18 April - Station Hotel - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Steak. Just give us the steak. Make it good, alrighty?

Thanks,
Love, the family...

Et voila, the meal with various cuts of delicious steaks.

Creme Caramel
The best I've had anywhere by far.

And you cannot have a birthday without cakes, and we prefer ours from Chez Dre :)
Ok, now I don't really remember what all of these fabulous concoctions were...
The salted caramel eclair (Smack bang in the centre! My all time favourite)
Lemon tart (the yella one, of course)
Berry mousse cake thing (the red globe at the top)
Tea flavoured mousse thingy (the oval chocolate thing on the right)
Blackberry cake thingy...(the long brown thing at top left)
Macarons (basil, raspberry, pistacios and tonka bean)

17 April - Boulettes Chouchou with Japanese Noodles

We call it choko, but the french call it chouchou so I'd much rather boulettes chouchou than choko balls (which, in the wrong frame of mind, can sound really quite dirty lol).

Apparently this is a really popular Mauritian dish... I've never actually eaten it before, so I can only assume that my version is the far superior one heheheh

We decided to serve it with some simple noodles, steamed beans and tofu in a simple soy broth. It was very nice indeed.

16 April - Tamarind Chicken with Belacan Stirfried Baby Silverbeet

Some very south east asian flavours at work here...

mmmm, belacan... so stinky, so yum.

15 April - Marinated Salmon, Ginger Garlic Rockling with Cucumber Salad

We like the fish....
We eats lots of the fish...
Fish is good.

Wow, this blogging business is time-consuming work... not really sure how much longer we can keep this going for...

14 April - Seafood Chowder

So yum it is beyond words

13 April - Figs with Bacalao Pie, Old Man Chicken with Mustard Cream Sauce

This was a Jamie Oliver concoction apparently...
Now, I didn't make this one, the lovely Miss T cooked up this wonderful little ditty - so forgive me if I get elements wrong...

Figs with wagyu bacalao on puff pastry (with honey? or balsamic? I'm not sure but it was bloody delicious!)

Old man chicken

Chicken thighs, mushrooms, beans, and ???

12 April - Jungle Curry Vegies with Rice

We got a whole lotta jars of sauces and condiments recently and one of them was this oddly titled "Jungle Curry" and so we tried it...

Here is our version of jungle curry with cauli and broccoli with a bit of speck (just cos we had speck and no other type of meat - and it worked quite well together!) served on rice and a fried egg.

10 April - Stir fried tofu with betel leaves with fennel pork sausages

Thought I'd try something different...

It wasn't bad... the betel leaves were very fragrant but I'm not sure it worked in this dish...
It tasted pefectly fine, mind you but it make my jaw drop.

Fennel pork sausages

Crispy baked garlic chips

Crispy fried anchovies

9 April - Ragu di Napolitano (Genarro Contaldi's recipe), & Lunch

I watched this being made on tv (Two greedy Italians), and thought, hmm... that was easy, I could do that.

And I did.

And it was good.

Basically, buy some cheap cuts of meat and pour in tomatos and cook for hours...

7 April - Nasi Lemak With Roasted Chicken

People who know me, know that although I do love to cook, I hate to cook fussy food...
My style is simple, flexible and adaptable. My philosophy is cook what you have, and make it as fast and as easy as possible, without neglecting flavours. The food has to arrive quickly, but also hit you in the face with their awesome power of flavour. I like to read recipes as research, but I rarely follow them... I'm just no good at following instructions from a book....

So I tend to avoid recipes with lots of ingredients that take me hours to prepare...
But I just had to try this one. Sambal ikin bilis with nasi lemak... my bastadised version :)

Simple roast chicken marylands

Sambal ikin bilis (top), coconut rice, roast chicken and eggplants in tomato/ curry sauce.

Not traiditional, but not bad, eh?

5 April - Salted Cod Pie

I've always wanted to try bacalao, or Spanish salted cod... but the lovely Miss T beat me to it!

And the result was a belly-rubbingly good pie.

4 April - Pho with Vegies

I think we're running out of food in the fridge... and sometimes, lack of food breeds creativity...

Aren't those the most lovely yolks in the world?
I reckon the golden colour comes from being a free range egg....

3 April - Bo La Lot (Beef wrapped in Betel Leaves)

I just love betel leaves, the smell of it, the flavour it emits. It has to be one of my most favourite smells in the world. It makes me dizzy with delight everytime I breathe in a waft of its dreamy scent.

And there is little I love more than beef wrapped in betel leaves. It's a winning combination that is hard to top.

Here's my first go at it, without my dad giving a helping hand... dad does make the best bo la lot in the whole land, seriously, he does.

oh yeah, we had tofu also, just because we love this stuff.
The nicest, simplest way to prepare it is to heat up the tofu in microwave, then lather it with garlic, spring onions and oil and sesame oil.

Ok, we ran out of beef, so we used thinly sliced pork belly instead. Boy was it great!