Bagan - Burmese cuisine

This wkend was a GASTRONOMIC wkend! After not going down to the city for food for almost a month, my greed knew no bounds. Surprisingly the first thing we did when we reached the city was not EAT ^_* talk about self-control! My mama will be really proud of me :)

Without a doubt, eating was the secong thing we did. We went to our all time favorite korean restaurant MADANG hidden in a little alley off pitt street. Unfortunately we were starvin by the time we got there so i forgot to take any pics. paiseh paiseh, next time i will.



Anyway the second place we went was a BURMESE restaurant called BAGAN in Strathfield. Special thanks to Charismatic and Andre Lam who brought us there. Dont mean to brag but it's the ONE AND ONLY BURMESE RESTAURANT in SYDNEY!!! I was ashamed of myself, how could I , the food connoiseur, not know about after 6 yrs in sydney????

Erm... I 'm sure most of us have no idea watsoever about burmese food. Well, according to wikipedia Burmese cuisine if influenced by chinese,thai and indian cuisine. The dishes usually do not contain pork or beef as avoided by the muslims and buddhist respectively. For more info, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Burma.

Dishes ordered:
1) BAGAN CHICKEN
2) DURIAN SHAKE
3) GOAT CURRY
4) Burmese fried rice
5) Sweet, sour, spicy fish
6) stirfry kang kung

BAGAN CHICKEN

Personally, I recommend the BAGAN chicken which was deep fried chicken coated in a thin batter and fried with a sweet, sour, savoury, spicy flavor. It was a explosion of flavors in the mouth. The chicken was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Apparently the spiceness is not for the faint hearted, so being "chicken" we ordered it with 'less spice'

The goat curry is another dish that I highly recommend to pple who like eating lamb/mutton. It is like a in between of rendang and curry. The goat is cut in bitesize cubes and it melts in ur mouth...

Last but not least is the ULTIMATE DURIAN SHAKE! Only one word...SHIOK! On the first mouthful I felt like I was back in Geylang in Singapore. On the second mouthful I imagined myself in Malaysia for holiday. On the third mouthful I felt like I was on the roadsides of thailand. For those that dnt knw, durian in South east asia comes mainly from malaysia and thailand.


Kevin's expression says it all

Try it out and give me your comments!

Pandan Chiffon Cake

I have not been back to the city for 2 wks... have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms from GOOD food since. Ask marvin and he'll tell you how miserable I have been :( My hunger and desperation has inspired me to discover a few new recipes and this is one of them. Improvised from http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/2006/03/pandan-chiffon-cake.html. Special thanks to MKBJ whose role was my kitchen assistant "by choice" ^_* ttz wat BF's are for :) I apologize for the weird measurements as I do not have a weighing scale so i make do with what I have, it is accurate enough though, beggars cant be choosers!

Ingredients:
150g cake flour OR 1.1 cups of plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

8 egg yolks
1 tbsp pandan essence (according to how strong you want the flavor)
300 ml AYAM coconut cream
160 g castor sugar / 0.6 cup of raw sugar

9 egg whites
1 tbsp castor sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Instructions:

1) Heat coconut cream in pan over low heat and dissolve 160 grams of sugar. Leave to cool.
2) Sift flour, salt and baking powder together.
3) Mix egg yolks, pandan essence and coconut/sugar mixture thoroughly.
4) Slowly add flour mixture to above and mix until batter is smooth.\
5) Preheat oven at 160 degree celsius
6) Whisk egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar until stiff peaks.
7) Add 1/2 of egg white mixture to green batter and fold it in slowly.
8) Fold in the rest of the egg white mixture.
9) Pour into 23 inch tube pan.
10) Bake at 160 degrees celsius for 45minutes.
11) Take the cake out of the oven and invert the mould
12) Allow to cool like that for 1 hour
13) Use a knife to loosen the sides of the cake from the mould.

Wala!

For convenience, instead of buying a tube pan, I used a 20cm spring form pan and baked it in 2 batches. The smaller the pan you are using, the shorter the cooking time. To tell if the cake is done,just stick a satay stick through and make sure that the batter does not stick.

ENJOY!

P.S. If you think itz too troublesome, then just tell me in person how much you would like to try my cake, then mayb i'll consider making it for you personally :P