Reine's Kitchen 2024

I think it's been a while since I've posted any cooking adventures, but this Christmas I had plenty of time to really treat myself to some fancy food!

Ok, this cake was not something I made haha. This is my second ever whole cake purchase for just myself, a pistachio trifle cake from Teeter Bakery and it was amazing! I was worried it'd be too big for one person to finish, but I managed it over 3 days, which was pretty good!

Christmas Eve spread included a trial of a caprese tower (which evolved to something way more epic on Christmas Day!), some sashimi, Big Don's Smoked Meats ham, berries and cherries galore, and a prawn salad - originally I wanted to make a prawn roll as well but I didn't manage to source brioche buns this time around and the salad was just as good!

Also these fruit mince pies from Miller and Baker were great too! Turns out I am having a lot of trouble with my Japan Zero teapot; I can't pour it cleanly if it's got anymore than about 30% liquid in it, for some reason with my tilt it keeps coming out of the lid rather than just the spout? And if I tilt it less, nothing comes out. Still a conundrum!

And here is the epic caprese tower! It was a post by Poly that inspired me to try it, and I loved how ridiculous it looked, especially on my obnoxious plate!

Luckily my senses returned and my remaining tomatoes and burrata were plated normally!

And then for New Year's Eve and New Years I made my best chirashi yet! This time I got some sashimi, whereas previously I'd used just smoked salmon and some prawns as the seafood. Also, the tamagoyaki this year was really good too! I paid attention and used a brand new stainless steel pan which actually helped the egg glide smoothly! Who needs a non-stick pan dedicated to eggs XD

Another fun experiment was to try and make einspanners while Giant Coffee was closed. I used whipping cream, and only lightly whipped it, but it still came out too heavy. I am wondering if it's meant to be like half cream half milk as the secret? Who knows, I don't really need to continue researching the topic of lightly whipped cream since I have a cafe that does it better already!

I also found some mugwort mochi powder at the Japanese shop so I tried my hand at tri-colour dango. The pink ones were made with a raspberry and strawberry syrup I'd prepared earlier. Turns out that dango requires a mix of rice flour and glutinous rice flour, but I only had the glutinous type, which actually still turned out good but I suspect that the mix makes the dango lighter; my ones were quite dense compared to how the green ones turned out since that was a pre-mix. I also need to reduce the wetness of the dough; the mugwort balls were the most deformed because they had the highest water content, even though I tried to fix it by adding a bit more glutinous rice flour, but I guess I didn't add enough. This might be something I'll try again, but not sure!

New year's chirashi which used up the last of my sashimi :D

And lol, I had bought some sashimi grade scampi so I did some dumb things and made an abomination hand roll, which tasted really good!

And a cheese plate for lols. King Island black label brie, King Island Roaring Forties blue, and a red cheddar I found. I was actually after reypanaer but the shops didn't have any of the super aged stuff. I decided for the cheddar instead since I hadn't had it before and to my (dumb) surprise, it wasn't the flavour profile I was after haha. It tasted like cheddar when I was hoping for caramel and crystals! It was still good though, so I can't fault the cheese, just my poor life choices. Oh also, the black stuff is Kangaroo Island dried sticky figs - they were so good I was temtped to go back and buy more, but they're an expensive luxury item so I guess I can only search for and buy them once a year.

Merry Christmas Happy New Year!!!

Finally! A Zero Japan Teapot!!

I finally found a Zero Japan teapot at the shops and decided to buy it! What a lovely pink colour and I love the way the spout pours! Although I've noticed that the angle at which I need to pour is a lot less steep than my current teapot; I am currently spilling tea through the top rather than just getting all the liquid out from the spout, so I have to refine my technique!

And some random cooking adventures, mango and blueberry pancakes, as well as some pippis I found at the seafood shop so I yolo'd my own version of XO pippis. I think I overcooked the pippis a tad and I added too much salt but it was still good! Though I managed to get a few rocks and grit in the pippis themselves still, so I might leave it to the experts in restaurants!

Super short Sydney trip!

I've somehow been whirlwinded into classical music and had decided to browse performances at the Sydney Opera House, and stumbled upon Maxim Vengerov performing a recital! And I decided to buy premium tickets to see how a violin master plays in real life! It was also good for a short trip to see if my pigeons can survive unattended for a few days, in case I decide next year that I want to do Singapore for a few days.

The owner of Steam Tank coffee still recognised me after all these years! And this espresso was really good!

And AP Bakery's egg sandwich! I was really hoping that there'd be mortadella on this too, but it was just cheese and egg, so I decided to add on some ham, but it really wasn't needed! That egg was a really great custardy texture, definitely worth getting, and I was lucky that there was barely any wait when I visited!

Did you know the seats in the Opera House concert hall are such a pretty colour?!

Oh yeah, that was a great performance! The sound was so clear, and watching his bowing was amazing! How can he put the bow on the strings and it all just sounds perfect, while I'm there scratching away haha!

I am definitely enjoying this classical/performance phase!

My lovely lemon tree!

Last year my lemon plant gave me a single delicious lemon, so I was super excited and tentative when it made five lemons all in one go! I wasn't even sure that a plant in a pot could sustain so much fruit, but luckily I have both supermarket fertiliser and my special supply of pigeon-poop-water, lovingly provided by my pigeons, which I'm sure is the secret ingredient!

I've had to fight mealybugs the whole time, I think they've taken hold even though I don't see them very often - but when I do, they go squish! One of the lemons developed a defect in the super early stages of growth, so I knew to expect at least one imperfect lemon, but to be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought! I only picked two for now, since they can stay on the tree for a bit.

I think this time they were more sour than last time? But still delicious! I love that I've gotten 6 lemons from my tree so far, I'm hoping this will be an annual thing, but I'm not the best with plants so we'll see!

Firepop

Firepop is very new; my friend mentioned it to me amongst other hip and cool restaurants in the Newtown/Enmore area, and this one appealed to me quite a bit - I love places that cook with fire, and the description of the place sounded right up my alley - chicken hearts! Chicken tails! Padron peppers!

Look at the fish bones drying for stock!

My friend and I went for the a la carte menu since I wanted the chicken bits that weren't included in the set menu, and it turns out that it's possible to try all the things on the menu (not the mains or salads unless you have a super big appetite). We went through the priority items first and then later went back to get the things we missed!

This was the lamb marrow and it was my first time eating lamb marrow, it was good!

They didn't have oysters that day, but instead had some really nice hapuka with really tasty watermelon radish!

This is a terrible picture of a really nice wagyu cube. It's not as dark as it looks, and the flavour was good and it was nice and tender! I actually think this would go really nicely with some wasabi rather than the garlic chips, but I'm not complaining!

Wagyu slices, which did come with wasabi! It was also soy marinated so it had a great flavour.

And here are the chicken tails! I love that fatty goodness, it's so bad but so good!

The chicken hearts were really delicious too, maybe one day I should think about possibly cooking with chicken hearts?

They actually had a grilled tofu option which was really interesting, had a slightly spicy sauce if I remember and was quite enjoyable. I had been complaining lately how a lot of cheaper, almost fast food places (and even not cheap fast food places!) often don't do tofu well - I have no idea how. It's so simple to make it tasty, and Firepop demonstrates this well!

Ahahaha the padron peppers, with a side of shishito peppers. I love chilli roulette, and there was a frozen long grape on the side if we got the spicy one. Because I have no spice tolerance though, it's hard to tell if I actually got a super spicy one. I think I can gauge whether or not something is spicier than normal for me; the final padron pepper was noticeably hotter than the previous one I ate, and the heat continued to build up well after I stopped eating more, so I imagine I might have hit the jackpot, and so I asked for an extra frozen grape. I should really freeze some grapes as edible sweet ice!

And here's where we went back to the top of the menu and ordered the things we skipped. Corn ribs with a mountain of cheese, one of their popular dishes, and with good reason! Very tasty corn!

The lamb was also very impressive, I actually don't eat enough lamb but whenever I order it, it's so good. I really think I should look into learning to cook more cuts of lamb too; I didn't cook lamb forequarter chops very well once (I had no idea how long to cook them for) and usually end up specialising in backstrap and cutlets, both of which are some of the most expensive cuts ever. Lamb ribs and lamb leg seem to be grisly? I have no idea why it'd be grisly? So shoulder is the only cut that I really enjoy slow cooking - it's so good! Maybe one day I need to find a cut that I can short cook well.

And the pork belly, a classic, tasty stick!

Okay, this panna cotta was actually amazing. The chef mentioned that they make everything from scratch, even the buttermilk, which is really cool! There was rhubarb and strawberry that cut through the panna cotta nicely, and also the drops of olive oil in there were really nice too! The panna cotta had a texture similar to the type of custard that Teeter Bakery in Perth makes, it's smooth, rich, very, very nice!

What a cute little restaurant that makes tasty food! It's so simple and we could try everything without feeling overly full (I managed to save enough stomach space to go a few doors down and try out some vegan salmon sushi lol - which was fun to eat!). Hopefully they'll do well!