Aroma Festival

Yesterday was a day of coffee and chocolate craze!

Hanging around The Rocks from 10AM when The Aroma Festival kicked off and back home around 2PM after sipping couple cups of coffee, mocha, chai latte and couldn't stop munching Italian pizza-like bread, corn, cheesy spiral spud, doughnuts... yet still stopped by a ramen shop in the city..well I still need to put on some weight though :)

Here are some snaps from The Rocks Aroma Festival..

The free event guide available around Circular Quay

a winter morning + hot coffee + spectacular harbour's view

Who doesn't love chocolate?

Coffee Sculpture, made from more than 5,000 cups! But I was too early and couldn't get the chance to see the whole image. Last year's incredible 3,604-cup Mona Lisa coffee sculpture achieved a Guinness World Record.

Cupcakes in the cage

Tempting Naked Berry

Somehow I put the wrong caption and link on those berries before, sorry for the mistake Naked berry :)

Some Italian ginger bread and pizza-like bakery

Green Tea Mochi

I've got a few posts about mochi from Shu Shin Bou, not that I am a big fan of this shop but I couldn't find another shop in the city selling Japanese mochi. So every time I crave for mochi I'd run to their shop and get myself some fresh and yummy mochi.

This time I got their blueberry mochi and green tea mochi, the blueberry filling is really nice but my favorite one is green tea for its strong green tea flavor.

(Green tea mochi and blueberry mochi)

Anglerfish battle

I just finished watching Iron Chef on SBS 1 and it was an anglerfish battle between the challenger Seiya Masahara and the Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, the famous Iron Chef for his unique style of cooking and presenting the food. The challenger, Seiya Masahara, lost three battles with Chef Morimoto before finally winning one in this anglerfish battle.

This anglerfish is so unique for me as I've never seen one before. This wide-mouth fish is famous in northern Japan such as Hokkaido as 'Ankoo'. The fish named for their characteristic method of predation. Anglerfishes typically have at least one long filament sprouting from the middle of the head; these are detached and modified three first spines of the anterior dorsal fin. This first spine protrudes above the fish's eyes, and terminates in an irregular growth of flesh (the esca) at the tip of the spine. The spine is movable in all directions, and the esca can be wiggled so as to resemble a prey animal, and thus to act as a bait to lure other predator close enough for the anglerfish to devour them whole.

(Source: Wikipedia)

And if you are an Iron Chef's fan, which Iron Chef do you think has the best win-loss records? I thought Morimoto-san would be on the top but I was wrong, here is the list of their records.

Iron Chef	Title	Win	Loss	Draw	Total	Win %
Chen Kenichi	Iron Chef Chinese	67	22	3	92	75.3%
Yutaka Ishinabe	Iron Chef French (I)	7	1	0	8	87.5%
Hiroyuki Sakai	Iron Chef French (II)	70	15	1	86	82.4%
Masahiko Kobe	Iron Chef Italian	15	7	1	23	68.2%
Rokusaburo Michiba	Iron Chef Japanese (I)	32	5	1	38	86.5%
Koumei Nakamura	Iron Chef Japanese (II)	24	11	1	36	68.6%
Masaharu Morimoto	Iron Chef Japanese(III)	16	7	1	24	69.6%

(Source: Wikipedia)

Fish Sushi Roll

It's not a real sushi but a product of Barby's bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in town. It's a bread rolled in nori (dried seaweed), filled with cucumber, corns, cream and covered with fish floss on the sides.

(Fish sushi roll from Barby's bakery)

Barby's bakery has one shop on level 2 of Market City and another one on corner of Goulbourn and Sussex street right in the heart of Chinatown strip. I love their breads since they are soft and they got lot of mouthwatering flavors.

Samurai Summit

I have been a fan of cosplay and any event related to this popular Japanese Pop culture, not that I'd like to dress in Inuyasha or Sesshomaru's costume but I do love watching people in fabulous attractive costumes. I wish I could fly to Nagoya end of this month to see the World Cosplay Summit 2010, this cosplay event begun in Osu, Nagoya in 2005 sponsored by TV Aichi. This year the WCS will be held on July 31 - August 1.

During the press conference held at the Central Japan International Airport, the president of the airport pictured in samurai costume to announce World Samurai Summit will be held in Nagoya, the capital of Aichi Prefecture, along with the World Cosplay Summit.

(picture courtesy of Mainichi News)

Kopi Luwak

Kopi Luwak is one of the rarest and most expensive coffees in the world. This Indonesian coffee made from beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by Asian palm civet, that's why it's called Kopi Luwak in Indonesian, Kopi means coffee and Luwak means civet. The civet eats the berries for their fleshly pulp, in its stomach, proteolytic enzymes seep into the beans, making shorter peptides and more free amino acids. Passing through a civet's intestines the beans are then defecated, having kept their shape. After gathering thorough washing, sun drying, light roasting and brewing, these beans yield an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness, widely noted as the most expensive coffee in the world.

I had been browsing around to find this coffee in Sydney, eventually found this Olio Cafe in St Leonards and couldn't resist to give it a try. For $9 you will get this coffee in a tiny mug served with a cookie and a small glass of water to clean up your palate before you finish this coffee in couple sips.

(Kopi Luwak from Olio Cafe)

The coffee has a real smooth taste with no after taste and if you'd like to buy the beans, the cafe sells a pack of 250 gram Kopi Luwak for $100.
And if you'd like to buy the coffee from the farmer in Sumatra here is the web from Pagaralam Sumatera, Indonesia: Kopi Luwak Sumatera.

You could call this coffee as 'cat poo coffee', so would you fancy a cup of 'cat poo coffee'?