Raisin Yuzu Milk Buns

A little while ago I was gifted a pack of Japanese and Korean ingredients from The Essential Ingredient to cook with. There were lots of delicious goodies - sweet red miso paste, dashi, yuzu koshou, smoked soy sauce and more! I knew that there were loads of savoury things I could make (and I do have plans), but of course my eyes zoomed to the candied yuzu peel and my first thoughts were to make a sweet treat.

The Essential Ingredient Japanese Pack

The candied yuzu peel is similar to candied orange peel, but has a lovely fresh, almost floral aroma, kinda like a mandarin or grapefruit. I thought it would add a lovely accent to an Asian-inspired bread. And if it was going to be an Asian-style bread, it had to be a tangzhong dough! I've been wanting to try the tangzhong method for ages, mainly thanks to all the super-fluffy and delicious breads I'd seen on Not Quite Nigella, Feedmeichi and from Kim-Joy on Great British Bake Off.

The tangzhong method is a way of making bread that is originally Japanese, but is extremely popular all throughout Asia. You know those super-light and fluffy breads you get at Asian bakeries like Bread Top? Those are made with tangzhong! You start by making the tangzhong / water roux itself - whisking together flour and liquid over heat until thickened.

Tangzhong

After making the tangzhong and letting it cool, everything else is just like a standard yeasted bread dough. You chuck all the ingredients and tangzhong into a mixer, then knead, prove, shape, prove, and bake. (Gosh, if I had realised that tangzhong was this simple I would have tried it ages ago!) The addition of the tangzhong adds moisture to the dough, making it softer and fluffier, and helps to keep it fresher for longer.

I adapted the buns from the Hokkaido Milk Roll recipe on the King Arthur Flour website, which stood out to me for its precision. (Gram and volume measurements! A specific temperature goal to aim for so you know it's cooked through!) As this was my first time trying a new method, I didn't want to leave much room for interpretation or error.

Bread dough

Here's the windowpane test to check for sufficient gluten development! Yup, it's ready.

Windowpane test

I added the yuzu peel and soaked raisins to the dough, as well as some cinnamon and mixed spice, for a bit of a hot cross bun vibe.

Proofed!

Buns ready for baking

Raisin Yuzu Milk Buns

So fluffeh!

Raisin Yuzu Milk Buns

Raisin Yuzu Milk Buns

If you like baking bread at home, definitely give the tangzhong method a go! It's only a tiny bit of extra work and the results are so great! Fluffy deliciousness can be yours too!

Raisin Yuzu Milk Buns / レーズン柚子食パン
Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients
For the tangzhong
3 tablespoons (43 grams) water
3 tablespoons (43 grams) full cream milk
2 tablespoons (14 grams) bread flour
For the bread
1/2 cup (75 grams) raisins
2.5 cups (300 grams) bread flour
2 tablespoons (15 grams) milk powder
1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon (10 grams) dried yeast
1/2 cup (125 millilitres) milk
1 egg
1/4 cup (57 grams) melted unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
2 tablespoons (20 grams) candied yuzu peel, finely chopped
1 extra egg, for egg wash

Method
To make the tangzong, whisk together the water, milk and flour in a small saucepan until smoothly combined. Cook over a medium heat, whisking all the while, for 3-5 minutes, or until the mixture is thickened and the whisk leaves lines on the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat, transfer the mixture to a bowl and cover with clingfilm, with the clingfilm directly touching the tangzhong to prevent it from forming a skin. Set aside until it cools to room temperature.
To make the bread, place the raisins in a heatproof bowl and pour hot water from the kettle over the raisins. Set aside to plump up while you make the bread.
Place the bread flour, milk powder, sugar, salt, yeast, milk, egg, melted butter, cinnamon, mixed spice and tangzhong in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Stir to combine, then knead for 5-10 minutes or until smooth and elastic and it passes the windowpane test.
Drain the raisins and add to the dough. Add the chopped candied yuzu peel and knead a few times until the fruit is evenly distributed.
Form the dough into a smooth ball, cover with clingfilm, and allow to prove in a warm place for 60-90 minutes or until risen and puffy.
Lightly grease a 23 cm metal cake tin with butter.
Knock the air out of the mixture and divide into 8 even balls, and arrange into the prepared cake tin. (The dough will be very wet and sticky so might be difficult to form into balls, just do your best.)
Cover with clingfilm and allow to prove in a warm spot for 50 minutes or until risen and puffy.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Beat the extra egg with a tablespoon of water. Brush the buns with the egg wash. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown and cooked though. (A food thermometer plunged into the centre of the middle buns should read 190F / 88C). The dough does brown quite quickly, so cover with foil during the cooking time if it's browning before it's cooked through.
Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 8 buns

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Sarah received complimentary candied yuzu peel from The Essential Ingredient but was not obligated to post nor compensated in any other way. All opinions are my own.

Loh Bak

My mum makes the best loh bak. Fact. She always makes it at Chinese New Year, and often throughout the year when we request it. She got the recipe from an auntie many years ago (before my brother and I were born, probably), and she still has the recipe typed up on a little card that she keeps in a box in the pantry. Of course, she's made this so many times that she doesn't actually use the recipe any more! As with most recipes from a Malaysian auntie, the instructions are quite vague, and assume a lot of existing knowledge. Fret not, dear readers, I have written the recipe below in a way that (I hope) is a bit more instructive! Feel free to comment if anything is unclear and I will attempt to explain in more detail! The recipe below is the way my mum makes it - I'm not sure how much is from Aunty Oh Nya Ee, and how much is from my mum. I guess that's what happens when recipes are passed along.

My mum and I made this batch together for our Chinese New Year celebration this year, with Sandra photographing (and taste testing). It's technically still the Chinese New Year period until Tuesday the 19th of February (chap goh meh or the "fifteenth night"), so you could definitely make a batch before then! Or just make it any time! It's that good.

So, the two main ingredients are pork belly (or "belly pork" as my Malaysian relatives call it), and bean curd sheets. You can buy the bean curd sheets at Asian grocers. My mum uses this brand; an important thing is to make sure you buy sheets that are flexible and not brittle, as you'll be rolling them up later. (I've seen both types in the stores). For the belly pork, my mum usually picks a piece at the butcher that "looks right", which I estimate is around the 1.5 kilogram mark. This year, she bought a few pieces already sliced into rashers, which made the chopping process a lot easier. She says she'll do this again next time! (PS the pork in the picture below is about half of what we used that day).

Belly pork and bean curd skin

With the belly pork, you need to chop off the rind, and chop out any bones. Then you slice and slice and slice into small pieces, like the ones below. This is quite a bit of work; a sharp knife is essential. Whatever you do, don't use minced pork, Mum says "that's cheating", and it won't taste as good. (I must add here that as an angsty teen I refused to eat pork, and during that period my mum kindly made loh bak with minced chicken every Chinese New Year! She also used to make bak kwa with minced chicken for me during that time. I remember her complaining about it a lot, but the fact that she was kind enough to make something different to accommodate me really demonstrates true maternal love).

Chopped pork and 5-spice powder

Work station ready to go

You lay some of the pork mince on the beancurd skin (as per the below picture), then dab the short edges with some cornflour mixture, then roll it up! You also dab some cornflour mixture on the long side furthest away from you to help seal it down.

Rolling rolling rolling

Press the sides

You place the roll on a tray (seam side down so it doesn't unroll), and then keep rolling until you're all out of meat. We often have a few pieces of beancurd skin leftover; it really depends on how big your piece of pork was, and how generously you fill the rolls.

Rolled loh bak

My one small contribution to the culinary tradition of loh bak is to make some rolls extra small. (About half a sheet). This means you get extra crunchy edges, which are the best part! (It's taken twelve years of Sandra stealing the crunchy end pieces at family dinners for me to come up with this innovation, but better late than never).

At this point you can either proceed straight to deep-frying, or cover the tray loosely with clingfilm and refrigerate for a few hours, or overnight, until you want to fry. (My mum often freezes logs of loh bak too, and fries them directly from frozen).

Ta-dah!

Loh bak

So crunchy. So juicy. So delicious! We serve them with cucumber pieces, and a dipping sauce made of equal parts tomato ketchup and Lingham's original chilli sauce with some toasted sesame seeds stirred through.

As I've told you practically every Chinese New Year for the last fourteen years, my family's Chinese New Year dinner is always the same - loh bak, curry chicken kapitan, and kiam chye thng (salted vegetable soup with duck and pig's trotter). So good!

Chinese New Year Lunch 2019

Happy happy Chinese new year! I hope the Year of the Pig brings you lots of joy and success! (And hopefully a few servings of loh bak).

Loh Bak
A recipe by Sarah's Mum

Ingredients
1 piece boneless pork belly (approx. 1.5 kilograms)
1 egg
1 teaspoon 5-spice powder
Pepper, to taste
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 packet bean curd sheets
Vegetable oil, for frying
To serve: cucumber, tomato ketchup, Lingham's chilli sauce, toasted sesame seeds

Method
Cut the rind off the pork belly. Slice the pork belly into thick strips, and then cut the thick strips into thin little pieces. Place the pork belly pieces into a large mixing bowl.
Add the egg, 5-spice powder, pepper and soy sauce. Stir to combine.
Remove the bean curd sheet from the packet, and cut into rectangles. Each packet contains one large sheet of beancurd folded up, you can just cut along the seams. Cut some of these sheets in half again if you want to make mini rolls and thus increase the amount of crunchy ends.
Mix the cornflour with 2 tablespoons of water to form a white liquid.
Set up the bowl of seasoned pork, the sheets of bean curd, and the cornflour water on your work surface.
Take one sheet of bean curd skin, and wipe it on both sides with a clean damp cloth. (I don't know how strictly necessary this is, but my mum always does it "in case it's dusty in the factory").
Place the piece of piece of bean curd skin on the work surface with the long side facing you. Place a strip of the pork mixture horizontally on the bean curd. (See the picture in the post). Use your fingers to dab some of the cornflour mixture on the vertical edges of the bean curd skin, and on the horizontal side furthest away from you.
Roll up the loh bak as tightly as you can manage, and then press down on the edges to seal. Place the rolled up loh-bak on a tray, seam side down.
Continue with the remaining pork and beancurd until it is all gone. (We usually have a couple of pieces of bean curd skin left over, this depends on the size of the pork belly you buy, don't panic). At this stage, you can loosely cover the loh bak with clingfilm and refrigerate for a few hours or up to overnight, until it's time to fry.
Heat up vegetable oil in a wok over a medium heat. (You'll need enough oil to allow the loh bak pieces to float freely). Once the oil is hot, fry the loh bak logs in batches, until golden brown on the outside and cooked through. Drain on paper towel.
Once they're all cooked, cut the loh bak logs into 2-cm chunks and place on a serving plate.
Make a dipping sauce by mixing equal quantities of tomato ketchup and Lingham's chilli sauce and adding a teaspoon or so of toasted sesame seeds.
Serve the loh bak with chopped cucumber and the dipping sauce
Makes lots

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

The idea for the crispy tofu came from a place from which I never expected to find an authentic-tasting Chinese noodle dish: Pinch of Yum. Pinch of Yum is an American food blogger from Minnesota who is suuuuper popular on Pinterest, and who mixes in lots of wonderful personal posts amongst her bright and chirpy recipes. In her recipe for Spicy Sesame Zoodles with Crispy Tofu, she makes a big quantity of a Chinese-inspired chilli-sesame blender sauce, uses some of it to dress the noodles (well, zoodles in her case), and uses the rest of it to fry cubes of tofu until crunchy and caramelised. Such a genius idea! Flavour, texture and protein, all at once!

I added some shiitake mushrooms to my noodles, because I have a big container of dried shiitake in the pantry, and I wanted to add a vegetable component to the dish. (I guess they're technically a fungus, but "they provide many of the same nutritional attributes of vegetables" so are often considered a vegetable). I soaked them in some hot water to bring them back to springy life, and used some of the soaking water to thin out the noodle sauce. It was a good move, spreading super umami goodness throughout the whole dish!

Sesame Peanut Sauce

Tofu Cubes

Spicy Tofu Cubes

Tofu and Noodles

Mee Sua Birthday Noodles

My mum used to make these for our family members' birthdays every year when my brother and I were growing up, and I used to look forward to them very much! I even remember us all getting up early and having a nice bowl of hot noodle soup before school, when one of our birthdays happened to fall on a school day. They're my favourite!

After I moved out of home eight years ago, we'd have mee swa less often, usually only if one of our birthdays coincided with a weekend or a day off work. (See posts April 2008, April 2012, April 2013 and July 2013 and July 2015). Mee swa eventually stopped being a "must-have" element of my birthday celebrations, and I must admit, I'd almost forgotten about them until Sandra requested them for her birthday last month!

My mum kindly obliged, and they were amazing as usual. They transported me straight back to my childhood, and I knew I just had to learn how to make them! So Mum explained the recipe to me (although she doesn't have a recipe per se; it's just in her head), and I took notes and then practised at home. Here we go!

Here are the ingredients - we always get that brand of mee swa noodles. I guess any extra-fine wheat noodles would do, but I have a nostalgic affinity to that particular brand and the retro-looking box. My mum says to use two bundles per person (i.e. 60 grams of noodles each), but I found that to be quite a large quantity (the egg and meatballs are quite filling). So I'd personally suggest three bundles between two people (or 45 grams of noodles per person). Trust your appetite!

Vermicelli noodles, pork, eggs

So, the balls. (Heh). You mix the pork mince with a little sesame oil, soy sauce, salt and pepper, and form into balls. You then cook them in boiling water, and the cooking water becomes your soup broth. (Hot tip: don't get lean pork mince, get a fattier pork mince. For flavour and texture!) I like a mild soup, and just seasoned the water with a little salt, and let people adjust the flavourings at the table. However, feel free to season the broth as you like, with salt, pepper, soy sauce, stock powder, sesame oil etc.

Pork balls

Meanwhile, you hardboil your eggs and cook your noodles. (The noodles take like a minute to cook, so quick!)

Noodles and eggs

Dab the eggs with some food colouring (my mum always does a cross, so I follow her), divide the balls and broth between the bowls and you're done!

Mee Sua

The accompaniments are non-negotiable in my opinion! Soy sauce and pepper, obviously. A small chopped red chilli, with some soy sauce (and a few drops sesame oil) poured over. And fried garlic! My mum usually has a big jar of homemade fried garlic on the go at home - she uses a processor to finely chop a big batch of garlic and fries it in vegetable oil, then stores the crunchy garlic and flavourful oil in jars for use as a condiment. So addictive. I didn't have any at home, and my processor kept turning my garlic cloves into mush rather than little cubes, so I just finely sliced a few garlic cloves by hand and fried those. When I get a bit more time on my hands I'll make a big batch and store it.

Mee Sua

I was really pleased that my noodles turned out like my mum's! It's a simple recipe so even I could do it. Yay!

Mee Sua

Do you make mee swa at home? Do you make them like my mum does or does your family have a different variation? Share your version in the comments, I'd love to know!

Mee Swa Birthday Noodles
A recipe by Sarah Cooks and her mum

Ingredients
2 eggs
90-120 grams extra thin vermicelli wheat noodles
200 grams pork mince (not lean)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Red food colouring
To serve: fried garlic, fresh chopped chilli, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper

Method
Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil over a medium heat. As soon as the water comes to a boil, place a lid on the pot and turn the heat off. Allow to sit for 7 minutes, then drain and rinse under cold water until cool enough to handle. Peel and set aside.
Cook the noodles in boiling salted water for 1-2 minutes, then drain and divide between two serving bowls.
Mix the pork mince with soy sauce and sesame oil, and season with salt and pepper. Roll into 10 meatballs. Bring a medium saucepan of water to the boil, season with salt and add the pork meatballs. Simmer for 5-6 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked. (They will be firm and springy when cooked, or just cut into one if you're not sure). Taste the soup and adjust seasoning to taste. (I like a mild-flavoured soup so just add a little salt, but you could add salt / pepper / soy sauce / stock powder / sesame oil etc.)
To assemble, add one hardboiled egg to each serving bowl, and dab the egg with a little red food colouring. Divide the cooked meatballs between the bowls and pour the stock over.
Serve with fried garlic, chopped chilli, soy sauce, sesame oil and pepper on the side for people to season as they wish.
Serves 2

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Crispy Chicken Rendang Spring Rolls

When that whole crispy rendang incident was playing out, I really wanted to see if it would be possible to create actual crispy rendang. After much deliberation, I thought the best way to achieve this would be to take the meat and sauce from a chicken rendang, and use it as a filling for spring rolls! So yes, I went through the whole rigmarole of making rendang from scratch, just so I could make these spring rolls. And while I made these crispy rendang spring rolls as a joke, I'm pleased to say they didn't taste like a joke. They were fantastic!

Once you've actually got your rendang, making these spring rolls is pretty easy. (I wouldn't recommend making it all on the same day, unless you have lots of time and are feeling very energetic!) In fact, the hardest part of the whole exercise is peeling apart the spring roll pastry!

You start by removing the meat and skin from the bones - and I'd suggest doing this by hand, but make sure you wear food gloves! Then finely chop it with some of the sauce. I like a ratio of about 70% meat to 30% sauce, but this will depend on how much you have left over. For funsies I actually made a few spring rolls that were all sauce, and they kept their shape, so it's ok to go for a higher ratio of sauce.

Spring roll pastry & leftover rendang

And here's how you roll the spring rolls. I hope this picture is helpful for any spring roll novices out there - I once read a recipe in one of my mum's books that had no pictures and simply said: "Roll the pastry spring roll style". Cool, thanks. Another tip is to brush the edges of the pastry with a mixture of cornflour and water to help seal them.

How to roll a spring roll

Frying the spring rolls

I don't deep fry often, as it can be a bit of a hassle to dispose of the oil, and it can stink up the house if you don't have a good exhaust, so when I do deep fry, it has to be worth it. These spring rolls were definitely worth it.

All the wonderful complex spices and aromatics of a rendang, in an easy to eat and crisp little package. Serve the cooked spring rolls with sambal belacan or sweet chilli sauce, they are crazy delicious. Crispy rendang for the win!

Crispy Chicken Rendang Spring Rolls
An original recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients
Leftover chicken rendang
1 packet spring roll pastry
1 tablespoon cornflour, whisked with 2 tablespoons water
Vegetable oil for deep frying (lots)
Sambal belacan and sweet chilli sauce, to serve

Method
Allow the spring roll pastry to defrost according to packet instructions. I usually put it in the fridge for a few hours before cooking.
To prepare the filling, remove the bones from the leftover chicken and discard. Roughly chop the meat and skin. (Note: the skin will not be crispy; this is ok). Mix the chopped meat and skin with some of the leftover sauce, you want a ratio of approx. 70% meat and 30% sauce, although this will obviously depend on how much you have leftover. Set aside.
Remove the spring roll pastry from the packet, and cover with a clean damp teatowel while you make the spring rolls.
For each spring roll, take one piece of pastry and place it on a board in front of you, with one of the corners pointing towards you. Place a tablespoon of the filling mixture on the pastry, just below the horizontal centre. Roll the bottom of the pastry over the filling, then roll it over once to enclose the filling. Fold the right and left sides in, moistening the pastry with a little cornflour-water mixture to seal. Continue rolling the spring roll to form a little tube, sealing the tip with more cornflour-water mixture. (Look at the pictures above for a guide). Repeat until all the filling is used up.
Heat a few inches of vegetable oil in a wok or heavy-based saucepan until 180C. If you don't have a thermometre, sacrifice one sheet of spring roll pastry to test. The oil should bubble up around the pastry as soon as it hits the oil, and it should take a minute to turn a nice golden brown.
Fry a few spring rolls at a time, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Fry for a minute or so on each side, or until golden brown. Remove the spring rolls and let them drain on kitchen towel. Repeat until all the spring rolls are cooked.
Serve with sambal belacan and / or sweet chilli sauce for dipping
Amount you get will depend on the amount of leftover chicken rendang you have.

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

My Chicken Rendang Nasi Lemak - not crispy

Good morning everybody! It's Wednesday and I have loads of recipe posts in the backlog just waiting to make their way out into the world... but they're on hold for the moment because I couldn't not talk about Crispy Rendang.

Two Masterchef UK judges almost caused an international incident when they criticised a Malaysian-born contestant's chicken rendang for not being "crispy".

So: last week, Masterchef UK contestant Zaleha Kadir Olpin was eliminated from the competition after the judges, John Torode and Gregg Wallace, deemed her chicken rendang not up to scratch. Some of their comments were reasonable. John, who has travelled extensively throughout Malaysia and his filmed cookery programs there, stated: "It hasn't had enough time to cook down and become lovely and soft and fall apart. Instead the chicken itself is just tough and it's not really flavoursome." Harsh but fair.

However, it was Gregg's clanger of a comment that caught the collective ire of my people: "the chicken skin isn't crispy, it can't be eaten".

I'm sorry... WHUT?!

Zaleha's expression is EVERYTHING (Source: YouTube)

For those who don't know, rendang is an incredibly flavourful slow-cooked dry curry, beloved throughout Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. (I believe it originated in West Sumatra ages ago, and has since become a national dish in all four countries). It ain't ever going to be crispy. If your chicken is crispy, then what you have is not a rendang.

Malaysians tend to be pretty chilled as a people, but when it comes to food, we do not mess around. We literally have no chill. Twitter and Facebook basically blew up with extremely impassioned comments from Malaysians. We love our food, we know our food, we are proud of our food. Gregg Wallace, who is supposedly knowledgable enough to be a judge on an international cooking program, demonstrated a lack of understanding of our cuisine and this would not stand! People definitely interpreted the exchange as an example of whitesplaining or having neo-colonialist undertones. The main thing that got me was that I hated the idea that a Malaysian contestant worked so hard to present a dish that was meaningful to her (and meaningful to us), only to have a judge with far less knowledge criticise it for a completely erroneous reason. (You can watch the full video here).

There have been lots of hilarious tweets and memes floating around, but this one in particular really tickled me.

Source: @Cookiemonstaly

Gregg seems to have remained silent on Twitter. But John, bless him, doubled down with this culturally insensitive tweet.

Oh John... Source: @JohnTorode1

My response on twitter basically said all I have to say about this.

Source: @SarahCooks

I am not super active on Twitter (unless you count my constant re-tweeting Simpsons Quote of the Day), but this little tweet of mine went nuts. People really cared about Crispy Rendang. And it wasn't just Malaysians! Indonesians, Bruneians, Singaporeans too - basically, all the major rendang countries, uniting!

Even Prime Minister Najib and ex-Prime Minister Mahathir got in on it. See? I told you food is important to us! I don't think Mahathir or Najib agree on much, but Crispy Rendang is something we can all get behind.

Ooh, feel the crispy burn Source: @chedetofficial

"Where do people eat "crispy" chicken rendang?" Source: @NajibRazak

Well done to Victoria Treadell, British High Commissioner to Malaysia, for keeping her cool and explaining the sitch. Also shout-out for the extensive use of #hashtags.

Source: @VickiTreadell

My chicken rendang

As you may know, I prefer to do a few small events with different friends, rather than one big party - smaller groups are much easier and you get to talk to everyone properly. Let's take a look!

The week before my birthday, we took advantage of the Anzac Day public holiday to have some friends over for a lunch at home. We made a roast pork loin with crackling, The Food Lab's incredible hasselback potato gratin, and a green salad with pear and toasted walnuts.

Roast Pork Loin

Hasselback Potato Gratin

Dessert was a huge plate of cookies! David Lebovitz' salted butter choc chip cookies and Dorie Greenspan's world peace cookies. Plus some rich dark chocolate truffles to go with coffee.

Cookies and chocolate truffles

So yum, such fun! Yay!

Of course, I had to get my complimentary Nando's birthday meal! (FYI you only get a small chips with the free meal; I paid to upsize because chips are life!)

Nando's!

The Friday before my birthday, I had birthday drinks and dinner at Belleville (Globe Alley, Melbourne VIC 3000). I'd been there before (on an invite) and really liked it, and have popped in a few times since then for sneaky after-work cocktails and delicious poutine. It was a good choice! The food was tasty, and they were great with the group booking (10 people). They were able to accommodate a couple of number changes at late notice, and they kindly let us split the bill at the end of the night. Thanks guys!

Drinks and dinner at Belleville

The next night, we hosted my annual slumber party. You know the drill, a group of girlfriends, comfy clothes, lots of food and drinks. This year I went for an American comfort food theme - vegetarian chilli (Nigella's recipe from Feast), buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing and celery, baked potatoes and corn chips, with sides of salsa, guacamole, grated cheese, sour cream and chives. The recipes all worked really well, but I was surprised by how popular the buffalo wings were! (Assisted in no small part by our viewing of BD Wong's guide to eat chicken wings - he's so awesome). I hadn't made buffalo wings since the first time, six years ago, but I've already made them twice more since the party. Can't get enough! (Check out my buffalo wing recipe here).

Slumber Party!

And for dessert, I made that cocoa sour cream layer cake with chocolate cheesecake icing, and raspberry whipped cream that I told you about in my April Unblogged Files. I was so pleased with how the cake turned out, especially the super stable raspberry whipped cream. I'll share the recipe with you soon! (I also did a gluten-free lemon slice for my coeliac friend Jess - yum!)

Cocoa sour cream cake with chocolate cheesecake icing and raspberry whipped cream

My actual birthday was a Sunday. It was a super lazy, chill day! Perfect. I made some waffles for breakfast. They were the waffles from The Food Lab, which I served with more of that stable raspberry whipped cream, raspberries (both fresh and freeze dried), butter, maple syrup, icing sugar, and a big pot of coffee.

Birthday Breakfast

Waffles!

As is my family's usual tradition, we went out for a special birthday meal for dinner. This year it was at Entrecôte (131-133 Domain Rd, South Yarra VIC 3141), for a classic French meal of steak frites. I'd never been to the South Yarra branch, and I'm happy to say the service was great and the food was excellent! They do what they do very well. The escargots and profiteroles were also *mwah*. (Mimes kissing gesture).

Steak Frites - Entrecôte's signature dish of grilled pasture fed Cape Grim 250g Angus Porterhouse, frites, sauce Maison au beurre et aux herbes,with soft leaves salad, radish, walnuts, Dijon vinaigrette - $44.90

Profteroles de chocolat - our vanilla bean ice cream, sauce au chocolat chaud, cocoa nibs & pearls - $17.90

I sneakily stretched out the birthday celebrations a little further the next day, with my customary (second) breakfast of donut and coffee with my buddy James at Shortstop (12 Sutherland St, Melbourne VIC 3000). The simple cinnamon, cardamom and sugar is my favourite!

Shortstop coffee and donuts

And for lunch, my buddy Adam and I went to Tim Ho Wan (206 Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000). We'd tried to come here last year but the queues were too long for us to do in a lunch break. Luckily the queues seem to have calmed down since then, and we were able to walk in straight away! Woo-hoo! We ordered a bunch of things and were really impressed. Of course, the signature pork buns were excellent, but we also liked the century egg congee, the har gow (prawn dumplings) and the chee chong fan (prawn in rice noodle roll). Definitely want to go back!

Tim Ho Wan

And finally, I wanted to show you some of the gorgeous gifts I was lucky enough to receive. Flatlay skills! There were cute flamingo accessories, sparkling wine, flowers, cherry earrings, fragrance, a candle, goodies from Burt's Bees, Mecca vouchers, Lost Highway on DVD (scary!) and some gorgeous plates. Not pictured: tickets to a Good Beer Week dinner, a massage voucher (I used that one immediately), and a weekend away! Feeling very loved and lucky!

Birthday gifts

Are birthdays a big deal for you? Do you like to do one big celebration? Or drag it out as long as you can? Do you have any fun birthday traditions with your friends or family?