No-Frills Recipes ... cooking, baking & excerpts on travel

After breakfast at the Goldenes hotel, we promptly took our maps and made our way to the Mirabell palace and gardens. Mirabell palace

Hallstatt , a picturesque village in the Salzkammergut was made a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.  The town is situated by a lake but the saltmines that attracted the earliest settlers 7,000 years ago are about 300 metres up the mountains.  The mines are the oldest saltmines in the world.

The Wachau is the name given to the 30 km stretch by the Danube between Melk and Krems where the river cuts a narrow rocky valley between the foothills of the Bohemian Forest to the northwest and the Dunkelsteiner Wald to the southeast.  This is an area with impressive vineyards, romantic small towns, castles and monastries.  This area was added to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites for outstanding architectural and agricultural history.

There's this famous coffee shop in Tanjung Malim, Perak ..... 'Yik Mun' that sells Hainanese curry chicken pau/buns and also pau with different fillings like curry beef, red bean paste and kaya/coconut jam.  As it is a certified halal outlet, other than the Chinese, Malays and Indians also frequent this shop and it's normally packed during breakfast and lunch.  We used to exit @ the Tanjung Malim toll exit and head to this shop  for the curry chicken pau.  You can hop over to this site for more goodies from Yik Mun. Coming back to my curry chicken pau .... no they're not Hainanese pau, just simple pau from my humble kitchen, yummy too but then not so uniform in shape as they're handmade.   I must truly admit that I still have a long way to go to master the art of pau pleating!

This was our last day in Vienna and we headed to some parks and the city centre for some 'window shopping'. Viennese City Park ~ Stadtpark.  This park holds many statues of famous historical composers and musicians from Vienna.  This is a statue of Johann Strauss, shows him in gold playing the violin and is one of the most photographed statues in Vienna.

We took the Underground train to visit the   Schonbrunn Palace   the next day.  The palace and the palace grounds were huge as you can see and naturally took us many hours to walk around.  We went on a conducted tour of the palace interior and they have different packages.  We only took the basic one which cost us 14.90 Euro per person and then after the tour we wandered on our own. Entrance to Schonbrunn Palace.

After tea at Cafe Mozart, we went to this part of the Hofburg Palace and bought tickets for the Mozart and Strauss concert for the next night.

A very big thank you to all of you who have continued to visit my blog.  Yes, I'm back and I would like to share with you pictures of my recent trip to Austria and Wales.  So, please follow me ............ On arrival in London on 5th September, we drove from London Heathrow to Gatwick and spent a night in this cosy little Bed and Breakfast, Southbourne Guest House in Horley near Gatwick.

Made this dessert to cool off in this cranky weather of hot, humid afternoons and evening showers ....... Soymilk Jelly with Rambutans stuffed with Pineapples! The Rambutan, Nephelium lappaceum is  a fruit native to Malaysia and other South East Asian countries. The word 'Rambutan' is derived from the Malay word 'Rambut' which means 'hair' and this refers to the spiky hair that covers the fruit.  These hairs are soft and harmless to touch.  The exterior of the Rambutan can be orange, deep red or even yellow in colour.  The whitish, juicy, sweet fruit can be released from the rind upon twisting it until it pops out.  There's a large seed in the middle and this must be discarded as it's poisonous.  Without the soft hairs on the rind, the rambutan resembles the lychee, which is in the same botanical family.  Read more about the Rambutan and other tropical fruits from this   'site' . 

This dish is a simplified version of the 'Wu Tau Kow Yoke',  steamed pork belly sandwiched with yam.  I  tweaked it a bit too, because instead of pork belly I used pork ribs.  As I'm a yam or taro fan, I like yam  cooked in whatever fashion and I find this to be delicious too!

I was cracking my head over what to do with the leftover dried fruits and then it dawned on me ...... why not just dump everything together to make some cupcakes and to name them 'Fruity Cupcakes'!

I have to thank Kristy of   ' My Little Space '   for introducing this super easy 2 in 1 Chicken Rice.  Not only is it easy to prepare, the rice is truly delicious as it has soaked up all the juice from the chicken.  In fact my family members are of the opinion that it tastes much better than those Hainan chicken rice from the stalls, at least there's no MSG add on!  I've made this a couple of times, quick and easy ....... no-frills!

I made these Savoury Buns recently, something like what they have in the Dim Sum joints, much referred to as 'Charn Pau'.  These buns were soft and nice and as usual kept some for breakfast the next day and they remained soft too!

This is my first attempt at making this Mooncake with nutty filling.  The extremely high price for mixed nut mooncake  @ 13.30 rgt per piece prompted me to try my hands and luck making this.  I adapted the recipe for the pastry from my recent post on  'Shanghai Mooncake, Re-visited' and the recipe for the mixed nut filling is posted below.  I wouldn't claim that this is perfect but nonetheless was pleased with the result and therefore would like to share with you!

As the weather has been scorching hot these days, I've cooked white porridge for lunch.  Whipped up this easy omelette, a very common and popular dish to go with it .......... 'Choy Poh Dan' or Radish Omelette.