The Good Sunday

We’ve just returned from dinner with Gill and Jaso (he’s back from London!) so I’m all happy :). Even though it’s been 8 months since I last saw Jaso (and this was during Jo’s wedding in Kuching , how time flies) hanging out with him felt exactly the same from when we last left off, I guess that’s how I know that he’s a friend for life.

Saturday lunch. I took these pictures for Jan and Andy because they love the food at Manise. From clockwise, there’s Jo’s must-have empek empek, fried tofu with sweet soy sauce, eggplant with peanut sauce and ikan bakar manise (grilled fish with special manise sauce). All very yums actually.

Sunday lunch bento prep. This is R’s loh bak bento with braised belly pork, tofu puffs, hard boiled egg and braised pig intestines. I’m getting good at cleaning those intestines but they’re still hard work.

Loh mai kai (steamed glutinous rice with chicken, mushrooms and chinese sausage) for Jo and HC’s snack tomorrow.

The only reason why I made loh mai kai was because I had leftover glutinous rice from my new kitchen experiment. Can you guess what I’m making?? I’m not too optimistic and might make a second batch next week with a different recipe but fingers crossed it will work! Results in a month…

Btw Jaso if you’re reading this (he claims he reads my blog.. hmmm..) stop complaining that I never invite you over to my house, I promise a home cooked dinner at my place before you go back to London ok? That can be your birthday present haha.

Sparrow and some meatballs

It’s Sunday night, Jo and I are in the living room watching the Masterchef finale. I made it a point to watch the finale tonight despite not having watched a single episode of this vastly popular show. But my colleagues are all obsessed with Masterchef so they made me promise to watch it so I can discuss it with them tomorrow. So far I like both finalists but I’m rooting for the Chinese girl who’s originally from Malaysia! Oh no, the aunty actually incorrectly identified shallots as onions, how can she get that wrong?!

Anyway I am feeling miserable because the weekend over. Even worse, Jason has gone back to Geraldton and won’t be back in Perth for another 10 weeks. 10 weeks feels like a long time, I wonder what my life will be like then? Lately I’ve been facing new experiences and challenges everyday so I’m a bit apprehensive. Ah well.

Masterchef update: The secret ingredient was whole chicken, I guesed the Chinese girl would cook Hainanese chicken and I was right!! Only I don’t think she’s cooking it right because she’s steaming the chicken and  hainanese chicken is usually poached/boiled. She’s making pandan chiffon cake which is one of my favourite cakes of all time.

Friday night dinner and drinks with TGIF gang minus Gill. It was also a farewell of some sort for Jaso. After dinner at Hawker’s Cuisine we headed off to the new 399 melbourne style bar on William Street. There was great, cosy and warm atmosphere and we had a great time drinking wine (me and Gerry mostly) and chatting.

Saturday morning I woke up early but was nursing a slight headache. Met up with the rest of the guys for karaoke but left to walk around the city with Gerry and Bryan. Introduced the boys to Tiger Tiger coffee bar which serves really really good coffees.

The service isn’t great, but the secluded alleyway atmosphere with the live Spanish guitar playing was fantastic. They serve a mean hot chocolate with marshmallows as well, yums.

Dinner at Sparrow also located on William Street. Sparrow is an Indonesian restaurant located almost opposite Manise. It’s very popular in Perth and well known for the friendly service, affordable prices and small portions. I remember Fung was the first person who introduced to this eatery, I used to frequent it quite often  but haven’t been since we discovered Manise.

Beef rendang which you order by the pieces (I think it’s $2.50 per piece). The owner told us that the beef was cooked for 5 hours, despite the long cooking time, I still don’t think the beef is tender enough.

Sparrow has empek-empek too, only they call it pempek ($7 with egg). Sauce wise the pempek was pretty similar to Manise’s empek-empek, but it wasn’t crispy enough and the fish cake was a little harder and chewy.

I forgot the name of these mussels, Kerang something. I didn’t have any of these but Wendy said they were good.

I didn’t feature most our dishes but what Sparrow does well is their gravy laden asam/curry dishes are always tasty and great with rice. We ordered 10 dishes in all with drinks and rice and it was only $10.50 per person (the owner also gave us a 10% discount which he has done every single time I’ve frequented).

Happy and satisfied customers!

Daitaoha ratings (btw, the rating system is on my About page):

Food : 6/10

Service: 7/10

Sparrow

Shop A
434 William St
Northbridge 6003 WA
Phone: (08) 9328 5660

I feel like cooking something big and elaborate, but I don’t know what to cook, who to cook for or what to cook for. But today I wanted to try a tomato and cream sauce pasta instead of my usual tomato based sauce, it turned out quite well but I will be experimenting more to get a better tomato cream sauce. This time instead of just using tinned tomatoes I also added fresh tomatoes which I feel made the sauce taste fresher and lighter.

I made beef meatballs to go with the spaghetti and garnished the pasta dish with lots and lots of parsley.

Masterchef update: The Malaysian girl lost!! I wish I watched the show right from the start now, but I have Jason’s Top Chef to watch, I hope it’s good!

I am hoping to force myself to try cooking new recipes and will try to post up a  new recipe from my collection of cookbooks at least once a fortnight. So scary there’s a hailstorm now, the windows sound like they’re going to break,lightning and thunder  everywhere,ok, maybe I don’t like rainy weather so much afterall (T___T).