Adriano Zumbo Pâtissier, Balmain

Enjoying my wonderful purchase from Zumbo outdoors, at a nearby park, with friends. Life is Good.

So, guys. SORRY I've been away the past week and a half. Even though it prolly hasn't been that long, but it felt like forever in "blogging-time". Have really missed you guys!! JUST finished my final paper for my undergrad degree and it feels GREAT. Been looking forward to this post for a long time so I'm glad to be able to share it with you guys today.

Don't worry, after this I've only got ONE Sydney post left from our Sydney Food Trip, i.e. our last degustation dinner at Marque, so watch out for that soon! But then again, I'm going to Sydney again this December with my family, and I can't wait to bring my parents to eat all the yummy stuff Sydney has to offer! The family is positively excited because we've all been looking forward to the day when we can go to Sydney together for SO long, YAY! =D (Really wish you and your family were here, Gogo!!)

Any-hoo, Zumbo. I know I've heard mixed reviews about them but I wanted to go try it out for myself. And before I went, I already knew which two desserts I wanted to try that day:

1) Passionfruit Tart (heard SO much great things about them) and

2) Pear Dessert (just cause I saw it on Junior Masterchef) ;p

View from outside the Balmain store. Short, easy bus ride from the city

Lovely display at shopfront window

Array of desserts but I already had my eye on two things hehe

DING! DING! DING! Jackpot!!

How those 2 kids (who haven't even finished primary school yet) could make this themselves, is beyond me

L-R: Rice Pudding and Salted Popcorn Macaron

Rice Pudding Macaron:

I'll be honest, when it comes to macarons, I'm more way interested in the creative flavours than their texture. Just cause most places can make really good macarons these days (texturally). Went with the two that most caught my attention =)

The powdered cinnamon really gave this rice macaron so much character. Was also pleasant to find small, sticky grains of rice in the ganache. Interesting.

Salted Popcorn Macaron:

LOVE any popcorn desserts!!! It's great how unmistakeable the smell of the popcorns were and couldn't help but feel taken back to the times I was at the movies with my friends or family. Don't you just love it when a food reminds you of good memories in the past? =) The ganache was a bit stickier, chewier than usual but I didn't mind. These flavoured macarons rose much higher and beautifully than the others there that day too =)

Two for me that day, and a box of five to bring back for some peeps in Melbourne =)

Passionfruit Tart

Let me tell you, everyone's first reaction to this was "WOW!!". We knew that it was gonna be good, but we didn't realise that it was THAT good. Flavour of the curd was really natural and just bursts in your mouth from the first instance. The curd was so smooth too. But the best part really has to be the sweet and seriously fine, crumbly yet buttery pastry. AMAZING!! I've had lots of great pastries in the past, but none can compare. This was really hands down the best pastry I've ever had in my life!

Pear Dessert

Bought this more for the novelty of eating something that wow-ed me on TV haha. Flavours: just okay but idea and execution: still very intriguing. The pear filling in the top piece of profiterole was light and flavourful and I enjoyed the slice of cooked pear in the bottom piece. The bottom chocolate hazelnut was sandy and really delightful. Overall, choux pastry was just okay, would prefer it were thinner or more chilled.

The pear placed perfectly in the centre of the bottom profiterole. Mmmm...

On a different note, I'll be leaving for Cairns to go DIVING IN THE GREAT BARRIER REEF for a week for my Grad Trip with my uni friends early tomorrow morning. Woooooo-hoooooooo!!! Oh man, it's gonna be so epic. We've been through so much together the past 4 years and we can't think of a better way to end our time in uni before we all go our separate ways. Friends for Life!

Anyway, hope you're all eating well, and doing swell. Will see you all on the flip side! Ciaoooo, chicos and chicas! =D

Gonn' on Holiday~

Din Tai Fung, Sydney CBD

Just a quick post today as I'm currently in the CRUX of my exams. Also apologise for not being in touch with most of you as I normally would! Just been a bit hectic... But it'll be over soon.

So, I may be stepping on some toes when I say this, but I really do think that Din Tai Fung in Sydney is actually better than (most) Din Tai Fung outlets in Singapore and Malaysia. The main reason I say this is because in Malaysia and Singapore, there's too many outlets scattered everywhere in shopping malls that the standards for each are pretty sub-par.

Unlike the one in Sydney CBD, where it's a main, centralised establishment and every person in the kitchen is highly-trained and professional at what they do. And I don't know if the chefs in the kitchen in Sydney also come from China too. The food is better prepared and more delicious in Sydney. Well, this is just an opinion drawn from my past 3 trips to Sydney's Din Tai Fung compared with my experience when I stayed in Singapore for a month earlier this year anyway. Don't be hatin'!

"Xiao Long Bao" or Steamed Pork Dumplings -- $10.80

You can't go to Din Tai Fung and NOT order the XLBs. The meat and soup inside the dumplings were flavourful and delicious as expected, and the skin was really thin. So much so that I noticed the dumplings couldn't really hold its shape. The ones in Hu Tong, however had a more firm and chewy bite without being too thick. No, don't get me wrong. I didn't mind this at all!! Merely an observation. Enjoyed this a lot, still =)

Fried Chicken with Medium Grained Rice --$13.80

I KNEW I wanted to order this even before we went to the restaurant. It's such a rockstar of a dish without being too dressed up by "sophisticated" and unnecessary things. Let's break it down:

First, the chicken. I LOVE how Taiwanese serve their fried chickens either in nuggets or as thin and flattened patties like these (and normally in brown paper bags with a skewer to pick up the meat). What makes Taiwanese fried chicken distinct is also the batter they use. Heavily seasoned with spices, sandy and contains little round crumbs all around. It really is delicious like you wouldn't believe.

Next, the rice. At the end of the day, you really cannot deny a good fried rice, no. Especially when they're done right. These "golden" fried rice is just made up of good quality rice, spring onions and lots of egg. So simple but believe me when I say it has the potential to be one of the most delicious things to eat.

Eating this with the fried chicken, I was smiling the whole way. You have to order this and enjoy it for what it is. Basically, a good fried chicken and fried rice dish. Tasty from the first to finish.

Lychee Mint Juice -- $6.50

Was a bit hesitant to order this at first because of the price but decided to give it a shot after being recommended by a friend. And boy oh boy, did I LOVE this or what! The drink wasn't too sweet but SO refreshing from the mint. Simply delicious and no wonder it's so popular. BEST drink of the entire Sydney trip, for me.

Overall, it was another great and enjoyable meal at Din Tai Fung. If you're not too sure what to order when you're there, just get what I had. Nothing but a simple fried chicken + rice dish, with a few dumplings to share, and a side of the lychee mint as a drink. Utterly, delicious! Love it so much that I really hope I get to go back and order these exact things again!

Have a great weekend ahead! Peace! =D

Watercress Soup Recipe

Hi!

Before I begin, I'm super ecstatic to announce that I've finally gotten my own domain name (yayeeee~~) and have moved my site to: http://www.thehungryexcavator.com/

It's been a long time coming so I'm glad I finally moved. Also, I've just installed a new comment platform on my blog to hopefully give a more personal and convenient experience for you guys to leave your comments (which is almost always the highlight of my day, btw). Thanks for all your words all this time, I really do appreciate every single one =)

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So one of the things that I'm passionate about on this blog is re-creating recipes of food that played a huge part of my childhood (coming from a Chinese-Malaysian background) and sharing them on this blog. I hope it gives people a sense of my identity and culture through Food =)

This Watercress Soup was really one of my favourites growing up. I never liked vegetables when I was younger (up until I came to Australia, actually lol) but would enjoy them a lot if they weren't leafy or cooked till extremely, extremely soft. Which is why I love this so much. The soup is so tasty and flavourful and I loved pouring them onto my rice and could eat so much of the veggies in the soup. They're so soft, sweet and delicious.

So, if you know of any difficult children (like me when I was younger, ahem) and are having trouble with feeding them their daily dose of vegetables, I'd definitely recommend this soup hehe.

Also, a lot of Chinese-Malaysian families like mine use dried cuttlefish + pork bones for many of our pork-based soups. It really is one of the most amazing combo of ingredients for hearty Chinese soups and if you've never used dried cuttlefish before, you really should try it! I plan to share a few more soups using these two ingredients, so watch out! =D

I was a bit worried that I couldn't find dried cuttlefish in Australia but after speaking to my friends, a lovely couple who owns Yahweh Asian Grocery (in Carlton near Melbourne University), I was so happy to find that they actually ordered them right away!

This couple is one of the most generous people I know and let me tell you, the wife is one HELL of a cook. She literally whips up a storm (once, a FEAST for more than 100 people with so much delicious food I almost passed out) each time she's in the kitchen and I trust her taste and judgement a 100%. That's why I feel at ease with the products at Yahweh Asian Grocery because I know these are stuff she uses herself and approves of haha. BEST of all, the prices are almost always cheaper, if not, comparable to anywhere else. If you like, she's got a blog that she uses to share recipes with products from their Asian Grocery, so do check them out: here!

One thing I love most about this soup is how cheap it is to make one huge pot, seriously. The pork bones I got from the market for less than $2. And the watercress was another $2. Other ingredients I already had in my pantry and can all be found at Yahweh Asian Grocery or from your local Asian Grocer. So, I do hope that you give this one a try -- ENJOY! =D

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Watercress Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

1 bunch watercress (around 450g)

500g pork bones

10 red dates

3 honey dates

1 dried cuttlefish *

7 - 8 cups of water

Salt to taste

* These are NOT the same as the dried cuttlefish snacks. Used in cooking and can't be eaten straight out of the packet. Red and honey dates also available at your local Asian Grocer.

Go with the packet above to be safe, or feel free to e-mail me if you've got any questions =)

Method:

Bring half a pot of water to boil. In the meantime, roughly chop the watercress to about 2.5 inches lengthwise and give them a quick wash. Soak red dates in boiling water for 2 minutes before pressing it flat with a fork.

Using tongs, hold the dried cuttlefish over a stove and burn all over until fragrant (it's okay if it looks a bit burnt). Your kitchen will smell pretty amazing right about now ;p

Once water is boiling, add the pork bones and keep boiling for 5 minutes. Switch off fire, drain, and rinse thoroughly with cold water once again (to get rid of the "smell"). Fill pot with 7 - 8 cups of water and bring to boil. Add all the ingredients and simmer for at least 1 1/2 hours. Season with salt to taste.

Soup in Rice -- How I love drinking my soups since I was a kid hehe. Peace! =)

Bourke Street Bakery, Surry Hills

Hey all,

Did everyone enjoy the Melbourne Cup public holiday today? I know I did =)

Anyway, I know I said that I would just do recipes for the next month but I realised my leftover Sydney posts (except for our Marque degustation) were pretty short so I thought I'd share them anyway cause it wouldn't take up too much of my study time =D So, yeah. Will be going back and forth between reviews/recipes again hehe.

After our really enjoyable lunch at Bills, we decided to take a walk around the Surry Hills area and find our way to Bourke Street Bakery (BSB) to have some tart and pastry goodness to share. It was the perfect weather anyway so I really loved the walk there, just soaking up the sun and enjoying the company I was with =)

Almost every person I know who's visited Sydney has been to BSB so I was really excited to give it a try. Thankfully we had that nice walk to give us time to digest before eating again. Here's a look at the food we ordered and really enjoyed...

Top Left: Ginger Brûlée Tart; Bottom Left: Lemon Curd Tart; Right: Rhubarb and Almond Tart

Ginger Brûlée Tart:

AMAZING! The ginger wasn't too sharp or overpowering and was just nice and faint enough like your favourite gingernut biscuits. I thought it was creative of them to use ginger in their custard. Also, I've always loved brûlée tarts more than crème brûlée because it's more interesting to eat. You get contrasting textures from the crunchy top/pastry and then the smooth, silky custard in between. YUM

Lemon Curd Tart:

This was great too I love how silky the curd looked and taste. The curd was nice and cold and had perfectly set consistency. Flavour wise, the curd was tangy and citric and had a good balance of sweetness too. Just nice mmm

Rhubarb and Almond Tart:

Yay for sweet and soft rhubarb. But what I loved most about this was the aftertaste from the almond meal mmm...

BEST thing about these tarts was how incredibly crumbly the pastry were. They reaaaaaally made their shortcrust pastry very well, delicioso~~

Before the "unveiling" of the Pie... ;p

Beef Pie

Beef chunks weren't dry or flaky, and I enjoyed the gravy in the pie as well. It's nice getting occasional bites of chunky mushroom too mmm...

Chicken, Pea, Sweet Potato and Lime Pickle Pie

As much as I enjoyed the good ol' classic Beef Pie, I liked this one sooo much more. This pie was SOOO NICE. The chicken was fantastic and moist and there were lots of pepper too. But best of all, the sweet potato gave a lovely creamy texture to the filling and had so much flavour YUUUUM. I loved it and I would definitely recommend this.

Again, the pies were really nice and flakey and I knew that my Mum would enjoy this. I always value the pastry for pies/tarts just as much as the fillings, which was what this place executed really well and what makes them so famous! Both shortcrust and puff.

We were really enjoying our day and our time in Sydney =)

Overall, lovely dining experience was shared with lovely people. To be honest, I would actually recommend people to do the same thing we did if they were to visit Sydney too, i.e. to go to Bills for lunch before taking a short walk straight to Bourke Street Bakery to enjoy some "after lunch snacks" haha...

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

To working adults: Have a great remainder to the week "post-Melbourne Cup"

To students: All the best with your upcoming exams!!

Peace!

Winston =)

Crash Hot Potatoes Recipe

Like I've mentioned before, this blog is really a space for me to share my daily personal experience and joy about food, which is what I'm going to do right now.

On a normal weeknight, my meals are pretty straight-forward. I'm out all day and do MOST of my cooking at night, which is pretty much the same as what all you working folks go through each day. By then, I really only have minimal capacity to cook nothing but seriously simple dishes. I save my "experimental" cooking more for the holidays or the weekends and stick to routine on the weekdays.

Like I said, weekdays are really straight-forward but every dinner normally consists of meat/fish + veg + carbs. But different variations of each. It's just what I've been used to for dinners growing up. Then, I will decide whether I'm doing Asian or Western that night. When it's Asian night, I'd eat (lots of) rice for carbs. For Western night, it'll be potato or pasta.

I've made so much mashed potato over the years for Western night because it's one of the first few things I learned to make for myself. Even though I've done SO many variations, mash is still mash. And I'm so bored of having mash for Western night.

That's why I go to The Pioneer Woman's cooking blog for lots of ideas and inspiration to kick myself out of my rut. She shares recipes that are just as hearty and delicious as they are easy to make, with amazing step-by-step photography and food styling. Truly a remarkable woman.

So today, I invite you to try this Crash Hot Potatoes recipe that I've been making from her site. It's crazy simple and great to make if you want to change things up a bit from your usual potato recipe. You don't even need quantities in the recipe and you'll see why. Like I said, I'm quite bored of doing mash already so I will be trying lots of different things with potatoes from now.

One last thing, the recipe calls for the use of a potato masher, which I don't have. So, what I do is I pierce the taters with a wooden spatula before flattening it with the bottom of a small pot. Not ideal but heck, it works. It may scatter because the bottom is smooth and there's no grip but I just scoop them back together, easy. All good though, because those small crushed bits just gives more surface area of crunch after they're baked, which I love. But, yes. If you do have a potato masher, it's much easier and cleaner to press with.

Enjoy! =)

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Crash Hot Potatoes

(adapted from this recipe by The Pioneer Woman)

Ingredients:

Baby potatoes *

Herbs of choice to taste **

Kosher salt to taste

Cracker pepper to taste

Olive oil

* Make as many as you want, as long as they can fit in the baking tray

** I used Rosemary and Dill for this, fresh herbs are preferable

Method:

Preheat oven to 230 deg C. Bring a pot of salted water to boil and add in as many baby potatoes as you wish. Cook until they are fork-tender. On a sheet pan/baking tray, generously drizzle with olive oil. Place tender potatoes on the pan leaving plenty of room between each potato.

With a potato masher, gently press down each potato until it slightly mashes, rotate the potato 90 degrees and mash again. If not, pierce the potatoes with a wooden spatula and make several incisions before pressing it down with a pot. Scoop potatoes back together if they scatter.

Brush the tops generously with more olive oil. Sprinkle herbs on top and crack lots of salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Baked chicken schnitzels with homemade Mushroom & Rosemary sauce, Salad and Crash Hot Potatoes

My complete "Western meal" with meat + veg + carbs. Was totally contented and happy after =)

Strawberry Lassi Recipe

So... I'm taking a little break from my Sydney posts for a while even though I've still got just a few more to go (including our degustation at Marque!). But, I really don't feel comfortable rushing through it and more importantly, my FINAL exams of my entire undergraduate degree is just around the corner.

So... Forgive me if I take a little more time off this space than usual to focus on that because it's very, very important to me. After all, almost at the end of 4 hard years of going through an Engineering degree, I'm really at the final home stretch, so wish me luck!

For that reason, I will be sharing more recipes instead until my exams are over (yay!!) because I find them much easier to blog about than reviews. Again, I apologise if my posts are much shorter and I don't visit your blogs or reply comments as regularly during this time. But believe me when I say this that I am thinking of you guys and trying my best to juggle life as a student/blogger hehe.

ANYHOO, on to the recipe. I was thinking of sharing earlier recipes from my ever-growing "collection" but strawberries are on sale almost every day now so I don't want you guys to miss out!! Though, I actually wrote this up when the weather was really warm but looks like Melb's getting cloudier/wetter so I'm hoping you keep this in mind anyway when the heat wave strikes later on ;p

I bought 3 punnets of strawberries for $4 at Victoria Market (Vic Mark for short) last week and immediately knew I wanted to make this. The thing about fruits that go on sale is that they tend to be quite ripe. Which is fantastic because the flavours are sweeter BUT can be quite easily bruised and sometimes, a bit "mushy". In times like these, I firmly believe that the one of the BEST things to do with these ripe fruits is to blend them for desserts or delicious drinks such as this Strawberry Lassi instead of eating them as they are. This is to get their flavour and not the texture.

And whenever I make Lassi, I always use Greek Yoghurt instead of normal yoghurt. I just like the consistency that comes out of it very, very much. Though thick, but incredibly smooth down the throat. It's more of a personal taste but if you haven't made Lassi before with Greek Yoghurt, I suggest you try and see what I mean =)

The end result.... Amazing. I made 4 tall glasses of these which was PERFECT for last week's sunny weather. Each day that I came home, I just reached into the fridge to have one cold, mighty glass of these "bad boys" to cool myself down. Plus, I felt really healthy because everything was 100% natural and I was having such a high intake of fruits and yoghurt each day. Mum would be proud ;p

I love that feeling so if you haven't made one of these before, I suggest you try them because they're CHEAP, refreshing, healthy and takes close to no time to make -- WIN!! On a side note, feel free to use any berries/fruits that you find on sale too, they're equally as satisyfing =)

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Strawberry Lassi

(makes 5 1/2 cups or 1.4 L)

Ingredients:

3 punnets (or 3 x 250g) strawberries

500g Greek Yoghurt

1/2 cup milk *

3 tbsp caster sugar (or to taste) **

* Add more if you want to thin it out

** Add more or less according to liking

Method:

Briefly wash before removing the cap off strawberries with a knife.

Put everything in an electric blender (or use a hand blender) and pulse till smooth. Taste to adjust sweetness and consistency. Pour into glass, glad wrap the top and refrigerate before drinking.

Optional: Garnish with more diced strawberries but totally unnecessary. I did them just for the sake of photos, so no dramas =)

Sooo refreshing... Ahhh ~ =)