Tapas @ Japaz

As per my usual scenario, I ended up getting abit lost to my dinner destination. I had read previous reviews of this place and had high hopes of the place.

My dinner companion and I decided on ordering the $68 tapas menu which included a wide range of their specialties.

Out of the 8-10 items that we had that night about half of it deserves a mention.

The most memorable item of the night was their take on the classic French onion soup. It had a Japanese influence with its wide variety of Japanese mushrooms swimming in it. It had a nice peppery kick.

The next choice selection was the roasted scampi. It was one of the largest scampi that i have ever seen. It was cooked very nicely with sprinklings of the sun dried tomato adding a pleasant touch.

As this was a tapas restaurant, they had their take on meatballs that used
wagyu beef. The dish was called Wagyu Meatballs & Seasonal Vegetables in Tomato Salsa. Did the beef quality in the meatballs have any difference in texture? I didn’t really think so. But it was well executed.

But surprisingly this place really loves their seafood, I guess having Japanese Owners might have a big influenced. They had deep fried the zucchini flowers stuffed with seafood mousse. It had a nice touch of tempura coating surrounding it.

I am normally not a fan of super savoury things. However, my taste buds decided that it liked this savoury dish.

It was a piping hot gooey cheese mixture that had bits of seafood in it. The manchego Cheese and the seafood had surprisingly blended very well with each other.

Unfortunately, I can’t really remember the order of the dishes that came out. One of the other dishes that was kind of unique was the deep fried portobello mushrooms. It was the first time that I had the mushrooms deep fried. The regular way of cooking these kind of mushrooms is baking/grilling it in the oven.

The rest of the dishes of the night are only to oogle at as they were not the stand out items for me.

Aburi Salmon with Chili, Celery & Ginger Salad

Scallops with a Sweet Soy & Onion Butter

Organic Spinach with Pinon & Sultanas

Fresh Strawberries, Strawberry & Ceylon Tea Sorbet in a White Chocolate & Coconut Cream

Overall, it was a good experience as now i know what to order off the ala carte menu on my next visit.

The chocolate room

Wow it seems that Sydney is slowly becoming a chocolate Mecca ! Max Brenner , lindtt, San churros and this undiscovered gem called the chocolate room.

As apt as it’s name, it’s literally full of chocolates although I still like the chocolate whiff that welcomes people entering max brennar. It even has a funky diet tip which I’m sure die hard chocoholics will love.

My friends and I headed there as we were craving for something sweet after dinner. The menu listing of the cafe had a really wide range. There was at least 10 different flavours of hot chocolate available.

I was craving something warm and ordered the gianduja hot chocolate. Gianduja is a type of chocolate which is very smooth. Nevertheless to say, the drink had hit the right spot for me.

“A” was enamoured by the pretty designer chococlates and ordered a tasting plate. They were neatly displayed in their lil’ homes. It made me feel that I was the big bad wolf blowing their house down by walloping them. Out of the 2 chocolates that I tasted what stood out to me was their blackcurrant flavoured chocolate. It had a subtle taste and brought me back to my childhood memories of enjoying ribena icecubes.

The Belgian waffles display on the banner inside the store caught “j”‘s eye. I guess it is now pretty obvious to guess what was ordered. BELGIAN WAFFLES!! It was definitely as pretty as it looked on the banner. I am pretty sure that taste wise it was delicious as the plate was nearly finished off.

I’ll definitely note the chocolate room as one of my dessert places to go on in the city.

Awaiting my macaroon disaster

Promises after promises…….i finally plucked the courage to sink into the deep end to attempt the formidable macaroon. Did I succeed? I guess I could say I did with a 10% success rate (or in plain terms… 8 decent looking macaroons) I think that is perhaps the reason why the patisseres charge exorbitant prices for their macaroons.

I guess I could have predicted that a disaster was going to happen when it took 45 minutes to sift the almond meal, icing sugar and cocoa powder. It took so long because my icing sugar and cocoa powder were in lumps and I had to spend a fair amount of time trying to shimmy it down the strainer. My eggs became another hint for me that this macaroon attempt would be an epic fail. I had bought a carton of eggs without noticing that 2 of them had cracked. I am normally pretty cautious with my egg purchases but I think that this may have slipped under my radar.

The recipe from Pierre hermes book about chocolate desserts became my inspirational guide. Numerous food bloggers that have attempted making macaroons have stressed on the importances of macaroons having feet. Macaroon’s feet basically describes an outer layer rim that that forms when the shells are baking in the oven.

Out of the 3 trays that I baked only 1 tray could be deemed decent enough to be used. was contemplating on giving up after the 1st tray and see whether it was worthwhile making the ganache. The 1st tray had only 1 shell that was not cracked.

The 2nd tray was a goner. Upon placing the last tray in the oven, I decided to google the average temperature to bake a macaroon. It is said to be around 150 degrees. The temperature was lowered and it worked like a dream. It finally looked that something was shaping up in the oven.

I also had the healthiest dinner that any one could have dreamt of ( Macaroon shells). It kept me on a sugar high till the effect wore out on me and I was starving by 10+ in the evening.

The end result of my effort had resulted in a mountain of cracked shells which could probably have been mistaken as chocolate cookies because they were pretty crunchy.

It was a big question on what was possible to sandwich between my 16 precious shells. I no longer wanted to make the ganache. Jam would have made it too soggy. Nutella would have made the end product to be too sweet . Peanut butter would had made the macaroon to be too rich. The last resort that may have seemed possible was black sesame paste. It was a perfect marriage- Chocolate macaroon shells sandwiched with black sesame paste. I had a small lil’ celebration in my mind as I tasted the finish product. I couldn’t believe how well it had blended together.

The precious macaroons were packed away to be given away to my taste tester. It passed the taste test. Whoooooooopeeeee….It also resulted in my tester giving me suggestions on what fillings to use the next time round. However, the next time round will need to have me improve my success rate to be above 50% so that I can move on to the next step of learning to make the ganache.

The article that led to an oyster hunt

An article about a burly chap called Jim Wild led to an afternoon drive to Greenwell Point to visit an Oyster farm. It was my first time and it was an eye opener experience. I had never ever tasted such a fresh but definitely one of cheapest sydney rock oysters. It felt that I was on cloud 9, perhaps that is why people say that it is an aprhosiadiac

It was also a learning curve as one of the owner’s buddies was very willing to share the story about harvesting an oyster.

I wish it would make me think twice before I gulp one of those morsels when I have it again. But it is so hard to resist.

According to the expert, he said that it takes about 3 years before the sydney rock oyster will grow to a decent size to be available to the retailer market. During those 3 years, it has to be sorted, graded and dried about 13 times. That is definitely a lot of back breaking tender loving care that cultivates the oyster.

He also informed me that they grew the oysters out in the mudflats. I asked him why and his reply was so that oyster lovers like yourself won’t knick it. I guess that would be true if I knew how to shuck an oyster.

It is probably wise to say that shucking an oyster is an artform which Jim wild definitely knows a lot about. He had won the title of the worlds faster shucker a few times in the past. He has the trophies proudly displayed for any of his walk in customers to see. I also can definitely affirm that he’s a good shucker as there was none of those shell bits while my family and I were walloping them.

While we were there, we met another couple who drove 100 km just to buy oysters from him. This was their 2nd time visiting the farm.

I guess this just proves that it is one of the best

A very green day

Am I having a bout of jealousy.. or am i just green with envy?

It really is quite a curious situation. But it allowed me to churn out 2 green goodies.

Although for my first attempt at making the pandan chiffon cake, i really do think i met a cousin of Shrek. Should I call him Drac?

I had added too much pandan paste. Apparently it was meant to be 3/4 of a tsp and I added 1 tbsp! Hehz.. perhaps that shows that i have a very liberal side to myself.

Tastewise, it definitely rocked! Although one of my guinea pigs (GP) said that it looked too green. The outcome from when it was in the oven and out of the oven is so drastic from each other.

I really did think that I managed to deceive myself with this picture.

With the leftover coconut milk, i decided to try and attempt mr shrek (kueh salat/ talam) again. Unfortunately, he still decided to give me a face.

But he was overwhemingly handsome.

I realised that on my 1st attempt I may have misread the instructions. I had forgotten to add 100 ml of water. No wonder the original mr shrek was so short and a tad bit sweet.

The addition of the water and extra egg yolk from the left over ingredients of the chiffon cake had resulted in a very smooth custard layer.

I gave it away as a present to my GPs who had it for tea. It scored a roaring approval. One of them even asked what other kuehs can i make.

Does this mean that I have one more willing guinea pig ?

I made a friend called Shrek

Please meet shrek who has a smily face to greet his visitors.

In order to overcome our chinese new year craving, my friend and I decided to attempt 2 local delights (Shrek aka Kueh Salat or Otherwise known as Mr Green & Kek Lapis)

The kueh salat is basically made of two ingredients – glutinous rice and pandan custard. This is one of my favourite local kuehs which I always have to eat when I’m back home. I’m so glad that i finally am able to make it.

It was definitely a very wise idea to make it together if not making the kek lapis would have taken forever.

We followed the receipe from Nonya food which is a sister site of Rasa Malaysia. It is a really cool site which always makes me “lao nua” at the author’s beautiful pictures.

http://nyonyafood.com/kek-lapis-indonesian-layer-cake/

Unfortunately, we had a bit of a baking disaster that turned out to be quite alright. We misread the recipe and used castor sugar instead of icing sugar!! Plus, futher down the track we realised that we forgot to put the all spice in. We managed to salvage it by mixing it with the rest of the batter.

It was definitely quite an experience making the local delights and having a taste of home.

Hopefully with my new additions of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my Home to Yours and Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Desserts in my cookbook collection will result in me expanding my repetoire!

a new beginning

We have finally gone on our first adventure on the 28th of november ’09. Hopefully this will mark a beginning in more cooking adventures ahead.

1 kitchen, 2 wannabes (B&M), 9 dishes + 7 testers.  Would it be a flop.. or a roaring success?

Judge for yourself as this post will tell you our bumps along this lil’ journey.

It was decided that we should not risk too much on our 1st attempt. Plus, we wanted the people to come back. Better not scare them off on our first try…

M’s lovely poached quail eggs,pancetta on mini toast

I was facisnated by the process that M used to cooked the quail eggs. Quail eggs are so tiny that if I did it I would have probably landed up with egg shells in the dish.

Hence, my egg dish interpretation was the chawan mushi with salmon roe.

Unfortunately I have yet to perfect the silky smooth appearance. Till then, i should just nickname my dish to be “pimply” the egg custard

The next 2 courses were our protein dishes. It shared a similar idealogy – MARINATION!

B’s miso cod.

This was my 2nd attempt @ this dish. A trick learnt was that the longer you steep it in the marinade the miso taste would be infused further into the fish.

M’s rice wine chicken with ginger & scallion

M had marinated this at her place the previous night before coming over with her gear . It was a very yummy dish. Could this perhaps be the next hainan chicken rice dish?

We were adopting a more fusion approach as our rice (carb) dish took a journey to lil’ italy

M’s mushroom risotto & B’s Linguine with Oriental Mushrooms

By now our guests were pretty stuffed with happy tummies. But every meal needs to have a vegetable dish.

M’s roasted veggies (pumpkin, potatoes, dutch carrots & parsnips)

For B, dinners would have been incomplete without dessert.

M’s japanese cheesecake

I always have a fear of rising things as I fear that they would sink. We decided to accompany the cheesecake with icecream. Why? I guess I should leave that  idea up to M to spill if she wishes.

M’s cheesecake & B’s black sesame pudding with kinako powder.

By the end of the night, we had 5 happy guests, 2 worn out rookies and one tired dog.