Loving my black bento box

I'm really in love with the black bento box my friend got for me last year. I've almost abandoned most of my other boxes in favour for this one! hehehe I don't know, I think it makes the food look so much more fresh and vibrant. Or maybe it just photos better! hehe


Left: Leftover Shanghainese pan fried pork buns
Right: Cold soba noodle salad. I had a really nice citrusy Japanese salad dressing to mix into this


Left: Chicken and mushroom ravioli in a garlic and olive tomato sauce
Right: Fennel and mandarin salad with smoked salmon. Usually I use orange, but I didn't think the orange segments will last after sitting in the salad overnight. The mandarins went really well! They also make great portable dressing dispensers. Before eating, squeeze a piece of mandarin over the whole salad as dressing! hehe


Left: Ham and veggie frittata with sliced smoked chicken drumsticks
Right: More fennel and mandarin salad with smoked salmon


Left: Smoked Chicken salad
Right: Black Pepper stir fried spam with broccoli. Really nice and peppery!


Left: Salad with ricotta cheese served with balsamic vinegar
Right: Veggie frittata with grilled veggies and beef patties


Left: Veggie frittata (Yes I had a lot of frittata! But 1 frittata can last 2-3 meals!)
Right: Tuna garden salad


Top: Lamb Kofte with Bulghur
Bottom: Baby corn, green beans, cherry tomatoes, curry puff, pea sprouts and sweet figs



Left: Chicken patties and sautéed shitake mushrooms
Right: Curry puffs and veggies

Recipe: Po Tak Soup

There was a while back when I was sick, and all I ate was Thai Po Tak soup with boiled rice. Po Tak is a hot and sour soup very similar to Tom Yum Gong,. The main different is Tom Yum Gong uses Nam Prik Pow, a thai chilli paste/oil, which gives it the lovely red hot chilli glow.

Ingredients

- 1 Stalk of lemon grass (Only use the bottom white part)
- 3-4 slices of galangal
- 1-2 birds eye chillis
- 3-4 Kaffir lime leaves
- shelled prawns
- white fish cut into chunks
- Coriander
- Mushrooms
- Fish sauce
- Lime

In a pot of boiling water, add a few slices of galangal, torn kaffir lime leaves, the roots of the coriander, lemon grass and the chilli. You can throw the chillis in whole, or take a knife and make a small incision on one side. This lets out more heat, but isn't a blow your head off type heat.

Let this simmer for 10-15mins until the broth is fragrant. If you bought prawns with the shell on, you can opt to add the shells into the broth for extra flavour. Just remember to strain the shells and that it'll also turn the soup slightly orangey. Otherwise, add the prawns, fish and mushrooms into the pot. Season with fish sauce, sugar and a very generous squeeze of lime. Serve in a bowl with coriander sprinkled ontop and extra lime.

The resulting flavour should be hot, salty, sour and sweet. To control the heat, serve with or without the chilli. If the person likes it hotter, ask them to squish the chilli with the back of their spoon. This means the one pot can cater for people who don't like chilli and those that live for it. I love this soup and it goes so well with a bowl of boiled rice or some vermicelli added to it.

To turn this into a Tom Yum Gong, add a few spoonfuls of Nam Prik Pow and some tomato (optional).

Home cooked comfort

My friends have been complaining that I haven't updated my blog for awhile. I guess I've been really lazy and basically just enjoying home time since I've been back from Houston. Plus I've also been busy planning my Europe trip! Yes that's right! Europe is on babyyyyyyyyy!!! I've booked our tickets and our tour, just need to sort out additional accommodation and transport for all the other free time in between. I can't wait for a proper holiday!

In the meantime, I've been at home cooking up a storm whenever I get a chance. Basically I want to dose up on homecooked comfort food every time I look at the food I ate in Houston.

Malay Chicken curry and rice

Combination Bugolgi

Easy to make. Get any amount of chicken, beef, lamb and pork, marinate in premade bottled bugolgi sauce. Stir fry quickly with onions, carrots and more sauce.

Stir fry garlic veggies

One of the things I missed the most when I was in Houston, veggies! The minute I got home, I stir fried a huge plate of shanghai bok choy and brocolli with plenty of garlic and a little oyster sauce. Really light and refreshing.

Homemade BBQ Pork

We couldn't get any decent chinese food in Houston, so I whipped this up for a bit of home comfort. 2 mins to put the marinade together, leave in the fridge overnight and roast. Can it get any easier than that? Recipe can be found here.

Min Chee

Inspired by TPF. I love this dish! Take some beef or pork mince and brown in a pan. And I mean REALLY brown in the pan. Add garlic, diced onion, potato and water. The water will lift all the lovely brown stuff from the bottom of the pan. Add oyster sauce, soya sauce and sugar to taste. Let it simmer til the potato and soft adn the sauce thickens (because the potato will start to break down). Eat with a spoon with or without rice.

Extra garlicky king prawns with choy sum and broccoli

Pork bone and watercress soup

I remembered one night we were all sitting around the office in Houston, 2am in the morning when we start discussing how miserable we were. And how we would kill for some home cooking. Specifically mum's soup! Every asian loves the soup mum makes. We were all craving pork bone and watercress soup. When I got back to Sydney, my whole family was on holidays leaving me home alone. Since mum wasn't around to make me soup, I had to make it myself! Comfort in a bowl.

"Sand Ginger" steamed chicken

Not sure what the herb is called, but its literal translation is "Sand Ginger". Its a common spice that is found in salt baked chicken. I covered the chicken with heaps of sand ginger and salt. Let it sit for a few hours before steaming. Pour the chicken juice all over boiled rice and consume. Yum!

Beef and capsicum in blackbean sauce

Stir fried bean sprouts

I didn't just miss home cooking, but also good quality junk food! Actually, non-liquid yellow paint like cheese would be a good start. And after all my junk food eating in Houston, I reckon I could whip up a mean burger.

SMJ Extravaganza!

For something a little different, I did a cheddar cheese stuffed all beef patty. Big hunk of cheese in the middle of my beef patty. You have to be super careful biting into the burger to make sure you don't get burnt by molten melted oozey cheese! Didn't make it easy to eat when I put bacon, eggs, lettuce and tomato into the burger as well.

Innards - Super oozey egg yolk

MmMmmm Cheesey...

I've also been hunting for a jaffle maker. Not the dodgy sandwich makers that try to cut your toasted sandwiches in half. I'm talking about the good old square pocket jaffle maker. I finally found one made by Breville! Damn I missed having a jaffle maker! I went and started experimenting with all different types of fillings. Ham, tomato, cheese, baked beans. But my favourite combo so far is my ham, cheese and egg jaffle.

A whole raw egg is cracked onto the bread, cover with ham and cheese and cook in the jaffle maker. Its best to use room temperature eggs, otherwise leave it cooking for a few cycles. Perfectly runny egg yolks......MmMmmm....

With winter hitting us full blast the other week, I've been sick as a dog. To make myself feel better, I've been having wonton noodle soup for lunch almost every day. The best thing to make me feel better when sick. I am also currently on a mission to find the best wonton noodle soup in the city. But why wait for the best wonton when you can make it? So I crashed a friends place to make a huge wonton and dumpling feast!


Left (Yellow): Homemade chicken and mushroom wonton
Right (White): Store bought pork and chives dumplings and seafood dumplings.

Homemade pork and veggie gyoza

Bottoms up!

The gyoza was super easy to make! I made a simple filling of pork, diced veggies, mushroom and black fungus. Wrap in gow gee wrapper and pan fry with a bit of water. I made a simple dipping sauce of soya sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil.

Soya stir fried wontons

I made extra wontons with the chicken and mushroom and also the pork and veggie filling. Once boiled, these were quickly stir fried with dark soy and a little sesame oil. This was a dish my parents used to always make me when I helped out at the restaurant. Its been a good 8 years since I've eaten it, but its just as good as I remembered!

Tropfest 2009

The Sydney weather is really confusing me lately. I don't know if its summer or winter, wet or dry. I had already booked Will in for Tropfest about 6 months ago, but with the way the weather was, we were just going to have to play it by ear. If it rained, we would just go out for coffee regardless. By about midday on Sunday, the weather looked stable enough to brave a trip to tropfest.

It gets packed very quickly

I then spent an hour running around trying to pack things to bring to Tropfest and quickly whipped up some tuna puff pastries and chocolate crossiants. The plan was to park at my work and pop into Coles to grab the rest of the food. I say we did pretty well considering the lack of preparation.


Besides the tuna puff pastries and chocolate crossiants I made, we grabbed:

- Brie
- Fetta
- Olives
- Sundried Tomato and French Onion dip
- Pitta bread/doritos/water crackers/grissini
- BBQ Chicken
- Lindt hot chocolate

And because we're having a Will and Grace day out, 4 bottles of wine!

Oh yeahhhhh!!

Brown brothers + Tropfest = Win!

Somewhere along the line, Matt showed up with spring rolls?


I really enjoyed the movies this year. Some were fun and light hearted, some were deep and meaningful (without being too arty farty so that no one understands what was going on). During the intermission, we got a little extra.....entertainment.

Some crowds celebrating...

Closer look.....

Oh god.....this is what happens when we cancel a trip to the Gold Coast. The last time we went to the Gold Coast, someone pulled out his errrrrr.........doodle and sack and waved it around my face. So instead of one person waving their doodle and sack infront of me, I've got 2 people this year to make up for the fact that we cancelled GC. Understanding why this was happening, we decided to go up close and personal to get a photo with them.



I won't show the photos of me with them, as I'm trying to keep this blog R-rated instead of X-rated. Which is exactly why the cops showed up and spoiled the fun. We did a quick runner with our camera!


Looks like the nudity pushed Matt over the edge who decided to drain the last of our wine.....



I had to physically shove him off my mat so I could pack up to go home!

Lets just say, most interesting Tropfest EVER.

VIC Bushfire Fundraising Morning tea

With the tragedy happening in VIC over the last week, we decided to host a morning tea at work to raise money for those less fortunate than us (Plus, we always love a cook off with heaps of food!). Our lovely Group Assistant did a wonderful job of harrassing everyone to make sure they brought food AND money to the morning tea. We weren't asking for a gold coin donation, we were asking for note donations only. And everyone was more than happy to oblige!

So what did I make?

Big white blob

What the HECK is that I can hear you saying. That, my dear friends, is my first attempt at making marshmallows!

The ugly ducklings

They look quite terrible to be honest, but that's cos I used some weird icing sugar my sister had bought to dust them with (it was all clumped up before I even opened it). The marshmallows was incredibly easy to make! I'm going to experiment with them a bit more to see if I can achieve those heavenly green tea ones that Tetsuya made. These were really really good for my first attempt. Incredibly light and fluffy, almost like eating the inside of a meringue.

Cookies and cream truffles

Salami and cheese palmiers

Sweet palmiers

The last morning tea we held, only 3 of us had brought anything in. And it was the one time I decided to make one dish only (My chocolate ripple cake). It was actually a pretty pathetic turn out. But this time, everyone pooled in to make this morning tea success! Those who couldn't cook, went to the shops and bought something instead.

Scones and apple puffs

Pikelets, cheese and bacon puffs, chocolate cupcakes, lamingtons and chocolate crackle slice

Lattice cheese cake, anzac cookies

More lamingtons (home made and store bought) and cupcakes

Vegetable quiche

Date scones

Chocolate caramel slice

The BEST oreo cupcakes and pikelets

Carrot cake

Butterfly cupcakes and chocolate spiders

Half of the spread

Even as I was taking photos, more and more food arrived to our kitchen. So much, in fact, that the table was groaning under the amount of food! We had run out of the room on the table and started placing the rest of the goodies on the benches surrounding the kitchen. There were also about 6 dozen Krispy Kremes lying around!

Everyone was more than generous with their donations, with plenty of orange and yellow notes going into the donation box. A few people even slipped some green $100 notes in! Some others decided to donate online for their tax receipts. At the end of the day, we had raised over $2000 in cash alone! Not including what was donated online. Every dollar we donate, our company will match the donation. As as we deposited the money into Westpac, who was also going to match our donation, we basically raised over $6000!! All for cooking some food and feasting on it!

I've also gone through my wardrobe and did a drastic clean out. I alone, managed to cram 3 hugeeeeee garbage bags full of clothes to donate (My sister and her family of 5 only managed 9 bags...). And I only went through 1 wardrobe! That shows how much of a horder I am!