The Harvest, North Fremantle

This is ONE great restaurant you should visit! As you can tell, it is a "house" restaurant, located in North Fremantle, in a location that could be easily missed (we almost did!). However, do not let the looks of this house deceive you, because behind the doors a cosy, homely dining experience awaits you!

This is "The Harvest", a very cosy, personal restaurant in North Fremantle.... the minute you step into this place you know you're going to have a great time! They had really nice funky type of music, and the place was buzzing! We went there for breakfast on a Saturday morning (quite a few weeks ago! This is a very overdue entry!) and no bookings were allowed, but we took the chance.

The door is old - infact you might have thought this was one of those unkempt houses, but once you open it, it's a whole other world! The walls are lined with flowery wall paper, coffee aroma and the happy clinking of utensils. We had to wait for a bit, and they have these large homely leather sofas for us to sit on. Wooden floor boards, bold coloured walls and funky music.

Scrambled eggs and salmon on toast, with little bits of shaved truffles

"The Harvest" - instead of hashbrowns, they served cubed roasted potatos

Waffles with stewed pears and very decadent chocolate mousse.

Unfortunately, the food for its price was not as fantastic as the actual restaurant's atmosphere itself. It was rather pricy for the quantity, and taste wise, it was nice, but nothing I would really rave about. However, I would recommend this place just for its atmosphere and the coffees were served really fast, and the service was pretty good too. They do open for lunch and dinner too, I would like to go back and try that!

(Photos courtesty of G - many thanks!!!)

The Harvest
1 Harvest Road
North Fremantle WA 6159
Phone: (08) 9336 1831

Chorizo Pasta & Caesar Salad!

Despite it being a weeknight, I just could not resist cooking! Had some friends over for dinner, and we said that we would just do a takeaway because we work and there would be no time to cook.... but as the dinner day came closer, I couldnt resist a chance @ cooking! So whilst this is nothing fancy, it is pretty delicious, wholesome and a great winter comfort dish!

Chorizo sausages, olives, semi-sun dried tomatos, fresh basil, cans of tomatos, fresh garlic and onion and pasta! Honestly, that's it! You basically fry up the garlic and onion with the sausages, add in the cans of tomatos, season to taste and chuck in the fresh basil and the al dente pasta! Mix all together and serve! This is a great combination - lots of different bits to eat in one mouth full!


Caesar salad - tossed to perfection by Shona! :)

I just found a new recipe I'm dying to try out - so I shall attempt to do it this weekend, will keep you in suspense for now...:P and a couple of outstanding restaurant reviews will be coming up soon too.... Have a great week all!!! :)

"Man" Biscuits!

Now you boys can bravely eat these Pocky sticks! We figured it must be "men" biscuits because it was a dark chocolate pocky stick! haha!

And boys, incase you wanted some advice, wisdom and encouragement.... turn to Pocky! :P

Melt & Mix Mud Cake!

You know those days where you feel like eating a real cake (ie not from a cake mix!) but yet you want it to be as easy as a cake mix? Well I had that feeling this weekend! I miss the kitchen... I feel like I haven't been in it much!!! And one of the best things in life is a rich smelling cake baking in your oven!

I found this recipe "Melt & Mix Mud Cake" from www.taste.com, which is a fantastic website for pretty easy recipes and they have a million chocolate and pasta recipes! I liked it because you literally just melted and mixed the ingredients, stirred it and put it in the oven! I have doubts on such recipes at times, but this one really did prove me wrong! It is a COMFORT cake! Rich and friendly! But on happy days, well, it can just make your day that bit better! :)

Ingredients (serves 8) (Thanks to www.taste.com.au)

• 200g butter, chopped
• 300g good-quality dark chocolate
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup self-raising flour
• pure icing sugar, to serve

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 6cm deep, 20cm (base) round cake pan. Line with baking paper.
2. Place butter, 200g chopped chocolate and hot water in a heatproof, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave, uncovered, on HIGH (100%) for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring every minute with a metal spoon, or until smooth. Add cocoa to warm chocolate mixture. Stir until smooth. Stir in vanilla, caster sugar and egg. Sift flour over chocolate mixture. Stir gently to combine.
3. Pour half the batter into cake pan. Chop remaining chocolate and sprinkle half over batter. Top with remaining batter and chopped chocolate. Bake cake for 55 to 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre has moist crumbs clinging.
4. Allow cake to cool completely in pan. Remove and dust with icing sugar. Serve.

It's crusty on the top and sizes, and inside the cake literally melts in your mouth... crumbly but soft and moist - for max. taste and cake experience, put it in the microwave for about 10s to soften it and honestly, with a cup of tea or coffee, you will add this to your list of blessings!!! :)

Happy weekend all! :)

Blueberry filo tarts!

Hello hello hello! Very strange, but I havent been cooking much in the past couple of weeks... life seems to have got busy! However, my mind hasn't been too far from the kitchen!

Yesterday, I learnt a new skill - weeding. I almost wanted to cry looking at it, but thank God my very very very good friend EH helped me out (this is self sacrificing... weeding on the weekend...:P) - she probably did more of the weeding than me... it was hilarious though on reflection! 2 asian girls wrestling with the weeds (and Im not exaggerating here!!!) and even wondering which were the weeds and the plants! Sometimes you couldnt tell! So although I will never love weeding, I'm glad to have learnt something new, and EH's advice: when you see a small weed, PULL IT OUT STRAIGHTAWAY!!!

Before weeding, we baked a New York Cheesecake! I havent got any pictures, but apparently it was nice! There was lemon and orange zest in the cheese mixture, and we used Arnott's Nice biscuits and butter as the base!

Okay, back to the Blueberry Filo Tarts (taken from Donna Hay's Aug/Sept 2007 Issue) - original recipe asked for fresh strawberries, but as I didnt have any, I used blueberries instead and they were really quite nice! Filo is an interesting pastry... it reminds me of the spring roll pastry... pretty dry, thin and very very delicate!

The mixture was almond meal, butter and caster sugar and an egg yolk! Mixed together and served in the centre of the filo pastry, topped with some blueberries. Baked in the oven for about 8-10 mins and you have this very simple, fairly quick (although a little fidley!) dessert! The filo pastry was so crisp! Yum yum!!! :)

Pretty Wedding Cupcake!

The latest craze in Wedding cakes seem to be these cutely decorated individual cupcakes!!! Isn't this SO cute! I was flipping through some wedding cake magazines and my my, the cakes are gorgeous! No wonder they can cost several hundred dollars! Anyway, it does seem these cupcakes are quite the craze! Tiers and tiers of cupcakes!!! Ahhh!!! :)

My parents recently went to an old friend's son's wedding and the above was their cake! Each guest had one of these cuties to take home! We could hardly bring ourselves to eat it! :)

Chocolate tasting plate!

So this is how the chocolate tasting plate turned out! I need to work on my creative presentatio of food I reckon! It looked a little too "proper"/"too straight"! Anyhow, the most interesting was the chocolate brulee - as I got to use the blowtorch to caramelise the top - you can't really tell from here as this was the "before" shot - however I think I shall have to practice as even when I used it, there was a thin layer of hardened sugar but it wasn't brown - I think I needed to sprinkle on more sugar and maybe I needed to burn it more! Anyhow who knows the technique, please let me know! :P

The brulee wasn't too bad - but not smooth enough despite being sieved through a muslin cloth! :((( The flavour was really nice and chocolatey!

Chocolate tart - oh my... the chocolate is really every chocolate lover's dream... it was just full of chocolate goodness.. and very smooth too... the pampus pastry was a little odd this time though, it seemed to take forever to heat up!!! :P

Enjoy a piece of a chocolate or chocolate in some form this week! A bit of chocolate can work wonders!!! :)

Crazy about chocolate!

You know the feeling when you suddenly find some money somewhere you never expected? The feeling of "yay! hooray"??? Well, a few nights ago, I was just shifting some stuff around in my room and guess what I found? Yes a Chocolate "bible"! I had forgotten I had bought this recipe book that was just on chocolates... every dessert and cake had chocolate in it, and even had some savoury sauces that had chocolate as an ingredient! It is a GORGEOUS book...... really, your mouth can water just looking at the pictures... the question was, where do I start???!!!

I have this dinner tomorrow night with some friends, and after days of thinking of what to cook, I decided I would make nasi lamak, but really I felt that perhaps I should make some sago, or almond jelly as dessert as it would go with the asian/malaysian theme... but once the discovery of this book came, all thoughts of sticking to the theme was abandoned!

Some weeks ago, maybe even a couple of months, I went to this most beautiful restaurant... which will be blogged in the weeks to come, and they served a terrific chocolate tasting plate. O very quickly, talking about tasting plates, another chocolate tasting plate that Cheryl and I had at the Globe Bar and Restaurant (which by the way is a finalist or has won some award according to The West on friday) which is in the Hilton Hotel... oh that was BAD... we figured the quality of chocolate must have been so out of our league that we could not comprehend the flavours... it is really with regret that I say this, as the restaurant is pretty funky and the atmosphere is nice, and our main courses were good (but small portion as such places would have it!), and I love the wooden floors... but really, the chocolate tasting plate was just really errmm... not at all chocolate tasting!

So in order to provide something interesting for my friends tomorrow night, and also for my own kitchen entertainment, I've decided to put together my own version of a chocolate tasting plate! (I thought about the different texture combinations... it had to range from smooth and creamy, to cake like to thick and rich...)

So here's the menu for dessert:

1) Brownies with almond cream cheese (as per the pictures)
- This is definitely different! The cream cheese is slightly on the sweet side, but with a cup of tea or coffee it would just hit the spot! The almond made it feel a little like marzipan, and whilst this may put people off, I would say, give the brownie a chance - there is something quite pleasant and classy about this combination! And looks gorgeous too!

2) Chocolate brulee
- As I type, this is sitting in the kitchen, cooling... and will be chilled and tomorrow will sprinkle some caster sugar over the top and grill it or use my gas torch :)

3) Chocolate Tarts
- The recipe looks excellent, requires no refrigeration and I will use Pampus' shortcrust pastry :) Fast and delicious!

I will blog the other pictures soon!!! And stay turned for a funky North Fremantle breakfast review soon! :)

I am way too distracted for my own good..... why do my accounting notes not appear as delicious?!!! :)))

Hope you all had a nice weekend!!! :)

Winter Warmers - Asian Style! :)

The forecast for the past week and the week coming up is WINTER all over... words like rainy, showers, storm, wind, rain and more rain are on every weather forecast... miserable? Actually no! I like this weather - it is the perfect excuse to stay @ home, perfect DVD/watching TV/korean series type of weather, and there is this very cosy feeling when you're indoors, warm and the sound of rain outside...

My mum occassionally asks me what should she cook for dinner... I guess after 20+ years of cooking, you would almost run out of ideas! So with winter weather upon us, I thought of making braised beef and throw that over rice flour noodles (or otherwise known as kway teow) - it is one of my favourite lunch time dishes and I always order this when I have lunch @ Chi... so here it is... and despite some nervous moments, my family gave it the thumbs up tonight! Yay!!!

Fry up lots of sliced ginger, sliced garlic, spring onions in a bit of oil, the 5 star anise and cinnamon stick, then throw in the beef pieces and then throw in 1/2 cup of light soya sauce (for about 1kg of meat) - sounds like a lot of soya sauce and I would suggest going easy on this if you're not having this over noodles or the rice flour noodles - it is just fine if you are doing so. And then 8 cups of water - it might seem like a crazy amt of water... I was like "Oh no... this looks like beef soup!!!" but trust me, after simmering for 2hours there is not much of it left. Thicken slightly with tapioca flour. And because I like the dark colour look, I swirled in some thick soya sauce too.

Whoever said winter wasn't great?! :)

Steamed herbal chicken stuffed with glutinous rice and some bouncy jelly for dessert!

The first thought I had when G sent me these photos were that this was one professional looking chicken - really thanks to the photography and photographer! (Thanks!!!) A couple of Sundays ago, a few of us got together and had this mega potbless, and I meant mega... the theme was Asian, and we had everything from thai fried rice, spicy spare ribs, salt and pepper chilli prawns, 3 egg spinach, mee siam and more!!! We had so much food I think at one point of time at dinner we couldnt talk... we were literally speechless.. we were too full!!! Ahhh this is the way dinners ought to be! Full of great food and fellowship!!! Thanks to all the chefs!!!

After many many pondering moments, I decided to steam a herbal chicken and stuff it with glutinous rice. I couldn't decide whether to make a herbal chicken or a soya chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, so I combined both! It turned out really well - steamed chicken is just so tender... and the rice was just right - the trick is to really soak the glutinous rice for at about 2 hours before you stuff it inside the chicken. Fry the rice up so it is partially cooked before stuffing it. So yes for a bit of a twist, stuff your next chicken with some rice! It is a meal in itself!!! :)



I'm so glad this jelly is back on the market - Konayaku (spelling???) jelly. Apparently it was taken off the market for awhile because someone choked on the jelly... anyhow just make sure you chew it properly ok? :) It is a rubbery, bouncy type of jelly - I'm not quite sure how else to describe it except that it is really nice!!! :P

This can be easily purchased from your chinese supermarket and it really is fool proof - I guarantee you can't go wrong with this, as unlike previously, this time everything is all in one package - flavour, colouring etc. It's literally read instructions, pour water, watch the fire and thats it! And they are a winner! Refreshing after a very heavy meal! This was lychee flavoured with real lychee in the centre of each jelly!