Friday, July 22, 2011

Mr B's Thai delishness

After a really shitty week of work out in Strathgay, I headed in to the city to meet Gustin and Vadge for some food and booze and we ended up at one of our usual smoking section of Mr B's on the corner of Pitt Street & Goulburn Street. The last time me and Gustin were here we smoked so much the bouncer was forced to kick us out much to our absolute amusement.
They do cheapo jugs of cheapo beerz & happy hour drinks deals and they have a bar menu full of meat on a stick and deep fried delights. They also have a full dinner menu of Japanese and Thai food and the last time we were here they had a Thai band on which made me a bit teary hahahaha.

Vadge said I could order for all of us to share so I went for a selection from both menus. Having tried the 'look chin' (pork balls on a skewer served with a chili jam) last time we were here, I got a plate of them to share along with some satay skewers and some soft shell crab sushi too. Then from the main menu I ordered the larb gai which is a traditional thai salad of minced chicken with shallots, chili, thai herbs and plenty of fresh lime served on a bed of lettuce (sometimes comes with cabbage in Thailand and is even tastier), and also a braised duck in a salty sweet cantonese style sauce with chinese greens, and a big bowl of steaming fragrant rice for the table.
The larb gai was definitely the hit of the meal though - it was perfectly spiced and served with plenty of crispy lettuce which was gradually soaking up the juices... $54 for the lot - Bargain town!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Keralan fish curry with dahl, cumin raita and fluffy basmati rice

Threw this together for dinner tonight, using the basa fish fillets from the freezer and also using up all the veggie leftovers along the way.




It was actually pretty tasty for my first attempt at a fish curry, I couldn't find the cardamom pods while it was in crucial cooking stages though so they only got thrown in at the end unfortunately. I even threw in the leftover cream from the dauphinoise we had on Sunday and it worked really well...

And served with a dollop of thick cumin greek style yoghurt raita on top...





Yummm, and I even ate the leftovers with the dahl and fish curry mixed together, baby peas fried into the rice, and a defrosted basa fillet panfried in salt, pepper and lemon.

Thrifty-licious rent week fuuuuüûd!!

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Location:Chez bailz

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Perfect Sunday Roast


Just had an amazing Sunday roast compliments of Danielle...

Whole leg of Lamb marinated in garlic and rosemary and cooked in D's balsamic baste. Served with creamed spinach, sautéed courgette & petit pan squash, dauphinoise potatoes, sweet spicy meat juice gravy....




Omgggggggg the meat was perfectly cooked, and all the accoutrements were beautifully done as well.

Thanks D, you nailed it! Hope you'll come and cook every week.
Xx


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Location:Chez bailz

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Pad Grapow Gai w/ Rice Vermicelli Noodles

Just made the leftover pad grapow from the other night. went with the usual base but I'm experimenting with different types of veg, at the moment my favourites are asparagus (cut into 1cm lengths), silverbeet stalks and leaves finely chopped, green and red capsicum, chunks of mushroom (I like to buy one big one and chop it into meaty chunks), half a sliced red onion and some green beans sliced into 1cm pieces diagonally.




Today I really couldn't be bothered waiting for the rice to cook so I found some packs of rice vermicelli and boiled them up to toss them into the mix... Meanwhile I fried a lil eggy wegg, sunny side up.




The end result was really a treat, served with lime wedges, pickled chilli, and some fish sauce on top of the egg.




And the egg has just gotta be runny on the inside...





YUMM woon sen (spot the cheesy pun anyone?)



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Chez bailz

'Thanon KhaoSan' - Pitt Street

Had a lunch voucher for this place so we decided to give a try on Friday afternoon to celebrate my mid term break. We often order from the Bondi branch and it's always good, so you can only imagine my delight when I saw that the city branches menu is twice the size and they also do lots of the Thai desserts, and even have a tuktuk in the restaurant... It felt like home!



I was squealing with glee and welling up a bit when I realised they had all my noodleshop lunch favourites: KHAO KHAA MOO, KHAO MOO DAENG, KHAO MUN GAI, GUAY TIEOW GAI, LOOK CHIN, KANOM JIIN ....wow! And even sangsom, although it's insanely overpriced.

I had the 'Khao khaa moo' (directly translates as = rice leg pig) one of my absolute favourites in Thailand and always a hit with friends when I brought them to my favourite noodle shop in Koh Chang ...it's a tender roast pork leg that comes served with all the fat in a sweet star anise gravy served with the usual pickled cabbage, steamed greens, spicy vinegar naam jiim (sauce) and half a boiled egg with rice on the side. It was pretty good... Tender, falling apart meat, loads of sweet blubbery fat (which I wouldn't usually eat but I made a pretty good attempt), and enough of the pickled cabbage and greens to last through most of the rice... อร่อยมาก!! $8.90

Gustin had the 'Khao moo daeng' (= rice pig red), which is another favourite of mine, it's a pork loin fillet that is roasted until the outside turns red (you often see this hanging up from a hook in a noodleshop glass cabinet and its also really good in bamee noodle soup with dumplings and 'hooa cha tao'**) The red pork is thinly sliced and served over rice with this sweet BBQ gravy, cucumber slices, half boiled egg, and bowl of broth - to my absolute delight the broth had 'hooa cha tao' in it which I convinced Augustine to let me have... Yessss. It was all pretty delishbags too but the meat was quite fatty and I was slightly disappointed that there was no sliced sweet Chinese sausage with it, as it's usually served in Thailand. $8.90 also (I think)

(Gustin was disgusted that they put 'half boiled egg' on the menu instead of 'half a boiled egg' and hours later he brought up the fact that he felt really swindled that they only gave him half an egg hahahah).

We also had some wontons with pork and some chicken wings to share and a couple of singhas and all in all it was a pretty impressive and will definitely be back for more of their noodleshop fare next time I'm in the city for lunch - although I was so full I couldn't drink much beer afterwards, I did manage to fit a Portuguese egg tart from the Chinese bakery a few doors down on Pitt Street.... YUMMMMMMM


** 'hooa cha tao' is like some kind of Asian turnip but I've only ever tried it in Thai noodle shops, they use it to make the broth and sometimes you get a chunk in your noodle soup which I consider a major treat! I don't know what the vegetable looks like uncooked though or what it's called in English so if anyone knows the stuff I mean, please message me because I would love to make noodle soup with it.

Location:Pitt street Sydney NSW 2000

Toona melt-gasm

Although I had a whole lot of Pad Grapow left over from last night, after having it twice over the last 24 hours I fancied something a bit more fatty, fatty.

So I had a look in the pantry and lo and behold... tuna, sweetcorn, green bell pepper, scallions, hot saaauuce, trocomare salt, black pepper and mayo - toooona melt time!!

I also happened to buy a loaf of Nonna's Panne Di Casa yesterday on my junga trip, it's a crusty kind of sourdough loaf and it's SO good when you toast it and then pour 'olitalia' olive oil on it.

So I toasty toasty, then I poury poursy, then I put the spicy tuna mayo mix on, loads of shredded cheese on top and put it under the grill for 5 mins - til the cheese bubbled and browned.

It was super delishbags, but I was in too much of a hurry to stuff it in my face so I didn't take pics... Soz lolz!

I did happen to take pics of the awesome meat pie I made for me and gugustin on Saturday night so I'll just post a pic of that instead...




Beef, cheese and gravy pie in a puff pastry, served with sweet potato mash, baby peas and this sauteed spicy silverbeet/mushroom combo, which was really yum too.

Location:Chez bailz