest restaurant that has a TV and is also showing the Australian Open!

We met up at 4pm and was walking towards the cinemas when I suddenly spotted a sign. I was so excited I couldn't even speak, just point and went "UH!! UH!!!!!". What got me so excited? Outside Mizuya (The newly open Japanese Restaurant/Karaoke bar where Maloneys and Bar Ace used to be) had a sign outside saying "Green tea soft serve for 50c". UH!!! UH!!!!! Meanwhile, my friend wasn't paying any attention to my grunting because she was too busy checking out people walking around with a green tea soft serve in their hands!

We both detoured into Mizuyas for a bout of dessert before the movies:

Green tea soft serve

I hate "green tea" flavoured things that are more green colouring than green tea flavoured. This however, was a punch in the face GREEN TEA. The intense taste of green tea, almost slightly bitter in taste was heart stoppingly good. Even better that you can pick up a green tea anything for 50c! We were so happy with this I took a photo and MMS my friend who was supposed to join us for the movies but piked. HA!

After the movies, we dashed out of the cinemas, met up with a friend and went straight to Sydney Madang. There was a huge crowd outside, and we almost turn tailed and left. Luckily we grabbed a number because we had waited less than 10mins before we got a table, right infront of the TV.....that was showing the Australian Open! Oh yeah!! Tennis and good food at the same time!

Banchan

Madang has some of the best Banchan that I've tasted in Sydney. Today's offerings were fish cakes, wongabok kimchee, choy sum kimchee, potatoes and a lovely salad with a grated apple and onion dressing. I think we has 3-4 rounds of banchan.

Seafood Pancake

Most of the time I get the kimchee pancakes, this time my friends insisted on the seafood one. And boy am I glad we ordered this. The seafood version is quite different to the kimchee version. Not only in taste, but in texture as well. Whilst the kimchee version is slightly crispy on the outside, it was soft and chewy on the inside. The seafood version however, had a wonderfully crunchy outside, almost tempura batter like. It has a much higher crunch to chewy ratio. I think its the few Korean restaurants that cook it this way. I am definitely ordering this over the Kimchee version from now on!!

Spicy Octopus, beef and tofu stew

When we order individual pots of soup, most of us stick with a seafood soup. When we order a hotpot size stew, we NEVER get a seafood stew. This is because it usually contains prawns, crabs and chunks of fish. All require you to pay attention to bones, shells and the use of hands. Most of the time we're all too lazy to wrestle the meat from the crab when there's so much other food to eat we actually leave a majority of the food untouched.

Madang has a wonderful octopus and beef stew, giving us the sweetness of seafood, without the trouble of having to eat with our hands. This pot was filled with bulgogi beef, octopus, rice cakes, udon noodles, tofu and heaps of veggies. Between the 3 of us, we barely finished this pot. I was actually sickly full after eating this as I was too busy concentrating on the game rather than listening to my stomach, that was screaming NO MORE!!

We waddle out of Madang and decided to swing past Mizuya again to introduce our friend to the green tea soft serve. We walk up to the bar and order 3 softserves and this is what happened:

Us: 3 green tea soft serves please
Him: Sorry, that offer is only available before 6:30pm.
Us: NOOoOoOoOoOoooooooOOooOoOoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Him: *panicked look* errrrr......er......I can sell it to you, just not at the promotional price. I'll have to charge you full price
Us: *collective sigh of relief*

The full price for the soft serve is $2. A huge jump from the 50c we paid a few hours earlier. But we were all craving for a fix and coughed up the money. Honestly, I would've happily paid $2 every time if I didn't know there was a 50c special offer! Oh, the soft serve is also around for a limited time only! So go grab yourself a serve before they discontinue it! I'm hoping if its popular enough, it'll be a year long thing!

Mizuya Japanese Restaurant & Karaoke Bar
Basement, 614 George St
Sydney
(Ph) 02 9266 0866
http://www.mizuya.com.au/


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Sydney Madang
371A Pitt St
Sydney NSW 2000
(Ph) 02 9264 7010


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Last minute bentos

One thing I hate about summer is the setting sun shining into our kitchen at 7pm at night. The sunlight is so intense, washing your hands will make you sweat from the heat. This makes it a pain in the butt to make my bento after dinner, so instead, I procrastinate until the sun goes down. Except then I have to scramble around looking for ingredients to wack my bento together. Thank goodness I keep the fridge well stocked. Here are the absolute last minute bentos I made, usually after 10:30pm. Yes, I'm that lazy.


I had to stay back late at work one night, so I packed this as a snack to tide me over until I got home.

Left: Smoked Salmon, cream cheese and lettuce tortilla wraps
Top right: Stringer shapes
Bottom right: Cucumber and capsicum strips


Left: I have no idea what to call this. The literal translation is "Flavoured rice". This is one of our favourite comfort food that we made in our family village. Its rice boiled with chinese sausage and cured meat, fresh chicken/pork/beef, dried shrimps/oysters/scallops, beans or peas of some sort and lots of shallots and ginger. Mix it all up with a little soya sauce and eat by the bowlful.
Top right: Cheese and bacon puffs and mediterrenean puffs.
Bottom right: Dragon fruit, one of my absolute favorites. But only if its the white variety. I absolutely hate the bright pink variety. It tastes like someone has sprayed deoderant or perfume in my mouth.....



You can almost guarantee that when I make bibimbap for my bento, that I had pho for dinner!! Since we make our own Pho at home, we have almost all the ingredients I need for a bibimbap. The 2 main ingredients that I don't always have on hand is beef for the bugolgi beef and bean sprouts. I added some sauteed zucchini, carrots and shredded egg. I also pan fried some Mandu (Korean dumplings) to go with it.


I had family friends over for dinner who spent the whole night sitting in the kitchen cooking. Not wanting to cook infront of them and getting them salivating over my lunch (No! I'm not sharing! hehe) I had to cook in our other kitchen. I loaded my arms up with as much as I could carry without looking like a piggy hog, I managed to whip this up.

Left: Cha Soba
Top right: Salad with artificial crab stick.
Bottom right: Mandu


My lazy vegetarian fried rice with added cherry tomatoes. I also quickly cooked up some beef patties. That's the last of my beef patty stash, will need to make more for the freezer soon.

Trying some new Bento ideas

After cleaning out all my Bento supplies in the freezer for Xmas, I have to replenish my supplies. And what better chance than to try something a little different?


This was an uber simple bento to make! The beef mince was sauteed with soya sauce, sugar and lots of pepper. I drained all the sauce and poured it all over the rice before putting the mince on the rice. This ensures all the rice is nice and flavoursome. I then sauteed some grated carrot and diced beans in the same pan with extra pepper and soya sauce. The corn was straight from a can!

Tomato fried rice with Shang Dong Chicken

Very simple vegetarian fried rice with cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes add an extra dimension of flavour and subtle sweetness. The Shang Dong Chicken is a chinese dish of fried chicken with a sour sauce with lots of chilli, garlic and coriander.


Left: Grilled lamb with BBQ seasoning. Chicken and mushroom ravioli with a simple tomato sauce. I lurrrrrrve this chicken and mushroom ravioli! Absolutely delicious! I probably didn't need the lamb to enjoy this meal.
Top Right: Sweet white peaches
Bottom Right: Edamame and cucumber


Top Left: Tomato and cucumber salad
Bottom Left: White Donut peaches and home grown strawberries. I absolutely ADORE the white donut peaches. If only I can eat it all year round!!!
Right: My version of Chapchae (Korean stir fried sweet potato noodle). Doesn't look too bad for a first timer aye?

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.

The bentos are back

Phew, finally caught up on a lot of my blogging. Back to bentos! Woohoo!!

Left: Kimchi soba - My sister bought over 1/2kg of homemade kimchi given to her from a friend. As much as I love kimchi, I wouldn't be able to finish it with rice. So I chopped up some kimchi and tossed them with soba. Simple yet tasty. The spinach leaves is to stop staining the lid. I also lined the container with lettuce.
Top right: Bulgolgi beef
Bottom right: Spinach and tomato salad with edamame. The little container is filled with japanese salad dressing


Left: This was hugely inspired by TFP's french toast. After reading her posts, I couldn't stop obsessing over them! My french toast was made with eggs and milk only. Since I am cooking these the day before eating them, I used a lot less milk than I usually would, so it was much eggier than I'm used to. I also bought a mini bottle of maple syrup with me to work. Boy did I get a sugar rush after lunch...
Top right: Ham, snow peas and bread and butter pickle salad.
Bottom right: Sweet potatoes and corn. This was almost like eating dessert!



Left: Teriyaki beef on a bed of lettuce with rice. I like to put a barrier between the beef and rice, as I'm hoping the lettuce will capture most of the juice/sauce and doesn't get absorbed into the rice overnight. When I am ready to eat, I poke heaps of holes in the lettuce and let the sauce drain onto the rice.
Top right: Chinese banana cake
Bottom right: Wokabok and garlic chives tossed in teriyaki sauce


Left: Udon noodle soup - I kept the soup seperate to avoid the udons going mushy. I added a heap of seaweed into my soup as well. I make a mean kick arse udon noodle soup!
Top right: Teriyaki chicken and a bear egg (Not sure if you can see the bear face)
Bottom right: Blanched wongabok

This bento was designed to be a deconstructions udon noodle soup. I basically nuked everything up and chucked it into the soup (with the exception of my boiled egg of course).

Bento gone mad

My friend told me about Maruyu, which is a small Japanese grocery store that imports a lot of traditional Japanese things and is often frequented by Japanese people. I had to work on Sunday, which gave me a good excuse to dash across to Maruyu, about 10mins walk from my work to load up on some supplies. They also had a $2.50 store where I managed to pick up a few things as well. I told my friend about it, so we went back again today to buy MORE stuff. I almost bought a box of frozen Natto, but I didn't think my workmates will appreciate it.

If you think that's bad, I spent Saturday trawling through every single bargain store in Auburn to pick up other supplies as well. It was only today did I realise how much I've accumulated over 3 weeks??


And the scary thing? That's not all. I know I'm missing 2 of my egg moulds (The bunny and the fish), another pan and a few other gadgets. I also managed to pick up 2 collapsable sandwich boxes (top middle, the pink boxes), I'll have to try those out soon.

At Maruyu, I also managed to find these!


WTF is it? Sausage cutters. The green one is a penguin, yellow is a tulip and the pink is a crab. The red one is to make octopus sausages. You really need the proper japanese sausages that are firmer and skinner, but I grabbed some cocktail sausages to try out.


Peel skin and put in mould, press the cutter onto the sausage to get.....

Penguin!! hehehe The crab one didn't turn out at all using these soft cocktail sausages, which was a real disappointment. The crab one was the one I was most excited about. I'm sure I'll figure out a way to use it properly.

Which brings me to my animal bento! I used the penguin cutter and the octopus cutter for the sausages. I then quickly pan fried the sausages with a bit of the bulgolgi marinade.


The noodles was leftover rice noodles I quickly tossed together with sliced green beans, carrots and leftover korean banchan mushrooms. I cooked up a few mandu and quickly blanched the sugar snap peas and packed it with the last of the cherry tomatoes. My little animal sauce containers arrived from eBay, and I filled that up with honey mustard.

Korean Bento???

Most of my bentos have been quite simple, nice delicate flavours, a balance of flavoured and unflavoured things. Because of that, I thought it was time to spice things up. I made a special pitstop to Campsie on the weekend so I could stock up on some Korean groceries. Even though Bentos are esssentially Japanese, I don't see what I can't apply the same concept to all other types of cuisines.

I followed some of the banchan recipes posted up by The Kitchen Wench to make up the different components of a bibimbap. I couldn't believe how simple it was to make most of my favourite side dishes! This took me about 20mins to make, which wasn't too bad as I had to make all the dishes from scratch.


The bibimbap contains bean sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, bulgolgi beef, carrots and a pan fried egg in my funky star egg mould. I packed a few strawberries to clean the palate afterwards.

Most of the veggies were incredibly easy to make!

Beansprouts - blanch, drain, mix with salt and sesame oil
Spinach - blanch, rinse, drain, mix with salt and sesame oil
Carrots - Grate, saute gently with salt and pepper
Bulgolgi beef - I used a store bought marinade (absolutely amazing for a bottled marinade) and pan fried with some thinly sliced onions. I marinated the thin slices of beef for 3 hours.
Mushrooms - We had some rehydrated ones already in the fridge. I squeezed all the liquid out, sliced and pan fried in the same pan I used to cook the bulgolgi. I let it absorb some of the leftover juices and then added a dash of soya sauce.

I also bought a huge squeezey bottle of bibimbap chilli sauce and took that to work in a small container. It tasted fantastic! I can't wait to make it again.

Soba and mandu bento

I've decided to venture from the "rice" bento after having it in ever bento box I've packed. I found a packet of Cha Soba in my pantry, which is basically green tea soba noodles. I boiled them up and refreshed it under cold water. After draining them well, I curled them into little bite size pieces, as soba tends to stick together in clumps after chilling. Its a wonderful little tip I picked up from Lunch in a box.


I stored the soba dipping sauce in a little container with a screwtop lid. Hopefully there will be no spillages on my way to work tomorrow. I also thinly sliced a shallot and some seaweed which I'll add to the sauce tomorrow.


When I cooked the soba, I threw in the last of my sugar snap peas into the water to quickly blanch which I then dunked into ice cold water to retain the crunchiness. The pattern on the outside of the carrot was done by scraping it with the tines of the fork. We used to do something similar at our restaurant, except we used an old fashion fish scaler to give it that lovely ridged patter.

I also had a bag of frozen Korean seafood mandu, which is similar to gyoza or dumplings. They can be eaten either boiled or panfried. I always thought there was a bit of work to cook these mandus. Well, not compared to making it from scratch. But I always spent about 10mins to cook any of these frozen dumplings, that is until I went to my Korean friend's place one day and saw her make these. I cannot believe what a quick snack it is.

1. Turn on the stove and wack a pan onto it
2. In the meantime, put a few of the mandus on a plate and shove it into the microwave for about 1min whilst the pan heats up
3. Once the mandu is slightly defrosted in the microwave, pour a little oil into the pan and chuck the mandu in.
4. Pan fry until golden on the outside (usually 1-2mins).
5. Eat

The mandu skin is thinner and seems to be semi cooked compared to traditional chinese frozen dumplings. And because of they're generally quite thin, even if the microwave doesn't defrost the mandu properly, it will cook supremely fast in the pan.

Really quick bento box to pack. The most time consuming was the noodle curling and carrot decorating. I can't wait to eat this tomorrow!

BBQ City Korean Restaurant

BBQ City is probably the first proper Korean restaurant I've been to, and is completely responsible for my love of Korean food. Frequented by Koreans all the time, you know the food has got to be authentic.

Kim Chi Pancake

One of my favourite entrees, although its big enough to be a whole meal for some. The spicy kim chi is pan fried in a soft chewy pancake. A slightly vinegary soya sauce is provided for dipping.

Banchan - Side dishes

My favourite thing about BBQ City is the variety of banchan they provide. Banchan is basically Korean side dishes to accompany the rest of the meal. Almost all Korean restaurants give you unlimited banchan, but you must ask for it. And if they charge you extra, you better check you're not getting ripped off. The banchan changes every time you go, so the more you go, the more variety you get to try!!

Boiled cabbage with a spicy bean paste sauce for dipping

Kim Chi - Still the best in Sydney

Sweet and spicy dried fish

Stir fried potato noodles

Sesame Spinach

Bulgogi beef on sizzling platter

This was quite nice, but I'm not a huge fan of mass onions unless they're fully cooked or caramelised. My friend enjoyed this dish thoroughly though.

Fish egg stew

When I first started eating Korean, the only dish I really knew to order was bulgogi beef and chicken with ginseng soup. That was until I ordered the Fish egg stew at BBQ City. This is now my "benchmark" dish at every Korean restaurant. A Korean restaurant doesn't get my tick of approval unless they make a good fish egg stew. The soup is spicy and hearty, yet light and fresh from the mass amounts of seafood and vegetables. This is served with boiled rice which you eat with the soup, seafood, vegetabls, tofu and other banchan. My all time favourite Korean dish.

With the freezing cold rainy weather we're experiencing, its almost time to go back for some more fish egg stew!

BBQ City Korean Restaurant
Level 1, 116-120 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: 02 9267 5155

Full house and then Karaoke

Mey sent an email seeing who was up for dinner and karaoke. The karaoke didn't interest me much, but I was more than happy to try a new place. Dinner was at Full House, a Japanese/Korean restaurant opposite the Hilton. I'm glad we even made the place because MnMs offered to pick me and Cookies up, except she was late. REAL late. Yeh don't deny it Ems, YOU WERE LATE. We eventually made it to the city and parked at my work before we power walked to the restaurant, meaning we were only 30mins late.

It was great having a get together considering I haven't seen a lot of people since I started my new job. Plus we finally get to meet Gus's girl!

I was too busy talking to everyone else, but Gus reminded me to take photos of the food!

Their "famed" pumpkin soup - according to Cherry and Mey

Banchan - Bean sprouts, spinach, fish cakes and kim chee

My soft tofu seafood stew

The food wasn't bad, although the service and kitchen was a bit lacking. Although our table of 10 ordered together, some people's food came a good 30mins before other people. They just couldn't seem to get food out properly. And there was surprisingly a lot of microwaving going on in the kitchen. With that said, I enjoyed my soft tofu seafood stew. I would've liked a lot more broth in the pot though, but the tofu was sooooo nice I wasn't too fussed.

After dinner, we headed off to Karaoke World for a bit of singing. I can't remember the last time I went to Karaoke. It could have been Cherry's birthday about 5 years ago? Was it 5? Gosh, I can't even remember.....maybe thats the old age? The only way I could face karaoke again was to get "happy", with a uber big glass of wine. They're certainly generous with the wine at Karaoke world. My 2 glasses came in tumblers, which equated to 1/2 a bottle!

After karaoke, some people decided to head home, whilst the rest of us went to Passionflower for some dessert. Me and Cherry shared an ice cream combo with green tea, black sesame and sticky rice flavoured ice cream, topped with glutinous rice balls. It wasn't bad, but the thing that left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of the night was the "Sunday" surcharge they put on our bill, even though it was a Saturday night. When we questioned them about the surcharge, they said it applies to the whole weekend. No wonder they're no longer busy on the weekends.

Full House
Opp Hilton Hotel
Level 1, Shop 5, 238 Pitt St
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone (02) 9264 8013