Tag: food

Posted on

Indonesian Style Chicken Galantine

As I googled chicken galantine, I learn that galantine is a French dish; de-boned stuffed meat (usually poultry) that is poached then served cold. Now, this is quite different to the chicken galantine we have in Indonesia. I am not sure what is the source of my recipe below, it was in my recipe book from years ago and unfortunately back then I had not understood the concept of acknowledging the sources 🙁 So, to whoever created this recipe originally, thank you!

 

Chicken Galantine:

  • 500 gr minced chicken
  • 6 tablespoons of bread crumb
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
  • 2 tablespoons of milk powder
  • salt, pepper and sugar to taste

Mix all ingredient in a bowl until well combined. Place a few tablespoons of the mix into a sheet of aluminium foil and roll into a log shaped, secure both ends well.

Steam the galantine rolls for about 25 minutes and let it cool before peel off the foil.

Slice each roll into 1.5 cm slices then pan-fried them with butter to give them a bit of colour.

And it’s ready to serve with sauce and condiments.

 

Sauce:

  • half onion, thinly sliced
  • 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 3 tablespoons of tomato sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of sweet soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon of maize flour, mix well with little bit of water
  • water, as needed
  • salt, pepper and sugar to taste

Saute the onion and garlic with butter until fragrant.

Then add in all sauces above, salt, sugar and pepper; mix and let it boil then add the maize flour mixture to thicken the sauce.

 

Condiments:

Usually Indonesian style chicken galantine is served together with some steamed vegetables, such as carrots, green bean, broccoli and lettuce leaves. On top of that, french fries often accompany this dish.

 

Overall this is a good recipe to keep and also make a good lunch box. But, there certainly some variations to make it more special, for example by stuffing some cheese pieces in the middle of the roll; or wrap them with prosciutto or bacon before pan frying them. It will definitely make these tastier and I shall try them next time 🙂

 

Packed for lunch box

 

 

 

Posted on

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

 

Crepe Suzette

 

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

Posted on

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

 

 

Posted on

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.

 

 

 

 

Posted on

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 😛

The side dishes and our grape 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 🙂

 

Yummy seafood pancake

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