I’ll caution you that I was going to do Olympic cupcakes. But that time it rolled around, the last thing I felt like doing was fashioning Olympic rings in the various colours out of chocolate. Let the athletes train for it, I’ll just stay on the lounge and watch. So these are my little shout out to the Olympics.

My mum rarely gives out recipes. For some mums, revealing their best recipe is akin to a magician revealing how they have done their tricks. They prefer to keep these close to the chest and leave a bit of mystery. It’s not restricted just to mums and I’ve seen it in people my age too. Not that I blame them, they’ve probably been asked to keep the valuable family recipes a secret, a physical or mental “vault” if you will.

It seems that everyone is dumpling mad lately and sometimes you just want to whip up a batch of soup with some greens and dumplings without having to leave the house. And at night temperatures in Sydney reaching -1 degrees (aren’t we supposed to be the sunburnt country?) the thought of going out some nights just pushes me towards the heater and the snug quilt. So for these nights, my mum has open up her recipe treasure trove and revealed her famous Wonton recipe (ok famous among her friends and family) which can also be adapted to make Siu Mai. These are excellent to freeze (use greaseproof paper between single layers) and popped into boiling water to cook.

The easiest part of this of course is making the filling. I buy the prawns shelled but whole so I blitz the prawns, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and spring onions in the food processor to make a fine mince. After making the filling, that’s where the fun begins. You may want to enlist others into this part as it can take up to an hour to make the wontons or siu mai. The biggest mistake in the past I’ve found was overfilling the dumplings. Please resist all urge to overfill them, especially when you’re halfway through and realise that you’ve still got loads to make (making a giant one when you’re well and truly over it isn’t a great idea).

How many this makes exactly depends on the kind of dumplings you make. The plain soup dumpligns require less filling but the Siu Mai and Gow Gees require more. Also make sure the ingredients are minced well, the finer the mincing, the less likely that the skins will burst from “sharp” or large bits. And either cook them once they’re made or freeze them, if you pop these in the fridge as is, they skin will become moist and stick to the bottom and split when you try and prise them off. The only thing I can think to counter this is to flour the bottom of the tray that they sit on although I haven’t tried this.

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Yes Dear Reader, I know I promised to write about my overseas travels. This was delayed somewhat with  intermittent internet acces. Tokyo is a city that has a firm place in my heart. I lived there for a couple of years and found myself at times, bewildered, curious, enchanted and exasperated by this fantastically weird city. It’s a city I enjoy now as a tourist which allows me to weave in and out of the areas with a familiar assuredness whilst remaining detached and appreciative of the idiosyncracies that may have niggled at me before.

So without further ado, I give you my adventures starting in the weird and wonderful city of Tokyo, followed later by Finland, Paris and London.

I love the story of Alice in wonderland as my babbling and cupcakes will attest. So it was with excitement that I found a “Fantasy Dining” restaurant in Ginza called “Alice” where waitresses, dressed in cute little alice outfits served Alice in Wonderland themed food, all in a setting fitting the eccentric little tale. We asked the Hotel concierge to book for us (I cannot live without a good concierge in Tokyo)  but even then it was busy and we couldn’t get the exact time we wanted. It seemed promising, most places are only full if they are good as the Japanese really queue and wait for things that are worthwhile.

Two of the Alice waitresses

Arriving at our destination, we head up to the 5th floor in the elevator along with 6 other people also headed to Alice and are led through narrow blue velvet curtained mirrored halls, past a large oversized clock and into our blue curtained private booth. All of the rooms are blue curtained booths in varying sizes to accommodate different sized parties. It’s not for the claustrophobic although I find it cozy and quite Alice rabbit burrow-like. There are silhouetted mirror images of Alice and the Hare at  the tea party and a vertical mirror image of it. We can see the people in the other booths somewhat through these but not clearly.

Our first waitress is a scream. She’s completely batty and I’m sure has no idea that she isn’t in Wonderland. She’s confused and confusing us to no end but doing it with a big smile and enthusiasm. We do place our order despite this and it is correct so perhaps it’s all part of the experience (although the later waitresses show no sign of the “altitude sickness”).

The drinks menu

Playing cards open to reveal pictures of the drinks

There is a minimum order of 1 drink and 1 meal per person which she tries to explain to us. She shows us each menu like revealing a big storybook and the drinks menu is particularly cute with the cocktails hidden inside playing cards. The coasters are Alice playing cards and should you want service, you simply press the bell on the table and a waitress will come within seconds. There is even a section at the back of the menu that tells you where you can buy the outfits from.

Amuse Bouch Y600 (yes, seriously)

As we are waiting they give us the Amuse Bouche course, curiously a tiny cup of dried banana chips and dried apricots with a little sign saying “Eat Me”. I didn’t like either given how parched we were and the waitress was a little batty so it took a while to get our drinks and water. Again, we learn that we are charged for our Amuse Bouches under the heading “charm” and the price of these little unwanted morsels? Y600 each, yep $12AUD for two of us for some bits of dried fruit.

Left “Lolita” drink Y750 Right Milkshake Y850

Our drinks finally arrive, the Lolita drink (orange and cranberry) is not off to a great start. The orange juice is not particularly fresh (you know, the point where Orange juice in your fridge is starting to go off but hasn’t yet) but the milkshake isn’t bad, although it is more just milk mixed with fruit, no ice cream.

Cheshire Cat croquette Y750

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It’s a girly afternoon that brings my friend Gina, Teena and I to Sky Phoenix. We’ve left the boys behind and are going to Yum Cha, shopping and the latest Sex and The City movie. The boys don’t mind, they’re more than grateful that they don’t have to sit through the movie which for a straight man is as bewildering and foreign as washing the dishes or the world of shoe shopping. The only part that the boys would miss is the Yum Cha. We usually go to Sky Phoenix as a) it looks chic inside b) we never have to wait and c) the food is good and the trolley ladies always stop and explain to us what they have in English. Having waited once for a table for 2 hours at Yum Cha (Kam Fook), I’ve been permanently scarred by the experience and we’ve also had trolley ladies whiz past us not willing to stop (Marigold Citymark) where I also saw Adman Siimon Reynolds get just as frustrated at the trolleys flying past and not stopping for him either (I guess they really didn’t know who he was ).

Pork with honey and black pepper sauce $9.80

We want to sit near the window but they won’t let us, despite the fact that the two areas are empty and remain so even after we leave. Many trolleys stop by and we take advantage of this and crowd our table with dishes so that we can talk without being interrupted. The first dish we select happens to be a “kitchen special” ($9.80), a small square plate of pork pieces coated in a honey and black pepper sauce. The pork is crispy and fattily delicious and the sauce deliciously sweet with a hint of hotness. I don’t know if the small serving necessarily warrants the price tag but it’s delicious nevertheless.

Scallop dumplings

The scallop dumplings are next, plump with seafood with the delicate translucent skin, although it could be prawns as well as the prized scallops for all we can discern.

Spinach and Seafood dumplings

The spinach and seafood dumplings are next, one of my firm favourites. They’re delicious and flavoursome with crunchy pockets of water chestnuts and all at the table murmur our agreement at its goodness. And having so much spinach in them can only attest to how healthy they are, right?

Yam dumplings

One of my favourite yum cha dishes is next, the yam dumplings. Although I prefer the steamed dumplings, I can never go past these dumplings. Coated in a fine lacey golden deep fried outer that crumbles and collapses in the mouth to reveal a gooey yam mash centre with mung beans and pork. I love dipping this in sweet and sour sauce and reveling in it’s soft and crispy textures.

Prawn Har Gow

The Har Gow is a favourite of mine and my husband’s and we’ve been known to order 4 of these at a Yum Cha seating. These are 4 plump prawn filled dumplings. There are two kinds of Yum Cha restaurants, ones that will serve piddly little Har Gow with tiny minced up prawns or the ones that serve these big plump dumplings with whole or halved prawns. Thankfully most good ones will have these although when I do come across one of the smaller ones I’m not happy. It’s also handy as it’s the only Chinese Yum Cha item that I know how to say in Chinese without eliciting a puzzled expression.

Ham sui gok

The Ham Sui gok (ok this is a second item I can vaguely pronounce), a pale, deep fried football of goodness, has crispy, sticky outer courtesy of the rice flour that sticks to your teeth. It’s filled with a delicious minced pork and dried prawn interior. And despite my rather poor explanation, they are better than they sound.

Custard dumplings

We’re done with our savouries now and going onto the sweets. We’ve spotted a cute pumpkin shaped fried dumpling and we’re told it has not pumpkin, but custard inside. The pumpkin stem is actually the top of a bird’s eye chili. As Gina points out, it’s someone’s job to put the little details on these things and one of them being putting the chili stem onto these dumplings. The blistered pale deep fried surface is similar to the Ham Sui Gok and hides a delicious thick custard inside. It’s like a tastier, cuter custard puff.

Black sesame and mango dessert

Our last dish is the one chosen simply because it looked like sushi and we had never seen it before. It has a black sesame jelly outer and a mango pudding filling. Black sesame can either be gorgeous in desserts or jarring and in this case it is jarring with a smokey, savoury sesame oil flavour to it. We peel off the outer jelly and eat the delicious mango pudding jelly inside.

We’re full and ready for a spot of shopping and the movie to end all girly movies. And the total damage? $56.10. More money for Manolos which would make Carrie proud.

Sky Phoenix

Level 3, Skygarden
77 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000
Open 7 days
Also a location at Manly, Rhodes and Castle Hill
http://www.phoenixrestaurants.com.au/

I adore Quail’s eggs. So much so that when I lived in Japan I’d buy these little speckled eggs by the tin and eat a tin for dinner, just with some sea salt and perhaps a little Japanese mayo if I felt like it. I was rather excited when I saw a tin of quail’s eggs, a much larger and cheaper tin at that, in Chinatown so I brought them home all set to have a tin (or half of it) for dinner. One bite and I knew something was wrong. There was an almost bitter, tinny taste to the eggs. I threw them all out and knew that I would have to either get fresh or buy some from a Japanese grocery store.

When we went for a drive up to Cowan one weekend, we saw some boys selling quail and chicken eggs by the side of the road along with tamarillos. I bought 6 quail eggs for $1 and 5 tamarillos for $1 (yes big spender me). The Tamarillos I made into a Tamarillo Tiramisu and as for the quail eggs, I had seen this recipe in a magazine which involved dipping them in Za’atar, a middle eastern spice and seasoning mix.

I had all of the Za’atar ingredients to hand except for the Sumac which I was pleased to find at Coles. I used a tip of Nigella’s in which you drop in a fresh, unlit match to the almost boiling water. This somehow prevents any egg white which may escape from whipping up a storm in the pot.

The quail egg membrane and shell do require a delicate touch, the quail’s egg membrane being much stronger than a chicken’s egg membrane so removing the shell and membrane without damaging the egg is a tad more difficult. But if a clumsy clod like me can do it I’m sure those more dexterous will have no issues.

These are absolutely gorgeous served at a dinner party as an appetiser, peeled and sitting up proudly in the colourful and fragrant Za’atar mix. Indeed the quantity given below is for dinner party appetisers. The yolk rich eggs really come into their own with the heady mix of spices and the floral marjoram. Sit back and watch your guests swoon at these tiny delicacies. The mix also works with chicken’s eggs but due to their size, it’s a bit more fiddly to eat so I wouldn’t recommend them for dinner parties. With the quail’s eggs it’s a quick pop into the mouth.

Quail eggs with Za’atar

• 24 quail eggs
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• 1 tablespoon sumac
• 1 tablespoon marjoram (fresh or dried, I have a small marjoram plant so I used fresh)
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon seasalt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1. Boil quail eggs for 4 minutes. Cool in cold water (it won’t take long, they are very small) and peel

2. Mix all other ingredients in a bowl well.

3. Place eggs standing up on plated Za’atar mix

This is also my entry for the latest round of Monthly Mingle, an event started by Meeta of What’s For Lunch Honey? it is being hosted this month by Mansi of Fun and Food who entered my Banana bread bake off. This month’s theme is vegetarian appetisers or Hors’Doeuvres. Wish me luck!

I know that mixing a Japanese flavour like green tea with the animal symbol of China is a little like mixing metaphors but I couldn’t help myself after seeing a panda and bear cupcake in the Claire Crespo Hello Cupcakes book.

This is my entry for two competitions. I decided I would make two flavours of animals, both with a cupcake base of sesame and vanilla but I would make a Panda one filled with green tea creme patiserrie for La Petite Boulangette’s Sugar High Friday Asian sweet invasion challenge and a Bear one filled with vanilla creme patisserie for the Master Baker April Vanilla challenge.

What I sought to do was create something like a Beard Papa puff-slightly crunchy on the outside but filled with a voluptuous creme patisserie custard inner so that when you bit into it, the sensation of oozing custard was replicated. I used a reliably good Delia Smith recipe for creme patisserie custard.

I confess I’ve never eaten tahini by itself before. When we went to buy some, my husband screwed his nose up at it having been fed tahini all of his life by his alternative parents. When I tried it I gasped, it was awful and bitter. I asked him if it was off and offered him a spoonful. He declined the spoonful and only dipped his pinky in. “Yep, that’s right, that’s tahini and that’s why I can’t stand it”. I had to eat some passionfruit butter to get the awful bitter taste out of my mouth.

Given that one of my main flavouring ingredients was bitter, I needed a vanilla cupcake recipe that was sweet and one of the sweetest and best is the Magnolia Bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe so I set about basing it on that.

I had a lot of highfalutin ideas for decoration involving shards of sesame toffee but once I saw the pictures of the panda, undoubtedly a symbol of China, and thus true to the theme, I was sold. The cupcake wasn’t particularly crunchy on the outside, if I were to do it again I’d add some sugar crystals and/or sesame seeds on the top before baking it. Still, my husband declared this his favourite cupcakes ever. Yes I know, he says this often but it’s the thought that counts.

Vanilla and Sesame Cupcake

Makes 12-14 full sized cupcakes. I made 8 large and 8 mini cupcakes from this batter.

• 3/4 cup self-rising flour
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup/125g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used Queen’s vanilla bean paste)
• 2 teaspoons of tahini
• 1 tablespoon white sesame seeds

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180c.

2. Line a (1/2 cup-12 capacity) muffin tins with cupcake papers.

3. In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add tahini and beat until just combined.

5. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Add sesame seeds. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.

6. Pour batter into measuring jug and pour into liners, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

7. Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Cupcake recipe adapted from Magnolia Cupcake bakery

Green tea and vanilla creme patisserie

• 1 large egg, plus 1 egg yolk
• 1 oz (25 g) caster sugar
• 7 fl oz (200 ml) whole milk
• ¾ oz (20 g) plain flour
• ¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. To make the pastry cream, break the egg into a medium-sized mixing bowl, then add the egg yolk and sugar. Next, put the milk on to warm over a gentle heat while you whisk the eggs and sugar together until the mixture becomes thickened and creamy – about 1 minute with an electric hand whisk on the first speed. Then sift in the flour and whisk that in.

2. Now turn the heat up to bring the milk to boiling point and then whisk the milk into the egg mixture. After that return the whole lot to the pan and continue to whisk, this time with a balloon whisk, over a medium heat until the mixture becomes very thick – keep the whisk going all the time because the mixture can catch very easily if you don’t. As soon as a bubble on the surface bursts, remove the sauce from the heat and quickly pour it into a bowl, then stir in the vanilla extract.

3. Divide the pastry into two bowls and add 1/2 teaspoon of green tea powder to one bowl and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste to the other and mix well to incorporate. Cover the pastry cream with clingfilm to prevent a skin forming, and leave it to get completely cold.

Creme patisserie recipe from Delia Smith’s Summer Collection.

To decorate both pandas and bears:

• 1/3 packet of Chocolate fondant
• 1/3 packet White fondant
• Cutters (large and small, I used regular round cutter and also the end of an apple corer for the smaller ears)
• icing sugar or cornflour and vegetable oil to prevent fondant sticking
• Pink decorations for mouth (I used small pink hearts)

1. Make the white fondant pieces first. Rill out fondant dusting surface with cornflour or icing sugar to prevent fondant sticking to surface or rolling pin. Use biscuit cutter roughly the same size as surface of the cupcake to make the “face” of the Panda cupcake. Then make eyes for the pandas and the bears as pictured.

2. Lightly grease a new chopping board and use biscuit cutter roughly the same size as surface of the cupcake to make the “face” of the bear cupcake, ears for the bear and ears for the pandas and also pupils for the eyes of the pandas and bears.

Assembly

1. To assemble, cut out deep cone of cake from the centre using a sharp knife. As I wanted these to be like the custard filled Beard Papa Chouxs I dug quite deeply and almost towards the edge. You may have to “Dig” twice to get it as cavernous as possible. Be careful not to hit the edge. Keep a thin “top” of the cupcake to replace back onto the cupcake.

2. Fill with custard and replace with cupcake top. Then add ears, faces and eyes onto the pandas and bears. For Bears see story here