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Maliaty

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Posts posted by Maliaty

    Ceramic Knives

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    Also, ceramic knife caused one of our microwave Pyrex type glass dishes to explode violently. It was very exciting.in the not good way. Something about the tension being released by the awful sharpness. All I know is that it doesn't happen with metal.

    eG Foodblog: rarerollingobject (2011) - Mealtimes at the University of

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    So cold, so very, very cold. Sydney has this icy wind that comes down between the buildings that adds wind chill factor. Also, us Sydney siders aren't very good at dealing with anything that's not balmy weather. No central heating etc, in the main.

    Loving the blog. Must go back to Emperor's Garden for some soy chicken...Was that Marigold for yum cha?

    Lovely blog. Dragged me out of lurkdum.

    cheers

    Maliaty

    Sydney Restaurant Recommendations

    in Australia & New Zealand: Dining

    Posted

    I've just returned from helping a friend from the USA find a long term (3 yrs) rental property in Sydney - and helping her test out all the nearby restaurants.

    In 4 days we found a fabulous spacious new apartment over on Bourke Street in East Redfern, one street from Surry Hills.    It's walking distance to Crown Street, which has excellent restaurants like Billy Kwong and Benzin.    My friend just loves the convenience of everything and has found pretty good butchers and grocers.  You can't beat going to Pyrmont for most stuff edible, however.

    Because we both knew nothing of Sydney, what we did was hire a taxi for 3 hours one Saturday morning, and got the driver to take us to several rentals which were open in Surry Hills, Paddington, Darlinghurst and Redfern, all very close to the CBD. (Found on www.domain.com.au the day before).    Bear in mind that one has to plan such a trip like a military operation - rentals are only open for 15-30 minutes.    We got fantastic advice from the taxi driver - oh, how fortunate we were to get one who spoke English..      Within each suburb there are streets which are really nice and some which are downright spooky. 

    Technical details: What we learned was that in order to get a good rental, you need to find a potential place during the week and be prepared to meet the agent at the property within an hour. This way you are not with a zillion weekenders crawling over the place and can actually have a conversation with the agent.    Be prepared to apply for a good one on the spot.  Come ready with cash for a deposit (one week's rent).  Once the place has a deposit and application pending, they cannot show it to anyone else.    If you find and prefer another place while the application is being considered, the real estate office will refund you the deposit pro-rated for the days you "held" the property.  If they reject your application, they return all your deposit.  Have 2 local people ready to give you good references.

    Despite the hype of real estate agents trying to convince everyone that rentals are scarce and that you have to offer more money than the owners have asked for, that's tommy-rot and just normal real estate agent hype.  After the intial confusion, we found lots of choice and certainly did not pay more than the asking price. 

    PS Balmain is great.  We had lunch at the Bather's Pavilion one day, and I don't know if all days are as light and bright like this but that beach was pure magic.

    -Jane

    I think Jane means Balmoral (since that's where Bather's is located). Balmoral beach is lovely, but that's some pricey real estate thereabouts.

    Cheers

    Maliaty

    Birthday dinner

    in Australia & New Zealand: Dining

    Posted

    Dear all

    I've been out of the fine dining game for a while (mother of a 3yr old), am huge with second child, but have a dear of a husband who would like to take me out for a birthday dinner.

    We've been to Tetsuya's and while it was lovely, don't want to besmirch the memory by going back. we've had celebrations at Rockpool in the past.

    Sydney siders, help me by suggesting a fine dining experience - preferably in the CBD / inner west that is going to see me through for another couple of years! I've had Glass, est, Quay and Sailor's Thai recommended... but would love to hear first hand experiences from you guys.

    Thanks in advance

    Maliaty

    Sydney Restaurant Recommendations

    in Australia & New Zealand: Dining

    Posted

    My turn now - I live in Annandale, which is in the inner west, a tad closer to cbd than Balmain. Close to us are

    - Glebe - cheap, because near university, with a mix of food shopping but accent on Japanese / Chinese;

    - Leichhardt / Haberfield - essentially little Italy - some great cafes, pasta / pastry / pizza places - family houses. Well known AC Butchers are based in Leichhardt.

    - Lilyfield / Rozelle - close to trendier / expensive Balmain, but with a bigger emphasis on the macrame / organic markets on weekends focus and cheaper.

    Various bits of the inner west (like Glebe, Five Dock) have excellent bakeries.

    On the other side of harbour,

    Chatswood - chinese / korean / japanese shops. Strangely high rise apartment buildings, mixed in with older style houses. Medium prices - further out from cbd.

    Foodie shopping destination The Essential Ingredient (with prices to match) is now in Crows Nest.

    Northern beaches - worth exploring if you are an outdoors person, cafe culture in various pockets - like Manly, or the more upmarket Avalon (which used to be more macrame / organic / hippy and is now more aimed at the weekend beachhouse contingent). Prices vary from suburb to suburb. There's a great Irish butcher in Harbord and a great Sth African one from memory.

    The big vegetable markets are out at Flemington - by which I mean the big boxes of veges sold to grocers at 4.30am.

    Further out west are pockets of good Asian food shopping - but can't give you much help with pricing because of the commute factor have never researched.

    And forget about Melbourne as a food shopping destination. Clothes and shoes, my friend, clothes and shoes. While property prices are higher in Sydney, we have the harbour. Okay, they have culture, but why would you want that? What are you, yoghurt? :laugh: (sorry, traditional Sydney / Melbourne rivalry showing up again. Some of my good mates are from Melbourne, really).

    Cheers

    Maliaty

    Let me give you my take on things (in line below)

    I live in Balmain.

    Some good suburbs to consider are:

    Newtown (Bohemian, student, very central and lots of little restaurants but no real food shopping to speak of)

    MY TAKE - full of lesbian bikers (not that there is anything wrong with that of course) with muscles bigger than most guys. Pretty ordinary/scummy. HOusing is small, not a lot of value for money.

    Bondi (Urban chic, close to the beach, ungodly expensive but very good food shopping)

    MY TAKE - touristy, full of Brits (not that that is a bad thing of course), quite nice but housing is very $$ and little value for money.

    Coogee/Randwick/Kensington (This is where I used to live. Reasonably priced, close to the city and some quite decent stuff)

    MT TAKE - not bad, a bit "vanilla" for my taste

    Northern Sydney/Chatswood (You'll have to ask someone else, I never go up there)

    MY TAKE - yawn

    Darlinghurst/Surrey Hills (Colonial style houses close to the city, lots of good restaurants, I don't know what the food shopping situation is like)

    MY TAKE - lots happening, close to city, good restaurants, good scene but along with that comes the junkies, etc., etc. Very small houses, not much value for money.

    If you're coming from london, the prices for everything will look cheap I guess.

    The silent cook

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    A rice cooker is a thing of beauty. it doesn't ding.

    Bananas are also good. They don't rustle.

    The hospital gave us the helpful advice of keeping noise up while putting baby down. Problem = baby so excited that does not want to sleep. Outcome equals tired parents, less bmilk, grumpier baby. Forget about it!

    Baby whisperer is great if it works for you. Also the contented child? can't remember what called, baby brain strikes again. however, we found that problem went away with age anyway. And mileage varies. Ours certainly did.

    I second the make ahead / buy 4 orders of whatever takeout (cold pizza worked for us) approach. If oven door doesn't make too much noise, heating up in there rather than microwave is another approach.

    First baby now = almost 3. Second due in couple of months. Sleep = thing of distant past.

    it's all good!

    Maliaty

    Malaysian hawker food in Australia

    in Australia & New Zealand: Dining

    Posted

    I'm another vote for the Hunter Arcade Malay place (down the escalators, hard left). The ginger octopus and sambal eggplant I had yesterday were fantastic. And they do good rice.

    I was a regular devotee of the Malay-Chinese place when it was on the corner of King / Castlereagh, opposite the MLC Centre. Great Hainan chicken rice. But it's closed now and i got sidetracked by the first Malay place when I tried to find their other place in the Hunter arcade yesterday.

    Here's to spice!

    Maliaty

    Cuisine Misunderstood

    in Japan: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    Having a large Japanese population means that there are some real Japanese restaurants which cater to Japanese in certain parts of Australia. You can find more and more Australians venturing in to broaden their perspective on what real Japanese food is.

    Just out of curiosity, are most of the Japanese restaurants in Australia run by actual Japanese? Here in North America, I would say the opposite is true (most are not run by Japanese).

    It depends. Most mainstream Japanese places (sushi trains, weird combo sukiyaki/ other Asian food restaurants) in major cities are usually run by Taiwanese, Chinese and Koreans. That's basically the norm, with a few Japanese waitresses on staff.

    The city I'm in at the moment only has a few Japanese run lunch places, a bbq place and a few overpriced restaurants.

    But if you go to the Gold Coast or Cairns it's totally different. The Gold Coast area attracted 192,943 Japanese tourists this year. There are lots of Japanese living and working in those places permanently or as a working holiday. There you can find lots of restaurants that cater to all the tourists - all Japanese staff and customers - a couple of ramen places, izakaya, places where you can find a proper Japanese breakfast, supermarkets etc.

    If you were just walking around in normal areas I'd say it'd be pretty much the same as North America - the usual "Japanese" or "Japanese/ something else" restaurants run by non-Japanese.

    In Sydney, it's a bit of a mix. Some "japanese" restaurants are fully Japanese run, a lot of "sushi train" places are korean. There are areas of Sydney that have more Japanese students and residents than others.

    Maliaty

    Moving to Australia

    in Australia & New Zealand: Dining

    Posted · Edited by Maliaty (log)

    I second the northern beaches of Sydney - particularly Avalon. It used to be just a surf spot, now it has restaurants, cafes, delis etc.

    Alternatively, there are some great places on the Sunshine Coast up in Queensland, around Noosa - Caloundra. Great surf, sun, great produce and smaller town feel.

    http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/

    No offence, Melbournians, but Melbourne's not exactly a small place either! It's got a great food scene, but I'm not sure what it's "real" about!!

    Edited to say that Canberra (our inland capital) is great for bike riding and has a decent amount of high end restaurants, but it's a bit of a schlep to get to the beach - at least a couple of hours in a car.

    Cheers

    Maliaty

    dessert for the mega-allergic

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    How about a cobbler or a fruit crumble?

    http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/featured_recipe2.php

    The same gal has peach crumble recipe that looks pretty easy too... it calls for canned fruit, but you could probably substitute frozen fruit for it. I could pull it from the database and e-mail it to you if you'd like.

    AlanaMoana- I'm not sure what to make of the comment about the girls parents, seeing that I have kids with food allergies. I know I wouldn't appreciate a comment like that made about me by someone who is clueless about our situation.

    I don't like having to deal with the food allergies... wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.

    Me too. Mine is allergic to eggs - and he used to be allergic to dairy. It's not something that he does / I inflict on others to be annoying. It's a real pain in the whatever.

    My base allergy recipe is jello at the moment, because it's got so little actually in it. And it's a dessert, so doesn't need to be too nutritionally balanced. Judgment call re sugar / sugarless being worse. You can make it without sugar with fruit juice instead (adding gelatin, obviously), but it is a little bit more work.

    There's another one with copha (a coconut derivative) - chocolate crackles made with rice bubbles, or a "white christmas" made with rice bubbles and preserved fruit, but again, there is the sugar factor.

    http://www.kelloggs.com.au/Recipe/Recipes....cipecopyid=2621

    http://www.kelloggs.com.au/Recipe/Recipes....cipecopyid=2533

    I can't think of any, because I don't make them for obvious reasons, but perhaps a dessert around eggs of some sort? Meringue? Pavalova (betraying my Australian identity)?

    Hope those help. And if all else fails, fruit is good for kids, as you mentioned! Perhaps a frozen fruit blend - home made slushy thing would make it more fun.

    Cheers

    Maliaty

    Cooking and baking for those with severe food allergies intolerances/sensitivities

    in Cooking

    Posted

    For my 2c, I have a 2 yr old who is v allergic to egg. My creative solution...

    jello. He thinks it is v interesting because of the texture and certainly doesn't mind the sugar.

    Watch out for commercial sorbets, because some contain egg whites. Definite downer.

    Australians have a no-egg cookie - the ANZAC biscuit. Substitute the butter with margarine and you should be right, mate (as we say down under)

    http://www.aussieslang.com/features/anzac-biscuits.asp

    I second the cake with no egg approach - one way of dealing with the dryness that I have read about, but not tried (yet) for what it's worth is to add a gelatin mix. I usually add tofu, but that won't work for you.

    I say go the jello. It's a 3 yr old. What's not to love!

    Cheers

    Maliaty

    eG Foodblog: therese - Hey, wanna play a game?

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Therese

    I'm still trying to convince myself that Rubber Biscuit was in the BB movie. Searching the internet didn't help, all I found was listings on albums. But no mind. I will watch the movie seriously in the future...

    I can certainly fill in the details on a

    wish sandwich - two slices of bread and you sincerely wish you had some meat

    ricochet biscuit - the kind of biscuit that's supposed to bounce back from the wall - if it don't bounce back...you go hungry!

    cool water sandwich and a Sunday go to meeting bun means that I had a watermelon and I took a little lady to church.

    It's all good.

    Can't help with the Atlanta based questions from my grey day in Sydney Australia, I'm afraid, but having a great time reading your blog

    Maliaty

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