Quiche and tea!

So I cooked a quiche for my Boyfriend. I was wondering what to make him for the last week! He doesn't really understand why I went to so much effort, I tried to explain to him about how its like the Asian form of love, to feed someone you like, adore, care for, love. You are essentially feeding them an extension of the emotion you feel for them, in palpable form. He told me he had cooked meals for other people so he knew the pressure! He obviously didn't!

I had been thinking about this all day! I knew he loved pesto, salmon and thyme and would eat basically everything but parsnips, banana and pumpkin. How could I even combine this in ONE DISH. I could make a pesto crusted salmon, baked, fried, cooked in foil, en papillote? A pesto sauce maybe, would it be just plain pesto? A creamy drizzle of pesto in cream? A vinegarette? My creamy pesto and smoked/flaked salmon pasta? A salmon and pesto sandwich? Salmon cakes with a pesto sauce? A salmon and pesto pizza? I wanted to make him something that would make him think, holy fucking shit, my girlfriend can cook.

My life is terrible

My life is super hard though, cause the guy has like no pantry staples! What on earth was I going to do with, and this is the entire contents of his pantry; rice, white tea, tasty cheese, a loaf of white bread, full cream milk, butter, lettuce, Vegemite, pasta, a can of tuna, tomato sauce, bean sprouts, a carrot, fish sauce, soy sauce, tortilla wraps and four onions? He also had 5 eggs, SR/plain flour, brown sugar, white sugar, peanut butter and chocolate chips that I had bought him the last time I came over! No herbs! No spices! He didn't even have salt or garlic! I didn't realise this until I started cooking!

Basically what I felt like when I found out

Do you know what else he had that doesn't make any sense? He has a mini blow torch! HE HAS A MINI BLOW TORCH. THAT IS SO FUCKING SPECIFIC, YOU ONLY USE IT FOR LIKE CREME BRULEE TOPS. I DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND. HOW CAN YOU HAVE A MINI BLOW TORCH AND NOT HAVE SALT OR GARLIC IN YOUR PANTRY. ITS MAKING ME MAD JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

This thing, but not salt or garlic?

Anyway, I decided on making just a quiche to use up the eggs that I had made him buy for me for cookies. He told me he never eats eggs so it'd be a good way to get rid of them. We went to the Jan Power Markets that day so I picked up a bag of baby spinach and thyme, mushrooms. We also stopped by at Coles to pick up some cream, a pre-made pie/flan base since I wasn't sure if there was a pie tin in his communal kitchen, some parmesan cheese and some terrible ham chunks.

Basic Quiche.

Quichey.

Uses: centrifuge for left over kitchen scraps. Easy cool lunch/dinner option for spring. Making sure your boyfriend eats well for the next few days.

Basic quiche ingredients:
4-6 eggs
100ml thin cream
100-200g grated parmesan cheese
100-200g grated tasty cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
Short crust pastry, pre made or your own recipe

Ingredients I used:
100-200g baby spinach
200g diced ham
200g sliced mushrooms
3-4 sprigs of thyme
1 large brown onion

Other ingredient ideas:
Feta, roasted capsicum, smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes, dill, sour cream, garlic, ricotta, bacon, pancetta

Various junk:
Pie tin

Instructions:
1. Prep all your ingredients. Strip off the thyme leaves. Wash your spinach. Grate your cheeses. Slice heat your mushrooms. Dice your onions.

Everyone should know what an onion looks like

Woah baby spinach and Boyfriend's huge thumb!

GET OUT ALL THE INGREDIENTS

Poorly shredded thyme

A few mushrooms!

My Boyfriend grated some cheese for me!

2. Preheat your oven to 180C and blind bake your pastry for 10 minutes so that the pastry gets nice and crunchy. Put aside and allow to cool
3. Saute your onions until a medium golden brown. Throw in your spinach, mushrooms and thyme until wilted. Put aside and allow to cool.

You must be THIS golden to proceed.

Disgusting . . .ly delicious!

4. In a large bowl, whisk your eggs until fluffy and bubbly and throw in your cream and cheeses until well combined.

Omg its so fluffy, I'm gonna die.

5. Arrange ham on the bottom of the pastry, spread spinach, thyme and mushroom mixture on top and pour egg mixture on top of that. No picture cause it looked disgusting according to my Boyfriend. The egg will rise. If anything is leftover, make another quiche or an omelette.

Orrrrr make an omelette?

6. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown and set. Test with a skewer, it should come out clean like a cake. Allow to cool before serving. My Boyfriend had eaten the entire thing in two days.

At the same time we also had some . . .

WOOO TEA!

Bursting Osmanthus tea! Its a special type of tea known as a blooming/flowering tea, where tea leaves are tightly wrapped around a dried flower. When hot water is poured on top of this, they slowly unfurl and infuse into the hot water and become a normal tea. The majority of the appeal is in the visual and aroma, much like your first Spider drink where the ice cream and soda foam all over the place. I think a large part of the appeal, is that even though tea is a great finisher to meals, a flowering tea is even better as it sits centre stage and everyone slowly watches as it unfurls into a gorgeous flower.

As per the back of the packet

I bought this from the T2 chain of shops, a super cute tea shop that is a hit with every woman I've ever bought to it. From the free samples, to the tea pots, accessories and universally super friendly staff, most young women my age have been to T2 I think. It cost $5 and I bought it earlier when I went to Yum Cha with LGS, L., and NZ-A.

I decided to bring this to my Boyfriend's house when I went over there and we actually had it after dinner. He volunteered to do all the dishes in his share house including our own, as I have a bit of OCD when it comes to doing a job. This is even though he hates washing the dishes, but he did it because I cooked everything and he loves me hahahaha.

I was being a terrible girlfriend and had actually retreated into his room to play games when I realised he had an empty 1.5L iced tea bottle in his room and the box of osmanthus tea in my bag. I rushed outside just as he was finishing up rinsing all the plates and began making the tea.

Looks like an alien egg or something

These are some other pictures that I took after. I poured some cold water on top of the blossom and shook the bottle a little and it was much, much prettier. Too bad the warped plastic on the bottle distorted the image. It was really quite pretty. There was a dark greenish osmanthus flower at the bottom with three red ball like flowers attached on a silken red thread on the top. The flavour was nothing spectacular though, despite the length of time we seeped it, overnight, it was still quite mild without that terrible, cheap green astringency you sometimes get with poor quality teas.

ooooh.

Ahhhh!

Purdy.

Its been a while in posts cause I've been out with my Boyfriend so much! That just means lots more posts to catch up on :)! It was his birthday recently and pretty much ate and walked around Brisbane all day.

Mondo Organics

My Boyfriend, his Brother and his Brother's Friend all went to lunch with me recently. They were all previously locals in West End so rather than have me laboriously research a place, read blog reviews, Urbanspoon places, search Instagram photos and stuff. However, since my Boyfriend reassured me that his Brother was a local and knew a good place to it. I was quite excited as I was hoping we'd go somewhere fantastic that was a local hidden secret.

That is until we started walking from his house and started taking random side streets to get to main roads. This was an issue since my Boyfriend and I had gotten lost earlier that morning trying to walk home after I finished work. We ended up taking the wrong side street and overshot his road and had to walk another 5 minutes back. Terrible at directions we are.

Anyway, it was quite difficult deciding where we wanted to go since none of us wanted anything in particular, no one had any finicky dietary requirements and no one had a craving they wanted to fulfil. So we just went around and around West End, we went all of Boundary Street and Hardgrave road and criss crossed over everywhere. We looked at Lock n Load, the Music Cafe, all those Boundary Street eateries and nothing really caught our eye.

We went to Cup Coffee, Brother suggested it as he and his Friend had just eaten and weren't keen for anything too heavy, but there were more substantial meals for the both of us since my Boyfriend hadn't eaten breakfast and I hadn't eaten since 2am. I had one look at their menu and wasn't keen, it was a very bustling and busy cafe that Sunday and it looked like it would be hard to find a seat for the four of us. What was worse was that no one was eating any of the meals, just drinking the coffee.

We ended going up Hardgrave Road again and ended up at staring longingly at Red Hen, I was intrigued by Manakan Indonesia and Tibetan Kitchen. The Brother was wanting Vietnamese like Kim Thanh, Trang, Quan Thanh, Dakbla and but I refused since I am Vietnamese and have terribly high standards for Vietnamese food thanks to my own ability and my mother's cooking ability. His Friend wanted to eat at a little cafe I can't remember the name of and my Boyfriend did not care but he did want to eat, relatively soon, possibly even that day.

In the end, I got everyone to start playing scissors, paper, rock in a circle to see who would choose their first choice. However we got side tracked again and decided just to shout out names until we said the same name twice. Our option was Lefkas, a Greek restaurant. Our second choice was Mondos Organic.

It was closed of course. So we ended up at Mondos Organic.

I didn't take any pictures of the menu or the interior as the actual website and Urbanspoon pages have very good pictures already. Maybe I secretly knew that I would dislike this place and didn't want any photos already. It was gorgeous though, an airconed cafe, with lovely wide seating arrangements, pristine cutlery and table settings with a very extensive bar, and discrete entrance to the kitchen.

Inside Mondo

The service was great, our waitress was an impeccably dressed slightly older lady who greeted us warmly and allowed us any choice of seats, inside and out. I quite like it when you can choose your own spot in a restaurant, I really dislike it when there's no one in a restaurant and you get shoved in the worst part of the restaurant. Some examples include at the very back of the restaurant, in front of the kitchen, or in front of the toilets, or worse, at the very doorway of the restaurant so everyone has to walk past you.

We got immediately given a carafe of water, and asked for drinks. The Brother's friend wanted a skinny soy latte and a coconut kefir shake, but she had originally picked the self respect drink, consisting of apple, celery, ginger, lemon and tumeric. Ironically they were all out of self respect, and she instead got the coconut shake as a pick me up instead. It did make for some hilarious joking around about needing a boost of self esteem and stuff. I remember when the Friend was asking about the kefir bit, it was apparently a probiotic or something made at the restaurant?

Coconut kefir shake

Soy skinny latte

My Boyfriend ordered this nifty pink grapefruit infused lemonade that he states was hand made despite the bubbles as it had segments of floating lemon in it. The waitress ended up giving us a free second glass as she had made too much and was handing out the glass for free :). We instantly snapped it up. The Brother and I were happy with just water.

Lemonade

We given a few menus and then spent some time going over the menus and were told that the fish of the day was some sustainable free swimming kingfish. We had a nice time chatting about this, that and the other before we decided on our meals.

The Friend ordered kangaroo carpaccio, spiced beetroot glaze, fried garlic and chevril. She was keen for a light meal and the Brother was teasing her about eating kangaroo since he wanted to try some as well. The Brother and I sampled a bit of this dish and we commented that the kangaroo had been so thinly sliced it seemed to resemble a weird deli meat of some sort, not a fan. No one was quite sure what the little black nubs were on the plate, for some reason we were guessing cocoa? The texture was like it, but I was also reminded of dried raspberry bits.

Kangaroo carpaccio

The Brother ordered the sustainable kingfish, charred parsnip, spinach, cured egg yolk and kamut. Kamut is apparently an ancient strain of grain sorta like barley? Its apparently very good for celiacs, and it tasted like rice bubbles to me hahaha. I felt like the kingfish was super fishy, and I really like fish, also a bit dry?

Fish of the day!

My Boyfriend had the potato and parmesan gnocchi, fennel, smoked tomato olive and opal basil, he opted for the vegetarian version, meat lovers having chorizo included as well. God, I wish there was more gnocchi on this plate. He polished it off the fastest, despite having started the latest out of all of us. Good reason too, the gnocchi was pretty fantastic, soft, pillowy, smooth as silk and not overly floury with a crunchy outer coating. My only complaint is that they were a touch irregularly sized and could be a bit saltier for my taste, I suppose that's the love of handmade gnocchi right there.

Gnocchi!

I ordered the pork belly and crackling, mustard seed, sweet potato, radicchio, garlic and oloroso sherry. Pork belly should always be best option on the menu! Its like anything with bacon on it is delicious! I WAS SO WRONG. How do I even start to describe how bad I thought this dish was? My Boyfriend said it looked like it came out of a can. Individually, the components were good. I liked the quality of the pork belly, I liked sage leaves, probably the best mustard seeds I've ever had, radicchio is always delicious as were the garlic cloves sweetly roasted.

Pork belly

However, the pork belly wasn't seasoned. It was tender but it wasn't anything special. The pork crackling was terrible, there was no salt lovingly rubbed in, the top didn't even crunch like broken grass, it had obviously been cooked separately as there was no soft fat layer insulating the crackling and colour was terrible. I've better crackling at Bucking Beef and you can buy a cup of that for $2.50. The sweet potato was terrible, it was raw, it looked like it had been charred and should have just turned to mush as soon as I looked at it. Nope I had to saw like I was cutting logs. The sherry reduction was seriously too reduced too and sweet, it was like licking an interesting maple syrup.

Leftover everything!

All in all, it was a good idea and I can see where they were going but it failed in execution. I left about half my plate behind and was just sitting there, pouting, it was bad. I think the Brother felt really bad that we had gone to that spot and eaten there, when no one really enjoyed their meal at such an expense. The company was good however, and its bound to happen I suppose. At least no one got food poisoning.

Atmosphere: 7/10. Pretty nice. Probably too nice for a Sunday lunch for a first meeting. We probably would've done better somewhere, loud, cheap and cheerful. Like a pub bar.
Service: 8/10. Very attentive and friendly, able to answer all our questions easily and she gave us a free lemonade too!
Food: Personally 1/10 for my plate, you couldn't pay me to eat that again. 7 1/2 says the Boyfriend. His gnocchi was fantastic.
Price: Hella expensive. Subjective really.

Cafe Wrapture

West End is Brisbane's mecca of solid food places and breakfast places, its a very old area that still remains full of the things that are fantastic for prospering food communities, a large ethnic assortment of inhabitants, cool little shops, scores of students floating around and its quite central in the Brisbane CBD. For breakfast its got the Gun Shop Cafe, Three Monkeys, The Burrow and Lock n Load Bistro to name a few, amazing Greek food being I guess one of the central spokes of the Greek community here in Brisbane with the Little Greek Taverna, Char Char Yiros and Lefkas Tavern as well as a large Vietnamese influence. My father remembers when he first settled here, that West End was the other large Vietnamese ghetto with Inala being the one most people commonly think of. I have no opinion on this matter since I cook Vietnamese, why would I go out and eat it too?

So with that being said, I was quite jealous when I found out my boyfriend had moved into this amazing locale, whereas I'm stuck down on the bad side of the southside. While I was on this stretch of working days, we had planned a breakfast date to break up the week between our last date and our pending end of work date. The nice guy that he is, and knowing I've got a food blog, allowed me to pick the location. Unfortunately I couldn't decide.

Yep basically me

I'm pretty sure I linked him to every breakfast/brunch place within walking distance of West End, or easy commute. If it was in the breakfast/brunch section of Urbanspoon under the Brisbane CBD heading, I looked at it. I commute an hour every day into work and I can't decide when thinking of food. One time after finishing night shifts, I went to Central Station, walked down to Eagle Street Pier, did a complete lap of Queen's Street Mall, to West End, back up Queen's Street Mall and Eagle Street Pier before heading to a very early lunch at Three Monkeys in West End. All the Brisbanites are aware of what an achievement this is, all the shift workers are also in awe of my crazy energy.

I took 2 shots of International Roast instant coffee.
Tasted like someone had pissed in my mouth.

So in the end I settled on either Eros Cafe or Cafe Wrapture. Both had interesting menus and were within walking distance of his house, so it was unlikely he'd get lost. He did get lost though. Did I mention that? We both have no sense of direction, its terrible. On the map, it appeared to be a distance of less than 100m and we still got lost. I managed to get us there but geez, struggle street, and he was quite dubious of my navigational abilities too! And I was the only one with a working smart phone!

The photo I took on my phone of the map

When I arrived at the intersection of Melbourne and Boundary Street, he was wandering around Boundary Street on the opposite side of the road. I initially thought of heading down Boundary Road but we actually had to head in the opposite direction to that. Basically if you are facing the Little Greek Taverna, head up onto Browning Street and its the next right to get to the Cafe.

Deceptive view towards Boundary Street.

Anyway, first impressions of the cafe, it was very cute and kooky. A very sorta, bohemian feel to it for some reason, maybe it was all the loosely strewn cushions that did it. I unfortunately didn't take any photos of the area just underneath the plastic screen on the right side of the screen. It was like low seating of wicker cane covered by colourful cushions all around little coffee tables. It looked very comfortable for small groups of people.

Cafe Wrapture

Where we sat, under the flag :)

Its a very relaxed setting, read the menus that are scattered everywhere, go up to the desk when ready and order. 

At the front desk!

Here are the menus! They have a very diverse range of plated breakfast food, vegetarian and omnivore wraps as well as fancy arse hot chocolates, that are unusual and also quite inexpensive! 

Main menu

The wraps!

The drinks!

Inside their shop is a very eclectic mix of decorations, items for sale, spices and chai mixtures. I don't really see any sort of theme to the decorations, it just all seems to be the kind of stuff someone would pick up if they had travelled extensively in their time. We ended up picking up a menu and heading outside to eat breakfast in the sun.

Oooh random stuff!

This is a little skylark that was floating around, it was attacking its reflection in the glass. 

Poor little bird

I ordered a shakti hot chocolate. This was a West African sourced chocolate made with a chilli and chai hit. It was lovely, fragrant hot chocolate, even more so with the addition of chai. I had to take some antibiotics with it and it was too hot to drink comfortably! I had to take little sips constantly and it was delicious, warm and spicy with a lingering heat from the chilli.

Shakti hot chocolate and some hairy arms

He ordered an iced coffee. He gives it a 6/10, he comments that it needs to be stirred before you drink it. Apparently there was sugar added to the top but if you drank it as presented, it would've made things too bitter. 

Ice coffee!

I ordered the bacon caesar wrap! I was really thinking of getting their farmers breakfast but I thought since they were named for their wraps, get a wrap you know? The wrap consisted of thick char grilled bacon, cos lettuce, tomato slices, cucumber, red onion, Caesar dressing and shaved Parmesan. 

Bacon caesar wrap!

I am literally drooling as I sit here thinking about their wraps. The fresh pita were absolutely fantastic, crunchy, chewy, fluffy and still in one piece despite its toasting. I would happily just buy the pitas and use them for dips. The ingredients were fantastic, with the char grilled bacon being probably the best cut bacon I've ever had, it was thicker than your usual store bacon, salty and the charring was perfect, the salad was perfectly cut and in interesting ways so the textures were amazing and the Caesar dressing was incredible, generously applied but not sloppy.

Close up!

He ordered the haloumi wrap, consisting of haloumi, lemon, minted yoghurt and salad, coleslaw in this case. He gave the wrap a 9 1/2/10, he said it was very close to perfect but he thought it could've been better. When I asked him he said, he has no idea how but it should be. It was okay I think, quite tasty for a vegetarian wrap but I missed my bacon caesar and got it back from him, when we were exchanging bites. I found the haloumi to not be squeaky enough but he said he prefers it more crunchy then chewy and squeaky, so he was happy. He was raving about the yoghurt sauce too.

Haloumi wrap, give me back me back my bacon caesar!

I really enjoyed this place. We sat in the sun watching each other, eating and chatting, while watching the poor saps heading into to work. Then again you would too, if this was the first time and place your boyfriend kissed you :)

I couldn't recommend this place more highly. L., and D., went to this cafe the day after I went, and my boyfriend and I had intended to go, but felt quite under the weather. L., said she got a wrap that I don't recall and D., got a plate of something, and they both agreed that they'd definitely go here again. I was very envious cause I was constantly thinking of this place when I got hungry. 

Two days after we went, my boyfriend and his brother went again. They both had the haloumi wraps, my boyfriend was teasing me that it was still as fantastic as it was the first day we ate there. I would definitely go here again and again, I can easily think of 3-5 other items on their menu that I would be happy to try :)

Just Soy Cafe

Just Soy Cafe in Sunnybank Hills is our go to meeting spot. Its relatively close by to all our houses, its cheap, its quick and we can stuff around in the cafe for ages. Its pretty popular with Asian students. since it does a lot of Asian style desserts, soy custards, bubble teas and a really solid traditional frappe. Think Meet Fresh with a third of the queue.

Just Soy Cafe

Its located in a weird little spot but its also quite near to everything? Its close to Calamvale Centre Shopping Centre, Pick n Pay Hypermarket, about 10 minutes away from Sunnybank's Market Square. I think its weird anyway, the parking is all out the back of the store, and its heading towards suburban local traffic.

I have very fond memories of this place. I'm not sure when we discovered it last year, maybe VGirl found it. Almost every second or third day of winter, we went to this shop and bought a traditional or Japanese matcha green tea frappe. In winter. Heading out food shopping, Just Soy Cafe, going to work, Just Soy Cafe, heading home from work, Just Soy Cafe, bored at home, Just Soy Cafe.

It got to the stage where the shop assistants recognised us by sight and could predict our three frappes, mine was always red kidney beans, rainbow jelly and then some type of giant flavoured pearl, whilst VGirl's was always fresh fruit, pearls and then rainbow jelly. My mother's was always something different. The creme caramels here are absolutely delicious, and I'm not even a fan, smooth, slightly sweet, with a sultry wobble and oozy caramel sauce. The Asian flavoured ice creams here are fantastic too, their green tea and black sesame ice cream are just sweet enough, lovely, creamy and incredibly dense.

Oddly, we never go here once the weather warms up? After we went to Little Singapore, we went to Just Soy Cafe, us being VGirl, JGirl and I, Yannikins and Shishi had to leave us. VGirl and JGirl shared a dish whilst I went solo, and I immensely regret this decision.

Japanese Green Tea Matcha Frappe

VGirl tried to get a few of her options changed in her Japanese Matcha Green Tea frappe but they said they weren't able to do any substitutions, however when she asked if they could add fresh fruit to her dessert, they also said no? She then ordered my one which had the additional of sweet potato  balls, a mix of a traditional pearl with bits of sweet potato, and that was fine. Weird, I know, maybe it was a language barrier? The traditional green tea matcha frappe contains adzuki beans, green matcha pearls, regular pearls, a scoop of green tea ice cream all on top of a massive bed of shaved ice, condensed milk and matcha tea syrup.

My regrets.

All my regrets for not having shared this dessert. I didn't even finish half of it ):

Bare bones but it does good stuff!

VGirl always unintentionally photobombs my pan shots