A Brunch: Typika Artisan Roasters

A couple of weeks ago, I went with two of my highschool friends to Typika Artisan Roasters at Claremont. The place is a little tucked away but very close to Claremont Quarter. We all wanted to try a few different things so we decided to order 3 meals from their lunch menu and share it between the three of us.

My main worry when ordering at a relatively western restaurants or cafes is the taste. I grew up in Asia and I am very used to stronger tastes and western cooking usually taste a little bland to me. However, this worry was a useless one at Typika! The presentation of their dishes is definitely very nice and I love all three of the dishes that we ordered.

Here’s what we got:

Pork and Crab Gyoza $16.00

Free-range pork and Shark Bay Blue Swimmer Crab fried and steamed dumplings with a soy and red vinegar dipping sauce.

The gyoza is definitely delicious and I’d go back and eat it though I don’t think it is at all Japanese nor if it is supposed to be real Japanese gyoza. It’s yummy and that’s all I care about.

Pulled Pork Quesadillas $20.00

Shoulder of pork, marinated in spices and slow cooked in sarsparilla, shredded and served in a grilled tortilla with cheddar and BBQ sauce, accompanied by a BBQ corn, capsicum and avocado salsa.

This is the first time I have tried anything like this. The shredded pork is so fine, soft and smooth that the texture reminded me of canned tuna – in a good way (I love tuna!). The taste is sweet and I am hungry just thinking about it now.

Petite Steak Sandwiches $25.00

Three mini steak sandwiches on garlic croutes, succulent grilled fillet steak, cream cheese, bacon, asparagus and harissa hollandaise, served with beer battered onion rings and aioli.

Yet another yummy dish. All I can say is yum yum yum.

I would definitely go back to this place. Although the price is a little high for me to visit and eat often but it’ll be somewhere to go to for when I feel a little fancy.

Have you been to Typika?

Lots of Smiles,

Sita

Times Square Claremont Blogger Gathering

Yesterday, I went to my first ever blogger gathering.

What is a blogger gathering? I asked myself that same question when I was trying to decide what to wear. It’s a fairly informal event where bloggers just come together, sit around, get to know each other and have a massive social media frenzy. I attended one that Times Square Claremont (TSC) organised. Here’s what happened during the day:

The only gathering where being on your phone is not rude but rather, highly encouraged.

Thank You Cookie Dough Biscuits for our yummy nibbles!

We met up at Cookie Dough Biscuits where we talked and got to know one another as well as nibbled on yummy nibbles.

Of course, bloggers being bloggers, we all had to take pictures of EVERYTHING. Food being a high priority for most of us.

Here’s a few girls I met – Vanessa from Nezuki, Dar from Call Me Dazzle, Meg from Darling, We’re the Young Ones and Joy from The Perthian. I also got to meet fellow Indonesian blogger Angeline from Love Thread! You might have seen her last year at the Perth Fashion Festival for Restyle!

Here’s a red sign that everybody loves. Am I right?

We then went to the stores around Times Square Claremont and took photos. We went to shops such as Lost Souls, Breathless, Jomay Cao, Sana Boutique, Poppy Lissiman Addition, Betty Tran, Tarvydas, and even L’Amour Kids.

Some amazing Jewellery at Betty Tran (and I love the display!)

Jomay Chao’s Shop Display

The back of the infinity dress on Jomay Cao’s display window

Some amazing Jewellery by Alicia Sarra at Jomay Cao

Tiny Shoes at L’amour Kids

Who can resist looking at cute little tiny things? everything is so pretty and cute and tiny and I just wish that I could still wear them sometimes.

Lastly, another first for me – my outfit of the day. Basic plain white tee, elastic skirt (Indonesia), lace-up-detailed flat shoes (Indonesia), brown messenger bag (Indonesia) and of course, my Camera!

More photos from the event on Instagram (#tscbloggercatchup)

I met with so many wonderful people – fellow bloggers, fellow Indonesian, fellow photographers. Thank you to Nikola from Times Square Claremont and Cookie Dough Biscuit for the event yesterday and Cindy from Rose Gold Whimsy for the invite!

Lots of Smiles,

Sita

Meet 6 Garlic & Mr. ROnion

Hello hello! I hope you are having an awesome weekend so far. I’m just here to quickly introduce you to my 6 garlic and Mr. ROnion!

6 Garlic is a pot of 6 garlic (obviously) and Mr. ROnion is a red onion in a separate pot. I saw so many posts about planting garlic on Pinterest and so I wanted to give it a try.

I’m not much of a green thumb but I thought I’d give planting garlic and onions a go. I’m in to try lots of things at the moment! #YOLO. I’ve just been following a few instructions from the internet. I put them on my patio (with a roof) and water them about twice a week since it is autumn here in the lower half of Australia. I also sprinkled a little tiny bit of Epsom salt on top of it the other day as fertiliser. If anyone has any tips, do let me know!

Yes, I am so creative I write details on some extra plastic spoons we had laying around the house from takeaways and such. *sarcasm*

Anyway I will probably write update blogs on these two pots every now and then!

I hope you have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

 

Lots of Smiles,

Sita Carolina

 

Kale Chips

Seasoned Kale in the dehydrator along with other veggies my mum is dehydrating.

Recently I found a fitness website called Blogilates. It is getting rather popular on youtube right now with many success stories, healthy recipes, etc posted on their website.

While browsing around the “recipes” section, I found this recipe for Kale Chips and Cassey (the owner and host of Blogilates) said that it tastes like Doritos! And it’s KALE! A super-food  I hear there’s heaps of benefits from eating kale – some a little unbelievable. But if you want you can do a quick search on google or read this.

I gave up eating deep friend around 5 years ago but I still gave in when it comes to potato chips and Doritos until about a year ago. If this recipe is a success, not only can I eat this healthy snack, but I can also share this with my family and promote a healthier diet. So I have high hopes!

Since my family and I were going to go travel for 2 weeks, we had to “clean out” our fridge – meaning buy nothing new and eat what’s there. We still had a bag of kale left and didn’t know what to do with them since that was our first time seeing and buying Kale. So I decided to make kale chips.

Dehydrate at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours…

I followed Cassey’s recipe except for the fact that we didn’t have any sunflower seeds nor cashews as suggested by the source recipe – we only had peanuts, so we used that instead. After dehydrating them for about 4 hours (we left it a little longer since we were out of the house for a couple of hours to do some last minute shopping for travel) they came out about half the size and super crispy! I think that’s what we’re going for?

The Finished Product

The taste? Um… a little weird… Mine didn’t turn out to taste like Doritos, possibly because we used peanuts. But hey, still edible and pretty yummy.

One thing I found weird in the recipe was that on Cassey’s blog, it says if I use the oven to bake it for 5 minutes, toss then bake for another 5 but on the source recipe that Cassey mentioned, it says to bake for 3-4 hours. What a huge difference! Let me know if any of you tried baking them.

Nutritional Yeast

I also had a really hard time trying to figure out what “Nutritional Yeast” was. There was so many warnings saying that it’s different from a brewers’ yeast. I almost used bakers yeast (which I did find very weird) since I thought this was the same thing. Luckily I searched around a bit more and found out that it is definitely not bakers yeast. I searched around some more and found out that there are a few alternative names to “Nutritional Yeast” – Savoury Yeast Flakes is what it’s called here in Australia. Unluckily, my local supermarket didn’t carry it. So I had to go on an adventure to go to a pharmacy (out of all places) at a suburb nearby and got a 200gr packet for AU$14.95 – which is like WHAAAA?? why you so expensive??? 😦

If you are in Perth, Western Australia and looking for nutritional yeast and you are not in a hurry, I definitely suggest to try order them online. I think I saw a 500gr packet for just under $20 and a 200gr packet for about $11. But I was in a hurry, so I bought mine at Pharmacy 777 in Cottesloe.

Anyway, I hope you like my little review of this recipe. It was definitely an adventure trying to find “Nutritional Yeast”. I hope it was useful know how I did mine and maybe (just maybe) inspire you to go eat healthier alternatives to over-processed foods.

Have you tried making Kale Chips? How was yours?

 

Lots of Smiles,

Sita.

Visited after 10 years: Nazar Kebabs & Turkish Bakery

So I’ve lived in Australia for close to 10 years now and aside for the first few weeks, I’ve always lived in this suburb. There is a local Turkish kebab shop in the same complex as our local supermarket here and mum, little sis and I visited the shop last week (finally).

It’s amazing the stuff that you go past almost everyday and take for granted. I’m not much a foodie and I don’t know why I’m “reviewing” a food shop but my point is remember to look at what’s in front of you and be thankful for it.

I ordered a steak kebab with salad. The service was excellent – the people were nice. The food was yummy and the bread was unique – like nothing I’ve tasted on a kebab before – but yum!

As I grew up eating probably about 95% Asian food until I was 18, I need to have “tasty” food. As in, nothing bland. For example, I cannot eat plain noodle or plain rice though I’m fine with plain white bread for some reason. The taste of the kebab in this shop satisfied all three of us though and we will most likely come back.

They have great opening hours too! They don’t close till 9pm – great for those days when you forgot about time and didn’t prepare dinner until it was too late and everyone’s too hungry to cook.

My Order: Steak Kebab with Salad

I think I need to learn and practice more on how to eat kebabs because I made such a huge mess and ended up with a puddle of sauce along with pieces of steak (which I ate) on my plate 😦 But it was great that they gave us each a plate without us requesting it.

Have you had any similar experiences where you go past something so many times but never stop and enjoy it?

Do share with us below in the comments section!

P.S. sorry for the bad quality photos – only had my phone and it was super dark!

Lots of Smiles,

Sita

My Easter Bunny Buns

Honey Bunny Buns pinned on Pinterest http://pinterest.com/pin/282812051572476079

First of all, I would like to wish you all a HAPPY EASTER!

It was Good Friday and I decided to make these bunnies from a Honey Bunny Bun recipe I saw on Pinterest. With a little help from both mum and little sis, this is what I achieved.

I like to bake because I feel like my efforts are being rewarded greater than cooking normal meals. For example, you might spend an hour on a main meal and then it gets eaten in 15 mins. However, if I bake, the produce will last for at least a few days. Somehow this makes me feel better. Am I weird?

I don’t bake that often nor am I awesome at it. I have never baked bread before other than a few pizza bases. I didn’t do a lot of things differently to the recipe though I did find a few things weird. First, I didn’t expect the amount of yeast required – 2 table spoons. In the end, I decided to put in the whole 2 table spoons. My mum also thought that it was weird to mix in the oil, sugar, water AND yeast in one go. Though I already did that before she saw and it turned out okay.

I found out only after all the ingredients were mixed that we don’t have a bread dough mixer (the spiral kind, not the cupcake kind). Luckily, mum owns a Thermomix – a neat little kitchen gadget, practically good for anything from making juices, mixing stuff, making soup to even cooking rice, pretty cool huh. So that’s one thing I did differently.

Second thing, mum couldn’t remember where she’d put the honey so we ended up glazing it with golden syrup instead.

Thirdly, I am not very artistic – I tried poking it with chopsticks to create eyes but they ended up looking a little creepy and thought that it would look better without the eyes. So in the end we ended up with 24 faceless bunny buns.

Fourth, I used a fan forced oven so I lowered the heat by 20 degrees Celsius from the recommended temperature and the bread were cooked in less than 10 minutes (a few minutes less than the recommended 11-13 minutes). The recipe is American so it uses Fahrenheit instead. I simply used the Google converter to convert to Celsius- easy peasy.

A Tip: You know bread is ready when it sounds hollow as you tap the bottom of the bread with your nail. Be careful though! It’s HOT!

THE FINISHED PRODUCT:

Sita’s Easter Bunny Buns

FRESH – fresh out of the oven, they taste like heaven. Slightly crunchy on the outside, but still very fluffy on the inside. The taste is similar to that white table bread at fancy restaurants. I was worried that the golden syrup might taste a little weird and yeah honey would have tasted better but this was fine too. A light brush at the top of the bunnies gave them a slight sweet taste but nothing overpowering. Needless to say, I was quite proud of it (being my first bread and all).

NEXT DAY – I was a little disappointed when I picked a bunny up. All the golden syrup have been absorbed and the outside was not crunchy anymore. The inside was less fluffy too. But I guess this was to be expected from a day-old bread. I wonder if I put it in the oven again for a few minutes it would be a little crispy again on the outside? Maybe I should try.

VERDICT – So I like to categorise recipes into 2 piles – worth doing again and not doing again. I also like to put some notes on them so I remember what went wrong last time or what could be improved. This recipe is definitely going into the worth doing again. Not only is it cute, but it’s also very Though next time I’d probably bake this in the morning and maybe just make half the recipe or something (my family doesn’t eat a lot of bread). Also maybe I will get mum to make some soup to go with it. Hmmmm….

So that was my experience with this recipe. Do let me know if you like these kinds of posts where I try out recipes. Of course the taste comments will only be based on my opinion and whoever is around me at the time. Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and read this post!

Lots of Smiles,

Sita

Tea Haul – March 2013

Happy Saturday dear Internet!

Today, I want to share with you my love of tea and my new journey on trying out different types and flavours of tea.

I grew up only drinking either a plain black tea with sugar or plain jasmine tea with sugar and occasionally some green tea. I love tea and I’ve always wanted to try a lot of different kinds of tea so a few days ago when I went to Coles (supermarket) with my parents, I saw that the Twinings teas were on sale for $1 a box! I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start trying out different kinds of teas.

Tea Haul March 2013

It was so tempting to get one in every single flavour. Though I swear there were about 20 flavours there. But after much consideration, I ended up with these 6 flavours:

• Raspberry, Strawberry & Longanberry Flavoured
• Cranberry & Pomegranate Flavoured
• Lapsang Souchong
• Pure Peppermint
• Green Tea & Lemon Flavour
• Lady Grey

I think that this is probably the best/cheapest way of trying out new tea flavours. I did go to Oriental Tea House before but the teas there go for around $10-$20/box (one flavour). I haven’t tried any of these teas before, nor am I affiliated with them.

Be sure to subscribe to my blog and wait for my review on the individual flavours!

Lots of smiles,

-Sita