Cooking: Durian Crepe Layer Cake

3 hours well spent. Enjoyed every moment of making this cake, including eating it =P
Yes I think durian smells delicious and tastes even better. So creamy and just yummmmmmyyyy.

Recipe is modified from Stephanie Alexander's Lemon Curd Cake (found on masterchef). Replaced the lemon with durian pulp. Totally forgot to add the butter so I just omitted it and it still tasted nice. Beyond nice.

12 layers. Layers filled with alternating layers of cream and durian curd. 

Pure delicioiusness

Cooking: 3 course dinner for Mum

It was mum's birthday yesterday and I made her dinner on Sunday because we went out to eat yesterday, more on that later.

Started cooking at 10:30am and went all the way through till 8:30pm. With a break for lunch.

Smoked trout pate with homemade flat bread

I've been meaning to make this pate for a while now, found the recipe in the paper yonks ago and I finally had the opportunity to make it. It tasted very smokey but creamy at the same time. The spring onion gave a very nice subtle oniony flavour and the lemon cut the richness. I think it's a well balanced pate/dip. Hardest part of this dish was deboning the entire smoked trout. It was an absolute pain, the bones are so small =.="

Simple flatbread, very crispy so it went well with the pate.

Pan fried quail with gnocchi  and pumpkin

Matt Moran's signature dish. This dish took forever to make. Deboning the quail was a massive pain in the ass but I guess it was worth it, must a whole piece of meat without having to worry about bones. The gnocchi didn't turn out very well as I ran out of flour. Overall it was an alright dish. One word, interesting.

Chocolate Mousse

Relatively simple to make. Didn't use dark chocolate and used milk chocolate instead, as a result it turned out very sweet. Although the slight hint of coffee was nice and may have kept me up at night.

Took me about 6 hours to make just these 3 courses. But I enjoyed it, minus the stressful part when you realise dinner will be served an hour or two later than planned.

Cooking: Chilli Steak with mash

Not posting a recipe. Steak is steak. Mash is mash. Both dead simple but hard to perfect.
However, experimented with sprinkling chilli flakes over my steak today and the results were really good. The chilli flakes don't add any chilli "flavour" but just that little hint of heat on a otherwise boring steak. I shall be doing that more often now. Dried oregano also gives it an extra boost, but a pinch is more than enough, the flavour is quite strong.

Random: Survey

If you grew up in the last decade where emails were the thing not letters, then I'm sure you've done a number of those email surveys. Not company ones but the random ones where you put in your favourite colour, drink and other utterly random facts. There is a certain joy to doing them and for the ones who read, it's nice to find out something you didn't know about the person. At least that's what I think is the purpose of these surveys.
Here's one my friend ngoc posted a week ago, I've decided to do mine as well. (btw, she's an amazing artist, especially with a tablet/computer drawing)
why are you not going out with the person you want to? Who said i wasn't?? when was the last time you cried? unfortunately i must say it was a few days ago why is your relationship status the way it is? cos that's the path we chose a year ago? how long is your hair? more than a third of the way down my back? closer to halfway i guess last thing you ate? sultanas who last sent you a text message? sammy last person you hugged? K仔 who do you dislike currently? whoever thought it would be a good idea to put a methods sac on the last period of term? are you wearing make-up? no, don't really wear make up often...almost never at all for that matter. your heart is racing, who are you standing next to? 心跳 of course leehom
something you hate more than anything? cockroaches tears are falling from your eyes, what’s the reason? physical pain or i'm sad. is tomorrow going to be a good day/night? first day of holidays!!! badminton and possibly southern fried chicken, sounds good too. are you in a good mood? Schools out, who's not in a good mood? would you rather get up early or sleep in? i'm a night owl, i sleep during the day, not wake up. are you wearing anything? pjs are you paranoid about something? yeah, i like my recipe collection neat. everything else...meh does it take a lot to make you cry? i can put up a decent fight but once i fall i fall down hard. wanting to tell someone something? not that i can think of what would you do with five million dollars? open a restaurant. travel and eat all over the world what do you think about toe socks? they don't really keep your feet that much warmer would you rather watch a romantic movie or a really gory one? romantic, gory movies aren't my thing if you had to live off one type of fruit, which would you pick? watermelon? what is your favorite curse word? fudge is yum do you have a favourite toilet paper brand too? not really how long does it take you to get ready? 30 mins with brekky would you change yourself to make someone like you? i think everyone in the world does that in some way or another are you the type people should take seriously, or should they think you’re joking most of the time? both? does it annoy you when people say their heart is “broken”? not really

Cooking: Tandoori Salmon

My tandoori obsession continues =]

Ingredients: Salmon Steak skin on. Tandoori paste. Cornflour. Oil. <--I'm not kidding, that is seriously all you need.
Method: Don't think it takes a genius to figure out the steps.

1. Cut salmon steak into bite size pieces (keep in mind it will shrink a little bit when you cook it)
2. Scoop a teaspoon of tandoori paste and mix, you only need enough to coat the pieces. About 1-2tsp per steak. (don't add too much as paste is normally quite salty)
3. Place 1tbsp(per steak) of cornflour on a little dish. 
4. Heat oil in pan.
5. Dip the SKIN of the salmon into the cornflour (light coating) and place into the pan skin side DOWN.
6. Repeat with all pieces, use your hands, it's way faster.
7. Once skin is crisp turn and cook all the other sides. 

Note: Salmon will be cooked all the way through as it is very hard to control when your pieces of salmon are that small. (I personally don't think it'll taste very nice rare in the middle with tandoori on the outside).

Serve with rice.

New Layout

Hope you like the new layout because I do.
Experimented with basting a fried egg with oil to make it crispy on the top. Almost caught my sleeve on fire due to the oil catching on fire. But I still like covering the pan do cook the yolk technique. I like the JUST set yolk so it doesn't run out and get everywhere but you still get that creamy soft texture....hard to describe.

Anyways Mum's birthday's in a weeks time and I plan to make dinner for her.
At the moment I'm thinking:
Entree: Crab and smoked trout pate with homemade bread? AND possibly mussels in vol-au-vents/mussels with a tonne of sauce to soak up with bread as well.
Main: Matt Moran's pan fried quail from masterchef OR duck breast of some sort. Bro complained quail won't fill him up.
Dessert: Crepe Suzette (also from masterchef but last season i think) AND/OR chocolate mousse

Cake? Thinking of durian cake of some sort but the lemon curd layer cake sounds nice as well, might change it into durian curd layer cake...hmmmmm.

Eating Out: Nandos. Franchise all over Australia.

Went down to Doncaster Westfield again today. Shopping with the girls. Been craving Nandos for a little while now. Used to eat it quite regularly but now its about once every couple of months.

Why is it so good? One, the marinade is spicy and jammed pack with flavour. It has the nice charred flavour without the burnt flavour as well. Two, the chicken is soooooo moist and fatty, not dry and disgusting unless you get the breast but its not too bad.

One downside to nandos is the price. This piece cost me $5.90. Burnnnnnnnnnnnnn. And it didn't make me full but it did taste delicious and I was happy. Had to get a roll of sushi after to fill myself up. So lunch ended up costing $8.20. Not too bad I guess.

Cooking: Lemon Delicious

Didn't make dinner last night as it was leftovers but I did make dessert. Went to the library and borrowed a few cookbooks and flipped through the desserts sections to choose what to make. Decided on something "simple", lemon delicious. Looked very nice in the picture, however mine didn't turn out right.

Ingredients: 2 Lemons(rind + juice). 3 eggs separated. 70g butter. 175g white sugar. 3 tbsp sifted plain flour. 3/4 cup milk.

Method: Cream butter, sugar and rind with a mixer until pale and creamy. Use softened butter (i used rock hard butter and it just didn't work). Add egg yolks. Then milk and flour. Continue to whisk. Pour in juice. Whisk to combine. Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold into the egg and milk mixture. Pour into a baking dish or ramekins. Bake in a bain marie for 1 hour.

Supposedly serves 8 but it only served 4 in my family XD

Eating Out: Little India, Foodcourts at every shopping centre

Special post today. Done by K仔(the boy). Anything written in this font is by me(teenagefoodie).  Pretty much headed down to Doncaster Shoppingtown/Westfield after a very very depressing Specialist Maths sac/test. Food makes me happy again, hopefully it does for the boy as well.

"twas a cloudy day in melbourne when we decided to eat some fooood! mainly because we were hungray. and westfield being westfield had many choices of FOOOD to offer. so we set off around the drum (why they call it a drum??) in search of a meal to appease our hunger. walked past nandos....but....nandos....is expensive!! and they were going 2 eat it anyways (might be eating it tomorrow).... and further down we walked.....the more outlandish the prices got -.- ("who pays 10dollars for a slice of pizza, chips and coke? i can make two pizzas for less than 10 dollars"(yes i said this, but come on it was $10) and thus we arrived at an indian resturant and decided to have INDIAN. because someone was quite peckish and desired some tandooooooooOOooori chicken(hehe i wonder who...=). 
So ended up ordering a rice with two meats coz...lets face it, we don't exactly LOVE our vegies..... (vegies are nice, just that chickpea curry doesn't sound as nice as a meat curry)
Picked tandoori chicken and butter chicken....becoz...i mean...COMEON!! its CHICKEN!! (chicken is supposedly the healthier meat option yes?)

butter chicken was....very buttery and the sauce is the best part because you can add it to your rice and its SOOOOooooo buttery!! *droools* (i've learnt how to please this boy, give him some curry sauce and some rice or even better roti and he'll have a big smile on his face)
 tandoori chicken....does not taste like most tandoori chicken i've eaten. probably because being malaysian my mum jst chucks a LOT of spices which make it uber spicy. but this one wasn't. looked like CHAR SIu tho. very red =S maybe lacked a bit of flava, but thats my opinion.

Service: 6/10 its a food court.....though the guy did come buy and pick up our plate........so not bad

Atmosphere: 6.5/10 again...its a food court...but the view outside of shopping town wasn't too bad....except...couldn't see the city -.- too bad there was no awesum sun set

Food: 6.5/10 becoz...again=.=" sorry im repeatin myself, but its a food court. and i dont think tandoori chicken was too my liking, therefore the low score. though rice is really nice, apparently it's saffron rice. very buttery, but extremely DELICIOUS With the butter chicken sauce!!*DROOOOOOLS*

I love his writing style. Hope you enjoyed the post =)

Eating Out: Petaling Street 600 Station St, Box Hill

Been waiting for this place to open since it was announced that they'd be opening at Box Hill. There's already another two Petaling Street Restaurants around town so they must be pretty good. Finally opened recently and decided to go with K仔 for lunch. Waited for about 10 mins for a table for two, it was very crowded, this was at 1:30pm. Ended up sitting at a table with a man who was dining by himself. The renovations are very very nice, everything is RELATIVELY clean.
Had a very hard choice deciding between, Hainanese Chicken Rice, Roast Chicken Rice, Hokkien Mee or Curry Laksa. Due to the chilly weather and sudden craving for laksa I went with Curry Laksa. K仔 wanted the Asam Laksa (cos supposedly he hasn't had it in ages) but unfortunately they didn't have any today. Went with Nasi Pat....(forgot the rest of the word but in chinese it was 马来特别鸡蛋包饭) but essentially its seafood fried rice wrapped in a thin omelet.  (sorry about picture quality, taken with phone)

Curry Laksa $8.90

OMG, best laksa I've had in a very very very long time. Where to start? MASSIVE BOWL Tonnes and tonnes of chicken. Quite a few tofu puffs, actual tofu puffs unlike Ampang Tofu, grrrrrr. Lots of bean sprouts. A few large thick slices of fishcake. But the best part was the soup and noodles. The vermicelli noodles soaked up the curry soup really well. And the soup.....could have drank the whole bowl, cept the thick layer of oil was a tad off putting. One thing that I was not happy with was the clam, okay, I should be really grateful they actually have clam in it considering pretty much no where else does it. Even better it's actually a blood cockle like its supposed to be. So what's the let down? It is actually A CLAM, smaller than a 5 cent piece there is only ONE clam in this entire bowl. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. But probably one of the best/better curry laksa's around.

Nasi something =P $9.90

Didn't taste this, I was way way way too full. Looked pretty nice, had a few prawns. 

Took over 30 mins for it to come though, seriously this dish doesn't even take 5 mins to make...

This was a really really big problem with most tables, anything that needed to be stir fried took over 30 mins to come out. All soup noodles came out really quick but everything else took too long. 

Food: 8/10 Extensive menu. Authentic food. Really yummy. Worth your money.

Environment: 7.5/10 Newly renovated. A tiny bit cramped. Sat next to the dirty dishes tub. Saw a menu fall from the counter into the tub and return to the counter =S customers aren't supposed to see that.

Service: 7/10 All waiters can speak english and chinese. However when you ask a waitress about when you're food is coming after 30 mins they don't do anything about it. Ask a waiter and they'll go up to the kitchen and go "WHERE IS TABLE 20's DISH!!!! IF IT DOESN'T COME SOON THEY'RE LEAVING!!!"

Verdict?  Very good. Service needs to be worked on. Try to avoid busy hours as the kitchen just can't keep up. Don't come if you're in a rush unless you just want laksa. But definitely worth the wait. Can't wait to go back to try all the other dishes. YUMMMMMMMMMMYYYYY

The second floor has been separated and changed into a dessert lounge. Really wanted to go but I was way tooo full to fit anything else in, and a bit limited on cash. Sweet soups start at $5, no mango pancake or any pancake so I decided to give it a pass for the time being. In the top corner of the front shop window it says "Monga Desert Lounge" I believe they mean dessert not desert. 

Cooking: Pizza

Sorry for the lack of food posts lately. Mainly due to exams, school formal and being way too tired the day after.
Not going to blog about the food at school formal for 2 reasons. One I was feeling kinda sick and didn't each much of it and Two the food was plain shit. But you can't expect much if they're trying to make 400 servings of the same dish. Tasted a bit like airplane food, and that stuff makes me hurl.

Finally got round to doing some cooking yesterday. Made pizzas for dinner. Original plan was to buy pizzas from pizza hut but why not make your own, tastes way way way better and you know what is actually in your pizza.

Basic Pizza Dough Recipe
It says make 3 but I stretched it out really thin to make 4 instead.

Made two types of pizzas, prawn and smoked salmon. Made one at a time, so we could eat it and improve it for the next pizza. I find it's a really good way to master and make the best pizza.

Second try of garlic prawn pizza. 

Ingredients: Handful of cooked prawns (cut into pieces), spanish onion, olives, cheese, tomato paste, anchovies, one large clove of garlic roughly chopped.

Doesn't sound like a lot of  topping but thats how I believe pizzas should be like. Just enough topping to cover so you can actually taste each topping by itself and appreciated. Unfortunately dad doesn't agree with my philosophy.

Smoked Salmon Pizza

Ingredients: Strips of smoked salmon. Spanish Onion. Capers. Cheese.

Yes that is all thats on that pizza. Cheese has to go on the bottom otherwise the salmon gets covered. Tried to make stuffed crust but it didn't turn out too good. Found the salmon overcooked and onion was soo cooked to give that fresh crunch.

Second try of smoked salmon pizza

Same ingredients however put the pizza in the oven with just tomato paste spread on bottom with a little cheese sprinkled on top. When the pizza was pretty much cooked I took it out put the salmon, onion and capers on, baked it for a few minutes and served it. A lot better, the salmon was still a little overcooked, I think 20secs in the oven is enough. The onions were just right. Sooo yummy but full.

When it comes to pizzas

Less is more!

IT'S OVER

22 past exams later and it's finally OVER!!!!

Now I can cook again =)

Any suggestions?

Cooking: Awesome instant noodles

Came home from my first exam for the year.
Played an hour of wii to relax.
Made some awesome lunch...of ramen...or otherwise called instant noodles.

Looks like the real deal yeah?
I made the chashu last week, been sitting there waiting to be eaten.
To get this awesome bowl of noodles done in 10 mins. (best if you use tonkotsu/shoyu/miso flavour noodles)
1. Put a pot of water on the stove put your egg in (just covering the egg). Boil the water.
2. Boil some water in the kettle (too add to pot later and to make soup)
3. Slice chashu and put under grill.
4. After the pot has been boiling for a min add in more water from kettle, enough to cover the noodles.
5. Add noodles. Cook for 3 mins.
6. Flip chashu.
7. Stir noodles.
8. Make soup with flavouring packet.
9. Put noodles into bowl. Dunk egg into a bowl of cold water until cold enough to peel.
10.Meanwhile take chashu out and put into bowl with noodles.
11. Peel egg and cut in half.
12. Serve.

Guess what I just did!
Taught you how to make instant noodles =P
Enjoy.

Exams in a day =S

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

First exam for the year tomorrow.

And no i'm not prepared. 9 practice exams later and I'm still getting really bad marks. 

I really should have revised regularly instead of NOT REVISING at all. 

Regrets regrets regrets.

As for chem, a little more confident in it as I know more of the coursework but I still manage to screw up calculations here and there. And do not know how to define majority of the terms.

11 exams done and I'm seeing slight improvement. But still no A =( 

Formal on Friday and I still don't have a dress, shoes, clutch, jewellery..... in short I'm screwed. 

This is going to be an interesting week.

I better start studying now.

Exam in under 17 hours

STUDY

Argh, haven't really had the time to cook lately. 2 mid year exams in 5 days. I've been pretty busy trying to demolish this stack of practice exams

So far I've done

The stack on the right. Still have the entire left stack to go.

Haha, extremely messy desk. This is what happens when I don't want to practice viola anymore. XD

Jay Chou decided to fall on me this morning, hehe, in poster form of course.

Eating Out: Ampang Tofu 13 Village Avenue, Doncaster East

Went out for lunch with the family. Couldn't choose where to go. I wanted to go to Straits Cafe but due to the legionnaires disease outbreak like 50m down the road parents refused to go there. Ended up at Ampang Tofu although I wanted to go to Malaya Inn cos we haven't been there for soooooo long meaning about 10 years.

Curry Laksa Chicken $9.00

Used fried tofu instead of tofu puffs. Nothing special about it. A bit of a let down. The broth wasn't spicy and fragrant enough but was quite coconutty. At least it wasn't bad.

Thai Fried Noodles $9.50

Mum ordered this one. Very strong lemongrass and sour flavour. The noodles have soaked up tom yum flavour. I suspect they add tom yum soup to the noodles when this is cooked to soften them and allow them to soak up extra flavour. Quite nice. Could have been spicier though. And I didn't really like the raw shredded lettuce on the top.

Hokkien Mee $9.50

Mum was about to order Stir Fried Beef Rice Noodles but I stopped her and asked whether we could have Hokkien mee instead. I like hokkien mee for it's sauce, so delicious. This was my favourite dish out of the three. However the sauce was quite runny and didn't stick onto the noodles as well as it could have. And there wasn't much seafood or vegies in with the noodles. Just nitpicking, not bad.

Food: 8/10 The food here isn't amazing but it's definitely not bad. It's good but don't expect exceptional food. Presentation could be improved. 

Service: 6/10 The person at the counter could have been a bit friendlier but I guess he is under a lot of stress. Tables were not cleaned for about 5 mins after being SEATED. Bowls had weird brown residue on them, probably from sauce not being cleaned off it properly *shudders*. They need a better dishwasher.

Environment: 7/10 This place is pretty cramped. The place is about the size of the place is a tad bigger than my room. And you can seat about 20-30 people in there I think. Not an ideal environment to dine in. However I do love their massive wallpaper of KL more specifically the Petrona Twin Towers, I would love one of HK in my room.

The verdict? Consistently good food. Although there may be better Malay food around, this is a place you can rely on. I would come back again if I really wanted to but with the choice of Malay restaurants around, this place probably wouldn't be first choice. It you want some decently authentic Malay food QUICK, come here.