My New Toy!!
I finally bought my dSLR on Saturday! Ended up costing me closer to $1,300 to get the flash card with it. The salesguy was trying desperately to get me to buy the whole package which would cost me about $1,700 - totally out of my budget. I hope I can make some good use out of it.. Still in the process of figuring out just how to use it, and hopefully I'll know enough to be able to take good pictures on our trip to Kalbarri this coming weekend.
Rob and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary this Sunday (28th August). I've taken some time off work, and we'll be taking a nice 4-day holiday up in Kalbarri, hoping to do lots of outdoors-y stuff like sandboarding, abseiling and horseriding. I am really hoping that the weather up north will be much nicer and warmer than Perth's winter weather.
Cookies
I baked some cookies/biscuits as well so that we have some treats for our trip (in addition to the timtams, m&ms and other junk we are bringing) and decided to try out my new toy.. I shot these pictures in 'idiot' mode (i.e. auto everything) because I don't know how to use the camera yet!
I baked three types of cookies: plain ginger snaps, ginger snaps with crystallised ginger, and my own version of Anzac biscuits (which Rob says doesn't taste like Anzac, but is yummy anyway).
Ginger cookies
Rob likes Arnott's Ginger Nut biscuits and the Butternut Snap, and I told him I'd try my hand at making homemade ones, but I can't find any recipes for Butternut Snap biscuits! So I settled for doing Ginger Snaps instead since there are so many recipes available on the net for
them (why are they called snaps??).
Believe it or not, I was looking at 3 recipes for the ginger snaps while baking - the quantities of the ingredients for each of these were quite different, so my recipe is essentially a modification of these three recipes to suit what I had in the pantry and to what I thought
was relatively healthy. These turned out softer than I expected - I expected crunchy biccies, mainly because of the name 'snap'. Honey suggested using less baking powder. Ah well, next time, I'll omit the baking powder and see if I can get a crunchier texture.
I am always amazed at how much sugar and butter these recipes use. I used less sugar in my recipe (about 20% less than what these recipes used) but the cookies were still quite sweet. Rob obviously likes it, being a sweet-tooth. The snaps recipe uses molasses, but I didn't
have any so I substituted that ingredient with honey. I won't have much use for molasses (Rob hates the stuff) so it would be a waste to buy it just to use it once or twice.
I made two batches with this recipe: plain and crystallised ginger. Verdict? I brought some up for my family, and most went for their second biccie. So it can't be that bad right? Rob says he likes it :)
Ingredients
125g butter
1 cup raw sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
0.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
0.5 teaspoon vinegar
3 cups plain flour
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
3.5 teaspoons ginger powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup crystallised ginger, chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Cream the butter and sugar. Add vanilla, eggs and honey and mix well. Sift the dry ingredients, adding to the wet mixture 1/3 at a time. Divide dough mix into two. For one half, mix in the crystallised ginger. Form dough into 2cm balls, flatten with the palm of your hand and place in a greased tray, leaving about 2cm space between each cookie. Will make about 36 cookies. Bake for 15minutes.
Oatmeal/sultana biscuits (a variation of Anzac biscuits)
Now apparently, Anzac biscuits are good non-egg recipes. But I wanted to use less butter which meant that a substitute binding ingredient had to be used. Eggs are a lot more healthy than butter, so I used an egg in this recipe. Also, instead of plain flour and baking powder, I used wholemeal self-raising flour. And of course, I used about 25% less sugar in my recipe - it was still plenty sweet (ask Rob). Most Anzac biscuit recipe uses golden syrup, but since I don't have that ingredient in my pantry, I used honey instead. Not quite sure what the purpose of (hot) water is meant to serve, but 3 recipes I looked at used water, so I decided to be a sheep and follow. Honestly? I don't think it matters if you have water or not.
Ingredients
80grams butter
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoon water
1 egg
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup coconut
1 cup wholemeal stoneground flour
3/4 cup raw sugar
1 cup sultanas
Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Place dry ingredients (oats, coconut, flour, sugar and sultanas) in a big bowl and mix. Place butter, honey and water in a bowl or saucepan, melt in the microwave or over the stove. Add the wet mixture and the egg to the dry ingredients and mix well. Place tablespoon-full size cookie dough on the baking tray (use another spoon to push off dough from the spoon onto the tray because the dough is quite sticky). Will make 24 cookies. Place in the oven for 15minutes. Enjoy!!
Tuesday 23 August 2005
Wednesday 17 August 2005
Digital SLR Camera
Totally non-food related, but I have been wanting to buy a dSLR for quite some time now. Harvey Norman is currently having a sale on, and they have their Olympus E-300 for $999. I want!! Went to Myer Megamart to see if they could beat the price, but they say they can only match it as $999 is 'below cost'. Even Rob's friend can't get it cheaper wholesale priced.
It's been such a long time since I dabbled in photography (that being in high school!), but it's something that I have always been interested to do - same with astronomy and music. Never had the money nor the opportunity to buy an SLR camera, telescope or a piano :P. And it seemed that with our overseas plans, things like that weren't likely gonna happen for a few years.. But I've waited long enough, and I need an artistic hobby to keep me sane :)
Anyway, so Rob and I trudged down to Harvey Norman to have a look at the camera and to purchase it (where, coincidentally, Ian was also looking at a digital camera - it was funny: we were standing by the camera display cabinet waiting for the salesguy to finish up serving these two people, and we waited for at least two minutes before I glanced over (somewhat impatiently) at the couple taking up my precious time, and did a double take when I recognised my brother). The salesguy takes out the camera and lets me play with it!!! But that's the sad part because I started becoming unsure of what I ought to be looking for, and doubted if I should get the camera then and there. The main thing that I worried about was the fact that the focus dial on the E-300 seemed to be a dummy dial - i.e. it seemed that the camera can only auto-focus. I asked the guy, and he tried to turn manual focus on, failed, then consulted the manual and said "Hm, it does look like it only has an auto-focus function", to which I replied "Auto-focus? That's unusual for an SLR camera!". Sigh. Anyway, the salesguy finally saw in the manual that in order to learn to use the manual focus, you need to consult the "Advanced Manual" which is on a CD. Highly inconvenient. Anyway I decided to do a little bit more research on SLR cameras before I take the leap to buy it..
It's been such a long time since I dabbled in photography (that being in high school!), but it's something that I have always been interested to do - same with astronomy and music. Never had the money nor the opportunity to buy an SLR camera, telescope or a piano :P. And it seemed that with our overseas plans, things like that weren't likely gonna happen for a few years.. But I've waited long enough, and I need an artistic hobby to keep me sane :)
Anyway, so Rob and I trudged down to Harvey Norman to have a look at the camera and to purchase it (where, coincidentally, Ian was also looking at a digital camera - it was funny: we were standing by the camera display cabinet waiting for the salesguy to finish up serving these two people, and we waited for at least two minutes before I glanced over (somewhat impatiently) at the couple taking up my precious time, and did a double take when I recognised my brother). The salesguy takes out the camera and lets me play with it!!! But that's the sad part because I started becoming unsure of what I ought to be looking for, and doubted if I should get the camera then and there. The main thing that I worried about was the fact that the focus dial on the E-300 seemed to be a dummy dial - i.e. it seemed that the camera can only auto-focus. I asked the guy, and he tried to turn manual focus on, failed, then consulted the manual and said "Hm, it does look like it only has an auto-focus function", to which I replied "Auto-focus? That's unusual for an SLR camera!". Sigh. Anyway, the salesguy finally saw in the manual that in order to learn to use the manual focus, you need to consult the "Advanced Manual" which is on a CD. Highly inconvenient. Anyway I decided to do a little bit more research on SLR cameras before I take the leap to buy it..
Yummy Steamboat @ home
This steamboat actually happened a few weeks ago - Rob only recently uploaded the photo from his phone and that reminded me to post it. My dad came back home from overseas, and suggested that we have a family lunch thing in the form of steamboat. My mum was still overseas, so maybe my dad saw it as a good opportunity to make a "mess" of the kitchen area - I don't know. We all chipped in to bring some food to my parents': Rob and I brought fish, pork, glass noodles, silken tofu and japanese (egg) tofu. Honey bought squid and seafood extender. And between my dad and Faye, there were prawns, scallops, chicken and veges. My dad bought pork bones and all sorts of stuff to make the soup base. And damn, the steamboat was yum! Rob had steamboat at a restaurant with us when we went to Malaysia, and didn't really think much of it (he doesn't really think much of soupy things in general), but he said this steamboat was really nice - much, much nicer than the one we had at the steamboat restaurant in Malaysia. Great yummy food! We estimated that the overall cost came to about $10 per person - and we had tonnes leftover eventhough we all ate to our brims.
Monday 15 August 2005
Coolgardie Safe on Edward Street, East Perth
This place is only about 15mins walk from our apartment (5mins from Claisebrook train station, and 10mins walk to Perth and Northbridge), and has been there (to my knowledge) for at least a couple of years. Got my hands on a buy 1 get 1 free main course voucher in the Perth's Entertainment Book. The special feature of Coolgardie Safe is that they use local Australian produce and "bush" ingredients in their recipes. Always keen to try new things, I suggested to hubby we try this place out (the voucher being an extra incentive) and showed him the menu available on their website. He was keen to try this place, particularly to sample crocodile meat. Bookings at this restaurant are necessary.
Like the rest of the businesses on Edward Street, the building of the restaurant itself is actually an old house which has been converted and renovated to suit a restaurant setting. As we walk in the entrance door, there is a nice covered outdoor area with those outdoor gas heaters. There are about 3 rooms inside the restaurant, all set up for diners. We were greeted and invited by one of the hostesses (somehow the word waitress didn't quite suit the ladies serving us) to choose our seat. At the table were the restaurant's usual menu and the special menu. Our hostess explained the menu to us, told us what the soup of the day was, and also advised that the restaurant is BYO only (there is a corkage of $4.00 per person), which didn't bother us at all as both of us are non-alcoholic drinkers.
For drinks, I went with the "tassie devil" mocktail, which is tomato juice with pepperberry and tabasco - it was kinda spicy but more of an aftertaste - Rob didn't taste any spiciness and thought it tasted like any tomato juice. Rob ordered the "muntharri blur" mocktail which is made with muntharri berries and apple juice - this was a nice sweet drink. (Apologies for the bad quality photos - we forgot our camera and had to rely on hubby's phone camera.)
The entree set-up allows you to pick and choose what you want in your entree, with pricing for the items both individually and as a set of 6. Our hostess highly recommended that we try the "Tastes of Australia" platter as a starter, which included crocodile meat, kangaroo, baby marron, emu sausage, karri smoked chicken, caperberries, trio of australian olives, wild lime compote, bush tomato chutney, quandong relish, beetroot tapinade and damper. This was $12p/p, and was a great way to try a little of everything. Obviously we went with this recommendation, and were pleased we did so. The crocodile meat looked and tasted a little bit like chicken - for some reason I actually expected it to be red meat (I don't like red meat much). The kangaroo looked and tasted like any red meat. We were kinda disappointed that the emu meat came in the form of a sausage because the meat has been processed and you can't really taste much of the actual meat - it tasted very much like a normal sausage does. The smoked chicken were nice. The caperberries tasted nothing like capers and more like olives. The damper was toasted and was yum - we had it with the compote, chutney, relish and the tapinade. We were happy with this platter.
Man-eating-crocodile ;P
For our mains, we went with the seafood platter ($29.80p/p) which had pepperberry tasmanian salmon, lemon myrtle and chilli prawns, shark bay scallops, coffin bay natural oysters, hand cut australian chips, bush tomato chutney and lemon aspen jus. Rob really liked the lemon myrtle juice that came with the prawns, and dipped his chips in the remaining juice left behind after the prawns were eaten. The juice had a nice sweet flowery fragrant taste. The raw oysters were yum (I love natural oysters!), the scallops were cooked to perfection (i.e. not overcooked). I felt that the salmon was a little bit overcooked, but that's a biased opinion from a person who loves sashimi and fresh raw salmon meat.
This will be a good place to bring overseas visitors to let them try "Australian bush" ingredients. Now obviously, this is probably not exactly how the Australian indigenous people nor the bush Aussies traditionally ate (somehow I don't think they would have the facilities to make a 'muntharri blur' mocktail), but you gotta admit that the menu is quite innovative and interesting. Give this place a try for an interesting experience. Grab the voucher too!
Like the rest of the businesses on Edward Street, the building of the restaurant itself is actually an old house which has been converted and renovated to suit a restaurant setting. As we walk in the entrance door, there is a nice covered outdoor area with those outdoor gas heaters. There are about 3 rooms inside the restaurant, all set up for diners. We were greeted and invited by one of the hostesses (somehow the word waitress didn't quite suit the ladies serving us) to choose our seat. At the table were the restaurant's usual menu and the special menu. Our hostess explained the menu to us, told us what the soup of the day was, and also advised that the restaurant is BYO only (there is a corkage of $4.00 per person), which didn't bother us at all as both of us are non-alcoholic drinkers.
For drinks, I went with the "tassie devil" mocktail, which is tomato juice with pepperberry and tabasco - it was kinda spicy but more of an aftertaste - Rob didn't taste any spiciness and thought it tasted like any tomato juice. Rob ordered the "muntharri blur" mocktail which is made with muntharri berries and apple juice - this was a nice sweet drink. (Apologies for the bad quality photos - we forgot our camera and had to rely on hubby's phone camera.)
The entree set-up allows you to pick and choose what you want in your entree, with pricing for the items both individually and as a set of 6. Our hostess highly recommended that we try the "Tastes of Australia" platter as a starter, which included crocodile meat, kangaroo, baby marron, emu sausage, karri smoked chicken, caperberries, trio of australian olives, wild lime compote, bush tomato chutney, quandong relish, beetroot tapinade and damper. This was $12p/p, and was a great way to try a little of everything. Obviously we went with this recommendation, and were pleased we did so. The crocodile meat looked and tasted a little bit like chicken - for some reason I actually expected it to be red meat (I don't like red meat much). The kangaroo looked and tasted like any red meat. We were kinda disappointed that the emu meat came in the form of a sausage because the meat has been processed and you can't really taste much of the actual meat - it tasted very much like a normal sausage does. The smoked chicken were nice. The caperberries tasted nothing like capers and more like olives. The damper was toasted and was yum - we had it with the compote, chutney, relish and the tapinade. We were happy with this platter.
Man-eating-crocodile ;P
For our mains, we went with the seafood platter ($29.80p/p) which had pepperberry tasmanian salmon, lemon myrtle and chilli prawns, shark bay scallops, coffin bay natural oysters, hand cut australian chips, bush tomato chutney and lemon aspen jus. Rob really liked the lemon myrtle juice that came with the prawns, and dipped his chips in the remaining juice left behind after the prawns were eaten. The juice had a nice sweet flowery fragrant taste. The raw oysters were yum (I love natural oysters!), the scallops were cooked to perfection (i.e. not overcooked). I felt that the salmon was a little bit overcooked, but that's a biased opinion from a person who loves sashimi and fresh raw salmon meat.
This will be a good place to bring overseas visitors to let them try "Australian bush" ingredients. Now obviously, this is probably not exactly how the Australian indigenous people nor the bush Aussies traditionally ate (somehow I don't think they would have the facilities to make a 'muntharri blur' mocktail), but you gotta admit that the menu is quite innovative and interesting. Give this place a try for an interesting experience. Grab the voucher too!
Wednesday 3 August 2005
Asahi Japanese Restaurant in Mt Lawley
Must be getting lazy with taking photos. Kinda awkward to do it when you're out with friends - takes too much effort to explain why I'm taking pictures of my food :P. Anyway, last Saturday, we went to Asahi on Beaufort Street (15mins walk from our apartment) with my friends from my days back in university for a long-overdue catchup dinner. Rob and I already have a favourite Japanese place at Taka's on Wellington/Beaufort Street or on Shafto Lane, both in Perth - they serve great authentic affordable Japanese food (most expensive meal is $10, unless you go for the party platters) and free unlimited self-serve roasted rice green tea. Hence I went to Asahi with a critical mind.
It is quite a cosy restaurant with a nice decor. My group of 10 were seated by the window, and we had to remove our shoes because it was one of those tables that mimics the Japanese style of seating on the ground for meals. I wore boots, so I snuck into my seat. Robbie wasn't so fortunate because one of the waitresses saw him and requested he removed his shoes. The place looked authentic enough, with Japanese waitresses and chefs. But it all came down to the menu itself.
The menu selections weren't bad, with choices of the standard different types of sushi, set rice meals with miso soup + salad, and teppanyaki-style dishes (unfortunately, the teppanyaki dishes are all prepared in the kitchen, so none of the showy business like at Midori). With the sushi dishes, you can choose small, medium or large sizes. The prices of the teppanyaki dishes ranged from around $16 for chicken and beef up to around $30 for lobster, and rice is not included. The set rice meals like oyakodon and katsudon were priced around the $15 mark.
I chose Chirashi set for $18.90, which was the priciest rice set - an assorted selection of sashimi served on top of sushi rice, served with miso soup and salad. Sashimi is my benchmark with which I rate how good a Japanese restaurant is in terms of freshness and cost. I quite liked the idea of using the sweet sushi rice with the sashimi. The sashimi - raw salmon, tuna and snapper, and octopus - were fresh and beautiful. The salad was classilly dressed with japanese salad dressing.
Rob went for the unadon set for $17.90 - grilled eel served with rice, miso and salad. It was nice, however not much different to other unadon that I've tried.
All in all, it was a pleasant experience. It was rather pricey, and obviously catered to Westerners, but the variety of the menu offerings made up for the costs. Unlike Taka's, I doubt you'll see many Japanese students and backpackers frequent this restaurant.
It is quite a cosy restaurant with a nice decor. My group of 10 were seated by the window, and we had to remove our shoes because it was one of those tables that mimics the Japanese style of seating on the ground for meals. I wore boots, so I snuck into my seat. Robbie wasn't so fortunate because one of the waitresses saw him and requested he removed his shoes. The place looked authentic enough, with Japanese waitresses and chefs. But it all came down to the menu itself.
The menu selections weren't bad, with choices of the standard different types of sushi, set rice meals with miso soup + salad, and teppanyaki-style dishes (unfortunately, the teppanyaki dishes are all prepared in the kitchen, so none of the showy business like at Midori). With the sushi dishes, you can choose small, medium or large sizes. The prices of the teppanyaki dishes ranged from around $16 for chicken and beef up to around $30 for lobster, and rice is not included. The set rice meals like oyakodon and katsudon were priced around the $15 mark.
I chose Chirashi set for $18.90, which was the priciest rice set - an assorted selection of sashimi served on top of sushi rice, served with miso soup and salad. Sashimi is my benchmark with which I rate how good a Japanese restaurant is in terms of freshness and cost. I quite liked the idea of using the sweet sushi rice with the sashimi. The sashimi - raw salmon, tuna and snapper, and octopus - were fresh and beautiful. The salad was classilly dressed with japanese salad dressing.
Rob went for the unadon set for $17.90 - grilled eel served with rice, miso and salad. It was nice, however not much different to other unadon that I've tried.
All in all, it was a pleasant experience. It was rather pricey, and obviously catered to Westerners, but the variety of the menu offerings made up for the costs. Unlike Taka's, I doubt you'll see many Japanese students and backpackers frequent this restaurant.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)