Paris in Melbourne – Entrecote

Good morning my Dearest Readers! I wish you all a very belated Happy Easter and hope you’ve all been well. I wish I didn’t have to apologise all the time for not blogging but life has just been getting in the way but this time I hope my excuse is valid and you will forgive me again. And that is because we’ve been moving into our new apartment which is a two bedroom apartment meaning more room for my baking goods and props! Hopefully will be able to share with you more baking recipes 🙂

Anyhow, I have been wanting to blog about this new restaurant for the longest time since the first time I visited for breakfast. But I knew I had to wait until I tried their famous steak and fries before I did! So you see Entrecôte has recently opened up on Domain St, South Yarra. If you remember, I posted about the Le Relais de L’Entrecote in Paris a few years ago. Well Melbourne now has their own version, with a little more variety on their menu they serve breakfast until noon, and then offers steak and fries along with a few more items for lunch and dinner.

Newly Adopted Bro 🙂

The first time I went with my newly adopted Brother (Richard) and friend Q for breakfast. He was acting all shy when I asked if I could take a photo of him and post it on my blog haha So of course I started with a latte as I clearly needed caffeine to wake me up 🙂

Latte $3.8

Bro had a quick look at the menu and decided to get the Croque-Monsieur with hand carved Bill’s ham, three cheeses and thyme béchamel. I most definitely tried a little and thought it was lovely and actually not as rich as I thought it would be.

Croque-Monsieur $16.9

Q had trouble choosing what she wanted so I suggested the Le Petit Dejeuner which is the Parisian continental breakfast. For $19.9 it included many items such as orange juice, tea, coffee or hot chocolate, croissant and baguette with Bonne Maman jams, 63c egg, brioche and bacon ‘crumbs’.

Le Petit-Dejeuner ‘Continental’ $19.9

I think the 62c egg with the bacon crumbs looked wonderful and I can’t wait to come back and try myself. Just the feeling of sitting outside on the patio with a croissant just makes it feel like you have been deported to Paris.

I decided to go for the omelette of fine herbs and Gruyere and soft leaves, it was exactly the way I imaged it to be, soft and fluffy with just the right amount of Gruyere cheese oozing out. If I was to be really picky I would add a little truffle oil to it 😛

Omelette of fine herbs & Gruyere $16.9

Brunch wouldn’t be complete without dessert so I forced Bro to share the French toast with lemon curd ice-cream, lemon verbena poached etches and buttered almonds. This dessert reminded me of bread and butter pudding as it was very soft, it wasn’t very sweet and I thought the poached peaches were actually quite tart.

French toast with lemon curd ice-cream $15.9

We all had a great time having brunch at Entrecôte but I think the happiest would have been Cupcake as it is such a dog friendly cafe with the large patio and the fake grass. He got many pats and compliments too from the waiters and other patrons 🙂

 

A couple weeks later, after rescheduling 3 times, I finally managed to drag Mr Bao out for a date night back at Entrecôte. I wanted to get there between 4-6pm as this is when they had their happy hour, with $2 oysters and $7 champagnes.

House red $8

We started our early dinner with a house red for Mr Bao which was a dry shiraz and complimented the steak to come very well.

Hot Chocolate $4.5

I was feeling a little under the weather, so I stuck with a stomach friendly drink, a hot chocolate which was warm and comforting and exactly what I wanted. We bought Cupcake with us again and he got himself a dog bowl for water 🙂

Freshly shucked Oysters $4ea (happy hour $2ea)

We started off with a dozen of shucked to order with ‘Mignonette’ sauce and lemon, I’m not quite sure where the oysters are from, but they were quite salty and was great with a few drops of lemon juice. Mr Bao was so happy, he ordered another dozen and immediately devoured them.

French onion Gougere $5ea ($3ea)

Ash (Im So Hungree) recommended the French Onion Gougere which is essentially a profiterole with French onion and cheese filling. The choux pastry was made very well and the filling was so wonderfully cheesy and paired perfectly with a dry red.

Steak Frites with soft leaves $39.9

The reason why I come back to Entrecôte and visit again before I could do a blog post is because I simply HAD to try the Steak Frites with soft leaves and see how it compares with Paris. The steak is from Hopkins River and we ordered it to be medium rare, just looking at the dish it looks very similar to Le Relais de L’Entrecote.

I found the béarnaise sauce to look more limey and didn’t taste as strong. The shoe string fries comes with complimentary refills so forget about calories and eat till your hearts content.

 

The steak itself was cooked to medium rare, keeping a pink centre and even though it was a very big piece with the creamy sauce and the fries I found it to be a good serving. Compared to the Le Relais de L’Entrecote in Paris, I found the steak itself to be of better quality, thanks to our great Aussie beef 😀

Soft leaves with radish, walnut, Dijon vinaigrette

It also comes with unlimited soft leaves with radish, walnut and Dijon vinaigrette, admittedly not as exciting as the steak and frites, but the tangy Djion vinaigrette does make it a little more interesting.

Entrecôte cheese burger with frites $22.9

I wanted to try something different and since we were siting out on the patio we had more options, I ordered the Entrecôte cheese burger with frites. A black angus beef patty with melted cheese and the same Paris bearnaise sauce on the steak. Even though I found the patty to be slightly under seasoned the cheese and sauce definitely made up for it.

Been a while since I’ve posted a photo of myself haha and Mr Bao insists this is a good photo of me just before I was going to shove the burger into my mouth 😛

Lemon Tart, creme fraiche $16.9

I honestly wanted to try all the desserts – creme brûlée, apple tart tat in, mille-feuille and profiteroles. But we settled on the Lemon Tart because I had cravings and once again Ash recommended it and I trust her judgement. It was one of the best lemon tarts I have had in a very long time, with a sweet shortcrust pastry and that luscious lemon curd filling that had the right about of tartness and paired with creme fraiche. Personally I think I would have preferred vanilla ice-cream but both are fine by me.

No doubt Entrecôte has become a new favourite of Mr Bao and I with its great dishes, friendly staff and most importantly for us dog friendly. I think it’s also a great brunch spot for a brunch of girls to try to be Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl…ok sorry I got carried away haha I’ve been rewatching the series. Anyhow, we will be revisiting for sure! Have a great weekend!

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Pancakes on the weber – Barbeques Galore

Pancakes with grilled banana, vanilla ice-cream and salted caramel

 

 

My Dear Readers this is part two to my previous post about cooking on the weber and using a kettle 🙂 I kid you not it was not planned but Barbeques Galore contacted me just before Heatbeads® did, to help them create a recipe on the weber. First thing I think about making is of course dessert but haha once again I’m clueless at this barbecuing business…so again I consulted Annoying Uncle and other colleagues.

 

 

Clearly desserts weren’t their forte because these middle aged men kept steering the conversation back to roast pork, pulled pork and all other savoury things! Focus men! I need dessert recipes and ideas haha so I edited up coming up with the thought of making pancakes on the grill, topped with grilled banana, ice-cream and salted caramel! But how do you cook pancakes…. the liquid will all run through. Then Annoying Uncle said this recipe could work but I would need to get a hot plate. A what? I had no idea but apparently it’s a plate made out of cast iron that you place over the grill and it can be used like any fry pan I guess.

A funny side story, I didn’t have the weber or the chimney and all the equipment I needed back then…so Annoying Uncle had to lend me everything! Very grateful for his help and assistance 🙂 But you can purchase it all from Barbeques Galore So he explained to us how to use the chimney and light the firelighters and using an indirect method (BBQ Briquettes) on both sides of the weber and place the hotplate over it.

 

 

 

Will be sharing the recipe below, I’ll quickly run through the steps with you here first ~ basically once the plate is hot enough, you can poor the pancake mix and cook it as per usual. Just make sure you grease the hot plate very well as we found it to be a little difficult to flip the pancakes.

Left: Failed 😛
Right Looking good!

As you can see, it can be tricky pouring the mixture and flipping it so take your time, and even if it doesn’t look nice I promise it’ll still taste good!

Once the pancakes are done or you can cook them at the same time, cut some bananas up and put them on the grill for approximately 3 minutes each side.

 

That’s all the cooking required, now all you need to do is assembly it! We had 3 pancake then topped it with vanilla ice-cream, grilled bananas and most importantly salted caramel with gold flakes because it’s from Burch and Purchese.

I came up with this recipe because I wanted something that was easy and sort of fail proof for us newbies! Hopefully, I’ll get better at this and develop a more in-depth relationship with my weber and will share with you more savoury and dessert recipes 😀

Recipe – Pancakes on the weber with grilled bananas adapted from Nigella Lawson
Yield – 10-12 pancakes depending on size

Ingredients
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
2 large eggs (beaten)
30g unsalted butter (melted and cooled)
300ml milk (regular)
225g plain flour
Extra butter for frying
1-2 Bananas
Vanilla ice-cream
Salted caramel sauce (homemade or store bought)

Notes
– You must have a hotplate to make this recipe
– Remember to use an indirect method to cook these pancakes in the weber
– Try to use bananas that are not too ripe as it will become very soft

Method
1) Heat the weber as per instructions, please refer to my previous post for more information about lighting the BBQ briquettes. Fill the baskets full of charcoal and use an indirect method where they are placed on both sides of the weber.
2) To make pancake mixture, place all dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt and sugar) into a large bowl and create a well in the middle and add the wet ingredients (beaten eggs, melted butter and milk). Mix it very well with a whisk or wooden spoon. You can then poor this into a jug to make it easier for pouring.
3) Place hot plate over the grill and wait for it to heat up, once hot grease well with butter and pour batter to make pancake.
4) Wait approximately 3 minutes when bubbles start to appear, it means it is cooked and you can flip them and cook the other side. Place on plate and continue cooking pancakes.

5) Cut bananas lengthways and put on grill directly and cook for 3 minutes each side.
6) To serve, place pancakes on plate, 1-2 scoops of vanilla ice-cream on top, grilled bananas on the side and finally pour salted caramel over!

And that’s it! Pretty easy and a great dessert to make using the weber 🙂 Actually you can even make this for breakfast! Please let me know if you try this recipe!

This is a sponsored post by Barbeques Galore, however, recipe and opinions are all honest. 

Ice-cream creation – Harry’s Ice-Cream

Because I’ve been absent for so long, two posts in a row for my My Dearest Readers! For those who are in Melbourne are you prepared for another hot week? It’s going to get up to 40 degree this weekend. But I guess it’s still better than a couple of weeks ago when it was over 45 degrees Celsius. I don’t do very well with heat… so if you’re like me, remember to drink more water, keep hydrated and eat loads of ice-cream 😛

Harry Ice-cream

That reminds me, at the start of summer, I was invited to Harry’s Ice-cream to visit their factory in Brunswick and was also asked to create my own ice-cream flavour! That is like any ice-cream lovers dream because I mean who doesn’t like ice-cream and to put all your favourite things in to create your own signature one, that sounds pretty awesome to me 🙂

Owner & Founder Lawrence Harrison

I always assumed the Owner and Founder of Harry’s Ice-crema, first name would be Harry. But turns out Lawrence Harris is his name and they shortened it to Harry and used it as the brand. Harry’s ice-cream is their own brand of ice-cream but they also do private labels of Coles and Aldi, so you never know when you’ve purchased a tub of their ice-cream.

Blueberry Lemon Cocktail

We started the fun event with a cocktail each served in these pretty and trendy Mason Ball jars which I adore. It was a blueberry and lemon cocktail with some vodka, the girls at Keep Left PR actually hand squeezed over 40 lemons themselves, now that’s effort. It was quite sour but a great way to clean our palettes and prepare us for the savoury and ice-cream tasting.

Savoury Nibbles

We were offered some savoury nibbles with mini bagels with smoked salmon, a spinach ricotta cheese tart, mini chicken sandwiches and puff pastry with blue cheese and dried figs. They were all freshly made and very good, but the spinach ricotta cheese was definitely my favourite.

Zumbo Macaron Stand

Super spoilt, there was also a 3-tier stand full of macarons from Adriano Zumbo with nearly all the flavours you can think of, salted caramel, milo, popcorn, violet, finger bun and many more. I may have had one too many 😛

Where the magic happens!

After some savoury dishes we were then given a tour around the factory to see where the magic happens. It is so amazing how quickly it is for ice-cream to be made, filled into a tub and sealed and have it ready for delivery! I felt like I was in Willy Wonka land but for ice-cream hehe

Tony Senior Technician

We met Tony who is the Senior Technician and has been working alongside Lawrence for several years. He showed us how ice-cream was made from scratch, where a mixture similar to a custard is firm made with additions added to it and then churned in an industrial ice-cream maker. By the way, hygiene is taken very seriously here so we were all in the same gear as Tony, with a hairnet, lab coat, shoes also had to be covered lol no sorry no photos because I look simply too weird haha

The ice-cream is all churned and ready to be placed in the plastic tubs. I was really surprised with the texture and flavour of the freshly churned ice-cream it felt like whipped cream, it was so light and not very cold. Flavours were also more prominent because it wasn’t as cold.

Now it’s time for tasting and judging! So there were quite a few of us – Lianne, Sofia, Ling, Gastrology and Prue. We didn’t only get the chance to create our own ice-cream, it was also a competition where we got to judge each others ice-cream. Gosh I was nervous hehe because not everyone has a sweet tooth like mine 😀

Our ice-cream creations

We had a good range of flavours amongst the bloggers, we had a carrot cake flavour, chocolate caramel slice, pistachio honey and rosewater and coconut cheesecake with biscuit.

My Creation

Now do you want to know my creation hehe it took me a while to get it but I came up with a super sweet (duh) flavour haha with white chocolate ice-cream base, Mars Bar, Roasted Hazelnuts and Peanut Butter. Thinking back I probably overloaded my ice-cream but it was everything I like all in packed into one ice-cream.

This was the scoreboard! Congratulations Lianne for winning! Her flavour pistachio, honey and rosewater was fantastic and I’m a fan of pistachios too so it won a vote from me too 🙂

As for my favourite Harry’s Ice-cream flavour from their range of ice-cream would definitely be Sticky Date Pudding with toffee and fudge pieces through the ice-cream. Delicious! Thank you Harry’s Ice-cream and Keep Left for the invite to such a fun event, now time to go home and perfect my own personal flavour!

Daisy@Nevertoosweet attended this event as a guest of Harry’s Ice-cream and KeepLeft PR 

HK Style BBQ – New Year Eve Party

Happy New Year my Dearest Readers 🙂 2013 was a rough one for Mr Bao and I, many ups and quite a few downs. But now that’s gone, I am ready to take on 2014 and can’t wait to see what it has in store for us all!

How did you spend New Years eve? Did you have a party? It might be surprisingly to many but this year is probably the first year I’ve spent New Years in Melbourne because in the past I am always in Hong Kong wit family. Alas with work it’s a little hard to take time off during this period so Mr Bao and I decided to stay here instead. You know we had a Christmas Eve party, so initially for New Years eve we wanted to go away on a short trip. Unfortunately, because of the car accident that happened and a few others mishaps we left it too late and it was too hard and expensive to plan a getaway 😦

So instead we decided to do it the Aussie way and have a barbeque at my parents place because its more spacious ~ and since they’re not here they couldn’t really object hehe. Even though we wanted to do a BBQ like locals do, we wanted to put a twist to it and do the HK style way. Instead of using a weber barbeque, have an open fire with charcoal and cook the food on long forks.

We just assumed our friends knew what to do but hahaha turns out they haven’t seen or had this type of barbeque. It’s basically a DIY you need to choose what you want to cook, put it onto the fork and then go to the fire and cook it. Some of my friends were quite alarmed because they’re use to all the food being cooked at once ~ Nope you’ve gotta feed yourself 😛 sorry friends but that’s why it’s fun hehe

Once again I think we over catered for 16 people haha we got 2kgs of beef marinated in Korean bulgogi sauce, 4kg of chicken wings marinated 2 ways with a special BBQ rub Mr Bao made, 2kg of chicken thighs marinated 3 ways and we marinated that in some Nandos marinate sauce which was actually quite tasty.

I also made dessert using those forks, using a piece of bread spread butter and honey over it, toast it using the open fire remember to turn it frequently so it doesn’t burn. And then top two marshmallows and wait patiently because it will start to melt you then fold it into and eat it 🙂 Its such a simple but delicious little sweet treat hehe next time I think I’ll put a little chocolate in it to make it into a Smores toastie 😀

Apart from a BBQ party I also wanted to make it an ice-cream party where we blind tasted ice-cream to see which brand we liked the most. I got this super fun idea from my fellow blogger friends 🙂 I asked my guests to all buy chocolate ice-cream because I mean who doesn’t like chocolate and that was probably the most readily available flavour hehe. We ended up with 7 tubs and ready to serve and taste!

1. Movenpick Swiss Chocolate
2 Connoisseur Belgian Chocolate
3.Killeigh Farm Triple Chocolate with chocolate swirl (Aldi)
4. Indulge Chocolate ice-cream (Aldi)
5. Ben & Jerry Brownie fudge chocolate
6. Blue Ribbon Triple Chocolate
7. Sara Lee Ultra Chocolate

Can you guess which 3 brands was top three choices amongst my friends and I? hehe
First Choice – Ben & Jerry Brownie fudge chocolate
Second Choice – Connoisseur Belgian Chocolate
Third Choice – Movenpick Swiss Chocolate

I can’t say I’m surprised that Ben & Jerry won this blind taste because it was so decadent, moreish with brownies pieces through it just made you want to eat more 🙂 I was surprised though Movenpick was only the third choice because it’s actually Win Win (my sisters) favourite.

Mixed berry and coffee trifle

I was a little sad I didn’t get to make dessert for the Xmas eve party soooooo I promised to make a dessert for this party…flipped through so many recipes and finally decided to make a trifle since I’ve never used my trifle bowl (I bought it last year! :P) I ended up adapting the a few recipes and came up with this massive mixed berry and coffee trifle. It’s actually quite easy to make just need a few ingredients not baking or cooking required hehe please let me know if you would like the recipe! I’ll blog about it.

We didn’t want to watch the fireworks on TV so we all headed over to Westfield shopping centre and parked at the highest car park. It was actually a great view we could see so many fireworks going off, they were not all close to us, but it was just as spectacular. I also bought us fire crackers/sparkling candles to play with. Yes I still act like a child hehe

We also drew words with this them 🙂 I hope in the new year we will all learn to love ourselves and the important people around us more! May 2014 be the best one yet for us all!

Ice-cream Party – Movenpick QV

Hello my Dearest Readers 🙂 hope you’ve had a nice weekend and if you’re in Melbourne enjoyed the wonderful weather we had yesterday! It was sunny, warm but not too hot with a cool breeze! It’s probably the best day we’ve had for a while! Last week was down right miserable wet and gloomy. Hopefully, the wonderful weather will continue, I mean it is Spring after all!

Movenpick QV Store

Spring will lead into Summer which means ICE CREAM season 😀 It’s more of an excuse for me to consume more than I already do hehe Last week, I was invited to the Movenpick launch party for their newest boutique store in QV Building in the CBD. They are situated on the top level in the open area where all the other eateries are.

Lolly Buffet Table

I invited Ashley and Kirk to come to the launch party with me, Mr Bao unfortunately had to work even though he would’ve loved to come as he’s a fan of Movenpick ice-cream ~ As soon as we walked in, we were welcomed by this enormous Lolly Buffet Table with all different kind of lollies, meringues, chocolates and those addictive caramel popcorn.

Do you like pouring sauce over your ice-cream? I love pouring chocolate sauce, caramel sauce and heaps of chocolate chips over hehe yes I am still a child at heart and occasionally act like one.

Espresso Martini with coffee ice-cream

No party is complete without  alcohol, so we started off with an Espresso Martini that uses their Espresso Croquant flavour it’s got a good hit of coffee and creaminess from the ice-cream. It was more like an affogato ~

Smiley Sam from MKR

I thought I saw someone familiar when we walked in, turns out Smiley Sam from MKR was hosting the event and explained to us that this was Movenpicks 18th store in Australia and the first concept store in Melbourne 🙂 It’s good now that Movenpick is easily available in most supermarkets, I remember it use to be was quite exclusive and I had to go to specific stores and delis to get it.

Crispy prawn, mini burgers and macarons

We continued with some savouries and macarons before we hit the ice-cream station ~ we were all really impressed with the fried prawn which was so succulent and crispy on the outside, and the super cute sliders with a mini beef patty, melted cheese, bacon and tomoto relish. We then tried some of the macarons, really good texture but we couldn’t really tell what the flavours were hehe i think one was pistachio, gingerbread and raspberry white chocolate.

Decisions decisions decisions

Then it was the hard bit, which flavours do we get! In a cone, in a cup, fruit based or chocolate based? So hard to choose! I wanted to try all of them but hahaha I had a dinner party at our place that night so had to save some stomach space.

Round One – Maple Walnut, Caramelita and Strawberry

After some serious deliberation for round one I chose the Maple Walnut which is my favourite flavour the sweet maple with the crunchy walnuts through it. Kirk chose the strawberry and Ash got the Caramelita, can’t believe it’s actually the first time I’ve had this flavour. It has my name all over it with streaks of caramel through the ice-cream 😀

Round Two – Swiss Chocolate, Panna Cotta, Creme brûlée

We quickly finished the first cup and moved onto the round two the more unique flavours, I got the Swiss Chocolate flavour, it’s Win Win’s favourite she loves the dark rich chocolatey flavour. We also tried the panna cotta and creme brûlée flavour I was really impressed with the slight burnt caramelised flavour achieved in the creme brûlée 🙂

Last round – Strawberry ice cream with balsamic vinegar, mango sorbet and vanilla bean with coconut

Last round we tried the even fancier ice-creams, starting with the strawberry ice-cream with balsamic vinegar and fresh strawberries I never use to think that this combination will work but it sure does! The mango sorbet was tangy and refreshing with a little tuile biscuits. Finally it was Mr Bao’s favourite vanilla ice-cream sprinkled with flaked coconut, simple but delicious.

Cute doll made out of balloons!

It was definitely an honour to be invited to Movenpick’s launch party, it had good music, wine but most important unlimited ice-cream and lollies 😀 There were lots to keeps the kids amused too look at this super cute doll made out of balloons! I appreciate the time and effort put into make Movenpick’s ice-cream, they ensure than an element of their flavour is in the ice-cream for instance in the Maple Walnut there will always be walnuts through it.

Movenpick QV Boutique
QV Level 2/ 210 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne Vic
Ph: +613 9654 4423

Daisy@Nevertoosweet attended Movenpick QV’s launch party as a guest of Movenpick Australia and Get Glossy.