honey glazed pork ribs

When I was a small girl, I always loved it when we have honey glazed pork ribs (baikut madu) on the table. It seems like such a luxury to have, with its golden honey coating the crisply fried succulent pork ribs pieces. I used to think that cooking them must be so complicated and hence never tried it.

One day, though, I woke up early, my mum was serendipitously cooking the pork ribs, so I stayed and watched. I don't know what I was so hesitant about, because it was nothing difficult, it only needed minimal ingredients and it's bloody delicious!

kachi gamjatang

Kimchi stew with pork and tofu - $6.95

Hot stone pot bibimbap with bulgogi - $8.95

The first time I went to KaChi, I had the kimchi stew with pork and tofu, not knowing that KaChi is famous for its gamjatang. The tofu stew was pretty darn spicy, but spicy in a painfully good way.

My husband had the hot stone bibimbap with bulgogi, which had fresh vegetables, mushrooms and deliciously marinated beef. Since he is a lightweight in the chilli eating department, even more leightweight than I am, the bibimbap was perfect for him. He got greedy that day and ordered some dumplings, which he then couldn't finish.

penrose fish & chips

My husband has searched far and wide for great tasting fish and chips in Ontario, but he has not found any that compared to the Australian fish and chips. I thought I might help him find one and suggested the Penrose fish and chips.

The shop was small and quaint. It's the type of shop that has been in the neighbourhood forever, owned by the family from one generation to the next. The wall was covered with pictures of the area in the 1940s, there was old newspaper clippings and fishing paraphernalia. The proprietor was courteous and efficient.


All that quaintness and niceness, however, cannot compensate the fact that the fish and chips was sub-par. It was not that the fish was not fresh, because I think it was. It was the oil. I think they've used it too many times or that they didn't have good control of the oil temperature, which made the fish and chips taste like burnt oil. I was very disappointed. We promised oursleves to give them one more try, hoping that this was just a one time thing.

Halibut & Chips - $9.50

Dad's Root Beer - $1.75

Penrose Fish & Chips
600 Mount Pleasant Rd
Toronto ON
Open Tuesday-Friday 11am-7pm, Saturday 11am-6.30pm

japanese daikon chicken curry

I would usually cooked japanese chicken curry with carrots as the vegetable. But, a few days before I cooked the curry, I cooked my daikon chicken soup where I overestimated by buying two daikon roots, and used only one. So, I googled and found this site that recommended to use it in a curry.

I won't tell you how to cook japanese curry, because all I do is buy the instant curry roux and follow the instruction on the box. And when they tell you to add the vegetables, add the daikon, simmer until the daikon is soft. I normally use the House brand curry sauce (medium hot), but obviously you can use any curry sauce that you love.

red soup

For you non-asians, I know what you're thinking, what the heck is red soup (or sup merah)! It's actually a very common recipe in Chinese families. I'm guessing that it's made up during the war when the only meat they could find was the canned variety.


Every family has a different recipe, this is my family's recipe which I have modified a bit. My mother got this recipe from my grandmother, and now she has given it to me (plus her modifications).

I guess that's how family recipes are passed down, you might choose to add a little bit of this or that and adapt the recipe to make it your own. I do have to say that you cannot modify or remove the tomatoes as an ingredient. The tomatoes are the crucial ingredient which makes the soup red.

gordon ramsay plane food fresh fruit salad

Fresh fruit salad - £5

We did not go to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant because it was a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. We went there because there was no other restaurant in Heathrow airport that served light breakfast. We just landed from Paris and my stomach was so unsettled that I just wanted a bowl of fresh fruit salad. It was only here that we found it.

The restaurant was decorated in the clean, modern style with plenty of light from those wide glass walls. Breakfast was pretty quiet, the waiter & maître d' gave us their full attention. Our order of fresh fruit salad, classic breakfast, toast and preserves came quite quickly. We were in a hurry to catch our next flight, so every minute counted.

il duca spaghetti alla bolognaise

Spaghetti alla bolognaise - €13

When I'm in a new Italian restaurant and when I'm in doubt, choose spaghetti bolognaise (yes, what a boring choice, but it has served me well so far). Unfortunately, Il Duca did not have spaghetti bolognaise in their menu, but I asked the waiter anyway and he said that there's no problem to arrange it for me. I think you can only request this kind of thing in a small restaurant. Big restaurants won't have the patience in making something specially for you.

Il Duca is a very small restaurant, like most restaurant in Montmartre, but this one is especially small. You can hear everyone's conversation. We sat next to two British ladies, I was totally eavesdropping! The waiter (singular, one waiter in the restaurant) was very friendly, understood English perfectly well. My mere-male husband managed to singe the menu with the candle on our table, but the waiter was totally understanding and got us a new one. Ooops!

new naoko yakitori

We had a reasonably nice meal in New Naoko in Montmartre. It's not authentic Japanese, the chefs and servers were speaking in mandarin, but the food was top notch in quality. Before the meals arrived, came a side of edamame, crunchy and salty. The sushi was fresh, though I didn't much care for the ugly parsley garnish, if it doesn't improve the taste of the food don't put it in there.

Menu D (4-piece sushi & 5 skewers) - €16.90

I ordered Menu B, it had the skewers of beef ribs, prawns, mushrooms, chicken and duck. They were all yummy. The salad that came with menu had this great tangy wasabi salad dressing. The menu came with the standard rice and miso soup.

Menu B (8 skewers) - €14.10

New Naoko
3 Rue Abbesses
18e arrondissement, Île-de-France
Open Tuesday-Sunday 12pm-2.30pm & 7pm-10.45pm

boulangerie ravignan croissants

In Paris, it seems to me that there was at least one boulangerie (english: bakery) in every block of land. I really love that about Paris. I love that it's not Starbucks or McDonald's that are ubiquitous, it's the great old fashion bakeries. I just hope I won't be proven wrong in a few years time.

As you may have read from my previous posts, we stayed in Montmartre for our honeymoon, and our little apartment was near the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. It would take about a 15-minute walk to get there from our apartment. One night, the weather was nice (not too cold and the sky was clear) that we decided to go there on the spur of the moment. We walked and we climbed the many steps and the hills.

View of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur from Place du Tertre

robert et louise cote de boeuf pour deux

Escargots les 6 - €8

Another French thing to do is to eat the infamous snails, a.k.a. escargots, which we did get to eat at Robert et Louise in the Marais district. But that was not the reason why we came to this place, it was just a coincidence that they had it there. I came because Robert et Louise was highly recommended by Lonely Planet to be serving home-style, rustic French cuisine, which it most certainly did.

The restaurant was decorated in a traditional home country style, with a lot of knick-knacks and bric-à-brac here and there. The proprietor (which I assume was Monsieur Robert) sat at the bar, keeping track of the comings and goings of the guests. We almost didn't get to eat here because we got lost, as usual, trying to find this place plus we didn't make any reservation. Luckily, we beat the crowd and sat at the bar for dinner, but only just. Few people who came after us were turned away as there were no more seats left.

crêpes sucrées

crêpe avec nutella - €2.50

In Paris, everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, there are numerous crêperies to be seen, especially in the touristy places like Montmartre. The French must have known that we tourists are such fools for novelties. I mean what kind of street snack would we eat in France if not crêpes. It can be made in a jiffy, it warms you up in a cold day and it won't fill you up.

From my tone you may deduce that I am a bit bitter about this whole crêpes thing. Well, you're right. I mean, these crêperies would only have to have the crêpes' batter, then either sugar, nutella and/or bananas. You know how much they charge for a piece of nutella crêpe, €2.50, that's AU$3.70 (current exchange rate) and that's considered cheap because we were in China Town (4e arrondissement).

In other places like Montmartre, you'd have to pay at least €3-5 for a nutella crêpe. With AU$7, I could have gotten a really filling meal. But when you're a tourist, you won't care about a few euros here and there.

groceries in montmartre

I find it curious when I'm in a country where I don't understand the language of, suddenly everything seems such a novelty. A trip to the grocery, which normally takes 10 minutes, would take triple the time.

ladurée macarons

Someone once told me that macarons are Les incontournables des Paris (english: Paris must-haves). It's dainty, it's colourful, it's like eating art. And no other place in Paris more famous for its macarons than Ladurée.

Ladurée is more like an institution than a simple macaron shop. As I was opening the door to the Champs-Élysées branch, I was greeted by a long queue at the counter. I was really tempted to just turn right to the restaurant and warm myself from the bitter cold I have just escaped from. Second option was to relax at the bar towards the back of the building. But, I was there to buy the macarons, get out and move on with the day. So, I queued.

kunitoraya ténpura-udon

Ténpura-udon - €13

What could be better than a bowl of udon with hearty soup to warm you up when it's bloody freezing outside that you couldn't feel your toes, all your joints ached, your ears felt like ice blocks and your nose could pass off as Rudolph's nose? That's exactly the question I asked myself while we were freezing our butts off outside the louvre. So, we went and searched for, apparently, one of the best udon in Paris.

may fa poulet sauté sel & poivre

Another cheap eats near our apartment was at this Chinese restaurant, we found quite accidentally really. We were starving at lunch time and were walking back to our apartment. Just few metres from the apartment, I saw these huge fried prawns on display.

picard surgelés frozen food

While you may think that being in France we would eat fabulous 5 michelin star cuisine every single day, the fact of the matter is, we were travelling on a budget. We kept costs down by not going to every museums (not our thing anyway), we did not stay in a 5-star hotel, we did not eat crazy expensive French food every day. We chose to go to only a couple of museums, we stayed in a charming little pied-à-terre in Montmartre and we ate in local restaurants. But when we got lazy eating out, we bought some Picard Surgelés frozen food, there's actually a store just steps away from our apartment (to me, it sort of look like a dental surgery from the outside, maybe it's the blue and white colour scheme).

mcdonald's royal cheese

I arrived in Paris at 5 in the morning after a very long flight, even then I still had to wait for my husband to arrive on another flight at 12pm. I was not in a jolly mood. But, I somehow managed to struck up a conversation from a guy from NSW and a girl from Hong Kong.

I was quite amazed to find someone from Australia to talk to. For the life of me, I can't remember his name (and lost his email too. sorry! hope you found me in the world wide web so I can give you your picture), but he was the one who looked outside the window, saw Colin Firth and proceeded to tell me. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have met Colin (yes, we're on first name basis now). Colin's so nice, he saw me stalking him, taking a picture of him and so he asked me if I want to take a picture together with him. Tell me, is there any sane girl out there who would have passed that up?!!

kayumanis breakfast service

One of the three hotels that we stayed in during our wedding was the Kayumanis Private Villa & Spa in Nusa Dua. In Kayumanis, they have these private villas with its own private pool and even the most basic villa has a separate living room and an outdoor shower. Quite romantic really, if not for some of the horrors that we found.

When we stayed there, they were spraying for bugs, which didn't bug us. But, the next morning, when we were eating in the living room, a maggot of some sort dropped from the ceiling and landed near where our breakfast was (you can get your breakfast delivered to your villa without charge, so we did that every morning).

warung ibu oka babi guling

Dear faithful readers, I am not sure how many of you out there are following this blog. I hope you have been enjoying it as much as I have been writing it.

I am trying out this new format, I will start uploading one frame per picture instead of 4 frames-in-one like I have been doing in the past. One, it'll be easier on me, less time consuming, two it gives you foodies a closer view of the food. Love to hear what you think, so let me know.

I have for you, starting from today, stories of my wedding/holiday/honeymoon food adventur-ing, first in Bali then in Paris. First up is Ibu Oka's most famous babi guling (english: roast pork). In Bali, you can eat roast pork in just about every restaurant, but I beg of you, please resist that temptation and go to Ibu Oka instead. Not every roast pork is made the same and if you have made the trip to Bali, you might as well get the best.

taurus hawker combination hor fun in egg sauce

The last time we went to Taurus, my brother-in-law told me that this was his most favourite place during his uni days for affordable, honest-to-god good Malaysian food. It's not because he's a sentimental bloke that he kept going there every so often even after graduating more than 5 years ago.

I've got to warn you, the restaurant is nothing fancy, it's hawker style after all, so no fancy decor, no fancy table and chairs. Just fast service, delicious food and it can be a bit rowdy during lunch time so get in early or have it for take away.

1. Snacks
3. Combination laksa
4. Combination hor fun in egg sauce

I always get the silky smooth combination hor fun in egg sauce, my sister the mi pok and my brother-in-law the combination laksa. But other than the great food, they also have Malaysian/Indonesian/Singaporean snacks, but you gotta be there early, they sell like hotcakes (I always wonder about this phrase, why hotcakes? Why not gummi bears or chocolate cakes?).


Taurus Hawker Foods
Shop 10, 113 Collins Road
Willetton WA
Open Tuesday-Sunday 11am-9pm