“Horse Racing” in Spanish Moroccan Cuisine

It’s Melbourne Cup day. This is the day the whole city is on holiday for a HORSE RACING competition. Unfortunately, the university has no holiday, which is fine with me as I have tonnes of dateline looming.

Julien, the exchange student from France (which we had a farewell) had graduated and got himself a job as an engineer in Australia. FYI, this is not a celebration for his job (he has been working for almost a month) but instead because it’s a public holiday, we had a chance to meet up over dinner. Nothing to do with celebration

So, since we never tasted Moroccan food before, we decided to head towards that direction. La Paella was chosen by Nadia (reason unknown – probably nearby? nice picture on the internet?). For me, La Paella was perfect for the reason it’s only 7 minutes walk from my house.

A to B only about 7 mins.

We ordered a banquet as it has lots of variety that we can taste most of the Spanish Moroccan Cuisine.

Entree – Breads with Dips

Mix Platter of Chicken Kebab, Pan fried Cheese, Spanish Omelet and Grilled Mushroom

Beef Raif – Deep fried bread with minced beef and yoghurt

Lamb Shank Tagine (this is very Moroccan)

Main – Seafood Paella (this is Spanish though)

The food was not bad. The lamb tagine was very tender. Paella….ok. I thought the rice is a bit soggy compared to the one I tried before. I would give the food an average rating.

It was nice catching up with Julien. Our next meet up probably will be over Lebanese cuisine.

From left: Julien, Me, Flora, Nadia & Yuping

 

Hooked

Flora has been craving for Fish and Chips for quite some time. I think the last time we had it was when we arrived in Melbourne sometime in mid-December. So, last Sunday, I brought her to this Fish and Chips restaurant that was recommended in the Cheap Eat magazine. The place is called Hooked.

There were so many different types of fish and seafood to order, so we decided to settled for the Set Lunch for Two. It cost AUD 30. It has 2 Fishes (Grilled and/or Battered), 2 Prawns (Grilled and/or Battered) and Calamaris (Grilled or Salt and Pepper Style) with whole lots of chips.

The counter with all the menu written with chalk on the black board.

Hooked

Set Lunch for 2

Verdict:

The grilled fish – I thought it was grilled well. The sauce they pour on top was good.

The battered fish – Nothing special as I thought it’s a pretty standard fish in a Fish and Chips serving.

The grilled and the battered prawn – Flora thought the prawn weren’t fresh. Got a bit of the “water” taste. The battered didn’t cover that taste either.

The grilled calamari – I thought the combination for the grilling is good. The only downside is the calamaris are tough and hard to chew.

The chips – Standard. It comes with different sizes. You see two big round fried thing with lemon on top are not the fish. It’s deep fried battered potato.

 

Dumpling King

I’ve been wanting to setup this column in my post – Food review.

As we now start joining the cell group member for lunch after church more often, I decided to post review of the food we eat at the restaurant. To kick off…..

Restaurant: DUMPLING KING

This restaurant’s famous dish of course is dumpling. There are varieties of dumpling you can choose from. Displayed on their wall are the awards they won for their dumpling. So we ordered the “original” (original as in just pork in original flavor) dumpling which cost around AUD 7-8 (can’t really remember).

This is the “original” dumpling.

If you guys want to order meals in this restaurant, apparently they only have noodles as this restaurant cater more for ordering dishes and eat with rice etc. Since ordering dishes can be pricey, so we decided to order noodles. I had Shanghai Fried Noodles while Flora had Szechuan Sauce Pork Noodles. Both the noodles cost AUD 9 each.

Shanghai Fried Noodles

Szechuan Sauce Pork Noodle

Verdict:

The Dumpling – I thought they tasted quite NORMAL. Nothing magical. Seriously, no offense to anyone, I don’t know how the award was awarded but it just tasted very normal.

The Shanghai Noodle – It looks like Foochow Fried Noodles you get in Sibu, Sarikei in Sarawak. I thought the Foochow Fried Noodles tasted much better than this one. The noodles are oily and quite tasteless.

The Szechuan Sauce Pork Noodle – The sauce that mix with the sauce were good. This one at least I give my thumbs up. BUT, the noodle again oily and tasteless. It’s basically plain noodles with the sauce pour on top. If you finish the sauce, that’s it. So when you mix with the noodles, I thought the portion of the noodles were too much for the sauce making the whole dish more to the tasteless side. If only the sauce portion is a bit more, that would be nice.

 

Social ‘Laksa-ing’

This month’s social outing for the cell group is laksa night. What makes it more special is that the cell group leader decided to pamper the ladies by having the guys do all the work while the ladies chill out, wait and eat. I think picture will tell more than words….

As you can there are 4 of us. The front 2 are preparing the laksa, while the back 2 are preparing coffee. Tim (3rd from the front) brought his coffee machine over and he makes great latte. It’s so good that I had 3 cups for the night

The ladies are pampered – chill out, wait and eat

Large Size Laksa

Medium Size Laksa

Ready to eat

You might be wondering what version of laksa is this. Actually I also don’t know. Just let it be curry laksa.

 

When the Western Pasta meet the Eastern Noodles

I tried something really “off” yesterday while preparing for lunch. The pasta that we prepared the night before wasn’t enough for both of our lunch. Hence, I decided to add “Indo Mee” to the pasta I had. This the result.

It’s not too bad. Have a go if you want something “unusual”

 

Craze for Shapes

Shapes. Another product from Arnotts.

Coles and Safeway from time to time will have promotion for Shapes such as 2 box for AUD 4, 1 box for AUD 1.50 etc. Whenever that happens, the craze for Shapes will hit both us.

The Tomato & Chilli (bottom left) is one of my favorite. But anything with cheddar cheese is also nice. For Flora, she still stick to BBQ (top left) after trying out so many different flavors. What’s your favorite flavor?

 

A Long Wait But It’s Worth Every Second

MART 130 had been named one of the best place to have breakfast in Melbourne for 2008 by The Age newspaper.

MART is actually TRAM spell backward.

Flora’s cousin’s friend actually arrived at the place first and called us that the place was closed. I was surprised as I’ve just called them before hand to ask what time their breakfast end for the day. We were like confused as if we are entering the Twilight Zone (I’m guessing you are playing the music of Twilight Zone in your head now). Who did I actually talk to on the phone 1 hour earlier? When we reached the area, we also couldn’t find the place and things started to get really like Twilight Zone (music). Where’s this MART? Finally we found it. It’s actually ONE of the tram stop. No wonder we and/or Flora’s cousin’s friend couldn’t find where this MART was.

MART is the tram stop itself. How cool is that. Behind MART is Albert Park.

We were supposed to be there for breakfast but we arrived at around 1130am. There so many people that we have to wait to be seated. Around 30 minutes later, there’s table for 7 available hence, breakfast became lunch……of which I thought. 1200pm we were seated. We were given menu at 1130am while waiting so we’ve decided what to order then. Once the waiter came and took our order at 1215pm, we waited eagerly for the food. MART was famous for its Corn Fritters. In fact it was their Corn Fritters that won them the award which I mentioned before hand. So, Flora ordered the Corn Fritters and I ordered the MART Egg Style 3.

Soon lunch became late lunch. Our food only came at 130pm. More than an hour wait. When the food came, the presentation was fantastic and the portion was quite good. In my heart, I was thinking the food better be good. I was so hungry. Imagine a supposedly breakfast became late lunch. When we helped ourselves, it was worth every second of the wait. The food was fantastic and superb. The corn fritters was nice and the claim is authentic. I can’t elaborate more as I just tried a little bit from Flora’s plate. Let her tell you how did it taste in her blog when she posted it.

The Recommended Corn Fritters. It’s corn fritters with ham and sauce and cream.

My MART Egg Style 3 was not too bad as well. It’s poached eggs, with sausages with toasted sourdough and cream and sauce.

MART Egg Style 3

FYI, MART served their MART Egg in 4 styles. If this is not your taste, you can choose the remaining other three. My combination of the poached egg, sauce and the sausages was superb. You can taste the texture of the sausages well and everything was fantastic. The long wait we had was worth the wait.

MART is located at 207A Canterbury Road, Middle Park, Victoria. But I recommend you taking tram to get there. Like I say, it’s the tram stop. Take tram 96 from the city and stop at tram stop 130. Price wise, I wouldn’t say it’s cheap but it’s not too bad. Both the dish we order are priced at AUD 16 (RM 48). But, it’s worth pampering yourself at least once to try the food there.

 

One of our weekly menu

Eating out in Melbourne can cost a bomb. Hence, it’s important that me and Flora not only cook every of our meal at home but also plan what to eat and budget for what to buy so that we don’t overspend. Basically we try not to exceed $50 budget on meal per week (for 7 days, lunch and dinner for both of us). Occasionally we do have to eat out for example after church, then we try to eat the most reasonable meal. Here I am bring you through how is our weekly meal would be.

It all started with planning of what to eat for the week. (Pardon the poor picture quality)

The L means Lunch, while D means Dinner. Then, comes the budgeting. The price written down there are based on estimate and experience. As you can probably see the total budget for the week is about $45-$50.

So, for our Sunday dinner and Monday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Bulgogi Sauce Chicken

Monday dinner and Tuesday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Assam Fish

Tuesday dinner and Wednesday lunch, we had Sushi

For Wednesday dinner and Thursday lunch, we had Egg Sandwich and Chips with the bread we made ourself.

For Thursday dinner and Friday lunch, we had Rice, Green Vegetables and Butter Chili Chicken.

For Friday dinner and Saturday lunch, we had, Rice and Kimchi Mixed Soup.

And finally for the weekend, we went to Queen Victoria Market and bought this “famous” Bratwurst. Boy it’s pretty expensive. $5.30 for the bratwurst. (Just bread and the bratwurst)

This conclude our weekly menu. Cheers

 

Our first self made pizza….and certainly not the last

I’ve been craving for pizza ever since I’m in Melbourne. Due to the dear price most of the pizza seller here, I decided not to buy but instead make them. Thanks to Sharon and Yong Yi that our Jamie Oliver’s cook book finally arrived in Melbourne and we can tryout his recipe especially in the art of pizza making. Thanks Jamie once again for his recipe.

Making pizza is actually very easy. The toppings can be anything you want and/or you like. The harder part of it is the base dough. Well, Jamie gave a very simple recipe to make the dough and it is very simple. The only thing you need to work on is some strength to give the dough some “massages”. We bought most of the ingredient from Coles Supermarket. If I’m not mistaken, we used up about AUD 15.00 for all the ingredient and we are able to make 7 large pizzas!

To make, just mix 1kg of flour with 600ml of lukewarm water and yeast. The trick is make a well in the pile of flour and slowly pour the “yeasted water” in and mix them until the dough is “massageable”. After the massage, leave the flour for 15 minutes to let the flour expand. From there, pull out the number of pizza base you want. We managed to pull out 7. And this is how the “pulled out” dough looks like.

Then, use a roller to flatten the dough to form the base of the pizza. If you don’t have a roller like us, we used, a bottle . Is alright if the shape of the base is not circle. Jamie’s pizza also is not circle. For me, it gives the sense of more “original” pizza. Spread tomato sauce on top of the base and put whatever toppings you want. I think the secret to the “ummpphhh-ness” to a nice pizza is to be very generous with your mozzarella and cheddar cheese.

Finally, put into the oven at around 180 degree and baked for 15 minutes. The result is…..

Fantastico! At least for us.

 

Breakfast Tip in Cyberjaya – Part II

I’d made some blogging about breakfast tip in Cyberjaya not long ago. Due to the fasting month and preparation for Hari Raya, several stall located in Cyberjaya Bus Terminal was closed. Hence, some of the best food didn’t manage to make it to that blog on Breakfast Tip in Cyberjaya – Part I. As for today, I finally have the compilation of some of the best food choices among terminal breakfast goer who work/study in Cyberjaya.

Chinese-style Fried Noodles with Fish Cake from Stall K

Malay-style Fried Kueh Teow with Wedges and Mini Sausages from Stall M

Puree with Chadnee from Stall P.

Last but not least, the best food in Cyberjaya Bus Terminal that people will pack 25 packs of them for company breakfast is the Nasi Lemak from Stall O. Apparently most people who eat there will agree that this Nasi Lemak is one of the best. Unfortunately, Stall O does not have a nice fried chicken to accompany the Nasi Lemak. Hence, our general choice of combo would be Nasi Lemak from O + Fried Chicken from M. Here, I present to you the best breakfast combo you can find in Cyberjaya.

So, next time you somehow ended up in Cyberjaya around 7:30am to 9:30am, you can drop by Cyberjaya Bus Terminal (located in between Auto Bavaria BMW and Street Mall) to try out these breakfast. But if you don’t like the combo I’ve written there, I guess we don’t share the same taste bud.