Taiwan Taipei, fun Taiwan... What a lovely country to visit for a holiday, unfortunately it was a rainy winter in December, regardless of the bad weather food were abundance, restaurants, cafe, street food were everywhere. First meal we had was in a Hakka restaurant located near our hotel






Glutinous rice flour with pork stuffing, clear broth with coriander.


Duck noodles more coriander.


古早咸猪肉盖饭 - authentic salted pork rice? haha, but seriously it was tasty. And more .. coriander, they seem to love coriander, i dont mind, i like it.


mochi covered with peanut powder.


仕林夜市 Shilin night market was so crowded on a Sunday night.


Tang hu lu - candied fruits


Wow frog eggs?? nah it's actually pearl milk tea


Aiyu jelly


Not sure what to drink? No problem! here's the menu take your time, plenty to choose from.


Grilled mushroom with a selection of sauce to go with


Very fresh and juicy mushrooms. I chose only salt and pepper, wanted to taste its natural flavors.


This night market is packed~! don't go there on weekends, its at crawling level on weekends.


So back in Taipei main station we saw people queuing to get something, obviously with a queue that long, its gotta be something awesome, of course we were curious to check it out ourselves. Turns out to be a famous Japanese franchise cheese cake, one store one item, nothing else.

12 cakes baked fresh every 15 minutes. Only one purchase per person, that's what building the line. 18cm diameter cheese cake for 20ringgit, why not give it a shot.



hmmm.....


... so the cake was light and airy, could hear micro bubbles burst while slicing into it, cheese was perfect, mild and eggy. If your a diehard fan of cheese cake, go queue up its definitely worth waiting for it;)

Ooh yea... just before leaving Australia, a couple of friends gather to have a 3 day DimSim(aussie slang) marathon before saying farewell. We've visited Taipan doncaster, Goldleaf burwood, Yum Cha Inn glenwaverly. Food was so good i got all the pictures jumbled up.

Goldleaf and Taipan were among my favourite, both had an authentic style and flavour where else Taipan were more adventurous, i remember ordering corn kernel prawn balls and silky smooth rice noodle roll wrap fried chinese donut, they look appealing and i've never seen these dish before and it taste delicious.

A few must have dish for me are Chicken feet uuu... i love chicken feet, braised in soy sauce its salty and sweet and pork ribs marinate and steam with fermented black bean.

Each portion were huge and reasonably price, feel like DimSim tomorrow, yum.

Good bye 2010 and a big welcome New Year 2011, though we missed the fireworks display in the city we had a joy ride and relaxing evening.

May this year brings you more happYness and success. kampai bro.

Unboxing

Finally the parcel arrived, my first yanagi knife, 27cm Masamoto Hon-kasumi. did not expect the knife to be wrap in such a big box but i held on to it walking home happily.

Inside the box was the knife and a Korin catalog of other knives they sell, what a lovely work of art, fully hand craft blade and handle with a perfect center balance. testing the knife on a piece of paper feels awesome, listening to the paper shred and watching this beast tearing the paper in a clean cut, awesome simply awesome tool added to my repertoire.

hispanic fiesta

Anguila
Smoked eel brandada with sorrel, crispy tocino and fresh truffle

Anchoa
Hand filleted Cantabrian Artisan anchovy on crouton with smoked tomato sorbet

Bomba
Catalan Potato bomb filled with chorizo

Buey
Rost Biff wagyu with tocino de cielo, potato crisps, pickled garlic and black garlic

Carillera de buey
Slowly braised beef cheek in Pedro Ximenez on cauliflower puree

Bocadillo de calamares
Calamari sandwich with Basque guindilla and mayonnaise



Monday night, rainy week, a little slow, a little lazy to cook and home, decided to dine out with a couple a friends, the place was Movida Terraza, one of Frank Camorra's few tapas bar in Melbourne. Tapas were appetizing and the slow braise beef cheek i ordered were nothing much to look at but was amazingly tender and tasty, smoothers cauliflower puree i ever had.
Bomba's, i would never forget this dish, as Marion from Masterchef Australia beat the creator of that dish himself. Its a cute dish, little deep fried ball with sauce on top, i can eat a few of these as a meal:)

Felt a little Mediterranean recently because i have a few spices sitting in the drawer waiting for me to cook with it. So i thought of cooking a kebab. What a simple easy dish to put together, marinate the meat, chuck it in the fridge, prep the vege and prepare some skewers ,done. Well i thought i had some bamboo skewers at home so i opt to use toothpicks instead. It was easier than a Chinese stir-fry.
To accompany my ... cocktail kebabs were couscous with raisins and wonderful fresh herbs grown in the garden and a dollop of sour cream,mince garlic,paprika. Garnish with a citruses layer of sumac spice. Sour, lamb, couscous hmm. i gotta make this more often.

Its funny how sometimes when disaster strike and things turn out even better then what you've expected. for example these Grissini i've baked, i begin with too much water and had ran out of flour, leaving me no choice i continued kneading a very moist dough and let it prove till double its size. an accidental recipe that turn out prefect nice happy and moist, just the kind of dough i've wanted to work with.
Top up with seasoning of salt, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and Togarashi. i know, cheese and Japanese spice is a match made in hell, but i was delicious. saltiness from the cheese and a little heat from Japanese spice actually compliment each other.