Egg Benedict

Happy new year! Insomnia has striked again and I find my self reading recipe books and watching cooking shows on YouTube. Things on my mind at the moment are 1. worrying about the never arriving contracts from the new lab. 2. wanting so desperately to plan my getaway from Brisbane and 3. a little drama in my private life. I tried jogging, cooking and gardening to calm my mind a little but they don't seem to help. Last night I managed to sleep a bit after midnight but I ended up having this unpleasant dream about making egg benedict on my bed and ruining my beautiful white sheets. I used to get these unpleasant sleeps when I worried about my experiments or about a month before piano recital or exams.

Anyway, so why egg benedict? A few days ago I was unable to sleep until about 6AM; I Googgled "breakfast" and landed my self on Breakfast Blogger. My favourite entry is Room Service at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan: NYC breakfast #3. I love staying at hotels though sometimes I get a bit scared and sometimes paranoid. There are so many entries which feature eggs (naturally) and the author(s) kindly inserted a Youtube video on how to make Truffled Egg Benedict. I'd heard of this name before and I think I even have the recipe somewhere in one or two of my books but I never really paid attention to it or knew what it is exactly.

After the nightmarish dream, I decided that I MUST make egg benedict, but first I need bread. I had left bread out of my shopping last night because I'm such a bread snob. Well, not really. It's just that, why buy commercially made bread with preservatives and funny chemical in it when I can make my own fresh loaf the way I like it (with tons of salt, chilli and garlic). So first thing was making bread. It was a good loaf, unlike the one I made 2 nights ago that ended up being like a really massive cracker (>"<).




Egg benedict as I understand it is essentially poached egg presented on a tower of toasted bread or English muffin and bacon, topped with a generous dollop (or whatever it is supposed to be called) of Hollandaise sauce; while the asparagus serves as a garnish and nutritional booster.

This is my first time making Hollandaise sauce; it's a bit like mayonaise except the egg is whisked with some heat involved. I didn't use clarified butter of course and the egg was fried sunny side up instead of poached. Maybe I'll follow things more religiously when I start cooking as a career. Hehehe. On the side is tomato, quickly pan fried (Yes, it looks soggy. It was soggy. I'll try better next time) and some potato cubes that I boiled for about 30 minutes then pan-fried with some curry powder and lemon grass. 30 minutes sounds a bit excessive and I had never done it before but they were soooooo soft with slightly crunchy exterior. It sort of just melted in my mouth after I broke the crunch. I should eat more potatoes (or maybe I should stick with my low calorie vegetable soup for a while, considering my escalating weight).

I tied my sister to the dining chair and made her eat it. Just kidding. She is, as always, my voluntary guinea pig, my sweet sweet kitchen test rat. She liked it. I'm happy. Let's hope tonight I could sleep in peace. Amen.

knottin' noodle

自己做麵條真好玩. 今天晚上我又再做. 照片上的是香菇味跟Bonito 味的.

剛剛 YouTube 上有看到一個 CHEF 做麵條. 看起來好像在看人家表演功夫. Click here to watch the noodle 師傅.太利害了!!! 現在會了自己做, 希望不會再吃 泡麵... 但我還是做不到泡麵的湯那麼 yummy. (>"<)

Aku sedih, nga jadi ke Korea.

fresh new year, fresh noodle

Happy new year!! (^o^) I hope everyone has had a great 2006 and a fantastic holiday. My parents came over for my graduation and left on Christmas day. I got miserably ill that day and couldn't stomach anything solid for a few miserable days. I recovered just in time to welcome the new years with my cousins and their cousins, one of whom came from Adelaide for the Christmas break. I went along with them to the city and on our stop at Borders I found a recipe book for pasta. I knew I shouldn't buy another recipe book so after hugging it for about an hour, I let go, keeping in my memory the basic recipe to make fresh pasta.

I've always wanted to make my own fresh noodle. I have this Korean DVD and its opening scene is of a guy making noodle in a really peaceful and homey kitchen. Today I made my first batch of noodle/pasta (call it whatever you like). I flavoured it with dried chilli. It turned out well except I think I needed fresher eggs and I should have rolled out the noodle a bit thinner (I don't have pasta maker, so I rolled it out with baking pin).














I quickly tossed the final product in my garlic infused olive oil, lemon juice, freshly cracked black pepper, dried chilli and flat parsley and topped it with a bit of shaved parmesan.

Hanyeong Haseo

I'm leaving for Korea in about a month time and after reviewing my pantry, I realise that I've got a lot of cooking. Tonight I made chilli and black sesame onigiri, chawan mushi and straw mushroom udon with chilli-wine sauce.

Honours year

(Back: James, Norelle & David. Front: Kiki, Prascilla & Masa)
2006 has been a great year. I completed my Honours in Biochemistry and Structural Biology. With the tremendous help and support of everyone in the lab, I achieved a First class Honours. Thank you to everyone in the Craik group especially Masa, my supervisor. I've learnt more than peptide science from her. She is my role model and a friend. I couldn't have survived this year without her constant guidance and support. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you also to Jonas for his faantasteek jokes and Richard for his never ending patience and answers to my silly questions, Crystal for her life advices and friendship and Prascilla, my best friend in the lab. Also to David Craik who has given me this opportunity to join his lab first as a student and then as an research assistant (RA). Thank you to Norelle, my first supervisor in this lab whose guidance never stops. Thank you to Sunithi, Kathryn, Conan, Ivana, Justine, Maria Felizmenio-Quimio, Michelle Colgrave, Rekha, Shane, J Lo my little brother, Christian Gruber, Phillip, David Ireland, Josh, Chia-Chia, Ray and Cameron for advices, words of encouragement and friendship.

It has been one great year.

birthday & engagement party

Congratulations to Masa and Miguel.

kopi coklat

kopi coklat
Originally uploaded by kiki.yulyaningsih.

冬菜包

This is Kiki's 冬菜包. Initially, I wanted to make Chinese style garlic bread, but because the 冬菜 flavour is much more persistent I decided that I should try harder to make it next time. For the dough, I had mixed in a little bit of 五香粉 (5 spice powder) and lots of garlic. I think it's fantastic and it definately will feature in my (future) cafe.

冬菜 (dong cai) is Chinese preserved cabbage. It's brown and salty.

paradis bleu

gina's 23rd

tomorrow gina (the nem) turns 23. above is the nem and her cake( blackberry cheesecake, topped/garnished with strawberries)

hating charsiew

It's Saturday and I wanted nasi goreng. I have this vegetarian charsiew meat in my fridge that I bought a while ago from the local Taiwanese grocer. I still don't like the taste, I think I just don't like charsiew flavour. So I tried masking the flavour with tom yum paste.

Result: very faint hint of the charsiew flavour. i wouldn't put that much tom yum paste in next time and perhaps green peas would help the color and nutritional content a bit more.

sang merah putih

Can't really celebrate this year. Gina is out with fever all week, I have a tonne of thing to do.

moshi moshi bento

Chawan mushi with prawns, onigiri, tuna salad, prawns & smoked trout, cucumber

bekal monster

I love japanese animation, but my cooking mood seems to always emerge when I'm watching them. Last night I made pandan bread after watching Yakitate Japan from episode one again. Anyway, I let my dough rise twice in hope that I'd achieve that snowy softness, it came out very cakey, soft nevertheless. The pandan essence smells nothing like pandan. Yuen's market sells frozen pandan but that won't do. I dream of being able to cook with real pandan again.

Tonight I'm watching Ichigo Mashimaro. I had to pause it every now and then to try to read the Chinese subtitle that seems to flash by. The itch to cook took over and then off I went to the kicthen. My ingredients are limitted, I'd like to have some cucumber, that would go well with the tuna salad. For more details, please click on the picture. That will take you to my Flickr page and you'd be able to see little notes.

我在想。。。 台灣便當跟日本的 bento 有什麽分別呢?

chocobomb

Lagi ngantuk pas selesai bikin kue ini. menurut rencana tadi maunya mocha mousse cake, tapi akhirnya error mulu. moussenya nga jadi karena tadi coklatnya kiki masukin ke microwave (karena males dipanesin pelan-pelan). begitu kuning telur dimasukin kok coklatnya tiba-tiba jadi keras...! nothing ever goes according to plan. telur yg udah disiapin buat mousse akhirnya buat quiche bawang. kemudian, kue ini jadi mocha cake bersandwich whipped cream dan dilapisi hazelnut ganache. yg bulat diatas itu hasil coklat yg dimicrowave tadi, dihiasin biji kopi.

pizza

I like to be a rebel when it comes to create traditional dishes. Far back is pizza al funghi with aiolli sauce base. The one on the front has prawn topping marinated with morrocan seasoning that i found in my spice cupboard. I hadn't made my own mayonaise for quite a while now and i really enjoyed it. I love the feeling of dough sticking to my hands, it's like a clingy puppy that you need to treat with love.

I'm graduating again in December, this time from my Biochemistry Honours degree and I'm going to move to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for 2 years. My parents are going to be really upset (I haven't told them, thank god they don't believe in internet). I still really want to do a phd, but not straight away.

I visited KL twice this year and I absolultely love the city, the environment, the pace. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are really similar culturally; Indonesia is slightly different. Singapore is a bit fast even though it's the perfect city for biotech. Indonesia is out of the question; I'd have no freedom. Malaysia is just right. :)

The most delicious thing I had while I was there in June was the deep fried oyster mushroom in Jalan Alor. I stayed at the Royale Bintang (previously known as Novotel) and the place is just a 5 minute walk away from the hotel.

l'ennui

i decided to bake, at 8.58 tonight. it's peanut butter cream sandwiched between layers of mocha sacher. i accidentally added too much ground coffee... happy birthday, chére blier.

le petit volcan

i call this the little volcano because of the dangerous amount of chili involved in the making. the chilli dough wraps tomyam flavoured vegetarian mince and chili. only for the brave and chili resistant mutants. if you can eat one bird eye chili (cili padi [malay]/cabe rawit [indo]) without crying, you can take this.

anti social

for the anti-social in all of us:
pan fried black sesame crusted ocean trout on a bed of spaghetti.
who says cooking for one isn't fun?

croissant

My first successful batch of croissants. In the picture is Gina's stuffed pig, Zai-Pi, with a mini croissant that I experimented with. I made them with lower fat content than the conventional croissants and increased fibre power. The texture was just as flaky and inside it's soft... so soft. (^o^)

For my own croissant recipe please click here.
To find out more about yeast and solution temperature click here.
For other illustrated croissant recipe click here.

Happy baking! I apologize for the lack of illustration guide. The next time I make croissant, I’ll get pictures of the stages.

cece and her birthday bouquet

Not completely unrelated to food or the midnight bakery.
This is my sister, my original taster, and her birthday bouquet.

quiche

新年快樂

call it good sign, i dreamt that the tree in front of my house, on the right side of the drive way, was fruiting with massive red ripe tomatoes. gina arrived just in time when i took out a rather strange looking ladder and we spent a bit of time setting it up to make sure it was stable. when i was up closer, i noticed that the tree was bearing rambutan, tomatoes, red capsicum, purple plums....

(^o^) happy new year everyone. wishing you happiness, health, wealth, love, luck and world peace. :P

spaghetti marinara

For Cece, a seafood addict, the funnest sister in the world, a funky banker and an awesome photographer.

Boentoet Jahoet

tadinya mo kiki kasi nama roti buntut, tapi rasanya kok boring gitu.. kaya ikut-ikutan sop buntut. wehehehe, jadi ganti aja namanya yang unik dikit. buntutttt yahuttt [boentoet jahoet]. *lol* spicy marinated prawns wrapped in bread dough. the dough is glazed with the marinate and sprinkled with black sesame seeds. i love the spiciness in this, but maybe next time i should mix in some chopped red chili into the dough to really bring out the indonesian flavour. nyam!

Selamat Ulang Tahun, Mama

If I could go up to the sun and take a morceau of its light to brighten everyday of your life, I'd happily burn and roast. But I'm not an astronaut, nor do I have wings to take me there. But I have hands, eggs, butter, sugar, fruits, jelly and knowledge of biochemistry and cakery to create something delicious yet healthy. ^^ Hehehe. Happy birthday, Mama. 祝你永遠幸福,永遠快樂, 永遠看起來象25歲的美女.

salty goodness

sautéed portabello with garlic, asparagus & anchovies pizza with cracked seasalt & drizzled with the new bottle of cold pressed extra virgin gourmet avocado oil that i bought just now. ah, the red thing there is thinly sliced chilli, gives the pizza a bit more of a bang.

like superglue

the midnight baker is finally confirmed a UQ graduant for graduation ceremony on the 7th of Decembre, 2PM. :P if you click into the picture and if you're wondering why i blacked out two rows... it's because i have a double degree. kakak, that's right. BSc(Biochemistry)/BA(French language & Mathematics). *tears of joy* after 3 months of worrying that i might fail my last semester. it's been one hell of a year and i'm still in one piece and unbreakable... like superglue thanks to everyone who kept me sane; Cece, Gina, Maša, Crystal, Gumby, Papa & Mama. i love you!!!

watch this space for some crazy cake coming up real soon.

crystal

Crystal 生日快樂!!!

mamamia macadamia

Selamat Ulang Tahun Stevana!!!

what you see: crème ganache blanche, strawberry fans, white and dark chocolate walls, macadamia nuts & pink ribbon.

what you don't: chocolate sponge cake, strawberry cake, macadamia whipped cream, 2 days worth of Bengawan Solo song playing over and over again and a happy family gathering. (^^)

headline news

*WARNING: pictures not for viewing of crabs under 1 month old*

Over the weekend came a disturbing news about the masacre of crabs. The victims were kidnapped from their homes and sold for $10/3 at a human shopping centre. Three in particular were reported to be bought by a human by the name of Kiki and her sister who later cooked and made a fiesta out of the incrabane killings.

Gelap

These are low sugar hazelnut brownies. I've decided that feeding people with artery clogging food stuff isn't really going to help my karma. The centre square is topped wtih ganache and roasted hazenut. The rest are completely glazed with ganache and topped with pecans and lindt's dark chocolate.

NOIRE

looks familiar? I wanted to experiment with chocolate curls. I made a mini one so that I could do a miniature Noire but Phillip ate a chunk of it... we worked around it and covered it in white but I forgot to take pictures before he ate it for real. maybe next time. Hehehe.

Luna de la lune

Welcoming 中秋節 (Chinese MidAutumn Celebration) or also known as Moon Festival.

I wish I'm home. It's a pity that Phillip doesn't like peanut.

¡Feliz cumpleaños!

Cakes are cold tasteless ornaments without the warmth of laughters of friends and family to celebrate the occassion with you. The surprise party was very nicely planned; I'm glad i took that extra double shot espresso to attend it. Hahahahaha. ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Miguel!

Sunday Night

Sate Pan

Khuntien #2, a special bread named after my hometown (written as pronounced in Teochew dialect). It's basically grilled prawns wrapped inside sweet bread dough on skewers and then baked.

Sisa Kemarin

Duluuu skali aku suka ngumpulin ranting kering dari pohon belimbing buat bikin api unggun di kebun belakang. Hidung si Papin pernah kebakar karena ngendus api waktu masi mungil. Kita masak agar-agar di kaleng bekas susu kental manis sampe asapnya itemm banget, dan setelah dinyam-nyam g sakit batuk seminggu. Ini buktinya kita belom kapok. Regina, Aban dan g nge-test drive mini BBQ grill yg dibeli Soikim pake sisa makanan yang nga sempat diabisin waktu 火鍋 / shabu-shabu minggu lalu ditambah Roti Bakar Bandung / Ropita. nyam.nyam.nyam.nyam.nyam

kurowa-san

It doesn't look too much like croissant from shape and texture, this is my first attempt.

white lie

L’inspiration n'arrive pas à quelqu'un qui le cherche… et c’était moi à vendredi. Je n’ai rien de recette secrète, je ne sais pas ce que je vais faire jusqu’à le moment j'y commence. À la photo est White Lies, un gâteau de chocolat blanc avec beaucoup de fraises. Joyeuse anniversaire Regina!

Peachy Peng-Loti

The things that fascinated me most as a kid when we travelled were buffet breakfasts at hotels, and I'm still crazy about them to this day. As a kid, I used to think that danish pastry was egg yolk on a piece of pretty toasted bread with loads of sugar. This is my own version, it's not perfect but I will get there. Thank you to my genious food photographer Regina/Inem and also to my critic Phillip/Aban for his very constructive advices and comments.

blood on the dance floor

bread smorgasbord

Went nuts on bread today. Hahah. these are just the usual... there's basil & sundried tomatoes, chocolatté, red bean paste and tuna mayo.

Dans La Famille

My cousin Phillip in his kitchen. I rescued this picture from my computer's trash bin. (^o^) He's too cool!!!