November 2014 - Chik's Crib

30 November 2014

Jinda Thai

November 30, 2014 0
Jinda Thai
Some of my family has flown into Melbourne for a holiday and we’ve been busy the past two weeks showing them around the area. One problem I face with visitors is that I never can decide which restaurants to bring them to. Should we visit a restaurant that I have been wanting to try and has many reviews raving about it online, or should we stick to one of my favourite restaurants in Melbourne?

After a long consideration, Miss XS and I decided to visit our favourite restaurants to avoid any unpleasant surprises. After all, I (and a few unlucky friends) have first-hand experience how misleading online reviews can be. 



One of the restaurants that easily makes our list of top recommendations is Jinda Thai, a restaurant that my friend from Chang Mai loves because of their legitimate Thai cuisine. Ever since Jinda Thai opened its doors in July 2013, it enjoyed a meteoric rise to become one of the most popular restaurants in Melbourne. This marks Miss XS's sixth time eating here, and my second!  


29 November 2014

Cake Decorations

November 29, 2014 0
Cake Decorations
I was having a conversation with a friend one day, and as my conversations sometimes do, the subject moved to baking. We discussed about making cupcakes for sale, and how we could decorate them. After all, like my school teachers used to say as they pointed out our untucked shirts and ankle socks, "first impressions are very important."

I wasn't sure how it happened, but I made a remark off-handedly during the conversation: "Don't bother using good chocolate."


European standard of living, right here. I wished I studied in Europe. 





27 November 2014

My favourite recipes

November 27, 2014 0
My favourite recipes
I have something to confess. Sometimes, my desserts taste bad. BAD. Bad, in an Excuse-me-while-I-go-to-the-toilet-and-rinse-my-mouth-out kind of way. Still, I do put a picture up on Facebook, where it sits there looking pretty and accumulating Likes.


For absolutely no reason at all, (don't sue!), this is my version of Brad Spence's Salted Butter Semifreddo, 
It... looks pretty decent doesn't it? Ice cream resting on a bed of crunchy granola, surrounded by fresh strawberries and topped with an almond.

Still, it haunts me as The Most Disgusting Thing I Have Ever Tasted. A standard vanilla ice cream recipe goes like this: cream, eggs, sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. This recipe is just like that, except substitute the teaspoon of vanilla extract for a block of butter.

And yes, that mixture tastes exactly like how you'd imagine it would taste like. Believe me.

I went back to the recipe and scrolled all the way down to the comments. Every Single One was glowing and positive. In fact, the tagline of the post boasted "How to eat salted butter in a socially-acceptable fashion." Which was sort of a warning shot, I guess. What was I thinking?


A couple of days later, when my friend came over to my place, I gave her a bite of the semifreddo just to get a second opinion. No words were necessary; the look of disgust showed plenty. And whatever thoughts that were left in her mind were better left unsaid, for the sake of our friendship. Still, four months had passed and I don't think she ever quite got over the fact that I tried feeding her a frozen mixture of butter and heavy cream.


Gingerbread House recipe

November 27, 2014 0
Gingerbread House recipe
Back in 2013, after my Year 1 examinations, I was looking for a Gingerbread House recipe. I found this one, which looked really promising. In the author's own words: It has no leaveners that would make it puff up and distort the shapes, and it's firm so it can support lots of decorations. It also uses no expensive spices and has only five ingredients.












26 November 2014

Tiramisu Recipe

November 26, 2014 0
Tiramisu Recipe
This is the first recipe I made that my family approved of. It's pretty easy to make, and yields an impressive dessert. Stand back after serving and prepare to bask in glory.





This recipe is one of my favourites!

Tiramisu

Adapted from: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/8677/tiramisu. 
I made additional notes and clarification here where needed. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup strong black coffee
 1/2 cup Baileys 
 3 eggs, separated
 1/3 cup caster sugar
 250g mascarpone
 300ml thickened cream
 1 large packet of sponge fingers (savoiardi)
 cocoa, for dusting

Step 1

Pour coffee and Baileys into a shallow dish. Set aside.
Step 2
With a clean beater and bowl (no water!), beat egg whites in a medium bowl with electric beaters until soft peaks form. 
Step 3
In a second bowl, Whip the thickened cream to soft peaks.Add the mascarpone and beat until no lumps remain. 
Step 4
In a third bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl with electric beaters until pale and thick. Add to mascarpone/cream mix. 
Step 5
Using a large metal spoon, gently fold egg whites into the cream/mascarpone mixture.
Step 6
Dip spongefingers, one at a time, into the coffee mixture. Soak for 4 seconds, then turn over (coffee-side face up!) and line the base of a ceramic dish with it. Cover the biscuits with  some of the mascarpone mixture (about 2cm in height). Then dust generously with cocoa powder. Repeat for another layer. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. 

Variation: Baileys can be substituted with marsala or orange juice if preferred. O'Donnell is a Bailey's substitute found in Aldi 


*I beat the egg whites before realising that I ran out of cream. I took a twenty minutes trip to the grocery store to pick up a bottle of cream. When I got back, the egg whites did not deflate and remained in perfect condition.


*A regular Nestle brand of cocoa powder, or equivalent, would suffice. 





25 November 2014

A Wood in my Garden (No it's not an euphemism)

November 25, 2014 0
A Wood in my Garden (No it's not an euphemism)
My dad has a bad habit of sprinkling fruit seeds into our garden. Years later, I'm the person elected to cut them all down. Having more free time than wisdom, I offered to turn a recent one into a bench over the June holidays.



24 November 2014

Koko Black

November 24, 2014 0
Koko Black
My voyage into the spicy world that is Korean barbeque ended with me getting out relatively unscathed (Ha! Pun intended). Afterwards, we headed over Koko Black in Chadstone for desserts. It’s a place I’ve been wanting to try for the better part of the year, and I finally managed to coerce my friends into coming with me. Whee!

We had the Classic Belgian Hot chocolate ($6.50), and also shared a plate of Koko Black’s degustation ($26).



Degustation
All three of my friends found the hot chocolate too rich, proving there is too much of a good thing. I, on the other hand, wished it was richer and creamier. So take whatever you can from our views... Although I was always a bit of an aberration. 

Degustation

It was unanimously agreed, luckily, that best dessert of the degustation was the chocolate mousse with a caramel layer (Picture, second from last). The chocolate ice cream (furthest from picture) was excellent too, and I was sorely tempted to dunk it into my hot chocolate. (“Oh look over there guys, a UFO!”) Still, my table manners prevailed, and my mom would be proud of me. 


23 November 2014

Les Misérables in Melbourne

November 23, 2014 0
Les Misérables in Melbourne
Whew.

2014 has been quite a ride.


Looking at everything that has happened, I'm not sure whether the positives and negatives came in equal proportions this year.  It has been a hell of a ride (In both good and bad. See? Yin and Yang.)


Year 2 is also a demanding year for my course, where we were tested on everything we learnt since Day 1. I sat through the 3-hour paper and walked out thinking "I'm glad THAT's over. I'm ready to fly back to Singapore now." Only to remember that there's another 3-hour paper the following Monday.


Whatever happened to my good ol' hardworkingness?


Still, I'll like to focus, if I can, on the positive. Which admittedly, is far easier to do once the examinations are over.


Because misery loves company, there are few post-exam activities more suitable than Les Misérables, where watching other characters getting maligned, chased and killed do help ease our minds off our exams performance.



About the only picture I managed to snap. The design of the stage was intricate and I wanted to touch everything, but I didn't want to be the first person to be banned from the Theatre in front of a full house.


A Bookstore in China

November 23, 2014 0
A Bookstore in China
Many moons ago, way before I started to blog, I toured around Guangzhou, and I wrote about my experience in a bookstore here


You enter a bookstore. At first sight, everything seems normal. Your first red flag occurs when you pick a book up. Perhaps the colour on the cover is a little off. Perhaps some pages are printed askrew. Perhaps the pages are flimsier, and you can make out the words printed on the other side of each page. 
Or perhaps the contrast of the ink is slightly off, and you have just spent the last hour staring at Figure 6.2 and still can't make out what that arrow is pointing to. 
You look around the dimly lit room. You notice the signs duct-taped over each dusty bookshelf, and it hits you. In lieu of the normal classifications "fiction", "Non-fiction" ... etc, the signs simply read RMB/æ–¤ (price/weight).  

Yes, books are sold by their weight. You compare books and find that Revenge Wears Prada costs more than Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, simply on the basis that it contains more pages
Dayum. 
You bring your books to the counter, and true enough, the store assistant dumps the books onto a scale. You hand over your money, he grunts and then you're off. 
You exit the store and squint in the strong sunlight. People rush around you, caught up in their own activities. Some scan the two rows of stores alongside the road and pass the bookstore where the storekeeper sits, calmly weighing books and conducting his daily business, as if nothing at all was unusual. And you can't help smiling a little at the chutzpah of it all.



22 November 2014

Valrhona Chocolate Orbit Cake Recipe

November 22, 2014 0
Valrhona Chocolate Orbit Cake Recipe
Sometimes when I walk into a restaurant, something curious appears on the menu. There might be something labelled Valrhona chocolate tart, or Valrhona chocolate cake. And it’ll invariably be the most expensive dessert on the menu. The question that first popped into my head was “What the heck is Valrhona?”

Bought from Sun Lik, Singapore. Link below
Valrhona is a luxury French chocolate-maker, one that produces premium chocolate. Along with several other established brands, for example Callebaut (Belgian) and Scharffen Berger (USA), they primarily target chocolatiers and pastry chefs working in high-end restaurants, who melt down these chocolate and turn them into a finished product (like chocolate truffles!).

Yarra Valley Chocolaterie & Ice Creamery, a major tourist attraction in Melbourne, sources their chocolate from Callebaut. I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on some Callebaut and began making desserts with it as well.

Try as I might though, I could never persuade myself to buy a block of Valrhona chocolate, which cost twice as much as Callebaut per weight.

So imagine my utter delight, when a wonderful friend of mine gave me une tablette de chocolat Valrhona as a gift out of the blue.



20 November 2014

Mrs Kim’s Grill

November 20, 2014 0
Mrs Kim’s Grill
I love Korean food. It’s an acquired taste, one that developed rapidly when I moved to Australia for my studies. I love picking my way through all their many side dishes, and would gladly sit there for hours sipping Korean barley tea.

In all honesty though, I’m probably not the best person to eat Korean food with. People tell me I hold the chopsticks wrong. (It’s not wrong. I can use the chopsticks just fine, thankyouverymuch. I can use them to stab your judge-y eyes). My one personal failing, one that I own up to more readily, is that I can’t take spicy food. I try, but the results ain’t pretty. My skin first starts to itch. Then I start sweating. And my nose starts running. Still, my resolve to eat only non-spicy food wavers every time I enter a Korean restaurant, and we’ll inevitably end up with several spicy dishes.

In spite of my unattractive physical reaction to spiciness, (or perhaps because of it?), a group of friends headed over to Mrs Kim’s Grill, a Korean BBQ restaurant, with me in tow.





We went for lunch on a week day, a timing not popular with people who have jobs or school later in the afternoon. Aha! Perfect. We got the best seats in the house, while the other people are frittering their lives away in school. 

We ordered their Famous Marinated Galbi Beef Ribs ($18), their Soy Pork Belly ($14), Soy Lamb Ribs ($14), and Ox Tongue ($15). We also shared a jug of Kirin ($23), which are served on tap. 


My baked goods

November 20, 2014 0
My baked goods
I like to bake.

No wait, scratch that. Let’s start over.

I know how to bake.

 Valrhona Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

I would like to say that I am naturally gifted at baking, but it's far from the truth. I still remember my first few attempts. My sponge cake tasted like cookies. My cookies tasted like bricks. My dog turned her nose up at my cake and continued rooting through garbage for scraps. 

I gave up soon after.


Valrhona Chocolate Orbit Cake, davidlebovitz.com