Nothing lifts my spirits up more than cooking pancakes on a Sunday morning:

With fresh blueberries, whipped butter cream and syrup

I hope your week has been better than mine! I’ll have my life back on track soon. Meanwhile, eat drink and be merry, my dear readers!

Check out the review in today’s good living for Steel Bar and Grill… a little disappointing really!

This is how the duck was served by the master chef, each piece perfectly sliced and layered. It is cooked in a such a way that there is no extra grease (they called it “Superlean” actually, i think it’s a lie) but the skin of the duck is glistening like it is glazed with honey, purely from the natural fat and oil of the duck. The condiments served below are (clockwise from top): Cucumber and pink radish, sweet sauce and scallion, crystal sugar and garlic puree, olive paste and pickled ginger.

The waiter gave us an introduction to how this is to be eaten traditionally. You eat the duck skin first, by dipping it in sugar. It tastes amazing – cripsy with a moist juicy centre, it is fat but there is no excess oil. Then you place the rest of the meat on your pancake. You either use a mixture of sweet sauce and scallions (you don’t use the cucumber or radish when you have it with the dark sauce), or you wrap it with a thin layer of garlic puree (“it is important to spread it very thin, evenly across the pancake so it isn’t too overpowering or spicy” she teaches us), and garnish with cucumber and radish. In between each flavour, the chinese olive and the pickled ginger serves as a palatte cleanser. And we all learnt how to assemble our pancakes using chopsticks only – without touching anything with our hands until eating.

Another amazing highlight – Braised Black Tip Shark’s Fin with Saffron Sauce

The signature dish. At a whooping 500+ yuan a bowl (a year’s salary for some people), we shared this delicacy with a few people. The saffron is aromatic and creamy with an amazing golden color, and somewhat French influenced, in my opinion. The sweetness is so delicately balanced against the smooth glassiness of the shark’s fin with a glutinous bite. It is a signature dish that has been award gold medals in the National Cooking Competitions and an amazing spin on the classic Shark Fin’s soup.

This dish is also one of my favorites, not only for the presentation of the two love birds made from bok choy.

It looks like a hard boiled egg, but in fact, the egg white was steamed in the shape of an egg – and inside, is a delectible concoction of braised golden crab roe and crab meat with flavours that explode in your mouth. It would take some skill to create something as special as this!

Drunken Chicken topped with Bamboo Fungus

There is also an amazing choice of vegetarian dishes, each one presented so beautifully.


Top: Lotus root (where each little hole is stuffed with glutinous rice), Iced asparagus (which were the sweetest, freshest without that asparagus smell that some people find offputting)
Bottom: Bolete with Burgundy, Aubergine, and young bamboo shoots

And who can say no to Fois Gras?

One with mushroom sauce, the one on the right was infused with green apple and Haw. (Remember haw flakes as a kid?)

Stuffed tofu on spoons – spicy mince, and pickled vegetables on the bottom (Xue Cai).
 

On the left, Sea Cucumber fried rice – It was delicious. And on the right, Diced fois gras fried rice.

It got to the point where I was so full, I could only try two bites of each flavour of fried rice. I didn’t even try the Matsutake fried rice.

And finally, the complimentry dessert included chilled Perssimon puree in I think an almond milk…

If you ever visit Beijing, I highly recommend this place! Oh, and the Olympics were great too… I burnt all my calories walking in the Olympic park – there was hardly any transport available in and out of the games. You think you’re really close to the Bird’s Nest because you can see it…. but that was another 30 mins away!

The one bedroom suites were more than accomodating in size with fully equipped kitchen (decked out with Miele appliances) and large bedroom upstairs. The sitting room can comfortably fit a party of 15 – 20 people, and the upstairs bedroom has two individual bathrooms on either side of the room, for all of those (like me) who hate to share. Sheer bliss.

Buttermilk pancakes with banana, maple and honey ice cream

Japanese breakfast with seared tuna, Japanese pickles, Tofu and wakame miso soup and rice

Dinner at Nu nu Restaurant on Williams Esplanade

Freshly baked sourdough with lemon and olive oil

Freshly shucked Coffin Bay oysters – unwashed, the way I like them!

Soft shell crab and avocado roll with cured yellow fin tuna in Ponzu sauce

Twice cooked quail, Sichuan eggplant salad, home made XO

North Queenland mudcrab in soy, ginger and shallot dressing, sticky rice in lotus leaf with lapcheong, Kailan and broth
 

Mandarin Souffle, mandarin cream, mandarin sorbet

Hibiscus Marshallow – which was fragrant, subtly sweet, delightful and reminiscent of Jean Georges in New York… if not better!

Nothing too much to rave about the restaurant scene in Palm Cove, but the ingredients were fresh and the service was good. Just a nice, relaxed environment to getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city, and not to mention, the horrid, rainy and cold Sydney weather!

Other recommended restuarants in the area:
The Reef House (Sebel)
Vivo Bar & Grill

One of Australia’s most celebrated chefs – most known for her amazing desserts and Asian inspired cooking, held a class at the Sydney Seafood School last week which I was very excited about. After an hour long demonstration on how to prepare each dish, we separated into groups of 5 to try and recreate everything she had taught us. She created 4 dishes which are designed to be paired with champagne. Perfect for summertime and the holiday season.

The Menu included:

And finishing everything off with a bottle of Heidsieck Champagne – Gold.

The whole process took well over 4 hours. I really miss my giant kitchen back in Darlinghurst! I have all the recipes, but I won’t type them out here. Click here if you want to download a PDF of my recipe sheet! (it even has notes on it)

Checked out Rambutan on Oxford st – the usual overpriced modern Thai fusion, but it was a nice feed. The lounge downstairs has a great tropical fish tank which I can stare at all day… and the cocktails were inventive.

 

I’m itching to go to Cambodia in December for one week. I’m currently looking at Intrepid travel – I’m not a fan of group travel but the ‘independant’ style is a customized itinerary for 1 or 2 people (link). It sure makes travelling alone a lot less scary.

Unless someone wants to come along?

And the company was even better.