Genghis Khan, Sydney

I recently got into online coupons, and I was really excited to make a booking for this deal that I got off Scoopon - $16 for an all you can eat Mongolian feast!

I have heard the restaurant name before as there is also a Genghis Khan restaurant in Singapore. It has more of a Japanese mix - because it seems that Singaporeans love Sashimi in an all you can eat. And I can vouch for that. I don't think that the Genghis Khan that we went to in King St Wharf has any link to the one in Singapore, but it's an eating experience nonetheless.

The process is simple.



First, you select your meat - lamb, beef, pork or chicken - and then you select your vegetables and sauce. Then, you line your bowl up to get fried up on a gargantuan flat hot plate. Apparently, this has evolved from the Mongolian warriors shaving off frozen meat and frying them with twigs on their round metal shields.

The result was really yummy and fresh, and the variety of what you can choose from keeps it from being boring. Quite simply, it's great stir-fry.

It was a little bit hard to photograph, though...



It all kind of looks the same, but there are subtle differences in flavour with the different sauces that are available. The meat was tender and juicy, and the vegetables still crispy.

There was one small down side though.



The meat, on occasion, was slightly undercooked. Which, is not necessarily a bad thing - I really dislike overcooked meat. However, it does get a little bit awkward when that happens on a pork or chicken dish. Something to look out for, but I think the flavour of beef and lamb works better anyway, and so that didn't really affect the meal for me.

In all, it was a fantastic meal for the coupon. Sean and I walked away with our bellies full, all the while knowing that we didn't stuff our face full of something that we'll regret for the rest of the week. It was a light sort of full, and it still felt great the day after.

Still, I'm not sure if I would pay full-price ($26.80 for dinner) for it. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with the place - the staff were attentive and the food tasted great - but would it really be worth the near $30/pp (I'm rounding up for drinks) price tag?

I'm not so sure.

We ate at:




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Leftover Pizza!

Not that the pizza was leftover...rather it was pizza made out of left overs.

One weekend I really felt like olives and roasted red peppers. I thought, "Hmm, why not make a sandwich with all those toppings? Ooh I could make them like little pizzas. But wouldn't they be too small. I could make pizza dough and make real pizzas instead!"

So I made pizza dough. My train of thought always gets me in trouble.

It was quite a bit of effort, but on behalf of everyone who ate it - Sean and myself - it was really worth it effort. And there's something about kneading dough that makes me happy.

I simply used this pizza dough recipe from Taste, and covered the pizza with tomato paste and with whatever leftovers I had in the fridge! I had:

• Roasted red peppers - I bought red capsicum in bulk and chucked them all in a 200C fan-forced oven till they were all blackened. I then covered the tray with foil and let it cool. After it cooled, I just peeled off the skin and took out the stem with seeds. Then, I just put them into a sterilised jar and keep them in the fridge!
• Thinly sliced onions
• Finely chopped garlic
• Chopped Bacon
• Haloumi
• Misc Cheese - I had some tasty cheese, a little block of parmesan and a teeny tiny bit of mozerella left over.
• Olives

The recipe for the pizza dough yielded two medium cookie trays worth of pizzas, which means as much experimenting as you want!!

Just remember to oil the bottom of the trays before you stretch the dough onto them.

Yum.

House, Surry Hills

And, no, it's not the doctor on TV. Vina and Lauren had heard about a dessert called "Better Than Sex" at House, in Surry Hills. Talk about expectations hey?

Well, there always needs to be a lead up, so first.



We had a great seafood salad - Yum Sea Food, $14. It was a little bit on the spicy side, but the seafood was nicely cooked with a great dressing. It was light, tangy, slightly salty...I thought it went really well with the glutinous rice, which came in this uber cute steaming basket!!



We also had some lovely spiced chicken - Gai Yang, $16.



It was surprisingly well cooked - there are so many places that seem to overdo the chicken for some reason - and full of bursting flavour. The chicken was juicy, and not fatty, and each bite was lovingly dipped into a sweet/spicy chilli sauce that it was served with.

And the last savoury dish that was ordered was the herbal soup - Aorn Gai, $14.



Topped with dill, this soup was really refreshing...in a broth sort of way. It's quite hard to describe, but it whenever I started feeling a little bit full, the soup actually made me feel...cleansed, and actually whetted my appetite. Served in a little pot on a stand, it was also really cute, and had great visual effect.

And finally.

What everyone has been waiting for.



Better Than Sex is a piece of extremely soft white bread is fried and topped with a gargantuan, monolithic scoop of pandan coconut ice cream and treacle-y caramel syrup. Was it good? Extremely. Did it live up to its name? Well, depends on how you like either I suppose. But it is very good.

In essence, the food was tasty, and the service not too bad. There was a nice flow of people through for dinner, and it got neither too crowded or quiet.

Definitely somewhere that I would go to again.

We ate at:

House
(02) 9280 0364
Surry Hills
202 Elizabeth St
Surry Hills, 2010




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Bacon Pancakes

After watching Man Vs Food - Season 3, Episode 2 where host Adam Richman goes to The Buff Restaurant in Boulder Colorado - I decided that bacon in pancakes was a really really good idea. There were a couple of things that I took away from the episode:

• The bacon was first baked, not fried.
  
• The pancakes were semi-cooked before pieces of bacon were pressed into them.
  
• It was all then topped with a 'basted egg' which, from what I could gather, was a part poached, part steamed sunny side up egg. 

So I decided to do a little experiment. I laid some bacon out on a tray, and put them in the oven. While that was in there, I decided to fry some bacon.



The fried bacon turned out curly, with more extreme caramelization.



The baked bacon seemed more evenly browned, and turned out flat pieces that were more easily pressed into the pancakes, and prevented the batter overspill that happened with the curly bacon. It's all personal preference, really.

The pancakes used in the show were, I think, buttermilk pancakes. I used my own recipe for pancakes, but feel free to use whichever one you want.

Breakfast Pancakes:

1 cup self raising flour (or one cup plain with a teaspoon of both baking powder and baking soda)
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk

Mix all the ingredients together, being careful not to overmix. Heat a pan to medium and lightly coat with oil. Ladle the mixture into the pan. When bubbles start appearing and the pancakes start setting, place cooked pieces of bacon onto the still-slightly-runny batter. Flip the pancakes.

Serve with maple syrup.

********

The final part of this awesome breakfast dish is, of course, the basted eggs. For this, you need a frying pan, a lid, egg, water, and a little bit of oil.

Basted Eggs

Eggs
Water

Preheat a lightly oiled pan to medium heat. Use butter for an extra richness. Crack an egg (or two!) into the pan. As the whites start to set, add about a teaspoon of water, and cover with the lid. I used a glass lid, which allows me to monitor the eggs, but my stove's medium heat has my eggs done in about 30 seconds. This does take a little bit of trial and error, but it does pay off in the end.

Don't believe me?

Here's the money shot.



The most perfectly runny, silky eggs ever.

Well worth the effort. =)