Archive for May, 2008

Chinese food - Cranbourne style.

Published at May 26, 2008 in Cranbourne and food. 1 Comment

Well we have been settling well in Cranbourne, and slowly trying the neighborhood restaurants, so slowly, I shall be reviewing some of these.

 First off the bat is Yue’s Chinese Restaurant.

First thing you notice in Yue’s is the decor. It is distinctly chinese restaurant looking. With one minor difference. Not a chopstick to be seen, forks and knives at every table, standard Australian commercial radio going.

Thats when, if you are like me, you also notice that instead of a asian person, service is provided by a matronly suburban Australian woman.

Now you would be forgiven here for assuming this is a recipe for a memorable meal, memorable for all the wrong reasons, however, when you make an assumption, you sometimes are just making an ass out of u and mption….

The service is very very friendly. The food is rather good. I wouldnt say brilliant, but it is definitely good chinese. I half suspect they have a poor chinese chef chained to the kitchen, as the flavours are 100% chinese and very well presented. Chopsticks are provided on request if you want, and the food comes out in a very timely fashion.

I will definitely be going back there again. The prices are very very reasonable and service friendly.

It seems to be a thing about some of the restaurants in Cranny, decent food at very decent prices, with very friendly service.

Coffee - How i went from a drinker to a maker.

Published at May 25, 2008 in Coffee. 0 Comments

So I used to have a daily coffee from a place called Coffee Max. I highly recommend them. They are in Camberwell, on Burke rd, next door to the JB HiFi there.  In particular, the blend known as Brasilia is divine. They roast their own beans on premise, and Dino pulls one of the best coffees you can ever have.

That said, $4 a day, sometimes twice a day, while not ridiculous, was an expense I wanted to pair down. In addition, having a 50 minute commute to work in the morning, I decided I should make my own coffees and drink them on the way in.

To this end, I initially invested in a Vac Pot - a Bodum Santos 6 cup, and proceeded to learn how to make a damn fine coffee with it. Vac Pots are for the coffee purist who loves a long black. Very little bitterness, and a beautiful full bodied flavour.  It does take a bit of fiddling to get right however, and the process is tricky when half asleep. I do heartily encourage anyone who loves a coffee to at least try a Vac Pot at some point, and when making coffee for several guests now, the Santos always comes into play, and everyone is always very appreciative.

In order also to improve the flavour of my coffee, it was around this time I also invested in a new grinder. After a fair bit of research, in order to suit my budget needs, I invested in a Sunbeam EM0480 grinder. This is where I learned that my old Delonghi machine would no longer serve my purposes as a decent grind would essentialy block up the group and spray water everywhere.
So  I decided it was time to get rid of my old DeLonghi semi auto coffee machine and get a real coffee machine. You can make an ok coffee with a semi auto, but for a truly awesome coffee, you need a manual machine. After some research, it really boiled down to a choice between the Gaggia Classic and the Rancilio Silvia. The Classic was more easily available secondhand at an affordable price, so after a week or 2 on eBay, i scored one for $250.

Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately for me, the machine was not as advertised on eBay. It was not in Very Good Condition, as stated in the auction, it was in fact, quite poorly. Water only poured out of half the group, it came out dirty and stale tasting, and I could not get a decent crema.

This is where some online research paid of handsomely. Machine’s like the classic have many users and there are massive coffee communities out there, coffeesnobs.com.au and coffeegeek.com are two to mention to start with.

With help from these communities (also the help of a friend with a dremel), I stripped the classic down completely, ordered some spare parts  (in total $40 worth) and cleaned it all out, put in new gaskets, shower screens etc and voila, as good as new. All of a sudden I am tasting coffee heaven. Absolutely wonderful coffee.

I ordered a new tamper to go with my machine - the old tamper was a 53mm tamper, catering for the smaller basket of the delonghi, and the new tamper is a proper 58mm. Once again, the coffee improved.

Today, I have done one more mod to the Classic, and that is to change the plastic frothing aid with a proper steaming wand off a Rancilio Silvia. This has already much improved the microfoam I can produce, and means a much nicer latte or cappuccino.

One more mod planned for the machine, in the next few months I will install a PID kit on it to give me ultimate temperature control.

All this might sound a bit obsessive, but hey, if you drop by, you can know with surety that you are going to get a great coffee if you ask for one.

Oh and yeah so I spent a bit of cash on this, but considering I am saving (yes i do actually make 2 coffees for myself for the ride into work every morning) approximately $3 a day  (taking into account purchase of coffee beans) the machine AND the grinder will be paid off in savings in less than 6 months.  A hobby that literally is paying for itself.

Update - quick state of the raph

Published at May 25, 2008 in The House and State of the raph. 0 Comments

Well, I am not going to harp on here much, because is suspect either straight after this post, or if not directly after in the next few hours or at most days, there will be more posts.

But, Rachel and I have moved into the new house in cranbourne. It is big, warm, and quite lovely. Working on keeping it clean is an exercise in discipline for me, but so far I am working well at it. Having a dishwasher is nice, and a 90cm oven kicks butt.

Beej is settling in well, and the regular commute to work is not too bad, about 50 minutes in, and 1 hour 10 minutes out. Its made easier by the 2 coffees I drink on the way in.

Still need to get landscaping done out the front and out the back, have a few quotes, working on the funds to do it all.  Theater room is set up, with selectv and setanta as well, so we have movie and documentary channels and i will be able to watch euro 08.

Rachy also seems to be loving the place, so things are indeed going well.

Emptying the old place was an exercise. 4 cubic meters taken out of the garage alone to be thrown away. I knew I should have gotten a bigger skip, but hey we managed (thanks dad). Currently haggling with the agent as to how much of my bond I should get back.  Hopefully it will be most of it. All things considered the place is not in too much worse shape than when I moved in, and I am leaving behind an airconditioner.

I have gotten totally into making coffee at home, will talk more about that later, and am settling into the suburb of Cranbourne nicely too - Also more on that soon.