Tan Viet, Cabramatta

Why hello, crispy skin chicken of my dreams. Where have you been all my life?

To finish off my little Cabramatta series (for now!), Lili, Betty, Leona and I stopped by Tan Viet for their famous crispy skin chicken. We were so full of food, after stuffing ourselves at Bau Truong and eating some other sweets which I'll talk about later, but we were determined to fit in some of this chicken. It must be good, their logo is a huge yellow chicken and there was a huge line of people coming out of the restaurant for most of the day. Lucky for us, by about 2pm we were able to walk straight in and get a table. The waiters seemed a little bemused that we were only ordering one plate of chicken and a side of grilled pork, but we didn't care, it was exactly what we wanted.

The air in the restaurant is thick with the smell of deep frying chicken and grilled meats. Almost every table has a plate of dark golden chicken. It doesn't take long before our fullness is forgotten and our mouths are watering in anticipation. We sip the cheap tea (which I always find so thirst quenching, I don't know why) and have a giggle at the 'engrish' menu, 'Cash only, no effpot!' and 'Criskin chicken' (though maybe this one was just their cute branding?).

Com Ga Da Don - 'Criskin Chicken & Tomato Rice' ($10.00)

The service is lighting fast and before we know it we have a steaming hot plate of crispy skin chicken which looks so damn good. The photos are taken in a hurry and we dig straight in. Ohhh yep, it tasted as good as it looked. The skin was uber crispy, crackling as your teeth sunk through it and giving way to the perfectly moist meat. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. We may have been doing some serious stomach stretching at this point but it was so worth it.

*drool*

The tomato rice that comes with it is pretty good, definitely better than a lot of the ones I have had in the past. I find a lot of places do a really terrible job with the tomato fried rice, it's always too bland and dry. This one has a decent amount of flavour and goes well with the chicken. We don't finish it, not when we could save the stomach space for the grilled pork that we got on the side. For just a few dollars, how could we resist?

Side serving of grilled pork ($4.00)

The pork is also quite crispy and moist on the outside, though it looks and tastes very different to the grilled meat at Bau Truong. I think if I remember correctly (sorry it was a while ago!) we detected some sort of herb or spice on the surface. It was very moist and delicious, but the chicken was still the stand out.

Oh and did I mention we had spent the whole day eating a ton of other things? I'm starting to feel sorry for my stomach. A huge lunch was followed by a small amount of wandering around and then we stopped by kaysone sweets to get me my durian shake that I was so determine to try for the first time. To make things a little more exciting, I got a shake that had both durian and avocado mixed into it. A huge splash of sweetened condensed milk and a load of crushed ice is blended into the fruit, and it's heavenly. It was a surprise how moreish it was, even the durian wary among us didn't think it tasted too bad. It was incredibly rich though, even though I enjoyed each mouthful I felt increasingly full as I made my way through the cup. I think over the space of an hour I only managed about half of it before I had to admit defeat.

Durian and avocado shake

Lili was hoping to get a rainbow combination drink and we were more than willing to share one with her :) We found a great place which made the drink with a scoop of icecream and sweetened condensed milk rather than coconut milk. I actually preferred this to the coconut milk version, which I found made it far too rich. Barley, pandan jelly works, pink glutinous rice balls, red bean, palm seeds and jackfruit turned out to be a great combination and my favourites were definitely the glutinous rice balls and the jackfruit.

Ahh Cabramatta, how I love thee. Rest assured, I will be back soon.

Tan Viet
Shop 2-3, 100 John St
Cabramatta NSW 2166
(02) 9727 6853
Mon-Sun: 9am-7pm


Kaysone Sweets
Shop 4, 59-61 Park Road
Cabramatta, Sydney
(02) 9755 5759

Check out my other Cabramatta posts:
- Bau Truong (Goat curry, custard apple shakes, crispy sticky rice)
- Phu Quoc and a general walk around Cabramatta (Vietnamese spring rolls, custard cakes, pandan waffles, mooncake, flowering tea and rainbow drinks)

Chocolate Cake with a Zumbo Salted Caramel Twist

In case you haven't noticed, I am not a neat baker. 'Rustic' is about as kindly as you can describe my decorating style. It's just how I am, no matter how hard I try to be neat and precise and pretty with my presentation, I end up with either 'rustic' or 'freeform'. As a child I could never colour inside the lines, my handwriting was totally inconsistent and my hair was always out of place. So it comes as no surprise to me that layer cakes are an enemy of mine when it comes to baking. I can never get those perfectly straight, clean and neat layers with a smooth layer of icing between and on top. My kitchen usually ends up covered in cake cut offs and random extra blobs of icing that have been slung off my spatula in frustration.

When I heard Regex Man's birthday was coming up I immediately asked him what cake he would like me to bake him. His reply: "Chocolate cake, with chocolate icing." My shoulders slumped ever so slightly and I asked hopefully, "Anything else?"

"Chocolate sprinkles!"

This may come as a surprise, but chocolate is not one of my favourite cake flavours. Are you gasping in shock? I don't know why, I think I prefer my cakes lighter and fluffier than the plain chocolate cakes you usually get (though I totally LOVE chocolate mousse cakes). So I wasn't too excited about baking this cake, until I decided to make things a little bit more exciting with an element of Adriano Zumbo's now famous chocolate mousse cake which was featured on Masterchef. I have never been game to try making the entire Zumbo cake, but I decided almost as soon as I saw the recipe was up on the website that I would definitely be borrowing 1 or 2 elements in another cake. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to spice up an old-fashioned chocolate cake with a layer Zumbo's salted caramel.

It was easy to choose a chocolate cake recipe. Nigella's old-fashioned chocolate cake was easy and look delightfully moist since it was full of sour cream. In theory it sounded super easy since you just bake two half cakes and sandwich them together with icing and cover with more icing. So all I had to do was substitute the icing in the middle for caramel. Sounds so easy, right? The only thing is, I forgot that it's me we're talking about here, and I can't colour inside the lines. The cakes turned out great, and the icing was perfect. But as I was assembling the cake all hell broke loose. I lifted a cake layer up to my face to have a quick sniff, since I was a little worried I had burnt the top, and the whole cake slid out of the tin and started falling towards my face. I managed to catch it (partly with my face) but it cracked in two. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

So I tried to compose myself and kept saying "It's okay, it's cool! You can just cover it with icing and no one will know!" So I placed the two cracked halves on top of the salted caramel and bottom cake layer. And then I started covering it with chocolate icing. This should have been easy peasy but I am slow and fiddly and the icing started to harden before I had smoothed it out, and then the two broken pieces started falling down the sides of the cake, and caramel started leaking out through the icing and OH MY GOD it was starting to look like a poo. I eventually got it sort of smoothish, though a bit messy on the sides, but I was like "No worries, I can cover the sides with sprinkles!", but the sprinkles made it look like a hairy poo. Much swearing ensued as I frantically tried to scrape the sprinkles off and re-smooth the sides. CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES EVERYWHERE.

Anyway. I sort of managed to get it smooth, but it was so plain except for some sprinkles down the bottom. It still sort of looked poo-like, so in a panic I topped it with some raspberries I had in my freezer. It looked okay until the next day, when they defrosted and got all wet, and made it look like the cake was bleeding. Sigh. Anyway, the cake was cut and eaten and enjoyed, and honestly it was really tasty and the salted caramel layer was perfect for it. So I will give you the recipe because I am sure you are not as much of a messy slob as I am. Though a warning, it's terribly bad for you, I would limit yourself to one slice (or two if you're the birthday boy/girl)!

Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake with a Salted Caramel Layer
(cake adapted from Nigella's recipe and caramel from Adriano Zumbo's chocolate mousse cake recipe)
For the salted caramel:
150g caster sugar
30g glucose
60g water
110g cream
3g gelatine leaves (or powdered gelatine if you can't get it)
60g butter unsalted
2g sea salt flakes

For the cake:
300g plain flour
300g caster sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g best-quality cocoa
250g soft unsalted butter
3 large eggs
3 tsp real vanilla extract
225ml sour cream

For the icing:
75g unsalted butter
175g best quality dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
300g icing sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
125ml sour cream
1 tsp real vanilla extract

Prepare the caramel layer the night before; Heat cream. Place sugar, glucose, water in a saucepan, cook to caramel colour. This is the part where I am notorious for taking it off the heat too early, so this time I was very patient and waited until I got the deep brown colour I was looking for, while stirring it regularly to stop it burning.

Deglaze sugar with cream (add it gradually and stir vigorously to stop it from bubbling over). Add gelatine (I dissolved my powdered gelatine in a tiny amount of hot water before adding it). Cool to 50°c. Add butter and sea salt flakes and blitz, then place in a silicon mould (or a greased and lined springform tin) of the same size as the one you will be baking your cake layers in, and freeze overnight.

Note: The caramel layer in this photo is double the amount specified, I halved it after seeing how thick it was!

Take everything out of the fridge so that all the ingredients can come to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line and butter two 20cm sandwich tins with removable bases. (I used my 21cm spring form tin for all of these)

Place flour, sugar, baking powder and bicarb, cocoa, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream – into a food processor and process until you have a smooth, thick batter. If you want to go the long way around, just mix the flour, sugar and leavening agents in a large bowl and beat in the soft butter until you have a combined and creamy mixture. Now whisk together the cocoa, sour cream, vanilla and eggs and beat this into your bowl of mixture.

Divide this batter, using a rubber spatula to help you scrape and spread, into the prepared tins and bake until a cake tester, or a thin skewer, comes out clean, which should be about 35 minutes, but it is wise to start checking at 25. Also, it might make sense to switch the two cakes around in the oven halfway through cooking time. I actually split the amounts in the cake recipe in half and baked the two cakes separately since I only have one tin in the size that I wanted to make. The amounts I have given are for a thick birthday cake, but if you prefer a slightly less enormous cake, follow the amounts in Nigella's original recipe.

One of the broken halves. Sob!

Remove the cakes, in their tins, to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before turning out of their tins. Don’t worry about any cracks as they will easily be covered by the icing later.

To make this icing, melt the butter and chocolate in a good-sized bowl either in the microwave or suspended over a pan of simmering water. Go slowly either way: you don’t want any burning or seizing. While the chocolate and butter are cooling a little, sieve the icing sugar into another bowl. Or, easier still, put the icing sugar into the food processor and blitz. This is by far and away the least tedious way of removing lumps. (I followed the food processor way, I love how easy this was!)

Add the golden syrup to the cooled chocolate mixture, followed by the sour cream and vanilla and then when all this is combined whisk in the sieved icing sugar. Or just pour this mixture down the funnel of the food processor on to the icing sugar, with the motor running. When you’re done, you may need to add a little boiling water – say a teaspoon or so – or indeed some more icing sugar: it depends on whether you need the icing to be runnier or thicker; or indeed it may be right as it is. It should be liquid enough to coat easily, but thick enough not to drip off.

Choose your cake stand or plate and cut out four strips of baking parchment to form a square outline on it (this stops the icing running on to the plate). Then sit one of the cakes, uppermost (ie slightly domed) side down. Remove the caramel layer from the freezer and place on top of your bottom cake layer. If it is too large you can place it on some baking paper and cut around the edge of the caramel with a very sharp knife to its desired shape though it will soften and get very sticky so be careful!

Sit the other cake on top, normal way up, pressing gently to sandwich the two together. Spoon half the icing on to the top of the cake and spread it in a swirly, textured way (though you can go for a smooth finish if you prefer, and have the patience (which I did not have)). Spread the sides of the cake with the remaining icing and leave a few minutes till set, then carefully pull away the paper strips.

Optional: Decorate with sugar flowers, berries and/or chocolate sprinkles. Please don't do what I did and use frozen raspberries. I knew they didn't work but I was desperate!

In the end, I think Regex Man was very pleased with his cake. And he was very kind to ask me if I wanted to take a photo of the insides after he cut it :) Haha I seem to be training my friends and family well! Everyone loved the caramel layer, including me. The cake was moist and icing was delicious and the right texture I was looking for. The important part was definitely using really good quality cocoa and chocolate. Obviously layer cakes are still not my friend, I can't even manage two layers! But you never know, things may get better with practice ;)

Happy Birthday Regex Man!

Banana Maple Tartlets

A quick post for the weekend...This banana maple tart is not a complex, beautiful creation. In fact this post isn't really much of a recipe. It's just one of those random things that you throw together with all the leftover sweet things you have in your fridge and pleasantly surprises you by how good it tastes. Nothing fancy, kinda ugly, but it's a fantastic mix of flavours and a great shortcrust pastry that are the key to this yummy treat.

I had a bit of leftover shortcrust pastry after making my two cheese and rosemary tart and had a real urge for something sweet after all that cheese. So the leftover pastry was hastily moulded into a (fairly ugly) tart shell and filled with whatever I could find. Imagine my surprise when I took it out of the oven, bit into it and was rewarded a mouthful of yum. A buttery, super short pastry, warm bananas glazed with pure maple syrup and cinnamon and topped with some cold whipped cream. This is all about the pastry, so this time I've included the pastry that I used, because it turned out fantastic and was so buttery and flaky it was almost like puff pastry.

Banana Maple Tartlets
(Includes Stephanie Alexander's shortcrust pastry recipe)
180g unsalted butter
240g plain flour
3 tbsp water
Pinch of salt
Bananas (approx 1 per 1-2 tartlets)
Ground cinnamon
Pure maple syrup
Optional: Whipped cream for serving

(This quantity of pastry will line a 26cm loose bottomed tart tin and will make about 6 medium sized tartlets) Remove the butter from the refrigerator approximately 30 mins before making your pastry. Sieve flour and salt onto a clean, smooth work surface. Chop butter into smallish pieces and toss lightly in the flour. Lightly rub to combine partly. Make a well in the centre and pour in water. Using a pastry scraper, (and being mindful of the technique you have observed of mixing cement), work paste into a very rough heap of butter lumps of dough. (I don't have a pastry scraper, so I just sort of combined this using my hands and it worked out fine)

Using the heel of your hand quickly smear pastry away from you across the workbench. It will combine lightly. Gather together, then press quickly into a flat cake and dust with a little flour. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 20-30 mins. When required, roll out pastry dusting generously with flour. If you are using a big tart tin or smaller tartlet tins, roll out the pastry, then wrap it around the rolling pin and let it unroll over the tin. Press it into the edges of the tin wel and trim the pastry a tiny bit higher than the edges of the tin and fold the extra bit over the edge (this will help prevent shrinkage). If you're not using a tin, cut your pastry into equal portions (say 6 or so), roll out and use a sharp knife to cut out your tart bases and roll the leftover scraps into a thin long strip to use as the borders of your tart which you can press onto the tops of your tart bases after lightly brushing the edges of the base with some water. Chill or freeze your tart cases for at least 20 minutes before baking.

Line your pastry with foil or baking paper and then fill this with pastry weights, beans, rice, or my personal favourite, 5 cent coins. Take care if you are using the coins as they are dirty, and get really hot. So don't touch them with your hands and don't let them touch the pastry! Bake the pastry at 200 degrees C for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and weights and bake for another 5 minutes. Slice bananas thinly and arrange on top of your pastry, drizzle with a generous amount of maple syrup and lightly dust the tops with cinnamon. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a few minutes and then dust with icing sugar. If you wish, this can also be served with some cold whipped cream, which makes it very banoffee like :)

'Hot' Chocolate Mousse with Pine Nut Praline

I've had to take a step back from the kitchen in the last few weeks. Work is very busy and rather draining, so the precious moments I have to myself have usually been spent being a couch potato (I am so lazy!!). The warmer weather has stopped me craving winter puddings and pies, and numerous eating out opportunities have meant that lots of sweets and baked yummies sitting around the house is not the best idea. But certain circumstances can arise where I'm willing to break this baking/desserts drought. The other day, Mr. Rabbit (of the free lemon fame) came up to my desk with a lovely little bag of red chillis from his chilli plant at home and I immediately started to ponder what I would use them for.

It would have been easy to throw them into whatever I cooked for dinner, I can put chilli in almost anything (I even put chilli flakes in my spag bol). This time I decided to try this great recipe that I saw in Gourmet Traveller. I know chilli chocolate is a bit of an overdone thing, but I think it's great fun in small doses. Obviously the original recipe uses a nut praline which I can't have, so I adapted it to use pine nuts instead, inspired by the lovely pine nut praline that Lili used in her secret dinner dessert.

I wasn't quite sure about replacing the chilli powder with fresh chilli, I dried it under the grill (and forgot about it so it went a bit black, oops), chopped it up very finely and ground it up a bit in my mortar and pestle. It seemed to work fine, the chillis were super spicy so the mousse had a fantastic kick to it.

Hot (chilli) Chocolate Mousse with Pine Nut Praline
(adapted from this Gourmet Traveller recipe)
For the mousse:
180g dark chocolate (54% cocoa solids), coarsely chopped
3 eggs, at room temperature, separated
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground allspice
¼ tsp chilli powder
225 ml thickened cream, lightly whipped (I used light and it still worked very well)
For the praline:
100g pine nuts, toasted
150 g caster sugar

Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, turn off heat and cool, add yolks and stir to combine, then add spices. Add cream and fold through to combine.

In a separate bowl, beat eggwhites until soft peaks form, then add to chocolate mixture and fold to combine. The mousse should be smooth and even in colour. Spoon into six ½ cup-capacity moulds and refrigerate for 3 hours or until set.

For the pine nut praline, place pine nuts on a baking paper-lined oven tray. Combine sugar and 3 tbsp water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat for 5-10 minutes or until light caramel, then pour over pine nuts and cool completely. Coarsely chop. When you are ready to serve, sprinkle praline over the top of your mousse.

I poured half the mixture into plastic cups and brought it (along with a zip lock bag full of praline) into work for Mr. Rabbit to try and take home. I think he was surprised and pleased to see what had happened to his chillis :)

Almost Bourdain's Malaysian & Dutch Feast

"Just bring your empty stomach and enjoy". That was the invitation extended to us lucky people, by Ellie of Almost Bourdain, to come and sample some Malaysian and Dutch treats whipped up by herself & her husband. I felt so spoilt! It was a fantastic opportunity to meet Ellie and her lovely family, after being an avid follower of her blog for quite some time. Her Malaysian recipes always look so delicious and make me miss the food over there, so I had a feeling that the lunch would be full of moments that would help cure some of the homesickness I get for Malaysia. Along for the ride was Helen, Lorraine, Richard, Shez, Simon, Suze and Yas.

Sure enough, there's already a load of food and drink ready for us that are guaranteed to put a big beaming smile on my face. On the table is rojak, a Malaysian fruit and vegetable salad dish with a thick, sweet and nutty sauce (which I couldn't have, but was happy to pick pieces of pineapple and fried dough off the plate), cute mini biscuits that looked like curry puffs which tasted just like the little spicy shrimp rolls I always buy in Malaysia, and spiced gouda. I particularly enjoy the gouda, which is peppered with caraway (or was it cumin?) and just delicious dipped in the accompanying mustard.

Spiced gouda

Smoked sausage

It was the first time I really got to try Dutch food, and I really enjoyed it all. The sausages were lovely and smoky and were also great with mustard, the friekendel speciale were tasty little sausage-like pieces of ground meat topped with diced onion, Dutch mayonnaise and curry sauce. The curry sauce was intriguing, not particularly spicy but with a strong scent of curry powder. My favourite of the Dutch goodies on offer was definitely the bitterballen, deep fried and crumbed balls which are very much like croquettes with a smooth, spiced, meaty filling. I was so busy enjoying one of these that I totally forgot to take any photos of them, silly me!

Friekendel Speciale

On to the mains! I was already feeling a bit sloshy and full from downing many glasses of barley water (oh childhood memories!) and Michael Jackson drinks, but I was so ready for the food because it looked and smelt so amazing!

Michael Jackson drink (recipe)

So much food!! (Front: Gado Gado)

Gehaktbal (recipe)

The gehaktbal are huge Dutch meatballs which have been sliced up and skewed with big hunks of onion. The Dutch must like their meat, and I don't blame them when it's this yummy.

Nasi kunyit (recipe)

I can only clap my hands with glee at the sight of the bright yellow nasi kunyit (tumeric glutinous rice) and I am bouncing up and down in my seat when the huge dish gets placed right in front of me. A bowl full of happiness, that's what I called it! I ate far too many portions of this and had to resist the urge to loosen my belt and this wonderfully fragrant sticky rice, dotted with whole black peppercorns, expanded in my stomach. Oh so good.

Beef rendang (recipe)

I'm usually quite picky about my beef rendang, and this was a good one. It was definitely all that toasted coconut in the recipe that added that extra texture and aroma that you would expect in a good redang and this went perfectly with the nasi kunyit. I ate so much AND I took some of the rice and rendang home with me for A, who gobbled it all up on his own.

Malaysian chicken curry

Ellie cooked two chicken curries, one with a Malaysian brand curry pack and another that was Singaporean. It was interesting to try both of the side by side, because I sometimes use the Singaporean one (Prima) at home because I'm too lazy to do it completely from scratch, but it tasted different to how I remember and I found myself enjoying the Malaysian version more. They were both very moreish though, and I went back for seconds (possibly thirds, I'm not sure, me and Shez hogged the curries, rendang and rice at our end of the table).

Singaporean chicken curry

Cooking roti for the curries

While Ellie was getting the previous dishes ready in the kitchen, her husband was preparing this amazing fish on the barbeque for us. Whole snapper was placed on banana leaf and then smothered in sambal belacan. My mouth was watering at the sight of that huge bowl of super spicy and incredibly aromatic sambal belacan.

Snapper on banana leaves ready to be barbequed

Spreading on the sambal *drool*

Sambal ikan (recipe)

The fish was as good as it looked, gorgeously moist and tender flesh with that fantastic spicy flavour punch from the sambal.

Butter prawns (recipe)

Last but definitely not least were the Malaysian butter prawns. This is one of my favourite dishes to have at seafood restaurants in Malaysia, that combination of the butter, egg, chillis and curry leaves is so good, I can just eat it on its own. Unfortunately this dish came to the table after I had already gone a little bit nuts on all the curries and nasi kunyit so I was really full already, but of course I had to try these, and they tasted just like how I remembered.

Cheesecake brownies (recipe)

Even though I had totally pigged out on the dishes before, I always have room for dessert! And lucky I did, because we had so many awesome sweets on offer. Cheesecake brownies, a hybrid of two of my favourite indulgent dessert and bright green kuih bakar. I was keen to try the kuih bakar because it had previously been described as 'kaya in a slice form' which was so up my alley!

Slicing the Kuih Bakar

Shez insisted on cutting the kuih in the diamond shape that is typical of kuih sold in Malaysia, it's just not the same if it's not cut this way I swear! The only thing that would have bettered it would be to cut it with a crinkly knife to get that crickle-cut edge :D The kuih was just as I expected it, rich with the flavour of pandan and really nice with the sprinkling of sesame seeds on top.

Kuih Bakar (recipe)

Rockmelon sago (recipe)

Two things that were guaranteed to get me on a sugar high - rockmelon sago and a selection of different dulce de leches that Simon had brought for us to try and compare. The rockmelon sago was soooo good, I want the recipe Ellie! The four different dulce de leches we had to try were made from 1) A no-name brand, 2) Nestle brand 3) Skim milk 4) A squeezy tube version of condensed milk.

Dulce de leche taste testing

It was very interesting to see the differences between them all, unfortunately the squeezy tube one had crystallised a bit since it was smaller and probably needed less boiling, so although the taste was nice, the texture was off. The skim milk one still tasted good but wasn't as smooth and creamy as the full fat ones, but would probably be alright after some whipping with an electric beater. My favourite was the no-name brand one, which seemed lighter and less dense than the Nestle brand version. Wheee sugar!

Pasteis de nata from Sweet Belem, Petersham

Finally, even though I was going to explode, I managed to share half of one of these portuguese custard tarts that Yas brought from Sweet Belem. I can't believe I didn't know about Sweet Belem before, everyone else seemed to, but I must go visit now! These were so amazing, the pastry was insanely flaky and made an extremely sexy (yep there's no other way to describe it) crunchy noise as you bit into it and was followed by a lovely light and creamy custard, topped with a load of cinnamon which I totally loved. I was wishing I had just eaten a whole one! Thanks Yas!

Custard tart food porn

At this point I was so well fed, I couldn't believe I was going to have to leave from this lunch and go straight to a birthday dinner where I would have to consume more food. Ughhh. But Ellie's lunch was definitely getting priority stomach space and it was so worth it. Thank you so much to Ellie and her lovely family for hosting such a wonderful and tasty lunch, it was fantastic spending time chatting and enjoying food with you and all the other bloggers!