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Relaxation: A book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other.

February 11, 2012 by · 1 Comment

It’s no secret that I am a big lover of Rieslings. If you were to offer me red or white, I’d go white. If I got to pick which white, I’d tell you Riesling. I do lean towards the sweeter Rieslings but occasionally enjoy the ones with higher acidity in them as well.

I was sent a bottle of the oh-so-lovely Babylon Block Riesling from Lion’s Den as a blogging opportunity from Wine Selectors. I am, admittedly quite late with my review so I do apologize. Introduced as a summer wine, it is certainly a beautiful one for the hot season but we have still a good half a month of Summer to go and who’s to say you can’t drink this in Autumn as well? I drink my Rieslings all year round – I love them that much.

The tasting notes are:

Bright straw yellow in the glass with lifted citrus florals on the nose with some lanolin richness becoming apparent. Distinctive lime juice varietal flavours with a touch of straw and honey add complexity to this ripe, soft and flavoursome wine – classic Barossa Riesling

So my love for instagram has dulled the colour of the bright straw yellow a little. But the beautiful colour of the wine as it swished into my glass had me salivating already. The citrus floral notes were very prominent and the first taste on the tongue makes me cringe a little with its acidity but it is all soon forgiven as I ease into it. Beautifully light, easy drinking and it would be a treat any day or night.

Perfect for a relaxing weekend, a beautiful night out with the BBQ and definitely very easy drinking. If you like your Rieslings, do try this one! Another thing to note that it is from the Barossa region – and while they may not be famous for their Rieslings, they do tend to make some pretty good ones. My last trip to the Barossa saw me come home with almost a dozen of them!

However, if you like your wines sweet, I recommend staying away from this one. It will not tickle your sweet tooth at all.

As for me, how did I enjoy this? A beautifully chilled bottle, a glass, a book and a long relaxing bath. Oh yeah, this is the life.

So relaxed I am, that I’m not even going to apologize for showing you a non-made up me. You can take me as I am, bare face, bath towel, wine and all!

Filed Under: Wine Tagged With: , ,

Recipe: Baked Chicken with Chorizo Sausages – explosions of flavour!

February 9, 2012 by · 3 Comments

I will always remember this dish with much fondness. I was suffering from cook’s block, my usual cooking companion far away in Melbourne, and the lack of food blogger’s activities meant a very distinct lack of inspiration. I was getting to the point where I rather not eat as I was just dying from the lack of inspired cooking. Then I stumbled upon this recipe in one of my most-loved blogs and it revived my desire to eat and interest to cook. It was heaven on a plate, a much needed drop of water in a dry and cracked desert of inspiration. That is why I urge you to try this recipe even if you are not suffering from cook’s block like I was. It’s incredible.

Baked Chicken with Chorizo Sausages

Serves 4 – prep a salad!

Ingredients
4 chicken maryland, excess fat removed
1 hot chorizo sausage, thinly sliced
1 hot chorizo sausage, cut into chunks
1 head of garlic
1 lemon, cut into chunks
olive oil

Method

1. Loosen the chicken skin by inserting a finger between the skin and flesh. Stuff sliced chorizo under the skin, repeat the rest.
2. Place chicken in an oven proof dish, scatter garlic, chorizo and lemon chunks over. Drizzle with a little olive oil and season well with salt and pepper.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
4. Serve immediately with some of the pan juice and a side salad of your choice.

How simple is that? The recipe belongs to 3 hungry tummies and I urge you to click through to the blog as they have pretty step by step pictures which I don’t have. Plus, their photo of the dish actually looks better too. But I can assure you that mine tasted amazing.

The best part of this is that I can prepare as much as I like, keep it away for separate lunches or dinner and always have an amazing meal. Not too shabby for something so simple!


salt and pepper to taste

**I used all chicken drumsticks as that’s my favourite part of the chicken!

I should make this again tomorrow. Yum.

Filed Under: Cooking, Modern Australian Tagged With: , , , ,

Eating out: Lok lok @ Pulau Tikus Market, Penang

January 18, 2012 by · 1 Comment

What exactly is Lok lok? To me, lok lok is like steamboat – except your ingredients are all on skewers and your soup base is really just boiling water.

And that’s exactly what you see in the above picture. (Photo credit to Desmond). A table with a cooker fitted in the middle, a pot of boiling water and plates and plates of fresh ingredients on skewers surrounding the cooker.

On this particular day, we were having Lok lok at the evening hawker center at Pulau Tikus Market in Penang. This was a new experience for me as lok lok has always been a food truck affair for me. And one that mum would never let us try because of its questionable hygiene.

It’s not hard to see why it’d be unhygienic. While communal eating is not a foreign concept to us Asians, lok lok is a pot of water where every Tom, Dick and Harry will dip their skewer into. You don’t know who you’d be sharing that pot of boiling water with! Still, we like to argue that the boiling water will kill anything (not true) and that as long as people don’t double dip it’s okay? Maybe!

The eating process is easy, you pick a skewer with the ingredient you want and you pop it into the cooker. You let it cook for however long you’d like and then retrieve it. Dunk it in your choice of sauce (mine was Tom Yum) and chow down! Other sauces available were Satay and Sweet Chilli I think. Or I might be making that last one up. I don’t know, I stuck to my Tom Yum.

With a group of friends, this can be a really jovial affair. I love steamboats, and I love lok lok. Hell, I just love communal eating. There is nothing more heartwarming than sitting around a table with your friends, eating and laughing away.

Lok lok at Pulau Tikus Market. Hit it.

Filed Under: Chinese, Hawker style, Malaysia, Malaysian Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Eating out: Penang’s famous cendol @ Penang Road

January 16, 2012 by · 1 Comment

Penang is known as the food heaven of Malaysia. If you want to eat really good food, most will point you to Penang. I remember when we visited Penang when I was Primary four, our family friend said this: “Eat as much as you can, but don’t forget to bring tummy medicine.”

Penang is a little bit odd compared to the rest of Malaysia. The roads seem tinier, the drivers a whole lot more aggressive and the same food is called different names. Take for example the ever popular Har Mee (Prawn noodles). The rest of Malaysia calls it Har Mee, but Penang insists on calling it Hokkien Mee. But for the rest of Malaysia, Hokkien Mee is thick noodles stir-fried in dark soy sauce! Oh, that. Penang calls that Hokkien Char. What.

Confusing names aside, Penang has some pretty unique food. I wish Johor could say the same. What exactly is there in Johor? Not very much. Feh.

On this particular day, I was out with the lovely Glow. She had driven into Penang to meetup with me! I was excited! Oh and of course, the boy came along too. It was a bit of a funny feeling really, because the boy had just became the boy once again the night before, and when Glow asked me “Is he your boyfriend?”, saying yes felt so odd. So. Very. Odd.

Glow is incredibly sweet, did I mention? She came by to pick me and the boy up and whisked us away to start our eating and shopping tour of Penang! The first place we went to was the ever famous Penang Road Cendol.

Oh hey, look! Even PCK has been. This cendol store is hard to miss. It is in a small alley but there is no mistaking the queue. Be mindful though, it’s not exactly the world’s best queue system and you will find that if you are overly polite, you will never get that bowl of cendol. Right opposite is another cendol stall. They aren’t very friendly, and if you stick around their stall with a bowl of cendol from their competitor, they will yell at you.

I have to admit. This cendol was sublime. Unlike many other cendols I have come across, this one was just the right amount of sweetness (from palm sugar) and had a really generous helping of the green jelly and red bean for extra texture. And in that hot and humid weather, the icy cold dessert went down a treat.

Now, much like other Malaysian dessert, cendol doesn’t look like much. In fact, to some, the above photo might be down right unappetizing. But if you are ever in Malaysia, you need to try cendol. If you are ever in Penang, you need to try this cendol. So good.

We also had Chee Cheong Fun (above) and Assam Laksa (below). Or in Penang, Assam Laksa is just known as Laksa. Ah, stupidly confusing! Especially because then they also like to separate it into curry laksa and lemak laksa… As for that Chee Cheong Fun, it was just not good. Tasted incredibly fishy and I wasn’t a fan. Give me back the Chee Cheong Fun we get in SG please!

**If you are confused as to what these dishes are, I have linked their wiki pages**

After that we went shopping, in which Glow made me spend monies by pointing out a really pretty lacy scarf that had music notes all over it. Doom.

All too soon, the day was over and Glow had to go home. Sadface. We did take some photos in the car though!! These were taken with the Popbooth app, so the quality’s not that great but it does take some pretty funny photos. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Dessert, Hawker style, Malaysia, Malaysian Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Review: The Kitchen Door, McLaren Vale

December 22, 2011 by · 4 Comments

Kitchen Door at Penny’s Hill Winery
08 8556 4000
Main Rd
McLaren Vale, SA 5171

Having a relaxing lunch at a winery has to be right near the top of my list of favourite things to do. I love it so. There’s just something so charming, so luxurious and so beautiful about lunch at a winery. So every chance I get (which is everytime I go wine touring) I try to book lunch at a winery.

Except this time, I didn’t quite get a booking at a place that had been recommended. Damn. That’s how we ended up at The Kitchen Door in Mclaren Vale.

But that’s alright. As long as it’s a winery, surrounded by natural beauty, and has wine… then well. I’m alright with it! Check, check, check, and we settled in for lunch at The Kitchen Door.

We arrived somewhat early for our reservation so whiled away the time at the cellar door tasting wines. Being the driver, I had to be mindful of how much I actually drank. 4 tasting samples = 1 standard drink. And it’s very, very easy to hit the 3 standard drinks mark. So you gotta be careful. And careful I was. Knowing full well that I’d be drinking a full glass at lunch, I skipped pretty much all of the tastings except for the riesling. Good choice. That’s what I ended up with for lunch!

The Kitchen Door had a tasting platter going on. However, it was using the format of all or nothing. Which means, either your whole table had the tasting platter, or none of you did as it was designed to share. Interesting, however the table wasn’t quite sure they wanted the tasting platter. Which, turned out to be really funny because after we were done ordering for all of us, we had all picked different dishes from the tasting platter and if you put it together….

At any rate, here’s what we had!

The ratatouille tart – $15.

I don’t know if I would actually call it a tart. An open tart, maybe? At any rate, this was tasty but not very filling. At that size, you don’t exactly expect it to be either. Simple, easy eating, light fluffy pastry. Yum. A great starter to any meal, I’d be tempted to do this myself at home too! I reckon they’d make great finger food. I think it was actually one of the better dishes of the day, really.

Chicken and Crab Salad

Very beautiful dish, but sadly, I couldn’t taste the crab. All chicken. I wasn’t entirely taken by it too which was a pity as the description was really quite gorgeous. Blue Swimmer Crab, shocked K.I. Abalone, flat beans, puffed black rice, star anise and basil. Doesn’t that sound gorgeous? But it really didn’t taste quite as gorgeous. It was a bit dry, bit bland though one of my travelling companions, E, really seem to like the puffed black rice.

Pan Fried Crumbed Pork Fillet

We then moved onto the pork which won main of the day, in my books. Beautifully moist, it was quite the treat. Not much crackling available, but I am quite the crackling fiend.

Silver Whiting

I didn’t really like this. It was bland, the flavours didn’t mesh and it was just… not that great. It wasn’t bad, but it really wasn’t memorable either. Something about the flavours just didn’t work out. I don’t quite know what, but it just didn’t work. Alas.

The mains and starters had been shared between 3 of us, so we still had quite a bit of room for dessert. I’m always keen to get desserts when I’m out at the wineries, so after a quick look over the dessert menu, we decided to get the dessert platter. I actually can’t remember what’s on it other than the chocolate souffle as it was the one thing that was causing a huge wait on the platter. See, they make this to order, which is fine but I wasn’t quite aware of how long a souffle takes to make… so we were waiting for quite a bit. Lesson learnt!

As for the desserts, they were nice. They weren’t wow. And that souffle, sorry to say, wasn’t quite worth waiting for.

All in all, go for the mains, don’t get fish and desserts and drink heaps of wine! You’ll be rocking. Oh and I’ve heard they serve a killer lamb. I would quite like to try that!

Kitchen Door at Penny's Hill Winery on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: McLaren Vale, Modern Australian Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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