If you are a fan of prawn toast (and lets face it, who isn’t?) and you feel like a slight change of pace, Roti Babi is for you. Or if you happen to be firing up the wok to make prawn toasts and want to make a variation to go along with it, this may do you well. Its a beef or chicken mince version of the prawn toast, sans the ginger and its crispily and moreishly good.
Since it is a deep fried item I am not the chef (being mortally fearful of hot oil) so it is my mother who made this (and who usually makes the fried items). I simply participate in its copious consumption.
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December 16th, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
Don’t you hate it when Melbourne gets something before Sydney? OK Melbourne getting Nobu first hurt more but Beard Papa was apparently something that had a lot of people crying foul. So when Beard Papa came to Sydney a while back, a lot of people were loudly relieved.
Ahhh what is this divine puffy choux that inspires rapturous musings and raves and a legion of imitators? Its the bizarrely named Japanese Beard Papa choux pastry. I had tried Barby’s (ugh, never again!) and Puffy (delicious outer, average inner) so I was eager to try what some say is the “original”. There are two Beard Papa stores currently in Sydney, one in Chatswood Westfield and one at Macquarie Centre.
Alongside the puffs are an assortment of other sweets like Chocolate fondant (puddings), cheesecake sticks etc. I will not be distracted in my mission and I order one vanilla puff and one mixed berry (today’s special along with chocolate). We watch her fill each puff to order. The service is very Japanese in cuteness and politeness although unlike Japan where you’d probably get a puff in an individual box, these are put into a paper bag which is decidedly less glamourous.
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December 15th, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
I love the idea of edible Christmas tree decorations and the fact that I happen to like gingerbread is an added bonus. Last year I bought some chocolate Christmas tree decorations but thought that I’d try my hand at making some gingerbread this year.
I had some major issues with the original recipe, the amount of flour that they specified (2.5 cups) was not enough to make a dough that was kneadable so I had to add more in order to make it so. This recipe is for the crisp, not chewy gingerbread although apparently if you cook it for less time (closer to 7 minutes than 10) then it turns out chewy. It is also a fairly mild tasting gingerbread so you could certainly up the ground ginger content or grate some fresh ginger if a stronger hit is desired.
This is my first foray into using royal icing and I am painfully aware that it shows. Seemingly I have no dexterity when it comes to icing gingerbread despite the fact that I can ice and decorate cupcakes just fine. The amount of royal icing that this makes is quite a lot-enough for you to use to cover the cookies and pipe them in a myriad of shades although I used pre bought cake icing pens as I don’t have any disposable piping bags and they’re much easier to deal with. The recipe didn’t say so but I found the royal icing much easier to use a while after it was made, it was simply too runny otherwise, certainly far too runny to pipe with when first made. Oh and whatever you do, do wait til the icing sets, it does take a while, but any nicks or smudges are hard to get out. Go wild with the colours, the more colours the better I thought and silver cachous are fabulous although I just happened to run out of them much to my chagrin. ..
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December 14th, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
Ashiana’s is what we call our old favourite, our standby. With our family in law of vegetarians and vegans its a hard task to find a nice place that will cater to everyone without making the omnivores suffer or have to listen to false exclamations of “There’s NOTHING vegetarian on the menu” (*sigh* honestly, I wonder if they just like saying that). In the heart of Manly, just off the main Corso, Ashiana’s is full of rich maroon and red tones and gold and a trail of tealights leads you up the stairs to the main restaurant.
Ordering Indian is fairly easy, we omnivores share our dishes and the rest do their thing. I am in the mood for tandoori chicken and fish tikka as the weather is hot and a curry doesn’t really appeal to me. We order a slew of dishes with the European waitress. She seems to understand what we’ve ordered but as we later learn, she hasn’t quite got the dishes down.
Delhi Special Chaat $7.50
Our meals come quickly starting with an unusual fried pasta-like dish, Delhi Special Chaat -fried ravioli shaped pieces are coated in a tangy English chutney style sauce. Unusual and vinegary, perhaps too vingeary for my taste but I am not a huge fan of vinegars.
Tandoori chicken (full) $18.50
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December 13th, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
I make this tart often, mostly because it is extremely easy to make requiring only 5 ingredients, providing you use ready made frozen pastry or a flan case. I love the look of the long rectangular tart tins but they’re rather difficult to fit the pastry in often requiring a patch job or three but since this is a recent purchase I feel obliged to make at least a few goes using it. Hopefully you’ll find my dodgy pastry joins more spun with home-made charm than blundering and clumsy. I’ve also made this with the German Obstboden cases and it looks quite good in them although I always worry that the white chocolate filling might seep through the sponge so its never a calming experience.
To make it truly spectacular looking you will need fresh raspberries as frozen raspberries tend to bleed all over the place and since we have a gorgeous cream coloured filling, you want the red and white contrast to make it look utterly gorgeous. Also, a rather timely note, the red raspberries with the white snowy icing sugar look fabulously Christmassy.
I find fresh raspberries to be one of the most “diva-ish” fruits to work with. They’re very expensive, extremely delicate, temperamental and need to be used straight away. Indeed this batch were only purchased today and when I got them home, some had started to “bleed” so a late night baking session was in order before any more of these beauties bled to death!
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December 12th, 2007
by Not Quite Nigella
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