Please excuse our absenteeism..

Hey Readers,

We just wanted to say and apologise of our absenteeism lately. Whilst we have been away, we have been getting in touch with our creative side and employing the knowledge of making a short video to promote what we are about and what we do.

So, here it is: 

Have a look and tell us what you think! Comment, watch, watch again, and perhaps even share the video!

Love Thyme-forfood :) x

Mother's Love-- Breakfast

 Parents may all have the problems that kids do not like eating breakfast or particular about food. A mother from Hang Zhou ,China came up with the idea to make the breakfast as a painting. She gets up at least 30 minutes earlier than before to make the breakfast. This was successful and she shared all her ideas and recipes in her blog.

I will just show some of her posts and give the link to her blog at the end.

1.The following  one is made on 30th August 2012. Made by sandwiches, milk and mango. Looks like a panda and pineapple.

2.This one which looks like the sunflower is made by fried rice with bamboo shoots，carrot，ham; and soya-bean milk with cherries.

3. This one really looks like a painting. Materials: rice, quail egg，sausage，milk and winter jujube.

In her blogger, she has many other different ideas about the breakfast. It provides almost the nutrition that a kid need in the morning.

Hope you can get ideas from this. Even adults would love this.

Her blogger link is  http://weibo.com/u/1863372684topnav=1&wvr=4&topsug=1&page=1&pre_page=4&max_msign=-1

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Stin Iya Mas ('Cheers' - At Yiamas Greek Taverna)

Yiamas Greek Taverna, St Peter's - Sydney 

As apart of a Greek university society, last Friday around one hundred early nineteen to mid twenty year olds, all came together in celebration of our culture and heritage (and of course enjoy a great feast)!

Located in Sydney's Inner West, is what I would put my money on in saying, one of THE best Greek Restaurants around Sydney. The staff, their hospitality, the environment/atmosphere, the food, the service, and most of all- the dance floor with plate smashing that they provided for us at the end of the night!

From the moment that my friends and I walked in, we knew that we would have to roll to get out of the place as the smell from the kitchen that drowned us, with all flavours of the Mediterranean, we were in for a good feed.

We were greeted and taken to our table with excellent service and no stresses at all!

After socialising and catching up with everyone for the first our or so, it was time to sit down where we were served our entree meals, right through to the desert! From entree meal, I was sold over. The haloumi, breads & spreads- first thing that hit our table! Literally, to DIE for! Still nice and hot, but just the perfect temperature to eat, the haloumi melted in all of our mouths as we drooled, eager to see what was awaiting us!

- Haloumi Cheese Plate ($10- worth every dollar!)

- Salt & Pepper Deep Fried Squid ($14.50)

- Mixed Mezzethes Plate ($49.50)

- BBQ Octupus (marinated in lemon, olive oil & garlic), Chips & Salad Platter ($22.00)

- Souvlaki Platter with Lamp, Chips & Salad ($24.90)

Wow! What a feast, and that is only a taste of what they have to offer there! The food, combined with the live Greek music (played and sung by Greek men themselves), and the 'parea' (company) of course, the night was a great hit!

I mean come on, all you have to do is picture yourself with a group of great friends, with pictures and paintings like these around the restaurant of Greece, and, well, well that is as close to Greece as I am going to get in Sydney!!

Home made PATATAS BRAVAS

As we love the dish named PATATAS BRAVAS (fried potatoes with mild tomato salsa aioli) and it's a really nice but boring weekend, we are trying to make it by ourselves. Just have fun with cooking and enjoy our own work.

Materials to prepare:

Few potatoes; butter; oregano leaves; tomato sauce

Cut the potatoes into slides and put into the water

 Then put them into boiled water. Cooking around 5mins

After that, you can whether bake in the oven or fried in the deep fried machine. Cook until the potatoes turn to gold.

Have a look at our final achievement. Good snack for drinking with friends...

It took only 15mins to finish. Really nice taste and same as the taste at MIRO. 

The Spanish taste - MIRO tapasbar

There are many Spanish restaurants in Liverpool St. and Kent St. near world square (Sydney). MIRO was highly recommended by my friend and I really love the taste. This Friday night, I had dinner together with my friends in MIRO tapasbar. 

The first dish is PATATAS BRAVAS (fried potatoes with mild tomato salsa aioli). This is my favorite dish. The potatoes with the mild tomato salsa aioli are perfect match.

The following entry is CHORIZO A LA PLANCHA (BBQ Spanish sausage). It's a really cute dish that put in a small round iron plate. Actually, the sausages are salty.

The most famous dish for Spanish cuisine is the PAELLA DE MARISCO （Seafood Paella）

We had other dishes, but i forgot the name of them.  The dessert is the one that you should never miss out.

The total cost for the dinner is $120 for 4 people. Very fair price and nice taste. Highly recommended for friends dinning together on weekends.

The address:76 Liverpool St, Sydney Australia 2000

The special Chinese Food

Chinese Food is welcomed in many countries, and that's why ChinaTown exist. What will come to your mind first, when talking about Chinese food? Hotpot? Yumcha?

Here, we cooked a special kind of hotpot -- Dry hotpot.

Here are the materials to prepare: Meat (any kind of meat) , fish meat, potato, gizzard，needle mushroom.

STEPS:

STEP 1: Fried the spice in the oil to make the source.
STEP 2: Put all the material into the source and fry until it become dry.

It does not look like very nice but taste great!

Shui Jing Fang is the very famous Chinese restaurant for waiting hotpot. Only in this restaurant, you can have authentic dry hotpot.

Address

15 GlebePoint Road, Glebe

Phone

9518 5328

Style

Restaurants

Cuisine

Chinese

Hours

Lunch and dinner daily

Details

Licensed, BYO

Price Guide

About $70 for two, plus drinks ($3 a person corkage)

Lunch/Brunch - Apple Muffin Recipe

This is really easy to bake. Simple ingredients that most of every households have. And no special baking techniques required. My family loves this. You can have the muffin with coffee or milk for breakfast, or tea as a nice afternoon treat. The sourness, chunkiness of the Granny Smith apples and the moistness of the muffin are irresistible.

Ingredients (for about 6 big muffins)

• 150g all-purpose flour (plain flour)
• 1.5 tsp baking powder (can substitute with 1 tsp cream of tartar + 1/2 tsp baking soda)
• 1/4 tsp salt 
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon ground 
• 1 egg
• 45 ml yogurt (no sugar)
• 60 ml milk
• 85g sugar
• 42g vegetable oil
• 1 Granny Smith apple (100g), peeled and cubed 

Method 

1. Line a 6-hole cupcake tray with paper cases. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Sift the plain flour, baking powder, cinnamon ground, salt in a mixing bowl. 
3. In another mixing bowl, beat the egg, milk, yogurt and oil to combine. Add the cubed apples, mix well.
4. Pour the batter into the flour mixture. Use the spatula to fold together the two mixtures (for about 10-15sec). Try not to over-mix. 
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases about 3/4 full. 
6. Bake at 180C for 20min. Insert a skewer to test the cake. 
7. Leave in tray for 5min until cool down before turning out to wire rack. 

Coffee on a rainy Saturday - The Coffee Club

Although it was raining and stormy this morning (which is Saturday), I still had to get up early for a group meeting at Uni...which is sad...but anw, after all the hard work, we (me and my group partner) decided to have a quick lunchtime at The Coffee Club in Macquarie Shopping Center. Just a few steps away from the campus, getting cozy and chit chat away, shouldn't be better!

There weren't too many people when we arrived, although it was lunch time. I got myself a Cappuccino with a Smoked Salmon & Light Cream Cheese sandwich. The sandwich was quite good, very fresh ingredients with good seasoning. However, the coffee wasn't up to my expectation. It tastes bland, despite its nice presentation.

My friend chose Hot Mocha and one slice of lemon cheesecake. I tried the cake and loved it! The sourness of lemon curd lifted up the creaminess of the cheese. A brilliant choice to have with coffee! However, again, the mocha wasn't that good compared to the cake. It's weird, since I know that The Coffee Club has good food, but since it's named as 'coffee', the coffee should be up to some standard, shouldn't it? And it wasn't cheap...but it might be because of the franchise?!

p.s. we couldn't wait to tuck into the food, so sorry for not taking photos of them this time. But they taste good, seriously!

Thai cuisine at Satang Thai

Since I have friends who are also enthusiastic foodies, we are really keen on trying out different cuisines. This time, the theme's Thai food. There are so many good Thai restaurants around Sydney: Chat Thai, Sailors Thai (previously called Oy), Spice I Am, Yok Yor, just to name some! Luckily enough because one of my friends is from Thailand, so we got great food guide from him!

We went to Satang Thai Exclusive in Central (Sydney) for a quick dinner before heading to Event Cinema. In fact, Satang Thai actually has 2 different stores - one sells takeaway food (called Satang Thai Takeaway) and another one is the Exclusive. They're on the same street!

It was Thursday night and the restaurant was packed. We had to queue up for about 15 minutes. We got eight people and decided to have all kind of meat (e.g. pork, chicken, beef, duck) and also seafood! My friend made some suggestions and we were more than happy to try on those. 

The food arrived shortly (about within 15 minutes). They were served with steamed jasmine rice. Our first dish was Yum Neua - the beef salad with spicy sour dressing. The crispiness of the veggie and tenderness of the marinated beef make a good combination. However, nothing special, to be honest...

The main dishes came at once. We got Sweet chilli fish, Panang - Chicken Curry, Chilli Duck and Keang Som Cha Om - a kind of soup. Thai food's quite spicy and salty (that's why you usually eat them with jasmine rice) so you should prepare! 

The sweet chilli fish is quite tasty! The fish is deep-fried to golden and drizzled with Thai sweet chilli sauce, garnished with baby sprout and carrot. The skin is really crispy while the fish is still moist and tender. I can taste the saltiness of fish sauce, the sourness, sweetness and a hint of spices in the sauce. 

The Panang - Chicken curry is my favorite dish of the night! The chicken is so moist, soaked in creamy, smooth, nutty curry sauce. Everything is so well-seasoned! I just love it! 

Chilli duck is another great dish at Satang Thai Exclusive. It's stir fried duck with Thai chilli sauce and fried Thai basil leaves. The dish looks so appealing and we couldn't wait to tuck in! I especially love the deep fried basil leaves! So creative and yummy! And look pretty on the plate too. 

We also ordered a soup for the meal. It's called Keang Som Cha Om. The soup is quite spicy and hot (we were warned at first), containing egg cake, prawn and mixed veggies. I didn't enjoy it much since I can't have too spicy-hot food. I prefer my mom's veggie soup instead (lolz)

The whole meal costs us around $100 (for 8 people). Looking at the generous amount of those dishes, it's quite cheap actually! Not a fancy, fine dining Thai restaurant  for special occasion, but a good idea for weekday dinner with friends or family. 

Satang Thai Exclusive 

Address: 204/107 - 121 Quay Street, Haymarket, NSW

Phone: (02) 9212 5885

Mochi - Japanese rice cake

According to Wiki (this's just a personal blog, so I guess it's ok to use wiki info haha), Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice (not to be confused with gluten) pounded into paste and molded into the desired shape. In Japan, it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki. While also eaten year-round, Mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and is commonly sold and eaten during that time. Similar snacks are prominent in Hawaii, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

Hmm...talking bout the taste of Mochi...it's hard to describe. It tastes quite bland at first, but then, when you get the taste of the filling, it sweetens thing up. Mochi has a weird texture, delicious and kind of gummy and odd. But, they are delicious! Trust me! And they also look so cute. 

Here are some photos of the 'real' Japanese Mochi that I got from the Internet. 

You can buy Mochi from most of any Asian grocery shops in Sydney (I see so many of them in Chatswood, China Town, Eastwood, Bankstown, just to name some). However, I do not really like the taste of those, quite too sweet for my palate. And then, I started looking around the Internet and found this super easy, simple but tastes delicious recipe. Was successful after the first attempt - which is unnormal to me! So I'd like to share with you. All you need is some basic ingredients (that you can find at any Asian grocery shops around the town) and a mixing bowl, a rolling pin, plus a steamer! 

This is my home-made Pandan Mochi with green/mung bean filling

Ingredients

• 300 glutinous rice flour
• 60g rice flour
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (optional), can substitute with 1/2 cup milk
• 200ml hot water
• 3tbsp sugar (optional)
• 160ml evaporated milk (optional, if not using, add more water to the mixture)
• 240ml fruit juice (optional, depends on the taste you want to make, e.g. strawberry, orange, mango)
• Filling as desired (e.g. red bean paste, black sesame paste, mung bean paste, ice-cream, etc)
• Butter/Oil (any kind except Olive oil) to grease

Note: Traditionally it was made from cooked glutinous rice pounded intensively while adding a bit of water between each pound. 

Method

1. Mix glutinous rice flour, rice flour and sugar into a big mixing bowl.
2. Dissolve sugar in 200ml hot water. Add in the evaporated milk (if using). Pour this into the flour mixture and mix till smooth and well blended. Stir in the fruit juice (if using - here I'm using pandan leaf juice). Strain if mixture is lumpy.
3. Pour batter into a greased tray/bowl and steam on high heat for 30 minutes. 
4. Remove from steamer and stir the cooked dough with a plastic knife till smooth. Leave aside to cool.
5. Filling: you can buy the filling from some Japanese grocery stores. Otherwise, you can simply create your own filling! Here I'm using mung bean (since there's still some left in the kitchen), you can choose to make red bean (highly recommended to combine with greentea/matcha flavoured pound), black sesame, etc...there're heaps of recipes show how to make the filling paste around the Internet!
6. How to: 

• Dust your hand with flour
• Take a small piece (18-19 grams each piece) of cooked dough and flatten it into a round disc - not too thin (about 1-1.5 cm)!! *Tips: to avoid stickiness, you might use some cling wrap to cover the surface of your bench/chopping board, then cover the surface of the dough ball with another piece of cling wrap before rolling it out
• Wrap in the filling as desired (using a teaspoon to put some fillings in the middle of the dough 'disc')
• Seal the edges tightly and gently shape them into round balls (using your palms). Do this quickly so the dough doesn't get too cold. 
• Once finished, wrap up mochi balls individually tightly.

The inside look (with green/mung bean filling) - I love the taste!

Almond Friands Recipe

It's the only dish I will miss after dinner. As my 'families' (overseas friends) love it, as we discovered this recipe together whilst trying to make it one weekend. You have to love it especially when it's your own creation!

Ingredients:

 1 1/2 cups sugar

 1 cup plain flour

 1 cup almond meal

 5 eggwhites

 melted butter

 1 tsp vanilla extract

 flaked almonds

Method:

STEP 1	Preheat oven to 180 . Grease eight 1/2-cup (125ml) capacity friand or muffin pans and place on an oven tray.
STEP 2	Combine icing sugar, flour and almond meal in a medium bowl. Add eggwhites, butter and vanilla; stir until just combined. Spoon among pans. Sprinkle with almonds.
STEP 3	Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centres comes out clean. Set aside for 5 minutes; turn onto a wire rack.
STEP 4	To make syrup, use a small, sharp knife to scrape seeds from vanilla bean and place in a medium saucepan. Add bean and sugar; stir to combine and break up seeds. Add water and place over lowheat. Cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and bring to the boil. Cook, without stirring, for 3-5 minutes or until syrup thickens slightly. Remove from heat. Pour hot syrup over friands. Set aside to cool.

WOW~That's it! We finished! As I am most definitely not the best chef, my friends helped me finish it and they provided the script for the recipe (as I am hopeless at this stuff also!).


Hope everyones enjoy it and checks it out for themselves!!!

Would You Like a (Skinny) Margarita With That Sun?

So, as I drive home after a day at work with the window's down, on a Friday, with 30 degree temperatures, a smile lights up my face as it is that time of year again.

The time where it is gorgeously hot with a warm breeze at night, and what a better way to say hello to the weekend then a margarita on the balcony, soaking up the sunlight before it fades into night.

What is that I hear you say? Summer is approaching and you are wanting to watch your waistline? Not a problem! A recipe I have dug up called "Skinny Margarita" is only 118.4 calories, compared to your usual 311 calories. BRILLIANT! Just what every woman wants to hear right?!

So how do you create some of this magic? Well, it is simple! Right in the vicinity of your home!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of lime juice 
• 1 cup of water
• 20 drops of stevia
• 6 oz tequila
• 2 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice
• Ice
• Salt for the glass rim- for an extra touch!

Steps:

1. Make a pitcher of margaritas by stirring all the ingredients together and taste it to alter sweetness levels
2. Add an additional (optional) stevia
3. Serve in your salt-rimmed glass over ice!

Serves: 4 glasses

Too easy right, all within 10 minutes and you could be looking at this on your balcony too, but actually enjoying it!!

Bring on summer (and that slim waistline at the same time too)!!!

Tea for Two at T2

A sunny spring day. A cup of tea. And a chat with your mates. That makes a perfect day. Plus a fact that tea is healthy! *I'm just trying to be fun*

T2 has been one of my favourite outing place, especially when I want to slow down, sit back and relax with some special friends. Its unique design, unique menu and friendly staff are the reasons why I keep coming back times after times. 

T2 Tea House has two stores, one in Macquarie Shopping Center and another one in Hornsby which I have never been at. 

The look from outside, through the glass walls

The very first thing that attracted my attention when I first came into the Macquarie Tea House store was the Japanese looking lady on the wall decoration. It gave me the feeling that I'll be served with tea in Japanese style - which is not true...kinda confusing...but anw, now I get used to it, after the 3rd time visiting the store. 

The warm color, stylish and cushiony chairs will surely make you feel like home. 

Different chair and table settings (btw, they're having High tea)

An interesting thing at Tea House is that it looks like a shop where the waiter/waitress will come to your table and take your order, but in fact, it's not! At my first time, I was sitting at my table, waiting for like 10 minutes, hoping that someone would come to me and ask to take the order. Until I saw a lady at the next table came to the counter and ordered her tea.

Another cool thing is that you will receive an empty teapot from the cashier after paying. Then, you'll bring this empty teapot back to your table and wait until the teapot is replaced with your tea. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes. In the meantime, it's a good idea to go through the menu to decide on what to try at your next visit! They have a set drink menu written on a blackboard above the counter, with a variety of new teas everyday. 

Sweets, salad, scones, cakes, etc 

Their delights include a range of cakes, pastries, sandwiches, salads, sweets and of course, tea. The tea is served in a Victorian-styled teapot or polka dotted ones, with unique traditional and contemporary tea cup. 

This time I get myself Crème Brulée tea and one caramel macaroon. 

And it tastes like Crème Brulée which is awesome! I can smell the caramelized aroma and feel the sweetness when slowly sipping the tea. This makes a perfect combination with the macaroon and gives me so much joy.

However, I must say I'm not a true tea drinker. So I'm quite happy with what I get here. If you expect some real, authentic, English tea experience, I suggest you might want to try somewhere else...

T2 Tea House
Address: Level 4, Shop 440 - Macquarie Shopping Center
Tel: 9888 3665