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August 27, 2017August 27, 2017

Four Frogs Creperie, Circular Quay Sydney

We just had the beautiful warm winter days in this past weekend, such a nice weather for a walk around city. After lunch, we headed to Circular Quay, revisiting this creperie shop. Been wanting to get hubby to try their crepe for a while and finally get to do it this time.

Located in the front side of (fairly) new revamped Gateway food court in Circular Quay, Four Frogs Creperie is hard to miss. On the front seating area, you can look out to people walking by surrounding the Circular Quay ferry wharf. This would have been a nice spot in the morning or evening, not so much in the afternoon due to direct afternoon sun exposure. Since we went there in the afternoon, we opted to sit inside – not much view but it was cozy enough.

The first time I came here, I was amazed with their Crepes On Fire menu. For the same reason, I asked hubby to choose one from that section. It sure did not disappoint, they came with a bit of theatrical presentation and more importantly, they also taste great! They also have some interesting French ciders on the menu, I guess we just have to try next time we go there.

This is how the waiter brought our orders:

And here are what they look like after that short theatrical show:

Chocolate, vanilla ice cream and Grand Marnier

They are both absolutely a delicious – the crepes are so smooth and buttery. The sauce are as lovely and not sickly sweet, and don’t taste like artificial flavors. I adore the crepe suzette as the orange sauce and pieces cut down the sweet sauce and the grand marnier really pair wonderfully. Whereas hubby being a chocolate lovers, still keep on saying how good his crepe was a day later 😛

Four Frogs Creperie

1 Macquarie Place, Circular Quay, Sydney

Phone: (02) 9241 2277

www.fourfrogs.com.au

July 29, 2017

Lontong Sayur aka Vegetables in Spicy Coconut Broth

Now that we have finally moved and settled and I finally almost fully recovered from flu, it is time to update my forgotten blog. This post will be about lontong sayur, another common Indonesian dish. Been having huge craving for this meal for months but will all those house inspections and moving etc, I hardly found time to get into it. And just as we settled in the new place, I came across few posts about this dish – talk about good timing, eh 🙂

Anyway for the vegetable soup, I used recipe from here. I followed everything as per Flo’s recipe, but ended up added a lot more chillies for colour and kick. If you do not handle chilli well, her recipe is perfect as I find it tastes quite mild yet super delicious. Also, I did some variations on my condiments for lontong sayur – based on what we have in the pantry/fridge 🙂

Here is the recipe as copied from the link above:

Ingredients:

500 gr young papaya fruit/chayote, julliened (I used chokos)
10 stalks long bean, cut in 3 cm pieces
Optional: fresh tiger prawn, cleaned and deveined
3 cm galangal, crushed
2 stalks lemongrass, crushed
3 pieces bay leaf
1000 ml light coconut milk
500 ml coconut cream
500 ml water

Spices:
10 pieces of shallot
6 cloves of garlic
4 pieces of candle nut
3 pieces of red chilies
Salt, pepper and sugar to taste
1 teaspoon of shrimp paste
2 tablespoons of dried shrimp, roasted and ground
2 tablespoons oil for saute

Ground and saute the spices until fragrant, then add the ground dried shrimp. Stir well and cook for another minute
Add in the julliened chokos, stir well
Then add the coconut milk and water to the pot, let it boil and cook the chokos until 75% cooked, and add the long beans and all other ingredients
Lastly, turn the heat to low and add the coconut cream. Bring it to simmer and it’s done. Make sure to adjust salt, pepper and sugar level

The usual condiments that always goes into lontong sayur is ketupat or rice cake. And since I am lazy, I just used my pressure cooker to cut down the cooking time of ketupat. Do head to Flo’s page for instructions on making the rice cake in a more traditional way. Thankfully mine turned out well taste wise, although didn’t look it.

At the time I cooked this, we happened to have beef rendang in the fridge – so we threw that in as condiment as well. The other condiments I prepared are fried boiled eggs and shrimp crackers. And lastly, sprinkle some fried onion on top of the dish before serving.

As you can see, there are a lot of things to prepare for this meal. But, it is totally worth the effort and time, happy tummy happy life, right? 🙂

The spices, julliened chokos, long bean, and cooked rice cake

July 1, 2017June 30, 2017

Jam and Cheese Thumbprint Cookies

While going through my photos folder, I saw these pictures of fail attempt of thumbprint cookies with blackberry jam. But still, I will share the recipe in case some readers get a successful results of it. It is supposed to be one of those easy and fast to make cookies as no cookie cutter involved. And even with the ugly shapes, they still actually taste really good. I truly hope that you will not be discouraged by the terrible looking to give this recipe a try. The baked jam gives nice caramelised flavour and become slightly chewy in texture. I kind of know which mistakes have led to the fails, so read on to the end for tips!

Ingredients (source from here):

150 grams of butter (50 grams of butter may be substituted with margarine)
120 grams of castor sugar (I’ll reduce to 80 grams next time as this is too sweet)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 egg yolk
225 grams of flour
20 grams of milk powder
20 grams corn flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
your favorite jam
grated cheese
1 egg white so the grated cheese will stick to the cookies

Mix butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract until pale and fluffy. Then add in the egg yolk, mix again until well combined.

Add the flour and baking powder in four stages to the butter egg mixture – make sure to fold the mixture until well combined with a spatula after each stage of flour addition.

Make round-shaped cookies, dip top half of the cookie in egg white then grated cheese and place them in baking tray.

Then press the center of each cookie with your finger to create a dent. Fill in the dent with jam, make sure to not overfill these.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes at 175C preheated oven. It is done baking when the base of cookies start to harden and change to golden colours. At this stage the cookies might feel slightly under-baked, but once cooled to room temperature, they will be perfect.

Please pardon this horrendous looking cookies 😛

As promised, here were the mistakes I made on the attempt:

* I overfilled the cookies with jam, so it overflowed during baking and hence cracked cookies

* I had used jam with chunks of blackberry in it. This combined with overfilling has resulted in problem above. It will be best to use smooth-textured jam and fill in the cookie dents with piping bag.

* As usual, the amount of flour shown in recipe is guidance. Especially for cookies recipe, you may need to add or reduce the amount a little bit. My mistake was I should have reduced the flour a little bit so my cookie dough would not be too dry

* Do not dip the whole cookie in egg white, as they will be a mess to remove from the tray after baking. Therefore, only dip the top half and then cover with grated cheese

* Depends on type of jam you are using and your liking of sweetness, you may need to adjust the sugar amount for the cookie.

June 26, 2017

The Barn, West Ryde

We have lived in West Ryde area for some time now and all this time we often said we wanted to try this and that restaurants. And somehow that just didn’t happen too often and the list grows longer. Does this happen to anyone else or just us? 😛 Anyway, seeing that we might be moving to another suburb soon, we made effort to try cross some off our growing list.

This time we went to The Barn, just on the opposite side of West Ryde train station. I think it is fairly new (more or less a year) and interior looks inviting. They have tables with barbeque cooker in the middle and those massive exhaust pipe that hangs from the ceiling, hence no problem with smoky bbq smell lingering in your clothing. We went there on a Saturday night, around 7 pm and it was not full house, maybe 3/4 filled. There are few big groups of diners and few other couples.

Service was great, we were shown to our table right away, menu came soon then the chilled water. The waiters were friendly and helpful with advises and recommendations. Upon looking at their menu, prices are pretty much on par with other Korean restaurants in Sydney. On this occasion, we ordered a medium size hotpot, seafood pancake, two bowls of rice, and of course bottle of soju to share.

The food came out within 30 minutes of ordering and portion were huge! Love the hotpot, the broth was tasty and rich with generous amount of fillings. Same goes with the seafood pancake, it was fluffy inside and crispy on the outside. And that dipping sauce for pancake was delicious. I personally don’t drink alcohol often, but I enjoyed two glasses of that soju 😛

This pork bone hotpot is so good for winter, very hearty and warming – and this medium size is probably enough to feed three to four people 🙂

We most definitely went home with a happy tummy and will happily return to try out their BBQ or other dishes 🙂 And, overall dining experience was good, nothing we could fault.

The Barn

1/14 W Parade, West Ryde NSW 2114

Phone: (02) 9807 7773

Menu source: Zomato

May 22, 2017May 21, 2017

Mr Stonebowl Restaurant, Burwood

A few weekends ago we finally paid visit to Mr Stonebowl restaurant that many has people raved about, including my brother and cousins. Their first comment aside from being served delicious food was that it is always packed! And because it does not take reservation, your best bet would be to come a little early for your meal, or a little later. Good thing is the dishes came out quick hence diners turnover are good as well. Bottom line is this restaurant is not a place for diners who want to have long chat while eating. That Saturday, we came at 11 for lunch, just on its opening time. And yes, many tables were already taken then.

Apart from the crowded issue, the dishes are excellent. There was nothing we would complain about the dishes, everything we ordered were delicious. Oh by the way, I guess because of the name, they use many unique crockery (you’ll see in photos below).

Garlic Prawn with Stir Fried Rice in Squid Ink ($18.80) – this is soo delicious!

Crab Meat with Tofu ($16.80) – love that crockery as much as the dish! Very subtle flavour with creamy garlicky and gingery gravy.

Deep Fried Eggplant in Bread Crumb ($13.80) – this is probably everyone’s favorite, those soft eggplants coated in flavorsome bread crumb, yummy. I think most people actually come to Mr Stonebowl for this dish!

Shandong Style Chicken ($15.80) – nothing negative to say about this dish either. Deep fried chicken in tangy, salty and spicy broth, yummy!

Pan Fried Pork Bun ($8.80) – not much to rave about, but not a bad dish either. The skin is not too thick, the meat filling is juicy and burst with flavor and broth once bite into it. It probably just overshadowed by all other super delicious dishes.

Mushroom Stir Fried with Vege ($11.80) – who knows a vege dish can be sooo delicious. The various mushrooms used in this meal add different texture and taste, definitely a winner for stir fried bakchoy dish.

Seafood Fried Vermicelli ($10.80) – generous with seafood and that tasty thick gravy over pan fried vermicelli.

We most definitely had a super satisfying meal at Mr Stonebowl, in fact I already want to go back there while doing this post. Oh by the way, those meals above were for 6 people! Good thing about eating out in groups is you get to try so many dishes at once 🙂

Mr Stonebowl

185C Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Phone: (02) 8970 9605