Eating Out: Dutchies Stonegrill [1 Vista Place, Cape Woolamai VIC 3925]

Cape Woolamai? Don't worry, it's just along the main road at Phillip Island. There are signs and everything so you won't miss it. And if you do you've probably been driving too long and need to take a rest. It's on the left if you're driving towards Cowes. It's my second time here but I can't remember what I ordered the first time I visited as it was a few years back, all I knew was it was a good experience and some decent food.

The food comes out very quickly as all they need to do is put some chips on one side, salad and bernaise/other sauce on the other, put the meat on and it's ready to go out.

All the parents ordered the same steak and the kids all ordered something different.

 Stonegrill Rib Eye $38.50

I ordered the rib eye and when I saw it I was delighted. I was hoping for a fatty steak and I got one. I was quite surprised at how large the steak was. I liked this better than my brothers rump. The quality of the meat was excellent, well flavoured and juicy. I did encounter one problem, as it was the thinner steak available I found I had to take the entire steak off the stone and onto my chips to prevent it from overcooking (by that I mean over medium). This not only saved my steak from destruction but also allowed it to rest and my chips to soak up some meaty juices. Ingenious. Although it doesn't look like a large steak it actually was, I needed help finishing it and I was starving when we arrived at the restaurant.

 Look at that delicious caramelisation/crust on my steak. A weeks worth of red meat in one meal.

 Prime of the Land-Rump Steak $34.50

Though smaller than the rib eye it was a little thicker. My brother was quite upset when he saw my steak come out, he thought he would get the biggest steak by ordering the rump. But he had to help me eat mine in the end. Although he was still quite satisfied with his.

 Lamb O'Rock $38

On the menu it says you get either a rack of lamb, lamb fillets or lamb cutlets depending on what is that day's selection. It was lamb fillets the day we went. Nice and lean. Four fillets which my friend was overjoyed to see and absolutely loved. I might choose this one next time I come.

Feathers and Feelers $27.50

Two marinated pieces of chicken and three prawns. My friend enjoyed this except there was one downside. She had to watch everyone eat and smell her delicious chicken sizzling as the chicken had to cook all the way through for health/hygiene reasons.

Eye fillet of Beef $40.50

All 6 of the parents ordered this. Each steak was very thick with no fat (parents dream, my nightmare). The menu description claims that you can cut through it with a butter knife, this we did not try but all the parents thoroughly enjoyed the tenderness and flavour.

I didn't get a picture of the mixed grill. Just imagine a bit of beef, pork, chicken and lamb all piled onto the stone grill. For $38.50 it was decent. However only an active male teenage could handle all that meat.

Food: 8.5/10 The meat is good quality. Cooked to how you like it.

Service/Environment: 8.5/10 Luckily that night there were only a few other tables so service was good. However water was filled up very inefficiently and it was a hot day. With the hot stones it was a bad combination which required lots of water which we did not get.

Value: 7/10 Not the cheapest meal but definitely a good experience.

Verdict? If I had the money I would come back and if I was in the area. I think everyone should at least try stonegrill once.

Cooking: Steak/Open Lasagna/Veal Roast

Steak and chips for a lazy Friday night dinner during exams

And made an open lasagna last Friday night except it turned out pretty bad. Tried to semi follow the one Anna made on Masterchef Masterclass. Made fresh pasta for the first time in ages, year 12 just made me not bother but the difference between dried and fresh is massive.

My pasta drying rack...aka oven rack. Not going to post a picture of the final dish, it looked disastrous.

Saturday was another simple quick lazy dinner. Veal roast with vegies and garlic bread.

It was actually quite nice. Roasted radishes taste weird.

Eating Out: Pancake Dessert House Eatery (Mid-City Arcade 18/200 Bourke St Melbourne, 3000)

After attending the filming of iron chef friends and I went out for dinner. After some epic discussion we chose to eat at Pancake Dessert House Eatery. Whilst we waited for our table we were given a menu and expected to order. 

Baked Chicken with spaghetti (Portuguese sauce?) $10.30

I chose this because I miss eating this. Typical Honkie style meal if you eat out at the 茶餐厅. Had the choice of rice or spaghetti. It's good with either. Chose the Portugese sauce because I hardly get to eat it here and it tastes awesome. It's nothing like peri peri although that is also portuguese. It's like a coconut sauce with a hint of curry. Just really really yummy. It's popular in HK cos of Macau and their portuguese population. Overall I really enjoyed this dish except it could have done with a few more vegies than just frozen peas for that price. Decent serving just like in HK. 

Spicy chicken on rice $8.80

Very crispy chicken. Salty and hardly spicy. Not bad if you like your fried chicken asian style.

Steak in special sauce with noodle soup? $9.30

I actually don't know the name of this dish. It says steak noodle soup on the docket and I know it is the "special sauce" I didn't taste this but just looking at it the combination is certainly weird. The person who ate this complained about it's combination of flavours. 

Food: 7/10 Nothing spectacular but it certainly tastes like HK, damn I miss HK. 

Service: 7/10 You are ushered in and out as quickly as they can. I don't blame them it was Friday night. But not the friendliest service ever. 

Environment: 6/10 They have literally arranged this place like tetris. Even the waiters can't get through. You share a table with however many people they can fit onto the table. Seriously this is a fast food restaurant.

Verdict? It I was in a rush and wanted honkie food I would definitely come here. Good value for money. Next time I will definitely try the pork chop on rice which is their signature dish and probably the quickest one too. Looked super super super yummy. 

Cooking: Steak Sandwich

For fathers day I didn't make breakfast for dad because I was too lazy to get out of bed. Made steak sandwiches for lunch instead.

Ingredients: Sliced tomato, sliced onion, avocado, gerkins/pickles, cheese, whatever else you want in your sandwich, some sort of steak, sauce of your liking (I used HP sauce which no one seems to know about), some sort of bread (I used a focaccia like bread).

Method: Cook the onion with some sugar and salt until soft and caramalised. Meanwhile slice the tomato, gerkins. Set onion mix aside. Flatten steaks until they are about 1/4-1/3 bigger than your bread (as they will shrink when you cook them). Heat a grill pan till smoking hot and cook steaks for about 30 seconds a side. Slice avocado whilst steaks are cooking (have to bea ninja to do this). Place a slice of cheese ontop of the stead and rest the steaks. Place bread onto the pan. Lightly toast (keep you eyes on them because they burn quickly). Spread the sauce onto the bread. Top with everything and eat =]

Pretty simple and quick. Tastes awesome!

Cooking: Steak, roast potatoes and roasted chilli cauliflower with gravy

After cooking over 50 steaks in my cooking life, I have yet to master how to tell how cooked they are. Every time I manage to overcook them, this time was no different. But only overcooked them slightly, by overcook I mean medium-well done instead of medium-rare.

However this time I focused mainly on roasting a cauliflower for the first time, sounds pretty odd. And TRYING to perfect roast potatoes.

Roast Potatoes:
Ingredients: potatoes chopped into the shape you want them to be. salt. water. olive oil.
Method: Place potatoes in boiling water and cook for about 10mins (if cut into bite sized pieces) or 15-20 if half/whole. Drain and shake pan like there's no tomorrow to rough up the sides to get super crunchy potatoes. Drizzle with oil and salt(normally hot oil to start the crunchy part forming but I find that too much of a hassle because I'm lazy). Mix well and spread onto a tray lined with FOIL. I find u end up with wet potatoes if you use baking paper, not sure why. Bake (180ish) until crunchy looking?/golden, 30 minutes or so?

Roasted Cauliflower
Ingredients: Head of cauliflower broken into florets with larger ones cut in half, coat with some oil. Place them onto a tray lined with FOIL (for the same reason as potatoes). Season with salt and chilli and roast for about 30 mins. DEAD SIMPLE. Roasting cauliflower seems be sweeter than boiling them.

Gravy:
Ingredients: Beef stock. Sliced mushrooms. Butter. tablespoon or two of flour
Method: Melt the butter in a saucepan, add flour and stir and cook for a few minutes. Add stock little by little, whisking well after each addition. Put in mushrooms and also any juice that has come out of the resting steak, this will give the gravy it's darker colour. Taste. Add black pepper if you want a black pepper gravy.

Steak is a dish I think everyone should master, because steak is yummmmmmyyyyyy as.

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.

Cooking: 3 course dinner

Friday night again =)
Came home at around 5, feeling very happy since its a LONG WEEKEND!!
After making a cup-a-soup (of course my favourite flavour, Creamy Seafood Bisque) I took out the netbook to find recipes and ideas on what to make for dinner.

Decided on Pumpkin soup, Steak with roast vegies and Pavlova (using Donna Hay's recipe on the masterchef website since it was on the first ep of Masterchef). After 2 hours of cooking, dinner was finally ready.

Ingredients: Pumpkin, half a red onion finely diced, 2 cups water, 1 cup milk, teaspoon of cumin powder, pinch of salt and my secret ingredient.... 3/4 teaspoon of chicken powder.
Method: Roast pumpkin for 45 mins. saute red onion until translucent. add pumpkin, stir into puree, add water, milk, cumin, salt and chicken powder, simmer for 20 mins. (because the pumpkin was so cooked I didn't need to blend it/puree it which was really awesome cos I'm too lazy to clean the hand blender.)
Taste? I really really like it, it would have been better if I actually blitzed it in the food processor or hand blender because it was a tad separated but it was still very good. I really enjoyed the hint of curry/cumin flavour. I didn't think the sautéd onion would add so much flavour to it, so simple but so nice.

(Looks a tad unappetising)

Ingredients: Beef steak of your choice. Vegies of your choice + balsamic vinegar. Potatoes.

Procedure:

Steak: Season with salt and pepper and put a teaspoon of oil on each side. Grill on griddle pan to your liking.

Roast Vegies: Chop up vegies into whatever shape you want. Put them into a large bowl, drizzle with oil, season with salt and pepper, add a tablespoon or two of balsamic vinegar.

Roast potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Place two skewers on the chopping board, place potato cut side down inbetween the skewers, cut the potato into thin slices (the skewers should stop you from cutting the potato all the way through). Drizzle with oil, season with salt and pepper. Roast for an hour. 

Have you ever seen a pavlova so screwed up? But hey its my first time making it. It looked like a big asian bun in the oven but when it came out it deflated =( Can anyone tell me why this happened? 

But it looked alright cut up =)

And it tastes very nice.

Lazy weekend =) Might cook some more over the weekend, I'll see. Wii or to cook...hard choice

Cooking: Beef Wellingtons

I don't seem to see this dish on menu's very often nowadays. It's a good dish but extremely hard to master.
For those who don't know what beef wellingtons are, it's a beef steak wrapped in puff pastry.
Two main things are hard to master in this dish:
1. Cooking the steaks. As you have to cook the steaks before you put it into the pastry, it is hard to not overcook or undercook the steaks as they will continue cooking in the oven. (That probably doesn't make sense)
2. Prevent the bottom of the pastry from become soggy due to the juices released by the steak whilst baking.

Whoever invented this was a genius. (really good if your steaks are small cos the pastry makes if look bigger and fills you up)

And they taste awesome. Spread pate on the steaks before wrapping in pastry. The pate just adds this extra rich flavour to the steak and makes it even better. 

The sauce looks a bit weird because there's actually two sauces. A cream sauce and a gravy on top of it.

Was reading some food blogs and came across this Malaysian Layer Cake and now I want some. Anyone know where to get it?

Steak Expert-Megabox, Kowloon Bay

Steak Expert is this steak chain all over HK and possibly the world. They aren't exactly known for great steaks but I guess some are cheap.
I had a lunch set which included a pepper steak with vegies, soup, breadroll and a drink. All for HK$39 (AUD$5.50)

Soup: Borsch soup. Tasted quite nice, only contained cabbage and was unusually sweet but a good start to the meal.
Steak: Don't expect a good steak when you order a cheap meal like this. The steak lacked flavour and was drowned in pepper gravy. The vegies were just like the ones you get on camp.
Breadroll: The breadroll wasn't like the breadrolls you  get in Melb, it was a honkie breadroll. Whats the diff?  It's a lot sweeter and softer, which I love :)

Vedict? If you're looking for a decent steak, this is not the place to go unless you're not willing to fork out the money. You get what you pay for I guess.