Cottage Point Kiosk and Limani Seafood

Despite of the heavy rain we still went for a road trip. Well I actually thought the rain stopped at some point in the trip, but you know normally the more you think it will then it won't. So as you might have guessed the rain actually stopped when we got back home. Umm..anyway enough about me being a bitter anchorwoman.

I lurve road trip. Main reason is probably somehow I feel less guilty to non stop snacking in the car? And I also love the fuss going to grocery shop and prepare all the junk, I was even willing to ride the bike to get some more food. Anything for some lovin..

The day started early-ish, just early enough to get breakfast at Maccas. We actually made two trips to Maccas since after picking up my friends, they also wanted some Maccas..

We didn't actually go too far, seemed that we only drove to have an excuse having some fatty food. It only took us less than two hours to reach our first destination. Without wasting time at our first stop (if you didn't count Maccas as the first stop..) we went straight to the cafe which probably the only kiosk/cafe at Cottage Point. The price was not cheap but I guess it's the benefit of being the only shop surrounded by water.

Once we saw what's on display, it only took us two seconds to know what we wanted to order. Six of us decided to order the same thing, the luscious looking scones..

Warm home made scones with fresh cream and jam

three sets of identical orders (well with various types of coffee and teas of course)

If only the weather was better we'd be able to sit on the deck and enjoying the view, instead we had to sit inside and facing the walls..
But I guess it only made my soy latte tasted even better :)

Anyway up we go...between the next lunch destination we grabbed some snacks to be exhibited..

one of my friends half buried with our treasures..

It's quite tough to find a lunch spot during holiday, the rain optioned out to have a picnic too. We ended up crashing at this restaurant ( which my friend found using the iPhone apps). The restaurant looked a bit too fancy at first but considering the special deal they had, I guess it wasn't too bad. ($27 for one main and a dessert!)

I quite like the design of the restaurant, it reminds me of the Boat House at the Black Wattle Bay. With the 1950s music on air and the hanging lights at the corner, it brings out a relax and romantic atmosphere. The venue is certainly perfect for a wedding reception ;p

Moco's fish and chips

To be honest there's nothing special with this dish, the fish was actually a bit tough for Moco (and for another friend who ordered the same).

My Roast Pork Belly

This is the entree size and actually more Moco's request since I personally wouldn't order a pork belly. I was still full from all the snacks I had for the past hours so I didn't really mind..yes yes I know it's unhealthy but I could just eat chips and snacking around and skip the entire lunch and dinner ;(

Pan Fried Veal with Beans and Mashed Potatoes

According to my friend the veal was again too tough, the meat was overly cooked I supposed. But as in the picture, they're quite generous for the portion..

Barramundi with butternut pumpkin and sauce

I personally think this is the winner dish for the day. The pumpkin was naturally sweet and the barramundi was so soft and tasty. However my other friend who also ordered the same dish thought his dish was too salty (we suspected the chef might put a lil too much salt in his plate..)

Now moving to desserts time..

Toblerone Pate with caramel sauce and peanut coated ice creams

It's Moco's lucky day, I don't eat caramel or anything that's too sweet so basically for this dessert I only ate the ice creams and tried as much as I can to avoid the sauce. Again, there's nothing special with the toblerone pate..

Strawberry Panacotta with chocolate ice creams served in biscotti

Great dessert. The Panacotta was so smooth and not too sweet. Definitely the winner dessert for me!

The Citrus cake with lemon sauce and fresh cream

This one wasn't bad either. The tangy-ness was just right (hence it didn't leave a bitter after taste in the mouth like my last lemon cake!)

The aftermath..

The trip concluded with our lil visit to Ben and Jerry's new outlet at Manly!
I know you wouldn't think we could stuff another dessert in just less of an hour gap eh? Well you just never know if you never try..

Quite a line..

Yummo!

Gosh my sugar intake that day certainly went up!
Can't wait for the next road trip though. We're actually going again on New Year's day, but this time we're going with Moco's family. So I'm not sure in what degree they'll let me snacking all day ;)

El Jannah

For some reasons we always got hungry at 3pm these last couple of days. I think mainly because we're on holiday waking up late and having brunch instead of our usual breakfast.

Anyway Moco's friends have been raving a lot about the great charcoal chicken near Granville station for so long and since we're in the neighbourhood we decided to try it. Not many shops were open on that day so when we saw a relatively busy charcoal chicken place at the corner we thought it must be it. However the sign was quite big and the joint looked very commercial. Personally I thought if it's a good charcoal chicken near a train station the shop can't be look that fancy. So I told Moco to call his friend to check. And I was right, that place definitely not it, we overlooked a small chicken shop up the street that was half the size of this commercial restaurant and inside had double the line.

line was getting longer and longer and by 3.15pm it almost reached the front door

Most of the people were actually having a take away (only $5 for half of chicken take away!), as for dine-in the price inflated a bit but I think it's still pretty good value. We got the half chicken combo (with lebanese bread, pickles and the famous garlic sauce) for $10.

half of the chicken combo

The plate looked so pretty with the combination colours of the pickles (I don't eat pickles so Moco's happily eating them all - but still I think the plate looked pretty..)

The chicken was very succulent and already delicious without the garlic sauce, but once you added the garlic sauce you just can't stop using it for your next bite.


Moco and I are positively assured this is the best garlic sauce we've had, and whilst I agreed the chicken was above average, I'm still not convinced that this is the best charcoal chicken we've had. At this point my heart still belongs to the charcoal chicken near the old CBA in Fairfield, can't wait for my next trip there so I can show you the piccies :)

Christmas and Boxing day 2009

Woke up in the morning (noon) with the yummy leftovers of last night's oxtail soup, didn't have much time left since we had to rush back home. I still needed to do finish off the other cake to bring to Moco's parent's house. I was kinda cheating with the base by using the biscuits but I didn't put enough butter. So eventhough I made it the night before the base still looked a bit loose. Based on the last experience using frozen berries, I also added more icing sugar!


At dessert time, the base did crumble a bit but it's still okay, so glad Moco's cousins finished it all!

Flashed back the time after we got home and before we went to Moco's parents place, we got a lil peckish and wanted to have a quick snack of dumplings. Our first choice was the Din Tai Fung at World Square but sadly they closed at 3pm and we got there at 3.01pm

But conveniently there's this new dumpling restaurant just below. Attracted by the high tech menu on their walls and by the fact we did want to have some xiao lung bao we were lured in. We had to wait and I think they've been quite busy since the waitress was a bit 'forgetful' (she didn't give us a ticket but in two minutes she suddenly asked for a ticket from us?)

Overall the service was good (they can speak English and weren't too rude) but if you're starving and you saw the restaurant was full, maybe the best not to go in. It took so long for us to fill our craving! Whilst waiting we realized we have actually visited their original restaurant in Ashfield a long time ago!

pork xiao long bao $7.90

My dad always said eating xiao long bao is an art in itself, there's a trick to lift it without breaking the skin and to keep all the juice inside. But I think it's more likely to depend on your luck of the draw and thickness of the skin..

I found this one was a bit too thick, but the inside was perfectly tasty.

pan fried pork and crab dumpling

I think I was a bit dissapointed with the pan fried dumpling. Not just because it took so long but also from the menu each of the dumplings had crab roe on top. When it came out there was only one dumpling that had crab roe on top! The bread itself was too thick for my liking too...

Next time when I come again I'd like to try their larger dishes instead of their dumplings...

Anyway that was just the afternoon snacks, now we're getting ready for the real deal.

We arrived at Moco's parents house and already greeted with Christmas Noodles Viet style!
What I like most about Viet cooking is the freshness and the natural vibrant colours that they have and I'm also a big fan of rice noodles.

It's so nice to have lots of greens after the all meat dishes yesterday..

lettuce, mint and some other leaves =p

homemade sauce and pickles!

Moco's mom has been trying to pass the recipe on to me but I can't see myself doing any of these sauces anytime soon..

Prawn springrolls and taro rice vermicelli rolls (apparently the taro rolls were fresh from Vietnam)

I don't normally eat deep fried springrolls but this one was quite good. It's crunchy and I can actually tasted the prawns inside! As for the taro rolls, I've actually never tried them before and surprisingly good for a vegetarian roll ;)

the prep..

My bowl! (greens, sprouts, pineapple, shredded pork, prawn, springrolls, and lots of meehun!)

The next day, the noodle bonanza continues, using a different type of rice noodle, this time my bowl was filled with mungbean prawn fritatta and sliced preserved pork!


It's almost too late when I realized there's a different type of noodle at the bottom of my bowl. This one is similar to what you can find in yum cha but the rice noodle had dried prawns inside.

And if you think the noodle show ended now, you're thinking too fast..

Last one for the night!

fresh deboned steamed fish and special sauce prawns!

This is my second time I've eaten this dish and I think the first one was more than two years ago. I almost forgot how beautiful Moco's mom stewed these prawns. The sauce was so sweet and the meat so tender. It's hard to believe the sauce is mainly made up of prawn head guts. Traditionally you eat this with soup but I like dry noodles more so for the next bowl (yes I had two bowls!) I made my own version of just the noodles and the prawns ;p

Christmas' eve potluck

Yay we're almost on track again..

We need to prepare two dishes for Christmas eve and Christmas day hence the work started on Wednesday night, after the quick dinner at Umami we prepared the meatballs for the eve, we made the sauce and fried the meatballs on Thursday so it's still fresh.

Pork and veal mince meatballs with chorizo, kransky, mushroom, carrot in tomato sauce

And luckily I still had time to bake a chocolate cake (and plus I just wanted to have some reason to use the bundt pan again!)
One lesson I learnt from using the frozen berries is not to use the frozen berries. They are so sour and I had to put extra icing sugar to make them edible!

Chocolate cake with mixed berry icing

Some of the potluck dishes at my friend's place..

1 kg of roast pork with crunchy skin

the skin mysteriously kept on going missing..

honey ribs, my friend marinated the bones until they were really soft!

the lot with oxtail soup

I think I got ulcers by eating too much meat and no greens! unless you count shallots and parsley..

Umami

Okay this will be the quickest post ever (as quick as our visit there), but I'm pretty sure the pictures speak for themselves..

This place was sometimes overseen by people due to its location, but I remember we had take away bento from this place a while ago, it was pretty good and the portion was generous but we never tried to dine in there hence as usual we got our Wednesday night to eat out here.

I wasn't too hungry so I 'only' ordered the salmon salad (I know it sounds crazy but that lettuce were actually quite filling!) I don't eat avocados so I tried to swap it with tofu but too bad it didn't work hence Moco was happily eating it and I was happily stealing his tempura, that's fair enough hehe

$16.50 salmon bento box special

Bondi Mongers and Pompei

Wow it's been seven days since our last post! Well I guess Christmas season could take the blame. Merry Christmas to you all and happy Boxing day! Just less than a week to 2010!

I'm gonna try to catch up with the blogs so let's do a quick round up of some shots I took in the past seven days so hopefully soon I could post some Christmas shots!

From memory we went with my cousin for dinner last Sunday night in Bondi at this fish and chips shop. The place was recommended by my other cousin, and I was actually quite surprised how much I enjoyed the choice. I was thinking of standard fish and chips but they were definitely not the ordinary fish and chips I normally have at the seafood shop. Even though we couldn't pick and point the fish here, the concept is quite similar with the gourmet fish and chips at Paddo.

Personally I like Mongers better though..I love their corn and sweet potato chips the most (what fish?)

Moco's Monger box (fish with calamari rings and sweet potato chips)

My Portugese's Warho with salad..

the fish gank..

Straight after we strolled around for some dessert. With the choice between yoghurt and gelato, we decided that some pistachio and hazelnut would be the right way to end the night. Great choices of gelato but I think the eat in price is a bit up there ($10.50 for 2 scoops..)

Dayao Thai and San Churro

As promised, we took my cousin and his wife for a fresh Thai dinner, for choices we were torn between Spice I am, Chat Thai or any random Thai restaurant in Newtown. We decided to bring them to Newtown just to get a different feeling outside of the city but we didn't take them to any random Thai restaurant of course. Instead we took them to Dayao Thai, yes it's a chain and normally we try to avoid them but this one is actually pretty darn good. We went here last time for a friend's birthday and we totally had a big banquet and probably only paid $30/person inc the corkage and treated the birthday girl :)

The place is quite ample for Newtown, but last night the crowd managed to fill in every corner of it. Good thing we made a booking the day before hence we got our table secured. For the entree we placed an order for the chicken wings stuffed with mince and the prawn tom yam goong. The chicken wings were pretty good although not the best I've had, and same verdict applied for the tom yam goong. Its sourness is definitely up there and whilst it tasted better than most of tom yam goongs that I've had but once again, not the best.

$8 for two chicken wings with sweet chili sauce..

We ordered three mains, the first one was the whole bbq chicken (I think we could have got away with just half a chicken though), whole deep fried fish with curry paste, tofu and vegis stir fried with basil.

The winner for the night (for me!)

The winner for the night (for my cousin ^_^)

There's always room for dessert..

3/4 cream 1/4 chocolate drink?

Triple chocolate attacks

It's been a while since my last visit to San Churro, they don't have my fave Buddha Baci anymore, so I ordered the closest which just the normal hazelnut hot choco, but for some reasons it doesn't taste the same and it tasted way too sweet for my tastebud. Actually it's too sweet for everyone on the table hence sadly we had to leave it wasted ;(

But it's paid of with the dark chocolate sauce with the churros, it tasted better that what I remembered ;)

Love fresh churros with dark chocolate dipping..