Kitchen Wench

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How to poach an egg
2006-12-05 23:24:02
I am an egg lover. That’s right - I love these little bundles of protein that are flavourful yet versatile enough to be used for so many different dishes! My favourite way to have them is poached, but till this weekend I didn’t know how to poach them myself, and had to stick to soft-boiled eggs when having them at home. After having that shocking poached eggs on toast at a local cafe awhile ago, I wondered just how difficult it actually was to poach an egg. I mean, it’s just boiling an egg without the shell, right? How hard could that be! A lot more difficult than I originally thought, but still fairly easy! Now, a properly poached egg should be soft - the whites just set and the yolk still runny, with no flavour permeating through than the egg itself. One of my favourite books, “The Cook’s Book” (a book that I recommend that every novice kitchenhand keep as close as a bible!) happened to have a step-by-step picture guide that I used to create th...
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Mr. Woofy pulls faces
2006-12-05 23:24:02
It’s been awhile since Mr. Woofy made an appearance here, so I thought I’d add a couple of photos of him being cute and pulling faces “Mommy, I’m hungry!” Howling for love “Insert food here” “Why, is that cookie for me?” Playing with the macro focus on my camera, this is a close-up of Mr. Woofy’s eye I’ve been playing with my camera a fair bit over the past few days and taken quite a few pictures that aren’t food related - you can see them on my flickr page Technorati Tags: golden retrievers, pets, dogs, animals, photography, maco
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A call for ideas
2006-12-02 23:22:01
The other day I was in the supermarket and saw these miniature bell peppers and was so taken with their tiny size that I decided to buy them. However, one small problem - I have no idea what to do with them! They’re about the same size as a large roma tomato and so a bit small to stuff, and I want to do something that makes the most of their adorable size! So, my dear people, any idea on what I should do with these tiny veggies? Technorati Tags: bell peppers, capsicum, vegetables, miniature
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Snicker-dee-doo-dah, snicker-dee-day!
2006-11-29 11:18:02
There is something about certain words and the mouthfeel that they give which will make me develop either a like or dislike of them, almost in spite of what the words themselves mean. For example, I find I can’t feel much for the word ‘fluctuate‘ - saying it makes my mouth feel awkward, almost as if it were full of marbles (I will never forget that look on Audrey Hepburn’s face when she finds herself in this predicament in ‘My Fair Lady’!), but a word as mundane as ‘sequential‘ can feel round and voluptuous as it rolls off my tongue, not akin to the sensation of a small piece of chocolate melting in your mouth. ?Snickerdoodle? is a bit of a strange one. It?s a bit long, and yet bounces off the palate easily and quite vibrantly. It sounds and feels a bit childish, and yet there?s something oddly comforting in its pronunciation. And when a cookie has such a name, it makes it almost impossible to resist making them, just to see what kind ...
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Lunch for lazy days
2006-11-27 23:15:02
Sometimes I get into a mindset where I cannot be bothered doing anything - forget cooking, forget washing the dishes, you can even forget about me changing out of my jam-jams! All I want to do is read/watch movies, or if the weather is fine, swing in my hammock and watch the clouds roll over my head. Unfortunately, even when I am feeling utterly lethargic like this, I am unable to indulge in my slovenly desires as there are usually things that need to be done?like doing my laundry, being a kitchen hand, walking/grooming/playing with Mr. Woofy, proofreading letters and essays written by various members of my family, and entertaining my mother. And that?s just on the days that I don?t have to go to work (all the working mothers out there, I salute you ? you must either be mad, or have the best time-management skills in the universe!). Because I?m generally doing something, when I have the opportunity to do absolutely nothing, I find it difficult to do even the most menial of tasks. Su...
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Making muffins is kid?s play
2006-11-26 23:12:02
Maki ng Nigella’s ‘Jam Doughnut Muffins ’ is something kids will love - as will you! Nigella claims that these ‘Jam Doughnut Muffins’ are something easy enough that her kids could help out with in the kitchen, and that’s definetely true as the batter took me all of about 5 minutes to put together. However, she also claims that the danger with these little morsels is that they taste so good, you may be tempted not to share, and she definetely does not lie here. Now, I’m not a huge doughnut fan, as the whole deep-fried aspect tends to leave me feeling a bit sick, as well as making my stomach feel like lead, but there is something in their light, airy texture and slight chewiness that I miss, and these muffins come about as close to replicating that aspect as any other cake I’ve made/tasted. To keep the calorie count slightly lower, I’ve refrained from dipping them in melted butter and rolling them in a cinnamon sugar mix, but I imag...
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Cockroaches and cabbage
2006-11-21 23:06:02
“Urrrgh” I grunted as I carried the multiple shopping bags back into the house. My mother had been pestering me to try making Okonomiyaki for a few days, and I thought that today, with it’s 39 degree C heat would be the perfect day to stand over a hot stove and fry up one after another of these Japanese pancakes. Though having tried them before, I’d never actually tried making them so after a bit of googling I settled on a ‘basic’ recipe for the batter and decided to try it with whatever other ingredients I had on hand - after all, it is meant to be “cook what you like, the way you like”. Unfortunately, the lack of cabbage (something every recipe puts down as a necessity for this dish) meant that I needed to go shopping, which led to my current situation with the shopping bags. I dropped them on the kitchen table and started pulling out items of the bags when… “CRUNCH” I blinked. My hand wrapped around a 2L bottle of ...
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How to recover from a cold
2006-11-21 23:06:02
What do you do if you wake up one morning with the world’s scratchiest throat, phlegm issues and generally feeling spaced out? 1. So long as your not suffering bodily aches (which I’m led to believe are the precursor to a flu), drag yourself to the gym for a light cardio workout or out for a walk to get yourself moving and get some endorphins flowing through your system. 2. Take a hot shower to freshen up and relax those muscles, then set about making yourself a vitamin-rich lunch. 3. Go to a beauty parlour/day spa with a mate and get some pampering treatments to make you relax. A facial or a pedicure is a good choice, waxing not so much. Vee relaxing on the balcony after our pedicure at the day spa 4. Go have a delicious meal for dinner, something flavourful and filling, such as a paella claypot, at a trusted restaurant This is the paella claypot at Coco Lounge - saffron rice with black mussels, tiger prawns, chorizo and chicken in a home made napoli and white wine ...
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Swimming with the fishes
2006-11-16 23:00:06
Or in this case, sharks. Now, before I go any further, I have to admit that I’m not crazy about yum cha, though the rest of my family absolutely adore it. I quite enjoy the fact that you order small plates of a wide variety of dishes, and that dining can be quite a social event that forces people to take their time as they eat and digest their way through the different servings. However, I don’t enjoy the fact that I don’t know if the dishes are freshly cooked (I highly doubt it from the experiences I’ve had), and that many of them appear to be literally swimming in oil. However, being my kid brother’s birthday, his birthday lunch was to be the yum cha at Shark Fin Burwood (not sure if it’s associated with the ones in the CBD) and so I went along, only mildly apprehensive about how it’d be, and just happy to be celebrating my baby brother’s birthday. I’m not going to write an in depth review as I can’t remember the names of...
More About: Swimming , Fish , With , Swim , Ming

Happy birthday, Marty Farty!
2006-11-13 22:54:02
18 years ago, a screaming baby entered the world, much to the adoration of his parents and the dismay of his two older sisters. As he grew, he continued to provide much laughter and tears with his hijinks - which include, but are not limited to, throwing the iron off the second storey balcony after watching a Rex Hunt’s Fishing episode on tv at the age of 4, laying a turd right between the entrance between my room and my kid sister’s room and laughing as he watched us argue over who would clean it up (we resorted to getting a ruler and measuring whose room it was closest too!), chasing us around the house with various objects whilst trying to beat us up, and tearfully waving goodbye to me from the livingroom window every morning that I went to school. He may have grown up to be bigger and taller than me, but he will forever be my baby brother whom I adore with every atom of my being. Gentle, loving, smart and with a similar sense of humour to me, I am proud of the man he...
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Rollin?, rollin?, rollin? on the river!
2006-11-13 22:54:02
I’m afraid this has nothing to do with the Creedence Clearwater Revival, but rather, is about one of my favourite summertime dishes, rice paper rolls When you’ve got a family with 5 adults all doing their own thing with their own schedules to follow, it ultimately means that you don’t get a lot of ’sit down together’ time, and in particular it means that family mealtimes are rare - you hardly get more than 3 members of the family sitting at the dining room table at any one time. For someone who cherishes time with their family as much as I do, this is something that makes me quite sad. Don’t get me wrong, the essense of my nature is quite solitary and I need to have at least some time to myself everyday otherwise I start to feel a little strained, however I also love my family very much and adore the time I get to spend with them. What does this have to do with rice paper rolls? Patience, patience, I’m getting there Despite the different...
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Coco love, rockin the suburbs pt 2
2006-11-10 10:48:01
As far as the dining experiences in Glen Waverley go, most of the places available are those “cheap eats” Asian restaurants where you rush in, get what you pay for, and rush out. Not that I have anything against them, as I’ve had some pretty decent meals in those dodgy looking little dives, but sometimes you want somewhere where you can sit back and relax, where it’s not too noisy to have a casual chat with a friend whilst you enjoy your meal. At times like that, Coco Lounge is definetely my choice for an eating venue. Owned by the same person as Mocha Joes, the standard of food and overall dining experience leaves Mochas eating it’s dust. Though it’s a small restaurant, they don’t cram all the tables together so they can fit more patrons but make sure that your visit is a comfortable and enjoyable one (service with a smile is definetely one of their key mottos). The decor inside is clean and modern - a little dark during daylight hours than...
More About: Love , Rock

How do you tell when your store-bought herbs are fresh?
2006-11-08 22:42:02
When you unwrap their newspaper covering to discover a very much alive worm wriggling around amongst the shoots. Hey, at least it proves it’s pretty much straight outta the ground! This little fellow was placed into my rosebed in the hopes that he’ll help them to grow up big and strong, and the coriander was used in my rice paper rolls Technorati Tags: coriander, cilantro, herbs, worms, organic
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Shik Hae for the Soul
2006-11-07 22:42:01
Now, let me state for the record that Korean cuisine is not easy. There are some that are less painful than others, but many dishes require lots of pre-preparation and hands-on work. Rather than letting this dissuade you, it’s more of a personal challenge for me, to see if I can recreate the flavours that I’ve grown up with from my mothers cooking. Sometimes, this proves a mite difficult as she doesn’t follow written recipes or measure quantities, but by standing by her side, tasting the progress and making notes, I think I’m getting closer to the mark It’s approaching summer here in Australia (though you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d hopped back to winter weather today in Melbourne), and on those hot, stinking days when you’re in dire need of a refreshing drink which isn’t carbonated and liquid sugar, I turn to a traditional Korean drink known as shik hae, a malted barley drink which is an absolute pain in the ARSE to m...
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The Butterfly Effect Meme
2006-11-07 22:42:01
Gee, there are a lot of these memes circulationg the blog-o-sphere, aren’t there? This particular one was created by the mind of Dan from SaltShaker, and has been slowly travelling around as it’s not an easy one and needs a bit of thought: My thought in this meme is food items or events that changed your foodie life. Not some ?oh, it?s the first time I didn?t put jelly on a peanut butter sandwich and used bananas instead? sort of change, unless you truly feel that affected you profoundly. That?s the key - it affected you profoundly, in some manner. A moment you can look back at and say ?that was a defining moment?. The questions are simple, the answers might be harder - an item, person, event, or place that had that effect on you, and why. They don?t have to be big splashy things - sometimes it?s something very small and simple that changes the way we view the world - the famed ?butterfly effect? (and I?m not talking about the Aston Kutcher movie). So, to those who want ...
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A year older, not necessarily a year wiser?
2006-11-02 22:33:01
“RING RING” “RING RING” I opened one eye and looked at my phone, which sat on my bedside dresser illuminating the room in it’s hazy glow. I closed the open eye, reached out, pressed a button and held it to my head and mumbled “mmmph. Wah? Whossat? Whassatime?” “Hey gorgeous - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” “Youuuurfreakincrazy…whassati me? Wanna sleeep…” “Hehehe, I just wanted to say happy birthday! I’ll let you get back to bed now!” And so began my birthday. Not exactly the best start, as I’d only gotten 4 hours sleep and after having my first ever pilates session the night before, was in an excruciating amount of pain, but the day itself has turned out lovely and finished with a lovely home-cooked meal courtesy of my mother Remember what they say, kids - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That, and waking your friend at 5am with a phonecall because you want to be the first to con...
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Fate or luck?
2006-10-26 23:21:01
Having a dog means that you need to exercise them regularly, so I try take Mr. Woofy out for walkies every night. Tonight, the park that we usually do laps at was overrun by the local baseball club, so we just started to amble around the neighborhood, aimlessly looking for another park where my canine companion could run freely and roll around in the grass. After about an hour of traipsing around, we finally found a small park he could run around in, so I took his leash off so we could both explore at our own individual paces.All of a sudden, I heard a maddened barking, and thinking that he’d cornered another cat, rushed over to where he was. By the time I got there, he’d jumped back and was looking quizzically at a small little lump in the grass - closer inspection revealed that it was a tiny little baby bird, no more than about 10cm long (4 inches). It was clearly in shock, but still breathing strongly and I was nervous and unsure as to whether I should leave it alone ...
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My little angel (WDB #57)
2006-10-23 05:09:02
Just a quick entry as I’ve got to head off to the doctor to get my test results, but here is my and Mr. Woofy’s entry for this week’s Weekend Dog Blogging! Mr. Woofy is certainly my angel, but with wings he is very much a little cherub! Sleepy angel in the sun, though he mixes with mortals, he likes wearing his wings on special occasions See all the other adorable woof-angels at Sweetnicks as part of the round-up for Weekend Dog Blogging #57 Technorati Tags: weekend dog blogging, WDB, golden retrievers, dogs, angels
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Bravo to Buckwheat
2006-10-22 17:09:01
Buckwheat is one of those foodstuffs which is sorely unappreciated. It doesn’t appear on too many menus or as a featured ingredient, and most people mistakenly think of it as just another grain. In terms of the botanical, buckwheat is actually a fruit though often referred to as a ‘pseudograin‘ because of it’s grain-like qualities. Yet another reason to sing its praises is that buckwheat is (like quinoa and rice) naturally gluten-free, making it a safe food for coeliacs. There are a few buckwheat dishes in Korean cuisine, one being a jelly made from buckwheat flour (which is another post in itself), but my favourite is a cold noodle dish which goes down a treat in summer! Buckwheat noodles are called soba in Japanaese cuisine, and in Korean are called ‘meh-mil’ - you should be able to buy them under either name in most Asian grocery stores, and it’s quite worthwhile having them in the pantry as they are versatile and go well in most noodle s...
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?Your breath stinks like chocolate!?
2006-10-21 05:03:02
Every bite of these chocolate laden discs is one of sheer pleasure This was the exclamation from my brother after I’d consumed one of these chocolate chocolate-chip discs of doom, and he was absolutely right. Those who know me know that I’m not one of ‘those’ chocaholics - you know the ones, with noses tuned to the scent of cocoa beans, who can be found lurking in the dark corners of chocolatier stores with noses pressed against the glass of the truffle display, and who’d sell their mother’s right lung for a box of their most desired chocolates. Which is kind of a shame if their mother had already donated the left one to the aforementioned chocaholic, when their own had to be removed due to excessive cocoa powder inhalation. So, whilst I enjoy the odd bit of chocolate here and there, I often go weeks or months without a single morsel passing my lips. At work last week, one of the girls was running around and distributing finger-like little slices...
More About: Your , Chocolate , Cola , Breath , Late

Mr. Woofy Sulks (WDB #56)
2006-10-21 05:03:02
I had a bit of a bake-a-thon this weekend, and since I tried a few new recipes, I had to photograph them for the blog. Now, the undesirable positioning of our house means that it is difficult to get natural light for photography, the house itself is dark most of the time despite large windows in every room, and you can only get direct sunlight in the middle of the backyard, or from the second storey balcony. Ever seen a plate fall from a second storey balcony onto concrete? Let me tell you, it isn’t pretty. Especially if you have to go and sweep the area 2-3 times to make sure you got the last of those tiny shards of porcelain, due to worry about a certain woofer’s delicate paw pads. Since then, I stick to ground level when I need to take photographs, which means that Mr. Woofy is a constant companion. I thought I’d take some pictures to illustrate his dedication to all things munchable. Disembodied dog head - everytime I elbowed him away, he’d rush straight...

Bea?s Bars of Gold
2006-10-21 05:03:02
Even when I’m happy with a recipe that I have, I am always willing to try new ones to see how they compare. This weekend, it was the world of financiers that I ventured into again. The same type of baked good, the result was vastly different to what I had expected - not that this is a bad thing! The usual recipe that I used to create these little golden delights (they are meant to be bars, but as I lack the equipment, I just use mini muffin tins) is one by Clotilde from the famous Chocolate and Zucchini blog, however, months ago I had seen a post by Bea at La Tartine Gourmande about the same mini-cake, though the recipe was quite different! The results looked amazing, so I wrote the recipe down in my little ‘must try’ book, and promptly forgot all about it. Until this weekend. Whilst giving the pantry a bit of a clean out, I found a half-used packet of hazelnut meal and then recalled that Bea’s financier recipe called for this particular ingredient! Since I ...
More About: Gold , Bars

Empa-whos-a-what-now?
2006-10-21 05:03:02
Whilst I obviously still need to work on my pastry-shaping skills, these unassuming brown domes held naught but tastiness inside! I love food blogging events, I’ve participated in two so far and both have been marvellous. The last I took part in, Blogging By Mail, introduced me to the wonderful Brilynn, the blogger behind Jumbo Empanadas. As soon as I found out who I was sending my care package to, I eagerly went to the blog in question…and went ‘huh??‘. Before I go any further, in defence of my ignorance, I’ll point out the fact that I am still new to the whole ‘expanding culinary boundaries‘ thing, and that Latin American food is something that is not bountiful here in Melbourne, Australia. So, whilst I understood the ‘jumbo’ part, I had to google to find out what the heck an empanada was! Ahhh, wikipedia to the rescue! Essentially, it is just a stuffed pastry, not entirely unlike the Italian calzone. My research revealed that...
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