Bagel with warm herbed salad and egg

Oh my gosh! I've been gone for so long. Hope everyone's had a fantastic festive christmas and a wonderful new year! I definitely had plans to fill this site with amazing food for those two occasions but these plans were dissolved into thin air by a big ship and a plane to Melbourne. I do apologise for my long absence but this trip has been amazing, despite having a cold/flu/hayfever for the most part of it. 

I've never been on a cruise ship before, so I didn't know what to expect. The first few days were really relaxed as we settled in to the rocky rhythm. As aforementioned, food was of abundance. However due to my sickness and being bed-ridden, I actually lost weight on board! The journey took a positive turn on about day six when we met several other people around our age. Each night was filled with loads of card games and we got everyone hooked onto Mafia. Who knew playing Mafia with kids would be so fun haha. I only wished my cold didn't hit me then, I could've spent more time doing more productive things than watching movies in bed. 

All journeys come to an end. Of course, it was right when friendships were forged we had to say goodbye. Though it was awesome that our new friends in Sydney took us to karaoke and on a semi tour of Sydney city on our one night stay there. My trip to Melbourne was significant too. We visited our auntie, uncle and cousins whom we haven't seen in more than 10 years! Sydney has a big city edge to it while Melbourne is more mellow and suburban. I really love Melbourne's vibe, the colourful Chinatown, picturesque Yarra River, hipster cafes, the malls!, the countless restaurants and eateries and not to mention the presence of extended family. It's a vibrant city and I have many many many photos to showcase it! Please be patient though... I haven't had a chance to edit any yet *gasp!* as my brother's been occupying the computer with Lightroom ever since we got back. 

This trip to Melbourne has opened up my heart and I can feel the city's magnetic pull. It's definitely a city I would strongly consider to live in. Though I did feel strange being in such a flat city. The view of Melbourne from the plane was just like a vast stretch of quilt, so different from the hilliness of Auckland. After spending new year's eve with cousins counting down at Federation Square and watching the spectacular fireworks that went on for about 20 minutes, the family and I flew back to our big little city called home. Yet again it felt strange that we didn't have to travel hours to get to places. The single lane roads, the miniature city skyline, the empty streets welcomed us home in its gentle embrace. 

Anywho, as promised, here's the second post on bagels! It's perfect for brunch. It's healthy. It's filling. It's delicious. It's colourful. Enjoy it while I let my thoughts float between the to do lists of reality and dreaminess of the trip. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bagel with warm herbed aubergine, fungus and tomato salad, topped with fried egg

Serves 4

Handful of wood-ear fungus

Handful of oyster mushrooms

Half a medium aubergine, diced

1 tomato, diced

zest of 1 lemon

About 1/2 tbsp of cumin seeds, toasted

About 1/2 tsp ginger, finely chopped

Oregano leaves, about half a handful, finely chopped

Olive oil

Soy sauce

Salt and pepper

4 eggs

4 halves of bagels

In a pot, bring about half a cup of water to a boil. Drop in the wood-ear and oyster mushrooms. Pour about 1 tbsp of soy sauce in. Turn down to medium heat and let it cook until all water is evaporated and the fungus has softened. Set aside.

In a hot saucepan, pour in some olive oil and throw in the ginger. On medium heat, stir until it begins to brown. Drop in the aubergine and cook until softened (still has a slight bite to it), tossing occasionally. Add some more olive oil if aubergine sticks to the pan. Stir in the tomato, fungus, cumin seeds and oregano leaves. Cook until the tomato has softened. Season with soy sauce, salt and pepper. You'll need quite a bit of soy sauce. Add in the lemon zest and stir. Cook for about 1 minute. 

Plate up and serve with bagels. 

For each serving, fry (or poach) an egg and place atop the bagels. Season with soy sauce and pepper.

Serve. 

Savoury bread pudding

I am tongue tied and have writers block today. Actually, I've had writer's block for days. I've been meaning to write this blog post for days, but haven't had time to edit the photos. But here it is now!

Well, what's happened these past few days? My dad's left for Malaysia, back to tend to his business and visit my grandmother, relatives and friends. Mid-semester break's over. It passed so quickly and slowly at the same time. It was mooncake/mid-autumn festival on Thursday! I have an abundance of mooncake at home and am thinking of learning how to make them for next year's festival. I realised that we're pretty lucky here. Mooncakes are pretty expensive, but the cheapest you can get is about $20 per box of four. But in Malaysia, mooncakes can cost up to RM20 for one! Which is around NZ$10. And apparently in China, you can get a mooncake that's even more astoundingly priced... thousands of dollars for one! WHAT?! Is it made out of diamonds and gold? And who the heck would buy that? 

Now that i've told you what's happened, I can tell you what will happen! (Not that it'll affect you in anyway, but I'm super excited about it!) My family is going back to malaysia next January for Chinese New Year! Yay! It's been 2 years since I last went back, and even longer since I last celebrated Chinese New Year back home. Can't wait to see the row after row of New Year snacks packed in red containers, the red and gold lanterns adorning the malls and streets, to get sick of hearing Chinese New Year songs, to eat all the food that I didn't savior during my childhood, and of course, the best part of all, to see my grandmothers, aunties, uncles and cousins! And we might be going to China too! It's gonna be a great holiday. Now... time to find a way to earn some money. 

Anyway, I'm sorry that today's post is fairly unexciting for you. My writer's block still lingers on. Hopefully the photos and recipe idea entertained you! And I've got to get back to preparing for a seminar on Monday about carotenoids in carrots! Interesting and important little pigments these are. I'll share more later on on it! 

But now, I will share a recipe for savoury bread pudding. Follow on from the savoury theme, this recipe is a twist from the traditional and conventional sweet bread and butter pudding. It's healthy, it's tasty and you don't feel guilty eating it! Admittedly, the idea came from somewhere else - Spoon Fork Bacon (these guys are awesome), though I did not follow their recipe. I made this for lunch one day when I was home alone. I actually made another version of it again for Peter and I put some leftover herby tomato sauce that my dad made and Peter called it 'Pizza in a bowl' haha. Interesting. It looked and smelled delicious but i didn't take a photo of it :( 

[Savoury Bread Pudding]
Serves 1 
You can easily multiply the ingredients to make a big pudding, and substitute any of these ingredients with whatever you have on hand.


1 ramekin
Olive oil
1 thick slice of good bread
1 medium size button mushroom, thickly sliced
about 1 tablespoon of green peas
1 square of firm tofu (about 4cm x 4cm), cubed
Some carrots, about 1 tbsp in total, cut into the tiniest cubes (these give amazing little crunches as you bite into the pudding)
1 egg
splash of milk (soy milk or other milk works too)
salt
pepper
1 teaspoon chilli paste (omit it if you want, but a bit of spice kicks this up a notch! I used a chilli paste with black beans in it and wow the black beans go really well with cheese!) 
Tasty cheese, about 1 tbsp, grated

1. Preheat your oven to 200C.
2. Oil the sides of the ramekin.
3. Roughly rip your bread up into little pieces and toss them in olive oil. Set aside. 
4. In a little pan with olive oil, lightly cook the mushrooms until coloured. Set aside.
5. Mix the bread, mushroom, tofu and veg together and drop them into the ramekin. 
6. Whisk together the egg, milk, salt, pepper and chilli together. You don't have to whisk the egg too thoroughly. I quite like how you get bits of egg whites laced through bits of egg yolks. 
7. Pour the egg mixture into the ramekin, over the filling, carefully. 
8. Top with grated cheese.
9. Bake for about 10-15 minutes.
10. Serve! 

This recipe takes no time to make at all and you can enjoy your lunch in under half an hour! Do the cleaning and washing up and make yourself a good cup of tea while you wait for the pudding to bake. Enjoy!

First Quiche

I love quiche. The first ever quiche I had was made by my boyfriend, Peter. Back then he was still studying to become a chef and he made the quiche as a practice one for his course. I still remember because he didn't have a quiche or pie tin, he made it using a cake tin. The quiche was so thick and huge. It looked pretty impressive until he put a knife through it and a pool of puddle started pouring out. He didn't sweat the mushrooms prior to baking. Admittedly, it wasn't the best quiche he made. But nonetheless it was a great first quiche. And since then he's made many much more delicious quiches - and yes, in proper pie tins. 
Since he's working full time now he's hardly had time to cook at home. So I thought I'd attempt it myself, you know, how hard could it be? I've seen him make it so many times. I'm sure I could pull it off. 

So today, as Auckland was blessed by its usual heavy downpour of winter spell, I thought I'd make quiche for my family for lunch. To be honest, I wasn't off to the best start. I'd slept in too late. We didn't have all the ingredients. I was feeling quite unconfident about making pastry. My dad was making grapefruit marmalade and we had to share our tiny kitchen. But those things couldn't deter me from making my quiche. The quiche will be made and it will be made today. 
Now now, who knew making quiche would take me THREE HOURS?! THREE. HOURS. Poor family was starving by then and my brother even started snacking on chips. I wasn't sure what my sister was surviving on though. Probably a secret stash of snacks in a her room. Towards the second half, I was feeling distressed from how long it was taking and from the hunger to just get the quiche done. All the while, my dad was peeling and cutting up a bucket-load (seriously it was a bucket-load) of grapefruit. Just calmly in his own little world. 

I was actually quite surprised at how it turned out. On one hand, it wasn't quite the glorious golden crown that I'd envisioned it to be. Well it looked pretty glorious, but the filling was lacking in some seasoning and some oomph - perhaps needed some sundried tomatoes to provide that extra tang. On the other hand I was pleasantly surprised at how well the pastry turned out. It took me an age to roll it out. I was worried that the time it took me to roll it out (why did it take me so long I'm not even sure) would cause the butter to melt, thus resulting in an un-short pastry. But it was perfectly fine. It had a nice crunch to it too despite (depsite? more like DUE TO IT) being on the further side of gold than I'd like it to be. All in all I think it was a good first quiche. No doubt I will make it again. I shall conquer you quiche let me assure you. 

And yes, I made mini quiches too! Aren't they just q-ute? 

[Vegetarian Mushroom and Potato Quiche]
Pastry
400g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g butter, cubed 
100ml water

Sift together flour and salt. Rub butter into flour until fine bread crumb-like. Create a well in the middle and pour in the water. Mix gently until a dough forms. Place onto glad-wrap, pat into a flat disc and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Roll out pastry. Place onto buttered pie tin and bake blind at 180C until pale golden. 

Filling 
Olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
4 handfuls of mushroom (I'd say there were about 15 golf-ball sized button mushies), sliced
1/4 head of cauliflower, diced 
1 capsicum, diced
1 large potato, sliced 
1 red chilli, chopped 
6 eggs
100ml milk 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
Pepper to taste
1 cup grated cheese 

Sweat onion, mushroom and cauliflower in olive oil until mushrooms have shrunken and deepen in colour. Remove from pan, but leave the 'juice' of the mushrooms. Place potatoes into the pan with mushroom juice. Cook until all juice has been absorbed. Remember to season as you go. 
Whisk together eggs, milk, salt and pepper. 

Place all vegetables into quiche crust. Pour egg mixture over it. Sprinkle grated cheese on top and bake at 180C for about half an hour or until golden. 

Serve as is or with chutney. 

The original recipe called for cream in the egg mixture, which was what I didn't have at home. I think it would've added some richness to the quiche but without it I find the quiche is still quite delightful (pun intended). 
You could use any vegetables like broccoli, spinach, kumara or whatever tickles your fancy. Adding some herbs would be nice too!