A highlight though, was a dish I had at the wedding – and I rarely eat anything amazing at weddings, due to everything being luke warm, dry and overcooked.

Shark fin soup, served on a layer of steamed egg (chawanmushi style) with crab meat. You can’t see the steamed egg in the photo as it rests on the bottom of the plate, but the silky egg and crab meat complements the thick, rich soup. Garnished with a full piece of shark’s fin, goji berries and “silver” bean sprouts. Decadent and divine!

I wish I could’ve stayed longer! I did stop by a restaurant named “Devi’s Corner” which was recommended by the hotel concierge to have really good Nasi Lemak, thought it really wasn’t anything to write home about, as the Malaysian place down the road from my office in Sydney would’ve done an equally (if not better) job.

Here is a simple, filling soup you can prepare in under 45 minutes. Hey, if I can cook this while I’m tripping out on extremely strong painkillers (and doubled the dosage for added excitement) you can do this with your eyes closed! This is for you, Deb

All you need is:
2 leeks (only use the light green and white parts, discard the green leaves)
5 washed potatos
1 brown onion
2 slices of prosciutto / parma ham, bacon or pancetta, diced
1 litre of chicken broth
half a cup of cooking cream

Using a mandolin, slice leeks and potatos thinly, and finely dice the brown onion.

In the soup pot, add two tablespoons of butter and cook the onions and leeks until it’s softened and lightly browned. Add diced prosciutto or bacon – you may add more olive oil as well. The prosciutto really gives it extra flavour and smokiness, but if you are vegetarian you can easily leave this out.

Add the sliced potato in the pot and stir for another three minutes

Add chicken broth, just enough to cover the potatos. If the soup becomes too thick you can always add more broth later.

Simmer on medium heat for 15 – 20 minutes. The thinner you sliced your potatoes, the quicker it takes for them to cook. When the potatos become soft, you can start squishing them into smaller pieces with your wooden spoon.

Using a hand blender, blend soup on low heat until smooth. I would normally prefer it slightly lumpy to give it more texture, but I can’t chew!

You can see that the soup has become a lot thicker than before. You can stir in extra broth if you wish, and simmer for another ten minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally.

Add half a cup of cooking cream and slowly stir in before serving

and voila, a quick and easy soup – not to mention all the ingredients cost under ten dollars. Hello financial crisis!

I improvised on the recipe, and it turns out I used waaay too little sugar. I have a bad habit of making all my recipes low cal. What’s the fun in that?

Filling: Using a mortar and pestle, grind seasame seeds to a powder. Add sugar (add a lot more than I did!) and continue grinding. Then I added sesame powder – at this point you can add a little water to make the filling ‘pastey’.

The perfect glutinous rice flour to water ratio is around 3 cups rice flour to 1.5 (and a little bit more) water. I boiled my water with a few pieces of chinese rock sugar to sweeten it first. (you can also add food colouring as well, if you want, say, pink tang yuens) Pour the hot water into the flour and start stirring until it starts to stick together loosely. At this point, dust your hands with flour and start kneading. Knead for about 5 mins – continually dusting with flour. Glutinous rice flour is very sticky to work with. Pack it into a large ball and leave for 20 minutes under a damp tea towel.

Pinch a small ball of dough, roll between your palms to form a ball and flatten it into a disk around .8cm thick. Poke the centre slightly with your index finger, and spoon your sesame filling in the middle. Pinch the dough back together evenly with the filling in the middle, and re-roll into a ball between your palms.

Now repeat it a gazillion times – if you have a large family to feed. Store each finished tangyuen under a damp tea towel so it doesn’t dry up. You have to work very quickly as the dough will not be smooth as soon as it starts to dry.

Boil half a pot of water, add glutinous rice wine and rock sugar to taste, and add your tongyuen. It will all sink to the bottom at first, but as soon as they float up to the top, it is ready to serve!

The result? The tangyuen was amazing – but the filling could be sweeter! We forgot to take photos… so here is one I found which is very similar:

You can be creative with your fillings – red bean, green tea, choc peanut, cherry blossom?
Instead of serving them in a sweet soup, you can also roll them in seasame powder to make mochi.

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!

Good service should be rewarded – I must admit, I was acting like a spoilt princess when I found out that the ‘outdoor table for 9′ that I booked ended up set by the entrance to the restaurant. The server saw the disappointment in my face and with his own initiative, ended up re-setting the outdoor area for us. I am a true believer that the service before the meal is crucial to the customer experience and it really depends on that first impression. You could have mind-blowing food, but if someone isn’t happy to begin with, they most probably will not enjoy the rest of the meal. This was probably something that was recognised right away and corrected. I wish more mid-ranged restaurants in Sydney would do this!

The food was beautiful, and we were amongst heaters on a crisp, cool Saturday afternoon in the courtyard of a Victorian terrace house with sandstone walls. Both the chef and the waiter were attentive to our needs (even though it was a quiet day, there were only two other tables in the restaurant that day), the food was delicate and the flavours were rich – just the way the French like it. I had no qualms with my 33% tip, well deserved – albeit a little painful for the wallet. I guess I felt bad for being difficult.

The wine list had my new favorite white for the moment - Vouvray (Chenin Blanc) from the Loire Valley alongside other French wines. Divine.

Escargots a la Bourguignonne $14
Snails with garlic butter and puff pastry

Souffle d’ecrevisses au gruyere $22
Twice baked Moreton bay bug & gruyere souffle

Salade au chevre chaud $15
Spinach salad with pears and warm goat’s cheese

Duck Rilette (special of the day)

Soupe du jour $14
Celeriac and Salsify soup with parsley toast

Saint-Jacques et crevettes a l’ail $35
Grilled scallops wrapped in prosciutto & garlic prawns (I thought of PetiteTokyo when I ordered this!)

Faux Fillet $29
Angus sirloin with bearnaise sauce & fries

Supreme de canard et son choux farci au porto $35
Pan-fried duck breast & stuffed cabbage with a port sauce

Plat Du Jour
Veal shank and lamb pie

Puree de pommes de terre $8

Creme brulee $14
Vanilla creme brulee

Profiteroles au chocolat $15
Chocolate profiteroles with vanilla ice cream

Tarte tatin $15
Apple tatin with ice cream

Delicioux!

I always thought I was crazy for chefs (being a bit of a chef groupie), that was, until I went to Gordon’s show. My lord are the middle aged ladies crazy for the guy! Gordon fits extremely well in a live audience setting. His crude and offending humour on other chefs like Matt Moran “he’s lost a hat and he’s got no hair” or Jamie Oliver whom he conveniently calls a “twat” proves to be an entertaining show.

He demonstrates with ease three dishes we can replicate at home: Butter bean and chorizo soup, Pan fried lamb with green bean and parmesean salad and for dessert, a Pain Perdue with ricotta and raspberries. Many prizes were given away, almost like the set of an Oprah show, except it’s a lot less generous.

His main cooking tips were:
- Always cook the meat when it is at room temperature
- Seal the sides of your meat properly by tilting your pan and letting the oil cook the edges in a ‘puddle’
- Never slice meat straight after cooking, always rest it for at least five minutes
- Add leftover meat to your soup (such as shredded chicken) and place in the fridge overnight to give it better flavour the next day

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

Not your usual Fifth Ave

Visited Blacktown on Sunday to pick up my new baby in an arms deal. In the spirit of the United States we decided to visit Lone Star Steakhouse on the way home – to join the bridge and tunnel crowd (it’s just like going to Jersey!) in a feast of cholesterol and melted cheese on EVERYTHING. Ranch dressing is so common in the states but actually very hard to find in Australia – no one here is familiar with what Ranch is… and I absolutely LOVE IT… on everything. It brings just as much happiness to me as indulging on fois gras grilled with truffle butter.

No lectures on my cholesterol levels, please! The following was consumed purely on reasons of nostalgia… and the eternal question: Why do yanks cover everything with cheese (Including their pick-up lines)?

Amarillo Cheese fries

Lone Star fries smothered in melted Cheddar cheese, topped with bacon, served with Ranch Dressing

Spicy spinach and artichoke dip

With a hint of Jalapeno, topped with cheese and served with tortilla chips.

Bone in Rib Eye

In our opinion the best darn steak you’ll ever taste, YES it’s that good! Actually, I would agree! What is that thing to the right? A piece of pumpkin, with an ENTIRE SCOOP of butter, covered in cinnamon sugar. Induces cardiac arrests before you can even say “heart attack”

Swiss and Mushroom Burger

Melted Swiss cheese topped with our sauteed mushrooms and served with ranch dressing

(L) Would you like a sprinkle of salad leaves with your cheese and thousand Island dressing?
(R) The remaining ball of melted cheese picked off the Cheesy fries. WOW.

I don’t think I’ll do this again in a long time – eating cheese and ranch on everything, or going to Blacktown. If it’s any consultation, I made organic chicken & vegetable soup for dinner (which is also what I’ll be having for lunch today).

God Bless America. Yee-har! *fires shots into the sky*

We arrived on a Sunday night at 8pm and almost instantly got a table without waiting (my Aussie attempt at broken Mandarin included). The staff are trained to be almost too enthusiatic, and each one bows and says “ni hao” to every customer entering the restaurant, possibly imitating the Japanese ritual. The kitchen is in full visible view from both the outside and the inside of the restuarant, dumpings and buns piled high in their bamboo steamers on some sort of sophisticated industrial steamer.

You order by writing the quantity of your dishs onto an order form. And no joke, within 60 seconds of our order put through, the drinks arrived. By the 2nd minute, our first food plate arrived. In such a high turn-over restaurant I was blown away by the lead time.

First the drunken chicken arrived (unpictured) which was very fragrant, the Chinese wine flavours perfectly soaked into smooth, tender chicken flesh.

I then ordered the Tofu with Pork Floss and Thousand year old egg – which I loved!

Their specialty – Xiao Long Baos (I ordered the one with the crab meat and pork) was consistently nice, although not nearly as good as the one I had in Hong Kong, still a very high standard for Australia. Nice and soupy on the inside, though the dumpling skin could be a tad thinner.

Shrimp and pork wonton noodle soup

Other dishes ordered that were unpictured: the Snakebeans with mince (四季豆) which was just slightly undercooked – with great flavours, the garlic Spinach was nicely made though it’s hard to get that wrong; the fried rice was fluffy and tactile which contrasted with the pork chop beautifully; and another order of wontons that were in a spicy sauce, which adds another layer of appeal to the usual soup wontons.

Great place for a quick meal – although I can’t help but feel extremely rushed. That’s Fast Food at its best, I suppose! You’ll walk out with a food coma and 15 people smiling with “Xie xie“.

I think the trick is to remove most of the blood from the ribs - I soaked the ribs in water for a few hours, then pre-boiled it twice to remove all impurities, so that the broth runs clear. I did the same to the white radish, which was actually a tip from my mother used for Chinese cooking – always pre boil white radish twice before cooking (if you have time) to release the excess moisture, and allowing it to readily absorb more flavours later.

So 1 kilo of beef ribs, cut in 5cm cubes, one whole garlic (yikes!) and salt to taste, bring to the boil in a pot and then simmer for 2 hours. Add the radishes and Korean soup mix (I bought it at the store, because the box had a picture of the dish I was trying to make). The meat gently fell off the bone (but it wasn’t mushy), and the radishes were perfect. Serve garnished with chopped green onions. It was a variation of Dorothy’s recipe – without it, I’d be clueless. Thank you!

My 2nd dish to attempt was the Pajeon. Very easy to prepare, except that I would add a few more tablespoons full of rice flour to the recipe to give it a bit more texture. I bought fresh Australian seafood (clams, squid, scallops) which made the flavours very fragrant against the pan fried green onions. And then the third and final dish, Gamja jorim (Potato in sweet soy) Talk about high fat, High sugar, High calorie, High carb…