MAGNUM'S PLEASURE POP-UP STORE @ SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

There it comes again... The Magnum Pleasure Pop-Up store, celebrating its 25 years birthday this year. It was a customize ice cream instead of eating a plain magnum. 

My mate who went to try it out last year told me that the line were unbelievable long but since there was nothing much for me to do on my holiday, we went over to Westfield on the Chinese Mooncake Festival at Monday to try it out.

Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad which it took us less than 10 minutes in line, and also we have our own sweet time to watch how the pleasure been done. 

There are 18 types of toppings to choose from, which mainly from chocolate, nuts and dried fruits.

I picked a dark magnum chocolate with roasted pistachio, rose petals and mocha chips with white chocolate drizzle to finish where else my mate had a very simple milk magnum chocolate with roasted pistachio and rose petals finishing with dark chocolate to drizzle on top. 

It was a fun experience designing our own ice cream and watching it made in front of us :)

STIR FRY GARLIC SHOOT WITH PORK BELLY

My mate in Oz introduced me with this new bright green veggie - Garlic Shoot, which are also called stems, spears and scapes. The garlic which we known has separate cloves and white papery skin and obviously garlic is amazing for lots of food but this is a new plant which can be edible on whole in general. It doesn't really taste like garlic overall but much to a bright, fresh, verdant version  as they have a milder flavor. It is when cooked, the scapes become much more sweeter with subtle garlic undertone and the texture is quite similar to asparagus to be honest. Thus, in Korea this garlic shoot are commonly used as a veggies for side dishes.

Garlic shoot is so much cheaper during the coming of Spring. Stalls in the market in Oz are selling as cheap as 3 bunch for 5 dollars, a bunch for 1.50 and even 2 bunch for 2.80, etc as the supplies are so much during the season. There are hundred of ways to cook it and the most simple way i can think of for a simple lunch / dinner to goes with a bowl of boiled rice is to stir fry; basis and mother of all Chinese. It is a very simple, fresh ingredient which is fast and tasty. It is so super easy to cook and especially delicious with its crunchiness and sweet.  

Ingredients:-

A bunch of garlic shoot (cut into 4 segments)
2 x clove of garlic, crushed and chopped
Slice of ginger, chopped
2 x carrots (cut into long thin strips)
100 gram of pork 
2 tbsp veggie oil
2 tbsp Shao Hsing Chinese cooking rice wine 
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

(It can be with any vegetables, meat, or even tofu and employ the same technique. The philosophy behind Chinese stir fry is to present with 3 basic steps - color, smell and taste).

Method:-

Heat up wok / frying pan with high heat and once it is piping hot, add in the veggie oil and reduce to medium heat. Put in crushed garlic and chopped ginger and stir fry until smell the fragrant. 

Add in pork belly slice and stir fry until half cooked.

Add in carrot strips and cooked it until soft, place the garlic shoot at last and bring up the heat. Splash in the cooking wine on the sides of the wok / frying pan. Mix well and allow the heat to evaporate all the alcohol. Keep on tossing the ingredient well and finally add in the soy sauce and sesame oil. Mix well.

Arrange onto serving plate and serve yourself with an inexpensive and simple meal which goes so great with just a bowl of steamed boiled rice.

I left a few for dinner to add in my plain congee and surprisingly it goes so tasty with it as well. Lovely ~

SALMON TERIYAKI

I worked in a Japanese restaurant when i was in London 9 years ago. It was owned by a real japanese family instead of those made-in-china owner who knows nothing about the origin japan cuisine. They had only little of dishes in the menu and all of the methods are passed down in the family tree from the great ancestors.

My boss taught me a very common dish which are widely eaten all over but little known how and what is the best way to cook it - Salmon Teriyaki.

Salmon, along with sardines, mackerel, herring, halibut and black cod is a sustainable source of omega 3 fish. The most beneficial omega 3 fish fats occur naturally in oily fish as EPA (eicosapentanoic acid) and DHA (docosahexanoic acid). Both are contribute to healthy brain function, heart, joints and common general well being. It's firm enough either to grill, can be cooked in many ways and doesn't dry out as easily as other fish does.  

Some may add sake and mirin (sweet japanese cooking wine) but to make as simple as possible, my ex-boss just use 3 types of items to make the marinade sauce and it taste a lot better than those teriyaki sauce selling in bottle. 

Ingredients:-

120 ml japanese soy sauce
6 tbsp caster sugar
3 tbsp ground ginger
3 tbsp olive oil
2 x thick fillet salmon, skinned-on
1 rice cup of rice (choices of japanese rice / long grain rice)
mix salad to garnish at side
1 x boiled egg

Method:-

Mix soy sauce, sugar and ground ginger together in a bowl and have the salmon to place in. Preferably to marinade overnight if possible or else an hour or 2 will be good too.

Cook rice and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan to medium heat. Drain the salmons reserving the marinade sauce and pat dry. Cook the salmons with skinned bottom. Turn each side after a min or two and be careful not to overcook the fish, it will taste nicer with slightly under-cooked in the center and moist. 

When it is almost done, pour it the marinade sauce in the saucepan to heat up. The sauce will gradually thickened because of the sugar. 

Set salmons on plate with boiled rice, salad and boiled egg. Low cost affordable healthy meal presenting on table. Everyone can cook it. 

DRY POT @ "GAN GOU"

My colleagues told me few years back that hot pot days is dead and the new era for a new family member called Dry Pot is taking over, which i think is a bit too much and exaggerated. I do really love hotpot. It is a must for me in each and every occasions, but to this whole new thingy - Dry Pot.... was a big question mark for me.

It is said that Dry Pot comes originally from an area in Deyang, Sichuan and spread out all over the mainland and especially popular in ChongQing as well. It is a northern Sichuan dishes where the local will only add veggies cooking in the wok with the seasoning but they would serve generously with meat and seafood when there is guest on the house to make it richer. 

I was introduced to this Dry Pot aka "Gan Guo" in mandarin saying 2 years back for the first time when i dropped in Oz at a chinese Sichuan restaurant in Chinatown, and unlike hot pot where we dip our raw meat, seafood and fresh veggies into a pot of bubbling hot desire soup for a quick boil / cook, in Dry Pot we choose our variety ingredients of meat, seafood and veggies, etc. and make a combination ourselves into a colorful ready-to-eat pot. The chef behind the kitchen will flash stir fried and cook in a spicy hot sauce with fresh red and green chillies peppers, scallions, ginger, garlic and nonetheless, Sichuan peppercorns which is later transfer in a mini wok to serve on the table. In Chinese cuisine however, the cooking theory includes 5 colors of veggies as in red, greee, yellow, white and black. For example; red peppers or sweet potatoes are red, celery or coriander are green, potatoes are yellow, onions or cabbage are white and dark fungus are black.

Dry Pot in fact are actually another type of pot-eating but differs from the tradition of hot pot which comes with soup based, instead it is directly use of oil in cooking in very high temperatures, focusing in burning out the hot fragrant. The seasonings, ingredients and cooking theory are totally different. Lots and lots of dried red chilies  are throw along with the rest of chosen ingredient. Some might think it is a simplified hot pot but well compare to that, Dry Pot is much more easier to prepare because it is cooked behind the kitchen and serve right on table. Less hassle.

BAK CHANG / ZHONG ZI

"Bak Chang" (in Hokkien dialect) or "Zhong Zi" (in Mandarin) which literally means Pork Dumplings made from glutinous rice stuffed with variety of filling and wrapped in bamboo leaves. It falls every year on the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese lunar calender. It was a tradition family event to making Bak Chang when my mother was still around. She would gave away most of them to friends and relatives, and kept a whole bunch which filled up half of the fridge for us. At that time i was consider far too young to learn the preparations and wrapping techniques or skills so usually i was not allow to go in the kitchen when my mother was busy preparing it. I didn't get the change to learn it either when I grow up as i had moved out from the house and has been drifting outside the world ever since. Now, sadly to say there is no one in my family knows how to make Bak Chang anymore.

As always Chinese delicacy has its own legend about how and why it was invented. It is prepared during the "Duan Wu" festival, honouring "Qu Yuan", a famous Chinese poet and statesman of the ancient state of Chu in the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty. Due to hopelessness of the corrupted government and the defeat of his country, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo river on the fifth day of the fifth month in 278 BC. His last poem was:

Many a heavy sigh i have in my despair,
Grieving that I was born in such an unlucky time.
I yoked a team of jade dragons to a phoenix chariot,
And waited for the wind to come,
To soar up on my journey

Upon hearing Qu Yuan's suicide, the local fisherman paddled out in their long boats, beating drums and shouting out loud in the hope to scare the fishes or sea creatures away (it was believed that this is how the Dragon Boat event is related to the festival). At the same time, the local people would also threw in sticky rice balls into the river, so that the fish or sea creatures will be distracted and feast on the rice balls instead of his body (that is how Bak Chang was born).

Most of the Chang is filled with glutinous rice containing fatty pork meat, Chinese mushroom, salted duck yolk, chestnut, dried prawn, etc. There are also those with very little ingredients, some just filled with beans, lye water, black-eye bean, shrimps and many more version and style of Chang.

My colleagues and I were talking the other morning about all sorts of Chang, and only then i found out that eating lye water Chang with caster sugar was origin from Toi San, which is why i realize that was the way my mother taught me when i was small, and her ancestors was from Toi San. 


I come from a family steep with traditions. Thus, when it comes to festivals like this I could feel the emptiness and gloominess setting inside me as the hour approaches for me to go home, eventually.