Xiamen Szechuan Restaurant..

during my china trip, we went to xiamen for two days. we went to have some really fantastic meal there. szechuan style restaurant and it was really good.

spicy appertiser.

fried fish with spices. yummy!

custard egg with seafood, mushroom and mixed vegetables.

sizzling pork

bok choy with mushrooms

vegetable soup. something different and it was really refreshing.

steamed tofu with salty eggs.

a whole table full with dishes and we had this kind of banquet meal all the time when we were with our relatives. that's chinese culture.

Eastern Palace..

well well this weekend i had yum cha session with my parents and another couple of mum's friends. it's a favourite thing to do during chinese new year, don't you think so? anyway mum and her friend have a good impression with eastern palace which is at 1171 stud road, rowville, vic 3178. if you're looking for a yum cha place which is not that noisy, this is definately a place to go for. the price might be a little pricey but we're happy with the food and environment.

more dumplings please! one of the favourite is prawn with chives.

another all time favourite. 'siu mai' mince pork and prawn dampling. nice one!

chicken feet. mum likes it alot..

steamed pork with black bean and chilli. this is really good.. the meat was kept juicy and tender.

chee cheong fan also known as fresh rice sheets with prawn and soya sauce. like this one cause the rice sheets was not too thick.

look how crispy puff pastry kind of crust of the egg tarts. it just melts inside your mouth with the egg custard. faint! it was really that good. i'm a huge fan of egg tarts. i shall try it in hong kong. anyway i ended up with a bowl of sweet beancurd dessert, also called tau fu fa. enjoyed myself and best of all, we were able to chit chat without yelling at each other.

Kam Bo Chinese Restaurant..

well i had my reunion dinner with my family at kam bo chinese restaurant at shop 1, 1 mahoneys road, forest hill. we've even ordered for the set menu with six dishes for $326. there were eight of us. interesting meal and with reasonable prices. it turned out to be quite satisfying meal, we were quite happy with the food.

we had stir fried lobster with ginger and spring onion and noodles to begin with. it was delicious! the gingery taste was a bit too strong for me but the flavour was awesome.

this is the deep fried prawn with bread underneath. it was coated with a thick layer of bread crumb. and eating it with the mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce, it was yummy! my cousin sister enjoyed it.

this is the stir fried spinach with mushrooms, dried scallops and also abalone..mushrooms. we really thought it was abalone. haha!

this is the deep fried chicken with salty egg yolk. one of the old time favourite.

next is the stir fried squid with vegetables and seaweed.

and finally we had an awesome steamed fish with ginger and spring onion. this one was definately good, it was cooked just spot on and with the freshness of the fish, it was absolutely mouth watering. i had lots of rice just because of the dish. all in all we were quite satisfied with the food. one more new place to go for chinese food. p/s i think it was better than shark fin inn.

Chinese new year..

happy chinese new year everyone! it's the time when everyone gather to catch up and have some authentic chinese food for good beginning of the year. i've been out for dinners, gatherings and lucky enough to taste some awesome food. here's some homemade food that i had lately.

i had fried egg with clams/mussels, pan fried bun with stew pork belly with taro at my friend's place. that was superb. absolutely love that one. thanks for the awesome meal.

i had a small pre-cny pot luck party at my office. look at all the yummy food with desserts.

i went over to my friend's palce for dinner on the second day of cny. and look at all the food he cooked. this is the fried fish with sambal paste and anchovies and fried piggy fat. totally can't find this anywhere else. special recipe!

i had an awesome meal and thanks to the chef! hope i'm not putting on too much weight. haha! anyway hope everyone is enjoying themselves and have a great year ahead..

Shark Fin Inn..

Chinese new year is around the corner and i bet everyone is like busy spring cleaning, looking for restaurants to go on that day, baking cookies and also buy lots of cny goodies to give relatives and so on. that's our chinese tradition for cny preparation. oh well, i had a pre-celebration with a group of friends before they all go back for their family reunions. last night we headed to shark fin inn at 50 little bourke street. well the shark fin group have a few restaurants around and shark fin inn is their older shop along chinatown. they have quite famous reputation of their food. let's check it out..

we've ordered a total of eight dishes for a group of 11. and this is the stir fry snow peas, carrots, mushrooms with scallops. looks yummy right? the flavour was really mild, and the taste of the scallops stood out quite well. i would think that it would be better if add on some garlic into it.

stir fried deer meet with spring onions and ginger. it's one of my favourite dishes way back in malaysia. we have really good ones there. and this one was just average.

stir fried enoki mushroom, shredded dried scallops with snow pea shoots. i like this one!

this is the stew chicken with vegetables. it supposed to have a special name for this dish, but i forgot what is it called. it was delicious, rich in flavours and i like the varieties of vegetables that they added into it.

this is the 'pi pa tofu'. it's actually a type of cantonese dish. there are added shrimp together with the tofu and then deep fried with some sauce on top. it was delicious! and of course nice presentation.

highlight of our meal was of course the steamed fish! we've ordered 'mang chou' and it's $24 per pound. and this one is almost 1.75 pound. so this fish costs us $42. it was pretty good, can taste the freshness of the fish and it wasn't overcooked, which was great! enjoyed it alot. we've also ordered sesame deep fried chicken and pork spare ribs. didn't manage to take photos of them. anyways we had an enjoyable meal. but on the down side, it was bit pricey than normal chinese restaurants. they charged $5 per person for rice and tea. our total bill for the night was $239. the other dishes price range around $20-ish per plate. so maybe you want to try it out yourself.

Dry noodles with soya sauce..

one of my old time favourite is dry noodles with soya sauce. i had it almost every week way back in malaysia and they were of course very cheap. after coming over to melb, i always have the cravings of it. my sis and i wanted to try making ourselves. surprisingly, it tasted pretty good. so here you go, all you need is egg noodles, the sauce, spring onion, bok choy, and some roast meat. or perhaps some won ton as well.

well the hard part about making dry noodles is about cooking the noodles. you can't overcooked it or else it won't be that yummy. only dip in the egg noodles into hot boiling water for a few seconds and then rinse it with cold water. then the noodles will keep the chewy texture. we also cooked some chicken soup with fish balls to have it with the dry noodles.

the next thing is the sauce. the ingredients are as follow:

10 tbsp dark soya sauce

5 tbsp light soya sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of sesame oil

3 tbsp cooking oil (i used olive oil instead)

1 tbsp mirin sauce (a type of japanese vinegarish seasoning sauce, or instead you can use xiao xing wine)

thinly chopped garlic and some shallots

Imperial Kingdom..

happy new year everyone! hope that it's a great year ahead us. on the new year's day, i went to have yum cha with my mum in the afternoon. i went to imperial kingdom along blackburn road. the restaurant was all packed with people that day. and lucky for us that we were able to book a table.

the left one is the prawn dumpling steamed with mushroom. it was pretty good, the prawn tasted nice together with the sweetness of the mushroom. while the right one is pork wrapped dumplings, it was wrapped into a money bag. it was so adorable that we looked at it for a while before eating it.

we had our favourite fried taro with pork meat. i would have to say the one i had in shark fin's house was alot better than this one.

yummy! this is my favourite during yum cha session. it has been a while since i had these egg tarts. it was really delicious. the crispyness of the pastry and with the softness of the egg custard just goes together really well. it was fresh hot from the oven. when you eat it, it just melts in your mouth. awesomeness!

a nice sweet way to finish off our yum cha session with a bowl of beancurd dessert, named "tau fu fa". the texture was really good, it was so soft and it just melted away in your mouth. i had quite a satisfying meal there but of course as usual, the service was not so good in this kind of chinese restaurant. we had about 6 kinds of different dim sum and it only costs $32. so the price there is considered average, nice location for a quick gathering.

Shark fin house..

last week i went for yum cha session with my collegues at shark fin house. it's along little bourke street, slightly after russell street. i've heard alot about this restaurant and i've never been there before. my friends who went there before told me that it was really good. so i was rather looking forward to try out. i went with two other girls. so we didn't eat too much. but we did manage to try quite a few popular ones. the service was average as they were really busy during the peak times. we went for the first session which started from 11am. you do need to pre-book for a table as it's always packed.

we tried out the shiu long bao, i would say that there are better ones at other places. also had black bean stew pork, that one was pretty good. my all time favourite.

we also tried quite a few fried stuffs like the fried taro with minced pork, pan fried white carrot cake, and others. i liked the fried taro.. it was really crispy outside and the flavour was just nice.

a must order "shiu mai" it was delicious! we also tried a few steamed ones but i couldn't remember the names. then we finished up with some desserts. i had the mango sago which was awesome. love it! we paid for about $60 for the bill. i guess the price is quite average as compared to the ones we have around surburbs.

Pacific House

I had dinner with a few collegues at pacific house, along lonsdale street. it was my first time there. they are famous of their roasted meat. tried out their roast duck and roast pork. i have to admit that it was pretty good, the meat was juicy and tender while the skin was crispy. but it was a little too oily. that's the best part at the same time. haha! can't eat it everyday, if not you're going to get high cholestrol. the serving was pretty huge, and i had it with noodles. it was a bit too dry. i miss the malaysian ones.

they have quite a varieties of dishes on the menu, from chinese to western and from entrees to desserts and bubble teas. very similar to star east at glen waverley. service was average, don't really like it when they started to clear our table when we were still chatting. but i guess this is a normal situation in chinese restaurants. anyway nice catch up dinner with a few friends.