Home Made - Shepard's Pie

Here's my first attempt at Shepard's Pie:



Ingredients:
500g mince beef
diced carrots
diced onion
500ml beef stock
plain flour to thicken sauce
salt and pepper
dash of soy sauce
dash of tobasco sauce
dash of worchester sauce
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
mash potatoes for the top
melted butter over the potatos for color

I completely went overboard with the carrots and the end result was a very carroty shepard's pie (After all the hard work of chopping up the carrots I wasn't leaving any of them out of the dish). It was a massive dish in the end, and took a few days for us to finish it all. Overall it tasted like a shepard's pie, but I think next time I will cut back on the carrots, and maybe add some mushrooms as well.

For desert, Scott made vanilla cake. Out of packet mix. It was nice and moist, and this time real butter was used in the icing (as opposed to margarine). Definately the way to go.

Malaysian

Sambal Kampung is fast becoming a favourite for quick lunchtime meals.


Look at that roti! Fantastic! It comes with dipping sauce of either Beef Rendang (pictured) or Chicken curry. This is an entree but I can get full on this alone. The roti is so fluffy and delicious!

One of the lunchtime specials is the Chicken Curry with rice. I love potatoes in curry.

I can't remember why I thought I'd get a spicy Chicken dish, but it was covered in sambal sauce and all I could taste was shrimp, which is a little disconcerning when I was eating big pieces of chicken. I think I will stick to the curries from now on.

Old Town Cafe

Old Town Cafe is a reliable chinese restaurant not to far from work. It does have its hits and misses though. Here is are a few dishes under the category of "meh".


Mongolian Beef with Fried Rice (a couple of peas and spring onion makes it fried rice right?)

Combination Soup (aka one-of-everything-from-the-previous-meal-in-hot-water special)

Prawn Dumplings. Gluggy.

Crispy Skin Chicken with Rice. Eh.

I don't have photos of the 'better' dishes, because I'm always halfway into the meal before I remember to take photos. However, judging from the number of mediocre dishes I have been sampling lately, I think its time to take a break from the Old Town...

Lunch

Delafrance (or is it Delifrance?) on Bourke Street has delicious freshly baked rolls, and they use real butter and hand made mayo (I think). My sandwhich filling usual consists of ham, cheese, mayo, pickles/gerkins and salt and pepper. Yum!

And for desert, a blurry apple strudel.

Cakes and things

Brittany here. Tried to figure out how to post here for a long time now. So i'm sharing an account with my sister. Success!

An orange and almond cake i made a while ago. It was SUPER moist. There was an orange syrup that was supposed to accompany it, but i didn't make it.....perhaps i should've, to offset the cutting edge moistness.

MOISTMOISTKAPOW!

My banana cake, which i have altered several times. It started off as banana, honey and pecan cupcakes before i put it in a cake tin and added sultanas, raisins and almond flakes (replacement of pecans) and then switched honey with golden syrup (which works just as well..and not overwhelmingly sweet as honey).
ps. this cake does not contain any butter or eggs. such a clever cake.





Pre-Little Birdy risotto at a lovely Italian place on Degraves Street - Il Tempo?
A lunch i made myself on one of my Wednesdays off from school (which are now extinct).
(L-R) Almond biscuit from a Viet bakery, which tasted like a biscuity-meringue actually, a sandwich filled with French Brie (!!!), tea in a smiley face mug, salad with my first boiled egg (the yolk was runny and delish!)

**Music for food: Elvis Costello & Paul McCartney - So Like Candy
(Paul Dempsey cover is available on his album 'Everything Is True'..it's amazing)

Lemon Chicken

So what could possibly be better than the best lemon chicken in the world?



Why, two of Dragon's lemon chicken and fried rice of course.

Poffertjes are elusive

Dutch pancakes (Poffertjes) are great. You can't go wrong with tiny bite size doughy pancakes sprinkled with icing and maple syrup. But don't think you can get these any old day. I had a Thursday morning free and thought it was perfect for poffertjes, but for some reason the shop was closed. On a weekday. At 9:30am in the morning.

I had to settle for a sad weak cup of tea and a luke warm piece of raisin toast at a Gloria Jeans. I was too defeated to take a photo of my sad breakfast.

Breakfast

Poached eggs on muffins.



Scrambled eggs, extra crispy bacon and toast

Lazy weekends are the best (especially when you live near a cafe that makes the eggs and bacon just as you like them)

Home Made Take 2: Scones

Second attempt at scones went a little better.



This time I didn't leave the oven on for ages before I was ready to put in the scones (since I knew now that I take forever in getting my dough sorted).

They were still a little hard, next time I'll take them out a little sooner.

Home Made: Apple Crumble

Here is the Apple Crumble I made over the weekend. I ended up with way too much of the crumble, so had to use the big tray (and a lot of apples). I think I cut up the apples a little too small, so they became a little too mushy for my liking. It took about 3 days to finish it all off though :)