Yeshi Buna Ethio African

I really like Ethiopian food, it has weird food bowls, you eat the food with your hands and most of it is super tasty. I mentioned this to Jubi and I was telling her that I really liked the type of food there. We had a look at a few different menus and decided on Yeshi Buna Ethio African because I had to have an early dinner because I had work the next day. Here's to another Jubiventure!

By the way, do you have a worried noise? A noise you make when something is making you feel concerned, worried or uncertain about something? For me, its a very distinct, "urrrrrrr", its actually quite similar to a sound that Siri makes when she has no water in her bowl and wants a refill. I was making this noise when I was trying to find this restaurant.

Its goddamn hard to find because its on the corner of what is mostly a bunch of banks. It doesn't really have a sign for me to locate it. It also is located right across from a really seedy gazebo and dirty, run down public toilet that reeks of stale urine. Does that it make any easier to find?

Its a sugar bowl!

The interior of the restaurant is interesting. It reminds me of my cousin's house, if the living room was converted into a quick restaurant. The posters remind me of 1970s National Geographic pictures. There's a front desk with lots of little teapots on it.

Don't worry if you have dirty hands, there's a hand basin with antibacterial soap to wash your hands before and after the meal. I read somewhere that is an important part of Ethiopian culture to hand wash before and after a meal. I've noticed there's always a very public hand washing basin whenever I've been in an Ethiopian restaurant.

The lighting is terribly yellow

I don't even know why I get this vibe because none of my cousins decorate anything like this.

It reminds me of a cousins living room somehow

Also this is the menu.

I like most of the dishes here to be honest

Even the veggo food sounds interesting

We ended up picking the mixed meat and vegetarian combinjation. I wanted just the meat one while Jubi debated the vegetarian one since she doesn't eat lamb very much. We settled on the combination ust to try a little bit of everything. I really wanted to eat the gomen wat which is a spinach or silver beet stew but we'd have been too full by then to get another dish.

So we what we had, according to the menu, was:

Doro wott, the national dish of a marinated chicken slow cooked in berbere and other spices. This was the direct centre of the dish and had one large chicken drumstick with the bone attached still but with the knob of the joint sliced off. I've had this before and like earlier, I really enjoyed this. The berbere spice mix is a very interesting one, you should google it, it adds amazing aroma and complexity to every dish its in. I want to find a recipe for doro wott one day. The meat was delicious, moist and easily poked off the bone.

Minchet abish, a minced beef stew. The beef in here was very, very finely ground, imagine the thinnest beef mince you've ever encountered, like the kind you get in a very meager spaghetti bolognase sauce. Not that there was beef lacking in this dish, just the texture was similar. 

Gomen be siga, lamb cooked with spinach, onions, green peppers, garlic and ginger. This was spicy, spicy, spicy I was really taken aback by it. I did eat all of mine and Jubi's, since she doesn't like lamb. I highly recommend eating this. The lamb pieces are much smaller than what is normally used in Eastern/Western culture and the meat was cooked to the point of not being to hold its shape, meltingly tender.

Atkilt wot, fresh carrots, potatoes, green peppers, cabbage and onions in a garlic and ginger sauce. I didn't particular mind this, but I didn't care for it either.

Kik alicha, split green peas cooked with green peppers, garlic and ginger. Jubi loved this, she ate all of mine. I think if you like pulses, you will like this dish very much.

Fassolia, green beans and carrots cooked in a spicy sauce also not on the menu. I'm not 100% sure if this was on our dish, although there is a little pile of carrot and beans there, but I didn't notice a particular change to the flavour.

Ye beg alicha, a mild lamb stew that I didn't recall being on the regular mains menu at all. I'm also not sure if this was on our plate, just because when I tasted the two lamb blobs, they tasted the same to me. This was my favourite thing on the plate and I really enjoyed it although I had to keep cooling down my mouth with bits of cucumber.

Missir wott, split red lentils cooked in a berbere, garlic, ginger and mysterious spiced sauce. My second favourite dish on this plate. I can't even describe how good this was. It just was.

Mixed salad, mixed greens with sliced cherry tomatoes, capsicum, red onions and fetta with a lemon and olive oil vinaigrette. There was no feta, but I really liked this mixed salad and its zingy dressing, Jubi eats a lot of salad and didn't think this was particularly as good as I was saying. Who do you believe though? The girl who hates salad or the girl who always eats it? Hmmm tough call.

The plate is actually a mirror image, so from upper L-R, minchet abish, kik alicha, gomen be siga, missir wott, atkilt wot, mixed salad and in the centre is the doro wott

What was the stuff under the meats and vegetables you ask? Injera! Its made of a very iron rich teeny tiny grain called teff, the seeds of which are smaller than a 1mm in size! Wikipedia and many other websites on the internet sing its praises as a very good crop, a very valuable staple food and its also gluten free! Lol wiki! The wonders of teff! Read this link! This one too!The texture of injera is soft and slight spongy and is used as almost a secondary serving dish. You use the injera to scoop and pinch bits of food as you eat. The food resting above it soaks into the injera below it and the meal is considered finished when you finish all the injera!

So spongy!

We didn't finish the meal of course haha. We had quite a bit of sauce soaked injera left behind at the end.

Yeshi Buna Ethio African:
Atmosphere: 5, I didn't think this was a restaurant for some reason. It has menus and tables, but I don't know.
Service: 10. Best service I've ever received. The beginning was a bit odd, as we went in a pair and were seated right in front of the kitchen against the wall. The first table was directly in front of the kitchen door, the second still had plates on it and the third was occupied. We were motioned to the second table and then had the table cleaned in front of us. The owner immediately gave us some water and some cups before giving us the menus. He asked us if we had been there before and explained the menu thoroughly, recommending the combination platters to try a little bit of everything. Halfway through the meal, he came back to ask how everything was and we were happily digging away. Towards the last five minutes of the meal, he came back to check up on us again and asked if we needed any more injera. We said no, but he came back anyway and dropped off another two portions. When we were paying he asked again how the meal was and Jubi asked if she could take the remainder of the bread home, which he obliged. I gave him a large tip for the great service and like everyone else who had dined there, he walked us over to the door and asked how we had found the place. I explained that I had used Urbanspoon and that I was a food blogger, and he was enthusiastic about the whole thing and said he would look forward to my post.
Food: 9, I would definitely go back here again. I've recommended it very highly to friends as a interesting experience and food meal. The combination of flavours is very interesting to people who are used to Western/Eastern palates, go somewhere new and try the food here~

 

Endless Noodles

I love noodles, that's the only reason why I decided to go here. There's no cool story here, I went out with VGirl and we decided to go here. It doesn't really have a sign, its on the corner before O-ishii sushi bar.

Sauces!

Every table has a massive line up of sauces, black vinegar, soy sauce and a jar of bright garlic and chilli sauce.

Chilli and garlic oil

The sauce wasn't that great, it was very pretty though. It didn't have a great depth of flavour. Here is the menu by the way.

Pictures included!

Lots of veggie food that VGirl didn't like

Even more veggo stuff

PORK!

All the chicken!

Why is lamb/beef a combo?

Seafood!

So much fried rice

Rice dishes

SO MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF NOODLES

Even more noodles

Hot pot

So many pictures

Here is a board with something on it. I assume specials, I would have no idea what it says because its all in Mandarin. Maybe the next time I'm here I'll be ballsy enough to pick something randomly to eat off this board.

BUT WHAT DOES IT SAY

It was a nicely set out little restaurant, the black tables were huge with nice solid chairs. There were nice pictures on the wall, mostly water colours of nature.

Clean and simple

We ordered the scallion pancake as an entree. It was wafer thin, super crunchy, quite light and actually a very large size. Its the size of a large dinner plate although there's nothing to compare it to in the picture. I ate mine drenched in some of the vinegar, chilli oil and soy sauce mixed together.

Scallion pancakes!

We ordered nearly identical looking dishes, to be honest I think this might be VGirl's. She ordered the handmade vegetarian home style noodles. They had strips of green and red capsicum, cabbage, oyster mushrooms, black cloud ear fungus. She really enjoyed the sauce in this noodles and spent most of her time dunking the scallion pancake in her sauce. When I was pointing out that the sauce was a bit oily, she protested and said that the sauce was so delicious that she couldn't not soak it up. She ate about a third of it.

Veggo home style noodles

I got chicken XO home made noodles. It was also really tasty and looked around the same as VGirl's except that it had tiny pieces of chicken. These noodles are so delicious, I can't even describe. I threw aside all the other ingredients and was just slurping up noodles. They had that delicious slightly chewy texture that hand made fresh noodles have. The noodles were all irregularly shaped and that really contributed to the texture as well.

We didn't finish these massive portions and I ain't even mad. We got a free takeaway box and took the leftovers home to Siri, who also liked them because I heard her licking her bowl for a good half hour after she finished eating.

Endless Noodles
Atmosphere: 7, clean and well lit, little Asian takeaway shop.
Service: 6, we got our food and that's about it? I don't remember much else but we were sat down quite promptly, our server was quite cheerful and that was it.
Food: 8, noodles were delicious, so delicious I would go back and never try anything else here ever again.

 

RJIE 15: Potatischips - graddfil and lok aka Ikea brand sour cream and onion chips

I like IKEA. Its a shop of randomness and anyone who is observant can find nifty things in that shop. With that being said, I prefer the downstairs part of IKEA where its not displays but all the smaller stuff like kitchen equipment, textiles, pot plants and that sort of thing hanging around. I find it easier to find what I'm looking for.

I love their cheapo kitchen equipment. I love their $20 queen doona covers with four pillowcases that come in so many different designs. I love their weird generic art. I love their cheapo food. Most of all I love their cheapo Ikea food range. You can buy everything upstairs in their cafeteria, frozen and ready to consume once heated up in the convenience of your own home! They also give discounts for Ikea family members like myself.

I picked up these sour cream and onion chips there. I think it was around $3-4 for 150g. They were super duper crunchy potato chips, like crunchier than kettle cooked chips, when I first tried them they had a slightly bitter taste. Some of the chips were darker than the others, perhaps attributing to the burnt flavour. The flavouring is a lot milder than other sour cream and onion flavours but still delicious nevertheless. After a few chips the bitterness wasn't noticable and I finished the packet of chips.

Yes, in one sitting. That's how I roll. How I would literally roll if I made a habit of consuming family size chip packets in one go.

Flourless Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

There's a girl named S., at work who is a coeliac, that unfortunately means she cannot tolerate gluten in her diet so when she does eat things containing delicious gluten such as pasta, bread, beer or sausages, she gets bloated, has stomach pain and feels nauseated for days. If she chugged through this intolerance, in the future her intestines would've been so scarred as to cause malnutrition, a severe drop in iron levels, anaemia and she would be at a great risk of developing a lot of different cancers.

In any case, she's a smart girl and when diagnosed, she made the change to gluten free straight away. At the same time, she craves all those delicious gluteny things like doughnuts, cake, a good bread that is tall and all that fun stuff. Whenever we have stuff at work, either as a gift from patients or stuff bought in by the other nurses, she often can't have any because it contains gluten. Its become a lot easier these days but eating gluten free isn't easy.

I took pity on her and decided to make her a cake one day. This was one of the first cakes I baked when I started baking for work, its a very simple five ingredient cake. I got the recipe from Taste.com.  This is basically my go to recipe for chocolate cakes, and I add and change ingredients to it all the time. Its one of those great mix, pour and bake cakes that you can whip up in a flash, its dense, chocolately, very moist and has a great crumbly texture from the hazelnut meal. Somehow its also very light and quite tall for a gluten free cake due to the huge amount of eggs. Every time I bake this, someone asks for the recipe and I always forget to give to them, so Z., and H., here it is. S., for whom the cake was made, doesn't know how to make this cake because she valiantly resists all attempts for me to teach her how to cook.

Flourless Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
150g of butter, chopped
200g of milk cooking chocolate, broken up
3/4 cup of sugar
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups of hazelnut meal, sifted

Instructions:
1. Chop up all your chocolate and butter. Melt in a bowl that fits snugly above a boiling saucepan. Have your butter on the bottom so that melts and frequently ladle the butter onto the chocolate. Once melted and glossy, put aside and continue making the rest of the cake.

Melting chocolate in a saucepan is a mistake.

A chunky mistake.

2. Separate your eggs into two different bowls. Line a 22cm cake tin and heat your oven to 150C.

Unskillful separation

3. Add the sugar to the yolks and whip/beat until thick, pale and fluffy.

Yep.

Its the colour of beige!

4. Pour in the chocolate and briefly mix.

Glossy

5. Sift the hazelnut meal onto of the wet mixture. Endure how long it takes, you'll find clumps of hazelnut everywhere which you can break up, you get a bit more air into the mixture and ensures an even mix. When you get to the last 1-2cms of thicker bits, either discard or use in the cake up to you.

Chunky!

6. Beat your egg whites into soft peaks.

This fluffy.

7. Fold 1/3 into the hazelnut chocolate mixture. Fold gently and once incorporated, fold in the other 2/3s gently. 

8. Put into your prepared cake tin and bake at 150C for 40-50 minute until you can poke a skewer through the cake and come up with a few damp crumbs.

Malaysian Makanan

Another Jubiventure! Jubi and I out on the town! That means we meet up, head out for an early dinner and head home before it gets too dark and cold! Oh yeah, living on the edge!

Its the easiest place to find.

We picked this place because it had good reviews, Jubi had never had Malaysian food and I really like Malaysian food. Here is their menu.

Entrees and specials!

Favs and seafood

Deep fried battered?

All the rice

I picked this juice to have, while Jubi was happy to have the chilled water. Its an Apple Tree juice, they just have blends of apple juice with other stuff. It states on the bottle that its just 100% apple juice and I believe that. Its one of the sourest juices I've ever had the displeasure of tasting. If there was sugar on the table, I'd have been pouring spoonfuls down there in order to sweeten it. Jubi isn't a fan of added sugar and even she flinched a little when she had some of this juice.

They gave us extra cute plates when we asked for them. I really like plates in the shape of leaves for whatever reason. Simple and elegant.

I ordered roti canai as my entree. Roti canai is always delicious, no exceptions. God I love roti, so golden brown, delicious, crunchy and flaking into a billion different pieces all over your hands, plate and clothing. The sauce was okay, very thin, mild and with a slightly greasy mouth feel.

Jubi got the gado gado, she ordered it for the opposite reasons I disliked my first try of gado gado. She loves tofu and salads in general. I was quite puzzled when I saw this to be honest, I had no idea where the tofu was, its that bread textured stuff on the bottom right hand of the picture. It was an odd spongy textured tofu that squished in your mouth, was a bit chewy and absorbed the sauce quite readily. I've not had tofu like that before so unsure what to make of it. The other vegetables were wilted bean sprouts, fresh green beans, carrot and julienned cucumber. Jubi remarked that the satay sauce was much spicier than she liked and was almost too spicy for her to tolerate, when I tasted the sauce it was very sweet, quite spicy and with a gingery scent to the sauce. She scraped off a good deal of the sauce and solely ate the vegetables, saying that she enjoyed the bean sprouts and green beans.

I got the nasi lemak. I was thoroughly disappointed. The coconut rice was quite dry, had no discernable scent of coconut to it and wasn't creamy and rice as it should be. The beef rendang was very dark, with a bitter aftertaste and dry beef despite having been cooked for long enough that the oil had split. I only knew that it was beef rendang from having many other nasi lemaks before, otherwise this would've been a dry mystery meat. The chicken curry was plain, probably from the same sauce as in the roti canai, the chicken pieces were quite small and the potato chunks very large. The sambal sauce was very sweet, and not spicy at all. I did enjoy the hard boiled egg, which thankfully didn't have the grey ring of overboiling. The pickled vegetables were tasty and I always love anchovies.

Jubi was keen to order the short soup which came with six prawn wontons in a plain chicken broth with choy sum pieces, straw mushrooms and carrot pieces. The wonton filling was very tasty but there wasn't a heck of a lot of it as you can see. The majority of the wonton was its wrapper.

I didn't realise it would come up so shiny

The wonton in the wild.

Shed of its protective layers, the wonton emerges.

As you can see we didn't finish our meals.

Malaysian Makanan
Atmosphere: 7, cheap and cheerful Asian takeaway. It has all the hallmarks of your local Asian takeaway, complete with yellowed, overdeveloped pictures of their most exotic dishes.
Service: 8, solid. The waiter was very cautious almost? He nearly approached us several times and since we were immersed in reading the menus, he backed off and came back later. He did this four times before we signaled we were ready to order. They were very prompt with bringing the meals, and gave us our entree first haha. They were very cheerful and greeted everyone who came into the store with great enthusiasm.
Food: 6. I didn't really like the food here to be honest. The portions were plentiful but the flavours weren't too my liking. Initially I wanted to come back to try more dishes, but now I don't think I would.