dadeo, po'boy oh-boy oh-boy

There were a few instances during the road trip in Canada when I didn't bring my good camera with me, thinking that it wasn't worth carrying to lunch or dinner or any other meal I was having at the time. This was such an instance.

warung mak beng sup ikan

I've been to some pretty amazing places serving some pretty amazing food, all from the recommendations found in the blogosphere. That is not to say I haven't been to awful ones because I trusted a high urbanspoon rating, or maybe because a particular place is related strongly to a certain foodie keyword in google.

menega cafe

Have you read my short post on Menega Cafe last year? If you haven't, go on, go ahead, click the link, read about it. It won't take long. I'll wait.

Dum dum dum....

There it is, as you can see, Menega is one of my favourite places to go to in Bali since my wedding organiser introduced it to me last year. And since this is my second post on this place, I won't rave about the food again.

Instead, I thought I'd show you the restaurant itself. Its scenic surrounding. Its cooking, from grill to plate.

bumbu bali nasi campur

Gedang mekuah - Rp 70,000

Gedang mekuah is a bowl of spicy green papaya and seafood soup. It was my appetiser when I went for lunch at this restaurant called Bumbu Bali.

spaghettini with tuna sauce

Another pasta dish I cooked on a weeknight is Antonio Carluccio's pasta with tuna sauce, but this time I didn’t forget to take pics! Yay me! *Pat self on back*

What I found after cooking this dish is that I love tomato-based pasta dishes so much better than non-tomato-based pasta dishes. Love that heartiness, that umami-ness, that sauci-ness.

speechless sunday

Weekday meals

Pan-fried salmon wrapped in prosciutto & steamed broccoli

Wedges in hot oil

Wedges

Deep-fried potato cubes

Chicken liver - $7.99/kg
For making stir fried livers with garlic & sweet soy sauce

speechless sunday

Rottnest scallops - $19.99/kg

Rottnest scallops (cleaned) - $14.99/0.5 ounce

Whole cuttlefish - $9.99/kg

Barramundi cod - $34.99/kg

Innaloo Seafresh Fish Markets
Corner Oswald St & Scarborough Beach Rd
Innaloo WA

speechless sunday

Things from the local market.

Fresh prunes (first time I've seen them)

Pomegranate

Okra

Trumpeter

Red snapper

Pink snapper

oven-fried fish with fennel crust

Continuing on my addiction on fish lately, I did another hunt through my recipe books and found this fabulous fish recipe with crunchy breadcrumbs crust. It's so easy to make, yet so satisfying. It's as good as KFC, yeah, I said it. Unlike the chicken, this is most definitely healthier. And it's fast become one of my regulars.

plaa neung prik manao

I'm addicted to fish lately. I've been trawling through my cooking books for great fish recipes. This particular one from David Thompson's Thai Street Food is a classic Thai dish. Salty, spicy, sour and sweet, an all-in-one dish.

I made a few modifications for convenience purposes. The recipe asked for banana leaves to plate the fish, which I omitted, because I couldn't find any. It also asked for barramundi, but the barra in my local seafood market wasn't particularly fresh that day, so I substituted it with a whole gold band snapper instead.

crispy fried salmon & gochujang watercress

This is one of the quick easy meals that I like to make when I'm not in the mood for spending 40 minutes whipping something up. And of course, the omega-3 boost is not a bad bonus either.

I thought this up quite by accident actually. I had some hot pepper paste (korean: gochujang) in the pantry that I had bought in a whim but had not been using. So I made this recipe up to utilise the gochujang and to alleviate my guilt.

pan fried snapper

A really quick and tasty way of upping your omega-3 intake is to pan fry your choice of fish and either eat it with rice (my preferred way) or with salad.

It's good to know your nearest fish market where you can buy fresh fish. When I went to get my fish, I didn't know which fish is good for pan frying. This is the time when a knowledgeable fishmonger worths its weight in gold. She recommended the soft-fleshed pink snapper and she couldn't be more right. The fish was so soft that it literally melts in my mouth.

assam fish

This recipe is another keeper from Food Safari (google: SBS food safari). I got a chance to do this one because the cleaner at my work just came back from a fishing trip and she gave me two steak chunks of mackerel from the fish that she caught herself. Thanks Flossy, you're tops!

I kinda butchered this recipe, because I couldn't find a mortar and pestle to grind the rempah to a fine paste. So I used a blender which couldn't make the rempah into a fine paste. Added to that, silly me, I tried to stir the rempah with a chopstick while the blender was still on. Can you believe it? So I had to throw away that chewed up chopstick and start over. In the end, I think I did an OK job. Maybe that'll teach me next time to stick to the instructions to a tee.