The Bug

It has been a very cold start to the winter. As expected, there have been people coughing, sneezing and blowing their noses in the office. Lots of bugs going around. I caught one myself too. Luckily I caught the cooking bug, which is quite a nice, healthy variety (except when it compels you to buy expensive gadgets and exotic ingredients which will remain idle once the bug has gone).

Last week, I felt like I had fulfilled all my cravings to last a year. These were some of the dishes I made:

Crab Noodles without the Crab

When we have noodles with crab at the restaurant here, what I really look forward to is not the crab, but the noodles. The noodles would have soaked up the sauce and the fragrance of the holy trinity - spring onion, garlic and ginger lingers with every bite of the noodles. I substituted the crab with prawns and fish fillet. The dish turned out better than I expected... it was restaurant-class!

Char Tow Kway

There is a Char Tow Kway stall in the market near my house in Malaysia. Each time I walked past the stall there would be a long line of people waiting for the husband and wife team to cook up their order. They cooked the tow kway in a large girdle greased with lots and lots of oil and the secret ingredient... lard.

I made the tow kway with rice flour and shreded white radish then steamed for half an hour. It was rather sticky when it came out, and in no hurry to eat it, I put it in the fridge. The next day, the texture was much firmer and manageable. I cut it into cubes and fried it with chai poh, lap cheong, garlic and egg. I wished I had some lard though. It would have made the difference, I believe.

Siu Mai

Siu Mai is one of my favourite food when I was a child. Later, when I came to Australia and discovered the bursty big prawns in each har gao, I neglected the humble pork only filling of the siu mai. Last week I decided I must have them again. I was scratching my head to how to wrap these little fellas, luckily the trusty www advised to cut the four corners of the wonton skins off and hey presto!

I mixed 2:1 portions of minced pork to minced prawns, then mixed in some spring onions, salt, sugar and egg to bind. The result was really yummy siu mai! I topped each one with corn, pea and carrot. Sound familiar? Yeah... straight from the bag of mixed veges I keep in the freezer...

Food Trucks

A year ago when Gaz mentioned to me the phenomena of food trucks, he received a very lacklustre response from me. More tsk tsk pooh pah than wow and ahhs. Since then, the food truck phenomena has caught on in Australia and has made appearances in recent food festivals in Melbourne. These food trucks can be elusive, and advertises their whereabouts through Facebook etc.

The new food truck concept is quite refreshing because traditionally food trucks were viewed as junk food on wheels. Think of the ice cream truck and the hot dog stand. These days, they serve good quality food, fusion food at reasonable prices. In America, at least. Think Kogi - fusion Korean and Mexican, wowee!

So, it was on that premise that I ended up in a parking lot of an inner city shopping centre on a cold wintry day. We had read about Barkly Square's food trucks on the www and decided to pay a visit. Each week, there were a number of food trucks which would be stationed there namely Dhaba Truck, Gumbo Kitchen (only on Sundays the last time we checked), Big Moose, Cornutopia and Grill'd (the famous burger chain - their truck is pretty sleek).

When we were there on a Saturday, there were Dhaba Truck, Big Moose and Grill'd. Our mouths were already watering with the promise of hot, tasty and delicious food in the cold weather. We took a seat on the cold metal chairs and took a snazzy looking leaflet of the redevelopment of Barkly Square from the dirty plastic table in front of us. If only the surroundings were as snazzy as the crisp leaflet. We were in a cordoned off area of a parking lot, which for some reason makes me want to don colourful but mismatched beanie and scarf and set a hollow oil drum on fire.

Gaz the hunter went in search of food while I stayed on the cold metal chair to keep our places. These were what he got:

Butter Chicken on Rice - Dhaba Truck

Hot Dog - Big Moose

The butter chicken looked delicious, and showed a lot of promise. But sadly, it was a little bland. I remember a better butter chicken dish cooked by an Indian friend and my mouth watered just then. But not for the one dished by Dhaba Truck.

The hot dog from Big Moose was tasty. It was not as delicious as the ones by Lockton Farm Sausages (see previous posts) but the taste was good, and the meat was firm. The sausage was topped by finely grated cheese which Gaz said was blow torched just prior to serving to melt it. Wow!! Now... if only the bun was toasted, it would have been really nice. I think I would have preferred the bread toasted rather than the cheese melted with a blow torch. It was rather like going to a wan tan mee stall and having a plate of cold, limp noodles but hey, each plate is garnished with a flake of gold leaf!

Overall, we were both quite disappointed. Perhaps our expectations were too high, or perhaps we chose our dishes poorly. Whatever it is, we will not be chasing food trucks all over the state in the near future.

Klunk No More

I took my car for a minor service today and ended up with a $900 bill and two new (who knows? I certainly don't know if they are!) car parts. There was a new technician at the dealership who served me this time, and he was very thorough.

There were some noises which had been around for some time, even at the last major service which was not picked up. But this guy, he was good. He spotted it right away and informed me that the left bearing wheel nut whatever thing is noisy and needed to be changed to stop the noise.

My car is no spring chicken in car years, but I think for all the crazy driving I do in it, it deserves to be well maintained.

Klunk no more!

Scotch Eggs

I wonder who came up with the name Scotch Eggs for these little balls of deliciousness. I don't see no tartan, nor bagpipes, only delicious eggs wrapped in salty and spicy meat!

I made these little Scotch Eggs last week using quails eggs and minced turkey meat spiced with a dash of allspice. It was painstaking peeling the gazillions of little fresh quails eggs (canned ones are not quite the same!) but the thought of sinking my teeth into one of them made it all worthwhile.

When I was a kid, my fave food was hard boiled quails eggs. I ate so many of them my cholestorol levels are still inflated from when I was two. Due to its size, I thought it to be an exclusively children food, and was very proprietary about it.

I also made Thai Basil Chicken, another of my fave dishes. I put 3 tablespoons of fish sauce to fry this dish, and it didn't even need any sugar because of the natural sweetness of basil, capsicum and carrots.

Scotch Eggs and Thai Basil Chicken may sound like a strange combination for dinner, but they're just a collection of what I like to eat!

Butterfly Cupcakes

For Mother's Day, we bought a card with a cutout butterfly that pops up once the card is opened. I was really taken with the card so much so that I drew inspiration from it to make the accompanying gift - butterfly cupcakes packaged in a home made box.

I made different types of cupcakes starting with a basic vanilla cupcake base. From left: sultanas, plain vanilla, assorted nuts, and mandarin. To make the 'butterflies', I cut a circle from the top of the cupcakes, then cut the circle into half, pipe cream to fill the cut out part and stick the semi circles back on to make it look like butterfly wings. For the mandarin flavoured ones, I place two segments of mandarin onto the cream instead. I think they look fairly decorative, without use of artificial colouring.

Six cupcakes in a box... I think I spent more time making the box than on the cupcakes!! Once I have an idea in my head, I feel I must persevere with it till it gets done. I spent 3 hours on a Friday night hunching over the concept, drawings, measurements and execution. One would think I was designing something as big and grand as a house!!

But eventually the box did come together.... I was quite proud of my handiwork and learnt quite a number of things on the way. What to do the next time I decide to make a box... IF I made another box...

For the lid, I put in a clear plastic window. If not for the window to display the cupcakes, I would have just bought a box in a shop for the same price as the materials I needed for the box, and a lot less effort.

The finished product

 The cupcakes in the box did not seem like much, but don't they say it's the thought that counts?