The domesticated goddess SoRMuiJAi

I've been cooking ever since I could remember. It kinds helps that your entire family is full of chefs and you literally grew up in a restaurant. I can cook a whole range of things, from chinese, to japanese, italian to greek and Turkish food. But since I've had to be alot of domesticated lately and not just cook for me, but for my grandma, 3 meals a day, I've been racking my brain as to what to cook. I could go make some vine leaves or lasagne etc, but thats good every now and then, not every day. Atleast not for my grandma. And there needs to be variety.

Since my schedule has been insanely busy, I've been trying to find the line between batch cooking everything so she has something to eat if I'm home late, and cooking enough variety so you don't eat the same thing day in day out. So here's a few meals I've been making lately:

Fried rice with baby anchovies, fish cake and served with crunchy fried onions

I had dried baby anchovies in the freezer, and half a fish cake thats been sitting in the fridge for awhile. So I diced everything up, chopped up an onion (because I couldn't be bothered picking shallots from the garden), scrambled some eggs and threw everything together into a big wok with rice, corn and peas. Once everything was tossed until well combined and the rice was nice and dry, I dished it up with a sprinkle of fried onions. MmMMmmm The perfect cheap comfort food!

Clockwise: Teriyaki chicken, Garlic Choy Sum, Salted fish with pork, rice, fermented soya bean steamed with pork, ginger and shallots.

This was my attempt at cooking some "heung har" food. Basically a typical meal you might get back in the village where my parents grew up. Ok, Teriyaki chicken isn't exactly very "heung har" food, but I couldn't be bothered digging through our freezer (our two VERY VERY big freezers that can fit ATLEAST 4 bodies) for my mum's master stock to make soya chicken, so teriyaki it was.

My favourite veggie dish of all time will have to be either choy sum stir fried with garlic and just a smidgen of oyster sauce, or brocolli stir fried with garlic and just a smidgen of oyster sauce. This was heavenly. Veggies were crunchy and the sauce was pungently garlicky.

As for the 2 other dishes, you can't get anything more "heung har" than that. The salted fish was steamed ontop of a bed of pork sliced. Traditionally you use very fatty pork, but I opted to some lean pork, just to make myself seem healthy. This must be steamed with shitloads of thinly sliced garlic. MUST. As for the fermented soya beans, its called "dow jeung". You basically add a bit of salt and let the whole thing rot and mould, and walla! You have a sauce! Again, this has to be steamed ontop of a bed of slice pork, and it SHOULD be fatty pork, but I'm trying to be health concious! And just like the other dish, SHITLOADS of thinly sliced ginger and mass amounts of chopped shallots. The star of both dishes isn't the meat or the fish, its the sauce. You basically have 1 bowl of rice for each sauce. Which is probably why you shouldn't make both dishes for the same meal.....oh wells. :D

Chicken Congee with Fried Onions and shallots

MmmMm chickeny goodness

The cold weather has me suddenly craving for some comforting warm congee. The secret to good congee is to always soak the rice for atleast an hour beforehand with a pinch of salt and oil. It makes the rice break down into the congee goodness you see above. Otherwise, if you want to cheat, instead of stirring the congee with a spoon when you're cooking, use a whisk. It helps break down the rice much faster, but you might be lacking a bit the starchy sticky goodness thats a congee.

Icili kofte with SMJ puttanesca salad

Ok, I cheated a bit with this one. Its store bought icili kofte, but damn it was good! I gotta try and make these from scratch. As for the salad, I call it the SMJ puttanesca salad. Its basically all the ingredients you would need to make puttanesca pasta, but in salad form.

Baja Cantina revisited

I got free tickets to the theatre the other week. I wasn't too sure what the show was about, but thats not the point. So I booked Moishii for the night to join me in getting free stuff. The show wasn't going to start til 8pm, so we had plenty of time. As it was at the Seymour Centre, we decided to head back to Baja Cantina for dinner, this time without the psychopathic lunatic ready to stab me in the eye.

We were really early

As we've been a bit of an alcoholic lately, the first thing we ordered was a jug of sangria. Not just any sangria, but a white sangria. What was delivered was quite different from what we ordered last time:

White Sangria

Last time the sangria was quite murkey with some old fruit and a bit of foam on top. This time, it was nice and translucent with nice chunks of watermelon, rock melon and honeydew melon. The sangria wasn't exactly fermented the traditional way, but I liked it. It was light and fruity, and definately went down well.

I was really really tempted to order the fish tacos again since they tasted absolutely spectacular last time, but no. I must try something new. Quesadillas it is! With Chipolate prawns and a side of salsa.

MmMmmm my quesadilla had huge chunky prawns, not as smokey as I'd have expected, and quite cheesey, but very very good. The dish came with refried beans and rice. Now I had these last time and it's very filling if not a bit rich, perfect for winter, a bit heavy for summer. Hence my salsa. The sides were a bit oily and there was a bit too much cheese, but then isn't that mexican food? Next time I'll ask for less cheese.

Moishii ordered a chicken Burrito. The filling was basically the rice and beans that was served with my dish, with a heap of chicken mixed in. Not that that stopped Moishii from devouring most of the dish.

So by the time we had finished eating, it was around 7:15pm. We were sitting around whilst I proceeded to drink the ENTIRE jug of sangria. We were full, we were content, and we were sleepy. In other words, we couldn't be arsed going to the show. I think we kinda did discuss it, but the decision was already made, it was home time. Luckily they were free tickets.....

Speaking of New Orleans...

I've been a bit slack with the postings lately. I've taken a whole bunch of photos and just haven't had time to put them onto my computer. So heres a quick peek at what I've been doing. As a part of the little mystery shopping thing we've been doing, one of the nights we decided to grab dinner at Crows Nest before heading off the the unnamed venue. Now I worked at Crows Nest for 3 years, and I practically bought lunch every single day I worked at CN. There was one place I NEVER buy lunch from, and thats New Orleans Cafe. I don't know why. I love the place. They have sensational coffee and really good food, but it was just never a lunch place. However, whenever we do come to Crows Nest at night, it usually involves NOC.

This is when I could go on and on about the history of us and NOC. I could tell you the story where I had too much coffee there late one night with Moishii, and we ended up calling Christine telling her we've been arrested and that we need bail money. Who then ended up calling other people to try and get some bail money together before we called back to say she's just been punked. But lets not bother with that story. Lets focus on the food. We finally brought Christine along so she knew what we were talking about when we're screaming down the phone at her saying we're at NOC having coffee. So we quickly order the food as we want to move on to the next place for the free alcohol:

Cheese burger

Nachos

The food is always good. Big juicy burgers and the nachos. Good god, thats the SMALL size we ordered. Me and Christine were greedy and were contemplating ordering a large EACH. Luckily we checked with the waiter first, because the large feeds 2-3 people. I couldn't even finish my small serve! And all for $10.90! Too bad we didn't get a chance to have coffee there with Christine. Maybe next time.....

Mystery shopping

It was a freezing saturday night and all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep. But alas, I had promised Moishii I'll help him with his Mystery shopping thing he had to do for work. The "Mystery shopping" we were doing involves going to various venues and listening to music. Don't ask. Anyway, so we went to a pub which I shall not name for dinner. Cheap pub grub is always good. The plan was to do the mystery shopping over dinner, but from where we were, we couldn't hear a thing. So after eating, and consuming a few alcoholic beverages (I get a $30 budget to spend on alcohol/food simply by accompanying him) we roamed around the pub and eventually located a juke box. Being the enthusiastic idiots that we were, we proceeded to slot dollar after dollar into the machine and pumped out some Kylie and Beyonce. By this time the alcohol was hitting and I was tired. I sat down and faced the rest of the room. I slowly started to notice something a bit strange.....we were in the pool room, but there was no one playing pool. Everyone was sitting down and watching something to my right. I turn around to see a big screen that was showing footy. OMG FOOTY! Everyone was sitting at the pub trying to watch Australia kick the crap outta the Kiwis, and here we were pumping Beyonce out of the speakers!!

The guys directly infront of me turned to give us the dirty look just as the next song blares out of the speakers. Moishii has his back turned and is completely oblivious as to what is going on. He's bopping to the music and scanning through the playlist. In my inebriated state, I did a hiss of a "SIT DOWN!!". Only someone is quite thick as to what is going on. This is basically how the conversation went:

Me (Hissing): SIT DOWN!!

Moishii: Wait, I just need a few more songs

Me: I think you need to sit down!!!

Moishii: What?!

Me: If you don't sit down soon, you're going to get the shit kicked out of you!

Moishii: What???

Me: SIT DOWN!!!

Moishii eventually sits down which is when I explained the whole situation and how we have completely broken all pub etiquettes when the footy is on. We decided to sit down, pretend to watch the game and not attract anymore attention to ourselves. All was going well until this massive drum solo at the end of a video clip started pumping through the speakers. More dirty looks from all the guys. This is when my survival instinct kicked in and we left whilst we still had all our teeth. This is after I hide a big cup of beer nuts in my handbag......

We hop into the car when the rain starts pouring down. We have no idea where we were, and neither of us could be bothered pulling out the map. So in the dark rainy night, the drunk one (me) started directing the lost one (Moishii). There was a bit of miscommunication when we started going in circles when both of us basically meant to give the same directions but we ended up going around in circles from all the yelling we were doing. It didn't help that I was hanging my head out of the window screaming CHRISTINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE at every traffic light and passerby I saw.

We eventually made it to the next venue, another pub. We walk in, order more alcohol (God this place was generous with their alcohol......its like a double serve.......and cheaper as well) and tried to locate where the music was coming from. There was huge room where everyone was watching the game and betting on horses etc. We decided to avoid a repeat of the other place so we explored the pub some more. We eventually find the room with the juke box and plonk ourselves down right next to it. Before we pumped more music from it, we had a quick glance around the room only to see that everyone in there were big kiwis.....and the kiwis were loosing. Not a good time to play any music. So we settled for whatever was playing through the speakers. Since we couldn't play music, we decided to drink. Well, I decided to drink. I ended up having 3 glasses of wine infront of me, and since their glasses were so big, it totalled to about a bottle of wine. 20mins later, the room was spinning and I desperately needed some fresh air. I leave my bag and jacket with Moishii to grab some air on the streets. 5mins later, Moishii is screaming from the front door thinking I was run over by a car or something. I quickly run back to see him standing on the door step laughing his head off and trying to break down the door. Yep.....we got locked out. Luckily Moishii had my bag and jacket in his hands, so we jumped into the car for a bit of a joy ride. Alot of "CHRISTINEEEEEEEEEEE" screaming later, we ended up in Leichardt for some coffee.

We ended up at Tuscany on Norton Street. The reason we went there was because Sydney Weekender was doing a Norton Street special on Saturday, and Tuscany was on the show. That and it was close. After giving our orders to multiple waiters and still not getting anything, we were about to up and leave when they finally came with our drinks. It took another 15mins for the dessert to come through. We got the ricotta and nutella crepes which was nice, but nothing special. What was special was the people around us. The guy with his girlfriend sitting next to us couldn't stop staring at us. Maybe it had something to do with us leaving a voicemail on Christine's phone which involved alot of "CHRISTINEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!" and "CHRRRRRRRRIIIIIISTINEEEEEEEE!!". After they left, 2 chicks sat down next to us. By this stage I was quite sober and we just sat there chatting away. The 2 chicks got up and left less than 10mins after sitting down and sculling a coffee, but not before one of the chicks gave me the dirties. She stood up, turned and gave me the dirtiest look and then walked off. Like WTF? And to make things bad, she was wearing a Gold belt AND carrying a gold purse. No one, who wears a gold belt and carries a gold purse has the right to give me the dirties. It should be me giving you the dirties for your taste. BITCH.

Anyway, the night ended soon after that. Somewhere along the line, I woke up with a spoon in my bag along with the nuts. Like wtf?

Night Noodle Markets

Since the rain held off quite well last night, me and Cookiez made a sudden decision to go to the Night Noodle Markets. Fingers crossed that it wouldn't be packed with people since the sky threatened to rain every few minutes. We arrive and lucky, the place is quite empty, theres heaps of tables and the queues were all very short. We were basically very disappointed in all the foods on offer this year. So disappointed that I'm refusing to post up any photos. 3/4 of the stalls were all thai food. All offering the same things. Pad Thai, curries, fish cakes. There were the usual East Ocean, Zilver, Bungalow 8, Cargo bar etc. Their menu hasn't changed from last year, but their prices have gone up and the serving have gone down in size. Charging $8.50 for a tiny container of mussels (Which is mostly shell) anyway is a bit much considering I can have unlimited mussels if I paid twice the price. East Ocean usually sells their salt and pepper calamari for ~$7.50 at the Chinatown night markets is suddenly charging $12. They looked good and smelled oh-so-sinful, but jacking up the price like that is uncalled for.

I was originally ecstatic that the lines were so short! I was hoping I could grab a huge selection of food and enjoy them at one of the many tables. But with the woeful selection available, we only bought 2 dishes each. 1 from the Singapore Chou Kuey Teow store. It looked soooooo good when we saw someone walking away with their steaming hot plate that we just had to get one each. There was plenty of sizzling action and "Wok Hei", the initial few bites were "yummm", but that quickly turned into a "Omg...I feel so greased up...". We didn't end up finishing all the food.

The other dish we got was from Banana blossom. Thai Style Pork sausages, papaya salad and fried sticky rice. This was the only unique combo/dish available out of all the thai stalls. And boy was it good! The pork sausages had a hint of curry taste to it, not too oily and very juicy and meaty. The papaya salad was refreshing and cut through any grease from the sausage. Then there was the fried sticky rice. MmMmmm the rice didn't really have any taste, but it was the texture, the CRUNCH. The conversation went a bit like this:

Me: OooOoo fried sticky rice! *CRUNCH* MmmmMmm

Cookiez: OooOoo *CRUNCH* MMmMmm

Me: MMmmMmm!! *CRUNCH**CRUNCH*

Cookiez: *CRUNCH* MmmMMmmMMmm

I wish there was a bit more of the papaya salad dressing for the rice to absorb the flavour, but it was still orgasmic regardless. So to Banana Blossom, we salute you! The only stall bothering to make an effort in creating something other than pad thai and curries. I'm definately going to visit their restaurant and sample what else they have on offer!

Family bonding

Coming from a family of chefs, you probably wouldn't be surprised that in our spare time, we like to cook. So thats what we did on the weekend:

Rice noodles (Hor Fun)

First the coating

Then the ingredients with a bit of wok action

Followed by yummmmmmminess!

And I can't have rice noodles without some century egg congee to mix with!

I like fire........

.....to make yummy roasted marinated capsicums!

Salmon puff pie (Recipe courtesy of DMM)

All of that seems quite ordinary aye? True.....thats probably a normal lunch/dinner cooking thing that most families do on a weekend.....but what about mooncakes? Yep! That's right! Its that time of the year to start making mooncakes, and let me tell you something, we make the BEST 5-yun mooncakes (The nutty one). Not the crappy ones you get at the shops with a BIT of nuts and alot of fillers. No......ours is 99% nuts.....I know....because I spent 2 hours HAND CHOPPING over 3kg of nuts to make the first batch of fillings. And no I couldn't use a magic mix, or beat it with a rolling pin, it had to be hand chopped...otherwise it'll ruin the texture. So here is a few pics.......not too many so we don't give away our family secret recipe ;)

One down......

Another 98 to go.......

The little babies baking in the oven

The almost finished product!

I say almost finished because you cannot eat these for a few days.....well......you can, but it won't taste as nice. And it won't look as pretty. I might post a few more once they're ready...or maybe not. Maybe I'll spend my time eating them instead. :D

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays

September is really busy in our family. In September we have Father's day, my Mum's birthday, my Dad's birthday, my little cousin's birthday, and most importantly, My birthday. (We have 3 birthdays in the space of 5 days). And within the next week or so, we'll know if I'll have a little nephew/niece that might have their birthday in September as well! (Quite possibly the same day as me). So to uncomplicate things, we usually celebrate my dad, my little cousin and my birthday all in one go. We were originally going to go Encasa, but with the torrential rain that was pouring down last week, we opted to go to the King Crab House around the corner instead.

Cold platter of jelly fish, bbq pork, cold cuts of pork and duck

Sharkfin Soup

Crispy skin quail

House speciality mud crab

Steamed barramundi

Sea cucumber and veggies

Abalone, mushrooms and veggies

Sweet and sour pork

Mandatory salt and pepper calamari

Fried Rice

Complimentary Red Bean Soup

Fruit and biccies (Fruit display was designed by my bored nephews)

Birthday cake - One candle for each birthday boy/girl

We first dined at this restaurant about 5 years ago. We didn't enjoy the meal and haven't been back since. Recently my sister went as a part of a work function and said it had improved so we decided to give it another chance. Some of the dishes were quite nice. The fried quail was crispy and not too fatty. The meat was a bit tough, but still quite tasty. The sharkfin soup was nice, but it was ashame that they didn't bring out the vinegar until almost everyone had finished their soup. The crab was a bit too sweet, and because they didn't bring out the rice til the very end, there was nothing to mop up the sauce with and nothing to help dilute the sweetness. The one dish which I truely did not like was the sea cucumber with veggies. As you can see in the photo, there was more soup than there was veggies. It was as if they had forgotten to thicken the sauce and just poured a ladel of soup into the dish.

Now that the food part is out of the way, lets talk about the service. Or lack of. The cold platter came out before the soup, which is fine, but they didn't bother giving us any bowls. So we proceeded to grab the soup bowls off the table which means when the soup came out, they would need to lay the bowls out again. The soup bowls were not cleared when we had finished so everyone ended up with 2 bowls and 2 plates since the crab was served next. That I could still put up with. What I couldn't put up with was at the end of the meal, when they had taken all the dishes away, they neglected to collect the dirty bowls. Because we had such a big table, we tried helping by piling all the dirty bowls and plates onto the lazy susan so save them walking circles around us. Not only was there dirty bowls and plates, but also chopsticks, cutlery, cups and even dirty napkins piled onto the table.

They bring out the dessert (and no clean plates) and didn't bother collecting any of the dirty plates. Their red bean soup was actually REALLY sweet so most of us didn't eat it and placed it back on the lazy susan for them to collect. Out they come with the cake. The guy takes one look at the table and said "Oh, let me clean it up a bit first". He uses one hand and shoves all the dirty plates and napkins to one side of the table, plonks the cake down and walks off. No plates, no forks, no knife and a table full of crap. We ended up having to help ourselves to the cutlery etc. And what really really irked me was that the restaurant wasn't busy. When I was working in the restaurant, I used to waitress up to 8 tables, do the take away orders, phone orders AND cook. There was about 6 tables in the whole restaurant, and 4 waiters/waitresses. I would hardly call that run off their feet.

Oh, and to top it off, they gave us the wrong bill. Instead of the $300, they tried to charge us $550. They also charged us $10 for a jug of coke that barely filled 4 tumblers.