Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant- Hurstville

One of the yum cha restaurants I've always liked is Sunny Harbour Seafood restaurant. We used to come here quite often on weekends, depite it taking more than one hour to drive there (which meant long waits) and even despite the fact that the employees would let in the people they knew quickly, whilst the rest of us watched in frustration. The restaurant was small and cramped but the food was good, which is really what mattered. But the one thing that set the yum cha apart from others in Sydney was the fact that they'd often have seafood dishes- such as prawns, lobsters, crabs and my favourite, steamed eel. They'd brought out on the small yum cha standard dishes, often stacked so high they'd almost topple over- and they'd be as hot and yummy as they'd be if you ordered it from the menu at dinner. The only difference was the price- it was really cheap! This meant that we would often be able to eat luxuries which we'd normally eat on special occasions (i.e. birthday dinners, new year dinners etc etc). Somehow, this made it taste especially good.

However, as restaurants do, it grew and moved to a much larger building (with three levels!) which meant a few changes. Unfortunately, this meant the end of such dishes and they turned 'normal' and only served yum cha dishes. As good as they may have been, it was not good enough to keep us coming back as often as we used to- especially as the restaurant became busier than ever, the wait did not shorten and the employees STILL 'pushed in' the people they knew. Eventually we stopped going there altogether.

What brought us back was an advertisement in the chinese magazines, advertising that they had employed a new dim sum chef from Hong Kong and that there was a 15% discount on weekdays. So, on a weekday when I probably should have been studying for exams, my parents took me here to give it another chance. Although the quality of the dim sum was still not as good as the Hong Kong standard, there was quite a large variety of things to choose from and the quality was good, compared to others in Syney. The 15% discount also meant that it was really cheap, compared to other yum cha restaurants- especially as yum cha seems to be getting more and more expensive these days.

Now, you might be wondering what I'm doing taking a picture of teapots. The teapot on the left was really small and cute! Yes, I know, they look the same size. =[ The smaller teapot is for water, so you can distinguish between the two- I only ever drink water because I don't like tea (Or coffee.... if anyone wanted to know). Infact I dislike it so much that on the rare occasions that water is not ordered, I'll only drink the tea when it's dilute and will refuse to drink it once it goes past a certain shade of brown...... tehehe....

Gosh. I'm so mature =D

Steamed Pork Ribs

I never know what the food is called in english! Steamed pork ribs is one of our all time favourite yum cha foods because the meat is so soft and tender (or rather, the fat is). This one is no exception and the fact that there are a couple of pieces of taro in it gives it a bit of authenticity. The taro is actually the highlight of this as it is surprisingly good.


Chicken pie

I love chinese chicken pie- I love how the pastry is almost opposite of normal 'western' pies which use puff pastry for the top and shortcrust for the base. This chicken pie uses puff for the base and the top is sort of like short crust only it's much crumblier, and biscuit like. The contrast between the savouriness of the filling and the sweetness of the top makes this pie so distinct and delicious.

The chicken pie is good but not my favourite (that would be the one in Eastwood...)

Pan fried buns

The buns are wrapped in cling wrap, and are obviously cold, or at the best, warm . Neverhteless, they have got the taste right. The slightly sweet pillowy bun with the delicious chicken filling (like that of your normal steamed chicken pie) is really good, and I wouldn't mind having all three to myself! The bun is awfully soft, like the steamed ones but with a fried bottom which give it its slight crunchyness, and that extra bit of texture. I can't help but imagine how good these would be if they were just hot!

Har Gow

These cute little dumplings are not only cute but delicious too! I can never really tell the difference between good and bad har gow, although this may have to do with the fact that we don't order it much. These are pretty ordinary, but they taste good!

Beef Tripe

Mixed innards of a cow (I'm sure there's a better name for this!)

This is wheeled out in a huge hot trolley, alongside various congee. The large amount of liquid means that the trolley is awfully heavy and we notice the yum cha lady finding it difficult to manouvre it through the tight spaces. We ordered this and whilst the lady scooped it out from the trolley and into the bowl, my mother started a friendly coversation with her ( Something along the lines of 'wow, that trolley looks really heavy!') and so they talked . And talked. And she kept scooping stuff out, until it was pretty much overflowing! Which was awesome because I love this =]

Lotus Paste Buns

The lotus paste buns are smaller than the usual ones, which is why they give us 4 of them instead of the usual three. Personally, I prefer larger buns but I don't really like lotus paste buns anyway (I'm not a huge fan of lotus paste) but since there are four buns, I help out and eat the bun of one of them. THe bun is soft and yummy- I don't know about the paste though, I leave that for my parents =]

Pan fried Rice Noodle Rolls

These are a little underfried for my liking- i like my rolls extra crispy but other than this, the dish is really good.

Crystal Skin Dumplings

Ideally, a meal would end with dessert, or something sweet. However, our choice of dessert, these crystal skin dumplings, are rare and we end up asking a lot of the ladies whether or not the trolleys they are pushing have these. When we finally come across a lady who answers yes, we order it immediately, although we have not finished yet. These crystal skin dumplings are best eaten hot, so we I eat it straight away (burnt tongue.....I know) and the filling is so hot that it almosts oozes out. This restaurant must stock u ppon a good supply of taro because the taro crystal skin dumplings (the purple ones) have a really nice taro taste. The normal custard ones are good too but the taro one is definitely better =]

Afterwards, we stop by a bakery which also sells drinks. Freshly squezed sugar cane juice is something we get almost everytime we visit Hurstville. The old Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant was situated next door to this shop, and we would buy it almost everytime we were waiting for yum cha. Although the quality of this drinkis pretty bad, it doesn't bother me or my sister, since we love sugar cane so much and we quickly finish it.

Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant
9-11 Crofts Avenue
Hurstville NSW 2220

Pot stickers

I often am surprised at how easily many popular dishes eaten at restaurants can be recreated at home. I mean, if something which tastes so good can be made just as good at home, it wouldn't be so popular right?

Or maybe not.

A long time ago, my mum was flicking though a chinese cookbook she borrowed from her friends. She cam across a potsticker recipe which she thought would be interesting to make, especially as we love potstickers so much.

Potstickers are something we (used to) order almost whenever they're on a menu. They usually come in lots of 10 so we would share them so that my parent would get 3 and us kids would get 4 each. Me and my sister would eat them ever so slowly, wanting to be the one to eat the last potsticker, not wanting to be the one who watched the other eat it whilst we sat there in jealousy. The potstickers at yum cha were also really good, especially as they were big (although often not hot) but they were quite expensive, as they only came in lots of three.

So you could probably imagine our excitement was my mum told us that we would be making potstickers for lunch. Taking her cooking approach of following the recipe exactly for the first attempt, my mum made her own 'lard', or pig fat, as the recipe called for it. We then followed the recipe step by step. It took a while -all the kneading, resting and then the rolling out of the dough took a lot longer than expected and us amateur dumpling pleaters took a while to get a hang of pleating these things. The trick to pleating these things is to only pleat one side of the dumpling, like when pleating har gow. It will naturally curve inwards, giving a nice, 'potsticker' shape!

By the time we'd actually finished pleating, we couldn't wait to try them out. Unfortunately, the cooking time is about 10 minutes- much longer than we could wait for.

So when they came out of the pan, all hot and crispy, we didn't wait for them to cool- and they were delicious! They tasted exactly like the ones at restaurants. So pleased were we, with this recipe that it has now become a sort of 'tradition' that we make these potstickers at least once every holidays. Eventually, we substituted oil for the lard (a much healthier alternative!) which didn't make too much of a difference, and got the hang of making these it takes us less time to make them.

Now, when we go to restaurants, we only occasionally order potstickers, as we prefer to try other things which we don't make at home. We can never get enough of these things though- eventhough we the recipe makes a lot more then 10, and so we end up having more than we would at a restaurant, my sister and I still end up eating it slowly, wanting to be the last person to finish out share- even if they taste better hot!

Recipe:

Ingredients:

A
40g flour
20g water

B
20g lard (we used vegetable oil)
150g flour
75g boiling water

Filling
160g Chinese cabbage
240g minced pork
20g water chestnuts
20g Sichuan preserved vegetables
1tsp chopped ginger

Seasoning
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp oil
Dash of sesame oil
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
1tsp chicken powder
1 ½ tsp bean flour

Prepare the filling:
Wash vegetables and blanch in boiling water. Squeeze dry and mince. Mince with pork and seasoning and stir well. Place in refrigerator.

1. Mix ingredients A into a dough an set aside for 1 hour to rest (this is the raw dough)
2. Boil oil and water. Pour immediately into flour. Stir and mix well. Add to raw dough and knead into a smooth dough.
3. Divide into 3 pieces and with rolling pin, press into thing circles (we do this approximately and usually end up make only around 20 from the recipe…)
4. Wrap in ingredients (about 15g- again, we do this approximately). Note: to wrap potstickers, pleat them like you would with normal dumplings but only pleat one side, leave the other side smooth. You should end up with a curved shape.
5. Heat and grease a frying pan. Line potstickers in pan and add 4-5 tablespoons of water. Cover and cook slowly for 10 minutes. When all the water has gone, add a little oil. Fry on low heat until golden brown.

Tips (from the book, not me!)
* The wrapping is the same as for mini steamer buns, ie Xiao long bao (*gasp* I didn’t realise until now!!) The advantage of using a raw and cooked dough combination is that it will not stick to the table or the rolling pin. The texture when eaten is not sticky as well.
* When the dumplings have been cooked, they should be placed on the plate so that the bottom becomes the top. (I tried it- it looked funny....)

Eastwood Star BBQ

It seems that I often remember insignificant things which nobody else does. For instance, one of my most vivd memories of high school was the first day of Year 7, when we were all sitting in the hall whilst the parents were all peeking in through the glass door (the teacher wouldn't let them in). The teachers then made the parents leave and told us to wave goodbye to them- it was like preschool all over again!

I would have thought it to be a memorable experience for everyone, but everytime I bring this up, no one seem to rememeber this......

Another one of my memories was when my mother once took us to a restaurant in Eastwood after school. This was back in my early primary school days, and it a was a rare thing for my mum to take us out after school. I remember the restaurant being slightly dark (or maybe it was because I was looking outside the whole time) and that it wasn't really nicely decorated but that I was really happy to be able to eat out after school and especially happy that I was allowed to choose a drink, which I happily slurped down. Unfortunately, it closed down a long time ago, and in its place have been several of other restaurants, most of which haven't been too successful.

Lately, it belongs to Eastwood Star BBQ, and always being up for something new, we decided to give it a try.


Complimentary Soup (Lai Tong)

The restaurant isn't too busy, which I guess isn't surprising given the amount of competition around the area. They have a selection of barbecued meats too, which don't look too bad but the fact that BBQ One is only a few metres away means that they don't get too many customers buying them.


Dinner is served with complimentary soup which tastes the same as any other complimentary soup you'd get from a chinese restaurant- I can never really tell the difference. I really like this type of soup -it's sweet, it's got carrots in it (yum!) and the pork is very very tender.



Satay pot

The satay pot was good- it had plenty of noodles and onions and the meat was nice and tender. Of course, it is never a good idea to eat too much of the noodles- they leave you feeling very bloated when they get down to your stomach and expand. But the flavours were really good- making it really difficult to control youself!


Sweet and Sour Pork

Sweet and Sour Pork is one of my all time favourite chinese dishes. Although I can tell the difference between a good and bad sweet and sour pork dish, it's hard for a restaurant to produce one which I won't like. So, needless to say, I was content with this dish. The pork was hot and crunchy and the sauce was good, although not the best I've ever had.



Shan Tung Chicken

With nice crispy skin, and a tangy and slightly sweet sauce, the Shan Tung chicken goes quite quickly. Again, it isn't the best I've ever had but being fried chicken, we liked it anyway.

Portugese chicken baked rice

I usually love portugese chicken rice- I love the straight-from-the-oven-hotness and how it's drenched in yummy portugese (curry like) chicken sauce. This one however, failed to please and we did not even end up finishing it. The sauce itself was mediocre but what ruined this was the amount of cheese they put in. Although portugese chicken rice is usually served with a bit of mozerella cheese over the top, so that when you scoop it out, there are cheese strands, the cheese does not affect the taste too much. This dish had too much cheese and I think they also used the wrong type of cheese as the strong cheese flavour didn't compliment the rice and portugese sauce too well. Luckily, I actually like cheese, so despite the mismatch of flavours, I found it bearable.

Overall, the food isn't too bad but definitely not as good as many of the restaurants in the Eastwood area.

Eastwood Star BBQ restaurant

195 Rowe St, Eastwood