Eating Out: 大长今dae jang geum－Chinatown

This blog post is about a week late. Last week I went shopping for an 18th pressie for Mat with Ngoc and Abel. After buying his present we went out for lunch. (Sounds a bit like Ngoc's blog post bout this day..btw check out her blog cos it's funny as and she's one of the most amazing artists --> Ngoc's Blog)
Anyways back to lunch. Ngoc felt like Korean so we ended up walking past this place where they had two ladies dressed in traditional korean outfits holding menus out the front, I felt so sorry for them as it was 35 degrees outside. We walked inside to find a massive flight of stairs (we were so tired from pressie shopping) but awesome aircon. Sat down and they gave us a massive bottle of chilled water : ) and they're teacups were abnormally large....they took forever to fill up.

 

(photo courtesy of Ngoc)

I ordered the beef bulgogi set which is the plate in the top right corner, all the dishes in the middle and a bowl of rice. The beef was quite sweet but I think it's supposed to be like that. Definietly needs to be eaten with rice. The kimchi was quite sour but not extremely chilli which was good. All the rest of the accompaniments were pretty average. Though the chilli cucumber was refreshing on such a hot day. Ngoc and Abel both chose noodles (hence the two bowls in the pic) Both were boiling hot for ages. Bad choice for them on such a hot day (thank god that place had awesome aircon). Ngoc had a Chicken Noodles I think, looked very yummy. And Abel had Seafood Noodles which came with this massive prawn he didn't know how to eat without using his hands. Abel seems to love the noodles (think they were handmade) and ate them in world record time despite the soup being boiling hot.

Verdict? Definitely would go there again to try their noodles. The place was super spacious, very hard to find spacious restaurants in Chinatown. Lunch was under $10 for each of us which I guess is pretty good for us students with little money. And it probably one of the
cleaner places in Chinatown, very clean indeed.

Cooking: Orange and Coconut Tart

I made this tart exactly a week ago and half of it is still in the fridge...I think that might be saying something.
So my cousin came down from Brissie last Saturday and came over for dinner. I decided to make dessert and chose a recipe from my wall. Lemon, Lime and Coconut Tart. I realised that we didn't have any lemons or limes so chose oranges instead.
It was a pain in the ass to make, I don't like working with shortcrust pastry as you have to blind bake it and all that. Therefore I most probably will not make this tart again.

Looks can be deceivin. The pastry was all crumbly and the middle of the tart was not set and therefore the entire middle part fell apart when I tipped the tart out...and it was a complete mess.

The tart was shockingly sweet, the filling and the pastry. However I quite like the addiction of dessicated coconut in the pastry.

Update

Sorry there hasn't been a post recently. I've been extremely busy as my cousin has come down from brissie. I'll try to update my blog next week...hopefully. Tonnes to blog about.

Shopping in HK

I never really posted about shopping in HK. HK is famous for two things, eating and shopping. I think I've covered the eating part pretty well so it's time to cover the shopping part.
I didn't buy as many clothes as I planned to but it's better than nothing I guess.
I got this fobby hoodie in Taiwan. Although it wasn't exactly cheap, I quite liked it except for the incomprehensible writing on the front. I needed something to remind me of Taiwan.

Sham Shui Po is also a great shopping destination. It is an older part of HK but very busy with locals and tourists. The popular Ap Liu Street is the place to find electronics like torches, batteries, iPhone cases, phone cases, earphones...all those sorts of things. Most likely the cheapest place for these sorts of things but remember to BARGAIN.  Another destination for tech savvy people is Golden Computer Centre which is nearby. This place sells lots of computer parts, keyboards, mice, all computer related things, consoles, console acessories, console games.....the list is endless. If you have something you want to buy, MAKE SURE you ask a few different shops for their prices as the price difference can be quite large. I bought wii motion plus (less than AUS$20 each) and a nunchuck there.
I know girls aren't really interested in these sorts of things but don't worry. Walk around the nearby streets and you'll find TONNES of wholesale fashion shops with tonnes of designs to suit anyone. Endless shops at INSANE prices. This is where my aunty got this jacket for me, I love it because it's super warm.

Another good place to shop is at Dragon Centre. It's a nine storey shopping centre with TONNES of shops and restaurants. The "Apple Mall" is pretty good, lots of teenage stuff at reasonably cheap prices. This is where I got my AWESOME LEEHOM phone accessory (but my phone has no hole thingo to dangle things off, stupid samsung =.=")

But my favourite place to shop is MONGKOK. Also where you can find the most tourists. The famous Ladies Market :) There I picked up my new favourite toy which is doing my head in. My new rubiks cube :)

Yes it's a mahjong cube. I can't seem to solve it properly.







And a HK top for about $3 aussie :) It's a yum cha tshirt.

But the BEST place to shop is Argyle Centre (still in Mongkok). This is the place to shop if you're into asian fashion. Super cheap stuff.

Weird tshirt I got. Theres a freaky clown on the back, even freaks me out.






Funky Hello Kitty. It actually looks kinda like a robot. Two shirts for HK$70 (AUD$10).







Also bought a jumper and a jacket. Both for $10 aussie each. Wish I could have bought more but there just wasn't enough time. Next time I go back I'll be there from when they open till when they close :)
That's bought it for now. I'll post about the shoes I got at a later date.

Eating Out: Korean :) at White Tomato (City) and Ice Cream Mochi

Met up with Nals for lunch today. I owed her a korean meal from november last year. Tiff tagged along since she didn't have anything to do after the neap bio lecture in the morning.
We walked through Chinatown and only saw one korean restaurant with 2 waitresses outside holding the menu convincing you to eat there. However that place looked expensive so we walked around for a bit more to find another place. Found one on burke st called White Tomato.
The environment was very nice, spacious but most importantly, it wasn't noisy like some restaurants in the city. Maybe it was because we went at 2:30, past lunch hour. The waitress spoke limited english, wrote in korean and was very pretty. I ordered a beef bibimbab, Nals ordered a chicken bibimbab and Tiff ordered a tofu seafood hotpot with rice which looked insanely chilli.
We managed to watch the chef cook and it looked very cool. Watching him move the wok, throwing it up and catching it again, the flame was fierce.

My meal. There was a tiny bit of beef compared to Nals' massive heap of chicken. I was disappointed at how unfair the different servings of meat was. I feel that a tiny bit more of each ingredient would have been better as after I mixed my rice up there seemed to be very little ingredients mixed in. Taste? Quite nice. A bit like fried rice but better. All the flavours went well together, I particularly liked the egg and mushroom. The beef was a bit on the bland side. Nals complained that it was too oily unlike the one she ate in Korea. But I guess the oil makes everything taste that little bit better.

I would definitely come back but to try a different dish, they had soooo many choices.

After lunch we went to the asian grocery store where they had 90c pocky which Nals got. We bought the mochi ice cream thingos for dessert just like the ones I had in HK.

From left to right.

• The packaging of my chocolate ice cream mochi. $1.60. In HK you get doublt the mochi for that price.
• My icy mochi ball. Tasted NO WHERE near as good as what you get in HK. The ice cream was ROCK HARD and there was ice all over my mochi.
• Nals green one mochi ball. It looked nothing like the picture on the front. Supposedly ice cream with big pieces of walnuts in it, in reality tiny bits of walnut. The skin of the mochi ball did not stick to the ice cream. The ice cream fell apart. It was a fail mochi ball.
  

Raw Beans just for Xiaowei

As some of you might have read in the shoutbox, Xiaowei reckons that you can eat raw beans.
Okay sure you can eat them raw because you can eat anything raw but it doesn't mean it taste good.
So just wondering who eats raw beans? Like green beans, not peas, beans. Leave a comment please.

Something random but does anyone else think the Xiaowei is an awesome name or am I just weird? It just sounds so nice to me...

Cooking-Salad + New Utensils

Something extremely random but I'm just curious to know whether anyone else is like me. When you buy a roasted chicken from Safeway/Coles or similar sort of place, do you rip bits off to eat the second you get home? It's irresistable, the smell is just mouth watering.

So a couple of days ago we bought a roast chicken and had some left over which I decided to use to make a asian style chicken salad as it was sooooo hot that day.
Ingredients: Carrot, Celery, Beans, Spanish Onion, Lettuce, Chicken.
Utensil Number 1: Bought in HK :) Juilenne Peeler? No clue what it's called but it looks like a vegetable peeler but it also cuts it into strips as well. Very good tool, makes life a lot lot easier. So you pretty much just use it like a vegetable peeler and the carrot (or whatever you are peeling) will became thin strings of carrot. Saved me sooo much time. I don't really see any bad points...cept for it doesn't peel vegetables...but it's not supposed to I guess.

Utensil Number 2: The sharpest knife I've ever used. Also bought in HK. CERAMIC KNIFE. Been around for ages but we never got one until this year. I swear this knife is amazing, it cut the onion so it was see through thin. Cuts through meat as though as it is soft cheese. However there is a downside, as it is extremely sharp, it is OUTRAGEOUSLY dangerous, you can slice your finger open just by cleaning it. Also it cannot cut through bone and is easily broken/shattered.

Doesn't look very nice yeah? Tasted alright. The dressing was too thick though, unfortunately we ran out of hoisin sauce, peanut butter, chilli sauce..everything I was looking for so I had to mix whatever I could find into a dressing. Used, last tiny bit of hoisin sauce, some sesame paste I found, sesame oil, sweet chilli sauce, chilli flakes and quite a bit of bottled lime juice to thin it out and to balance out all the sweetness.

Verdict? Refreshing in the hot weather and felt good to finally eat a tonne of vegies after a month of eating out every day in HK. Could be better next time if I can find the right sauces.

Cooking-Mango Pancake

Due to the disappointment of not being able to eat many mango pancakes in HK I decided to make my own 3 days ago to bring over to a family friend's. I discovered that it is extremely difficult to find a Mango Pancake recipe online especially in English. Found one that was posted on a couple of different sites so I went with it.The hardest part of such a simple dessert is making hte pancake because it isn't like any normal pancake, it is very moist, not fluffy, chewy and very thin. The recipe sounded simple but when it came to cooking them it was merely impossible to master due to the fact that no oil was being used and the pancake was getting stuck onto the pan. A nightmare to clean. So essentially the pancake is steamed in a pan....
The mango cubes and whipped cream was very straightforward to prepare.
Another problem I encountered was the pancake cracking after folding the pancake. I guess this could be because of several reasons. 1. The pancake not being moist enough. 2. The pancake not being thin enough. 3.Wrong batter?
I kept forgetting to take a pic until I've bitten into it.

Taste? Similar but not close enough to what it is supposed to taste like. The mango was too hard, not fragrant enough. The cream was too whipped. The pastry was just wrong. I guess it was alright for my first go.

Last Day

Went to China on the 3rd and 4th of Jan. Another food trip but I'm not going to blog about it. The food wasn't too great, different but not outstanding...to tell you the truth I didn't take any pics XD And about the first China food trip, that blog post is still coming along due to Microsoft Word issues. I promise I'll finish it by the end of the week.

So back to my last day in HK. The day was mainly spent packing our endless luggage.
My aunty ate lunch with us, our last lunch in HK was of course CONGEE :) which was also our first lunch in HK. I ate a congee with fish slices, beef, corn and choy sum. Yes that is all in the congee not separate. No pic sorry but it was really different having corn and choy sum in congee but at the same time very nice and sweet. I might actually add corn to my congee in the future.
We then WALKED to Sha Tin Plaza and had to look for a laptop for my cousin but unfortunately they were sold out throughout all the big reliable retailers in HK. Since congee doesn't keep you full for long we had afternoon tea at Pokka Cafe.

Mum's Hokkaido Coffee (cold). Came with Hokkaido milk which is supposed to be really nice. But what I found interesting was they even have coffee ice cubes so your coffee doesn't get watered down.




"Romantic Dessert" obviously we didn't choose this for its name but for the amount of variety. We managed to share this between 5 people. Favourite was the chocolate mouse cake and the green tea ice cream, but really they were all divine.





My lychee drink with sorbet. The bottom was sweet lychee syrup followed by lemonade and a ball of rock hard sorbet floating around. INCREDIBLY expensive at $6 AUSSIE but it was relaxing to have afternoon tea with family.

 

Dad's fresh fruit sundae. Looked amazing, dad ate it without saying a word so I take it was nice.

Doug's ice cream thingo with coffee liqueur. Doug found this really weird as he ate it by layer, not mixing the layers together. Overwhelming his taste buds. Looked awesome though.

Dinner at Cafe De Coral for the last time. Great place to spend my last dinner in HK, at the HK trademark Cafe De Coral. I chose the HOT POT for like $6 aussie :)

The top tray is sliced pork and beef, the tray under is all the vegies, and noodles. I felt like such a pig since I ate it all but it was soooo fuunn. You're own little pot of boiling soup base (pork bone) and just cook away. Soooo yum and fun.

If you have never had Hot Pot before you have to try it at least once and with a massive group of friends or family. Good times :)

So that rounds off the HK trip unfortunately. I hope you enjoyed reading about HK food. But don't worry, I'll still be blogging about my cooking and eating. Stay tuned :)

Lantau Island and Food Court

Blogging about what happened over a week ago.
That morning we had to wake up super early to take the bus to Lantau Island and meet up with my buddhist nun aunty to visit this place they're redoing. Lantau Island is actually really beautiful, lots of people go hiking there. It feels like a forest, surrounded with mountain ranges in the background. So after spending the morning there we had a vegetarian hotpot with way too much food. Although it was very yummy, however no pics, very hard to take a pic of ALL the food. However we did eat lettuce that was grown next door and it was soo sweet and fresh. After lunch we went down to Tai O which is like the town at the bottom of Lantau Island? Not too sure. But the bus ride down felt like a rollercoaster, so twisty and HK bus drivers are crazy, they go way to fast for buses. After walking around looking at stilt houses we encountered shops that sold this tofu dessert 豆腐花 which is on the things to eat list. I never really liked this dessert growin up and I still don't. It's slices of really silken tofu in some liquid and you either sprinkly over this orange sugar or pour in some special syrup. Normally eaten hot.

My bowl of the tofu dessert with sugar sprinkled on the top. It was really smooth and slippery. You have to eat it with lots of sugar because the tofu is really plain, it's just about the texture.

We then left Tai O for Tung Chung to go SHOPPING. There's this shopping centre in Tung Chung that is just all outlets, like Nike, Adidas, Puma, Esprit. I only managed to get a roxy bag for just under $30 aussie.

So as we shopped till pretty late we decided to eat at the food court as it would take an hour to get back out into the city part of HK.

Pretty big food court, plenty of choices but there is a catch. They pretty much only sell asian food. There's a little shop for each country in Asia. Chinese, Shanghainese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai, Viet, Malay/Singaporean, Macau and possibly a few others that I've forgotten. And yes each country had a separate shop.

I had no clue what to eat as the choice was overwhelming. In the end I settled for Singaporean Laksa...which happened to be white round noodles not the malay style with two types of noodles (which is what I wanted). Mum added a satay chicken for like $10 or something.

  The satay chicken was pretty average, the chicken wasn't dry and was nicely cooked. The laksa on the other hand was pretty disappointing. The soup was not rich enough and there weren't enough ingredients. I have to go to Malaysia one day and try actual laksa. Oh well, it's hard to find all this for under $7 aussie in Melb though I did see seafood laksa for $7 today at union house at Melb Uni. Very tempted but at 43degrees it was just too hot for it.

To polish off dinner Dad and I went to the dessert shop to pick some desserts. Dad chose Ice Kachang...in HK...in winter??!! I chose the long awaited MANGO PANCAKE!!

Super sweet random Ice Kachang, I learned my lesson, don't eat Malaysian in HK.




Mango Pancake. I didn't take a pic of the inside as I was too busy eating it XD I've waited many many years to eat this again. Wondering what it is? Its mango pieces with about an inch of whipped cream on top all wrapped in a super thin crepe like pancake which is chewy. DELICIOUSSSS. MUST EAT in HK although it can be pretty expensive. Around HK$20 at Honeymoon Dessert. This dessert shop had it for HK$15

A great end to an amazing day away from the busy city streets of HK.

New Years Day-Claypot Rice, Yau Ma Tei

One of the last things on my list was claypot rice, looked online for a good place and found Four Season Claypot Rice in Yau Ma Tei. Went there at 7 ish, and the line was masssivee. Around 20 metres long but we decided to line up anyway even though you had to line up on the road. An hour later we finally got a table.

Beef Claypot Rice: I know it's a bad photo, had to be super quick as there was a massive line of people waiting for a table outside. So pretty much its beef on rice that has been cooked over a fire, it comes with an uncracked egg which u crack in and mix into the hot rice to cook it. Yummy!


Chicken Claypot Rice: I have to say this was pretty average, nothing special about it. I'm pretty sure there is better claypot rice in HK. I remember having awesome claypot rice in WanChai about 4 years ago, but they aren't allowed to cook their rice outside the shop as it was dangerous for pedestrians passing by.


Preserved Meat Claypot? All these claypots didn't have English names so I just make them up. So pretty much its just rice with Chinese Sausage, Liver Sausage and Preserved Meat? Also extremely average...

And then came the best oyster omelette EVER. I know it looks a bit weird but it was SOOOO YUUMM. Lots of little oysters that were packed with flavour in a duck egg batter with spring onions. Sure it was greasy but for some reason it was sooo nice fore some reason, I think it's because it's super freshly made with good ingredients. Very different to the usual oyster omelettes at Chinese Restaurants here.

The restaurant didn't sell drink so you have to go down the street to a little shop that sells drinks. The soft drinks come in bottles, every time my parents see them they talk about how when they were my age it was like that too. So after drinking my favourite soft drink, cream soda, we returned to the little drink store to RETURN the bottle and 2 bucks back :)

Verdict? The one hour wait was worth it...for the oyster omelette :) And good value, just over $100 for dinner for a pot of soup with homemade fishballs, 3 claypot rices, a dish of vegies and 2 serves (4 pieces) of oyster omelette. All that for $15ish aussie for 4 people :)

Last Day :(

My last day in HK and I'm at home packing and watching some random korean show with hot chicks flaunting themselves (my bro's favourite show =.=") so therefore I'm blogging instead.
I really want to go out and shop some more but we're really pushing it with the weight allowance :(
I'm a bit behind on blogging but I promise I'll finish it when I get back.
I don't want to leave and face year 12, I have an unlimited pile of work waiting for me when I get back.
Xiaowei has asked me whether I'll continue this blog for the rest of the year. I will continue to blog depending on whether I cook or eat out.

New Years Day-Snake Soup,Sham Shui Po

Ticked off another few things off the list yesterday.
First of all SNAKE SOUP. Sounds pretty crazy right? Tastes pretty good.

I got the snake soup and sticky rice set $45. Sounds pretty expensive but it really does fill you up and it's snake....pretty expensive stuff. The sticky rice wasn't particularly excellent, tasted like how sticky rice is supposed to. The snake soup was a little thin to my liking but contained tonnes of snake meat. Snake meat is like tougher chicken meat crossed with pork. You add crunchy fried pieces of wonton wrapper and shredded lime leaves to the soup, which gives the soup more textures and flavours.

After a bit of walking I started to get thirsty and saw trusty Maccas. Tried this new drink, no idea what it is in english. It was frozen fanta with ice cream on the top but the ice cream was special, it had an outline of flavouring.

Tasted sweet and cold...I don't think many people buy these in winter... And it's at about the price of a small-medium coke at Melb maccas.

4 days left NOOOOOOOOO

Can't believe there's only 4 days left :(

And 2 of them will be spent in China

I've eaten almost all the things I've wanted to eat in HK

I'll blog about what I ate today a tad later.

Unfortunately I still have a massive list of things to buy =O

Really need to go shopping but I don't have the time to :'(

Need to stay longer!!!!!!

But I've gotta get back and start demolishing that pile of holiday hw and get ready for YEAR 12 =.='

How'd everyone's start to 2010 go?

2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Hope everyone has a great year, with lots of memories and lots of .....FOOD XD

A day in Mongkok :)

 Finally kinda have the time to post bout 2 days ago. Went to Mongkok with Wezblob, Wezblob's bro and my bro. Only for a couple of hours but we managed to eat quite a few things on the things to eat list and shop around the touristy places in Mongkok.
Day started at noon, unfortunately in Mongkok barely any shops are open at noon which we found out. Our first planned destination was Japan Boat for takoyaki but they were only starting to open and not making takoyaki yet so we detoured and went shoe shopping on Fa Yuen St (otherwise known as sneaker street). Couldn't find the shoe I wanted in my size. Managed to find a badminton shop to look at some prices for things before accidentally walking into Gindaco (another takoyaki store) and it was fully open.
Bought 10 pieces/balls? of takoyaki (5 were octopus, 5 were prawn). $38 (AUD$5.50) cheaper than Melb.

Taste? Crunchy on the outside, soft but a little too hollow on the inside. Nice big pieces of octopus/whole prawn. Good mayo and takoyaki sauce. 7.5/10

After Gindaco we went to Rose Sporting Goods or something like that. Specialised badminton shop, really wanted a little keyring but way too expensive. After looking at more shoes we ended back at Japan Boat for a second round of takoyaki. This time at $15 for 6....way cheaper than Gindaco but you get what you pay for.

The guy at Japan Boat looked no where near as pro as the guy at Gindaco. Japan Boat takoyaki wasn't as crunchy but it was BURNING HOT, and the piece of octopus wasn't as big. The mayo looked like plastic and the takoyaki sauce was unusually sweet.

Then we went to ParknShop (supermarket) to buy "ice cream wrapped in glutinous rice wrapper" and decided to look for Hot and Spicy Pringles, failed to find them but found these instead :)

Tasted like wasabi flavoured chips...nothing special except for the price...$9.00....burning a hole in my pocket. Back to the ice cream thingos

PURE HEAVEN. The pastry is 2mm or so thick, just like tang yuan if you know what that is, its chewy and tasteless. Then there's a massive ball of ice cream inside, I chose vanilla. At $9.50 a two packs (one pack contains 2) it's pretty good value. One the pack it says Mochi Ice so maybe that's what they're called.



After walking to Langham Place we bumped into a place that sold the all mighty Egg Shaped Waffle thing 鸡蛋仔. No  idea what it is called in English. Been craving it for ages, but honestly I actually ate this last week.

Freshly made :) on nom nom
It's crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. Tastes like a waffle just airier. You rip off the little balls and EAT IT.
ANOTHER MUST EAT!!




The afternoon soon ended with a McFlurry which was half melted for some reason and a trip to Muji where I got told off for eating in the store though I could NOT find a no eating sign anywhere.

One last thing. ANOTHER MUST EAT!! Had dinner with family and ate SUCKLING PIG *drools* This stuff is amazing, 10 times better than Chinese Roast Pork.

Yes that is a roasted pigs head on the dish, with cherries as eyes. You bite into a wafer thin skin that is crispier than ever, and then into a layer of fat which just melts and possibly into a tiny bit of meat. TO DIE FOR!!!....I think if you ate this pretty often you would die....so much fat

All in all, a day of must eats.