Christchurch!

Yes, we just came back from a trip to Christchurch! And it was totally awesome!

We went away for our 1 year anniversary. Seeing neither of us had many leaves and we couldn’t really afford to go to Paris (I want to go) or Shanghai (Nick want to go, to see my dad). So we chose Christchurch. It’s such a beautiful city and everything was so cheap too!

We spent the first day wondering around in the city, had some local pub food and Mrs. Huggins cookies. They were so yummy! On the second day, we jumped on the bus and got to this really cool Japanese Spring called Maruia Spring. It’s about 3 hours bus ride from CBD and we saw the snow in the mountain! It was totally awesome! The Spring was cool too. They’ve got outdoor rock spa and indoor private spa. I loved the indoor private spa because there was beautiful mountain view literally outside of the spa while it’s all warm and cosy inside. I didn’t like the room too much. Mainly because there was no TV in the room. I got so bored at night. We had dinner in the Maruia Spring and it was a massive hot pot. Nick got so excited.

We caught the bus back to the city on the next day and spent another day walking around in the city. I was very impressed to see so many verities of cat foods in Pack & Save. And the housing price in Christchurch is shockingly low too! Funny enough, after we came back, we actually seriously looked into getting a job there but had no luck.

Our flight back was delayed for 6 hours, and we didn’t get the msg until we got the airport at 4am! It was a pain indeed! But I had a great time shopping in the duty free shop in the airport. The one in Christchurch airport is tiny compare to the one in Sydney. But I still managed to get all what I want. We can back with 4 bottles of rum and heaps of other stuff.

I could never think a better way to spend 1 yr anniversary. It was perfect. Thanks to my dear Nicky Bear! Love you forever!

Beef Stroganoff

We watched MasterChef couple nights ago and contestants need to make beef stroganoff to impress the judges. Nick kept saying none of them used the right recipe because none of them used the sour cream. Anyhow, he showed me this Margret Fulton recipe he used before and I gave it a go. I think he is right. It must be the best beef stroganoff ever!

Firstly, season the beef stripes (750g fillet steaks, cut into strips) with salt and pepper then toss in the plain flour(1 tbsp). Melt 30g butter in a frying pan, add onions (2, sliced), stirring, slowly, till they are soft. Add mushroom (250g or more if you like, sliced), fry for a few minutes.

Remove the onion and mushroom from the pan, add 30g more butter, fry beef strips briskly when the butter is hot. It would take about 4 mins.

Return the onion and mushroom. Season with plenty salt and pepper. Mix all ingredients well for 1 min. Add tomato paste (1 tbsp) and sour cream (2/3 cups), then cook for couple minutes longer until they are all heated through. Serve immediately with rice, pasta or even hot buttered toast!

Paella!

Yes, I made it! Well, it doesn’t look that good due to multiple reasons but Nick said, it’s way better than the one he made first time. Anyway, here is the recipe, from Margate Fulton originally and I changed a little bit J

First thing comes first. Having a big, nice Paella pan is essential! Unfortunately, I didn’t have it, so the whole cooking process turned out to be a bit messy in the end. Mine is a deep frying pan but I reckon it didn’t work as good as paella pan.

To prepare the sauce, bring saffron (1/2 tsp) and chicken stock (5 cups stock) to boil, set aside.

Heat the olive oil (1/2 cup) in the paella pan, fried chicken (4 large chicken fillets, roughly chopped into 2cm cube) until it’s golden. Remove it from the pan, set aside and add capsicum (1 red capsicum, sliced into strips), cook it till just turned soft. Remove from the pan, set aside.

Add onion( 2, chopped) and garlic ( 2 cloves, chopped) to the pan, cook till they are soft, just turning brown. Quickly add Arborio rice (2 ½ cups) fry for 4 mins, stir constantly. Reduce heat, add chicken, capsicum, anchovy fillets (6 or 7, or even more if you want it to be a bit salty. I put 10 in mine.), tomatoes (2, peeled and sliced into 6), green peas (1 cup) and seafood (100 g, any seafood will do. But usually people use scallops, prawns, mussels, baby squid, etc). The idea is cooking seafood in order, rather than having something under cook or something over cook in the dish. Add stock gradually. Let it simmer gently until rice is done. It will take about 25 mins. Serve 6 to 8.

I didn’t bother to add seafood in order because I got the marina mix from Coles and it would take me ages to separate them. But Nick made it to me once, and he cooked all the seafood in order, it was mind-blowing. Anyway, enjoy!