A couple of evenings ago, B announced that he had bought a TV. A TV? But, but, we have a TV! Yes, but this one is much bigger, he says. How much bigger, I ask. He tells me. Wah. Why do we need such a large TV? What are you compensating for? Small eyes?, I counter, with narrowed eyes.

You see, I drool at the sight of large plasma screens, as much as anyone else, but the thought of owning one of them frightens me a little. Being so big, it doubles as a room feature and screams, “I have no life! TV IS my life”.

It’s like when you’re at a party and you’re talking to a new acquaintance, asking them what television programs they like. You hope they’ll bring up your current favourites, like Heroes, Entourage, The Chaser and it turns out the conversation killer is so against the culture of the box that he doesn’t even own a TV. Oh, well,… we’ve recently bought a 48inch flatscreen plasma TV behemoth of a thing, now let’s change the subject!

Also, I’m one of those nonsensical people who stay attached to old things. I can buy a new toothbrush and still be using the old one to the point where the bristles aren’t brushing anymore – more like stroking the teeth gently. Might as well have been brushing my teeth with my finger, the way people do when they forget to pack a toothbrush. I love our old TV. It has been completely faithful and problem free. It’s just really hard..to..let….go. Old things are comforting. As comforting as a big bowl of hot dumplings in winter.

(see, I can segue as well as Anna Coren!)

Johanna of The Passionate Cook has chosen Dumplings as the latest WTSIM theme. Golden syrup dumplings, yeasted fritters, gnocchi, pierogi, takoyaki, samosas, gow gees, I love them all!

I saw a recipe for a yogurt soup with dumplings in a recent issue of Gourmet Traveller magazine and was intrigued enough to want to attempt it. For one thing, I’d never had yogurt soup before, let alone hot yogurt soup. Also this was my first time hearing of these dumplings called mante – which are, according to the recipe, “traditional Armenian pasta parcels filled with spiced meat and usually served with a yogurt sauce”.

Sold.

A few things I did have to change when I made this. For the life of me, I couldn’t find any plain pistachios when I went grocery shopping that day, so I substituted with toasted almonds instead, which still tasted good in my opinion. Also, I found the quantity of yogurt soup was perfect for serving, but not quite so for simmering the raw dumplings, so I ended up cooking them in water.

Overall, a very tasty and heart-warming way to start a meal.

Now, is there anyone out there who’s interested in a second-hand Phillips TV?

Hot Yogurt Soup with Chicken and Pistachio Mante :
(recipe by Joseph Abboud from Rumi)

750ml natural yogurt
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 tablespoon cooked short grain rice
1/2 teaspoon dried mint
Extra-virgin olive oil, to serve
Lebanese bread, to serve

Mante :

100g minced chicken
20g coarsely chopped pistachios
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
18 8cm-diameter round wonton wrappers

For mante, combine all ingredients except wonton wrappers in a bowl and season to taste with sea salt. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling in the centre of each wonton wrapper, brush edges with water, fold wrapper in half and join ends together, pressing to seal.

Whisk together yogurt, egg yolk, cornflour, rice and mint in a bowl, pour into a large saucepan and bring to a simmer (do not let it boil) over medium heat. Add mante and cook for 3 minutes, or until mante float to surface. Ladle soup into bowls, drizzle with olive oil and serve with Lebanese bread.

The wet weather had left me hankering for a nice big piece of chocolate cake, accompanied by an equally large pot of tea. I have my standard list of favourite, never-fail chocolate cake recipes, but wanted to try something new this time. George’s Chocolate Nut Cake, a recipe from Stephanie’s Cook’s Companion, was the result. Wishing I had chestnut flour on hand, but settling for the almond meal already in the cupboard, this cake turned out light but very moist, with that wonderful lick of alcohol becoming more pronounced the next day.

If one cake is good, then two is a tastebud tango, I decided. Armed with a handful of mandarins, the obvious way to transform them into wedges of cake was to utilise Nigella’s Clementine Cake recipe. What are clementines anyway, but a type of mandarin. And what is Nigella’s recipe, but a variation on Claudia Roden’s Middle Eastern Orange cake; an oft mentioned, much loved and much copied recipe. What has previously stopped me from making this cake has been that starting paragraph that goes something along the lines of, “Boil your oranges for two hours..”

Originating from South East Asia (like myself), mandarins are one of my favourite fruits. Like all citrus fruits, they are high in vitamin C. This fruit has loose, easy to peel skin (the dried form of which can commonly be found in chinese grocery shops) and sweet juicy segments. When I was growing up, I remember mandarins featuring heavily during Chinese New Year celebrations. This, I’ve been told, is because, apart from symbolising health and happiness, the chinese word for “mandarin” is also phonetically similar to that of “gold”.

So if you can get past the 2 hours of boiling that is required to kick start this recipe, I assure you, the results are well worth the wait. I quite like the idea of using the whole mandarin, harnessing all it’s citrussy flavour. Cooking the fruit first enables it to be blended completely with the rest of the ingredients and eliminates the bitterness of the pith. This mandarin cake is immensely pleasing in an aromatic, moist and flavoursome way, and is my contribution to this week’s WHB, hosted by Paulchens Foodblog.

Mandarin Cake :

3 mandarins (about 375g total weight)
6 eggs
225g sugar
250g ground almonds
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

Put the mandarins in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each mandarin in half and remove the pips. Blitz the mandarins in a food processor. Add the remaining ingredients and process to combine.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC. Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and lined 21cm tin and bake for an hour, when a skewer will come out clean; you’ll probably have to cover with foil or greaseproof after about 40 minutes to stop the top burning. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin before removing.

George’s Chocolate Nut Cake :

250g chestnut flour, ground hazelnuts or ground almonds
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa
9 eggs, separated
350g castor sugar
30ml cold espresso coffee
60ml tokay, muscat or other fortified wine
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
50ml olive oil
grated zest 1 lemon
small pinch of ground cinnamon
small pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 150’C. Lightly grease a 26cm springform tin. Sift chestnut flour and cocoa into a bowl. Beat egg yolks with sugar until thick and pale. Lightly fold flour mixture into egg mixture. Add coffee, half the tokay, vanilla, olive oil, lemon zest and spices and fold in carefully. Beat egg whites to soft, creamy peaks and fold in gently. Bake in prepared tin for about 40 minutes until cake still seems a little moist in the middle. Allow cake to cool in tin for a few minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Moisten the cake with remaining tokay before serving.

Dinner last night was at the Blue Eye Dragon in Pyrmont, a restaurant specialising in Taiwanese cuisine. Being early diners, en route to catching a screening of Paprika, we were the first customers through the door – a good thing, as the noise levels picked up quickly once the place started to fill up.

I love the place, as soon as I step in. The muted grey walls and wood tones add a sense of cosiness and warmth to the room – not to mention the gorgeous collection of teapots on display. Something tells me I’ll be in good hands if I order some tea. In fact, there are two types to choose from and the one we get at $2.50pp comes in a cute no-drip teapot with it’s own tealight warmer.

Beverages sorted, it’s on to the food. The menu is so tastily worded, there’s nothing on it that I wouldn’t happily order to try. We start with a set of four Calamari Rolls with Salted Duck Egg and Seaweed, which arrives as strips of tender calamari wrapped around a seaweed covered yolk, all of which are encased in a crisp golden crust. Delicious, and perfectly seasoned. The two mains that we share are Prawns with Dry Chilli & Shallot in Gongbao Sauce and QLD Scallops in House XO Sauce and Vegetables. Both are beautifully presented, tasty dishes, though I did think the prawn dish was perhaps a little bit on the greasy side.

Because it sounded so intriguing, we stick around for the sticky rice dessert. Sticky Rice with Chinese Wolfberries & Sultana, with Sweet Peanut Powder and Coriander, as stated on the menu, arrives very simply as a small mound of plain sticky rice topped with sweet wolfberries and sultanas, surrounded by said peanut powder and torn coriander leaves. As a whole, it was a very well balanced dish. I liked the chewiness of the rice, and while it’s not always my idea of what I’d like dessert to be, it somehow really appealed to me that evening, and I managed to demolish the majority of it, despite claiming to be “not very hungry” at the start of the evening!

A satisfying meal in elegant surroundings is perhaps what appeals to Blue Eye Dragon’s regulars (of which there seem to be many). It isn’t as cheap as you’d expect a meal in a more typical Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant to be, but you do get a sense that the food is lovingly prepared and surely that’s worth paying the extra for.

Blue Eye Dragon
Shop 2, 42 Harris Street,
Pyrmont 2009.