Spicy Peanut sauce for noodles

I can't remember how I first started making this sauce. I had a basic peanut butter sauce that I had made ages ago that I remember having as a cold entree at several Chinese restaurants. This one is a mix of different recipes I got online as well as what I've found to have worked several times. I've made this about four times at the time of writing, three batches for myself and one for my sister.

The very first time I bought this into work, it was just vegetarian with red capsicum, onion, garlic, cabbage, carrot and noodles. K.O., watched me enviously when I ate it, and kept remarking that I should add hot water to it to rehydrate it. She kept nagging and nagging me, insisting that just a little more would help the consistency. After about five minutes of this, I gave in and let her do what she wanted.

She loved it, slurping away at the noodles and I have to grudgingly admit that it did get a lot better. K.O., had eaten all her dinner but I got full really quickly so I gave her my dinner. M for Megababe came in for dinner and she and K.O., shared the rest of my dinner. The pair of them couldn't stop talking about the peanut sauce and demanded I give them the recipe.

Since then, everyone has happily made their own version of this recipe. Its one of those good vegetable user upper type recipes. The peanut sauce goes with a heck of a lot of ingredients. M for Megababe says that she enjoys it as a hangover food, so she makes a big batch for the weekend and eats it warmed up. I prefer it cold to be honest. You can use whatever noodles you want. A lot of the traditional recipes use thin egg noodles, Hokkien noodles, but I wanted to use up these Korean sweet potato noodles that I had in the pantry for japchae. 100g of dried noodles makes a good amount for about 4-6 large serves.

I've played with the proportions a bit but it seems to be 2 parts peanut butter/ soy sauce/ hot water to 1 part sweet soy sauce/ sesame oil with Sriracha and lime juice or vinegar to mix. You want a thick, rich, salty, tangy and spicy sauce, mix it to taste but that's how I like it. The hot water is to thin out the sauce of course, the noodles tend to suck up all the sauce especially after a day in the fridge.

Ingredients for a large batch of peanut sauce:
2 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of hot water
1 tablespoon of sweet soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar to taste

I have a lot of sauces

1. Mix the soy sauce, sweet soy, peanut butter and oil together until a thick paste is formed.

2. Thin it out with hot water and season to taste with Sriracha sauce and lime juice or vinegar.

An example of what to put in your noodles:
100g of dried Korean sweet potato noodles, whatever that equals cooked
1-2 large julienned carrot
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1 medium capsicum, cut into strips
1 large onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
 1/2 kilogram of cooked chicken, I pan fried mine and shredded it

1. Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente.
2. Stir fry all the vegetables, onions, garlic first. Then carrots, cabbage and finally capsicum.
3. Pan fry your chicken until cooked through, shred with a fork once cooled down.
4. Mix everything into the peanut sauce.

Pre meat

Delicious chicken

Atomica Eat Drink

I have always felt wary of Atomica Eat and Drink. Every time I walk through West End, I never wanted to eat here. This is even though it has quite a high rating on Urbanspoon and always seems to have lots of customers. I think it may be the prices or the flavour combinations. It's been on my go to pending list for a long time, and I was mildly relieved when Jubi suggested that we go here when we went to Higher Octave.

This place!

The interior was way too crowded, so I didn't bother taking a photo. I also don't have a copy of the menu because I was convinced that there was an online menu. So this is even more of a lackluster review than expected.

Anyway, Jubi decided to get the scrambled tofu with wilted spinach and sourdough. The tofu was super soft, teeny tiny cubes and scrambled with a strong rosemary, scent tomato, onion and garlic. It was slightly sweet, and this sweetness became more and more overwhelmingly noticeable the more you had. Jubi enjoyed it and said that she would try and make this at home, but I wasn't as convinced.

Not changing my dislike of tofu

I got the Big Breakfast of course, it had your choice of eggs which I got scrambled, bacon, roasted mushroom, tomato, bubble and squeak, a lamb and rosemary sausage and two pieces of sourdough. The lamb and rosemary sausage was probably the tastiest part of the meal, it was a touch dry but it still had a good flavour. The bubble and squeak was mostly sweet potato, and something else that I forget. The mushroom was meaty and flavoursome. Scrambled eggs were average. The toast was good but the butter was a bit sad since it came in a little packet which wasn't the best presentation.

Disappointing.

I need a separate paragraph for this complaint. The bacon was the worst I've ever had, it had a really dry, unappealing texture, overly crunchy and super salty. It reminded me of the bacon that I see in my hospital cafeteria, that's been sitting in a bain marie all morning and dried out. I have honestly never not eaten bacon before, I've eaten other friend's leftover bacon before and I've eaten bacon as a leftover snack when there were leftovers from breakfast.

Nope. Nope. Nope

So we didn't quite finish our meals the both of us.

Lots of leftovers

Atomica Eat Drink
Atmosphere: 6, busy little cafe.
Service: 5, our waitress seemed a bit annoyed that we approached the counter to order and informed us that it was table service. Got our food really quickly and nothing else really stands out.
Food: 4, not a fan of the flavours or the cooking style. Then again, I didn't get food poisoning and the servings were quite substantial. I would not go back here again.

The Lucky Duck Cafe & Bar

When I went to this restaurant, I performed my first parallel park since I passed my driving test. I stuffed it up the first attempt of course, but did it perfectly on the second attempt.That being said, I also did it after coming off night duties, so that's even more impressive.

I picked up my sleepyhead Boyfriend and we were off the West End via Google Maps to the Lucky Duck! I saw some random reviews of this place online and it seemed to have a good menu. I forgot to get their Canadian Bomb, which apparently is amazing, expresso, maple syrup, chocolate and banana milkshake. Maybe next time?

This place

The interior is well lit, with a large open space that's full of duck paraphernalia. Ducks, paintings of ducks, little figurines and stuffed ducks as far as the eye could see. Some of the paintings were a bit odd that being said, like the busty anime chick cuddling up to a duck. There's a little courtyard towards the back, that is much shadier to sit in but I thought the light at the front would be better for my photos.

Conjoined ducks

Duck, duck, duck, goose?

Leading up to the bar

Their specials board

The back, much cooler back here

Here is their online menu!

I ordered the freshly made green iced tea with mint, lime and strawberries. It was absolutely gorgeous, full of fresh floating fruit. It was refreshing but not particularly sweet, I felt a little simple sugar syrup would've livened it up quite a lot. One of my strawberries fell out when I was trying to fish out the mint which was a bit sad.

Pretty pretty

My Boyfriend had originally ordered a coffee frappe but the blender broke so he ended up getting an iced chocolate drink. It had a big blob of vanilla ice cream and whipped cream on top as you can see. The chocolate milk had a peculiar taste, like chocolate Nesquik? It was very distinctive but I can't really explain how or why, just that it reminded me of a particular brand and I had no idea why.

I always like stainless steel milkshake cups

My Boyfriend ordered their Mega Wrap, a breakfast tortilla with bacon, fried egg, avocado, diced tomato and house relish. Great combination of flavours, all of them are solid breakfast items and they work wonderfully together. It was overly saucy though, my Boyfriend helpfully estimates it was around 50% sauce.

I got the Kings, haloumi, lemon, egg, basil, bacon, avocado and tomato open faced sourdough sandwich with barbeque sauce. Once again, absolutely great combination of flavours, the bacon, egg, and haloumi combo was lightened by the addition of lemon, creamy avocado and sweet tomatoes, as well as the leaves of basil scattered everywhere. The portion was a bit small with that being, one egg, two slices of haloumi and one slice of bacon, so it was hard to get a little bit of everything when you had a bite.

Kings! Maybe a small King? A prince?

Lucky Duck Cafe & Bar
Atmosphere: 5, the decorations were odd. Bright and well lit with that being said.
Service: 5, average. Can't think of anything positive or negative about it.
Food: 5.5, good combination of flavours, excellent presentation of food, just the portion sizes are small. The prices are VERY reasonable with that being said, which helps balance things out a bit more. I think this place would be excellent for a quick hangover fix or students breakfast meet up. That being said, as a person with a full time job and a big appetite, I wouldn't go here again.

Yahoo Restaurant Sunnybank

 Little Taipei in Sunnybank is a little upstairs floor of small restaurants, all of which sell vastly different foods. D., and L., are frequently seen in this place and its perfect for us nurses, cause its open to quite late and you can stop by after work finishes for a quick bite.

This time, my Boyfriend and I decided to go to Yahoo Restaurant in Sunnybank. I had to emphasise the "in Sunnybank" bit because it also has another restaurant in Waterford and Highgate Hills. Its a small storefront that opens straight into the kitchen. Our server was also our cook!

This place

They had a decent menu full of classic Malaysian cuisine, with each dish having a picture and very cheap price beside it.

All the usual classics

I ordered char kway teow, which came with stir fried flat rice noodles, bean sprouts, garlic chives, egg, prawns and lap cheong sausage. Unfortunately it came without the little cubes of pork fat, but it still had a good smoky flavour with a slight greasiness left behind. It was actually a massive serving and I really struggled to finish it.There was a lot of hidden protein under the initial tumble of noodles..

My Malaysian friends were drooling

My Boyfriend zoned in on their chicken and combination laksa. It had a wonderful fragrance but a slightly lacklustre flavour to the soup with that being said, mildly spicy, super creamy but lacking a certain body to the soup. There was a combination of flat rice noodles, thin vermicelli noodles, eggplant, tofu, poached chicken and curly juicy prawns.

Okayish laksa

Yahoo Restaurant Sunnybank
Atmosphere: 5. Small food court type place. I wouldn't bring a date here.
Service: 6, cheerful and quick service. We watched our meals get made with speed and efficiency, the guy had obviously done this a hundred times before.
Food: 6, I would go back here again. Large portions, super cheap and quite tasty, even if its not the best Malaysian food I've had before.

 

Sour cream, banana and walnut bread

I hate bananas. I think this is well known. Sometimes I eat them but only when I need a fast whack of potassium and I don't feel like a sports drink is a good idea. I can moderately tolerate them as long as they are slightly under ripe and very firm. The slightest hint of an overripe smell turns me, VGirl and Mama Pham off.

Everyone knows what overripe banana mean! IT'S BAKING TIME.

Even I can appreciate a good banana cake. I decided to combine a few ideas based off this Donna Hay recipe. I thought sour cream is a wonderful idea as well as walnuts to add a bit of texture to the whole thing. So here we go with my sour cream, banana and walnut bread.

Its a very heavy, dense thing that is wonderfully moist from the first day. It lasted for a week on my kitchen bench, lightly covered with plastic wrap and it was as moist and flavour some on the first day as the seventh. I was still on holiday and didn't manage to finish it by myself. I bought a big chunk of it to my night shifts and it was gone before I knew it. I made another cake the next week and it disappeared before my eyes, with several of the girls asking me for the recipe.

I think this cake is one of those super easy cakes that you can chug out in about ten minutes, barring baking time. It doesn't really matter how you do it, as it all mixes up pretty much the same. The first time I made it like the method below, the second time I made it, I creamed butter and sugar together, then add the wet stuff together and then the dry. The second time was much denser and that was the only real distinction.

Sour cream, banana and walnut cake

Ingredients:
1 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup aka 125g of butter
2 eggs 
250ml of sour cream
1 cup of mashed banana or two large bananas
1 2/3rd cup of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder*
1 teaspoon of cinnamon*
1/2 cup of walnuts

*DrH is yelling at me via text message to add that I yolo sprinkle cinnamon and baking powder by sight.

All the things!

1. Set your oven to 160C. Line your favourite baking tray/cake tin, I favour my springform 16cm square tin. Cream your butter and sugar together until fluffy and pale!

Creaming butter and sugar is fun

2. Add in your cinnamon and mix again briefly.

Ahhh cinnamon, so tasty

3. Add your eggs in and mix!

Bright sunny eggs

It suddenly looks super liquid with eggs in

4. Sift in your flour and baking flour and mix!

Mix, mix!

5. Mash up your banana and once again, mix.

If you don't wanna wash up, just whack it in the bowl and mash it

6. Put in the banana and sour cream and mix once again.

So attractive

It gets better?

7. Don't forget to add in your walnuts until just combined. Don't remember last minute like I did haha.

Seriously don't let it get to this stage

8. Bake for about 45-60 minutes until it cooks through and a skewer comes back clean. Allow it at least 10 minutes to cool before slicing it, so it doesn't fall apart.

Sushi Kotobuki

Since I've started driving, I've been going to lots of places that weren't easily accessible by public transport. I noticed this while driving to my Boyfriend's and we thought we'd check it out the next time we went out to dinner. So here we are, three visits later!

It took me three attempts to get this photo

It's a very unassuming shop, simple wooden counter with two registers, one for takeaway and one for in house orders. The wooden counter has purchasable sauces on top, and you can watch the final plating of a lot of the sushi as you order. Although there is a kitchen behind the green curtain.

So casual

Around the restaurant, there are lots of pictures of all the dishes as well as their prices.

All the little photos!

Here is their menu!

I got the Kotobuki special noodle, stir fried udon with special sauce, chicken, carrot, cabbage and dried bonito flakes. Bonito flakes weird me out whenever I see them used as a garnish for hot food as the flakes continue to wriggle and move around with the steam rising up. The udon noodles were wonderful, chewy and light with a slight char. There was a lot of veggies but not so much noodles. There is a lot of liquid in the noodle dish but otherwise there wasn't anything fancy to this dish.

Special noodles!

We picked the Kotobuki roll, tempura fried sushi with crunchy chicken, avocado and cream cheese. This was so interesting in texture, an absolute abomination by traditional tastes but very interesting. There was an amazing crunch from the light and crispy tempura batter, soft sushi rice, then the melted cream cheese and avocado and finally a massive crunch from the crumbed chicken. I really enjoyed it and it came with a little blob of wasabi and some sweet sauce drizzled over the top of everything.

So deliciously crunchy

My Boyfriend ordered the chicken karaage don. It did come absolutely drowned in kewpie mayo, its lucky that stuff is so delicious. I wonder what cut they used as the bits of chicken came in identical balls of firm white chicken flesh. Anyway, crunchy deep fried goodness with a faintly gingery/soy flavoured flesh. It wasn't bad and for a regular size, it had a lot of food.

Ha, you should see the large ones!

We actually went here later that week for our Valentine's Day dinner. As introverted gamer nerds, we didn't really have anything planned besides a tentative idea to have dinner out somewhere. We were too busy playing games to head out to Eat Street Markets so we just went down the road to Kotobuki Sushi again.

I got the karaage curry udon. This was a bit of a disaster in my eyes, the curry sauce was very mild and super thin in texture. I was expecting this super thick, clingy sauce that slurped everywhere rather then a thin sauce that drooped off my noodles. Or like stir fried noodles in a curry sauce, rather than a curry soup sorta deal. The udon noodles were just as good as I remembered from last time. My chicken karaage pieces were drenched in sauce and lost all their crunch. I would definitely not get this again.

Sad sauce

I got an unagi and tamago hand roll, grilled soy glazed eel and a soft egg omelet. Delicious morsel with great flavours, a slight sweet sticky sauce over soft eel and of course sweet egg omelet too. It was a perfect size for a snack.

Tasty thing :D

We got the caterpillar roll which consisted of tuna salad, cucumber, avocado and fish roe on top. It was tasty but nothing particularly special. That vague feeling of, yeah it was good and I would get it again but it wasn't anything that I recall. My Boyfriend echoed this feeling and said when I was writing this that he would get it again but he can't remember why.

Oh flying fish roe, you so tasty

My Boyfried got the teriyaki chicken udon. It's another very sad looking dish but it was very good! The teriyaki chicken was very strongly flavoured with the sauce, so it had soaked through while cooking. There was a lot of cabbage and very little carrot. The udon noodles were very saucy and as always, delicious!

Yes, we love noodles

We went here a third time after meeting JGirl's new rescue puppy Coffee, I went over to teach them some basic training with a clicker cause he was a bit naughty. After playing with the puppy for a few hours we felt really hungry and decided to go here. JGirl's girlfriend, Dr S., also came along with us for the first time ever!

We ordered to share and the first thing that arrived was the crunchy chicken roll, crunchy chicken katsu, cabbage and that crunchy cereal coating that falls everywhere. It was quite tasty.

Crispy goodness

JGirl insisted on salmon aburi and said that she was disappointed with the small amount of salmon that she received. She added that it was okay but quite stingy in portion sizing.

Big plate makes the portion look even smaller ):

Dr S., felt a hankering for a larger meal and decided to get beef yakiniku don, marinated beef and veggies on rice. I didn't try it but she said it was sweeter than she was used to and that it felt quite Westernised in flavour.

It looks so pretty and bright

I was ordering for my Boyfriend and I stuffed it up by instead of ordering ebi katsudon said something that must've come out as oyakodon. I had actually argued him out of getting this as he had ordered this once and hated it. This time it was quite delicious! There was a crunchy chicken katsu chunk that was covered in seasoned egg and a really savoury onion based sauce that soaked into the rice.

Oyakodon!

This was the spider roll, soft shell crab, cucumber, avocado, a mildly spicy mayonnaise and fish roe. I always love spider rolls, that delicious crunch, the soft flesh and the additional cool crunch of the cucumber were all delicious. I ate a lot of this.

Yummy, yummy

Lastly we ordered the uhh raw salmon, cream cheese and avocado roll. JGirl was disappointed that it was stingy again on the salmon, she and my Boyfriend ate it all with that being said.

Sushi Kotobuki
Atmosphere:6, very busy and basic little shop. They could honestly take over a lot of the nearby table space cause they have so many customers.
Service:7, very polite but on the other hand the table system is very strange as many times people behind us got offered tables before we did when we were in front of them in the queue.
Food: 8, quite good sushi and interesting fusion combinations with very good prices. Dr S., and JGirl said it was good for Australian sushi but average by Japanese standards.