Temasek, Parramatta

I truly think that we here in Sydney are spoiled for choice when it comes to international cuisine. Case in point: I dined at Temasek in Parramatta a few weeks ago, and had what I felt was an authentic Singaporean/Malaysian meal...after driving for a mere 20 minutes from my place!

The restaurant was recommended to us by a family friend whose daughter seriously loves the Hainanese chicken rice there. We've heard recounts of the wee lass demanding to eat chicken rice and nothing. else. will. do! *insert girlish tween tantrum*. Because I was dining out with a large group, we decided to order half a chicken on its own with a steamer of chicken rice separately, rather than a single serve of the dish.

 

Hainanese chicken

  Chicken rice

The chicken was served cold, which I didn't mind. It wasn't as meltingly tender as some of the best renditions of the dish that I've tried, but still good. The chicken rice was a bit bland, not really having much of a chicken flavour. When I make chicken rice at home, I fry the uncooked rice in butter before putting it into the rice cooker with a few cups of chicken broth (from cooking the Hainanese chicken). When I open the rice cooker, the aroma is absolutely indescribable (as is the pain of having one's face scalded by chicken-scented steam, but let's not go into that). Anyway, sorry for bragging xD Next up - the beef rendang.

Beef rendang

 In spite of the crimson pool of oil floating on top, the beef rendang was only mildly spicy. The beef was fall-apart tender. I particularly enjoyed the odd bits of tendon and fat that added flavour and texture. The curry broth/sauce was aromatic with coconut and spices. One of my favourite dishes of the night. I mopped up the curry with bits of roti:

Roti

Ah, the roti! I could only imagine the amount of fat that went into the dough to make it so deliciously flaky. That knowledge wasn't enough to stop me from shoving piece after piece of beef rendang-soaked roti into my pie-hole. Look at them, stacked atop one another so innocently. I would have quite happily made my way through the whole plate, if it wasn't for the dishes that were yet to arrive.

The satay pork probably wasn't the most photogenic dish of the night, but boy did it taste good. It also provided an alternative for dipping my roti in :)

 

Mee goreng

Temasek's mee goreng is rave-worthy. I've never been a fan of noodles or pasta, but the sweet soy sauce, the juicy pieces of prawn and tomato, and the 'bite' from the egg noodles transformed this into something far better than a plate of insulin-spiking refined carbohydrate for me. 

Same with the char kway teow! Not being familiar with the concept or taste of the 'wok hei' (the smoky flavour that gets imparted to the dish by the intense heat over which the noodles are stir-fried), one of my dining companions commented on the "slightly burnt" flavour. It didn't taste burnt to me :D Rather, there was indeed a nice, smoky aroma to the dish.

The satay chicken skewers came with a peanut sauce that I mopped up with my second round of roti.

The lemongrass king prawns were succulent, and nicely crisped on the outside. I thought the serve was a bit small, though.

 Ah, the piece de resistance! The Singaporean Chilli Crab arrived last, in all its scarlet-hued glory. I admit to being a bit scared by the size, and wondered if we could even make a dent in it after stuffing ourselves on all the other dishes. We did end up taking a lot of this away with us, as well as leftovers of the other dishes. The crab meat itself was sweet and tender. I wasn't too crazy about the tomato sauce it was drenched in. 

We were definitely too full for dessert, but the next time I go to Temasek (and, mark my words, I will be back!) I'll make it a point to order the ice kacang!

Temasek

The Roxy Arcade

71 George St

Parramatta NSW 2150

Phone: (02) 9633 9926

Ben 10 Cake (and the PERFECT chocolate ganache buttercream)

It was my brother's birthday last weekend, and to celebrate, we threw him a party at one of those laser-tagging places that is all the rage with hyperactive boys his age. My personal present to him was a Ben 10 birthday cake!

I've never really been interested in cartoon/anime, apart from my obsessive viewing of Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Cardcaptor Sakura on Cheez TV every morning before school back in the 90s. Therefore, I was unsurprised (though slightly put out) when one of the brother's little friends informed me snidely that "Ben 10 [was] for babies!" I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation at the time, due to having gotten up at an obscene hour to put the edible icing transfer and other finish touches on the cake, and it was only out of consideration for my dignity that I didn't snark back. Making little kids cry is uncool, no matter however much they may deserve it xD

This particular cake marked many 'firsts' for me. It was the first time I've put an edible icing image transfer on a cake, and that was a nerve-wracking task in itself. It involved letting the image harden in the freezer, and then taking advantage of the 5 seconds it remained hard when taken out of the freezer to remove the backing sheet, and position it on the cake. I was a bit slow, and as a result some of the image didn't come off the backing sheet, but I managed to cover the boo-boo with the fondant border.

Talking about the fondant...you can see from the close-up above at how shoddy a job I did, but again, this was a first for me! Not only have I never worked with fondant before, but this fondant was one that I'd made myself, using the marshmallow fondant technique. I wouldn't say that it was necessarily cheaper than store-bought fondant when you count the costs of the raw materials and the time and effort that went into making it, but it did turn out to be tastier than the store-bought stuff. There were huge, visible cracks running down two sides of the cake and along the top, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought all was lost when the fondant tore as I pulled it over the cake. Thankfully I was able to rescue the cake, employing the same resourcefulness as I did in those disastrous Design & Technology classes back in high school. 

See, I wasn't exaggerating when I said the cracks were HUGE.

All in all, not the neatest looking cake, but the cake itself (and the filling) was more delicious than any birthday cake we've ordered from professional cake shops. I decided on a no-frills cream cheese pound cake base, filled with chocolate ganache buttercream.

Spreading the buttercream on THICK; I like a 1:1 ratio of cake to filling!

Chocolate ganache buttercream combines the best of two worlds, as its name suggests. There are a few recipes on the internet under the common moniker of "chocolate ganache buttercream", but because I didn't like the sound of any of them, I decided to invent my own. I started by making a chocolate ganache, using the best chocolate I had in the house: 200g of Lindt milk chocolate, 100g of Lindt Excellence 70% dark chocolate, and 100g of Callebaut 70% dark chocolate. I intentionally used double cream which had a high fat content, around 48%. After the chocolate had melted into the 600ml of double cream over low heat, I added in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. I poured the whole concoction into an airtight container, put it in the fridge and left it overnight. This is what it looked like when I scooped it out the next morning:

Looks good enough to eat with a spoon, doesn't it? :D My original plan was to use the ganache as is to fill and crumb-coat the cake, but there were issues with quantity (i.e. not having nearly enough ganache to frost three layers) and the fact that the ganache was simply too rich and sweet. The solution: aerate it by whipping it with some butter. The result: a chocolate mousse-like buttercream that was not too sweet, but was unmistakably chocolatey!

I also made some iced cookies using the Easter-themed cookie cutters I recently purchased, but I'll leave the details for another post :)

Here's the recipe for the amazing chocolate ganache buttercream!

Recipe for Lucy's Chocolate Ganache Buttercream

Makes around 3-4 cups of buttercream

Ingredients

200g Lindt Excellence Milk Chocolate

100g Lindt Excellence 70% Cocoa dark chocolate

100g Callebaut 70% bittersweet chocolate

600ml double cream (I used Pura Double Thick Cream, but any cream suitable for cooking should be fine)

375g + 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method

1. Put double cream and all 400g of chocolate in a thick-bottomed saucepan, over a gentle heat, until chocolate has melted completely. Keep stirring the mixture and scraping the sides and bottom of the saucepan to stop it from burning.

2. Take the mixture off the heat, and add 3 tablespoons of butter. Stir until butter has completely melted.

3. Transfer the ganache mixture into an air-tight container, and chill in fridge until the ganache has firmed to a spreadable consistency. If ganache is too hard, microwave in 5 second bursts until soft but not liquid.

4. Beat the chilled ganache with a hand beater or stand mixture, until light and fluffy. Add in the 375g of unsalted butter. To help with the butter combining with the ganache, you can chop it into 2cm cubes beforehand.

5. Beat the butter and ganache until it looks like an aerated mousse. Chocolate ganache buttercream, done!

The Happiness Cake

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a pessimist, but there are certainly times when I fail to see the silver lining in anything. It's usually a case of wallowing in self-pity, and I get over my bouts of folly and narcissism quickly enough. Nothing cheers me up quite like baking a cake, and taking my time decorating it. Sometimes I get accused of wasting precious time by experimenting with swiss meringue buttercream, or building a gingerbread house, when I could have been studying, or cleaning my room, or doing some other 'not meaningless' thing. My only retort is that people have different ways of dealing with stress. Some people go get drunk. Others turn to retail therapy. I play with nonpareils and silver dragees.

This cake proved to be the ultimate stress-buster. For starters, it's hard to obsess over the ever-increasing pile of uni work when you're positioning each dragee with a pair of chopsticks (the only tweezers I own are the ones in my dissection kit). And then there's the anticipation of tucking into a slice of chocolate cake in bed right before lights-out on a Sunday night; a prophylactic dose of sugar before the weekday crazies start anew.

(Yes, I eat in bed. Nigella Lawson said it was okay, so cease your disapproving muttering at once!)

 

So, what's with the "B"? No, this isn't some homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or an attempt at disguising my shoddy frosting skills (okay, maybe a little of the latter). This cake is actually for my sister to take to her school chapel service on Sunday, and the "B" is the first letter of the name of the House she is in. Since everyone in her House will be bringing something to the service, I have no doubts that there'll be chocolate cake left over. But if this Happiness Cake proves to be especially popular, I'll make sure that the sister saves me a slice for my planned cake-eating-in-bed.

Some other things which make me HAPPY:

Macarons!

Flowers!

And some more flowers.

Beautiful views.

Eating pieces of the beautiful view (a shard of glacier in this case).

Fruit in bulk.

Jumping in fields of gold.

And, of course, cupcakes.

So...what makes you happy? ;D

Taste of Sydney, 2012

This past Monday marked the start of university for me for another year, and surprisingly, the week seems to have flown by. Even though the work load hasn't reached critical mass (yet), I am finding it difficult to dedicate time and attention to this humble blog of mine. Therefore, my apologies for the lack of updates!

As a way of blowing off steam, and also to celebrate the reappearance of blue skies, I spent the better part of Saturday at Taste of Sydney, a festival which show-cases dishes from some of Sydney's best restaurants. Foodies are given the opportunity to sample small portions of a wide variety of dishes, essentially creating their own "dream degustation". 

This year's festival, as with previous years', took place at Centennial Park, under the blessing of a beautiful cloudless sky and ample sunshine.

The weather was simply perfect for ice cream. A pot of sweet sesame halawa ice cream from Booza cooled me right down. I've always wanted to try this 'melt-resistent' ice cream, which derives its stretchy, elastic texture from the addition of certain tree gums and powdered roots. I couldn't really taste the sesame, but this was really fun to eat, and the first time I've had to chew ice cream ;D

Stretchy ice cream laced with tree gum, from Booza

The Booza ice cream stand.

Wish I'd gotten an action shot of the ice cream being stretched!

Foxy's Premium Frozen Yogurt were handing out sizeable samples of their products, and I took full advantage of their generosity. I tried two of the four flavours - the 'Naughty Pash' (honeycomb & caramel chunks), and the 'Sassy Pash' (vanilla bean & strawberry hunks). Let's put it this way - as far as low-calorie frozen desserts go, these were pretty good. The texture was similar to that of a granita's. 

I spied the Adriano Zumbo stand from a mile off...

...and secured myself a box of Zumbarons:

I think the flavours were (from left to right): chocolate brownie, finger bun, caramel, some other sort of chocolate, something citrusy?, and vanilla bean. My favourite was definitely the caramel. So chewy and addictive!

While we're on the subject of sweet things...check out these adorable hamburger cupcakes from The Sweetest Things!

They also had plenty of other beautiful edible creations. Easily one of the prettiest stands at the festival :D

Some other highlights from the festival: Maya Sunny Honey giving out samples of honeycomb. 

Ice popsicles from Fresh Pops; I tried a sample of the fig and cinnamon one, which had huge chunks of fresh figs in it, and it was so good.

As always, the sugar-coated macadamia nuts from Morish Nuts had me wanting to inhale the whole bag.

Same with the impressive range of muesli from Farmer Jo. Did you know that there's a Farmer Jo cafe in Surry Hills now? Serving their muesli, presumably :) I tried the 'burnt fig and cinnamon almond' and the 'hazelnut and chocolate orange'. Think I may have trouble limiting myself to one serving for breakfast!

Gooseberry catering had some beautiful looking macarons:

And Manna From Heaven exuded unmeasurable charm with their range of handmade cakes:

Pairing pears with cheese: really? xP

And finally, a fun display from the RSPCA to remind us of the importance of ethical farming.

(Okay, just one more photo...with Manu! :D)