Extra Special Harvests

Once upon a time I imagined a field of parsley growing in my garden, when I would never have to pay a couple of dollars to acquire this wonderful, tasty herb...

And then one day, the parsley had bolted and had gone over 4 feet tall!

to give you some perspective I stand at about 5 feet 6 inches 

and where my hand is, is the height of one of the parsley plants that is ready to flower and produce seed

meanwhile, this is a spinach leaf

from the backyard as well!

We have a compost pit where all our biodegradable kitchen veggie scraps go (including tea bags, cofffee beans) and we use it to fertilize the veggie patch. I would like to think that this cycle is keeping everyone happy! Anyway, I can't take too much credit for the veggie patch - he takes care of it more, and I just happen to do something with what grows there. :D 

a harvest of kale

the previous plant was pretty much raped by white aphids

kohlrabi - "german turnip" - a cousin of the cabbage

apparently you shouldn't let them grow bigger than a tennis ball if you were to harvest 

(except if you commercially sell them and they need to be as big as a saucer!)

It is just quite an amazing feeling to be able to harvest all these wonderful vegetables right within our own backyard - capturing fresh flavors as part of the day's meal. This Saturday's lunch was fresh from the garden...

With kale and the kohlrabi I decided to whip up something quick and easy - just stir fry the shredded veggies with crisped up spicy sausage, 3 cloves of minced garlic, 1 minced onion and a dash of vinegar and soy sauce, to be served over hot steaming rice.

Life is good :)

Daan's Cake (again!)

Our Dutch friends have 2 boys, both of which celebrate their birthday in September. This year, they were away for  holidays during the boys' birthdays so they had a belated party last weekend. I have grown very fond of these boys, basically seeing them grow up before my very eyes, and they are such good natured kids, it is difficult not to like them!

The other M was requested to make Thai fish cakes, his recipe which was a hit from a previous Sunday lunch. The cake I made was the sweet kind!

marshmallow fondant, made from microwaved marshmallows, kneaded with icing sugar

The cake is a lemon and caraway cake base from a previous recipe, slathered with a bit of cream cheese and whipped cream, so that the fondant would stick. I made two circular layers, and thought because it's a kids birthday, it would be a nice touch to decorate the cake with lollies, making it a huge treat!

And it was great to see the cake go down well. But not as great as seeing the children have a fabulous time!

Previous cake for Daan here

China Red

China Red is a restaurant in Bourke St, Melbourne CBD, modest in size but providing a bit of a wow factor with their touch screen wall mounted ordering system. Each meal is sent instantaneously, the next thing you'll know is that someone's popping over to drop off a dish you've just selected.

tap tap tap

I hope I didn't have to say that they serve Chinese cuisine, but there I've said, to remove all shadow of doubt! And when you're out dining in a Chinese restaurant, there are a couple of familiar dishes that you can't help but order. I personally  like sampling the hot and sour soup, which I think is a good gauge if a Chinese restaurant is kick ass awesome or not - if their hot and sour soup fails to impress, then it's like not getting the basics right . Well, at least that's what I think.

Anyway, so their hot and sour soup wasn't very bad, but one dish that caught our eye is the Fish Fillet in Hot Oil. It had an image of 2 chilis beside the name on the menu, denoting how hot it is. It was immediately ordered.

Fish Fillet in Hot Oil

Now this one is really not for the weak. Even the seasoned tongue (hah!) might get singed with this dish. The heat builds up different dimensions without invoking pain, and is heightened by the whole and ground szechuan peppers infused in the oil. In case the red things floating in the photo above didn't catch your eye, it's mostly whole and slightly crushed dried red chilis, and they are not just for decoration! The ladle is almost a 'sievelike', with holes in it so that you literally just fish for the fish, as you really wouldn't want to ladle the 'chili' soup on to your bowl. The bean sprouts had a bit of crunch and the lightly floured fillet of fish was soft and tender A bowl of rice is a must. And a couple of napkins to wipe away the sweat. And a Yanjing beer (they have some, it's pretty good and easy to drink - I wanted to take a photo of the beer bottle but after pouring it on to the glass the waitress immediately scurried off!)

We also got some xiao long bao - dumplings with soup inside. They weren't 'heavenly' but tasty enough. Perhaps I am just biased and loyal to the xiao long bao from Din Tai Fung. I would have to say though that the highlight of the night is the house chili sauce - which was really spectacular. It made everything taste great. I could've taken the bottle home!

yum

Service was quick, but sometimes too quick that arms appear to swoop from all directions to take plates and glasses away. Dishes seem reasonably priced for the serving size. Might be worth coming back some other time as I noticed they served pork intestines :D

** apologies the photos are from my blackberry. i think the resolution is not too bad for a camera on a phone, but compared to other photos, it does look a bit off, doesn't it :)

Chocolate and Guinness Cake

A colleague from work celebrated his 40th birthday last (Saturday) night. The man loves chocolate, and is married to an Irish lady, so I thought it would be nice to give him a fusion of something which represents each of them. So chocolate and something very Irish... what could be more Irish than Guinness?

Hence I researched chocolate and guinness cake recipes. It seems that one of the best recipes is Nigella's version. There was a lot of rave reviews about how moist and really tasty her cake turned out to be. I managed to do only minor tweaks - after all, the basic ingredients made perfect sense - the bubbles in the beer and eggs would give an the cake a lift, but not so much so I can imagine how dense it would be...the butter and sour cream is a great tandem to ensure it is moist, and chocolate+Guinness=enough said!

I followed the recipe from Nigella's website except I added two handfuls of bitter sweet chocolate chips to the beer mixture while melting the butter. The cake batter almost reached the top of my springform tin, and gradually rised beyond the tin, but eventually puffed down after just 55 minutes of baking.

The only other change was that I sprinkled chocolate shavings over the frosting to further highlight the 'chocolatiness'!

Guinness + butter + chocolate chips melting over medium heat

chocolate plus sour cream art 

cooling in tin 

finished product

The cake was a huge success - it was served during the party, and I watched a lot of people (most of them I've just met that night) wolf down the slices. Empty plates with telltale crumbs and happy faces said it all - it was a rewarding experience for something that was a gift to someone else in the first place!

Before and After

Before :

After ! 

** Winged creature not included in 'before' photo :p

These broad beans were succulent and went straight to the pot for a quick blanch before it was tossed into a salad. It is amazing how tasty fresh picked veggies are compared to store bought ones (or perhaps it's just all in the mind!) -  a really good motivation to keep it going!

This is also what happens when you let a dwarf white cauliflower simmer in the veggie patch - it becomes a mutant stemmed edible floral arrangement!

Sourdough Starter Experiment - results!

And one week later, here's the result of the sourdough starter experiment :

I think I can officially say that we have new pet, and we've decided to name it Bublé, because it is bubbly. :)

The 'essence of wild yeast' now resides in a wide mouthed bottle covered with cling film and a modest rubber band, and left in the fridge, and now I can feed it once a week only. For the past few days I have been religiously removing half of the mixture and adding 3 heaped tablespoonfuls of plain flour and almost half a cup of warm water to help propagate those wonderful microorganisms that would help me make wonderful (artisan?!) breads later!

This shows a bit of the 'hooch' forming on top of the mixture. Hooch is like beer - fermented liquid, basically. except i don't think it's suitable for drinking :p it also smells beery. I like to think that it's the booze for my pet! (we all gotta have our share don't we?!)

One last photo pose before it went to the fridge!

There is a lot of information about making sourdough starter but I find that this this link summarizes it quite succinctly. Check it out if you would like to make your own!

Harvest

Just backtracking on a previous harvest of silverbeet and watercress! I made these veggies into a fritata of sorts - which I'm sure I took of photo of, but just can't remember where I saved it!

He is now clearing the rest of the watercress to make way for new crop. Unfortunately it seems that the insects which could have been 'raping' the watercress have now moved on to the remaining silverbeet.

We pay expensive tax to these creatures! We've chosen an organic way to grow our veggies, so no chemicals or insecticides. I've googled some homemade sprays that might help (like a chili spray, or white oil) so we just need to get those going!