Korean Dinner in Chilly Winter Night

After some time, at last I cooked Korean again! It's been quite awhile, really. I think the last time I made Korean food was around February or March.

There is a slight difference here though. Usually when I said "cooking Korean" that means Bulgogi, that's it, it is the only Korean food I can make.

But whem I went shopping I decided to buy Korean red pepper paste just because the store only had small sized bulgogi sauce, so I decided to buy this humongous jar just for variety rather than buying 2 of the same kind.

And here I was, stir frying wombok and tried to put some of the red pepper paste then it turned into a "kimchi-like" dish. Then my housemate asked me if it was cap jae (or whatever is the spelling, a korean soup anyway) and I just realised I just made one! And of course as it was supposed to be a stir fry, there wasn't much liquid there.

But anyway, it was a nice dinner for a cold winter night! :)

And Tiramisu It Is!

And more tiramisu! I decided to make this easy tiramisu because one of my housemates missed out when I made it months ago.

This is one really easy tiramisu, no bake, just mix. But I ended up with a pile of dishes! I'm just glad that I have a habit of washing dishes bit by bit, so in the end I didn't need to be intimisated by mountains of dirty dishes.

I also ended up with a few mascarpone ice cream sandwiches, or so I called it, I don't know if it met the criteria to be one but whatever.

Here are two photos of my tiramisus, I made enough for everyone in the house. Sorry but no photos on the ice cream sandwiches and trust me, they are just the cream for tiramisu squeezed in between two marie biscuits! LOL

Back to Winter, Back to Cooking

It's been officially winter season in Melbourne since June.
For me, it's officially freezing in July!
We're back to July and tell you what? I'm super excited about everything that will happen in July! Except the chill of course.

WARNING! Some of the points will sound stupid, if you are lucky enough you will fin it funny though, or even weird? Anyway, let me start with this very morning then going forward and backward in order to confuse myself and everyone else reading this.

1. Tell you what? I love winter morning, especially a foggy one. It is still foggy even though it's already 9AM. I love my morning, I love my breakfast and I love taking my time in the morning. Since I worked I haven't had many of this kind of morning. I made coffee with Italian conduction coffee maker, which is very interesting. While waiting for my coffee to boil, I put up a blanket to cover my upper body (call me weird but I enjoy wearing my blanket that way) and started sweeping the floor. I even had a nice time standing in front of the house enjoying the fresh air! Talk about a nice morning, eh?

2. My master course will start next week! I'm just so excited! Tell you what? Next week is only the enrolment though. But guess what? I told my workplace that I won't be available for the whole week. Not my fault because I thought I might be spending a lot of days in uni. The same thing applies for the week after, orientation week! I haven't been very keen about orientation for my college nor bachelor course, but somehow I'm pretty excited on this one! I just can't wait to start my master!

3. And of course, in winter you need a huge amount of energy to stay warm, hence you require plenty of food. Conclusion? Cook a lot, eat plenty! I'm so happy I tried cooking so many things these past few days. And oh, I bought some new cutleries, kitchenwares and baking tools too! I tried some of my new equipments but of course I will be experimenting more when I start my uni as I will have more free time  (hopefully).

Here are some of the pictures of my cooking. :)

Sourdough Toast, Fried Egg and Crispy Bacon

Kahlua Banana Toffee

Baked Macaroni with Bacon and Cheese

Beef Soup and Macaroni

Coffee Syrup Cake

Creamy Bolognese with Chorizo and Mushrooms

Sourdough Toast, Sliced Turkey, Poached Egg with Hot Tomato Chutney

My Appled-Sausage Curry

My second attempt in cooking sausage curry with apples last night. I put a bit of a twist by putting indonesian veggies called 'labu siam', which I don't know the english word, and spring onion. I also put red wine vinegar that enhanced its smell and flavour.

Tasted good, I have to say that it was a success, except that it was a bit too spicy for us. I imagined my sister complaining to me for cooking something too spicy, typical me. I can't imagine if I cook on Masterchef Australia, I bet I will blow George Calombaris' head with my food, hahaha.....

Anyway, had a glass of lemon sparkling water along with the food while watching Masterchef. It was good having dinner with my brother again, I was excited with all the snacks he brought from Indonesia, hopefully they will last long!

Last Month of Interlude

Ok, been so long since my last post. I admit I have been procrastinating enough to not post anything in the last month.

Let's see the checklist of what I have done around....

1. an IELTS test, which I didn't pass the 8 all band obviously, otherwise I would have posted it sooner.
2. Indonesia and Malaysia, I put up 4 kg and of all those 2-3 kg is from one week in Malaysia.
3. Catch up with my friends in Indonesia.
4. Back to Melbourne and wanting to catch up with all friends.

Is that all? Perhaps, I can't recall anything else at the moment.

So it has been 6 months since my graduation and I have yet to find a suitable job for me and no PR application. It sounded so bad now that I put it this way. But I have applied for Master degree since about 3 months ago, since then I didn't really look for a job and just go with the flow, which felt really good.

Yup, it has been a short (or maybe a long one?) interlude, let's call it a gap (half) year before study. I learnt a lot from it. And I made new resolutions as well! Maybe it's too late to make resolutions in mid year like this, but surely it's better than nothing. The trigger for these resolutions are, surprise surprise, from Indonesia and Malaysia. I realised how stagnant the growth in Australia is and how significant changes took places in other countries. Of course I'm partly aware of the changes as we read newspapers, but it was merely like reading a fairy tale at that time.

Now that I realise that the world is broader than I think, I opened my mind and decided to let myself go with the flow, the good one obviously. I decided to study hard while looking for a more suitable part time job and will go to China to study Chinese. I will also do a backpacking or study language in Europe. And the good thing is, my father is willing to support me, both financially and mentally, for my grand Europe trip!

Oh, and I also decided to go home a lot on my semester breaks. Not that I want to avoid work and not that I don't want the money, I do love money! But I realised that while I'm young, I want to travel a lot, there are places that I have yet to visit, even in Indonesia.

SO! I'll be going back to Indonesia for 2 months from either December or January, and I will travel a lot! My family is planning for a trip to Japan! Can't be more excited than this! I wish I can see Hokkaido this time. Tours will usually take 2 weeks and I want to extend for another 2 weeks to do a backpack around Japan! Or maybe visit my cousin in South Korea for a week as well? Well, possibilities are unlimited at the moment. For now, I want my next holiday to be spent in Japan and in Indonesia (around Maluku or Sulawesi perhaps).

That's all for now.

Indo So Far with Approaching Melbourne

As you all know (or not), I went back to Indonesia for 3 weeks!
I am still in Indonesia, spending my last few days before flying back to Melbourne.
I just realised that I have not finished my culinary tour yet, there are still more to eat in my list, just for Jogjakarta!

One answer to that problem here, and this answer is not solving but just on checking why 3 weeks is not enough, is that I spent 1 week out of my 3 weeks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I shopped a lot, ate a lot and saw a lot. I spent about RM2000 there, equal to almost AUD700. If only I stayed in city centre, I would have spent MUCH more! But to cut costs, I stayed in my sister's apartment, yay me for not paying any accommodation.

My luggage now is filled with FOOD! And of course I got some souvenirs but they are not to be compared with the number of FOOD in my suitcase, hah! There are still places I want to visit and food I want to eat, but I know that my time will be up and all I want to do is spending my remaining time for my family.

My holiday was a short one and I might not be coming back to Indonesia for the next few years as I need to build up my leave for months in Europe. <3 Oh and I am planning to go backpacking to Japan too! Ah, so much in my travel list.

I will post more about my culinary trip, and pictures of course, when I get back to Melbourne.

And for now, ciao!

Metropol Weekend with Parisian and Vietnamese Tereat

Last Saturday was great for me.
I finished work a bit late hence had a really late lunch.

I went to East Richmond Station with my brother for my favorite macaron store, La Belle Miette. Didn't know they had a branch there, which is actually their kitchen!

We arrived at around 4.30pm, just 30 minutes from their closing time. Unfortunately we missed their limited edition macarons and madeleines. But that didn't sadden us at all. We indulged 4 macarons and 4 financiers, two of the financiers were complementory, and two cups of black coffee from their pop up cafe.

I had heaps of chats and laugh with the store owner and barrista there. Yup, we decided to chill out there until their closing time, it was only half an hour anyway!

Then we continued our culinary journey by walking to Victoria Street, which turned out to be about 5 blocks away! Luckily we was not in rush at all.

Victoria Street was like a grocery shop and restaurant heaven, literally. We took our time entering each shops. My brother suddenly had a sudden craving for dr. Pepper, a cherry flavored carbonated drink, so we tried to look for it.

We went a look at their new Woolworths and it was really cozy. We also went into Daiso, cheap Japanese goods store.

Then after all that walking, we decided to have early dinner at 6.30pm. We had this Vietnamese sizzling pancake and broken rice with pork chop at Tho Tho Bar and Restaurant. And believe me, it wasn't expensive at all!

After such delightful dinner, we went to our friends house in the city. They decided to drink and here comes the game. No details needed here, I guess.

We reached home at 3am, slept anf woke up ar 11am. I cooked some western breakfast of chips, bacon and eggs. Then we decided to make some croquettes. It turned out good!

We closed the weekend eith grocery shopping and chilling out at home the rest of the Sunday.