Cooking with Love

Haven't posted my wife's cooking for quite a while. It's because wife has been very busy at work and had little time for this "leisurely" activity.

From the top:

1. Cassava Cake,
2. Assam Prawns,
3. Pumpkin Cake and
4. Radish Cake

Cassava Cake is my favorite! Esp when it is hot and fresh out of the oven! :)

Despite I really like Assam like Assam Laksa, Assam Prawns is my least favorite.

The problem is me, 100% me - I am too lazy to de-shell prawns. Thank God that my wife de-shells them for me. I am so lucky!

Like the Cassava Cake, I love the Pumpkin Cakes when they are really hot out of the fry pan. Shame that I had a cough when they were made so I couldn't shove them down my throat without constraints..

The Pumpkin Cakes are filled with red bean paste inside. Yum!! There is also a steamed version, you can read about it here.

The Radish Cake is not as "smooth" as what you might find in a restaurant. However, that is because it is packed with radish, not flour. It is therefore heavy in radish flavour. I love the spring onions topping also. It is not over-whelmed with pepper.. no need for that because it is the genuine article!

As said, the Cassava Cake is my favorite. Wonder when my wife will make more for me?! :P

For more information, please visit here.

Melbourne Open House

MOH was a fantastic event!

One day in the year, 32 buildings in the CBD open to the public for free, most accompanied with guided tours. More than 50,000 people turned up for the event and God was kind and gave us amazing sunny weather on the day.

I love architecture so I wasn't going to miss this!


Yes, the queues were very long... But, my wife and her girlfriend later joined me which certainly made the day even more pleasurable. They saved a good two hours as well. To top it off, we had a fab lunch after that. Although it was kind of small. Loved the risotto and the company. I am hungry just thinking about it... :O...

This is the roof top view from MU.


I was lazy or perhaps just being realistic on the day... left my tripod at home... was going to bring it... it went as far as the door. Sorry tripod...

Tripod could have been useful at the St. Paul Cathedral. Anyway, had to do with handheld on the day. A wider angle lens would be nice too. I do love this cathedral, a wonderful house of God.



This is CH2. CH2 is the first purpose-built office building in Australia to achieve the six Green Star certified rating. A truly fasinating and innovative building albeit it took a long wait to get in also.

Love those infamous wooden louvers, yellow roof top turbines (also called wind crowls) and cooling through heat absorption into the concrete, etc... Magnificant!

After a long day of walking, met up with friends at Shanghai Village for dinner. The chicken dish was so nice! We are definitely going back again. Good choice Rumi/Yoshi. :)

A Sydney-sider told me buildings are even prettier in Sydney. Oh, I certainly love the Sydney Habour Bridge, the Opera House and I like The Circular Quay also. But this Melbourian is more than happy with what Melbourne has to offer.

Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne! =3=

Penang Foods

Thank you mum and Linda for taking us around to sooo many places to spoil our taste buds.

All the hawker food Penang has to offer - char koay teow, nasi lamak, laksa, rojak, hokkien mee, popiah (actually I prefer the Singaporean version), chicken rice, loh bak, chu cheung fun, curry mee, nyonya dishes and many others I can't remember how to call them... Memory is a wonderful thing. I can "taste" them just trying to recall them in my mind.. :P

What about deserts, drinks, durian and mangosteen (photographed below)... Oh, desert?! What about desert?! I felt cheated by the desert. Don't laugh Linda. What they dished out looked nothing like the picture in the menu... Compare this pink soup with the picture immmediately next to it on its left.

Photographs are supposed to convey truth. People believe it when they see it in a photo.

That said, this is my only whinge out of many dozens of great food we had. It is kind of like the train that was late in one of our legs to Mt Fuji. Our short memory meant we have forgotten how not punctual or un-punctual the train system can be back home (in Melbourne), we have become accustomed to the 100% punctual trains in Japan. But on this cold morning, waiting outside at this train platform. This train was late by 3 minutes, all of us were cold (perhaps except James who was armed with his Canadian water...) and not very happy that the train was late. That said, Japan has the most amazing train system still just like Penang food are still excellent (and cheap)! :)

Oh yes, before I forget, we had Japanese, Western as well as German food also, the last of which was really good. We had lamb shanks and it was great, at a very cheap price also! It is called Ingolf’s Kneipe German Bar and Restaurant. It is situated at Jalan Sungai Kelian, off the main Jalan Tanjong Bungah. For more information and pics, check this out! I don't get no commission for this.

Simple things in life

My wife is a great cook. We were in a rush this evening. But that is no challenge to my wife. Albeit having very limited ingredients in the fridge, she whipped together a simple but fantastic dinner.

Teriyaki Chicken wings and drumsticks, rocket leaves amongst other leaves, baby tomato, sweet corn infused with a secret sauce. All made in less than 30 minutes and I gobbled everything down in a flash. It (my manners) was not a pretty sight and wife doesn't think I can fully enjoy it at that speed. However, hours later, the taste and fragrance still lingers in my mouth and nostrils. Yum!

BTW, this is the new ice-cream we tried out today - Connoisseur Chocolate Brownie Temptation. I like my ice-cream rock hard hence the frost on the container. It is rich dark chocolate with chunks of chocolate brownie nestled throughout. To top it off, it was on discount at Coles supermarket! :)

Wicked Chocolate

Fräus Crêpes & Chocolat

Had breakfast with wife and a much loved friend of ours, Esther, at Fräus Crêpes & Chocolat, North Melbourne.

It has an extensive collection of sweet and savoury crepes, cakes, drinks and wine; including a range of gluten-free galettes.

We had a Vegie Galette, Chocolate Strawberry and Banana Crepe, and a Chocolate Pear Crepe. They were all delicious, especially the Vegie Galette! Chocolate (drink) was very rich, too. Felt somewhat guilty for having so much chocolate for breakfast... but it was really yummy!

We chose to dine at the court yard at the back. The weather was just nice and there are a few old vines which made the place very homey, warm and beautiful.

Highly recommended! A++++ (looks like ebay feedback. LOL. :D)

Friendship & Generosity

Thank you so much Andrew and Dharshi for the lovely quiche and baked pasta. They are both pleasing to the eyes as they are to the stomach. Well done for your achievements to date. All the best to your plans. Thank you for your love. We love you too and wish every good thing for you. So wonderful to have good caring friends around.

Proverbs 11:24 "One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed."

OK, below are the quiche and the baked pasta. I love the cheese on the baked pasta and the herbs on top of that. The sauce is so tasty. So yummy! Only pinched a little of the quiche so far... need to give it a proper test run tomorrow over lunch. I can't wait! :O...

~ Baked Pasta ~

~ Quiche ~

[2009-03-05] OK, been eating both the quiche and the baked pasta through the week. They are fantastic! Love the pepper on top and the pastry of the quiche is so nice and crunchy, even when I put it in the microwave. Hey Andrew, you are talented! I will blame you if I put on weight! Thank you very much bro.

Delicious Foods

I was grounded over Christmas so no exciting pics to share with you. Sorry.

Heehee.. :P not quite (grounded), just didn't go away and worked every day... No new year fireworks pics from the Melbourne city. No crazy dance party (Sensation) pics from the Telstra Dome. Anyway, good time to catch up on work. So, I thought I would share some pics taken over the Christmas and new year at lunch and dinner parties.

My wife made a really nice Chiffon cake last week, but sorry, I didn't take any photo of it... it was really good though! Not too sweet, not heavy, excellent texture, great filling, did I say excellent texture? :) (ah, my wife has a pic of it in her blog. But it is before it is cut, so it is difficult to appreciate how good it is inside...)



Big mistake. It would taking too long to load all these pics to the browser if I uploaded them individually. The browser may time out and give up all together. So, I made a video instead. But that took a loooong time to upload. Would be OK if I didn't start it close to mid-night (and have to go to work on the following day). So, you better enjoy it. :)

BTW, what do you think is my favorite amongst all these food? Chinese Radish Cake? Loh Mai Zhi? Mini-cheese cake? Roast Pork? Chicken Rice? Malaysian Kueh like Kueh Lapis? Thai Fried Rice? Ice cold beer like Pure Blonde? Well, the answer is in the middle of the pic below. Yep, jelly, plain old jelly (orange jelly in this case)! What can I say, the simple things in life are often the best. Actually, I do enjoy and love all the rest, so saying jelly is my favorite may not be entirely true... I just have a weakness for jelly. I am so spoiled!

"I like aeroplane jelly, aeroplane jelly for me. I like it for dinner, I like it for tea. A little each day is a good recipe. I like aeroplane jelly, aeroplane jelly for me"**

Come on, sing along with this.


**No commission for this, just a very effective ad I can't get out of my head... :)

Hainanese Chicken Rice (海南雞飯)

My wife and I have a problem. She made really nice Hainanese Chicken Rice, 海南雞飯, on Sunday and I took a few pics of it. They looked so nice I want to post them here for my photo blog. But she wants to post it on her blog too. It is a good problem to have. LOL! You are the winner!

Nicely flavored chicken rice, from natural chicken stock that came out of the steamed chicken. I can be sure it is not as oily as what one would find in restaurants. The chicken wasn't as thinly sliced as I had in Singapore. But it was rich in taste and moist like anything, even the breast meat. Yummy!

We love coriander. The chopped ginger, garlic, spring onion mix, the chili sauce and the soy sauce was fantastic. Chili sauce wasn't home made, we don't eat enough of it to go that distance. Everything were delicious.

It is not real obvious in this reduced size pics. But the ginger in the bottom pic is so nice it pops right out of the photo. I want to grab it with my fingers and put it in my mouth! :)

Home-made Dumplings (shuijiao/水餃) for Lunch

Thanks to my dear wife who loves cooking (and does a great job at it), at times, I get great opportunities photographing food.

Today happens to be a nice and relaxing Sunday. All I have to do is attend church service and do my BSF lesson 30 amongst other chores. We felt the urge to make Chinese Jiaozi, boiled dumpling (shuijiao/水餃) type, for the first time for lunch. The bottles of sauce behind are for the noodle base, not for the dumplings but I couldn't resist putting them there to add some interest and colours.

Sorry, we didn't make the Jiaozi/餃子 skin, may be we will try making it next time... For the filling, we got beef (left), pork (center) and chicken (right) mince, just so we can make 3 different types.Here is a close-up on the chicken mince filling. Come on, come closer to the screen. You might smell the sweet aroma of the sesame oil and coriander! :)
We mixed the mince with coriander, chopped Chinese mushroom, a bit of soy sauce, white pepper, sesame oil. That's about it... doesn't get any easier than this. They are so tasty, we just boiled them in water.

If you think the one to the left of the chopsticks looks strange, you are absolutely right. It is star shaped... tried to make funny shapes with a few of them... Just look at how beautiful they look. I can't wait to eat them!!