CLIPPER CAFE

What I like about Sydney is their cafes, especially during breakfast time.  Everywhere there are cafes serving breakfast.  Every morning we would walk from Liverpool street to Surrey Hill all the way down.

A hip, cutesy small cafe situated at the start of Glebe Point Road.  

Nice interior decorations and atmosphere.  The decoration of the cafe is very unique

Their Masala chai latte is amazing

Baked eggs with chorizo or lamb sausages are burning hot but nevertheless a delicious choice to go with toast

Big portion to be shared

Brinjal Hummus with garlic bread

BEDOK SOUTH FOOD CENTRE

Bedok South food centre is one of our dinning options.  The stalls that we normally patronize are the Hill Street char kuay teow, which usually closed early, leaving the Wah Kee cuttlefish and Hock Seng Choon noodles stalls.   There are usually long queues for these stalls which is a testimonial for good food.

It usually takes about 20 minutes to queue.  The stall closed on Mondays and the operation hours are from 1800 hour to 2030 hour.  Cheap and best cuttlefish kangkong in town, costs you $2.00 per serving formally but has now increase price to $3.00 per serving which still worth the value.

Generous sprinkle of fragrant peanuts with lots of cuttlefish, cucumbers and pineapples with a choice of mee hoon, or without.

No other places serve you such an amount of chewy perfect tender cuttlefish.  The tantalizing sweet & sour sauce is more than enough to blend every piece of ingredients and allured one to lick up to the very last drops.

This stall has quite a lot of patrons, with a long queue whenever we are there.  They serve excellent fish balls which are big and bouncy, without any floury taste.  We usually ordered the dry springy mee-bok version with very spicy chilli and sweet tomato sauce.

BIG BUDDHA

We took a train from Shueng Wan to Central Station where we changed train to continue our journey to Tung Chung.  From there we took a cable car to reach Ngong Ping village.  It was cold and windy on the day we visited.  The village is designed after ancient china architecture with many restaurants and coffee shops which I thought was a bit over commercialized.

We can hear the wind howling even inside the cable car.  The car swung from time to time and the glass windows were all frosted.  At time when the mist clear we managed to take some shots.

From the ground level it is 268 steps to the Lotus Throne on which the Buddha sits.  The steps are pretty steep.   We were in decent physical shape, and have to take a short break halfway up the stairs to rest our legs and catch our breath.  The lotus throne is the circular seat of the Big Buddha. Visitors can walk around the it and enjoy the view from there, but cannot go inside the Buddha itself. 

With the mist cleared the view of the surrounding island and the sea was very pretty.

There are stalls selling Tofu Fa and so claim that the Tofu Fa make from water from the hill (山水豆腐花) by using stone grinder (石磨).  We picked Tak Kee out of 2~3 stalls as the rest were not opened for business yet. 

Due to the coldness we ordered hot tofu fa with ginger syrup (HK$10).  Ginger syrup alone has enhanced the bland flavor of Tofu Fa and at the same time added some red sugar available on the table to adjust to our preferred sweetness.    The red sugar dissolved gradually.  Smoothness of the pudding was just awesome.  It was incredibly smooth and soft.  We also ordered the sweet sesame paste which was thick and great flavor.

SENG CHEONG CRAB PORRIDGE

We visited Macau last December and tried their famous crab porridge at Seng Cheong.  The eatery is situated at Taipa - Rua do Cunha or 官也街.   It was still early when we came so getting a place is not a problem  

According to the information pamphlet the porridge was cooked by boiling with 3 different types of crab : meat crab, roe crab and flower crab which resulted in very rich crab flavor

The porridge is very rich in flavor.  Crabs were soaked in the very smooth and fragrant porridge.  We gave our thumbs up.

We also ordered side dishes of soft shell crabs and stir fried lettuces in oyster sauce.  The crispy soft shell crabs go well with vinegar

After dinner a nice stroll back to the hotel.  Enchanting night scene along the way

Galaxy Hotel interior

FRUITS COCKTAIL AIYU

Continuing making aiyu jelly, a welcome heat repel!

To eat with sugar syrup

Serve with cocktails make a colorful and lovely dessert

BROWN SUGAR & GINGER AIYU JELLY

A bowl of cold aiyu jelly to reward myself after washing and cleaning on such a hot day.  Brown sugar and ginger juice were added to the unset jelly before refrigerating

PINEAPPLE TARTS

After making the usual pineapple tarts there were some pineapple paste leftovers.  Baked another batch just for fun by making a different design and decorated with dried cranberries.  The tarts turned out crumbly but tasted good overall.

KUEH LAPIS

Had not been baking kueh lapis (layered cake) for many years.  As there was ample time left after finished baking all other types of cookies I decided to bake the cake.  The recipe was from Mr Richard Goh whom baking class that I attended and was a huge success after the first try.  The cake was spongy and soft with rich butter and egg aroma.