Eating Out: Korean BBQ Seoulia Box Hill + Random

Went to an all you can eat Korean BBQ for Xiaowei's birthday on Saturday. Went to Seoulia on Whitehorse Road, Box Hill. The night didn't start off too well with the lady telling us we had to wait 15 mins for our table (reasonable right?) except that we ended up waiting for 45 mins outside in the cold instead. Finally got in and we got straight into it. Pretty much you pay $26.50 which includes a can of drink. Then you help yourself to the buffet counter which contains all the meat, seafood, vegies, kimchi, rice. It wasn't too bad, no expensive "good" meats and a pretty limited choice.

Yummy belly pork. After you have stuffed you're face with meat (and in our case only meat and no rice and very limited vegies) you can head to the all you can eat ice cream section for dessert. After 3 ice cream cones I was feeling pretty full.

Food: 6/10 (limited range of food and octopus was extremely salty, however the ice cream was pretty nice)
Service: 6.5/10 (made us stand outside in the cold for way too long, buffet counter wasn't refilled often enough.)
Environment: 6/10 (Cramped as cramped can get which means you can't escape oil splatters. The hot plate is massive so there is almost no space for your bowl/plates. Decently ventilated but it was very hot in there and came home smelling like oily meat)

Verdict? Not extremely bad but if I had a choice I might choose another place next time. Even if it means forking out an extra couple of dollars. The lack of choice and cramped space was not enjoyable. 




Anyways I found this on my receipt from Friday.

Epic name. She was a very nice checkout chick though.

Ever wanted to know what it looks like through the eyes of someone short sighted (e.g me)? But you have to pretty short sighted for it to be this blurry. Way too bored of studying.

Cooking: Mother's Day Brekky/Honkie Style Breakfast

Decided to make a Honkie Style breakfast for mum this mothers day. Honkie breakfasts have a Western influence to it. My mum's favourite is Macaroni in Soup, Scrambled eggs, Bacon, Buttered toast and a honkie milk tea. However breakfast turned into brunch due to two things. 1: It took a lot longer to cook than I expected, thought I could do it in 30 mins, ended up taking 1h 30 mins due to my poor time management. 2: got home at 1 last night and went to bed at 2, tried to wake up at 9 but failed, unwillingly got out of bed at 10 to make brekky.

今天是母亲节，每年我都会为妈妈煮早餐。今年选了做港式早餐给她。妈妈在外面吃早餐一定会叫火腿通粉，炒蛋，烟肉，牛有多士和港式奶茶。如果我有得选择我一定会每天吃港式早餐，可是每天早上没有那么多时间做。
HAHA, my fail chinese xD Hope it makes sense.

Ingredients:
Bacon, Macaroni/Elbows (200-250g for 4 people), Eggs, 6 tea bags (lipton is fine, strings cut off, for 4 people)), 1 big can of asian chicken stock, bread, butter, condensed milk, evaporated milk, shredded ham (not shaved).

Method: (the way I should have done it)
Fry bacon a little bit under. Whilst bacon is frying, cook pasta according to packet. Put the 6 tea bags into a pot of boiling water and simmer until you're just about to serve breakfast (i know it sounds insane but u need it to be as dark as possible). Drain pasta. Reserve about 500ml of the pasta water. Pour the can of chicken stock into the pasta water and bring to boil. Cook eggs (however you want them). Add a tsp of condensed milk into each cup. Add about 1/4 of a cup of evaporated milk on top of the condensed milk. Stir to combine. Lightly toast the bread (honkie toast is always just toasted so it is barely even golden/yellow) and butter. Place pasta back into boiling stock. Place bacon back into pan to heat through. Ladle pasta and soup into bowls. Sprinkle with shredded ham. Place bacon, eggs and toast onto a plate. Take pot of tea and pour into cups through a strainer to catch any stray tea leaves. Serve all together.

I made a ham omelet instead. 

I like the idea of putting the milk into the cup first, whether it makes a difference I'm not sure. Just how some honkie people do it. Also evaporated milk makes so much of a difference. 

Unfortunately it didn't taste anywhere near as good as the breakfasts you get in HK and it was no where near as cheap. HK $20 can get you more than what I cooked. Thats about $3 aussie.

Cooking: Tonkatsu and Udon in Dashi Broth

Japanese is probably my #1 favourite cuisine. Not just because of tastes but just the whole concept. Everything it so precise, so thought through, everything I'm not but I strive to achieve. So after deciding to make Japanese for dinner last night I dragged K仔 shopping with me for ingredients. Bought some udon and panko from Colonial Fresh Food Market (or what ever that place is called) at Doncaster Shoppingtown. They have an awesome asian section and an incredible Italian section + deli.

Finally learned the difference between Tonkatsu and Tonkotsu. Tonkatsu being the deep fried pork chop and Tonkotsu being my favourite rich creamy pork bone soup ramen.

Ingredients:
Pork: Pork Chops, flour to dust, egg to coat, Panko breadcrumbs (these make the biggest difference, not going back to normal breadcrumbs again), oil to fry
Noodle Soup: Water. Dashi powder. Shitake mushrooms. Corn cobs. Egg (soft boiled). Vegetables. Carrot. Salt. Udon noodles.

Method:
Crumb pork chops by dipping into flour, then egg wash, then panko. Make sure you immediately fry the pork chops after coating with breadcrumbs so the breadcrumbs stay crisp and don't soak up the egg wash and become soggy. Whilst the pork chops are frying. Add dashi powder to boiling water. Add in mushrooms, corn and egg. Fish out eggs after 5 mins and cool. Cook udon noodles according to packet. Place into bowls ready to serve. Chuck in vegies to cook in the dashi broth. Drain pork chops on paper towel. Peel egg. Spoon broth(without the vegies) over noodles. Arrange vegies into bowl. Cut egg in half and place on top. Chop pork chop into strips. Serve.

Cooking: Tandoori Fish

Idea came from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food cookbook. I really like the concept behind this book, of teaching others how to cook.

Ingredients: Piece of fish. Tandoori paste.
Methods: Spread a little tandoori paste all over the fish. (no need for yoghurt). Let it marinate if you want. Pan fry as per usual. However the tandoori paste does do something to the fish and makes it really soft and flaky so it falls apart really really easily. Simple

Looks a tad burnt and unappetising...but it tasted nice =)

Cooking: Awesome prawns

Went grocery shopping on Monday with mum at Safeway and saw that the prawns were on sale. The plan was to make garlic butter prawns but the outcome was quite different to what I had in mind.

My Awesome Prawns:
Ingredients: 16 large prawns, oil, butter, sliced garlic, sliced chilli, finely diced shallot, salt.
Method: Wash prawns. Snip all the legs off. Lay on chopping board and cut through under the legs lenghwise but don't cut the back shell (do not peel prawns especially the heads, it's where most of the flavour is). Push the prawn flat by spreading the two sides you just cut out and crack the back shells. The prawn should stay flat.
Heat a little oil in the pan and place the prawns cut side down holding it down for 5 secs to make sure they don't curl up. Fit as many prawns as you can into the pan. Cook until prawns are almost cooked though. Set aside and cook remaining prawns. After frying up all the prawns you should be left with a pan with lots of burn/stuck on bits. Heat some oil in the pan and add garlic, chilli and shallot. Cook on a low heat for a couple of minutes to release flavour into oil. Add butter turn it up and then add prawns. Tossing to coat. Serve.
It turned out to be more like Prawn XO sauce Prawns with extra XO Sauce on side. Except it wasn't actualy XO sauce.

Taken with phone camera so it looks pretty bad.

Tasted unbelievable though. The heads were the best. Sucking on them, slightly chilli. Too good.

CHHHHIIIIINNNNNAAAA (Shunde) + 100th post

This post is long overdue. WAYYYY overdue. Started it almost 6 months ago and yet I still haven't finished it (decided to finish it for my 100th post). So pretty much this was after a 2 day food trip to Shunde, Guangdong, China. So 6 months on, I better finish it off. I hope I can remember all the flavours of the food I ate.

22/12/09
This place should be called Crazy Land. Everything is crazy. But back to food, so it was a 2 day trip to Shunde in Guangdong province. This is the city where my grandpa was from. I visited this city 4 years ago, nothing much has changed from what I see.
First day lunch
Another first. Ever tried congee hot pot? Sounds outrageous right? They firstly put a plate of chicken pieces and abalone into boiling congee, wait for it to cook and then you eat all the congee. Tasted pretty good, chicken was a bit tough, possibly because it was cooked at such a high heat. The abalone was tasteless but what can you expect.
Then they put a new pot of congee on the fire and they non stop pour food into the pot of congee. And then the waitress keeps scooping the food into your bowl. Seriously non stop scooping, you can't keep up with her.
See anything weird about this prawn? Don't get to see it very often. It's filled with eggs, it wasn't my prawn so I didn't get to taste it.





Afternoon Tea:

This is a speciality in Shunde. 双皮奶 literal translation double skinned milk. It's made my pouring some warmed milk into a bowl, then letting a skin form on the top. Then poking a hole in the skin and pouring all the milk out. Wait for the milk to cool back down, then mix in some egg whites and sugar with the milk, then steam?(i think steam) it until set. It's served either hot or cold. I like mine cold. Tastes like cold white chocolate custard...really really yummy.

Deep fried milk? The milk is mixed with a bit of flour then wrapped in some pastry and deep fried. End result is crunchy on the outside, sweet and chewy on the inside. Pretty weird taste.





Dinner: 
After walking around a random village with a crazy tour guide we finally arrived at the restaurant. Way too much food.

7/5/10-Picking up from where i left off.
 So we were walking through the weird village. Didn't finish everything for dinner, the amount of food was just crazy.

First up was this milky looking soup. It was made from fish. It was sooo nice to finally get to drink a decent bowl of soup after two weeks of eating out. (Yes I am very honkie and I like to drink soup). The soup was sweet from all the fish bones and had a very clean taste. Good start to dinner.

Next was stuffed fish. Yes stuffed fish, pretty much fish paste is stuffed back into an intact fish skin. How they managed that I have no clue but showed amazing skill. Unfortunately the taste wasn't as awesome as the idea. But it wasn't bad, pretty average.




Can't remember what this was exactly. Some sort of soya chicken. I think it was quite good but I can't exactly remember. But chicken in China tastes very good, why? I don't think I want to know and neither do you.

They also gave us a little jug of prune alcohol drink. I think it was something like that. Tasted very strongly of prunes and had the feeling of vodka. The warm feeling you get going down your throat.
Hehe, I totally don't drink XD

This dish was loved by the parents. It brought back memories of their childhood. Looks nice yeah? It's braised POMELO SKIN. Which is a lot like orange skin just thicker and not orange flavoured. I must say I did not like this dish, the skin had a very weird taste to it. The parents insisted all the kids try it.

Another interesting creation. They look a bit like Shao Mai but its actually little straw mushrooms that have been split open and stuffed. The egg in the middle looked pretty cool but I'm not sure what it's purpose was other than presentation. Taste wise it was pretty average.

Another specialty of the area. It's fishballs I think. The fish in this area is really good and theres lots of it. Although most of the time it tastes really average, it's something you can't get here in Aus, something that should be treasured.

Char Xiu Bao was overrated. The tour guide made it sound like it would be really good. But actually I've had way better ones here. Stuffed my face with them just so they wouldn't go to waste. The ultimate Char Xiu Bao is at Tim Ho Wun in Mongkok. THE BEST ONE EVER.



So after dinner we were taken back to our hotel. Which happened to be next to a "nightclub" 夜总会. And nightclubs in more rural China ain't exactly the same as our nightclubs, not that I've been to either. So the "nightclub" was actually part of the hotel. And from the lobby of the hotel they had a massive clear wall looking into the nightclub side, and all you see it a staircase with Chinese girls all lined up dressed nicely waiting...

So this was our room for the night. Have you ever seen anything like it? Actually I have from my previous trip to China 3 years ago. What's with the clear window from the room into the bathroom? AWKWARD

The next day we set off to have the BIGGEST buffet I've ever had in my life. ONLY IN CHINA seriously. It was the size of about 6-8 basketball courts. Biggest range of food. Where I ate sea urchin for the first time, I know probably strongly not advised to eat live seafood in China but I did it. The sea urchin tasted pretty bland with a hint of the sea. Also the first time I'd had rabbit, tasted a bit like chicken. First time I've seen bugs actually as a dish at a buffet or any restaurant for that matter. Parents were excited over them as it was also a childhood delicacy. A childhood horror for me. Also the first time I've lined up for 30 mins just for four oysters which weren't even that great. Also the first time I've seen a champagne fountain....that was open for kids as well. It was a great experience.

So after 2 days of stuffing ourselves the tour concluded.
HA, that's not the end. My foodie uncle took us to this restaurant in Shenzhen which we ended up going to another 2 times during the course of our trip. The restaurant is higher class but the prices are like DIRT CHEAP in Aus terms.
The cheapest and possibly the tastiest roast pigeon I've ever had. At like AUD$2 each it was like AMAZING. So succulent and juice, the skin just perfect. Everything was just perfect about it.

Chicken Feet. EWWWWW, something I haven't eaten in about 10 years and I don't want to eat. It didn't look too bad but I just can't make myself eat it.

Might be a bit hard to see but it's peking duck. Wasn't the best peking duck every but it was pretty good. Loads of crispy skin, cucumber, spring onion, sauce and a thin crepe. Just missing something, not sure what but it just wasn't outstanding. Not to mention it was epically cheap, like AUD$5-10 for like 15-20 serves.

Some chinese vegetable which looks a bit like bak choy but all yellow...I didn't like this dish, not many people did. It was also pretty chilli. The flavours just didn't go.




So the day ended there. Where we took a train from Lo Wu home.
This post it finally done =)
Wouldn't mind a bowl of cold 双皮奶 right now.

Cooking: Chocolate Muffins *drool*

Sudden craving for chocolate muffins hit last night however I had a mound of hw to finish off (stll ain't done) but I decided to make muffins xD They were awesome, had a crunchy crust, melted chocolate on the inside. Only a few left cos I ate them for brekky.

Ingredients: 1 cup self raising flour sifted. 1/6 cup (40ml/2 tbsp) cocoa powder sifted. 1/3 cup white sugar. 150ml milk. 1 egg. 50g butter melted. 5 tbsp of chocolate chips. (these are rough measurements, I'm really lazy when it comes to measuring)

Method: Mix dry ingredients together. Make well. Pour in milk and egg. Stir until semi combined. Pour in butter (don't pour butter into milk as the milk is cold and will solidify the butter). Mix in chocolate chips. Make sure u stir gently and don't beat it otherwise u get a tough muffin. Scoop into greased muffin tray. Bake at 180 for about 20 mins or so, until skewer comes out clean.

Look at the chocolate goo inside, soooooo yummy.

So simple, so yummy

Made in about 40 mins including baking time.

Cooking: Tandoori Chicken, Tortellini Carbonara and Salad

From Friday night.

Tandoori Chicken:
Ingredients: Chicken pieces, tandoori paste, plain yogurt, lemon juice
Method: Marinate chicken according to the instructions on the tandoori paste container. Grill until cooked, basting if you like, especially if it is the breast.

Tortellini Carbonara
Ingredients: Tortellini, 1 onion diced, 2 cloves garlic minced, 1/2-1cup of bacon strips, 300ml cream, salt, 1 egg yolk.
Method: Cook tortellini according to packet. Saute onion for 1-2 mins, add garlic and bacon, fry until onion is translucent and bacon is crisp. Add in cream and bring to boil. Salt to taste, simmer until tortellini is ready. Add tortellini into the sauce, stir to coat. Turn off the heat. Add egg yolk in to thicken sauce. Serve

Yes I accidentally burnt the chicken