Masterchef Pop-up Restaurant

Yes, another food galore post for the month :D

This is basically a 3-course dining for masterchef fans to experience masterchef dishes put up by Sydney's well-recognised chefs and past masterchef winners/contestants. It's a pop-up restaurant concept whereby a temporary restaurant is set up at forecourt of St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney and tickets to be purchased upfront with limited seats available for each session. Each session is featured with 2 chefs, like a fan meet-up session and we had Adam Liaw, winner of Masterchef Australia 2010 and Martin Boetz from Longrain Restaurant on that day. Martin was busy at the kitchen the whole night and Adam did the table round chat with the guests. 

Well, the atmosphere is nothing like the tv show where you have mystery box challenge, masterchef clock timer ticking off your life, 3 judges and 1 celebrity chef to taste and scrutinise your dish, and all that vibes. However, being the all-time masterchef fan, it was worth the money and experience with great food, great company, cosy ambiance and meeting the "celebrity" face-to-face! Nope, no screaming no ooh-ahh no autograph whatsoever hehe. Also because we were all dressed up, prim and proper :P

I believe the pictures below would best summarise all and lastly had a snapshot with the trademark, ending the night ;) 

 Little welcome note and introductory

Us from table 21 with Adam Liaw - picture from facebook, courtesy of Jason :)

 Bar and kitchen at ground floor.

 The kitchen

 The dining area at mezzanine level

A warm and cosy set-up of the pop-up restaurant

Starter: Confit pork belly and scallops - Adam Liaw (Winner of Masterchef Australia 2010)

Starter: Lobster bisque with scallops - Hayden Quinn (Contestant Masterchef Australia 2011)

Main: Seared duck breast - Justine Schofield (Finalist Masterchef Australia 2009)

Main: Roast with crackling and potato puree - Justin North (Sydney's well recognised chef)

Dessert: Passionfruit tart with cream - Julie Goodwin (Winner first Masterchef Australia 2010) 

Dessert: Lemon and mint spring rolls - Marion Grasby (Contestant Masterchef Australia 2010) 

Outfit - red is my thing :P

Finally, us <3

  

Sweet Tooth July

It's crazy to realise we are now in the month of JULY - second half of the year and wondering what-when-where-how time has flew by so quickly!! Having said that, it's been quite an exciting month and so will be in the coming months with families and friend visiting which means planning (stress!!), vacays, food and more food! Heh

Here's what we've been up to over the last 2 weekends...

M's been inspired to bake and we have indulged ourselves with delicious home-baked cakes that were both pretty to see and yummilicious to eat :) Somehow, we thought the cakes taste better and healthier (100gm sugars less haha) with our very own home-baked delights XD

Below are some pictures of playing up our sweet treats :)

Week 1: The husband's birthday celebration of Seafood Hotpot, San Jose Cheesecake (wish I could claim credit for baking it but no, I ordered from Casa Del heh) and M's strawberry cream cake (yumzz!!). As M said,"everything made from scratch okay!!!"

The lady so ever proud of her cake and strict quality control imposed.

  

Random note : I felt a sense of deja vu that night and the feeling had me dig out a picture of us from 2008.
So, the question is.....have we aged (much) from 4 years ago??

Naaahhhh! Not at all.................

***

Week 2: A mission together on a Saturday and we baked Chocolate Banana Cake with chocolate cream and chocolate ganache. 

That's a mouthful :P Well, you can't get any chocolate more than this, can you? #salivating


It was really really fun baking together whatmore with M's new place so much more spacious and we were like busy bees buzzing in/out/around the kitchen. Such domesticated housewives-to-be! :D

There were also a few funny moments in between the waiting time for the cake to cool down, spread the cream and bananas, and lastly the ganache. We are the impatience familia that all 4 of us, including MJ and the husband literally sit and stare at the cake the whole cooling time waiting to eat up. We even turned our head to the cake at eye level to see if any more smoke coming out as we hope the cake's cooled down and ready to play up. M at a couple of times wanting to give up waiting and have a shower first but only to have her turned back to the table at the very next second. At every stage of putting up the cake, MJ and the husband had been pleasing if they could eat now but we had to shut them down "noooo..need to put in the bananas and the cream" and "nooo not yet! there's somemore ganache over the cake". So funny.


 It's funny how a cake could get us all overly excited! Hahahaha! It was so much fun though. 


We also served this cake over dinner at M's on Sunday night - hotpot again and we'll never have enough of hotpot especially in this cold weather - and we received nice compliments from the guests :)

As we were happily savouring the cake, someone (name shall not be mentioned but you might have already guessed who) was super duper happy with the outcome, had her fist held high up and the next moment we heard glass shattering then there was this 2 seconds moment of silent when we looked up and down and found the ceiling lamp broken, we just broke into this massive laughter that I was literally laughing in tears. EPIC!! 

Well, after all that I did ask if her hands are alright.

And here's the result of it. 

The whole baking experience definitely ended well, a story to be told to many and funny moments to be remembered :D

***

The baking mood's lifting up and I had my first try in baking a Lemon Cheese Tart on Sunday (some say too sour hahaa)

Oh.my.goodness!! Those were a whole lot just for the weekends!!

 Well, what can I say? ALL swept clean into our tummies!! *rubs tummy*

:D

Wake me up when September ends

HEllo hellllOOOoooo..

I promise I have not abandoned this little keepsake of ours - just that life has just been on fast forward this past month I feel like I'm struggling to keep up!!! It's already the end of autumnal May for god's sake and this will be our only post in for the month!   ¯\(°_o)/¯

It all started with the family visits - the parents and the aunts and cousins that came - and with all the eating and the shopping and the eating and the visiting and then more eating that we did, there's not a rock in Sydney there we have not uncovered or plate left unfinished.....clearly an exaggeration but it certainly felt like it.

Don't get me wrong though - I loved showing them about and sharing how I live but 3 weeks in a small space and close proximity is a very very long time.

Then we did a move as well!! Finally after all the discussion and inspections after inspection, we finally all agreed on a new place together! The sister is so pleased that she finally has a room to call her own after all her years alive!

New place rocks some balls!!! We're def loving it lots - we didn't even go through a settling in phase - it was immediately home. Thank You Mum! She did all the planning and organizing and coordinating that I barely had to lift a finger. *blows freshly painted nails*

So you know rather than losing weight and sleep deprivation due to the moving stress, I think I've gain some more instead. FML. Packed lunches and dinner every night the moment I step into the house. And the strain from the month of overeating is still evident when I attempt to put on my jeans!! Double FML.

 That said though, I would very much like to keep my mummy here forever. She cooks and cleans and packs and showers us with much needed TLC.  I won't bear having her leave in 2 weeks!

 Blasphemy!! I Won't survive!!

o(╥﹏╥)o 

Anyhoos, here are snippets of what I've been up to:

Coogee  - Am wearing Mum's super huge Jedi Visor for full UV protection.

Let's play spot the Kiasu Asian.

 Fish Markets (DUh) and yes I am overly excited about the size of the watermelon -__-''

 Lowenbrau and Hurricanes - sworn off meat after these meals.

 Mad Pizza and Hungarian Kurtosh. I liked how they used recycled Khong Guan biscuit tins to make chairs - reminds me of my childhood.

Ms. G's = corn cobs to die for!

Miso and Hanoi - asian fix

  Yeaps there's more - keep scrolling...

Clipper's with Grace

Epic Hotpot @ officially neighbour's place

My favourite kinda breakfast :)

Wakeboarding @Penrith, El-Jannah's and Abla's

  And yes you read right - ME - as in Me - went for wakeboarding.

In a lake.

Full of weeds.

In the cold.

And survived.

 Mummy's Day @ Toko

Loves Loves Loves

♥‿♥  

Bistro 80 - celebrating 10 years of love  - quote unquote MJ and Zumbo @ The Star

Absolutely felt all good and gooey and mushy after cos dessert was superb :)

Chocolate fondant served with vanila bean cream and peanut gelato in kidney bowl trumps all dessert!!

Last food collage I swear !! Brunch for champions just this past Sat.

I've realized that I have turned into one of those Ultimate Asian blog person that takes pictures of any food consumed!!! The one that everybody on the table has to wait for for snapping all dishes laid out - the one that everybody secretly hates and scoffs and rolls eyes at for keeping them from their food. And the one that blog readers just ignores and scrolls through them food pics quickly anyways.

 I Solemnly Swear I will reduce my itch to brandish my phone every time the food arrives.

Heh, you know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Count the calories in those pics.

FAT BOMB Explosion.

LOL.

Apologies for being lame but it's late and it's raining and cold here and I wanna go put on two socks on each feet and go to bed and dream of a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

Good night and I promise there won't be the painstaking wait for the next post. 

A lil preview:

I'd like to do a sartorial one next because my coats and jackets and shoes are too pretty to not come out and play ♥