I had a craving the other day. has anyone tried eating chips with
sambal asli, a type of indonesian chili sauce. not exactly sure what sambal asli means but i m definitely sure that chips with sambal asli is better than chips with ketchup, or as a matter of fact, salt & vinegar chips the oz way. the best chips i have ever had was chips from a chicken shop on goodwood road back in adelaide. for $2 you get a huge bag of chips. when i say huge, i mean it. normally a $2 bag can feed at least 3-4 people. bad news for mcD chips fan. it's not french fries styled chips. it's the fat, thick and chunky homey chips i m talking about here. in sydney i happened upon 'A Fish Called Coogee', which obviously is down in Coogee Beach. it has got the best chips i ever had in sydney. the thick chunky home-cut chips.
A Fish Called Coogee - minimalist shopfront
exotic marinated seafood $3.90/100g
add on 70c/100g for cooking
anyway i m going way out of my topic here. i m supposed to talk about fish. okie. let's get back to where i was supposed to be from the start. 'A Fish Called Coogee' is one of my favourite eating places in sydney. it's a seafood emporium. the must try is its wide range of exoctic marinated seafood. my favourite includes its thai fish cake and balinese sambal marinated anything! green leafy salad, stir fried asian greens and steam rice are also on the menu. very healthy!
© foodies date: 9April2004 @ A Fish Called Paddo (good friday)
♥ ate: moroccon tuna, thai fish cake, salad, chips with balinese sambal sauce
A Fish Called Paddo is a branch of A Fish called Coogee. yup spot on! it's in paddo, at Five Ways on glenmore road. the ambience and setting of Paddo is very much like the Coogee one. nothing is new or surprising there. i guess this is the only down side but on a brighter note, at least i wont be disappointed with the food quality. we had thai fish cake and morrocan tuna this time. we ordered the tuna medium but it came up pretty well done. oh i must mention the balinese sambal sauce. it tasted so good with everything! and chips to me was just perfect, as was the salad, which was there because i wanted a more balanced meal.
©foodies date: 20April2004 @ A Fish Called Coogee
♥ ate: bbq octopus, chili & garlic swordfish, chips with byo sambal asli
the Coogee branch is pretty much the same as the Paddo branch. this time we tried chili & garlic swordfish, marinated bbq octopus and of course my favourite of all - chips! i brought my own sambal asli this time. and i have to express my gratitude to jessie & derek who brought me some
oporto chicken chili sauce back from work, so i brought them along too.
A Fish called Coogee/Paddo is on the expensive mark along the conventional fish & chips eatery yet on the cheaper end of the upmarket seafood restauranteur. the food is good but i wont recommend the conventional fish & chips. the serving of fish is on the skimpy side. if you are looking after the ordinary fish & chips, i would recommend 'fhip & chish' (not sure if i have got the name right', which is just on arden street, next to the kiosk on coogee beach. their fish burger is just superb. ohhhh..i am beginning to hear seagulls 'mine-ing' in the distant background.....
Continue Reading A Fishy Affairs with Chips
© foodies date: 20April2004
what a great day it is today. it wasnt one of the brightest day during the week for me because today is a tuesday. never have liked tuesday unless of course it is a public holiday. tuesday means a 10am auditing class ie. need to drag my butt, my body and most importantly my brain & my mind away from my full of softness, warmth and love sleeping mate. urgh. what a great day not! i have just merely recovered from my pre-uni syndrome on monday night and a tuesday 'early' morning class just isnt helping my recovery at all.
brain and mind were still in sleepy mode when i returned home today. body did the same old routine. reach home - take off shoes - put down bag - switch on computer - go online - check mail - maybe chat a little - and of course eat at the same time (it's a time saving strategy or the fact that i merely couldnt leave my beloved computer alone for a minute while i m home). brain, mind and body suffered from a jolt of joy when checking mail. sleepy mode has been switched to excited. pinkcocoa is finally awake at 4.30pm.
yes yes yes. it is the mail in my bigfoot. not just any ordinary mail but "the mail" from
AirlineMeals.net informing me that my contribution on
VirginBlue meal has been posted on their website on 17April. yes yes yes. it's my first ever public contribution on the net. if you recall, the virginblue meal is dolci and QQp foodies' first ever foodblog. i have elaborated a little more in my foodblog than on AirlinesMeal.net. but anyhow do check out AirlineMeals.net especially check out my entry under virgin blue.
To view my contribution
1. visit
AirlineMeals.net
2. go to
Browse Thousand of Meals
3. Find Virgin Blue. it's the first one on muffin and juice (the same pic i post here)
i am excited. Are you excited? *grin* happy viewing!
Continue Reading AirlineMeals.net Contribution
© foodies date: 17April2004 (lawrence is back!)
steamboat or hotpot. whatever name you call it. it's definitely one of the best dinner seating you can get. with the hot broth bubbling away in the pot on the table-stove (we used electronic hotplate), the aroma isnt terribly nice especially when we are talking about the post-steamboat condition of whole apartment. but hey, no complain here. the food is fresh and yummy. the best thing is you get to pick what you like to eat from the pot.
katty and basil hosted a steamboat gathering tonight at their place @ the forum, st leonards. applaude (and kisses) goes to katty and basil who did all the shopping. and to katty who cooked the broth. this time we had a kimchee pot. basically what we did was cook the broth like you would normally do or you can use canned chicken broth and add vegies such as chinese cabbage, carrots and tomatoes, and let the broth simmer for a while. i would say half an hour is good enough if you are using canned soup. we then added a whole jar of kimchee (from asian supermarket) to the broth and let it simmer for a while. voila! we had instant kimchee hotpot.
as for the ingredients. you can basically have anything you like. this time we had really basic taiwanese stuff. in the pics, we had
- chinese cabbage, chopped to bite size
- konnyaku, japanese jelly-like health food which is low in calorie and high in fibre. one of my favourite. good for dieters too!
- sliced meat from asian supermarket. we had beef, chicken and pork. good source of protein.
- tofu
- baby corn
- assorted asian-style meatballs. we had squid-balls, fishballs, fishcakes and mushroom chicken balls.
- assorted taiwanese dumplings. in the pics are prawn dumpling (yes the long reddish strips) and squid dumpling. not in the pic is fish dumpling which resembles Italian tortellini in shape.
like i said, you can put into the steamboat anything you fancy. we didnt have seafood this time but prawns, white fish, mussels are very good in steamboat too. mushrooms, any type of mushrooms are good too. my favourite is enoki mushroom *yum* for vegan, there is a whole range of frozen vegan food from the asian supermarkets. dont get put off by the name on the packets that said vegetarian beef or chicken or mutton. they are basically made of soy. some are made of mushroom. they actually taste very nice. my favourite is vegan mutton which in actual are mushroom stems. fresh asian vegies like bok choy, choi sum and kai lan are normal too. usually we would add in vermicelli at the end of the dinner. with its high water absorption rate, vermicelli holds the best of the best from the steamboat (yes and all the fat too!). you can use any type of noodles but vermicelli is still the best.
one other important thing about steamboat is the dipping sauce. a very typical dipping sauce would be an egg yolk mixed together with a little soy sauce and sesame oil. katty was the creative one. the dipping sauce is different every time we had steamboat. she is a real talent in sauce-creating. she uses whatever she could find in the pantry. the sauce this time was sweet with a hint of spiceness. i like it a little more spicy so i added in some more indonesian chili sauce.
green tea and black sesame icecream from leCreme factory ended the dinner in perfection. the only pullback was the leftover. we still had one large pot left untouched. looks like katty and basil will have steamboat for lunch and dinner for another 2-3 days.
Continue Reading Steaming the night away
© foodies date: 23Feb2004 (Brunei's national day!)
i thought i would love the taste and smell of a creamy cheesecake for the rest of my life from the day i met the cheesecake family when i was just 14. boy, was i wrong. let's fast forward to just 10days before this pic was taken. it was valentine's eve. shinchan and i have just finished watching 'the last samurai' at fox's studio if my memory hasnt got me wrong. hunger pang hit us and it was almost midnight. we headed to cafe comity on oxford street and ordered a piece of their in-house passionfruit cheesecake. i wasnt sure if it was the hot weather or was it the late night. the cheesecake was just too creamily cheesey. the 'cheesiness' has just gone over my boundary of what's too cheesey and what is not. i developed headache and a little nauseous after just a few bite. this was the first time in my life that i couldnt finish a slice of cheesecake on an empty stomach.
♥
ate: sultana cheesecake slice & poppyseed strudel
and now 10days later, there we were at st kilda's beach. my eyes sparkled on the sight of cakes displayed on the windows of the popular continental cakeshops. shinchan bought a slice of sultana cheesecake and a poppyseed strudel at one of the cakeshop while i bought a few cookies at a french bakehouse next to the cakeshop. i thought i got over the cheesey-headache issue with comity cafe. but *sigh* i havent. the moment i took a bite of the supposedly-yummy cheesecake, headache striked me again. i tried another bite, another wave of headache striked. shucks. there goes my love to cheesecake.
nevertheless, shinchan enjoyed the cheesecake, saying it's really good. he didnt like the poppyseed strudel though. it was too full of almond aroma. my guess is almond meal is one of the main ingredient in the fillings and topping. you can see the almond crumble on top of the strudel in the pic. i enjoyed my cookies and saved some for later. besides the cheesecake and strudel, we also bought plum cake from another cakeshop down the road. the plum cake is something different. the cake is not very sweet which suited us since overly sweet stuff is a no-no for both of us. the plum on top of the cake was sour yet sweet. a perfect match to the cake. needless to say, the cake was perfect for a cool day at the beach! shinchan and i actually fought over for the last bite. *blush* i guess you can tell we eat like pigs now.
just to make it clear that we were not pig, we didnt finish the strudel and cheesecake. we brought it home and it took us 2 days to finish them. i had the strudel for breakfast and snacks, left the whole piece of cheesecake to shinchan. *evil evil me* lately i have been getting overdose on many goodies, so much so that i m starting to have phobia even on the thought of it. one of them is cheesecake. i suppose it is a good thing? no cheesecake = no weight gain. but then again my latest food interest has shifted over to smoothies and carrot cake. dont think it's so much better than cheesecake, aye?
Continue Reading Cakes Affair
foodies date: 22Feb2004
♥ Arintji's hot chocolate
Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!
how i wish i live in chocoland! a hardcore chocoholic I am, the best thing to take in the morning is a nice cup of hot chocolate. I could die without having any chocolate in any day. I am sure there are many out there who's just like me *grin*
♥ drank: Hot chocolate with a twist (?)
The cafe or rather cafe-restaurant where we had this hot choc has got a cute name called
Arintji. Not sure how to pronounce it but i would guess it's something like
a-rint-ji.
It was still early morning when we reached Melbourne. *gees* I havent woken up so early for a long time now. I desperately needed a chocolate dose to wake myself up or else I was on the verge of collapsing on the streetscape of Melbourne city. Right. ShinChan won't have liked that to happen. I am really too heavy to be carried around.
We headed to
Federation Square (Fed Square for short). There were many contemporary cafes and restaurants there with a very European ambience. I felt like I was visiting Germany. Dont ask me why Germany, but the whole atmosphere at
Fed Square just has this so-not-Australian character. It reminded me of Frank Gehry somehow.
We decided to head to this cafe with very comfy-looking outdoor seating area right opposite
The Chocolate Buddha. The long communion wooden table and bench looked comfy and relax.
I ordered a hot choc and expected it to be just the good old normal hot choc served in a mug but no! I was really surprised when the waitress brought up the drink!
♥ having fun with my chocolate syrup
A picture speaks a thousand word. ;-)
The chocolate syrup was a little too sweet though so I didnt add the whole lot. The hot choc was delicious. It would have be even more perfect if it came with a choc chip muffin! This hot choc actually reminded me of
Max Brennan's suckao.
Continue Reading Chocoland on Fed Square!?
♥ foodies date: 22 feb 2004
♥ what we ate on Virgin Blue
Yup. that's right. this is an airline meal and to be more precised this is the airline meal from
Virgin Blue on my first trip with ShinChan to Melbourne.
The airfares was what i considered as "dirt cheap". Hey! It was only $39 one way so I wasn't there to complain when no in-flight meals was provided. This was ShinChan'sbreakfast, by the way. We took the early flight. Sadly, I didnt have much appetite to sample other yummies from the inflight menu.
♥ ate: double choc muffin
According to ShinChan, the double choc muffin ($3.00) was one of the best he had ever tasted 35,000ft above ground. hmmm. We don't get much muffins on the plane from memories. At least I dont usually get to sample muffin.
I recalled
SQ's tiny and cold muffin on their breakfast meals. It wasnt that great. This double choc muffin was kinda cold too. It would have been nice if they could heat it up. But no sireee! I am not here to complain because the airfare was dirt cheap!
♥ drank: classic apple & blackcurrent juice, hot choc (not in pic)
ShinChan had the classic apple and blackcurrent juice ($2.50). The sweetness along with the sourness from the juice is great for such an early flight when you dont have much appetite but you are hungry.
Okie. Hungry but no appetite. What a weird description but that's exactly how i felt whenever i m flying. On my flight back I had a hot chocolate ($2.50). Wasn't expecting much from it but oh dear, the hot choc was good. It was thick and dense and very very chocolatey!
Best yet it is not mixed with milk. I dont like milk in my hot choc so this hot choc is definitely very "me". Definitely the best hot choc i ever tried on board. For $2.50 and given its size (a large takeaway cup), I would say it's good value for such rich and creamy chocolatey flavour. I wonder what sort of chocolate drink mix they used.....
Continue Reading Meals 35,000ft above ground
