RJIE 18: FantAsia

Sometimes I just can't be arsed actually going into an actual nice restaurant or cafe and waiting for a meal. So I just be lazy and get fast food. This is the one at Garden City shopping centre, I honestly am not interested in any of the restaurants that are open there so I'm always stuck for ideas when I'm trying to kill some time. Hopefully with the new expansion there will be a plethora of nice places to go out to.

I got the spicy chicken wings and Beijing zha jiang noodles. The spicy chicken wings are deep fried and are sprinkled with a salty capsicum, chilli, purple onion and green onion topping before they are served for you. The coating is deliciously crunchy even though this chicken isn't fresh from the fryer. The topping reminds me of what my mum uses for her salt and pepper calamari. I was very happy to be eating this.

The Beijing zhajian noodles were a pork mince seasoned with chilli bean sauce with a topping of shredded cucumber and green onion on top of chewy thick, yellow wheat noodles. They were a little spicy but in the way that Shichuan peppercorns are with their mouth numbing qualities?  I didn't particularly like this and mostly left it alone.

FantAsia
Atmosphere:4, fast food convenience.
Service: 7, fast and super cheerful. If you don't recognise the FantAsia brand, these are the super cheerful Asian girls always handing out samples and menus when you walk past.
Food: 6, the chicken wings were really good but the noodles weren't great.

 

Ethiopian Lentils and flatbread

Have you ever been so enamoured of your recipe that you crow about it to everyone you meet and continue to eat it for days on end? I'm the kind of person who can't eat the same meal more than twice in a row. I ate this lentil and flatbread recipe for a record nine days before I stopped. I can't eat Mama Pham's pho for any more than three MEALS in a row

I have no idea why I wanted to cook lentils, however the first recipe from one of my friends at work, S.,. She also gave me the mustard seeds for the recipe which also included cumin seeds, tumeric, tomato paste, onions, garlic, red lentils, stock and chilli. That seemed like a pretty easy recipe as I had all of that at home barring the lentils and the mustard seeds.

Of course when I went to cook the lentils, I found that my cumin seeds had gone missing, courtesy of VGirl when she was making falafels. Then the tumeric was gone from when we last made banh xeo, Vietnamese tumeric savoury crepes. Well that was me well and truly fucked, I'd have bailed but I had already pre-soaked my lentils and had no idea what to do with it.

I decided to be courageous and wing it with a spice mix. I had to choose between a powder madras curry or my new berbere spice mix that I had picked up. I went with the berbere, the premade one I had didn't have the ingredients listed but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that it usually has at least chili, garlic, onion, ginger, dried basil, Ethiopian cardamom, rue, nigella, fenugreek as well as ajwain or radhuni. I have no idea what Ethiopian cardamom, ajwain or radhuni taste or smell like, so there was no way I was going to try and make berbere from scratch. From the smell of it, mine has paprika and nutmeg in it too. Feel free to make your own if you want.

I actually can't remember what brand of berbere I got, except that I got it from Pennisi Cuisine, a whole sale deli store in Woolloongabba and they don't even have it on their website. Its comes in a little rectangular packet though . . .

Anyway, I also decided to make some flatbread with it. I stole Julie Goodwin's recipe for it, when I made it though, I made about 20? small pieces rather than 8 large ones. Each flatbread piece only ended up being about the size of my hand, a good 20cm or so in diameter. I prefer my flatbread quite thin and crispy though, so that might why I had so many.

I was very proud of both the lentils and the flatbread and made lots of people eat it at work. H., adores it, and I kept making her a little box of lentils and lots of flatbread to scoop it up with. Di really enjoyed the flatbread too and asked for the recipe. While K., who was on a bad financial stretch also vowed to cook this, until I took pity on her and made her a batch of sausage rolls to stretch it out until pay day haha. Oh Gill and I also do a dinner swap and she owes me a bag of lentils to cook her a batch.

Julie Goodwin's Flatbread

Uses: Bribing H., to do work for you.

Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon if you're a salt fiend like me
100g of butter
375ml of milk, I used soy cause I never have normal milk handy
Cooking oil

Soy sauce is not involved

Instructions:
1. Heat the milk and butter together until the butter is just melted. I nuked mine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Microwave strengths may change.
2. Sift the flour in a large mixing bowl with the salt and make a well in the centre. Gently mix until the dough comes together.

Like this

3. You should have a soft stretchy dough that doesn't stick to the board. If it does, continue to add flour until it stops being a pain. Knead for about 5 minutes until soft and stretchy.

Squishy

4. Cover and rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes or so.

Squish squish squish

5. Heat a large saucepan on a steady medium until hot, splash in some oil and begin step 5.
6.  Pinch off a blob and roll out as thinly as possible, lifting off the the board several times and rerolling until you are satisified. Throw in the pan, and start rolling out another piece while the flat bread cooks. It takes about a minute or so.
7. Once the surface begins to bubble and the edges curl slightly, flip over and continue playing around with your flatbread.

Rustic is a nice word for imperfect cooking

8. Continue frying flatbread until you have enough to eat for your meal.

So crunchy and buttery

Ethiopian lentils:

Uses: eating vegetarian for several days

Ingredients:
2 cups of uncooked red lentils
4 cups of water or stock
1 medium onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves of finely diced garlic
1 tablespoon of berbere spice
1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds
1/4 cup of water
400g can of diced tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste

Salt/pepper/sugar/chopped chilli to taste

Mmm lentils

1. Soak your lentils for about 30 minutes before cooking, also fine to cook straight from dried lentil. This recipe is very flexible. If you do decide to not soak the lentils, use an extra cup of water when cooking to compensate for water absorption. Chop up all your garlic and onion.

Lentils in stock!

2. Cook your lentils on a steady low simmer until soft and melting. While this is happening continue with the other steps.

Is it red yet? If so, done.

3. Put in a tablespoon of berbere spice and mustard seeds together in a hot saucepan. Stir until the mustard seeds begin to pop and smoke.

4. Add in the additional 1/4 cup of water and stir until the water has all evaporated again, this normally takes a minute or two. This gives the berbere and mustard paste additional time to cook. It gives it a really odd taste if you don't cook down the berbere paste so keep at it.

Lean away and turn on your exhaust fan

Pretty much done

4. Toss in the garlic and onion and cook until the onion has begun to brown and caramelise, 6-10 minutes.

Sorta hard to tell with the colour though

5. Blob in your tomato paste and cook for a few seconds to sweeten the mixture.

This is what you want

6. If you're brave, pour the lentils into the saucepan, if not, pour the spice mix into the lentils. If you go lentils into the saucepan, it will seize and spit at you for a bit, so have a lid handy.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble!

Almost there!

7. Add the canned tomatoes and season. I normally add at least a tablespoon of sugar, salt and hot chilli powder. I prefer this curry a little sweeter to be honest and the spiciness of hot chilli cuts through nicely. Heat to simmer and allow to cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the colour brightens and the lentils thicken slightly.

Delicious

Little Hong Kong

I'd just like to put it out there, that Pokemon X and Y came out. So my Boyfriend and I both got Nintendo 3DS and a Pokemon game each. I technically got two, Pokemon X and Super Pokemon Rumble Blast, but that's a different story. So don't expect a lot from this blog for a little while, while we play Pokemon together.

Oh and Terraria just released its 1.2 patch, but we've finished all that a few days ago. So I don't even have any back up blog posts to fall back on. 

Oh and I have an Instagram account now. Check out ThatSeriousGirl for stuff I don't always post on my blog. I'm still getting used to Instagram so bear with me :)

I have no idea why I picked Little Hong Kong as where we were going to have dinner for our first anniversary. It was a terrible idea because I was aware of its terrible service reviews on Urbanspoon, random blogs and from multiple friends. While I knew that it was from the Little Singapore/Malaysia/Nyonya brands which I never liked anyway, I still felt like I should try it. Ah well #yolo.

This place.

This place was super busy the night we went, as it is every night we go past. Upon entering the restaurant, we opted to sit outside. The waitress asked us if we wanted to be seated on the final table of a group of four tables, that were occupied by some students, even though there were other empty tables. I have no idea why she did thought we would want to sit beside strangers when there were already empty chairs. It was a good choice because they were incredibly loud as well as being messy eaters.

Their menus are all available online thankfully, complete with photos for your enjoyment. Noodles. Entrees and chef specials. Drinks.

On the inside there is a self serve sauce station. I didn't realise there were more sauces towards the cash register until we turned to leave. From memory, the only thing I really recognised was hoisin and plum sauce, it looked pretty similar to this one to be honest. I had a scoopful of the orange sauce second from the right and the red sauce, which were Hainanese chicken rice sauce and a garlic and chilli sauce. The Hainanese sauce was oddly sweet with a mild spice and a somehow tomatoey flavour? The garlic and chilli sauce was very chilli but there was not very much garlic flavour. They have little disposable dishes for you to put the sauces on.

Sauces!

We were both unexciting and got different versions of the barbeque options with rice/wet noodles or dry noodles. This is my Boyfriend's pick with rice, Teow chew chicken and roasted duck. The Teow chew chicken was nothing flash, moist with a mildly darker skin and a slightly soy sauce flavour to it. The roasted duck was alright, with a wet skin and not overly oily flesh. I found the roasted duck to not have much flavour besides the normal duck one. It also came with dishes of soy sauce as well as a minced ginger sauce. There is also a little undressed salad of cabbage, red capsicum and cucumber.

Looks good

On the other hand, I got barbeque pork, roasted pork and the soy chicken with dry noodles, which actually had a large puddle of diluted soy sauce underneath it. The roasted pork had a chewy crackling and very little seasoning, it was well cooked if nothing else. The barbeque pork was overly sweet and a little dry. The soy chicken was moist, and the flavour didn't soak through the flesh, it was mostly on the darkened skin.

Solid presentation

I left behind most of the noodles and the meat, although my Boyfriend ate my leftover meat.

Dry, my arse

We also ordered a side of steamed green veggies with oyster sauce. It was exactly as the name suggested, steamed, slightly oily vegetables with a blob of oyster sauce at the top. No golden minced garlic at all. The vegetables were the best part of both our meals to be honest.

Sad leftovers

Little Hong Kong
Atmosphere: 5, really loud, busy restaurant.
Service: 4, not sure what happened with our initial seating. Our waitress was quite surly and opted to take our order without confirming what we had gotten. Thankfully everything came out as expected.
Food: 4, pretty average. I wouldn't go here again to be honest, not even if a friend paid for a meal. 

Esher St Deli and Cafe

My God, Esher St Deli, I have been told about this place by more people than I've ever been told to go somewhere. Liz., Ms M for Megababe, Chelle and very loyal Jubi have all sung the praises of this place, calling it the cutest fucking place every with amazing, amazing food. The last three times I went out for breakfast with Jubi, we were supposed to go here but ended up going somewhere else last second.

To date, I think Jubi has been here AT LEAST six times since its been opened. She absolutely loves their muesli which changes day by day and they use a Farmer Joes mix, that she buys by the bucket load. Sometimes, I think a drug addiction would be cheaper considering how much they sell that stuff for.

Esher St Cafe and Deli!

They really should add an extra bit to their name, but Esher St Cafe, Deli and Plant Shop doesn't quite have the same ring to it. It's not so much gifts as random fruit plants, Bunnings eat your heart out. Pretty much every decoration here can be bought and taken home.

The sign is very noticeable

All these succulents are on sale out the front.

Pretty little things

Here are the outside tables, all very mismatched. I'm not sure I like the height of it all, since it could be a little close and bending down so far could be a pain.

Tables +_+

This is their lovely front entrance. Soon you can see all the food they have on display and all the fancy foodie stuff they have to lure you in.

I kept taking photos like a madman

They have a ladder strung up with lights. It seems like its the latest thing for cafes to buy something interesting and string it up with lights haha.

Not sure if this is upside down or what

This is their coffee machine with teas, museli, some organic fruit and cocoa visible.

There is a nice cogwheel sculpture next to the door

This is their backyard! They have a ton of extra tables at the back for you to sit at, although we chose to sit in the cafe itself due to lighting and the variety of things to look at while we waited.

It had a very nice breeze the day we went

Here are lots of different blueberry plants, all available for purchase! Lavender too, I'm not sure if this is the edible variety but considering the rest of the plants here, it might be.

Blue things

Here are some herbs, succulents and citrus plants! Also available for purchase!

So many things

These are papaya plants from memory, they were on the back staircase.

Red and yellow ones

Here is a shelf full of preserves, crackers, dip mixes and other interesting things. I bought one of the packet dip mixes seen here, it was a wild herb and dill one from New Zealand. I made it into a dip with some sour cream and aioli, and it was utterly delicious. I need to go back there and buy another packet. Much better than your stock standard, sour cream, mayonnaise and French onion soup mix dip.

+_+ so many things I want

Here are a collection of oils, spices, drinks, whole salt, pepper and random GF snacks. There is also a fridge full of award winning deli meats, pates, cultured butter, cheeses and yoghurts that I didn't take a photo of as well. I was very tempted by the Pepe Saya cultured butter but didn't have any good bread to eat it with.

I want all the things

They have a refridgerated display of sandwiches and cakes that was still enticing for us when we had finished our meals and were deciding on what to buy.

Those sandwiches look tasty

This is the main table where we sat. This seems to be where most of the gifts are kept! There is a lot of jewellery, hand creams, assorted small furniture and crockery around us.

So much stuff

This is our table. I just liked that they reused the jars from this place and let you try some of the stuff for free. The pesto mayo jar actually held brown sugar, although that little blue container beside it held some Italian seasoning, rock salt, black peppercorns and a dried herb mixture. I cracked some of it onto my poached eggs and it was quite tasty, I was too lazy to identify what the herb mixture was at the time.

Its a very nice spot we sat at

Jubi got a chai latte brewed on water with a huge side of soy milk and honey. I think she got a good three cups out of this little teapot. I really can't remember what the brand of this chai is, but it definitely started with an M.

Its going to annoy me forever until I remember that brand

I got myself a flat white, they use Veneziano coffee here. That is one damn perfect fern. I found this to be much more palatable than other cups I've had of Veneziano, it still has that very strong, dark flavour that I associate with this brand.

Best one yet

I got the haloumi stack with two poached eggs, tomato, grilled eggplant, garlic butter mushrooms, tomato relish and spinach, underneath all that are two slices of sourdough as well. The haloumi was squeaky and mildly salty, much better than the one I had at Leaf Expresso, earlier that week. The grilled eggplant was delicious, smokey and sweet, I never realised I enjoyed eggplant so much until this year. The tomato I mostly ignored. The eggs were wonderful, bright, creamy and well cooked. The mushrooms I polished off almost immediately, I feel like they've could've done with more garlic, but you've seen my recipes, I love garlic.

So hungry just looking at it

All in all, this is the best vegetarian breakfast I've ever had.

Dat yolk.

The day that we went the museli of the day was Trader Jo's burnt fig and cinnamon crusted almond toasted muesli. I really enjoyed flavour of the fig, a slightly bitter offset to the sweetness of the cooked fig. The almonds were whole ones that were crunchy and sweet. It was a sweet and very crunchy mixture. She really enjoyed it however at the end of the day she ordered the green apple and dried muscatel toasted museli from Trader Jo instead.

Esher St Cafe and Deli
Atmosphere: 10, absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous little place that I'd be happy to stop by and catch up with friends at. If you sit at the front, there's a lot of things to
Service: 10, the service was impeccable. The waiter we were initially talking to was a bit slow like he was just starting out at the cafe, however after a little bit the guy making coffees who I'm pretty sure was the owner took over. He asked us a lot of extra things like if we wanted our chai brewed on soy milk instead of water or milk for lactose intolerance. He also asked if I was a blogger since I was frantically taking photos, I said yes and when he asked if I was a food blogger, I said yes again. Jubi said he had this scared look on his face afterwards. We wanted to sit at the front and they told us that there were extra seats at the back. We asked to sit at the front that a couple had just sat at and they quickly cleared the table while we were browsing the shop. He came back several times during our meal to ask how things were and cleared the table very quickly too.
Food: 8, the food was great. I'd happily go back again to try something else on their breakfast menu or to buy more things from their deli.

Hoo Ha Bar

I only found Hoo Ha Bar because I was heading over to Southbank bus station from the Southbank train station. It was after I had gone out to breakfast already from night duty and was trying to get home. I was lured in by the billboard which is not present in the photo because I went on the one day it was closed. I saw the wonderful menu and I vowed to come back in the future.

Pst. Its a Tuesday.

The menu had changed a few times since I've gone there but this is what it was when I went. It has a really interesting mix of food and at very, very cheap prices. The total price was $35 for three mains and a drink.

Mains +_+

Tasty drinks

Anyway, the place is absolutely gorgeous. None of the furniture matches but they are complete little sections that look absolutely beautiful. Below is a gorgeous cabinet which stores all the glasses, cutlery and water bottles.

A random cabinet

Here is their bar, which is also cute. Its counter service. You have been forewarned.

Their bar

We sat at this table below. I'm not sure how to describe the furniture and why I like it so much, very nice dark wood?

Oh so pretty

This couch is beautiful too. Really comfortable too.

Pretty pretty

This is the corner, I have no idea how to describe these chairs. The table is odd, it doesn't look like it would support many dishes but would be a lovely spot to sit and have drinks at.

What are these chairs?

I'm not sure if I like the water bottles, they are tall brown glass bottles.

They weren't chilled either ):

I ordered the peanut butter cup milkshake consisting of peanut butter, chocolate, vanilla ice cream, milk and alleged awesomeness. Its not that awesome. The peanut butter flavour isn't very strong to be honest. All I can taste is a faint chocolate, creamy milkshake. As far as they go, this was a pretty average milkshake. I wish they had left a scoop of ice cream on the top or something so it was more noticeable, also it was quite plain looking.

No awesomesauce ):

My Boyfriend has his eye on this one for a while now, a smoked salmon Bagel Boys bagel with red onion, capers and a dill creme. There is a small splatter of oil that reminds me of sperm attacking an ovum, which is a bit gross. The flavours are a classic and this was the tastiest thing we ate in Hooha Bar. I wasn't able to taste the dill in the creme, but that may be because my Boyfriend was eating it at the speed of light.

Mmmm bagel

This is their mac n cheese with gruyere, parmesan and cheddar sauce, chorizo bits and a crunchy crumb topping. There is also random rocket on top. I didn't really like this mac and cheese either to be honest, I thought the cheesy sauce would be a lot stronger in flavour with the cheeses that they used. The macaroni was well cooked. The chorizo used would've been tastier if it was a hotter chorizo, I found it to be a bit greasy and my Boyfriend mostly ate it. He remarked that it was average.

This came out sizzling

I ordered the 12 hour slow cooked pulled pork reuben with house made sauerkraut, gruyere, dijon and sourdough bread. There were also three little cornichons on the side. The pulled pork was wonderful, fatty and meltingly tender from the slow cook. The sauerkraut was pretty from the use of red cabbage but not particularly sour or crunchy, if anything it was more like a wet coleslaw. The sourdough was good as was the melted gruyere. As reubens go, this was also average.

Wooden planks ahoy!

Hoo Ha Bar
Atmosphere: 9, it is honestly one of the most beautiful cafes I've ever been in. The furniture choice is amazing, can I hire these guys to decorate my house? Its a bright lit, funky hipster dive with lots of things to look at.
Service:7, very friendly hipster waiting staff who are happy to provide an opinion on the food. They were very prompt with our orders as well as clearing the table.
Food: 5.5, all of the food is very well cooked with well thought out ingredient combinations and good quality ingredients to boot. However, while I liked the idea of what I was ordering, the reality of the dish fell short. I would go here again to try other dishes with that being said, as the food is quite cheap and the place is absolutely gorgeous.