It’s really a pity Rundle Mall is totally closed off to traffic

Click on the images to get to Google Maps for the locations.

The Central Market Precint
This is one of the main restaurant strips in Adelaide. Not surprisingly, my favourites are clustered around here.

My favourite Japanese restaurant, Wasai:

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This doesn’t look like much because they only open for dinner, but it’s the best and most authentic Korean BBQ place in town. ?Hwan-Ro:

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Cafe Kowloon. Jolly decent place for yum cha.

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There’s a big honkin’ tree in front of it, but this is East Taste. The salted egg yolk deepfried whitebait is deeeeeeeelishus.

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Gosh the Gouger Street lot is blurry. Anyway here’s BBQ City. It gets my cheap eats award. Typical Hongkie Canto fare. My favourite is the chicken and salted fish fried rice. If I’m in a huge hurry I walk down there from work and grab a takeaway c&sffr (bringing along my own takeaway container of course). The I eat it over the course of 2 meals, much to the chagrin of the cleaners who think it stinks

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Noodle House and A Taste of Spice. Noodle House is another cheap eats awardee. It specialises in Northern/Shanghai/Szechuan style type Chinese though. The dumplings are dirt cheap. A Taste of Spice has Malaysian/Singaporean cuisine. It’s pretty authentic and the prices aren’t bad, especially for lunch. The last time I was there though I got a glass piece in my food (the sort that shatters into non-sharp chunks of glass, so no injuries there) and the young waiter didn’t even apologise! The boss man is not bad though so I’m sure he would have done the right thing if he was there. I wouldn’t have minded going back because it is that tasty but Ray refuses all the time I suggest it. And I’m the one that got the glass piece, not him! >_>

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Cibo’s:

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Apparently it’s an Adelaide institution. The coffees are great (so they tell me). I think the gelatis here are the best ever (tip: almond, pistachio and the hazelnut and chocolate flavoured-one [baci, I think]). The Italian hot chocolate isn’t bad too. Basically it’s like pure liquid chocolate. It comes in an almost espresso-size cup. I can’t comfortably finish one serve.

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Bazu is a newer entrant to the market. It opened early this year. It specialises in Szechuan cuisine, and hotpot. It’s cheap but can be very busy. Don’t expect the service to be great. The manager dude looks like a slave driver.

One of the entrances to Central Market, where I do my weekly grocery shopping. This particular section of the facade has been there since 1900 (the Market first opened in 1869).

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Big Table (shop 39-40) has awesome sandwiches and in winter, soups. My favourite is the chicken caesar salad baguette, and for brekkie the green eggs and ham (actually scrambled eggs with italian parsley and prosciutto, on buttered thick cut brown bread). I generally buy my fresh veg, especially tomatoes, from Ripe (shop 61), mushrooms from The Mushroom Man’s Mushroom Shop (shop 68) and cheese from Say Cheese (shop 46). I love working next to the markets <3 <3

Everything Else

It doesn’t look like anything here, but it’s now an Ajisen Ramen (opened in the last week or so?). Yes, Adelaide has Ajisen Ramen!

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I went there last night and had the paiku ramen. Mmmm…tastes the same as HK (or at least my memory of it from years ago ;;>_>)

Technically this isn’t really a recommendation but I love it so here goes:-

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Nando’s has got to be my favourite fast food place >_<
<3 Peri peri sauce

East Terrace Continental (ETC) is one of the awesomest breakfast places around. It doesn't beat a Big Table brekkie in terms of taste, but it has awesome ambience. Having Saturday/Sunday brekkie there feels really...inner city urban yuppie. >_>. However!! One has to fight hard for a table and it’s normally packed. So either go really early, or late, or book. Recommendation: Chill Bar. Turkish style brekkie, with soft boiled egg in warmed garlic yoghurt. Served with pan-fried mushrooms, and toast sticks that you dip into the yoghurt/egg. You sort of mush the egg so the yolk blends in with the yoghurt. It’s the first time I’ve had that combination, and to be honest I thought it sounded weird at first, but it works, it works.

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Rather blurry, but here’s the Yiros House:

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The first time I ever had a falaffel was here. The guy gave me free garlic sauce since it was my first time
I reckon it’s the best falaffel/yiros place in Adelaide (not counting fancy restaurants).

Speaking of fancy restaurants, here’s Alphutte:

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I haven’t been here, but it’s meant to be exactly the same as Lenzerheide which is out of the city. They were owned by husband and wife but after they divorced each got one restaurant each. It specialises in swiss cuisine. Tip: potato and leek soup.

P.S. The Adelaide bux has closed down! -shakes fist at global recession personally affecting me-
Where shall I get my Starbucks green tea latte now?!

Karen and Alan came down to Adelaide for the weekend for a wedding, so Ray decided to give them a bit of a South Australian experience for dinner.

We went to the Brasserie at the Hilton. The executive chef, Simon Bryant, has a show on ABC TV with Maggie Beer called “The Cook and the Chef” which is reasonably well known. They promote a lot of local produce on the show, and the Brasserie is no different. It showcases foods from different regions in South Australia from time to time. The first time I went there, it was the South-East region (so around Mount Gambier). This time it was food from the plains.

Ray and I shared a caesar salad ($16) for entree. I bullied him into it because I’m a caesa salad nut, however I graciously allowed him to choose the dessert (which we didn’t end up having since everyone else was too full - except me!! >_<). But if we had a dessert then I'd have gone for Desert Pearls ($14). It looks awesome. A pyramid of non-alcoholic wine jelly! Yum.

Anyway here's the menu blurb:

Julius dressed baby cos salad, speck, Limestone Coast Cheese Co bradenberg, Cleland Gully free-range egg.

Foods from the Edge is located at Coromandel Valley in the delightful Adelaide Hills and have been operating for over 10 years. They were winners of the 2002 SA Great Regional Manufacturing Award. Cleland Gully’s Joanne and Jon free-range their chickens at Mt Compass and produce barn-laid eggs that taste like they used to! Limestone Coast Cheese Co from Lucindale use fresian milk from the south-east to hand craft their range of cheeses.

Not bad…however I like my salad *bathed* in dressing (._.)

For the gnocchi ($27), the menu blurb:

Bocconcini cheese gnocchi, lime zested coriole black olives, tomato and chervil.

Lavera have made Italian fresh stretched curd cheese in the Adelaide Foot Hills since 1984. Coriole vineyards in the Fleurieu Peninsula are renowned for heir wines, olives, vinegars and oils.

This was FANTASTIC. Light fluffy pillows of potatoes! And the lime zest! So fresh and citrusy without being sour. I have always had bad experiences with gnocchi, and have avoided it, till now when I decided to try something different. Highly recommended.

Ray had the chicken ($28):

Roasted free-range chicken maryland, SA brown lentils, grilled fennel, roasted garlic, tarragon oil.

Val, John, Cathryn and Matthew Greenslades’ farm, 100km north of Adelaide at Riverton, prodices an exceptional full-flavoured free-range bird. Lentils are the world’s oldest known food crop, their drought tolerance makes them an ideal crop alternative to wheat in our dry state and we source locally grown brown lentils from grain specialist Goodies & Grains in Adelaide’s Central Market.

Reaaaaaaaaal yummy stuff.

Karen had the chicken too, and Alan had a Coorong Black Angus t-bone steak with mashed potatoes, a Mushroom Man roasted field mushroom and Cafe de Paris butter. I think he asked for a medium rare but the bits nearer the bone were ……pretty bloody. It was huge though, and very very tasty. Even the raw bits. Melt in your mouth delishusness.

The menu is very wordy so it actually takes awhile to read through everything to decide. I appreciate the detail that goes into it though; and it’s nice to know where the produce comes from. They need a better proofer though >_>

I like the layout of the place too. It’s very open so you can see alot going on. It’s pretty cool ^_^

It’s a Friday night and I’m looking forward to a well-deserved sleep-in tomorrow.
I’ve had dinner (fish ball noodle soup…without actually having any fish balls), and I’ve got my rabbit marinated and ready to go for tomorrow.

I’ve had my shower and I’m in my pyjamas.
Katie Melua’s album, “Piece by Piece”, is playing.
I’m reading Earthsea #1.

I’m drinking freshly brewed sencha out of my Bodum Pavina double-walled glass.
The tea goes well with Ray’s mum’s florentines.

-sighs happily-

=====

I had about 2 glasses left in a bottle of Penfolds red lying around so I decided to stew some meat. I suppose I should have used a redder meat because rabbit’s pretty white really - just like chicken.

I got the game meat shop to quarter the rabbit for me. Probably the grossest thing, when preparing rabbit, is that there are some hairs stuck into that membrane covering the flesh. The hairs are like cat’s hair kinda sharp and liable to getting everywhere. I can tell you my rabbit was one of those browney-grey types. Must have been hard to de-skin it around the neck because I found small downey fur balls stuck around there.

Anyway, I rubbed murray river salt, black pepper, sage powder (which tastes like nothing but I’m still trying to get rid of the bottle) and garlic powder into the pieces of meat. After that I rubbed in some extra virgin olive oil. Then I splashed some balsamic vinegar on top. Lastly, I poured in the red wine, giving it all a lovely purple colour. I’ve shoved in a couple of cloves of smashed garlic too. I’ll go to Central Market tomorrow and get some discount potatoes and onions which I will add to the casserole dish together with the tomatoes and carrots I got tonight at Woolies.

Ideally I’d brown the piece of meat in a cast iron casserole dish, then slow bake it in the oven. But because the most suitable thing I have is this Pyrex bakeware dish with no oven-proof lid I’ll probably do without the browning as I’m too lazy to wash another pot. I’ll have to cover the whole lot well with baking paper to try to seal it in so it doesn’t dry out so quickly.

Oh yeah and 1 rabbit is $8.50 (2 for $15). It weighs about 1.5 kg, I think.

They are selling air-flown from Paris fairy ring mushrooms and chantarelles at the market. It costs about $167/kg!! Think that’s bad? There’s also fresh black truffles - it works out to be $1000/kg >_>
I’ll stick to normal Swiss brown kthxbai.

I spotted these at Central Market and knew I had to get them :DD At about 13:30 on Saturday, there weren’t many mushrooms left as the market was about to close and wouldn’t re-open till the following Tuesday.
Even though they were expensive - $7.50 for 250 g (O_O|||) - I bought one to try (only one!!). I got a larger one and it cost $3.50.

The red pine mushroom, lactarius deliciosus (heh) is also known as the saffron milk cap. The “lactarius” and “milk cap” names refer to the characteristic of mushrooms in that genus to exude “milk” or latex.

They probably come from the huge pine plantations in the south-east of the state…

I wish the sign at the stall was more detailed. It took me awhile to find the exact latin name for the mushroom -complain-. When you search for "pine mushroom" you generally get links to matsutake (which, after all, literally means “pine mushroom”) type mushrooms. And it definitely does not look like matsutake. Turns out matsutakes are in a totally different genus - tricholoma instead of lactarious -grumble-. I’m pretty sure it is lactarius deliciosus as the photo on the wiki looks more similar than for the tricholoma mushrooms, name, and the fact that wiki says it has been introduced to Australia.

It looks really bad right!! Real manky…with suspicious-looking green bits. I was wondering if it was mold >_> Nonetheless since it was pricey I did the right thing. I didn’t wash it with water, only brushed it. Danger is my middle name!

It turns out that the mushroom stains a green colour when handled. But I only found this out much, much later when I read the wiki for the mushroom.

Note darker red on the cut edges of the mushroom - that’s the latex

The bottom right hand photo is the finished dish. Lousy pic, but you get the point. The similarly-coloured bread in the background probably wasn’t helpful.

The store girl said to cook it like a normal mushroom, and that it was the same except it had a stronger flavour. Sounds good.

I took a softly, softly, approach. Just real simple to emphasize the natural flavours. After quartering the cap, I pan fried it with butter and a clove of squashed garlic (although according to the wiki you shouldn’t use butter D:). I seasoned it with Murray River pink salt and freshly ground black pepper and finished it off with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. I wish I had some Italian flat-leaf parsely on hand to sprinkle on top. It would have gone fabulously together.

I had it with some nice ciabatta bread from Skaala bakery at Central Market. They do fabulous ciabattas btw. I cut it into large chunks and toasted the cut ends in the same pan as the mushrooms, swirling it around to soak up all the garlicky buttery goodness. I only regret that the butter started smoking after awhile and then the fire alarm went off. Have I mentioned that the fire trucks are automatically called out and that if it is a false alarm you have to pay $500? SUPER STRESSFUL. I rushed around opening all the doors and turning on the air-con to blow the air out and the alarm turned off before the fire trucks got called out. When I was finally able to sit down to my mushrooms they were lukewarm, which is better than stone cold I suppose (which is what happened the last time the alarm went off).

Conclusion: lactarius deliciosus is delishus.

When I was in Japan, I had the most wonderful dish in the world.

MENTAIKO OMURICE
“明太子オムライス”

I can’t remember how much it was, but it was cheap. It couldn’t have been more than 1000 yen.
I think I had it at some omurice store at the restaurant-gai (restaurant floor) of sun-something-or-other city at Ikebukuro.

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

It’s next to impossible trying to find English language information on mentaiko omurice. I had to search in Japanese.

I found a recipe that I will have use as a starting point as I didn’t see any others. It doesn’t exactly look like the standard mentaiko omurice.

In other mentaiko-related trivia, did you know my daily breakfast, lunch or snack combini onigiri was almost invariably mentaiko-flavoured?

Click here for mentaiko wiki.

The other day, no, month, no………year, (I started the draft on 14 June 2006 o.O) I flew into Adelaide REAL early, because the early flight was the cheapest >_< I had an job interview later in the day I think.

Anyway I had a craving for a fast food brekkie. I still hadn’t eaten anything yet. This was before Hungry Jacks opened up at Adelaide Airport. So yeah had to wait till my bus came and got into the city then the ardorous walk to Pulteney St/Rundle St Hungry Jacks. It was a bit of a disappointment. The hashbrown, of which I normally purchase two of from Macca’s, was greasy and not as crisp as it should be. The “mcmuffin” was…..eh. I remember feeling a bit sick after. But then I suppose I always feel a bit sick after I eat a fast food brekkie anyway

Yeah, saw some teenagers dressed up as tellytubbies while waiting for the bus. Must have been the morning after a big party

I went to Saldechin last year while moseying around Adelaide, waiting for an interview to start. It’s located in one of those old bank buildings. I really like the atmosphere inside. Sort of serene, with bucketloads of grandeur. Good fusion of tradition and modern style.

It sells traditional Chinese furniture (reproduction, not antiques, if the price and finish is any indication), Chinese teas and serves as a teahouse/cafe too. The dimsum (small selection) is apparently home made. After a bad run of baos and dumplings with mysterious gristle (and the whole China poison food and cardboard char siu baos news came out at the time), their char siu bao was refreshingly…homemade-tasting, I guess. It tasted good and not artificial.

On the weekends, the place turns into a club sort of place I think. It would be an alright place to hangout for the 30-something officeworker. (haha, I’m still too young for that……………………………… >_>)

Saldechin is located at 21 King William St, Adelaide.

Koko Black is one of those new-ish speciality chocolate drink/dessert cafes that have sprouted up. High quality chockies at rather expensive prices, but I suppose for the chocolate lover it is worth it.

I’m not one but I’m thankful there’s somewhere chic I can go to other than the usual coffee places like Starbucks or Gloria Jeans where my only realistic option is to get green tea latte at the former and creamy hot chocolate at the latter.

Is it weird that I don’t drink coffee or particularly like chocolate? In the ‘meh’ category goes ice cream and cakes.I can’t imagine eating one whole slice of cake. I think I have food ADD.

In Japan we saw this shop touting their 36 or so varieties of cakes that came shaped in slender fingers that offered perhaps 2 or at most 3 bites. A concept made for me! Unfortunately I never got to try their cakes…

My mom’s birthday is always around the time of the Chinese mid-autumn festival (actually it’s Spring in Australia…). She loves mooncakes, and this year she requested mooncakes as her birthday cake! \*0*/

I got the recipe from my aunt, but I’ve never heard of half the ingredient list, but more importantly the instructions are as vague, unclear and as downright misleading as you can get D:

Good thing I could call up my aunt for further clarification … but not so ‘nice’ to keep calling right?

So I kind of muddled my way through >_<

And then!! My rolling pin went missing and no one could find the wooden mooncake mold!!! \*o*/
Luckily one person in my cell group had a mooncake mold - plastic, but can't complain.

And then for some reason the dough is sooooooo elastic (I think it's because I refused to use alkaline water - the chemicals in it sound so scary o.o) that it just bounces back to its original shape after awhile. So even though I used a mold, it just ends up looking like shapeless lumps anyway D:

There are lots of other mistakes which I won't bore you with, but I think I know what to do next time >:|

The mooncakes I made are ng ngan (5 seed) mooncakes. It’s a filling made out of nuts instead of lotus seed paste. It’s actually a traditional filling but for some reason most people haven’t heard of it before and think I am making up weird shit :@

There are walnuts, sesame seeds, pepitas (melon seeds), almonds and cashews. There’s also kat baeng (candied mandarins) and tong dong gua (candied winter melon). It’s a delightfully light and crunchy mooncake and is not as oily or filling as a traditional lotus seed paste one (yar, and you use HEAPS of oil for lotus filling mkay!)

My favourite filling is the dong gua :D. I toasted it so it’s so nice and crisp and crunchy >_<

Because I didn’t have any carbonate/alkaline water in the dough, it didn’t rise at all!! So the skin is not soft >_>
It’s crunchy/hard like a cracker.

Also did you know the skin is so dark because they put in black sauce? And other seasonings I normally associate with savoury “normal” food >_>

Anyway no black sauce so I had to use lots of egg wash to brown it up. Otherwise it would have been a white mooncake!

It’s actually not bad. I quite like it. But maybe I shouldn’t call them ‘mooncakes’ eh? Yar. They are now henceforth called ‘Evane’s Special Nutty Biscuits’.

Basil infused rare yellow fin tuna, baby chard leaves, soy and mustard seed dressing

Ray took me to Aubergine, reputed to be the best one of the best fine dining restaurants in Canberra, for my birthday dinner.
Yay! <3

Cape Grim water

A moustachio’d Ray

Duck on top of a dumpling thing and giblets

Steak + stewed beef + carrot puree

Vanilla icecream on chocolate cake

We had to have the shorter degustation (7 instead of possibly…10?) as our table was needed for a later booking. We noticed there were a number of empty tables by the time we left though. Hmm.

They’ve changed the degustation menus recently and I can barely remember what we ate, so….eh. The following description is a rough estimate of what we ate XD. But the impressions are accurate still

I haven’t included photos of everything because some of them were just too blurry to be tolerable. Camera couldn’t focus in the dark ._.

Things started out promisingly. The water they served us with was Cape Grim, which is the purest water in the world (take that San Pellegrino!). It’s collected somewhere above Tasmania.

Then we were served a soup. It was a creamy cream-coloured soup with a brown lump in the middle. It may have been potato soup, and I think it was a meatball…
It was served in a smallish teacup espresso cup (aka short black coffee cup) on a saucer. Cute, but not that impressive. For that amount of soup I would have served it in a martini glass. It was pretty nice though. Very tasty.

After that was what I suspect may be their signature starter dish as it’s still on the menu - Basil infused rare yellow fin tuna, baby chard leaves, soy and mustard seed dressing. I couldn’t really taste any basil but the salad leaves were interesting and tasty. Found it a bit heavy on the soy sauce though. It was too salty which will be a recuring theme during the meal. Ray and I both agree that was the best dish though.

The next dish was a crustacean-themed one. Scampi and a scallop and prawn sausage on possibly caramelised onions on a bed of whipped butter. The scampi was a bit raw on the inside. I don’t mind raw scampi, in fact I LOVE scampi sashimi. But in a dish llike this I like my scampi cooked. The sausage was really “meh”. Waste of good scallop I reckon.

The (most likely) muscovy duck breast was served on top of a crepe with something inside, possibly braised duck. There was a triangle-shaped green thing which at the last moment I realised were duck giblets encrusted with a herb coating. Normally I avoid giblets like the plague but when you’re paying $80 for a meal you eat every frickn thing.

The main dish was grain-fed beef tenderloin with a pat of herb butter on top, braised beef rib (I think) and a carrot and sage sabayon with cabernet jus (probably). Notice how the sabayon, which is a whipped mousse-y sauce, is in a carrot shape and the garnish on the beef rib is a roasted baby carrot and a deepfried sage leaf. Witty.

The braised beef was a bit stringy and tasted like home-cooking of the sort you don’t like. I wasn’t very impressed by it and had to work to finish it off. The tenderloin was nice but a very dark purple colour in the middle - pretty raw. The jus I found really too salty, and it didn’t look very nice just sort of randomly splashed and swishing around the plate like that.

After that was a lime sorbet palate cleanser. It was very nice, slightly creamy but still clean-tasting. Even though it was only a palate cleanser it was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the evening. Unfortunately I have to mark it down for presentation. It was served on saucer! Maybe that circular depression in the middle is meant to hold the ball of sorbet in place…but eh. It’s like how at home if I run out of small plates I just use a saucer to eat a piece of cake or something (o.o) It really looked a bit lost.

To finish there was a vanilla semi-freddo on top of a circle of warmed chocolate mudcake. The presentation would have been very nice, see how the caramel threads mix in with the chocolate sauce on the right? Pretty. HOWEVER! The young klutzy looking “waiter” manhandled my plate and the ice-cream slipped off its base!! I was staring quizzically at the plate as he walked towards me, wondering why there was this ball swishing around on the plate. He dumped the plates at our table without even announcing what the dish was. No apologies (o.o).

Because the kitchen is semi-open, I was able to observe a bit of the kitchen from my seat. For some reason the bit that customers can see the most clearly is the sink and dishwasher. Uh, not the most glamorous part of the kitchen, hello! And the dishhand became my impromptu dessert-carrier.

Actually the waitstaff that night were all kind of curt and not particularly hospitable. Maybe they were short-staffed that night >_>. Well still that doesn’t excuse the service. No tips for them!

I made sure to fill out the feedback card.

I don’t normally care much about presentation or service, and the taste would have been alright at a cafe (except for the saltiness. Inexcusable.) Ray also felt there was too much raw stuff in all the food. The tuna, scampi and quite a bit in the beef and would have liked more variety in textures.

Rating (out of 5)
Ambience: 4
Food: 3
Service: 2
Overall: 2.5

On the whole I’ve been very harsh with my review because they say they are a fine dining restaurant and shouldn’t we expect that standard from them?

I decided to try this out today. They are pretty easy to make XD

Wish I had brown thread though. Oh well.
-hides the yucky sides away from camera-

I need to get some beads for eyes too. Wouldn’t that be cute XD

Here’s another photo:

(I got the patterns from here.)

I thought I’d have another crack at them.

So after months I’ve finally dusted off the sewing machine to (FINALLY!!!) finish off seaweed belt for Dan’s tamago nigiri
Unfortunately the machine kept screwing up on me so it’s not perfect ._.

I tried something new too - fluffy prawn tempura sushi XD
It was very trial and error, and the proportions are really wonky ._.

I didn’t do the belt or the rice (seaweed obi stolen from tamago and rice stolen from inari XD) for the tempura prawn, but eh.

I saw this weird fruit at Woolworths today. It was 98c each (pricey!) but I couldn’t resist trying it out.
It looks like a plum tomato and has a stalk similar to the stalks found on chillies. I was wondering if it was like a plum.

When I got back I looked it up on the wiki as per usual. Tamarillos aka tree tomato, are in the same family as tomatoes however they are in a different genus. They are native to the Andes of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia and are cultivated in quite a number of countries including Australia and are grown as a commercial crop for international export in New Zealand and Portugal.

The NZ Tamarillo Growers Association’s official tamarillo website markets it as “the lost food of the Incas” which is really quite romantic I thought. (The Tamarillos at Woolies weren’t specially marketed or anything though…wonder if they’ll be able to sell them all).

Oooo. NZ seems to be growing lots of strange fruit including kiwiberries. Interesting.

Anyway I very happily trotted back home with my lovely little tamarillo in my hands. I sliced it open…and had a bite.

…interesting flavour. But it was BITTER! What?!

The websites didn’t mention bitterness? Hmm. I tried just the flesh alone and it wasn’t bitter…Ah. Make sure you don’t eat the skin of a tamarillo……

I had half of it just plain. It had a very interesting flavour. Similar to a tomato - tangy. But it had a very tasty, savoury flavour to it too. Very unusual flavour. The seeds were harder than normal tomatoes but still edible. It was reminiscent of pomegranates.

I halved my remaining half of tamarillo flesh. I sugared one half and with the other I drizzled some good olive oil over it, gave it a good twist of freshly ground black pepper and salt.

The savoury tamarillo was pretty nice. It would go great in a salad. It’s just so tasty and full-bodied. Grilled tamarillo? Mmmm…I tried it with fresh grated parmesean cheese too. While it rounded out the flavour and took the edge off the sourness, I felt it also masked the unique flavour of the tamarillos.

I had the sugared tamarillo for “dessert”. And it was niiiiice. Very refreshing. The websites recommend chilled sugared tamarillo for breakfast. In Colombia, fresh tamarillos are frequently blended together with water and sugar to create a beverage.

Mmm.
Tamarillo.
Eeet eeet!

(Apologies for the horrible blurriness. It didn’t look as bad on my mobile screen)

- Sushi set from the traditional japanese food series, re-ment.

This is an early series re-ment shogukan. You can tell because the sushi is all stuck to the geta. I thought the seller glued all the pieces down =_=

The pieces also don’t achieve the realism of later series. I think it’s a good addition to any puchi food collection because it’s a representative piece in the developmental history of re-ment puchi food.

thanks for the set jamie!

This is the character for the name of a famous Shaanxi dish, biang biang mian (biang biang noodles).

From the wiki:

The noodles, touted as one of the “ten strange wonders of Shaanxi” (陝西十大怪), are described as being like a belt, due to their thickness and length.

Made up of 57 strokes, the Chinese character “biáng” is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage, although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary. Due to the fact that the Chinese character for “biáng” cannot be entered into computers, phonetic substitutes like 棒棒麵 bàng bàng miàn or 梆梆麵 bāng bāng miàn are often used.

Many Shaanxi residents have to rely on poems/mnemonics to remember how the character is written.

See Dan Washburn’s entertaining post on his visit to Xi’an and his first experience with Shaanxi noodles.

The noodles do look pretty yummy though…

- cheers for the heads up “Daniel”!

aburai salmon

(salmon nigiri with mayo squirted on top then blasted with hand torch so the mayo melts and the salmon surface is only just cooked)

Inside out tonkatsu and avocado maki with a handful of crunchy tempura bits thrown on top, comes with a little cup of tempura sauce that you pour over the top just before you eat.

Inside out salmon and avocado roll.

Crunchy tempura prawn nigiri. Comes with a sauce on top which is similar to tonkatsu sauce. Found it a bit too sweet this time.

- Sushi train, Adelaide. ~$13
I was sitting next to two aussie wannabe otakus. I’m guessing first year uni otherwise high school. One of them yes wearing one of those neko hats similar to the ones you see on azumanga daioh. She was interjecting ‘oishi!’ at regular intervals while goading on her more normal friend (well actually she looked like a not-fully-intense emo-goth) to try stuff. The emo at one stage took the sample/display bowl of tempura udon off the belt, fully thinking it was for reals…call yourself a japonophile while not knowing about their expertise in making food samples? I huff. Amateurs XD

Anyway, it was all a bit embarrassing, because i know i was really close to being just like that in the past, because i always had the feeling at the back of my mind that it was kinda weird to use japanese in everyday speech… Well, at times i could be just as otaku-ish. Cause i thought it was cool? Oh how embarrassing! -hides face-

i have so grown out of that phase. The only time i ever wore a neko hat was in singapore on a dare or something from jamie. Having a motive like that is not as bad as doing it cause it’s japanesey and ‘cute’ and your fav anime character wears one just like it. Right? Right?

No, no. I’m now riding the korean wave. Cause being a japonophile is sooo 2000.

And the wheel keeps turning round…

I’ve put the recipe up on Open Source Food. It’s here.

OSF is a relatively new project by yongfook. It’s like a recipe sharing site, but with loads of pretty pictures and that whole social networking jazz thrown in. The design is clean and simple. So, so, YF. Kudos, kid. I love it.

Ray baked this the other day (under my supervision)

It was yummy <3

- rating 4/5 (icing a bit on sweet side but toasted almonds were yummo).

I don’t know what the proper korean name for this dish is but it probably ends in ‘bap’. This is another bibimbap variation that is relatively modern. It gained popularity in korea because it’s rather healthy.

It’s basically the rice with a dash of sesame seed oil with young salad leaves like baby spinach and red endives with finely shredded cabbage and carrot. There are sprouts too like alfafa and mung bean sprouts. This is topped with seaweed, a sprinkling of sesame seeds and fish roe. When it is served you are given some chilli sauce and you can mix in as much as you like.

It was rather yummy and quite fresh-tasting although towards the end i might have added in too much sauce =_=. Even though the menu listed the roe as salmon roe i have to doubt it as the eggs are far too small. Maybe it’s the roe in its early stages before it got bigger…anyway you can hardly taste it. Probably needs more.

Seems like a fish that can be made easily at home…except for the chilli sauce, which is the key ingredient that holds the whole dish together. I suppose it’s easy to find the recipe online though.

-Irodori, Canberra city centre. $9. Rating: 3.5/5 (thumbs up on presentation and relatively low Canberra price, thumbs down for suspect roe that is not enough. Needs more seaweed and sesame seeds too. And i’d use korean roasted seaweed which is more tasty.)

Inspired by jamie oliver. There’s actually more lettuce than it seems…the poor leaves have been smothered by the coddled egg, baked chicken, prociutto etc

UPDATE: my recipe is up on opensourcefood.