My week/month in food #2

One night, my boyfriend and I went out for some tasty sze chuan. I don't remember what this place is called but basically, ages ago there was this really popular sze chuan place in Chinatown, and then it shut down a bit and this other place was THE sze chuan place to go to, but now this one has reopened so we went here! Also, apologies for the dodgy iphone photos.

This is one of my favourite sze chuan dishes. It's basically cold noodles made from mung bean powder or something, drenched in a delicious chilli oil and peanuts.

Prawns in a sweet and sour sticky sauce. It was tasty and had lots of garlic in it.


Asian greens with oyster sauce.

On another occasion, my boyfriend notified me of this new Korean-Japanese place called Darac in A'Beckett Street in the city. It's a lovely place and it does some really cheap lunch dishes so if you are around the city and are feeling peckish, go visit this place!

Chicken and prawn gyozas. This came with some kind of vinegar and soy sauce dipping sauce and it was so bloody delicious. The filling was so well seasoned and the texture of the pastry was wonderful and crisp.

My cocktail. It was a mixture of lemonade and some kind of Korean vodka. I think it's called soju.

Cheesy fried spicy chicken. I have been dreaming of the day where I get to eat this dish. It's basically a stir fried chicken dish in hot pepper paste and then smothered with mozzarella cheese.

Then on another occasion we tried out some Jamaican food at this place called Sassy's on St George's Rd. My boyfriend went there with some friends a few months back and said it was delicious so I was super keen for this.

This is the Jerk Chicken. Basically marinated chicken that's been cooked for ages the probaby pan fried a bit to get a bit of crispness. There's also steamed rice with beans and a creamy vegetable stew. The chicken was tasty, but I wanted some more salt on it.

Same dish except with a large piece of fish in a creamy sauce. I liked this one better, but there were a lot of bones in the fish!

We wanted some dessert so we drove to Sydney Road and got some delicious Lebanese pastries from Balha's Pastries. It was the night before Ramadan so it seemed busier than usual, but then again, Balha's is always busy in the evenings. It's really wonderful because there's all these families with their kids and it just seems like a wonderful social gathering.

And today, I went driving with my boyfriend (because I don't have my Ps yet and he's on his full license) and we stopped by Vibrante in Templestowe for some lunch. We were going to get some risotto but the beef and reef steak on the menu sounded pretty good so ordered that and a prawn pizza.


This a fillet steak cooked medium-rare topped with well-seasoned prawns, with a red wine jus, mashed potatoes and vegies. I've never had red wine jus before and I found the sauce kind of tart, but the whole dish was very good. My boyfriend loved it.


We also got some pizza to share and it was excellent. Excellent, excellent, excellent. The base was not too thin or thick and the pizza sauce was loaded with tasty garlic and oregano. It was one of those really fresh tasting pizzas that was packed with flavour. I'd recommend it to anyone visiting the east side.

My week in food

I don't know how you amazing food bloggers do it. When I am at a restaurant, I can't wait to eat my food. I end up taking some really terrible, out-of-focus images. I mean, I'd love to do the whole shallow depth of field thing, but truth is, my camera is no Canon insert-number-D or a Nikon D-insert-number. I just have a humble wanna-be in my hands and it takes AGES to focus properly on the manual function. So just letting you know, my photos are pretty average.

I came back from Thailand and I thought I wouldn't be eating out this week because everything is so expensive here, but I did it anyway. I've been really mopey and depressed at home so eating out is a good way to cheer me up and catch up with people I care about.

Thursday 14th of July

I went out and met up with my friends Karmen and Edwina. I don't see Edwina as often as I'd like to since she no longer lives in the same neighborhood Karmen and I live in. Karmen and I had discussed of maybe going to Chin Chin, but we wandered down Hardware Lane instead, and we were met with touters! I had no idea Hardware Lane had touters. I thought it was something strictly reserved for Melbourne Central. Oh well. After shaking off a couple of creepy people, we headed into Max Café. We were lured in by their $29.50 2 course meal. You can get a starter and main or main and dessert for almost $30.


Edwina got a t-bone steak with a mushroom sauce.


Karmen ordered the prawn and scallop risotto.


I ordered the grilled salmon with saffron rice.

Mine was all right. Bits of my salmon's skin was burnt, but the mango salsa was good.

We all opted for dessert. Karmen and Edwina got the chocolate pudding while I decided on the coconut creme brulee. The pudding was awesome. As soon as you put your spoon through the pudding, all this chocolate sauce poured out. Awesome. My coconut creme brulee was all right. I couldn't really taste the coconut, but the toffee topping was delightful.




We later on ran off to Cho Gao for some $1 champagne, then impulsively decided to go to Party World for some karaoke fun. It was amazing. I can't wait to do it again.


Monday 18th of July

On Monday, I went out with Karmen and our friend Joanne to eat cake. We visited the coveted Luxbite, then had some yummy lunch at Vegie Bar.



I ordered the ET: A small mound of salted caramel covered with chocolate mousse and a glossy chocolate ganache, topped with caramel-covered popcorn. It was very rich but so amazing. It's defintely one to share with friends, joined by a cup of green tea to cut the richness.


Joanne ordered the Oriental Love. It's like a giant macaron with bananas and passionfruit curd. Super delicious. The tartness of the passionfruit cut the sweetness of the macaron and bananas. Very tasty and unique.


Karmen ordered the most beautiful thing I have ever laid my eyes on. It was called the Meringue Monster and reminded me of a monster from The Little Shop of Horrors. It's kind of like a bombe alaska, but not actually. A refreshing watermelon mousse covered in a merigue that's been lightly blowtorched and sprinkled with a bright pink sugar powder.


We also got some macarons too! That was the whole point. I got salted caramel, creme brulee, kaya toast and kaffir lime. My favourites were the salted caramel and creme brulee. The kaffir lime had a strong kaffir lime flavour, mixed with coconut and chocolate. The kaya toast was disappointing, mainly because I couldn't figure out how it tasted like kaya toast, but as a macaron, it was very nice.

We then made our way to Vegie Bar. For those who have never been, it's the very popular place on Brunswick street that vegetarian and vegan food. Portion sizes are huge, and just very good value.


Joanne ordered the chilli tofu. It's a stir fry with tofu (she LOVES tofu), asian greens, carrots, brown rice and chilli.


Karmen ordered the dahl with a vegetable biryani, topped with a gigantic poppadum.


I went with a soba noodle salad, which had spinach, snow peas, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and avocado, topped with leeks and sesame seeds. Delicious.

Tuesday 19th July

After work, my boyfriend and I met up for dinner and a movie. We had some passes to see Errol Morris' documentary "Tabloid", which was great. I want to go see more films at MIFF this year.

Then we went to Jalan Alor for some dinner. It was super tasty and very filling. We were starving after the film so we ordered two noodle dishes and an entre.


Juicy chicken on skewers drench in satay sauce. Bloody good. The chicken was tender and perfect.


Singaporean Bee Hoon with chicken. This was a very tasty dish. I have nothing bad to say about it. Just tasty.


I don't know what this one is called. It's some kind of hand pulled noodles drenched in a rich black gravy that tasted like XO sauce, served with some bok choy and BBQ chicken. It was tasty, but quite oily.


My cendol. AWESOME.

Wednesday 20th July

No pictures here, but Karmen, Joanne and I, plus a bunch of high school friends went to Little Lamb in Box Hill for a spot of hot pot. I've never really been with friends (only with family and that was AGES ago) and it was so much fun. Highlights were the red bean pancake, and the cold noodles. AND DEEP FRIED CUSTARD.

Friday 22nd July

I had been craving frozen yoghurt from Cacao Green since forever and yesterday I managed to go get some. I just got the original vanilla flavour with some strawberries. For $5.50, it's actually pretty expensive. I mean it was delicious, but $5.50 for yoghurt? KER-RAZY.

Then I went to Nam Loong for some buns. I heard that they did really good BBQ Pork buns, but since I don't eat pork, I thought I'd try their chicken and mushroom buns. I wanted to get a custard one too, but I stopped myself. It was very nice, but I wouldn't say it's mind blowingly amazing.

Afterwards, I met up with the BF and we decided to go to Crazy Wings. Let me just say that it's a pretty average place. Their honey wings are good, but aside from that, there's nothing there that would make me come back again. Their crazy wings are doused in so much chilli that it made the chicken taste bitter. It was inedible.

Plus, the service was pretty bad and on top of that, they put in some kind of industrial kitchen grease cleaner in the men's bathroom hand wash dispenser. My boyfriend has incredibly sensitive skin and that stuff made his hands go numb. He recognised the floor cleaner because he used to work at a bistro, and every night they used that stuff to clean the kitchen grease. Ick.

So all in all, a productive week of eating.

Vegan Pineapple and Coconut Cupcakes

I was really bored today and I thought I'd give baking a go. Ever since I've been on this diet, I've been avoiding all baked goods and baking needs. Today I gave in, even ate one of the mini cupcakes. This is the first recipe that I've kind of made up. I was out of butter so that's why they're vegan, although I always do prefer vegan cupcakes over non-vegan ones because they are just so moist.

These ones turned out all right. Very light and soft. Had the texture of crumpets, I reckon. I would say they taste quite delicate. For more of a textural journey, maybe add 1/3 of shredded coconut.



Vegan Pineapple and Coconut Cupcakes
Makes quite a few, I'd say maybe 48.

Ingredients:

- 2 Cups of Self-raising flour
- 1 Cup of Caster sugar (I used half and half of caster sugar and brown sugar because I didn't have enough caster sugar)
- 1 Cup of Coconut cream (try to get a good brand from an asian grocer)
- 2 Cups of Pineapple (I used tinned ones, but fresh ones would be awesome)
- 1/3 Cup of Vegetable oil
- 1/4 Cup of Warm water
- 1 Tsp of Vanilla essence



1) Preheat oven to about 170ºC. Blend your pineapple in a food processor until it becomes a runny paste. Use some of the pineapple syrup if you do use tinned pineapple.

2) Combine pineapple paste with all the ingredients, and mix until all is combined.

3) Line your muffin tins with liners and spoon the mixture into the muffin tins, leaving 5mm of space for the muffins to puff up.

4) If you are using the tiny cupcake tins, bake for 15-20 minutes. If you are using larger tins, bake for 20-25 minutes. Insert a clean skewer into the centre of the cupcake. If it comes out clean, it's ready to be taken out of the oven.

5) Allow to cool on a rack. Put your own topping.



ONE OF THE CUPCAKES LOOKS LIKE A SMILEY FACE!