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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

Monday 27 June 2005

Berry muffins

The other day, I decided to make healthy low fat blueberry muffins. I looked up recipes, but in the end improvised using what I have in my pantry based on the ratio of wet and dry ingredients suggested by the muffin recipes I looked. And I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out good as well. I did not have enough frozen blueberries, so I used frozen strawberries too (these frozen fruits are great for making yummy smoothies).

I used
    1 cup self raising flour
    1 cup wholemeal self raising flour
    1/4cup brown sugar
    2 tablespoons honey
    2 eggs
    3/4 cup milk
    1/2 cup frozen blueberries
    1/2 cup chopped frozen strawberries
Preheat the oven to 180degC (mine is conventional, so use lower temp (170degC?) if using fan-forced oven). Leaving out the berries, mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then combine until just blended. Fold in the berries, whilst taking care not to overmix the batter otherwise the muffins will be tough. Pour the mixture into a 12-muffin tray, filling each muffin cup only 2/3 full. For fun, I pressed a few choc chips into the centre of some of the muffins just to see how it'd taste (Rob likes them, so it must be good right?). Place the muffin tray in preheated oven, and bake for 15-20mins. It is best enjoyed when it's warm :).

Saturday 18 June 2005

Peking Duck @ Warwick Chinese Restaurant

For my mum's birthday last night, my mum took us to have Peking Duck at Warwick Chinese Restaurant. Unfortunately, we didn't have a camera with us (well, I didn't think of taking photos anyway). We've been to this restaurant on several occasions, and every time to have peking duck.

This is the best place in Perth to have peking duck. There are 3 courses for each duck for around $55. One duck can comfortably feed 5 or 6 adults for dinner. The peking duck menu at other restaurants give only one or two dishes for each duck for similar pricing. According to one of my friends who has eaten peking duck at several restaurants, both north and south of the river, Warwick Chinese Restaurant gives the best taste and best value. Rob and I even had peking duck in its hometown of Beijing during our honeymoon, at supposedly the best restaurant to have peking duck in Beijing called Quan Ju De (more info here and a review here), and we still prefer the one offered at Warwick. Kinda sad huh? Quan Ju De is a very elaborately decorated restaurant, with ridiculously dolled up greeters (see our honeymoon photos). Very superficial and pretentious, obviously to cater for foreigners (and no doubt charge a lot for them - we don't know how much because we went with a packaged tour with accommodation, meals and transport provided.) If we had a chance to go to Beijing again, we'd definitely go to where all the locals go to. The peking duck dish we had Quan Ju De only had one course, and that was the duck skin with pancake (described better below).

At Warwick, each duck is served with 3 courses.
    The first course is the roasted crispy duck skin on a small round thin pancake. You basically take the thin pancake, spread the special sauce provided (similar to Hoisin) onto it, chuck a piece of skin on it (which has been cut to the right size for the pancake) and put a couple of vege sticks on top (celery, cucumber and spring onion sticks were provided), roll it up, and shove it into your mouth as elegantly as possible.
    The second course is the yummy soup made with minced duck meat. I love this soup.
    With the third course, you have the choice of sang choy bao or the noodles.
    With sang choy bao, specially prepared minced duck meat is served with lettuce leaves. You basically make dumplings with the meat inside the lettuce leaves, and once again, try and elegantly consume them. You can try doing this with chopsticks, but I'd say a big 'good luck trying!'. God gave me a pair of hands with fingers and practicality is my middle name. And chopsticks are not the most practical utensils to eat with.
    The noodle dish is either egg noodles or hokkien noodles cooked with the minced duck meat. Although the noodle dish was prepared quite nicely, I would recommend choosing sang choy bao as your third dish.

Monday 13 June 2005

Teppan Yaki heaven @ Midori

I love food. I love cooking, I love eating, I love trying out different cuisines. And I decided that if I ever started a blog, it should mainly be about food. Hence, don't be surprised if most of what you read on this blog is about food.

My first entry shall be a restaurant food review for Midori, a Teppan Yaki restaurant in the middle of Perth city. I planned a whole series of events for Rob's birthday yesterday, the last of which wasn't entirely an altruistic move on my part, since the teppanyaki meal was also a treat for me.

Teppanyaki is a Japanese style of cooking, with 'teppan' meaning iron plate and 'yaki' meaning grilling or stirfrying in Japanese. It is very much an entertaining theatrical display of the Japanese chef's food preparation skills, which includes chopping, dicing and cooking the food with all the fancy-schmancy way of handling the food and cooking tools. Watching the chef expertly prepare and cook your meal in front of you, and then savouring the lovely freshly-cooked and well-prepared food, is certainly a tasty experience.

The teppans at Midori are large, and up to 20 people can be seated around them. The weather on Rob's birthday was cold and rainy, so it wasn't a popular Saturday night to go out for dinner. We arrived early for our booking, and from 6pm until around 7:15pm, we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. The waitstaff were attentive, and needless to say, we enjoyed having the chef working only for the two of us.

There were two types of meals offered on the menu: a-la-carte (where you choose what you want) and set meals. Rob selected the Doona set ($85), which included salad, sashimi, tempura, miso soup, prawns, oysters, salmon, lobster, stirfried veges (mainly beansprouts), rice (the choice of having plain rice or garlic fried rice), dessert (green tea ice-cream) and green tea. I chose the Seafood Special ($65) which included salad, sashimi, miso soup, scallops, prawns, oysters, salmon, stir-fried veges, rice, dessert and green tea.

The taste of the food was beautiful on our palates, and the quantity of our meals were enough to satisfy our stomachs. We were very happy that the quality of the food preparation met our high standards (for example, the scallops were not overcooked, and the oysters were cooked to perfection such that they melted on your tongue).

Whilst the expensive price tag means that we cannot enjoy this treat on a regular basis, it certainly is worth the experience for special occasions.

Enough yabbering, here are the photos, which I'm sure you'll agree speaks much better for itself than my description.


Our teppan (and view of my salad and lemon lime bitters)


Salad with yummy dressing


Tempura and sashimi


Our chef beginning to work his magic


Never before have I had scallops done 'just right' by someone else other than me - for some reason people always overcook scallops. Not this chef though.


Yummo scallops


Rice and miso soup arrives


Whoa!! The prawns are under those flames somewhere!


Yummy prawns


Those are the oysters to the right of the prawns. Looks funny, don't they? They were so plump and creamy - just beautiful. I usually prefer natural oysters over cooked oysters, but these oysters were done very well


The cooked salmon with lovely sauce


Lobster on the teppan


Lobster on Rob's plate (it didn't stay long there though - it's fate belonged in Rob's belly)


The chef frying the bean sprouts and the garlic fried rice


Finished product of the garlic fried rice - tasted more yummy than it looked


The chef seasoning our stirfried veges with artistic handling of the salt and pepper shaker/grinder

'
Twas twirly, I tell ya!


Yummy bean sprouts (okay, I realise that my vocab in this blog entry is somewhat limited to the word 'yummy', but it's justified dammit!)


The chef writing 'Happy Birthday' for Rob upside down and backwards with salt using the salt shaker. My friend had told me that he writes 'Thank You' upside down and backwards, but I didn't know he could do 'Happy Birthday' too!




Rob enjoying his meal. We had the choice to wear a bib, because, according to the waiter, it could get messy. Rob usually drops food on his shirt at meals, but funnily enough, tonight, his bib was spotless, and instead mine was stained with a huge dob of sauce.


After our meal, we were invited to relax in the lounge area away from the teppan and the other diners who'd arrived shortly before we finished our meal. We had our dessert, which was green tea ice cream served on top of colourful cubes of jelly, and topped with a little dob of cream and a cherry. Perfect way to end a nice meal.