They also have a variety of gourmet coffee, sauces, chutnies and all sorts of stuff for sale that I would never dream of using (or heard of).

Check them out at the Jape Homemaker Village.

In fact, most of the dishes on the smallish menu (dinner menu that is, the lunch menu one is different) are quite differen’t to the usual Chinese restaurant fare that you get around here and all sound very tasty. I’m going to have to work my way down the list in future visits although there only seems to be one or two dishes without any meat in it - vegetarians better not visit.

The prices are damn cheap with mains ranging around the $12 mark if I can recall correctly. My babe and I had 2 starters, drinks, rice and 2 mains for about $40. You can’t spend 5 minutes in a nightclub without spending that kind of money these days.

Speaking of which, you could be forgiven you had walked into a club upon entering. High ceilings, shiny floor, tables and chairs, dark glossy paint job, lots of polished metal and a glass walled office on the second floor. Very swanky and impressive.

It wasn’t very busy when we visited, so the two young waiters were just twitching with every movement the diners made, eager to serve and please. I like good service.

Tasty House sure lives up to its name and I will be visiting again soon. I even spotted the owner of the mighty Hanuman restaurant eating there.

Tasty House is open for lunch and dinner and can be found on Smith Street Mall, Darwin City.

We munched on some kimchi to begin with and they apologised for taking their time with the rice and the sushi. I loved the sushi with its melt in your mouth flavour and texture. They apologised again when they brought out the pork dish which I can’t remember the name of. It was a while before the fried chicken teriyaki came out but at least the waiters told us how long it was going to take and apologised again…When the service is good you don’t really mind waiting a bit longer I guess. The night before we ate at a Malaysian/Chinese seafood restaurant where the service was rather shit by anyone’s standards and came to the conclusion that they were all a bunch of assholes minus one girl who was running around like a mad rabbit serving and seating customers.

Lightly boiled tuna, avocado and mayonnaise sushi. I ate one before I remembed to take a photo….

Immaculately cut strips of pork in some kind of sauce. I think it was a chilli sauce or something, whatever it was it was quite nice.

And fried chicken teriyaki, again I only remembered to take a photo after a few pieces had been eaten. One day my teriyaki will be this good! I’ve sourced some decent sake so I will give it another go this week.

I don’t recall the details of the place we ate at unfortunately, but I would eat there again without a doubt.

And some green beans with miso dressing I made last week. I was supposed to use toasted sesame seeds but didn’t have any on hand, it still tasted nice with roasted sesame oil used as a substitute. Quick and easy too.

We had:

• Dim sims - crap. Meat was harder than acceptable and still had that strong pork smell/taste. Shame on you for serving us such rubbish!
• Chicken satays with peanut sauce - The sauce didn’t taste like peanut at all, not sure what the flavour was but it sure tasted great. Chicken was nice and hot with crispy outer.
• Pumpkin soup - Different to pumpkin soups I’ve had in the past, but nice nonetheless. I’m a big fan of pumpkin.
• Hot and sour soup - The girl had this one, it looked tempting with about a billion different ingredients crammed in there. It was alright I guess, the ’sour’ part didn’t really do it for me.
• Chinese mushrooms and vegetable stir fry - As to be expected. If you screw this up then you don’t belong in the kitchen.
• Crispy skin chicken - My favourite, very nice tender chicken and crispy to the max skin. Yum.

I had a craving for some mighty fine pizza and what better way to get it than to make it yourself! I couldn’t get the cheese to brown like they do at Pizza King though, maybe I’ll grill it next time instead of putting it in the oven. This pizza you see here has tomato paste, pepperoni, tomato, mushrooms, onion, basil leaves, bacon, pizza mix cheese, parmesan cheese, oregano and chilli flakes. I ate the whole thing to myself over the course of the day. Yum!

Preparation time: 1 hour, allow time for preparing pizza toppings.
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 2 packs dry yeast (7-8 grams or 1/4 ounces)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups flour (approx)
• olive oil

Method

1. Coat large bowl with olive oil and set aside.
2. Stir wate, yeast and sugar together. Let sit for 10 minutes so the yeast can do its thing.
3. Place 3 cups of flour in a large bowl and mix in salt.
4. Cover work surface with a cup of flour.
5. Mix/Pour olive 3-4tsp olive oil into yeast mixture and then pour into bowl with flour.
6. Stir until combined as much as possible then pour onto floured work surface.
7. Flour your hands and knead the dough untila smooth ball is formed. You may beed to add more flour as you go. This maya while (5-10 mins) depending on how awesome your kneading skills are.
8. Place dough into the oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap and then a kitchen towl. Let sit for 30 minutes.
9. Dough shoud have at least doubled in size by now, take the wrapping off and “punch” the dough down till its flatter. Let sit for another 30 minutes or so. The longer the you leave it the better it will be…suppossedly.
10. Use half the dough to form the pizza base, flattening it out on a pizza tray. Brush edges with olive oil.
11. Add spread tomato paste on and desired toppings and cook for approximately 15 minutes in the oven at 200 - 220 degrees celcius.

Absolutely divine, my sister says as soon as I walk in the door. That my readers, is all the proof you need to verify the divinity of this simple pasta dish.

Now after a hard night’s training at taekwondo, my legs are buggered to the point where I’m too lazy to get up and go get the cook book where the recipe for this dish can be found. Thus I will just pluck it from my not so good memory, but fear not, it is quite a simple dish. Here goes…

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 5-10 minutes and about 10 minutes for the pasta
Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 400 grams past (less pasta means more yummy sauce!)
• 5 ripe roma tomatoes, chopped roughly
• 400 grams bacon, thinly sliced, use fatty bits for more flavour
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced (only because I put mushroom in all my pasta…)
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
• 250ml thick cream (add more for extra creamy goodness)
• greated/shaved parmesan cheese
• olive oil

Method

1. Cook pasta as per instructions on packet.
2. Heat olive oil in a pot, add the bacon and fry until brownish.
3. Add tomatoes and fry for a minute, stirring frequently, then add mushrooms. Continue frying and stirring until the tomatoes begin to soften ever so slightly.
4. Turn heat to medium and stir in thick cream, let it simmer for a couple of minutes so the flavours fuse together.
5. Whack the pasta in and stir it around.
6. Take off heat, stir in parsley. Serve topped with parmesan cheese.

I stuffed myself full on Sunday to the point where I could see beads of sauce squeezing their way out of my belly button. The food was excellent and there are plenty of wait staff catering to your needs. Didn’t take that long to get our meals given the amount of people there, I’ve had to wait longer to get pizza…

We began our meal with some butter naan bread. Nice and hot with a fabulous aroma.

A starter plate of kashmiri chicken tikka (i.e. tandoori chicken) which was quite filling in itself. Lovely spices and tender pieces of chicken.

The mains were, from left to right, red lentil dahl (I think, didn’t pay too much attention to it…), butter chicken and a “mean moolie” of barramundi fillets. I have no idea what mean moolie is supposed to mean but it was my favourite dish of the night. The butter chicken was very spicy and forced me to break into a light sweat…damn you. And the vegetarian dish was ok but didn’t really cater to my carnivorous ways, I’m sure the vegetarians would love it though.

Hanuman (Darwin) is located at:

Holiday Inn Esplanade
93 Mitchell Street
Darwin, Northern Territory
Phone: (08) 8941 3500

Indeed it is a sin for noodles to taste this good. I used my hoi sin stir fry sauce with noodles instead of vegetables like I usually do and it turned out great. I made it yesterday and again today as I wanted my partner to experience the yummyness.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 5-10 minutes
Serves: 4 (or 2 hungry people)

Ingredients

• Hokkien noodles for four
• 3 chicken thigh fillets, sliced thinly
• Vegetables of your choice, I went with sugar snap peas, zucchini and bok choy. Prepare each accordingly.
• 3 shallots, chopped coarsely
• 3 cloves garlic finely diced
• 1 chilli finely diced
• 1/2 large onion sliced thinly
• 1/4 cup cashew nuts
• Peanut oil to cook

Sauce

• 60ml / 2 tablespoons hoi sin sauce
• 30ml / 1 tablespoon sweet chilli sauce
• 30ml / 1 tablespoon oyster sauce

Method

1. Prepare the noodles as per the instructions on the packet.
2. Stir fry chicken in a bit of peanut oil until brown and almost cooked through, remove and set aside.
3. Stir fry onion, garli, chilli and cashews for a minute, then add in peas and stem parts of bok choy. Stir fry for another minute and then add in the softer vegetables then stir fry another minute or until the vetables start to become wilted.
4. Add in the sauce and stir through.
5. Add in the noodles and stir fry, flip or do whatever it is you like to do to the beast. Make sure the wok is on super hot because that’s how all Iron Chefs roll. Mix it up and sexify it.

Yum. Eat it while it’s hot because cold noodles are shit.