The Cut Bar & Grill, The Rocks

After the hectic week, finally I can sit down to have a proper meal. I have chosen my favourite 4-hour slow roast sher F1 wagyu standing rib to start! I just love this perfect cooked pink colour and it is very juicy too.

4 Hour Slow Roast Wagyu Rib - Standard Cut and Roasted Beetroot Salad on the background

After trying out their sticky date pudding, I cannot go without dessert. This time I chose something different, the lemon custard. It is a good way to finish off the night!

Lemon Custard, Sable Pistachio Meringue, Mascapone Sorbet

Miss Chu Sydney CBD Tuckshop, Sydney

After a long day at work, I will need to treat myself for some decent fast food. Miss Chu Sydney CBD Tuckshop is handy for me to get some takeaway before heading home. I have got myself Roast Duck & Banana Flower Rice Paper Rolls and Prawn & Crab Net Spring Rolls to finish off my night!

Various Rolls from Miss Chu

 

Combat with Mud Crab

If I didn't go to the Sydney Fish Market, I wont see the sign saying "$21.99/kg for Live Mud Crab". I walked into at least two shops which said the same and I have to give in. I bought a live mud crab home. Now the issue is how to kill this thing??? 

Thanks to Facebook. I dropped this question to my Facebook status and my friends have answered. Collating all the ideas and trying to put them in practice. I first tried to poke into the head as suggested. May be my chopstick isn't long enough, the crab was still very active and trying to escape!

Dead...

Without too much of the gruesome details, I have killed it with the good old method. However, I still have been bitten by its reflex. Next time I know even if its claw detached from its body, it still can bite and it's painful... ouch!!!

Steamed Mud Crab... Ready to Serve!

Steamed for around 15 minutes, fresh and very sweet mud crab is ready to eat. I am now off to eat... chat later... nom nom nom.

A quick meal: Italian Mussels

After a night of Sichuan Hotpot, there are so much left over. What can I do with them, if I don't want another round of hotpot? Going through the fridge and found myself with some mussels. Let make Italian mussels! :)

Tasmanian Mussels

In the cupboard found this sauce, Arrabbiata, with a dash of chili. Good enough to be the base!

Barilla: Arrabbiata

Heat the pot with garlic and shallot. (I found later that brown onion should be more tastier).

Chopped Garlic

Chopped Shallot

Added shallot and parsley to garnish. 

Ready to Serve

I have toasted a few slice of bread to mop up all the jus! :D

I would like to mop up the dish with more toast please!

Making of Nian Gao with Coconut Flavour (椰汁年糕) for Chinese New Year

It is day 15 of 2012 Chinese New Year and this will be my last post about making Chinese New Year food. How can I did not try to make Nian Gao 椰汁年糕 for Chinese New Year?

Ingredients for Nian Gao

Coconut milk and Flour mixture

The hardest part is to mix the coconut milk with the glutinous rice flour.

Ready to Steam

Steamed for about 1 hour 45 minutes... the Nian Gao is ready!

Nian Gao with Coconut Flavour (椰汁年糕)

Pan-Fried Nian Gao with a Pot of Chinese Tea!

I like it pan-fried with egg coating. :)

Making Poon Choi (盆菜) for Chinese New Year

After the success of making the water chestnut cake, I tried to make another Chinese New Year food, Poon Choi 盆菜. It is composed into different layers of ingredients. Each ingredient layers has to be in that particular order. It is mainly consists of pork, chicken, dried mushrooms, pig skin, squid, dried beancurd stick and Chinese radish. The most important part of this dish is the stewed pork. It used to be using the wooden type of "big bowl". Nowadays, it is either aluminum or stainless steel due to hygiene purpose.

Chinese Radish

First layer is the Chinese radish to absorb all the sauce. 

Lotus Root

Deep Fried Tofu

Second and third layer should be the squid and pig skins. I have replaced them with lotus roots and deep fried tofu.

After 3 layers of Ingredient

Dried Beancurd Stick

Forth layer is the dried beancurd stick.

Slow Cook Pork Belly

Stewed Pork

Fifth layer is the stewed pork.

Fish Paste

Dried Oysters

Dried Mushrooms

Soy Chicken

Broccoli to Decorate

Top layer consist of dried mushroom, fish paste, prawns, chicken and dried oysters. I have also used broccoli to decorate.

All Assembled and Ready to Serve! Enjoy!!!

Making Water Chestnut Cake (馬蹄糕) for Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year. I am trying to make my first Chinese New Year cake for this festive season. The easiest would be water chestnut cake. It only requires a few steps. I went to a Chinese groceries store to buy the necessary ingredient and started the process.

Mixing water chestnut powder

Chopping water chestnut into small pieces

Melting the Brown Sugar

Ready to Steam

After steaming for about half an hour, it is ready to be served.

Final Product: Water Chestnut Cake

Water Chestnut Cake

It doesn't look bad after all, but still have room for improvement. I love the texture... a success!

Red Chilli Sichuan, Glebe

For a cold and wet weather, it is nice to have something to warm you up! We are heading to Glebe to have Sichuan hotpot. :) Sichuan hotpot is not just spicy but also numb!! We thought we better order a divided hotpot, as experience from the past, we can't handle the spiciness! We ordered a mix of seafood and meat selection. By looking at redness of the hotpot, you can imagine the spiciness. Waiting for the soup to boil and we start to dig it! The meat was thinly sliced to make it cooks more easily. The soup base is not just spicy and numb but also made the meat very tasty. After a few pieces, you will start feeling heat! We are looking for the source of numbness and it came from the Sichuan pepper. We have to check every piece before putting it into our mouth. :) Almost finished and we can see a layer of chili oil on the top! Have we eaten so much fat? Oh well, as long as my tummy is happy, I guess it is fine! :p


Red Chilli Sichuan

Menya Noodle Bar, Sydney

This is one of my favourite place for a quick and easy meal. I just love their ramen or noodles. Their ramen is always, using Italian expression, al dente! Yum yum!! :) The restaurant at CBD is more relax and causal dining where you have to order and pay first. Your order will bring to you. Where as the restaurant at Circular Quay is more of a full service restaurant. The menu is also slight different between the two. I come to this restaurant too often and never take any photos of the food I ate. Just because today I brought my camera, let me introduce some of food which they have.

Menya Ramen with Tonkotsu soup base

Menya ramen has 4 different choices of soup base: shoyu, miso, natural (salt), tonkotsu. My favourite one is the tonkotsu. The tonkotsu is only available at the CBD branch.

Tsuke men

Tsuke men is good if you don't feel like a bowl of hot soup ramen. The dipping sauce sometimes can be a bit salty.

Kuro-goma Tsuke men

The Circular Quay branch has another version of it kuro-goma tsuke men. The cold dipping sauce is black sesame. However, I felt it is too much at the end of it!

Dragon jya-jya ramen

If you can handle spiciness, they also cater for that. Dragon jya-jya ramen is not a bad option. You can feel the spiciness when you see the red coloured soup!

Left: Menya Ramen; Right: Menya mega ramen

The portion of the ramen might not be big enough for guys. They also have the Menya mega ramen which is double size ramen.

Salmon gohan

If you still not enough, they have 4 choices of gohan, buta mabushi gohan, salmon gohan, chilli beef gohan and Menya curry gohan.

Tori kara age (side)

Or else you can go for gyoza, tori-kara age. Their menu has a wide variety. I cannot put all they offer on this post. I can simply using one word to sum it up, おいしい!!

Menya Noodle Bar
Shop 2, 1 Market Street, Sydney NSW (CBD)
Phone 02 9267 4649

High Tea at The Observatory Hotel

As suggested by one of the bridesmaid, we spent our gift from the groom to treat ourselves with something nice. So we decided to spend it on High Tea. We would love to try the Gunner's Barracks, unfortunately they require at least 3 months in advance booking for a weekend. The second choice is The Observatory Hotel which only needs 3 weeks in advance. :)

On the day, I was late for about half an hour and embarrassingly I didn't have coins for the meter parking!!! Thank you Miss J. :) We were seated at the Galileo Restaurant area. We were told that they have limited supply of tea pots which we have to share our tea among the 2 of us!!! Hence, we can only try 3 different type of teas. They are Ceylon, Sencha and Jasmine. The tea selection is also limited.

3 Tier Stand

Our 3 tier stand arrived and as always we start taking photos. One of the waitress has told us, "These food are to be eaten as well!" :) The bottom level is three different kind of sandwiches. The middle level is all the sweets and the top level is 2 different kind of scones.

Sandwiches: Ham & Cheese; Egg and others

Pastry

I have started off with the sandwiches. These are pretty average sandwiches. There is one particular kind which I dont really like.

Scones: Plain; the other with raisin

Strawberry jam with real fruit

The scones are not as fluffy as I like. However, I really love the real fruit strawberry jam! It's so tasty.

Various desserts

Saving the gooddies to the last! The sweets are so colourful and I dont know where to start!! The sweets are not as tasty as they look. I was hoping the panna cotta will taste good. However, almond flavour panna cotta is not my cup of tea.

Although the food might not be as good as I expected, but having a good time with my friends count!!

Note: High tea is served daily from 2:30pm to 5pm weekdays and from 2pm to 4:30pm weekends. Booking is essential.

The Observatory Hotel
89 - 113 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Phone 02 9256 2215