Organic White Tea from English Tea Shop

White Tea from English Tea Shop, I bought a box of this organic white tea when I went to one organic shop, Terra Madre located in High Street, Wesgarth. This lovely and warm shop has a wide-range of organic and healthy products. You can find healthy snacks, fruits, veggies, drinks, meats, dairy and even skin care products! I try to visit and have a look around this shop every time I have the opportunity. I remember the first time going here with my bf last year and he bought organic chocolates, honey and healthy snacks. It’s so fascinating of how the store ambient, decorations, shelf arrangements and of course the products are very well-managed.

Well, back to the tea, honestly at first I was highly attracted by the cute packaging of this brand only. It comes in a medium size boxes or tins in candy colors with a flowery teapot drawing and golden embossed print. It’s just so pretty and cute! I decided to try the organic white tea as it has the cutest packaging color among all, pink! I know I know, I may sound so superficial on this decision making case. But heyy, I love pink, the packaging is so cute and I never drink any organic white tea before. So, why not?

Actually I bought the tea bags in a box one rather than the loose leaf tea in the tin even though the tins look very cute as well. I don’t want to buy something in a large amount without having any experience or assurance of how the product looks like. Inside and outside.

The white tea smells tender with light sweet after-taste which I love so much. Brew 1 bag of tea with 200ml water in 70 – 80 degree Celcius for 1-2 minutes. The brewed tea color is pale gold, just as soft as how it tastes and smells.

I apologize since my tea box is currently no longer in a prime condition. Hahaha. So better google a nice one to be put on my post. Picture credited to http://www.etsteas.co.uk

1 box = 40 gr = 20 tea bags

I am quite sure buying this tea for less than AU$ 5,00 maybe around AU$ 4,00 something. This is such a good deal to get a delightful tea experience. Visit their official website here, where you can shop their products online. I bet you will be in love and tempted to try their tea variants just like me!

Cheong Fun RM Medan Pasar Rame, Jakarta

Cheong Fan, is a flat rice noodle (if translated, it means steamed rice roll) which originally from China but in Indonesia, we call it chong fan. I use to eat chong fan/cheong fun in Chinese restaurants that serve dim sum or yam cha. The flat rice noodle usually filled with minced pork, beef, prawn, vegetables, scallops, crab and etc. It really depends the restaurants’ creativity in mixing up the filling. After that, cheong fun then rolled and poured with salty/sweet soy sauce (sometimes served with fried shallots or chives on top).

Pork cheong fun. Picture credited to http://www.yelp.com

In this post, I’m going to review Cheong Fun from Medan Pasar Rame Restaurant that is located in Mangga Besar, Jakarta. In Indonesia, cheong fun is very well known in Medan as one of their street food unlike in my city, Bandung, we can nly find it in Chinese Restaurants for dim sum menu. In Jakarta, there are many Medanese selling Chinese-Medan foods especially in Chinese area (Chinatown-like area) including Mangga Besar. I’m not going to joke, Chinese-Medan foods are utterly very good. This cheong fun is slightly different with the ones I usually eat for dim sum because they cut the noodle paper into smaller pieces and fried it with seafood, beef and vegetables. Hmmm sounds good, right?

The simple menu where they don’t offer wide range of selections.

And well yes, the fried cheong fun (cong fan goreng in Indonesian) tastes good! It is dominantly salty and savory because of the salty soy sauce (that’s why the color is pale), mixed with sliced pork, prawn, meat ball, fish ball, egg and vegetables. The cheong fun itself, is a bit sticky at the beginning, actually it is not so different with kway teow that also made by rice flour too. If you see the picture below, surely you may think it doesn’t look any different with fried kway teow. Hehehe, that’s true but fried kway teow will  taste dominantly sweet because of the sweet soy sauce and kway teow has narrower cut than cheong fun.

One portion of fried cheong fun – IDR 29,000 or US$ 2.90

If you haven’t got the experience to taste cheong fun, you should! Seriously it’s very good especially for a night out eating. Let’s eat cheong fun and have fun!

Medan Pasar Ramai Restaurant

Jl. Mangga Besar Raya No. 4a
Jakarta – Indonesia

Mlesna Jasmine Green Tea

Jasmine green tea from Mlesna, it does sound inviting for me based on my personal liking towards Jasmine scent. My first reunion with Ci Celi after more than 3 years never met each other because she has moved to Melbourne was in August 2012. On our first “long time no see” meeting, she gave me a box of Jasmine Green Tea, that’s by her slightly knowing my fondness for tea. She is so sweet, isn’t she? Honestly I keep forgetting to make a review for this tea, even I have had cups and cups and cups since after I got it from Celi.

The tea nicely packed in a wooden sliding box and kept in a foil packaging inside the box. Quite unique, interesting and inviting packaging. Even though at first I was not sure whether it’s western or eastern tea product. The top side of the box gives me western-like feeling but on the other sides there are “Japanese people who are drinking tea” drawings. Hahaha. Well it doesn’t matter anyway.

This tea is originally Ceylon tea which is packed in Colombo so practically this is Sri Lankan’s product but we can find this brand at Tea Leaves in Sassafras Mount Dandenong. I know this when I went to this tea shop wit Ci Celi later. I also wrote a blog post about my visit to Tea Leaves in November. Check it out!

The dry tea is crinkle and twisted green tea with lightly dark green color. I always fall over and over again with the hint of Jasmine fragrant aroma from this tea every time I have a sip of this tea. It’s just so soft and has an awesome calming effect. I love to drink this at night in order to relax my body and mind before bed.

Usually I brew 1 tsp tea with 250 ml water for 3-4 minutes and sometimes I do re-steeping it. Two times steeping is still acceptable but more than that, clearly the taste is weakened. They provide the brewing information on the bottom side of the box too so no one should have done it wrong.

The after taste of this tea is a quite strong astringency, dry and puckering mouth-feel that remains in your mouth. I found a difficulty to describe this “astringency” after taste feeling until I got the explanation here. I reckon that the after taste might not fit to everyone’s taste bud but as long as you don’t overdose the brewing measurement, it should be acceptable. Thanks to Ci Celi for introducing me to this brand and even took me to the tea shop! If you go to Tea Leaves, you may find range of selection from this Sri Lankan’s tea brand.

Poached Eggs and Friends

Hi guys! How are you? Hope everyone is doing good this week I’ve been fully occupied by so many stuffs this week, which is good and bad in the same time. It’s getting cold here in Melbourne as in less than a month winter is coming. Winter is such a dilemma, if you know what I mean. You love the comforting fluffy blanket with a cup of tea or hot chocolate but it makes you tempted to stay under blanket all day long and getting lazy to move your body.

Surprisingly this week has been a little bit warmer and yesterday I took the chance to go out and enjoy the lovely weather. Then I fed my tummy a nice brunch too at home! I’m a breakfast foods lover, even nothing fancy, just toasts, poached eggs, lettuce, bacon, ah you know right, typical breakfast baby!

One thing that made me quite happy was when I sent the photos of my food and my bf thought I was eating out. Then I asked him, “Oh so you think my food looks like something you are going to eat in a restaurant? Well..what a cheap simple happiness for me.” Hahaha

I have made a post about poached egg before and the only difference is this time I whisked the water to make a twisted current before beating the eggs in. It went very well and really helpful to keep the eggs back in shape. Have to practice this more often!

This was totally a fat brunch with double wholegrain toasts, double poached eggs, triplet middle bacons and bit of veggies

I made Hollandaise sauce to complete my poached eggs, has been through a “trial and error” processes in the past before finally reaching this result.

Ingredients :

1. 2 egg yolks
2. 2 tbs of lemon juice
3. salt and pepper
4. 3 knob of unsalted butter
5. 2 tbs cold water

Step by Step :

1. Put water in a medium size pan and turn on the stove in medium heat
2. Place the egg yolks and water  in a clean bowl and put the bowl over a medium-size pan, assure that the bottom of the bowl not touch the water. It’s best to use big bowl to ease you while whisking the mixture and taking off the bowl from the pan
3. Whisk the mixture consistently and slowly the bubbles will be smaller and lesser, the egg yolks color will also become pale
4. When it becomes thickened and smooth, remove the bowl from the pan (the water seems to be boiling as well at this stage and you have to watch it would not touch the bowl)
5. Slowly add the butter one by one while keep whisking to reach a good consistency and smoothness
6. Add lemon, salt and pepper then serve the sauce with eggs

PS : Using a stainless steel bowl is the best but as lemon usually gets bitter easily when exposed with metal, I placed the mixture into another ceramic bowl and add the lemon and seasonings. It’s tricky to get a nice Hollandaise sauce but it’s worth to try, trust me! Since I still have some sauce left, surely I am going to poach more eggs next week.

Have a great and blessed week ahead, folks!

Broccoli and Cheese Bacon Cups!

It’s a T.G.I.F! I am quite amazed of myself this morning to wake up so early and prepared many things including breakfast and lunch box before heading to university. To be honest I’m totally not a morning person and having a tendency to skip breakfast unless I have plenty of time that day. I had a plan in mind to prepare and get myself a nice breakfast to survive the whole Friday at uni though. So this morning I had an experience with bacon cup. This breakfast menu is so popular with many different names nowadays and you can find it everywhere like on Pinterest that I have seen lots of bacon cup creations. But this one is mine!

Normally people use muffin mold but I don’t have it so I used a ramekin instead.

Ingredients (for 2 portion) :

1. 8 slices of bacon
2. 2 slices of wholemeal bread
3. small cuts of broccoli
4. grated tasty cheese
5. 2 eggs
6. gourmet lettuce
7. butter

Step by Step :

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius
2. Lightly grease the ramekin with butter
3. Cut wholemeal bread in rounded form to be placed as the cup basis
4. Arrange the bacon to form the a “cup”, normally it takes 3-4 slices
5. Place grated cheese and small cuts broccoli into the cup
6. Break an egg into each ramekin
7. Sprinkle slightly with cheese and pepper
8. Bake for 10 minutes or until eggs is cooked
9. Remove the bacon cup and arrange on plate with the lettuce

I always find broccoli goes very well with cheese and the smell of baked broccoli is so good. Lettuce brings freshness and neutralize the overall taste so it’s not too overwhelming by the savory ingredients.

I wish you guys could have a great great week end ahead!

Cheesy Oyster

I have planned to do my weekly grocery shopping today and it seemed that I overly excited to cook many things. I went to 3 different supermarkets and 1 smaller market so you can imagine how tired I am after walking round and round from one shop to another. I did walk all the way, no transportation used other than my legs. Well, consider this as an exercise yeah. I always love grocery shopping so much and it has become kind of weekly activity that I love. Back home I also do grocery every Thursday because it’s a discounted day for any fruit, veggie and meat purchasing. Hahaha

From the title you must have got the idea that I had cheesy oysters for lunch today. I found those lovely oysters in the 4th market and they were so fresh that I couldn’t bear myself not to buy them. I didn’t have any idea of having oyster today but well.. I only bought half dozen even though surely I can manage a dozen easily but I tend to have high cholesterol level so half should be fine. This is so simple fast and of course easy that you can do it in less than 20 minutes. In addition, if you are a cheese freak like me, it would suit you very well.

Ingredients :

1. Oyster
2. fresh lemon
3. dash of salt
4. grated tasty cheese
5. gourmet lettuce

Step by Step :

1. Pre-heat oven in 180 degree for about 5-7 minutes
2. Sprinkle salt over each of the oyster
3. Lightly squeeze lemon
4. Sprinkle grated cheese
5. Set the oyster in the oven and bake for 3-4 minutes. Actually I just want to make the cheese melted and crusted nicely. I really avoid the oysters to be finely cooked.
6. Arrange the oysters upon layer of lettuce and serve with lemon if you like

Why are there only four in the picture? Well, I stole 2 of them while waiting the oven heated. I had two fresh oyster with lemon juice and dash of salt. So happy they were so fresh  and taste real good. Such a Thursday treat! Have a lovely baked cheesy oyster, you!

Total time : 15 minutes including preparation time

Mushroom and Steak

Yeayy this is a public holiday here in OZ and as today is Thursday, I know many people take a leave on Friday for having a long weekend. After cancelling my lunch appointment with a friend because we didn’t feel like going out, I decided to do a grocery shopping. Yes I want to cook something delicious and as I just watched one of Jamie Oliver’s cooking video the previous day, I felt so tempted to give the mushroom and steak recipe a try. So here I am with yummy Mushroom and Steak for my late lunch!

Before talking much about the steak, I want to tell you what public holiday is in Australia this Thursday. Alright, so today is Anzac Day, commemorated as the anniversary of the landing on Galipoli in 1915. This is the day to remember all Australians who fought and died in all wars, conflicts and peace keeping operations (you can find more info about Anzac day click here). So there are ceremonies and marches in towns and cities nationwide to remember and respect the veterans. I reckon April 25th is one of the most important national event for Australians.

Public holiday or not actually is no difference for me as I don’t have class or work on Thursday either. What so special today is I had a morning shift working and got a chance to experience the Anzac day celebration. Oh, FYI I work in a Retirement Village kitchen in the last 7 months. Some of the residents were soldiers or even nurses during wars and this morning I watched them did a march with badges and medals put on their suits. I was overwhelmed seeing them so gallant, proud and well, oh so cool for their ages which are averagely over 90. So happy to see them with smiles on their face!

In order to celebrate the march-y and glorious feeling, steak and mushroom sounds incredibly mouthwatering for me. I went to the market and bought Porterhouse beef, some flat large mushrooms and portobellos as well. I got all of the fresh herbs from my workplace as the chefs grow all herbs themselves so we can always get fresh herbs for cooking ingredients. So happy!

Ingredients :

1. 250 gr Porterhouse beef (for 1 portion, double the amount for more portions)
2. 3 flat large mushrooms
3. 5-6 portobello mushrooms
4. salt
5. cracked corn pepper
6. 2 lemon wedges
7. 2 cloves of garlic, finely mince 1 clove
8. fresh rosemary
9. fresh thyme
10. Butter
11. Olive oil

Step by Step the Saute Mushroom :

1. Season beef with salt and pepper, leave
2. Thinly cut mushrooms but leave some portobellos in their shape
3. Heat the pan, add olive oil
4. Add mushrooms and garlic together, season with salt, pepper, and squeeze  a little amount of lemon juice then mix together
5. When the mushroom cooked, add a knob of butter then mix well
6. Add fresh thyme and mix well
7. Set the mushroom on a plate

Step by Step the Steak :

1. Medium-heat the seared pan
2. Add olive oil then put the beef
3. Rub each side of the beef with rosemary and garlic
4. Cook the beef until your desirable done-ness (I love medium done beef)
5. Now we are going to make a seasoning board. In a clean cutting board, splash olive oil, lemon juice, bit of pepper and chopped rosemary over the board
6. Slice the beef about 0.5 cm and smear every pieces with the seasoning on the board
7. Arrange the sliced beef nicely upon the saute mushroom and serve!

Note : Don’t be too generous in squeezing the lemon otherwise you’ll ruin it with sourness! The dish smells so good as I love herbs so much especially rosemary has a really nice tasteful aroma. I always have a tricky experience in cooking medium done steak but the result today made me so happy. I followed Mr. Oliver’s instruction to pat the meat to check its done-ness and when it feels like chewy when you pat on it, it supposed to be medium done. In my experience today, I made sure to cook the beef outer side until it caramelized and burnt beautifully. It turned out so tender and delicious. Thank you for the recipe Mr. Oliver! I love you

I didn’t completely follow his recipe but yes I do almost all of his instructions.

Preparing and Cooking time in total : 45 minutes

Grilled Crispy Salmon with Garlic

Hi, I am typing this post in a late night on no-longer-Sunday going to Monday. Alright, so I had salmon for my Sunday dinner which was so yummy and I enjoyed it with steamed rice. I can’t live without rice, so Asian right? Quick salmon recipe for dinner after a hectic yet stressful week for me was kind of a self treat. Hahaha. The grilled garlic salmon for dinner has made my day, hope it will have the same effect to cheer to cheer your mood up!

Before started cooking, dry the salmon skin using the same method in my previous salmon recipe here.

Ingredients :

1. 200 gram Tasmanian salmon fillet (for 1 – 2 serving)
2. 1,5 tbs olive oil
3. salt and cracked black pepper
4. 2 cloves of garlic, mince
5. 2 stalks of scallion, mince
6. Spinach

Step by Step :

1. Mixed olive oil, salt, black pepper, garlic and spring onion in a bowl, stir well
2. Marinade salmon with no. 1
3. Turn on and heat the oven for 10 minutes at 170 degree Celcius while waiting the salmon marinated
4. Wrap salmon with alumunium foil and grill for 30-35 minutes (it depends on personal preference, I don’t like salmon to be cooked well done so it was around 30 minutes)
5. Arrange spinach leaf on the plate
6. Put salmon above the spinach leaves and pour the juice from the grilling process over

In this picture, I cut half the salmon into 2 pieces that’s why it looks small for 200 gr weight

Preparation time : 15 minutes, Cooking time : 35 minutes, Total time : 55 minutes

Well it seems too late to say happy week end, maybe saying have a great week ahead would be better.

Tofu Gratin

When it comes to my own homemade cooking, I am a big fan of everything fast and easy to cook. As this is such a busy week, I wanted to reward myself a self-cooked dinner on Friday night. Kind of a chilling me-time, with good food and nice book.

I know tofu gratin sounds a little bit confusing as this is combining Asian food with western style. Well this is an amazing fusion food for me. I had tofu gratin twice about two years ago. The first time I had it in a Japanese fusion Restaurant in Jakarta and the second one was my trial replicating what I ate in that restaurant.

I have bought a tube of silken tofu since the beginning of last week but had no idea what to cook. Until yesterday I was so craving for tofu and the only stuffs I have in the fridge quite supportive to be cooked as gratin. So here we go!

Ingredients :

1. 1 tube of plain silken tofu or any silken tofu
2. 50 ml of lite milk
3. 2 slices of tasty cheddar cheese
4. minced carrot
5. 1 tsp of butter
6. salt and pepper
7. one beaten egg
8. parmesan cheese
9. mayonnaise

Method :

1. Heat up the oven to 180 degree Celcius while you preparing all the ingredients (approximately 10 minutes)
2. Cut the tofu into thin pieces (approx 1,5cm each), arrange and pile them nicely in a bowl
3. Heat up milk, butter and 1 slice of cheese, stir quickly until cheese melted and pour immediately into the bowl, try to spread the top side of the tofu evenly
4. Mixed egg with carrot, salt and pepper then pour into the bowl
5. Cut cheese slice into 4 parts and arrange above the tofu
6. Oven for 25-30 minutes
7. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and spread with mayonnaise

Well it was such a fatty dinner though, but no problem as I don’t eat this everyday, right? No sin..no guilty feeling..it was a guilty pleasure

Homemade Cooking Feast

What is better than homemade foods? I am a homemade foods lover and even those aren’t my traditional homemade foods, still it evokes the happiness and comfort as if I ate my comfort foods. And I am a true believer that it’s not about the place or the food but the company that matters. Fortunately I had all of them in one package last Saturday, yummy homemade foods with great companies.:)

Actually I had a group study work on Saturday afternoon since me and my group were trying to finish our assignment as much as we can during the Easter break. Besides the assignment work, we had a plan to cook and have lunch together. But in the end I stayed all day long in my friend’s apartment unit, had a great lunch-dinner with her flatmates and other friends who also joined us.

I will reveal all of their fabulous homemade cooking that successfully have WOW-ed me and definitely amused my tummy! Seriously, how lucky my friend is for having those cooking master flatmates and my friend herself is a great cook too. Fascinating, that so many foods from different Asian countries resemble one to another. As yesterday we had Vietnamnese and Laos foods but all of them tasted so familiar as they resemble to Chinese and Indonesian food as well.

Let’s start with the sticky rice, special kind of rice that has sticky texture that interestingly cooked in a special traditional container. It took more than 1 hour to get the rice ready but it worthed the wait. I always love sticky rice as this resembles with Chinese sticky rice that I used to have back home. The sticky rice has slightly salty flavor and goes well with any other dishes we had on the table.

The second dish was the chili and lemongrass chicken that was very lovely. It was fried chicken fried with garlic, lemongrass and chili. The next one was the unique fish paste that tasted awesome. They made this using fermented fish, chopped finely and then mixed with chili, garlic and other seasonings. The fish paste tasted spicy and salty which really perfect to my liking. This is perfectly fit to be eaten with the sticky rice.

We also had this capsicum basa fish that hidden under the capsicums layer very well as at first I thought this was a stir-fried capsicum. The basa fish was seasoned with ginger and then fried before mixed up with the capsicum.

This pork meatball was so delicious, that was made from minced pork, mushroom and spring onion then fried and smeared with a special sauce. The next dish was the bitter melon soup. What so special with the bitter melon is because it was filled by generous filing of minced pork and mushroom. I really like the filling inside but as I can’t manage bitter very well, I just ate a little bit of the bitter melon and only took the filling. So yummy! It took quite a long time as well to cook this one

This flat rice noodle is very similar to kway teow but this one is in wider sheet. We ate this with fried shallot and special sauce which was fish sauce, minced garlic, lemon juice and sugar. I really like this one too especially the lemon juice make it tastes so fresh.

Everything was seriously so yummy and I can’t wait to have another dinner with them. It’s so interesting to know and eat new kind of foods from other countries. Thank you Linh, Jenn, Freddy, Vee and Intan for the great Saturday! I’m looking forward our next homemade dinner feast!