Browsing tag: food

Chalk another up for the cheap and cheerful folder.

Nasi lemak is, I think, a dish it’s hard to understand the appeal of unless you’re from Malaysia. Boiled egg. Sliced cucumber. Rice with a hint of coconut. Sambal. Curry. Laid out like that, it just doesn’t sound all that exciting.

But for us, it’s comfort food. At KL Cafe, the dishes of our homeland are front and centre.

There are oodles of noodle and rice dishes. Egg noodles, hokkien noodles, rice noodles, the mee that I suspect comes from a Maggi packet. Dry noodles, soupy noodles. A couple of dishes featuring prawns. Plenty more with the thick salty, oystery sauce perfect for sopping up greedily. All in the $10-15 range and more than adequate servings.

My first time there, I plumped for the nasi lemak – served with curry chicken and sambal with anchovies (or ikan bilis, as I’m still inclined to call it in this context) softer and moister than I’m used to. Divine.

But what I was really itching to try was the kuan lo won ton mee, and I returned the very next day for lunch, determined to put this dish into my tummy. And I’m pleased to report I walked out with a belly full of it. See those saucey noodles atop a layer of fried mince, livened up with spring onions and nuts, topped by tender, thin BBQ pork slices and dried prawn, er, stuff? Uber-satisfying, especially with a cute little bowl of wonton soup to accompany.

That’s also T’s har lo mee, with fatter noodles and a tart shrimp-flavoured soup on the side. Greasy? Yes. But were you expecting any different?

Oh, and the free hot tea is pretty good – not overpowering, like some Chinese tea can be.

There are no pretenses here. You can walk in with no shoes on, I’m pretty sure. And correct me if I’m wrong, but it may be the only place out west that does Malay. Bonus points.

Frugal factor: high. Dishes are around the $10 mark.

KL Cafe, Great North Express

4055 Great North Rd (in the large row of shops across from the converted petrol station)

I’ve been baking up a storm.

Coconut chocolate blondies

I ran with this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks

Topping:
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon butter

• Combine the flour and salt; set aside.
• Stir together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla extract until well blended.
• Slowly beat in the flour mixture until blended, then stir in the coconut and chocolate chips.
• Scrape the batter into greased pan and smooth even with a rubber spatula.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until set in the center but still soft. Do not overbake. Let the bars cool slightly before drizzling with chocolate, then cool completely before cutting.
• For the topping, combine the chocolate and butter in a small bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until melted and smooth. Using a spoon, drizzle over the bars.

I only used about half the flour; it would have been too dry otherwise. I’m guessing that in this case the 1/2 cup of butter refers to the melted volume, not the original amount… I definitely like to err on the side of moister when it comes to baking. I also skipped the chocolate topping altogether.

Anyway, I definitely recommend making this! For not much work, these are incredibly tasty. As you can see, though, my chocolate chips (despite being tiny, delicate drops) all sunk to the bottom, even though I mixed them through evenly.

Yo-yos

Buttery, delicious biscuits with fluffy lemon icing? What’s not to like?

I used this Kidspot recipe:

125g butter, softened
¼ cup icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup cornflour

Filling

30g butter, softened
¾ cup icing sugar, sifted
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice

• Use an electric mixer or beaters to cream butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence.
• Sift together the flour and cornflour, add to butter mixture and mix on low speed until just combined and a soft dough forms.
• Place a piece of plastic film on a work bench, tip dough onto plastic film, wrap up and roll into a sausage about 2cm diameter (no messy bench or hands!).
• Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 160°C.
• Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• Remove dough from fridge and slice into about 30 rounds.
• Lightly flour hands and roll each round into a small ball.
• Place each ball onto the tray about 5cm apart.
• Dip a fork in flour and press each ball to 1 cm thick.
• Bake for 10-15 minutes or until just starting to colour.
• Cool on baking tray.
• To prepare filling, beat the butter, icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a thick paste. Sandwich cookies together with icing.

In this case, I definitely advise erring on the dryer side. My first batch melted too much and flattened out. I left the remainder of the dough in the fridge overnight, added more flour the next day and the second lot turned out much better, if not exactly photo-pristine.

And finally, my coup de grace!

Minimalist lemon ice cream

My favourite food blog, Stonesoup, walked me through this:

1/3 cup lemon juice
250g icing  sugar
300mL (1 1/4cups) whipping cream

• Combine lemon juice and icing sugar in a small bowl.
• Whisk cream until soft peaks just start to form and the cream has thickened slightly.
• Whisk the lemon mixture in with the cream and mix until the texture is back to the soft peaks.
• Freeze for at least 6 hours.

You really cannot go wrong, I tell you.

I ran out of icing sugar, so used mostly caster sugar, and it was fine. Super easy!

I can’t say I’ve ever had any success with homemade Indian cuisine, and unfortunately, the trend continues.

Up this time is a recipe from Dish magazine, streamlined for a quick weeknight dinner.

Ingredients:
500g potatoes, 500g carrots, 1tsp turmeric

To cook
1 thinly sliced onion
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1tsp each whole cumin and black mustard seeds (only had ground cumin and yellow mustard seeds)
1tsp ground coriander (skipped)
1/2  tsp each ground cinnamon and turmeric
1tbsp honey
1/2 cup water (used the turmeric water used to boil vegetables in)
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

To serve
slivered almonds
chopped mint
yoghurt
orange flower water, optional

Cooking is pretty straightforward: Boil small cubes of potato and carrot until cooked through and drain. Cook onion in oil, then add garlic, spices and honey and fry for a minute. Add water, bring to boil, then add veggies. Cook for another five minutes.

While tasty, it wasn’t anything to write home about. I definitely need to breathe some fresh life into our spice rack (most are old and nearly exhausted quantity-wise). It probably didn’t help that I had none of the extra ingredients to serve it with.

Rather, that’s dished up with a pauper’s version of Redemption Salad – shredded cabbage, carrot, steak, barely dressed with a mix of brown sugar, lemon juice, rice wine vinegar, soy and minced ginger and topped with spring onions.

We’re blessed in Auckland with a fair share of awesome Malay restaurants.

Until recently, I was a fan of my then-local, KK Malaysian.

My current favourite, however?

It’s on the east side – along the main Panmure drag of dollar stores and spice shops.

Under new management (the old owners didn’t know anything about food, according to the new proprietor, and just wanted to party all the time – they weren’t interested), Sri Puteri epitomises homey, unpretentious Malaysian dining.

A photo of its chef with Peter Gordon adorns one wall – apparently Sri Puteri’s beat KK in an Auckland-wide cooking competition that a judging panel, including Gordon, oversaw.

The menu at Sri Puteri runs from typical laksa, rendang and mee through to more Indian offerings (equally enticing; the head matriarch is Indian Malay). Lovely, gloppy satay. Deep, deep bowls of creamy, steaming curry. Enormous platters of rice and noodles, piled high. A twist on assam laksa, more currylike than the soupy traditional, topped off with pineapple and red onion, which counteract the spiciness – too sweet, perhaps, depending on the diner’s tooth. And for traditionalists, round the meal off with an ice kacang.

For all that, Sri Puteri’s is insanely affordable. I’m talking mains in the $10-15 range, large enough to fill your belly first time around.

We’re lucky to be able to eat such authentic fare at this price – get in while you can.

Sri Puteri’s

59 Queens Road, Panmure

Woop! I’ve officially crossed make pasta off my 101 in 1001 list.

The post-dough cleanup was predictably horrific.

The tedious mixing, physically tiring and time-consuming.

But the sense of satisfaction, immense.

I took directions from this recipe by Iowa Girl Eats, by which I mean I read the list of ingredients and proceeded to eyeball the amounts rather than measuring them.

Cook and mash potatoes, mix with flour and egg into a dough, then roll out into thin logs the width of your finger on a floured surface.

(I did try IGE’s trick of scoring a cut around the circumference of a potato, boiling it whole, then skinning it after cooling. It was not as effortless as I hoped, but it wasn’t onerous by any means, and the thin skin that comes off is definitely not wasteful. Do ensure the potato is practically falling-apart soft – make the subsequent mashing process easier on yourself.)

Cut off small pieces with a wet blade, then roll each cylinder down the curve of an upside-down fork to get the indents, keeping hold of the pasta piece all the way down with a light pressure by way of your thumb.

(I’d advise having a bowl or pot of water – you’ll need to boil the gnocchi anyway – to dip the knife in so you aren’t constantly reaching for the tap.)

Then either freeze or boil the pasta, if you’re wanting to cook it straight away. The gnocchi is done when it rises to the surface of a pot of boiling water.

IGE’s tip to sauté the cooked gnocchi in butter with some minced garlic is spot on.

Round off the meal with these delightfully fudgy, sugary, chewy cookies. Decadence in small doses.

T and I did the exact same thing for our anniversary this year that we did in 2010: dinner at a fancy restaurant, and a massage (him) and facial (me).

To be honest, I don’t especially care for fine dining. Give me downhome ethnic (especially if it’s southeast Asian) any day. Dine is the restaurant of bigtime chef Peter Gordon, however, and I was curious as to what it would turn out.

Course 1: Ricotta tortellini doused in insanely sweet honeyed sauce. Reminiscent of baklava. Not unpleasant, necessarily, but certainly a novel flavour pairing.

Course 2: Dahl in inari wraps with kumara salad, spinach and cauliflower raita – very Westernised, but palatable. He had fish and chips, aka, snapper with freshly made chips, and asparagus – simple and satisfying.

Course 3: Three-cheese cheeseboard. Nothing good to say about it, unfortunately – not even the biscotti-like bread, served both toasted and fresh.

The surroundings were stunning:

And the service was on par with the decor. I’m not used to making small talk with staff.

Then downstairs to East Day Spa, where I promptly dozed off during my treatment. Just a pity we didn’t get to use the jacuzzi, or even the shower:

Best of all, it only cost $9.50; I had a $350 gift voucher I got from my old job to use up, which paid for the dinner and spa package, plus a glass of whiskey on top.

It’s rare that I go out for breakfast and come away feeling fully satisfied.

The Dizengoff  portions hit the spot.

I can highly recommend the feta salad; I even ate most of the beans – and I despise beans as a rule.

Best of all, as you can see, they’re not stingy with the cheese.

You may have to jostle a bit to get through and end up elbow to elbow with fellow diners, but it’s all part of the atmosphere.

Frugal factor: middling. Regular cafe meal prices.

Dizengoff, 256 Ponsonby Rd.

or at the very least, I am. I’ve had enough of my delicate stomach and indigestion. Now, I know myself, so I’m not going for anything crazy. I’m not going to start drinking smoothies and eating lettuce leaves for lunch. A friend recommended Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP diet and although it does include meats, that’s still too much for me.

What I’m going for is much simpler: cutting out wheats, meats and processed food, a’la this much more realistic plan.

“Rather than following an extreme plan that limits just about every food except fruit and veg while at the same time getting you to down a nasty ‘detox’ drink every day, this plan is safer and more sensible and shouldn’t leave you short on nutrients if you follow it for just one week.” Amen!!

How long will this last? Well, as long as I can keep it up. I’m guessing a couple of days, to be honest. I love my starches and sugars and although I’m picky about my meats, I do like good steak and good chicken. But even if I manage to maintain a reduced consumption of the baddies for, say, a week, I’m gonna count that as a WIN.

I know that planning is key; if I don’t have a plan for what meals I’m going to eat, I’ll fail. Ideas so far include chili, curry, lentil patties, roast vegetable salads, green salads with tuna (need the protein; I don’t know how people stay full otherwise), my trusty fried cabbage (perhaps not the healthiest?), and stuffed squash or eggplant.

I’m not going to make BF do this along with me, so I’ll have to craft dinner plans carefully.

There is a problem. I eat one of two things for breakfast namely, cereal, or toast. Nothing else. Both of which are no-nos.

As much as I aspire to eating fruit salad with yoghurt for breakfast, there’s a high possibility that won’t last long at all. In which case, which is the lesser evil?

Also, you may recall my desire to make my own cereal. I did that for less than a week recently. And yeah, sorry, it’s not going to happen. I like coconut. I like fresh berries and apples. I like nuts. But I do not like oats. And somehow, muesli with cornflakes substituted for oats just isn’t the same…

When we were growing up, my mother didn’t bake. We didn’t have an oven. We didn’t eat delicious trifles, rich chocolate cakes, brownies … so now that I’m master of my own kitchen, I’m making up for lost time.

But you know what is now special and exotic in my world?

Baklava.

Sinfully soft, flaky, sweet and rich – without being excessively cloying – the baklava at Jaan were so good, they never had a chance to be snapped. Paired with rich vanilla ice cream, fresh grapes and a slice of orange, it was the perfect accompaniment to our Mediterranean lunch.

Every single dish on the menu sounded amazing, from the veggie moussaka to the shish kebabs. We ended up going with an open lamb sandwich and mixed mezza platter; both were packed with the freshest of vegetables and supersoft naan bread bursting with garlicky goodness. Flavourful falafel, hummus and sauces rounded off the plates, with a couple of odd little skinny spring rolls.

The single Chinese-looking, Middle Eastern-accented waitress was efficient and attentive, while the venue itself is all rich wood panelling with plenty of sunlight (I was a little blinded facing out of the massive wall-length windows).

And, most importantly, the prices are reasonable, in the $10-20 range for lunch.

Jaan Turkish Cafe, 505 New North Rd, Kingsland.