Banana Tikka Masala

Extra-special salumi

2009-01-12T01:12:00.001+11:00

My friend Candice flew back from Italy and Geneva after a whirlwind Christmas/New Year's holiday. She's even crazier about food than I am; and an order of magnitude more accomplished. She's the only person I know who has thrown a dinner party for 18 where one of the courses included foie gras wontons.

She's crazy about food because she brought back several kilograms of cured italian meats. She left her boots and some clothes behind at a friend's to fit them in.

So last Friday, as a quick no-cook throw-together dinner, we had the following sample platters (just a few tasty morsels from Italy):

Finocchiona (Salami with fennel seeds)
Lengua di Manzo (Ox tongue)
Mortadella al Tartufo (with truffle)
Prosciutto di San Daniele
Speck Magro (Lean speck)
Speck di Trentino (Fatty speck)
Bresaola di Manzo
Coppa di Parma
Sopressa di Veneto
Salai di Cingliale (Wild boar salami)
Salami di Capriolo (Juvenile deer salami)
Salami di Camoscio (Venison salami)
Salami di Cavallo (Horse salami)
Mortadella di Bologna

The speciality, Lardo di Collonada(sp?), deserves a special mention. It's basically 90% cured and smoked fat with a thin streak of meat running through. Candice told me to eat it with the wild Italian mountain honey and a freshly toasted walnut - I cannot remember the last time I was in heaven.

Wild Italian mountain honey has the most incredible unctuous creaminess. It's still sweet, but there's such a strong, almost gamey, taste to it. It's slightly musky but still floral. The toasted walnuts give off that roasted smell; the sweet nut oils and crunch contrast so well with the soft melting fat. Of course its saltiness and smokiness mix with the sweet of the honey - the bitter rocket leaf just skewers everything together.

Together with a friend who brought over some amazing French cheeses, I was quite in heaven. Candice told me to try the Gorgonzola with a horseradish-applesauce - what a combination. The creamy and pungeant gorgonzola completely mutes the sharpness of the horseradish and you taste the high notes of this spice without the heat at all. It's a vegetal astringency crescendoing over the smooth bass of the cheese. The sweetness of the applesauce only brings out the fruity nature of the gorgonzola.

If that weren't enough she'd also brought back some amazing pasta and found some Truffle Salsa. Together with Italian mountain butter, I couldn't resist and stuffed my face as the cries of my internal watchdog, "It's all just fat and carbs!", faded into the background. I cannot resist the aroma of truffle; and when you have it with butter and egg fettucine, it's a sin to say no.

Candice prepared a second lot of pasta for some latecomers and I went for seconds, despite a distended stomach. Terry asked if I was still hungry.

"No, but I just want to eat more. I'm using a smaller bowl so that I will take less."

I'd heard that eating with child-sized utensils was a technique that Elizabeth Hurley used to shrink her portion sizes.

I cannot remember a time when I've had such amazing food. Oh yes, I can; it was at her previous dinner party.

Never turn down an invitation.

Eating with mum

2009-01-11T03:20:00.001+11:00

My mother came to visit me over Christmas. She arrived on Christmas day at night.

She's a health conscious woman who's very concerned with her cholesterol levels. She went to Japan to visit my sister and hardly touched the shellfish for this reason. So I planned for lighter dinners and more substantial lunches, so that she could enjoy herself with slightly less guilt, I figured.

I grew up with my grandmother's Cantonese style cooking and wanted to try Peach Garden here in Singapore on a friend's recommendation. However, our host for the evening said that his favourite branch was closed for a wedding dinner. Wow, must be a rich family getting married to hire out Peach Garden.

So we went to Crystal Jade Golden Palace in Ngee Ann City.

My friend and host felt extravagant and we ordered Peking Duck, Roast Goose, Old Cucumber soup (served in the cucumber) and razor clams; amongst other things.

So much for the light dinner. Mind you, we hadn't exactly stopped eating since lunch time when we went to Little India to eat thosai and appom. There's some pani puri in the background. Tasty morsels of yoghurt filled puri shells sprinkled with chutney.

Then after a shopping trip for baking goods and tofu setting agent, we went for a quick trip to Chinatown hawker centre to observe popiah skin making and sample popiah.

La Nonna, Holland Village

2008-02-13T10:29:00.000+11:00

La Nonna in Holland Village is an elegant Italian restaurant with dark wood tables and crisp white linen. The knowledgeable and smartly dressed waiters are attentive but not obtrusive. The menu is very authentic and truffle is on offer.

I ordered a Caprino pizza: pancetta, rocket and goat cheese. Wood-fired, of course, and the base was perfectly chewy and savoury. The way traditional Italian pizza should be, that is the toppings as an accent to the bread itself. Before my pizza, I had a complimentary bread basket with ciabatta and thin crispy grilled cheese pizze sticks.

Pizzas (for two or a greedy one) and pasta from $18.
Mains from $28.

Illy coffee

2007-09-29T19:06:00.001+10:00

Illy Coffee

It's hard to find good coffee in Singapore. Recently I bought some illy coffee, attracted by the "individually wrapped sachets" promised on the shiny tin. I imagined using them in my filter coffee maker.

Imaging my surprise when these sachets turned out to be for an espresso machine. I can still use them, I just have to tear the packet and pour the coffee innards inside the machine. Kinda defeats the purpose, but oh well.

I like the idea of pre-packaged neat little capsules of ground coffee. I'd seriously considered getting a Nespresso expressly for this purpose. I'm glad to know that there is a cheaper and more ecological sound alternative to Nespresso.

Snowskin Mooncake

2007-09-29T18:39:00.000+10:00

Mooncake making

I made snowskin mooncake the other day.

I don't think I've got the skin texture right as it was a bit chewy. Next time I will add more shortening.

I like the translucency of the skin allowing the green of the pandan-flavoured lotus paste to come through. Here you can buy prepared lotus seed paste to flavour and add to your mooncake. There's even a pre-mix of the snowskin flour so all one needs to do is rub in the shortening and mix with a small amount of water to for the dough. Everything I bought from Phoon Huat bakery supplies in Holland Village.

The lotus seed paste is very thick and turns green once mixed with the pandan essence. I like how it looks like Hokusai's Wave when I mixed it.

My mooncake wrapping technique is a little shoddy. Mistakenly, I'd rolled out discs to envelope the paste and pinched it shut. I later found out that the correct technique is to form a small curved shell in one's hand, insert the filling then close it with the minimum of extra skin on the bottom.

I bought a mooncake press which makes forming and removing the mooncake so much easier, especially for hobbyists like me.

This is a far cry from the times my mother made mooncake. I remember her boiling the maltose syrup and vinegar (yuk), blanching lotus seeds, removing the inner shoot, then boiling until soft with sugar. She mashed the seeds into a paste, added oil, then let it rest for a few days to achieve the required texture.

I cut open a bag of lotus seed paste and squeezed it into a bowl to mix with the pandan essense.

My mum would oil and flour an intricately carved wooden mooncake mold, carefully press in the spherical pre-mooncake then pray as she inverted and tapped hard so that it would come out. My press makes peeling off the mooncake easy. I saw bright pink plastic mooncake molds for sale, presumably these are less prone to sticking.

Yi Bao Holland Village

2007-09-29T18:33:00.000+10:00

This new eatery seeks to capitalise on the wave of nostalgia over childhood foods. I noticed this trend in London and I guess it's natural to start seeing this occur in Singapore, albeit slightly delayed. I think it's a byproduct of increasing affluence and a global focus on the past-as-better as the world becomes increasingly frightening.

Yi Bao serves specialities from Ipoh, Malaysia, a city known for its hor fun, bean sprouts and chicken. Something about the water there - perhaps no longer given its development.

It's an air-conditioned restaurant with table-service and a small outdoor area. The service is atrocious as I had to wave like a madman to attract the uniformed waitress. I asked for a glass of water to accompany my hor fun and chicken and was told it was 30c.

"What is that for," I asked.
"We charge 30c for water," she replied.
"What for?" I enquired, hoping to point out how cheapskate and ludicrous it was to charge for water when I was already buying food.
Like a robot, she replied, "We charge 30c for water."

All right then, I thought, I'll have the barley. I chose the barley without ice as ice costs an extra 80c for hot drinks.

"Barley no more, already," came her clipped reply. "You want fruit juice? Soursop?"

Fruit juice, a cold drink, costs 40c more without ice. So I pay for ice if I want a hot drink cold, and pay for no-ice if I want my juice undiluted . This is standard practice at hawker centres and local coffeeshops. I have no problem with that. But a place that has nicely printed menus, airconditioning and uniformed waitstaff are just impudent if they want to charge me for water in its various phases (ice and liquid).

It's a different set of priorities I guess, perhaps it's a Singaporean thing that paying for food and airconditioning is okay, but extras like ice they can do without. Perhaps it's a perception that ice is a luxury?

My horfun had good texture and was all right, but I was cranky from the experience and left after eating. I'd already been asked to pay the waiter when my food arrived - I guess I was a flight-risk.

Durian

2007-09-16T14:54:00.000+10:00

Durian

The durian has a similar love-hate relationship that Marmite has for its followers. Personally, I'm not a great fan although I will eat a few durian products like ice-cream and the puff. I quite like durian puffs which are like cream puffs with a whipped durian and cream filling.

Durian was on my sister's to-do (to-eat) list when she visited.

After our fabulous dinner at No Signboard restaurant, my sister and my dining friends Kin and Kenny went to Geylang to the durian stalls. I'd like to emphasise at this point that I had not eaten durian in about 10 years. I'd completely forgotten about the various cultivars; the sweet variety, the bitter one; D10, D4, etc. We selected our durians of choice after a quick discussion: sweet ones, not too bitter.

The restrictions on durian transportation (not allowed on public transport, frowned upon in taxis) mean that this delicacy is usually eaten on the roadside on makeshift plastic stools - no one really wants to stink up their car either. There's something appropriate about Geyland, Singapore's red-light district; the seedy side of things - bootleg cigarette peddlers, prostitutes and pimps openly going about their business; and the stinky waft of the aroma, that goes well with durian. The vendors kindly open the fruit for you with their thick padded gloves but extraction to reveal further seeds inside is a DIY affair. Immaculately dressed Kenny had no qualms about pressing the segments open with his bare hands looking for new fruit.

Eating Durian

I must say that my first durian in 10 years wasn't all that bad. I think I've been de-sensitised to the smell since moving here. I'm not a convert, far from it, I could only manage three seeds or so. But everyone else enjoyed themselves. Here's a picture of my sister eating - she's wondering why this photo is public. It's because I wanted to post it on my blog!

Bangkok - Eating and Travel

2007-09-02T16:19:00.000+10:00

A few months ago I went to Bangkok with Nicholson. A former ex, he tore my heart out and danced on it with his devil hooves - but, I forgive him. Not really, actually, I just like being dramatic. We had a great time in Bangkok teasing each other.

We stayed at the Metropolitan Hotel which he obtained at a discount rate of ~AU$200 a night. Quite a steal as usually it goes for US$200 a night. The tourism downturn has really hit Thailand badly. The junta govt, the uprisings in the south and the bomb explosions a few weeks earlier had cleared out the usually crowded streets.

Flying up on a Friday evening, we ate at Noodi an ostensibly 'westernised' global noodle bar (they do pasta too). I say ostensibly because Nicholson assured me that the usually fiery hot yum woon sern would be to the Western palate. Boy was he wrong - no compromises with the fresh chilli and chilli flakes here! My mouth was burning and I dreaded to think about what was going to happen to the other end of my gut.

We visited a gogo bar with boys on parade (interesting but no more details on this G-rated blog) then headed to DJ Station to see what the fuss was about.

Breakfast next morning we took at the Healthy Food bar at the Metropolitan - Glow. It's like spa-food, but very delicious; low on meat, oil, salt and other evil ingredients of the moment; high on vegetables, whole grains, minimal cooking, etc. Long rectangular trays of wheatgrass lined the room dividers. I guess one could ask for freshly squeezed wheatgrass if one wanted.

I had a Bircher muesli and tomato avocado bruschetta. Nicholson had a fruit salad and some berry pancakes...I think - can't remember. The muesli was creamy and as it should be: grainy but not excessively so, yoghurty and fruity. Great ingredients all round.

We walked the streets (no, not like that) to get a bit of local colour. Nicholson loves Bangkok and I enjoyed being in a city that wasn't anal-retentively clean. It reminded me a lot like the streets of Kuala Lumpur. I smelled the aroma of caramelised vanilla and baking wafting towards me and bought these madeleines from a street vendor. Of course I got confused with the currency and overpaid him 10x what they were worth but he gave me the correct change. He's probably inwardly cursing that he's got no more change for the rest of the day but Nicholson assures me that they're very Buddhist about this sort of thing.

These are made on a batter poured onto cast iron moulds heat with a gas burner. He sits on the corner turning the pan and dishing out the cakes as soon as they're made. Mine had some sort of fig or dried fruit jam in the middle; deliciously light and very slightly chewy.

We hailed a cab to get to Thewet to catch a river boat down the Chao Praya river. Nicholson's been here several times to do the tourist circuit so the Royal Palace, Reclining Buddha, etc. are not of interest to him. My proximity to Bangkok makes it easy for me to visit again soon, and I will. We bumped into some monks and marvelled at the teeming fish in the river. It's great that a river running through one of Asia's biggest cities is host to such wildlife.

Several of these boats powered by what looked like converted artillery guns roared past at great speed.

Northern Thai Laksa

After a day shopping at Central World (we were disappointed as Nicholson's favourite Hong Kong brand izzu.com has "turned to shit") we ate at the superb food court above. An elegant black stone surround on the highest public-accessible level of Central World offers cuisines of the world. You get a token and go around ordering. The cooks scan the bar code and it's all computed and paid for at the end of your visit. I ate this laksa with sour vegetables and a sambal. This dish is from the north of Thailand - very delicious chicken gravy with coconunt milk. There's a drink made from a local fruit behind (I can't remember now, ugh).

We walked through the park via Saladaeng to get back to our hotel for our second expedition that night (again, G-ratedness prevents me from revealing more; suffice to say that we visited the former kingdom of Hammurabi). We sampled Thai pineapple and freshly squeezed Thai mandarin juice from street vendors. Honestly, this country has the best pineapple and mandarins in the world. I once saw Thai pineapple for sale in Singapore and got all excited only to find that they had sold out. We passed a Buddhist offering place where one could pay money to have a troup of Thai girls in traditional dress dance - the more money, the longer they danced.

Afterwards we went to the Sky Bar at the Hilton where I felt like a moviestar. It's a beautiful rooftop bar on one of the higher buildings in Bangkok. There are several levels and descending to the corner bar there's a long buffet table to eat from. I felt like I was entering some rich person's party.

Our last meal in Bangkok we took at the airport. For some reason Nicholson ate nothing but pad thai for this entire journey. He's usually quite adventurous, but he just felt like fried rice noodles this time round. This time I also had the pad thai. We washed it down with some orange-coloured iced tea.

Aren't the condiment holders so cute?

Soba So-good!

2007-09-02T16:06:00.000+10:00

Duck and poached egg soba

I love corny puns for restaurant names. Singapore seems to be full of them. My sister has already talked about the bakery Bread Pitt and a perennial favourite of mine is Cake it Away in Australia. So, I'm delighted to present Soba So-good!

Handmade soba noodles and a variety of other standard Japanese dishes. This eatery in Paragon mall basement specialises in soba, although handmade udon are also available. In the background you can see salmon sashimi (Ralf's favourite) and a spicy salmon tartare with quail egg.

Noodle noodle noodle!

Faultless, I must say - insofar as my limited experience of Japanese can construe. A table of Japanese business men in weekend attire gave further support to my opinion. Round after round of Tiger beers, sake and shochu were ordered at our neighbouring table.

My perfectly poached egg quivered, waiting to be slurped. The duck was moist, tasty and not too greasy. These were cold noodles so the sauce reminded one of something zaru-soba style. Yummmmm.

The Fat Duck - Heston Blumenthal

2007-09-01T15:27:00.000+10:00

This post has long been waiting; I wanted to have proper time to digest (mentally) the consequence of this experience - well, and I moved to Singapore and would have been too wistful too finish writing this at that early stage of my settling in. Anyway, before I totally forget the tastes and textures of this landmark restaurant, I'd better write about it.

A drive to Bray north of London on a grey wet morning (what's new?) reminded me of the road trips that Leon and I used to take in Canberra. Well, in Australia the highways don't look so depressing and there's usually blue sky. I like travelling with Leon because he puts up with my Princess-petulism with regard to hungriness, thirstiness and the need to go to the toiletness.

Champagne Toast

We'd booked lunch a long time in advance for this special occassion. I looked forward to it - I did not see myself dining in such a world-renowned place for quite a few years after I moved to Singapore.

We celebrated with a champagne toast to welcome in 30; a nice sweet cava.

As was the current fashion, we had two types of butter: salted and unsalted. You can tell by the fleur de sel sprinkled on top which is which. Leon ate here previously when I was in Amsterdam, but still elected to partake of the Tasting Menu. He felt there was still more to explore in the flavours and textures.

Oyster

Our amuse-bouches (note the plural) arrived. The waiter made the much-fêted nitro-green tea and lime mousse made from whipped egg white frozen with liquid nitrogen. [Diversion: Technically, the "nitro"-green tea should more correctly be "aza"-green tea as "nitro" implies NO2 whereas "aza" refers to the N-triple bond-N.] No pictures of this dish as it was formed and consumed so quickly.

Orange and Beetroot Jelly

Leon's favourite was the oyster, passionfruit jelly, lavender. I thought it very innovative to pair floral and fruity flavours with oyster. The tang of the passionfruit does well to cut the oyster liquor. We also had a two squares of orange and beetroot jelly. Can you guess which is which?*

We also had a Pommery grain mustard ice cream on a gazpacho of red cabbage. I love the presentation of this dish - what a HUGE plate and rim with a tiny depression in the middle. The concentric rings draw your eye right down to the quenelle of ice-cream. This was the first in a series of savoury ice-creams. This sort of thing is very easy due to the Pacojet. Anything that can be frozen can be made into a sorbet/ice-cream. This had a very subtle flavour. The cold numbed the mouth so that the mustard spiciness was very much subdued and only the nuttiness and hint of bitter came through.

Then a small plate of jelly of quail, langoustine cream and parfait of foie gras. The brown gel is made from quail broth and orange quenelle is the foie gras. The foam is made from langoustine broth and cream. I'm trying to remember the flavours but it's been over six months and there were too many dishes. All I can recall from this dish are the creamy and jelly textures contrasting with the savouriness of everything else.

Snail Porridge

With our amuses finished, on came the first course: Snail Porridge with Joselito ham and shaved fennel. We looked forward to this signature dish. Scottish oats cooked in a savoury broth - I've forgotten how the green was achieved - with diced snail pieces, shredded Joselito (I'm assuming a type of Spanish ham) on top with the aniseedy fennel counterpoint. The broth was a little rich and overpowering for me to make out the snail and ham distinctly.

Roast Foie Gras

Roast Foie Gras. Almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile This was one of my favourite dishes. I LOVE roasted/pan-fried foie gras. The cherry (stripes) and floral chamomile (white curl) cut the richness of the foie gras. The tiny cubes of almond gel were so cute; each one dissolving in my mouth to release packet of flavour.

I'm always on edge with the almond flavour/smell. The smell is due to non-toxic cyanide compounds in the almond itself. The skins of almonds need to be cooked to eliminate the toxic ones. We've frequently been told that hydrogen cyanide smells like almonds, i.e. the last thing one smells before dying of HCN poisoning is almonds.

Sardine on Toast Sorbet

Sardine on Toast Sorbet: Ballotine of mackerel invertebrate, marinated daikon, sea salad. I didn't really like this dish but admired the innovation and audacity. I also liked the cute little anchovies. Of course presentation is faultless. The daikon are the beige rectangles on the bottom of the plate. I found the dish a little fishy for me, thankfully this was cold so volatile flavours were subdued; very clever how the mackerel was 'invertebrated', i.e. the bones taken out and the flesh re-rolled to fit the original shape. Perhaps one day they might breed such a fish: just a long tubular piece of flesh wriggling in the ocean.

Salmon poached with licorice

Salmon poached with licorice: Artichokes, pink grapfruit, 'Manni' olive oil I liked this dish a lot. The artichokes are echoed twice here. Here the artichokes are served roasted and as a cream (beige blob off in the distance).

All the mains seemed to have the accents presented twice in two textures. Now that I think of it, I'm sure the broth for the snail porridge was made from (Joselito?) ham bones. We had almond cream and almond fluid gel, cherry sauce and cherry.

"But where's the salmon?", you may ask. It's in the black square: a resilient lightly liquoriced casing made from some sort of agar/gel. Break it open and perfectly poached salmon emerges, delicately perfumed with liquorice. Who would have thought it works, but it does. Personally, I love eating black food. It seems so unnatural and perhaps slightly poisonous; like taking drugs.

Poached Breast of Anjou pigeon

Poached breast of Anjou pigeon pancetta. Pastilla of its leg, pistachio, cocoa and quatre épices. This was probably the most 'traditional' of all the foods served today. I've forgotten what the pastilla looked like, but I think it was some sort of round patty underneath the pigeon breast. Nothing too unusual to mention here, I mean after sardine ice-cream the use of cocoa to season poultry seems positively ordinary. I think the quatre épices may have been a play on Chinese five-spice but minus one. The cocoa may have substituted for one, but my nose and mind were a bit overwhelmed at this point and I could not deconvolute.

The last of the mains finished, we had an in-between course refresher of Hot and Cold Tea (2005). Obviously a perennial favourite, it was just a ordinary looking cup of amber liquid served in a squat glass. The waiter turned the glass 'just-so' and asked us to sip from an exact point on the rim. Simultaneously, two streams of hot and cold tea entered my mouth - both slightly gelled, what an experience!

This must have been prepared at the last minute with the partition removed just before serving. The viscosity of both fluids would have retarded mixing and heat transfer from hot to cold.

We also had Mrs Marshall's Margaret Cornet. Apparently it was she who invented the first ice-cream making machine. Blumenthal is trying to revive old recipes and this is supposed to be the very first ice-cream recipe.

Pink sherbet fountain. A bit of a gimmick, but I gathered that woody flavours were in at that time; so Douglas fir sherbert came in a little packet. The interesting thing is that the flavour comes not from the sherbert but from the woody thingo that's used to retrieve it.

I love having a bit of white powder at the tail end of dinner. Brightens the senses and wakes the mind, I say.

Mango and douglas fir puree

Mango and Douglas Fir puree. Bavarois of luchee and mango, blackcurrent sorbet. Desserts naturally lend themselves to fanciful flights of imagination. This is probably the cutest dessert I've ever had. In the foreground you can see the bavarois with the mango layer on top. The squares of blackcurrent cube, tuile and blackcurrent sorbet repeat the single-flavour multiple-texture motif of this meal. The green garnish had piney overtones again. The pinkish squares, I think, are lychee flavoured. There's a streak of mango puree to the left.

Carrot and orange tuile, beetroot jelly. Nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream. Pain perdu and tea jelly. Whisky wine gum, violet tartelet. These after-dinner treats came to bring us down from the heady experience. Almost as if one couldn't partake of such dizzying culinary heights without a parachute to bring one down. The waiter 'fried' our bacon and egg ice-cream in liquid nitrogen at our table. He cracked open eggs pre-filled with a bacon-infused savoury custard and stir-fried the mixture till set in a copper-lined plate. I didn't really like the flavour of bacon ice-cream. The cream AND smokiness were a little overpowering for me, innovative concept though.

We liked the squishy whisky wine gum; very whimsical. We got complimentary menus to take home, each sealed with wax.

~£90 a head without wine for the 12-course degustation menu.

*The orange square is jelly made from golden beetroot. The red square is jelly made from blood oranges.

Fried chicken

2007-06-15T17:26:00.001+10:00

Fried chicken
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Crispy, crunchy, tasty and totally unlike the watery insipid stuff you get in Singpore.

Yummy!

Jakarta airport Bakso

2007-06-15T17:25:00.001+10:00

DSCF1867
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Bakso is a type of meat/forcemeat ball soup with or without noodles. They're versatile like that. Usually made out of beef, but mixed meats are common. The meatball is giant, quite large and a little like a sausage texture.

National Museum Cafe

2007-05-06T17:53:00.001+10:00

National Museum Cafe
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Singapore's proximity to Australia (relative to the UK's) means that flat whites pop-up here occassionally; like in the National Museum cafe.

This is decent coffee, with great roast beef prices only at prices a little bit higher than that seen in Australia.

Their carrot juice is velvety smooth, frothy and deliciously spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg - innovative and apt touches (the Middle East recalls spices and juices).

National Museum Cafe

2007-05-06T16:50:00.001+10:00

National Museum Cafe
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Pretty good. Nice roast beef sandwich, pretty good coffee (flat whites!!!)

Soup spoon

2007-05-06T16:35:00.001+10:00

Soup spoon
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

It looks gross, but it's quite nice. It's soup served in a bowl made from bread. I had the Boston Clam Chowder.

Hainanese Steam Boat - Yet Con

2007-05-06T16:32:00.001+10:00

Hainanese Steam Boat
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Hainanese establishements line Seah (or Purvis, I can never remember) Sts. Yet Con is one of these that I've seen but never dared to enter. My lack of Mandarin inhibits me visiting such Chinese places as inevitably I'm forced into, "Dui bu qi, wo bu jiang hua yu" in my forced Beijing accent. I shouldn't let it stop me, because it's the minority that do not speak English as well. But I feel this expectation that somehow my language should be genetically transferred and I'm somehow 'less Chinese' because of this.

But after Peranakan with K&K, we have dinner here. They order, surprisingly, in Cantonese while the floor manager bosses everyone around in loud Hainanese. He looks almost like my grandfather and the languages enveloping me remind me so much of growing up in Taman Desa, Kuala Lumpur.

Steamboat is their speciality here and a dangerous looking gas burner fires up and a bowl of clear chicken broth arrives. We cook the prawns, pork and blood-red cockles to our liking.

We order a plate of chicken breast (no skin) as one of us is a little fanatical about what he eats.

The bowls of chicken rice look too good to pass up and upsize mine to a larger one - the waitress chides me gently in Cantonese as she's already prepared a small one.

To finish we poach some eggs in the broth and drink the soup.

Peranakan food - Joo Chiat Rd

2007-05-06T16:22:00.001+10:00

Peranakan food
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I love Peranakan (Straits Chinese) food. Why? Because I love the richness of Malay spicing and sauces and the tang and lightness of Chinese cooking techniques.

I'm eating with my friends K&K who discovered this a while ago. We eat Ayam Buah Keluak (Chicken Curry with Keluak fruit), Beef Rendang, Sambal Kangkong with small shrimp or scallop and the highlight: Assam Pomfret. The fish was soft, translucent and perfectly cooked. The meat tender yet firm; the sauce tangy but rounded.

I had a dessert of sago gula melaka. The coconut milk was not from a can (but perhaps not freshly made that day either) but the gula melaka (palm sugar) was of high quality. Lots of caramel and other hidden subtle notes blended aromatically.

They served with a nice touch - the gula melaka was poured over a ball of shaved ice; very cute.

Sushi Tei - VivoCity

2007-05-06T16:16:00.001+10:00

Sushi Tei
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I'm discovering all these cool restaurants conveniently located in these giant shopping malls. I know this doesn't give me kudos because they are so accessible, but they're usually quite good!

When Singapore tries to be authentic, they go all out - you can end up paying $12 for a currywurst, but it will be authentic.

Sushi Tei is one of the numerous Japanese 'family restaurants' around. A mark above Sakae sushi, I was quite pleased with the value and quality of the food. It's one of those all-encompassing establishments - here you can find sushi, sashimi, donburi (rice dishes), yabemono (sp? paper steamboat), curry rice, yakitori, kushiage (deep-fried skewers) and ramen. Usually in Japan each category would have its own establishment.

I enjoyed myself, the uni was delicious and fresh and the wasabiller roll so cute (albeit a little bland). Good ambience as we sat by the balcony overlooking Sentosa Island - now if only all the tourists sheltering from the rain would move away so we could actually SEE the view.

The salmon and scallop carpaccio stole the show with the roasted sesame oil, yuzu and succulent fish doing it for me.

I'm annoyed...

2007-05-06T13:14:00.000+10:00

...because I had to throw out a piece of buffalo mozzarella I spent $8 on.

Dinner at home (and da Paolo Gastronomia)

2007-04-21T20:58:00.001+10:00

Pasta
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I finally got around to cooking a nice dinner at home. I'm missing European, esp. Italian food. So tonight I went Italian. Previously that day I'd visited Da Paulo Gastronmia in Cluny Court. I'd mistakenly thought it was a new stand alone mom&pop affair, when in fact it was just a new outlet of a successful Italian traiteur/deli. They sell good fresh pasta, and I was hoping to get some high quality storecupboard staples, e.g. boutique balsamic vinegar, spicy olive oils, De Cecco dried pasta, passata, etc.

Ingredients
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Unfortunately they cater more to cooks-who-don't-cook rather than cooks-who-do. An astonishing variety of Italian desserts, salads, grilled vegetables and pasta dishes are available chilled and pre-packaged. They sell one type of dried pasta, two types of balsamic vinegar (a very basic brand, along with a super expensive organic one) and commercially produced olive oil. None of what I was led to imagine by their gourmet sounding write-up in TimeOut.

I'll say that they do have an impressive range of Italian wines. But drinking wine in this country is a real luxury when the taxes bring it to around three times the cost in UK and Australia. They do have a good range of continental hard cheeses and fly in their Parma ham. Their coffee sucks, but their baristas just push a button and use sachets of pre-ground coffee beans.

Salad
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I got pasta, buffalo mozzarella and balsamic vinegar from here; decent prices for Singapore, not too bad. The nearby Cold Storage supermarket provided the other essentials for tonight's dinner - smoked salmon, strawberries and fresh herbs. I made a pesto with pecorino and basil - they claimed not to have any parmigiano; something I'm a bit incredulous about as it is, after all, a general purpose Italian deli. Later on I spied some hiding underneath the ham; the shop assistant must not have noticed - and I've snobbishly decided that Grana Padano is beneath me.

Saltimbocca
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

We had soy and linseed bread from Cedele with an olive oil and balsamic dipping bowl. I'd put in some snipped red chilli and a few grains of lightly crushed cumin seed for a bit of interest.

Then we had the buffalo mozzarella and beef tomato salad - which was filling enough, but we moved onto the chicken saltimbocca. I'd used tarragon as I'm still exploring the nuances of this herb since discovering how it tastes about six months ago. I'd originally planned to use the snowpeas as the green garnish to provide interest to the plate; but snowpeas and fish go very well, so I moved them to the next dish. I used chopped remnants of the beef tomatoes (near the stem and round part) to make a crushed tomato jus from the frying pan.

Pasta
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

The Parma was faultless - sweet, salty and full of flavour. It crisped up nicely on frying. The chicken breasts were a tad overdone, but not overly so. I'd defrosted and halved one I had in the freezer. Then we moved onto the straw-and-hay pasta with smoked salmon cream sauce. I made a quick sauce by gently heating double-cream with NZ smoked salmon slices. The infusion of oily smoky fish into the unctuous whiteness made a delicate sauce that gently coated the pasta.

We finished with some strawberries macerated in balsamic vinegar and raw sugar.

I wished Leon were here to eat this with me. I kept thinking of how this is the sort of treat I'd make for us after we hadn't seen each other for a while; or something I'd do to try to make up for periods when I was taking him for granted.

I thought that this is the sort of thing one might do to try to impress someone; but my dining companion seemed non-plussed - he enjoyed it well enough. Maybe he was trying not to be impressed at something I seemed to carry off so 'effortlessly' (I wish). Mind you, I didn't set out to try to impress - just to cook a nice meal at home.

My local

2007-04-21T20:44:00.000+10:00

I live near a 24h food court. So, I need never worry about running out of food. There's also a 24h supermarket round the corner. It's best to eat during normal hours though, what's there at midnight and beyond can be a little greasy and dried up; or stewed to death.

But this place is full of gangly old Chinese men laying about. You can see two of them playing Chinese chess in the top photo. They remind me of my grandfather - how they sit, they look, they smoke and their general demeanour.

You can see the inventive use of traffic cones as pot plant stands in the next photo.

Dinner party

2007-04-08T23:14:00.001+10:00

Wine glasses
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I went to a dinner party at a place lovingly known as Tommytown; a fabulous mansion near Holland V.

There's something elegant about a long table set with a multitude of shimmering and sparkling wine glasses. We drank a Penfolds Chardonnay 2000, which was absolutely delicious, and a couple of Australian cab savs which were too bold for my palate. I think I prefer merlot blends.

Table
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

We started with a broccoli soup, then had a butter-fried cod fillet with sweet bean (meen see) and baby asparagus. We had succulent Australian beef steaks, potatoes and a side salad for our main.

Pink salt

2007-04-07T12:15:00.001+10:00

Salt and Pepper
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

There's one truly Australian seasoning in the world: pink salt.

It doesn't really taste much different from any other salt, but it looks pretty.

People rhapsodise over the different salts and how they taste - I think it's all aesthetics. Once you crumble in the salt and it dissolves, it's all sodium chloride (+trace elements) anyway.

However, because cooking and eating are so sensual, appearances and touch are important. So, fleurs-de-sel, Maldon salt, pink salt, etc. have their place. But from a tactile and visual aspect: not a gustatory or olfactory one.

I love Duck Skin

2007-04-07T11:39:00.001+10:00

Duck skin
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Chinese New Year Reunion dinner

2007-04-07T11:37:00.001+10:00

Chinese New Year Reunion dinner
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

This just verifies my theory that food Made with Love tastes better than anything else in the world.

I'd forgotten how sweet and delicious my grandmother's cooking is until I came home.

Prawn omelette, roast duck, hainanese chicken, steamed salmon with black bean sauce. Stir fried garlic shoots with chicken, fresh cucumber.

Upper Surry Hills on a grey Sunday morning

2007-04-07T03:38:00.001+10:00

Belgenny Breakfast
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Cafe Belgenny 10 am, 25 Feb

There's a faint mist of rain on this warm morning. I walk up Oxford St, greeted by the smell of stale beer wafting from closed nightclub bars and the pavement.

It's a quiet day; perhaps more so as Azure aka Harbour Party is on tonight. The boys are getting their beauty sleep.

I choose Belgenny to breakfast; a small cafe on Campbell St introduced to me by that off-beat conventional Nicholson.

Through the window I can see up to a balcony of an apartment where a late 30's to early 40's man in a white Bonds t-shirt sits reading a newspaper. He's got closely cropped hair - mostly bald - and puffs casually on his cigarette.

Very soon, other men with barbershop -short hair and tight pale t-shirts fill the cafe; most studying papers the papers too.

The smell of bacon intoxicates the room.

Two men in similar white t-shirts, of a similar age, with similar builds (same personal trainer, I think) and similar haircuts (one is silver, the other is still brown) walk in. Their identical grey cargo shorts match their white t's. One, the younger, has a yellow and red striped pattern on his thongs, whilst the other has a plainer design - some sort of yellow on black emblem.

They order identical breakfasts: two skim flat whites and half a banana muffin each. Low-fat, low-carb.

Aside from their similarity, their demeanour is a study in long-term comfort or brittle weariness held together by routine. They hand sections of newspapers to each other, an act well practised over time, which makes me lean towards "long-term comfort".

They're chattier now as the caffeine and sugar kick in. Their presumably calorie deficient diets must leave them on a finely honed edge between alertness and collapse.

Coffee at Belgenny
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

A holiday looks on the cards as cruise ship advertisements are pointed at. The Queen Mary and Elizabeth II are on everyone's minds at the moment.

Their cloneship, albeit inadvertant, would be cute if it weren't for their sullen and grim expressions. The determined uniformity of these two suggests a certain lack of imagination. Or perhaps it speaks of the Industrie-led domination of the Sydney gay-fashion scene. Topman would provide serious compeitition if they opened here. I'm kinda wondering why they haven't already.

Yellow bistro and cafe

2007-04-07T03:23:00.001+10:00

Yellow bistro and cafe
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

I'm at Yellow Bistro/Food. My chicken salad has arrived; I forgot that the reason I knew of this place was because James described it as the place where he had a chicken salad with hardly any chicken.

I must say that my meat was in the minor key too.

But the deli is nice. I buy some Persian nougat for work colleagues. They're used to the hard crunchy cheap stuff.

Bar coluzzi, Victoria St, Sydney

2007-04-07T03:20:00.001+10:00

Bar coluzzi, Victoria St
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Good coffee on Victoria St.

Max Brenner Chocolate - update

2007-04-07T03:07:00.000+10:00

Oxford St, Paddington 22-Feb-07

Subtitle: Elegy for Chocolate

Max Brenner is dying a long slow death. Choked by its popularity, this once novel, exciting and little-known place where one saw stick thin models eating exquisite chocolate desserts with knife and fork, now harbours trendy young parents with wild rampaging children high on sugar. There's also the odd high-school date and its faithful regulars: Asian students who love Western desserts.

The venue has acquired that faint smell of sweet and slightly aged milk. The vanilla aromas blending disturbingly with lactic cheesiness to foretell the future of this establishment: another Gloria Jeans'in a few more years.

The gift packs remain fabulous, but the chocolate varieties are not what they used to be. The middle-of-the-road and most cost-effective are now the loaw of this incarnation of Max Brenner. The chocoholic has left the helm.

Their once delectable tribute to chocoholism: Espresso and dark chocolate frappe is but a poor shadow of itself. "We could make you a dark chocolate one, but I don't guarantee it will taste nice. We just follow the recipe," advised the sullen attendent. So the insipid milk chocolate version arrives. A sign that ooey-gooey mud-cake loving Westies have triumphed over good-taste.

The glass is beautiful: a ceramic soda cup replica bent at the top with a straw hole. But the taste is greasy and rough. The chocolate extract grates on my throat and no amount of numbing ice can enrichen what tastes like a cheap drink but costs $5.95.

Yai Thai

2007-04-07T02:53:00.000+10:00

Wednesday night, 21-Feb-07, Sydney. Lower Bourke St.

It's my first night in Sydney. James and I go for dinner seeking the Thai that Sydney's known for.

We walk up for a table. The restaurant is busy, but not stupidly so. We sit in the patio with wide open glass doors. There's that summer night breeze blowing through Surry Hills cooling the outdoor dining area.

We have:
Massaman beef curry
Banana flower salad with fresh coconut cream
Stuffed chicken wing

The salad has a spicy and sweet bean sauce - all very delicious. The total for dinner came to $22 a head.

I just marvel at how such a wonderful dining experience could was so easily achieved. A place like this in London would have been packed out and booked in advance for ages; not to mention cost the earth.

Simply Paris (in Wellington)

2007-04-07T02:43:00.000+10:00

Upper Cuba St, 20-Feb-07

J'ai venu ici de d'obtenir un petit chose d'Europe; un souvenir quands je suis resté là - avant Singapour. C'est assez nostalgie maintenant; plus sentimentale.

I come here to get a fix of Europe; a reminder, a souvenir of my time before Singapore. It's nostalgic now; sentimental, as time soothes the rough edges and I view the past through Vaselined lenses.

I recall Leon and I discovering the Old World together with our virgin Antipodean eyes. We learned what the weight of history does to a city and its people: good and bad.

It's not suprising that the service here is slow dolorous - it is, after all, staffed by genuine French girls. But her charming smile, cute French accent and good looks make me forgive all. The venue is populated by middle-aged women who have, more likely than not, been to France or Europe for a holiday and loved the elegance of it all. They're the ones who like Opera - not because of the art - but because of the kinds of people that go to Opera.

The food is good, the pastries quite incredible. It's nice to have this sort of thing in Wellington

Isles flotantes

2007-03-31T19:18:00.001+10:00

DSCF1439
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

Just a taste of what's to come as I begin posting again...

I ate this dessert when in Paris just before I left for Singapore. It's pavlova floating on custard - but because it's French, it seems a lot nicer. They call it Floating Isles.

Serendipitous Soya

2007-02-16T22:00:00.000+11:00

One of the suprising and very pleasant things I've discovered about eating in Singapore is that the humble tofufa man, ubiquitous at every street corner in Malaysia in his sweaty t-shirt and droopy moustache, has evolved into an equally ubiquitous soyabean derived product shop at every shopping mall and air conditioned venue. Usually the full survey of soya products: soya bean milk, soya bean curd, etc. together with grass and almond jellies are for sale at very reasonable prices - usually $1.50 or so.

Most of the time they also vend pancake goodies - stuffed with roasted chopped peanuts, red bean paste or even cream cheese. I told Leon how I've been having tofufa almost everyday; to which he said, "YUK!". It's not exactly his favourite food. My flatmate Pat remarked in hushed-trying-not-to-offend-tones upon trying some once, "Umm...David, it's really...bland."

But I like this new development in Singapore.

Killeney Kopi Tiam, Purvis St, Singapore

2006-10-07T11:26:00.000+10:00

Killeney Kopi Tiam, Purvis St, Singapore

Breakfast today was at this little place on Purvis St. The nervous middle-aged woman took my order. Her clouded eyes showing signs of stress and overwork. I chose a Kaya Toast and Half Boil Egg. These arrived speedily and I went back to order some plain toast to go with my (two) eggs. After paying again, she got very flustered and came to me:

"Your toast is already here. You want again-ah?"
"Oh no, I just want some plain toast."
"No kaya?"
"Just bread, thanks."

Her consternation was plain to see.

"Aiyah, this one is toast, how come you don't say you want plain-wan?"

I thought I'd made it 'plainly' obvious by asking for "plain toast", but that obviously confused her because "plain bread" comes toasted as a matter of course. It would seem "toast" is synecdoche for "kaya toast" in this linguistic microcosm.

The bread for the kaya toast was a little stale, and they stinged a bit on the kaya and butter, I thought. I'd expected a bit more given the marketing swathing the shop, "...established in 1919 Killeney Kopi Tiam serves crisp kaya toast...etc." The Half Boil(ed) Egg(s) was tepid, but slippery smooth and perfectly done. I prefer mine a little firmer, but that's because I've always had to make my own and I'm not very good with the timing, so tend to overcook mine. It's just what I'm used to I guess.

This street seems to be the Hainanese street as it's lined with hainanese establishments, although Hokkien was spoken at Killeney.

Pig Organ Soup

2006-10-07T11:24:00.000+10:00

I'd forgotten how ubiquitous the Food Court is in Singapore. There's really no such concept in London or Europe. My meals aren't provided for my first two days here, so I found a 24h Coffee Stop just outside from my hotel. There's a stall there specialising in "Pig Organ Noodle Soup".

The price difference between 'Western' and local food is astounding in Singapore. Last night I met up with a former colleague and we went for drinks at the bar on level 70 at the Swissotel. We were hoping for a lovely view of Singapore but the haze from the Indonesian bush fires kinda put a grey damper on everything. It was Happy Hour and drinks were 40% off, but when we got the bill the prices were exactly the same as the menu. Ah, we were told, we were given the special Happy Hour Menu. I think that's a little bit sneaky to say 40% off and lead one to think that the prices would be less than the menu. We bought a snack of chicken wings for $22 (eight pieces). We went on to an Irish bar in Chijmes - apparently I'm staying in the 'wealthy expat' area - where one could order a burger for $22.

I chose not to eat because the drinks were expensive enough, approximately London prices or more for the same. I'd previously had chicken rice for lunch and paid a princely sum of $3. Of course my eyes then bugged-out at the price of my coconut juice, $4 - it's not often that the drink costs more than the food. While I'm on the topic of prices in Singapore, the hotel 'drugstore' sells toothpaste for $3. I think this practice is shameless as the 7-Eleven across the road sells it at half the price.

I also forget about the lack of serviettes with food. I must get myself some tissues if I'm to maintain decorum whilst eating. It's also annoying that they add on all sorts of tiny taxes at the end of things. All food and hospitality bills are quoted with a +++ at the end, e.g. $160+++. "Plus plus plus" - that just sounds stupid anyway, just add it on!

Tea Bone Mind Zen, Seah St, Singapore

2006-10-07T11:17:00.000+10:00

This little shop specialises in specially selected teas and teawares sourced from Taiwan, Japan and China. The owner Carrie only carries wares where the artist has had six solo exhibitions - so that the work can be consistent. Personally I think that's a rather high bar to set because you can get artists that might do good one-offs. Each piece of ware is hand-painted and a work of art. I fell in love with a crane-pattern set; I didn't even ask the price because I knew I couldn't afford it.

Umami recommended this shop and tea-house as a lovely diversion during my stay at the Carlton on Bras Basah Rd, Singapore. Carrie wasn't in, but her assistant served me lovely cups of refined oolong tea. I love the idea of the smelling cup and the careful attention so as not to overstew the leaves. She boiled the water on an electric brazier - so picturesque-wan. We had a long chat about the art behind these beautiful wares, their uniqueness and their collectability; unfortunately the names of the artists went in one Westernised ear and out the other. Apparently Bill and Chelsea Clinton are avid collectors of one of the artists.

She served me home-made snowskin moon cake, my first time trying this variety, made by one of the shop's associates. I detected that a kind of bean flour is used for the white topping. She pointed out the fullness of the lotus seed filling and the thin-ness of the coating - delicious.

I looked at several delicate items to buy as a gift for my flatmate Pat. The lily-pattern teacup with porcelain strainer or the porcelain mug with Chinese crystal handle stood out for me. I decided on the mug for practical reasons: it would be rare for Pat to drink Chinese tea but he does like English tea with biscuits.

Street food and beer

2006-09-25T04:36:00.000+10:00

We found a street vendor selling poached snails that were quite delicious with a hint of saffron and herb. Belgium is also very famous for its fruit beers. The most well known is Kriek, flavoured with cherry juice - very refreshing and not at all artificial tasting. We also tried peach and raspberry flavours.

Les Crustacés

2006-09-24T21:02:00.000+10:00

Quais aux Briques 8
Bruxelles

This street in Brussels bristles with seafood restaurants. A long walk failed to find anything worthy, but Les Crustacés beckoned with its friendly family run atmosphere and proprietress.

We started with an amuse of very tasty prawns and escargots. The latter we ate with a pin so we could prise out the meat from inside.

Brussels is known for its mussels so we had to have some: steamed in white wine and fine herbs. Of course this comes with chips: homemade, perfectly crisp on the outside and creamily soft on the inside - served with home-made mayonnaise, bien sûr.

For our mains we ordered Lobster (Homard). I was tempted by the Thermidor, but wary of the excessively rich sauce that could disguise the taste of the sweet meat. We elected for a medium lobster split in two and cooked two ways: with garlic butter and flambéed in brandy.

Looking back, the brandy flambéed version was quite inferior. The bitterness of the flamed brandy really came through and kinda ruined the sweetness of the meat. The seafoody freshness was also totally destroyed.

We enjoyed our meals and waddled out replete, ready to visit Frederic Blondeel.

Exotic chocolate in Brussels

2006-09-24T20:48:00.000+10:00

Frederic Blondeel is an exotic chocolatier in Bruxelles, Belgium. Here you can find such novel flavours such as dill, szechuan pepper, chilli, green cayenne pepper, black cardomon, green cardomon and blackcurrant.

The husband and wife team that run this establishment are so sweet and helpful.

Although the quality of the chocolate is not as good as a Godiva, the flavours are definitely quite exciting.

An interview: Me on Food and Science

2006-09-15T22:28:00.000+10:00

I was recently interviewed on BBC Radio 5 as part of some publicity surrounding a talk I did at the Dana Centre about some science behind food and cooking.

My friend Tim kindly re-recorded it for me:
http://www.timbomb.net/download/DavidLoongOnFood.mp3

Noordrmarkt in Amsterdam

2006-09-10T04:35:00.000+10:00

www.flickr.com

The Noordrmarkt (North Market) has the most splendid array of fresh food I've seen in a long time. Perhaps it's the pollution free Amsterdam air that makes the fruit and veg glow with vitality? Borough market just seems so dusty with the rattling trains overhead.

Cream teas in Devon

2006-08-30T05:05:00.000+10:00

Devonshire teas in Ilfracombe, Devon - what could be more authentic? Well, the scones are good, the clotted cream fantastic and the jam pretty decent. St James Tea Rooms are friendly and welcoming.

Steamed sea-bass with potatoes and salad

2006-08-30T05:00:00.000+10:00

Take Thyme restaurant in Ilfracombe is a friendly husband-and-wife run place with fresh seafood. The fish is fresh, but don't expect anything fancy done with it. The vegetables are just as plain and simple. For £14.95 and sea-bass with country-town rents I'd expected just a little bit more.

Risotto with asparagus, prawns and hand-shelled peas

2006-08-30T04:58:00.000+10:00

No, I didn't shell the peas with my own hands, but I'm sure the underpaid migrant Polish worker did a good enough job. Asparagus, peas and shrimp were from Tesco but the rice is still from that expensive packet I bought ages ago.

I used a stock made with Marigold powder, with olive oil, butter, a small amount of onion and garlic as the flavour base.

Des Cadolor

2006-08-09T05:31:00.000+10:00

Seagull feather
Pebbly beach
Crashing waves
Beneath my feet

Verdigris water
On the shore
Tumbles stones
And soothes my core

Tingling breezes
Touch my skin
A gentle kiss
Sent by the wind

Warm wet smells
Of driftwood rot
Find me rapt
Upon this spot

Soft-peak clouds
And lemon-ice sky
Its purple islands
Floating by

Rattle, clatter, rattle
Crash
Pebbles roll
Amidst the splash.

Des Cadolor - Intro

2006-08-09T05:25:00.000+10:00

Although not food related, I had to post this here as MSN spaces are having teething problems with their migration to spaces.live.com, argh.

I'm currently in Ibiza, Spain having a holiday away from my ex-boyfriend. It's been good for me. Today my friends took me Des Cadolor, possibly the most beautiful beach that I've ever been to and definitely the most beautiful in Ibiza. It was so inspirational I wrote a poem seeking to describe my experience sitting amongst the pebbles listening to the surf roll and rattle them around.

Pato Pekin - Santa Eularia, Eivissa (Ibiza)

2006-08-06T21:58:00.000+10:00

This afternoon we eat at Pato Pekin, a Chinese restaurant in Santa Eularia. James in our dining party has a severe intolerance to MSG but our Spanish dining companions have never heard of it. They think this place has the best tasting food, maybe because they’ve not realised their Secret Ingredient. The waitresses don’t speak English so I try my halting Mandarin with them. It’s strange having Spanish spoken all around me but trying to converse in a language other than English. I try to explain what MSG is to the waitresses, finally succeeding with “Ajinomoto”. “Ah!” she exclaims, “Ah-hee-no-moto, wei jing,” she pronounces with a Spanish ‘J’ and a marked Beijing accent.

The food is well executed and tasty, if a little heavy handed with the soya sauce and MSG. The chef is not restaurant trained, but a skilled home cook. There are distinct Shanghai and Northern influences, but he’s obliged to make the more popular Cantonese style stir-fries – chop suey is also on the menu. The prices are decent and the set menus for one or two are particularly good value, hovering around €8 to 10 per person; otherwise a la carte dishes are between €9 and 14.

Club Sandwich

2006-08-06T20:08:00.000+10:00

My first experience of Western food was a Club Sandwich. My father used to work for the Merlin Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, it’s only 5-star hotel, and had accommodation there as part of his package. It was luxurious by Malaysia’s standards for that time – an actual suite with a living room and bedroom. Of course there was room service too; which was how I experienced these heights of Western decadence.

Sometimes on the few occassions we visited his suite my parents would order room service. The food would arrive on white plates with flat-top silver covers. We had such delicacies as omelette and Club Sandwiches. It was also the first time I tasted parsley – the ubiquitous in hotel food in the 80’s. I was told not to eat it as it was decoration. I persisted anyway and was surprised at its astringent taste.

We never lived at the suite, although I think we may have stayed one or two nights. I think my parents thought that a hotel was no place to bring up a child. My mother worked and so I used to stay with my grandmother who took care of me. I think the reason my parents did not live her much was because this was during a time when my parents were just about to buy a home that would house my mother’s immediate family: her two sisters, her brother and her parents. My father would still stay at his mother’s place as would my mother at hers.

For me the classic Club Sandwich is made with toasted white bread without crusts and cut into triangles. The filling may vary, but must always contain either bacon or smoked ham. Chicken may be permitted, but some sort of fresh component, e.g. lettuce or tomato is also vital. There must be three slices of bread in each sandwich, otherwise it’s just a fat sandwich, not a Club Sandwich. I’m sure there are other definitions about what makes a classic Club, but these are mine.

The BLT Club Sandwich at (£5.95) does not quite fit the ideal, although it was very delicious. The bread was toasted, albeit multigrain and with crusts and curved edges; only two slices of bread were used. The chips were marginally passable, i.e. cooked in fresh oil but not crisp or hot. I washed this down with a Giddy Giraffe (£3.50) smoothy made with papaya, mint and other tropical fruits.

Imli Restaurant

2006-06-30T18:40:00.000+10:00

Imli Restaurant, 167-168 Wardour Street, London W1F 8WR
Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Rd
Cuisine: Modern Indian
Telephone 020 7287 4243

Where best to take a friend who has just spent two weeks attending an Indian wedding with family in Toronto than an Indian restaurant in London. A rather odd choice, but he looked forward to experiencing Modern Indian.

Imli is the more laid-back cousin of Tamarind, London's only Michelin-star rated Indian restaurant. The warm orange tones complement the dark wood-grain furniture and Indian accents like beads, prints and the odd sculpture give a chic and stylish feel to the place. Lots of natural light flood the place giving an airy and vibrant atmosphere.

The waitstaff seem to be divided into a sort of hierarchy. The friendly woman who attended us was helpful and knowledgeable, but the others who brought dishes out seemed uninterested, perhaps shy. The manager on the day seemed tense and on-guard.

The highlight of Imli are its juices, made on premises. My thyme lemonade had a herbal and refreshing tang, the mango passion was fragrant with the slight grittiness of fresh passionfruit seeds and the lychee pear juice had a floral berry-ness to it.

Our waitress informed us of the nature of Imli: Indian Tapas. Dishes are priced from £2.95 to £6.95 with most being around the £4 to £5 mark. The portions are small, but it's recommended that everyone order three to four dishes each to share. Nine dishes for three of us was more than enough.

The tender bulgar bean salad had a slight tart aftertaste, perhaps because of excessive bicarbonate used when soaking the beans. This was cooked in flavoursome vegetable stock and seasoned with a hint of asafoetida. The mushroom tikki came as three crumbed oversize nipples, or giant Hershey kisses; deep-fried crispy 'kebabs' flavoured with ginger and coconut. My favourite was the aubergine masala: succulent eggplant morsels in a thick dark gravy, served with rice or pratha. We also had a roasted vegetable salad, crispy chicken wings, deep-fried seafood platter, fish curry, masala grilled beef and pav bhaji - cumin-flavoured vegetables served with a fried bun.

A sweet and rich base of ghee-sauteed onion and garlic provides the general flavour of most dishes. Green curry leaf, tomato paste, ginger, mustard seed and fresh coriander provide variety and accents to the sauces. I prefer lighter, less rich Indian; the dishes were on the satisfying side. On a hot day, I'd stick to the light-and-refreshing section and maybe choose one or two from the other parts of the menu. Just under half the dishes on offer are vegetarian - a sizeable but not unusual number for an Indian establishment.

Dessert provided a small range of exotic treats. We chose an Indian caramel custard with coconut and jaggery, carrot fudge and raspberry and black salt sorbet. My Indian friend informed me that black salt is pungeant, strong and tastes like pork crackling: his father hates it. However, it pleasantly complemented the raspberry, offsetting the berry tartness with a slight savoury edge. The minute flecks of black on deep pink were also attractive. The silky-smooth caramel custard and the bitter caramel sauce paired well with the rich coconut. Our resident expert thought the carrot fudge ordinary, but I found it tasty as it was my first time sampling this. Sweetened milk is reduced with shredded carrots, melon seeds and raisins to give something resembling moist cake-crumbs.

Imli is the perfect location for a quick pre- or post-theatre snack, afterwork drinks and nibbles or a casual drop-in for lunch. The small portions allow one to sample a great variety of tastes and the fresh juices are a must.

£5 or just under in London can get you:

2006-06-19T09:21:00.000+10:00

Two and a half cappucinos/espressos/lattes

Two Starbucks/Costa/Caffe Nero coffees

7.8 kg of bananas
3.6 kg of organic bananas

Four loaves of decent supermarket bread

Two one-serve ready meals

Fruit salad with mango pieces and a chocolate bar at Marks and Spencers

Five egg and cress sandwiches from a supermarket

Two egg and bacon, chicken and bacon, or chicken club sandwiches from a supermarket

Two pieces of roti chanai with curry gravy and a teh-tarik from Malaysia Hall

Nasi Campur with three choices from Malaysia Hall

Nasi Campur with two choices (plus some change) from Nahar Cafeteria

Two and a half breakfast-sized serves of Nasi Lemak from Malaysia Hall

A tiny plate of roast duck and undercooked two-minute noodles from Jen Cafe in Chinatown Newport St, Soho

£5 = US$9.20, AU$12.60, NZ$15.00, JPY1068, €7.30, SG$14.80, MYR33.70 (as at 19 June 2006)

Le Domino in Cannes, France

2006-05-30T06:46:00.000+10:00

Le Domino Restaurant - 7 rue du Pré - 06400 Cannes, +33 492 980 787

Prix fixe: €13.90, two courses.

Wandering along the streets of old Cannes looking for where the locales eat, we stumble across what must be the only gay run restaurant in town. Perhaps this subtle attractive force could be a new fundamental one - mediated by the homon force-particle? We walk up another one of those charmant winding streets in the suquet to find the only cafe amongst four with bustling tables. Two 40+ trim men with tight cotton t-shirts, identical cargo shorts and military-style haircuts natter away to their customers whilst taking orders. One spots us and cheekily quips, "Depechez-vous vous asseoir, uh! (Hurry up and sit down, you two!)" The food is a good price and of good quality - good value compared to 'film festival prices' down on the Croisette. It's so easy to serve fantastic food when you have great ingredients - decent produce, treated well. I chose a mignon de porc avec sauce miel (pork eye-fillet with honey sauce) and a tarte aux fraises (strawberry tarte). This was cooked well, without ostentation and good value.

Throughout the meal I tried to gather evidence, for I wasn't quite 100% sure, that our hosts were indeed Friends of Dorothy. I decided definitely when Monsieur Un came over and pretended to do a little striptease with his cargo short on the front step to his customers. They pegged us too as Monsieur Deux bustled around and dropped a grand wicker basket of gay-club flyers and other community information declaring in hushed tones, "I'll give you some addresses to go out to, ok?"

It felt so welcoming to find 'instant' community. I've never encountered such warmth from gays before. As their friends and acquaintances arrived, we were introduced to his 'sister' and his 'aunt'. A painter friend asked if I would pose nude for him "or even in your underwear will be ok, no?" Flattered, I didn't think I had the time and politely declined.

Secret Malaysian Hide-outs

2006-05-14T08:57:00.000+10:00

I think I've found the cheapest South-East Asian eats in central London. I've previously raved on about C&R Cafe but two recently discovered establishments leave it in the dust.

My mother always made a great deal out of chef pedigree - for how can a Chinese chef make real beef rendang if he (or she) didn't grow up living and breathing it, if it weren't part of the very fabric of their existence. As such, C&R being a Malaysian-Chinese run joint, although doing an admirable beef rendang, is not the best that it could be.

Leon unearthed two Malaysian eateries through his blog-trawling - two hidden gems accessible only to those in the know and completely hidden from public view. They're not advertised and there is no sign. You only know you're there because you're at the correct street number and there are tables and chairs to serve food.

Lest I give away my secrets and overwhelm the establishments with clientele (thus irrevocably changing what I seek to partake with minimal disturbance), I shall remain decidedly vague about their locations and you can email me for me to tell you about them. I expect great favours for my largesse - payments in kind also accepted.

Nahar Cafeteria is in Paddington and I suspect the canteen of the Mara hostel in London. MARA is a kind of technical training institute in Malaysia and why they have a hostel in London is beyond me, but I'm grateful for the extremely authentic Mamak-style food this place makes. This place is very basic with melamine tables and plastic chairs, but who cares - the fish curry is divine and the mee mamak aroma dark with Indian spices. Nasi Campur with 3 choices at £4.50 is the best deal. The menu is extensive and they're open till 11pm. I felt out-of-place speaking in English as Bahasa Malaysia flowed around me; I nearly did, but used English as I could barely string together, "Satu, ini [point, point], terima kasih."

The second establishment, Malaysia House, is in Bayswater and most definitely the canteen for the Malaysia House hostel in the same building. Although a more basic menu compared to Nahar: Nasi Campur (£4.50) and a few variants of mee/nasi goreng/bandung/sup - their ace in the hole is home-made roti canai (£1.50 with gravy). I could not believe it. But 'tis true. It's official that London has better Malaysian food than Sydney.

Very few non-Malaysians know or visit these establishments - a good sign that they cater specifically for the Malaysian palette rather than anything else.

Leon revealed that he prefers the oilier and greasier machine-made roti, simply because that's what he's used to - poor deprived thing. Never mind, I'm going to be eating both our shares of Malaysia House roti. They also do breakfast from 8 to 10am (Nasi Lemak and roti canai).

London has finally lived up to its reputation for being one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities.

S&M Cafe - near Liverpool St Station

2006-04-24T07:41:00.000+10:00

S&M Cafe
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

In case you're wondering, the S&M stands for Sausage and Mash. Could it be some play on the Vore fetish? "I'm so delicious, eat me! EAT ME!! Oh please won't you eat me?!"

At any rate, the sausages are delicious but I'd stick to the plain ones. The fancy ones may appeal but the true taste is in the pork.

Good traditional English food done very well - from sausage to mash to gravy.

Pork

2006-04-24T07:20:00.000+10:00

British pork is very tasty. The take pride in their pork, to the extent that named pigs are now the feature in the top restaurants, "Today's pork chops are from Rosalie. She's a duffel-coated black spot pig raised on acorns and olive oil in the wilds of Surrey." Well, not quite, I exagerate.

But another pang of homesickness made me create these dishes of my family.

Steamed pork mince with pickled cabbage (tung choy)
- I flavoured this also with white pepper, shao xing rice wine, ginger and garlic

Stir fried pork with spicy ham choy

Snake bean omelette.

Flat white Cafe

2006-04-24T07:04:00.000+10:00

Berwick St, Soho, London

Antipodeans in London (or anywhere else in the world) will know of that strange epi-phenomenon that is the absence of the otherwise ubiquitous 'flat white' on the standard coffee menu. But o-ho, this is fixed for my resourceful bf has found it: probably the only place in London that serves this exotic drink.

And the name of the locale? Why, Flat White, of course.

An antipodean duo own and run this cafe, which also sells L&P and Bundaberg ginger beer for the same price as a coffee (£2). They also do damn good vege bagels and a decent range of snacks. Service is quick and friendly - you order and pay at the counter and they bring you the food afterwards - just like in Australia/New Zealand. Even the barista's accent brought back memories.

Nahm

2006-04-22T21:37:00.000+10:00

The Halkin, 5 Halkin Street, London, SW1X 7DJ
Nearest Tube: Hyde Park Corner
Cuisine: Thai
Telephone: 0871 2238097

With much anticipation I finally get to try the great Nahm - the world's only Michelin-starred Thai restaurant. After eating at his first restaurant Sailor's Thai in Sydney several times and reading his extremely well-researched tome on Thai Cookery, I looked forward to tasting the cuisine of the man the Thai government asked to establish a Thai cookery school in Thailand.

We chose the traditional thai nahm arharn meal (£49.50) consisting of 6 shared courses: an hors d'oeuvre, a salad, a soup, a relish or light curry, a substantial curry and a stir-fried or casserole dish. Individual ordering is also possible with dishes ranging from £8 to £15 to suit tastes or budget.

We started with an amuse bouche of mar hor (minced prawn and chicken served on cucumber slices) which was followed by latiang. This amazing egg-net construction encased chewy strands of sweetish-coconut flavoured with crab. The pomelo and crispy trout salad with toasted peanuts yam som oo pla tort was a maze of textures - refreshing pomelo chunks, crunchy fish and reslient lime leaf - flavoured with a sweet and savoury sauce. We'd all elected for different soups and my spicy oxtail soup with onions and tomatoes sup hang wua tasted earthy and rich, full of beef flavour and redolent with mysterious aromatic spices. A chiang mai grilled chilli relish with grilled zander-fish followed. This small red pile of chilli and ground dried shrimp was pungeant with garlic and shallots and accompanied the raw cabbage and vegetables well.

Our two curries followed: an extremely hot jungle curry of chopped prawns with heart of coconut and chillies made me gasp but that is the nature of jungle curries. The chiang mai pork curry with shredded ginger, pickled garlic and shallots had a refreshing and aromatic ginger tang and was again very pungeant with onions.

My favourite dish was the double steamed rabbit with pickled mustard greens (known as ham choy in Cantonese) and daikon. This earthy peasant-style dish with the savoury pickles and sweet rabbit meat married perfectly with rice. We also had a firm and translucent deep fried royal bream with a rather sweet three flavoured sauce.

We dined in subdued lighting in a warm light-golden room decorated with subtle South-east Asian accents, e.g. bright red corded ropes in the atrium. The extremely friendly Thai staff gave elegant and knowledgeable service. Although we were only supposed to have one curry and one casserole she offered to make us two smaller serves of each because we couldn't decide.

An exotic range of desserts beckoned and I had a coconut ash perfumed egg custard with jackfruit - quite delicious.

For most people, Thai food is what's eaten on the streets in Thailand, usually cooked in a blazing hot wok seasoned with fish sauce, lime and peanuts. In reality, this method of cooking comes from the large contingent of Chinese traders that lived in Thailand. The old Thai cuisine as developed before Chinese influence made use of slow coal fires and gradual simmering. As such, you don't get the vibrant fresh flavours associated with stir-frying over high heat but an interesting blends and layers as the slow extraction processes develop and release aromas. I also found the food a little too pungeant and strongly flavoured for my liking, but I'm sure it's authentic and what's proper - I'm just not used to it.

If you like your pad thai and green chicken curry as served in pubs and are expecting just a 'better' version, this place is probably not for you. Nahm is quite a different concept and serves Thai food rarely seen outside of Thailand and the royal houses.

Lunch today - Tapas in my House

2006-04-09T01:41:00.000+10:00

The most expensive ham in the world (£7.99 /100g) is Serrano ham (San Danielle) bought in a West End London suburb. It's about half the price in Spain, but the cost of an airfare would have evened things out (just). Although she assured me that it was indeed the acorn-fed pigs, I had my doubts. But she gave me a free sample, and it was just as delicious as I've had in Spain. What you can see in the picture cost me £3.50, eek, but Leon was feeling tired and un-hungry, and I'd made it my mission to tempt him to eat.

I also bought some boquerons (marinated anchovies), giant Kalamata olives and made Matzo brei - an omelette made with rehydrated crumbled Matzo crackers. I'd seen this recipe in the book Garlic and Sapphires. We're having this with warmed seed baguette, roasted red pepper strips, fresh tomatoes and cos lettuce. There's a small square of English blue cheese that you can't see in the photo.

Ayam Masak Merah

2006-04-09T01:00:00.000+10:00

(adapted from a Cyberkuali recipe)

Dry spices:
cinnamon stick
anise seed
cardamon pods

eschallots
garlic - both pulverised in a blender

lemon grass

tomato paste
small can of chopped tomatoes

ground cashews

Trawling the streets of my local Middle-Eastern district, I was hard pressed to find the Indian spices necessary for this Malaysian dish. Lots of pre-made packets of felafel and shawerma spice, but nothing Indian. This dish is usually made with candlenuts instead of ground cashews and star anise, but I couldn't find any on Edgeware Rd. I think the Spice Shop in Notting Hill sell all of what's required (even white Sarawak peppercorns) but as with all things in London, you can get anything you want, at a price.

I should have fried the onions and garlic for longer as a slightly sulfurous raw taste still permeated the dish at the end. This could have been fixed with some sugar, but I'm loathe to add sugar to curry dishes like this.

Song Que Vietnamese Restaurant

2006-04-06T19:38:00.000+10:00

134 Kingsland Rd

A whole bunch of work colleagues and I went to dinner at this wonderful Vietnamese restaurant last night. This place serves a great pho, but because this was a group of 10, we ordered more Chinese style dishes to share. However, we did get some of my favourite Vietnamese treats for starting with.

I love Vietnamese food and its use of fresh herbs. It's so distinctive and difficult to do in London. I recently discovered that South East Asian herbs and vegetables are air-freighted once or twice a week from Thailand and surrounds. Outside a grocery store in Chinatown I saw masses of big white styrofoam boxes with labels from Thai airways containing bitter gourd, pea-eggplant and numerous other greens. Song Que does the whole gamut of traditional Vietnamese food with authentic herbs (as well as supply will allow it) and it pulls it off very well. We did notice that they stinge on the herbs and beansprouts if a non-Vietnamese is ordering. I guess these are the most expensive part of the meal and unless you appreciate it, most people might see it as some sort of garnish.

And at £5 for a bowl of pho, you can't really beat that.

Our meal cost £14 a head including beer and wine. Service is quick and efficient but gruff in the usual way - you're here for the food.

Entrees:
Summer Roll
rice noodles, herbs and pork or prawn wrapped in rice-paper with a dipping sauce of chilli, sweet-bean and ground peanuts

Barbequed beef wrapped in betel leaf
served with lettuce, mint, shiso (large purple serrated leaves), pickled carrots and radish and rice vermicelli. Vietnamese chilli dipping sauce

Mains:
Chicken with chilli and lemongrass
yellow coloured slices of chicken with large chunks of chilli

Shredded crispy beef in sweet and sour sauce
thin strands of deep-fried beef in orange sauce with tomatoes

Singapore noodles
rice vermicelli with shrimps, shredded barbequed pork, beansprouts, onions and light curry seasoning.

Lamb with ginger and spring onion

Freshwater bream with crystal noodles
whole fish with black bean sauce served on mung bean thread noodles (served on a big square plate)

Duck with pineapple
boneless duck pieces in a sweet and sour sauce with pineapple

Tofu, pepper and aubergine stuffed with prawn paste

Pork with shrimp paste
served with cucumber, chilli and other vegetables

Stir fried ong-choy with garlic

Saturday morning market in Poitiers church square

2006-04-03T00:22:00.000+10:00

Saturday morning saw us at the local market in the church square, a bit of a French institution. Wow, is all I can say. The freshest, best produce, meat and cheeses I have ever seen. All totally French, the most exotic thing I saw was a vanilla pod, but the myriad of cheeses and strange traditional root vegetables that are unknown to me.

French (goat) cheeses, just a small selection from the local Saturday market

These pink and white radishes were recognisable, but there were also some incredible gnarled deep purple-brown tubers, they looked like fibrous yams or something.

Bistro eating in Poitiers

2006-04-03T00:19:00.000+10:00

The other meals we partook at various bistros around the city centre.

Steak cheval hâché avec frites (horsemeat hamburger and chips)

La Serrurerie is a very popular and busy bistro serving what I would describe as French ranch food. Hearty big serves with vibrant flavours. The menu ranges from Soup á l'oignon (onion soup) served traditionally with a big chunk of baguette in the soup, covered in grilled cheese to Thai flavored barbequed prawns as long as your hand.

Restaurant eating in Poitiers

2006-04-02T23:56:00.000+10:00

Leon and I went to Poitiers, France a few weekends ago. While the town is charming, quaint and full of old shit (there're about six ancient and crumbling churches alone) it is very small and we really didn't need a whole weekend to experience it.

Our first dinner in France we ate at a local restaurant that was delicious, but in my mind, unremarkable. Nothing too exciting or scintillating here but everything well presented and flavours well balanced. I can't even remember the name, Alain ...something (not Ducasse), within walking distance of Le Grand Hotel (The Big Hotel) in town. We chose the set menu of E32.

Sorry for the crap layout, but I'm clueless when it comes to these HTML thingamies.

A happy smiley Leon with our first plate of French food in France.

Home-made pate with crispbread

Scallop hearts with endive

Pan-fried whole frog with white-wine reduction

Beef with parsnip souffle

Venison with offal and berry flavoured jus

Almond ice-cream, chocolate truffle loaflet, pear and ginger sorbet, rasberry coulis

2006-04-02T23:55:00.000+10:00

Waitrose stock duck eggs and these pretty blue hens' eggs. Quite charming with vibrant yellow (almost orange) and thick yolks.

Madrid

2006-03-30T09:56:00.000+11:00

I went to Madrid with Leon, but wrote about it in my other blog.

Eating at the Plaza Mayor
Intestines at the market

Black risotto

2006-03-09T10:28:00.000+11:00

More adventures in risotto have led to this exotic little number. The actual recipe is quite basic: onion and garlic sauteed in olive and butter till soft, then the addition of vialone nano rice and the stepwise addition of stock. The black colour arises from a small sachet of cuttlefish ink added at the end. I don't know if there's actually any flavour to this ink as the stock was quite strongly flavoured.

I'd bought langoustine and fresh black mussels from Appleby's Fish at Borough Market the morning earlier hoping to get the meat out and use the shells for stock. After peeling most of the langoustines and discovering soft mushy flesh, terrible for eating, I put them all into a pot to boil down into a tasty stock. That they did, but I did amp it up with a teaspoon of powdered Marigold vege stock.

The mussels, however, were fantastic. Small, sweet and so juicy with the slightest bit of give when just-steamed. Only 3 out of more than 20 hadn't opened so they were indeed fresh.

Oh, then a drizzle of fragrant truffle oil and a crumbling of pecorino nero before serving and you have a meal fit for two lovers.

Ranoush Kebab

2006-02-22T10:52:00.000+11:00

You know those crunchy, tasty brown bits you get when you roast lamb? How they always seem so little when compared with the rest of the roast - it's almost like we make do with the soft succulent pink interior because of the tasty brown bit shortage.

Walking past Ranoush Juice, the lure of the Shawerma kebab called me. I fought it off, but when I saw what was on the vertical rotisserie my tastebuds got the better of me: an entire chunk of rotating crunchy brown bits. I waited patiently while the cashier answered the phone - another belligerant Middle Eastern man with thick black eyebrows. He spoke angrily in Arabic down the phone, then looked at me and made the smallest of gestures with his index finger: I knew what to do.

"Lamb shawerma, please."

He continued the conversation, now sounding mollified but still with a thin edge of violence. I imagined that he was organising the next White Slave auction in Yemen. I paid my £3 and the woman behind me also got the look and gesture, but she had a question so he was forced to stop his conversation and attend to her.

One of the chefs daintily patted the viscous hommous down in the cold tray while I waited for the other to make my kebab. He laid down a small piece of khobez bread, a streak of tahini/garlic sauce, two slices of tomato, a long slice of pickled cucumber and some onion. He shaved the lamb, removing the maximum of crunchy brown bits to reveal pink succulence underneath.

Biting into my kebab rewarded me with juicy pieces of lamb fringed with crispy tasty edges. The meat was marinated with a complex but subtle spice mixture perfuming each mouthful. I'm not used to deconvoluting Middle Eastern spicing so I can only guess at what was present. I detected sumac and cardamon, but also something vaguely floral, rosewater perhaps, although that seems far too delicate for the roasting process.

The way the lamb chunks are speared onto the rotisserie means that all those edges get to go brown and crisp unlike a whole leg of lamb. You can only get lamb and chicken kebabs on Edgeware Rd, unlike the beef ones in Canberra. Mind you, those were never worth getting because Ali Baba only ever used low-grade minced beef.

Ranoush Juice is part of the ubiquitous Maroush restaurant enterprise. The Ranoushes seem to be the cafés and casual affairs whilst Maroushes are sit down restaurants with varying degrees of poshness. These 'oushes are not to be confused with the Fatoush chain (which incidentally is a kind of Arabic salad) that are competitors along with Al-Dar who have three restaurants.

I don't think you can find a tastier hot meat roll for £3 in London.

Comforting Food Memories

2006-02-20T09:42:00.000+11:00

Comfort foods soothe mini-attacks of homesickness - or in this case salve the difficulties of new cities and brutish crowds. For me, my comfort foods are a mish-mash of Chinese and Western. Traditional comfort foods such as mashed potato, roast chicken or lasagne seem exotic to me - these are what you'd eat for special occassions.

Some of my comfort foods are:
Chicken curry made with Malaysian curry powder and a hint of belachan
Fried rice with bacon and egg
Egg-rice (daan faan)
Pork with potatoes and soya sauce (lou chi yeuk)
Steamed pork mince with preserved cabbage (ching chi yeuk)

When I was growing up, my mother attended a cake-baking course in the evenings after work. The whole extended family used to look forward to her coming back because she would usually have a slice or several of what she had helped make. Western style cakes where highly prized as exotic delicacies in Kuala Lumpur during the 1980's and very expensive; mainly because the ingredients (eggs, butter, cream, western fruits) where all imported.

I remember my mother sourcing and testing all manner of ovens (well, two) in her cake making endeavours. She'd already experimented with hand-held beaters (unsatisfactory) so invested in a Kenwood Chef. She had some success with what looked like a camp-oven - a round silver dome that sat on the floor with a glass viewport. It used to get very hot and my mother always cried at us to keep droplets of water away from the glass in case the rapid cooling cracked it. Finally she found the perfect baking oven with both upper and lower elements.

This beige and brown cube sat in the store room and presided over many date cakes, chiffon sponges, pizzas and breads. My mum was especially fond of making date cake (which as a child I never saw the appeal of those brown sticky loaves) and bread. I remember once my aunts were using the oven to make a cake. My mum had just come home and asked which tin they used to put the batter in as she saw that all of hers were still in the cupboards. Suddenly my aunts rushed to the store room as they realised they'd put a bright yellow plastic container into the hot oven. It came out looking like a muffin with lurid yellow frosting on the edge. It smelled good, if a little plasticky, but health-considerations meant we threw it out.

During my stay in Australia I started a book of personal mementos and recipes. My mother gave me two of her favourite cake recipes from her baking days. Today, whilst sampling the sushi at the Selfridges food hall, I spied a Walnut and Coffee cream cake. This kind of cake reminded me of my mother and the flavours that she likes in cakes and desserts. Of course this was far too unhealthy and sweet with its sugary buttercream frosting and not nearly nutty enough according to her recipe, but I thought of her when I tucked into my slice.

Sushi at Selfridges

2006-02-20T09:24:00.000+11:00

The proprietress at Silverside meat let me in on a little secret about fish in London. She used to be the buyer for the Food Hall at Selfridges and said that the best value sushi in London comes from that very same place: next to the smoked salmon, but not Yo! sushi (heaven forbid!).

I bought a £10 tray of pre-prepared sashimi after watching the chef prepare special trays of takeaway for a Singaporean lady. There were cheaper trays available, but I wanted to try the sweet shrimp and surf clam.

Overall the sashimi is pretty good, better than the Sydney Fish Market, but a poor second to what I've had in Japan - the only other place I've eaten sweet shrimp. In Nagoya, these were crisp, fresh, succulent and almost floral in their sweetness. Here, they were okay, albeit a touch too soft and borderline slimy. The meaty surf clam was tasty and the tuna the best I've eaten outside of Japan. Sydney Fish Market tuna is just not cut correctly and contains a lot of ligament and stringy bits. These red slabs were tender but firm yet melting in the mouth. My favourite sashimi fish is salmon, usually because it's hard to go wrong with salmon, and these large, smooth and thick slices of orange shot with white slid into my mouth meltingly. I didn't think much of the sea bream present, perhaps I should have asked for a customised plate with the wild sea bass. Sea urchin roe was also on offer, but for £5 /100g, it was a bit dear.

One thing I did find disconcerting was the intensity of the soy sauce in those cute fish dispensers. I thought it too packed with flavour enhancer for the delicate fish. I would have preferred a lighter touch.

This sashimi dealer supplies Nobu, my source at Silverside told me. So I feel assured that I have experienced the best takeaway sashimi that London can offer. I didn't find the prices exorbitant either but just in line with everything else in this expensive city.

If I were to have a sashimi party I would order here, but probably stick to tuna and salmon until I've built a rapport with the sashimi-chef and he can tell me if other fish are worth getting on the day.

Church St Market, off Edgeware Rd

2006-02-20T09:22:00.000+11:00

We all hear celebrity chefs on TV rhapsodising about the joys of shopping in a marketplace - smelling the fruit, squeezing the vegetables. Until now, I never really understood this as marketplaces, i.e. those quaint jobs with rickety stalls, strange smells and shouting stall holders were not part of my food landscape in Australia. They've always been to me some sort of contrived ideal that didn't really exist. Besides, the closest thing to these olde marketes was the Fish Market in Sydney and even then it was very clean, covered with not a rickety stall in sight. Yes, there is the Farmers' Market in Pyrmont, but linen covered stalls pushing overpriced raspberry juice and fancy sausage isn't really the kind of marketplace I'm talking about. But perhaps the Victoria Markets in Melbourne are the closest to the real thing.

Living in London, the food landscape is very different. Supermarkets rule the roost, but the range on offer, especially in the inner city, is very small - á cause de small shops and lack of space. It's impossible finding fresh beetroot at a Sainsbury's Local or a Tesco Express - you'd have better luck at a Waitrose, but still, it's overpriced. The place for fresh fruit and vegetables is indeed ye olde streete market. Well, not quite so old because the sellers are purely there to make money with no pretence at recreating some Tudor-style shopping experience.

Church St Market near Paddington Station is open everyday except Sundays. Today as I walked down the centre avenue, Arabic women clad in black billowed past, nothing but their dark eyes shining seductively above their veils. I passed stalls selling polycotton sheets and pillowcases, household cleaners and a dubious fishmonger with a flurry of shiny flecks flying around him. A lingerie stall caught the eye of a short man wrapped up in a tweed coat and tea-cosy hat. He fingered the lacy red and gold bustier hanging cocooned in plastic above him - waiting to emerge like a butterfly on the right woman.

I saw the most beautiful eggplant in the world. £3/kg is not cheap but these deep-purple gems were shiny and perfect. The slightly flawed ones, albeit in a very minor way, were £2/kg. Large red capsicum beckoned me and I bought one for 20p. I walked past the two young boys sitting at a fold-up picnic table selling pirated CDs. "£3.50 a CD, any one you like," they called. Later on as I past them they yelled at the two girls behind me, "What you looking at, slag!" More veiled Arabic women, some in wheelchairs waving sticks; floated through the crowd looking for vegetables. The smoky scent of an incense seller wafted past and mixed strangely with that of the Tikka stall which belched charcoal and barbecue smoke around it. I wondered about the poor stalls nearby - those nylon trackpants for £6 each just absorb odours like a sponge.

At the end of the market was a Caribbean food stall selling jerk chicken, curried goat, plantain and other things for £3.50 a small takeaway. I'd just finished munching on a Manoushi (Middle Eastern bread with sesame, sumac and spices) so I was too full to partake. I located some cherry tomatoes for 40p a box and made my way back up Edgware Rd to home. Many shoppers, including myself, also patronised the nearby minimarkets. I bought some tangy Lebanese yoghurt and large flat khobez bread for lunch the next week.

Risotto et alia

2006-02-20T09:10:00.000+11:00

The perfect risotto is effortless. With the right rice, it practically makes itself. For our pre-Valentine's day dinner I made us a mushroom and asparagus risotto with Vialone Nano rice. This I bought from the over-priced deli Raoul up the road from me. I wouldn't go there for their traiteur style meals, but they do stock an excellent, if slightly pricey, range of groceries. You can buy risotto rice with truffle, and foie gras in tins here.

I made my mushroom and asparagus risotto with Marigold vegetable stock powder - a bit of a cheat's way of doing it but it is okay, I think. Raoul sell a nice variety of cheeses and there's a crumbling of Pecorino Nero and a drizzle of truffle oil on top. I oomphed the mushroom content by using some rehydrated porcini mushrooms - perhaps a bit too oomphed as there was a hint of mustiness that I would have preferred absent in the resulting dish. Needless to say the truffle oil was also from Raoul.

Above you can see a salade composée with lebanese cucumber, tomato, olives and lebanese yoghurt. Dessert was a Syrian cheesecake I bought from the Arabic dessert place on Edgeware Rd. There is a crispy noodley topping made from semolina on the actual sweet cheese underneath.

Tonight's dinner is a fennel risotto made with chicken stock from Daylesford Organic Farm. There's a wonderful organic butcher up the road from Raoul, Silverside run by the friendliest HK proprietress I've come across. We chatted briefly about how one can place an order for fresh fish and pick it up from her shop as she partners with a Japanese chef to visit the Billingsgate markets on Friday mornings. I also bought some organic chicken marylands that I'm roasting with some lemon rind. I've always liked the taste of organic meat, but I make no illusions as to why I buy it - it's the taste. I don't buy it because it's, "Better for the animals" as a friend's acquaintance liked to justify. For if so, it would be better not to eat them in the first place, right? I vividly remember my grandmother slaughtering chickens in our backyard from childhood. The trick to removing the feathers is to blanch the whole bird in boiling water after it has been bled to death. Once, the bird had not quite died yet and was only unconscious. So, when she dipped it head first into the hot bucket of water, it woke up and screamed its head off. For years I thought that was how you killed chickens - by dunking them in boiling water - but could never figure out why it was usually so silent most of the time.

I've paired the fennel with a hint of thyme - a herb that I'm exploring at the moment. My Italian colleague informs me that finocchio, the Italian word for fennel, also means 'gay'. So here I present: Risotto al'finocchio (Gay Risotto).

Sarastro

2006-01-30T09:26:00.000+11:00

We went to Fame (the musical) as my quasi-mother-in-law's present. Before the performance, we ate at Sarastro, a theatre restaurant, near Aldwych theatre bedecked in over-the-top lamps, papier mache, gilt, gold and velvet - very faux-opulent indeed. The food was decent but we weren't that hungry so shared a few starters. These were well executed and tasty but nothing too adventurous in case Betty Blacktown (or should I say Chrissy Croyden?) should get overwhelmed by a flavoured foam.

Apparently most of the waitpeople are performers and during certain times will sing out operatic-style when announcing your order, "And here is the fruit pla-a-a-tt-e-e-er!" Incidentally, this is the highlight of the menu. It is so huge you could never eat all of it. We partook of the strawberries and blueberries, then I surreptitiously packed the apples and oranges in my bag. I stopped at taking the whole pineapple - that would have been uncouth, although I'm assured that it would have been allowed.

Cumberland Sausage

2006-01-30T09:22:00.000+11:00

We had a pub lunch one Saturday afternoon. One thing about central London is that it is packed with visitors on the weekend. After trying two pubs with queues of 20 mins or more, we finally found one with a free table. The food is supplied by Nicholsons, who seem to supply numerous pubs in London. I ordered Cumberland Sausage served on a giant Yorkshire pudding.

Leon has already written about this post. My sausage lay nestled, coiled even, on top of a stale piece of "Yorkshire pudding", which was rapidly going soggy with the gravy. Small chunks of carrot, broccoli and leek, microwaved to perfection and then some more, lazily breast-stroked (with the assistence of my fork) in the brown gloopy gravy. But alas, this sausage was not prepared properly. In haste, it didn't have time to finish its toilette before serving and you can see that my sausage did a crispy poo.

Borough Market

2006-01-30T09:14:00.000+11:00

Radicchio
If you can find it anywhere, you can find it at Borough Market. Well, unless you want an exotic Asian (Oriental) herb or spice. But for anything in Europe, you will find it here. From exotic game (see the beheaded but still furred carcasses of hare, rabbit and other hanging in the picture), exotic vegetables and even wax-fruits.

Radishes

Wild game
It's a lovely place for a walk if you can stand the bustling crowds on the weekend. However, one particular acronym kept clanging in my mind as I walked with Leon throughout the market: HACCP HACCP HACCP HACCP. I was shocked at the level of basic food hygiene with regard to the displayed food. Loaves of bread, vats of olives and cheeses left open to the elements - the markets are below a major railway bridge - I suppose train dust imparts a delicate flavour that makes Borough food taste extra special. Raw meat was handled with bare hands which also changed money - Queen Liz and the collective phalangeal dirt of the British public must also contribute to taste. Of particular note is this vertical sausage rotisserie: here you can see how the raw sausages are loaded at the top so that as they cook, the melted fat slowly bastes the already cooked sausages at the bottom. Mmm mmm good, I love my sausages kissed with tepid raw pork fat.

Rotiserie sausages

Wax fruit
Nevertheless, Neal's Yard Dairy really impressed us. The shower inside continuously runs to maintain high humidity for cheese storage. We spent a lovely afternoon looking at the vegetables on display, warming ourselves on this frigid morning with Belgian hot chocolate and marvelling at the legs of Spanish ham ready-to-carve.

Raw quail

The food is not the cheapest in town, in fact one might say that it is gourmet prices. The major supermarkets, in particular Waitrose may well prove somewhat cheaper for many foodstuffs, but the variety at Borough Market is just immense. I don't know of anywhere else in London where you buy beheaded hare carcass.

C and R Cafe and Restaurant

2006-01-30T09:03:00.000+11:00

By chance, when I was suffering from crowd overload in Picadilly circus, I walked a back route to avoid Shaftesbury Avenue. I stumbled across Rupert Court and the C&R Takeaway which sold a respectable range of Malaysian kuih. An iridescent green tetrahedron of leaves caught my eye and lo and behold, 'twas Nasi Lemak in banana leaves. I bought one for dinner and I thoroughly enjoyed this tasty treat for dinner that night. Unfortunately, my palate and gut have regained their sensitivity to chili-heat and I had a few uncomfortable moments the following morning. The sambal in this dish makes no compromises (and takes no prisoners). But it was so tasty I couldn't help but eat it all up.

Roti Chanai

When Leon and I came a subsequent night, we ordered kangkung stir-fried in sambal, roti chanai with chicken curry and salted-fish and chicken fried rice. I went into homesickness-relieved raptures when I tasted the kangkung. I love how this vegetable is crunchy yet resilient. The hollow stems and soft leaves give it a wonderful shape for absorbing the flavour of the sambal belachan. The fried rice was also divine. Just the right amount of salted fish to chicken. The roti was...machine mass produced - I know my roti; it features prominently in my father's business - we used to make it ourselves from a recipe handed down from a Malaysian Indian cook but now another Wellington cook makes it for us, and this was not hand made. But to be fair, roti chanai making technique is very difficult to master and intensely laborious. Not only do you have to get the dough correct, the subsequent kneading, stretching and resting processes are crucial to get the correct balance between flakiness and chewiness. Machine-made rotis tend to be oilier and flatter than hand made ones. I think they use modified mass-production puff pastry techniques as the folds and flaking look roughly similar.

C&R is a Chinese-Malaysian restaurant, so you can't really expect them to be expert at everything. My mother has inculcated in me a strong sense of restaurant racial pedigree: she will not eat Malay or Indian curries in Chinese-run Malaysian restaurants. Her reason: "Chinese do not know how to make proper curry" - which is a fair comment as the Chinese-Malaysian curry usually contains prawn paste (foreign to Malay and Indian curries) and a sophisticated understanding of curry spicing (innate to Indian cookery) is not part of the Chinese rubric. Of course this means that she usually won't eat at at *any* Chinese-run Malaysian restaurant because, she being a very accomplished cook herself, can recreate many of the Chinese-Malaysian recipes at home.

C&R attempt to have representative examples of all Malaysian dishes, so you will find Beef Rendang and Chilli Chicken on the menu. I'm sure these will be more than adequate, but as the two Eurasian Singaporean girls on our adjacent table exclaimed insultedly on our second visit, "This is not Chilli Chicken!" I've heard that Mawar on Edgware Road is Malay run, so I look forward to visiting and sampling their Beef Rendang. Satay House in Paddington is reputedly patronised by the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Average price: £7 to 9.
More pictures

Austrian Food

2005-12-31T11:26:00.000+11:00

Spetzle, Kaiserschmarren (chopped pancake with sugar) and pastry after pastry seduced my senses during a Christmas skiing trip to Austria with the bf and the quasi-in-laws.

We stayed at St Anton in Arlberg and visited Lech, a neighbouring resort, for lunch. After which, we went up the gondola to Rufikopf (2362m elevation). It's good to see that Kombucha has made it here too. It's quite a refreshing drink, I discovered.

Austria is also home to what I call The Smoked Meat Shop. Smoked meat is ubiquitous here - the most delicious speck bacon for breakfast everyday and the tastiest hams and salamis.

We went into a Spar to look at some local food. We were so bewildered at the cheese section, because they're only described by the valley of origin - and there are thousands of them. So you don't find any Emmentaler or Gruyere, but Jerome and Mossbacher. L says that Jerome is very stinky and has bad BO. They also only sell Austrian smoked meat here. I asked for some salami to be cut and enquired, "Is it Austrian salami?" The woman frowned slightly and said, "Yes, of course."

Oh, they have a taxi company here called Harry.

Champor-champor

2005-11-21T04:17:00.000+11:00

Champor-Champor
62 Weston St, SE1 3QJ
nearest tube: London Bridge (5 mins walk)

I have to rave about this restaurant, which is the highlight of all my dining experiences in London. This place served to restore my faith that London is not just jam-packed full of bad food masquerading as mediocre.

My friend N from Canberra was in town en route to Malta and I caught up with him for dinner. He wanted to introduce me to his other friend F that he met whilst living in Moscow; so we combined the two and joined F and friends for dinner at Champor-champor located about 5 mins walk from London Bridge station. I was prepared for anything - the food has been very touch and go here in London; that which is easily accessible is usually not good. Well, Champor-champor is located in a deserted alleyway by the station. You would not stumble inadvertantly across this place, in fact, if you weren't looking for it, it looks just like a strange innocuous shop front. But let me tell you what a treasure trove the inconspicuous front contains.

We walked in to subdued lighting with the trickling of a water-feature tickling our ears. The air was heavy with a spicy incense - we were surrounded by dark wood, teak sculptures and various South-East Asian decorations. The friendly and professional waiters smartly clad in Malaysian-style shirts recognised our searching looks and immediately asked, "Are you in F's group?" like they read our mind. We walked downstairs to the private dining area that usually seats up to nine. Unfortunately we were not the only unexpected guests as the party soon grew to twelve and we crowded around the table. The waiter, a smiling and rather attractive guy with an etched eyebrow, efficiently took our coats and jackets to place them on the decorative swing chair (very Malay) behind the table.

I had a piece of table approximately the size of an A6 piece of paper to eat off, but the staff gallantly sailed through the night, coping with our rather difficult situation with aplomb. Later on I found out that the chef chose to use smaller plates and bowls because of our lack of space. Usually the meals are served on large plates but he compromised the presentation to accommodate our group. It was very intimate and lots of sampling occurred, to my pleasure. We were treated to some complimentary 'bread', thick toasted white bread (just like my grandfather used to make for his British employers), sweet raisin toast without the crust (a very Malaysia breakfast) and a crispy 'lavoche' of sugared, aromatic (cinnamon and allspice, I think) and grilled tofu-skin (Cantonese: foo-pei). I have never, nor would ever have, thought about treating tofu skin this way. It's always been shredded in stir-frys, cut into squares for sweet and savoury soups or stuffed with fish paste. I couldn't stop eating this tissue-thin crispy treat.

A short amuse-bouche arrived while we were still perusing the menu: idli bread (Indian steamed bread) with curry peanut butter and a spoon of deep-fried tofu with spicy kicap manis. This set the tone for the evening and I looked forward to the delights that the menu held. I must say that I've never had this part of the cuisine of my childhood taken to such heights and thought about in such a creative way. I got so excited reading the menu that I wanted to see or taste everything.

To give you an example of dishes that I must reserve for another time:
Starters
Borneo-style king prawns umai (cured in lime juice); Asian shallot salad
Malay dried 'barbequed' beef salad; sambal belachan, calamansi & palm sugar dressing
Main courses
Ostrich 'masak kichap'; fish-stuffed green chillies; rice and egg noodle salad
Roast loin of rabbit; crab-meat and turmeric curry sauce; urab rice
Steamed and stirfried choi sum, lotus root & chive wontons; spinach, masala & yoghurt 'bisque'

Roast duck breast; Japanese pickled plum & honey marinade; pear puree; nasi lemak

Two vegetarian options in each section cater for those so inclined.

I chose deep-fried frogs' legs, banana flower & quail egg rojak for a starter. My first time with these tasty limbs, which arrived crisp and golden, succulent and sweet. I've always been seduced by the idea of banana flower, but each time I need to remind myself that this is a textural item, not an aromatic one. When it arrived I forgot what I'd ordered and assigned the texture to artichoke heart. The quail eggs were perfectly cooked and sat attractively above the rojak, the yellow and orange winking in with the white.

For my main course I had the szechuan-peppered chicken breast; Johore laksa; serunding and Asian herbs. I am unfamiliar with Johore laksa, so a quick google gives me the essence of this dish: spaghetti with a thick sauce spiced with fish. Serunding is a kind of turmeric and coconut cream-based reduction with chicken shreds. My dish had a base of noodles topped with a thick turmeric and coconut cream infusion and ground dried shrimp. The aroma was pure heaven for a dried shrimp fan like me. The chicken breast slices nestled in and amongst the noodles, white slices of meat speckled with black pepper peeked through the gravy. A rectangular side-dish accompanied, containing all the Asian herbs necessary for an authentic laksa: mint, thinly sliced red onion, vietnamese mint and an appropriate blob of sambal belachan. It seemd so uncouth to tip everything in and mix it around, but I gathered that was what was needed. So off I went and in a couple of stirs I had the most delicious, thick and creamy noodles in my mouth. Explosions of sambal belachan pungeancy and ground dried prawn punctuated the unctuous gravy and I went into raptures (on the inside, for I did not want to embarress my dinner companions). I did feel that the chicken suffered a little bit in light of the spices, but this was a happy marriage of johore laksa and serunding indeed. Szechuan pepper has an interesting anaesthetising effect on the tongue; I felt the blandness of the chicken was exarcebated by this spice - but I could understand the spicing regime and what Chef Adu Amran Hassan was trying to do.

We had no room for dessert but here is a sample of what was on offer:
Burnt sugar steam cake; raisin and arak (alcohol) ice cream
Pineapple and chilli parfait; mint raita
Baked paneer; poached guava in jaggery syrup

We were joined by Chef Adu and his partner who manages the front of house after half of the guests had left (we had more room then). I conveyed my excitement about the menu and would have gone on and on about the food and his ideas, but held myself back so as not to seem too forward. I didn't want him to feel too uncomfortable that a dinner guest (and wannabee food reviewer) was looking with such an analytical eye towards his food; but honestly, he would have had nothing to be fearful about as it was 'all good'.

The menu is changed seasonally and Chef Adu travels frequently to Malaysia to centre his inspiration and renew his roots. There are definitely other influences, e.g. Thai, Indonesian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese, but these only serve to heighten the original Malaysian rubric. They also do festive menus and gave me a sneak peak of their Christmas menu. I was doubtful, no way I thought, Malaysian and Mince Tarts? They've finally gone koo-koo. I couldn't be more wrong. Somehow he has manage to infuse elements of the festive spirit into his cuisine and we have have such gems to come as:
Calamari-stuffed sticky rice 'sushi'; pickled water chestnuts; squid ink and mirin sauce
Roast eel and green papaya som tam; crushed peanuts; baked-parsnip mascarpone
Water buffalo 'rendang tuk'; truffle oil mash; carrot and thyme salad
Wild mushroom, lotus seed, artichoke and tofu skin spring rolls; sweet potato curry

Two courses £22, three courses £26.50 (plus supplements for a few dishes or an 'inter-course' refresher, ~£2 to £3)

Later on before leaving we had a short tour of the upstairs to look at the picture of a red-painted cow (a traditional Malay decorative art) on the wall along with the wooden temple that the owners imported from India, which they set above some lingam worship stones. Everything combined to give an exotic and intimate atmosphere with which the food served to make for a wonderful evening. I look forward to more adventures where I travel with what seems familiar or reminiscent, but am still transported with inspired ideas.

Zimzun

2005-11-14T04:28:00.000+11:00

Finally, I have found decent Thai in London. It's not the cheapest, but it is of acceptable quality, i.e. comparable with what I would pay to eat in Australia. Now, £6.50 (AU$15.45) is very expensive for green curry but it is acceptable for eating out prices in London. The beautiful surroundings also make it a nice dining experience. Several large tables have big square trays of water with flowers floating on the surface. I dare say the constant renewal of water and flowers contributes to the cost of the establishment.

Zimzun is at the Fulham Broadway shopping centre (cheesy slogan alert: Life Begins at FBDY) on the same level as the cinemas. I ate a lovely roast duck salad (yum ped) for £7.50 whilst my friend P had duck and spinach fried rice for £6.25. The duck was succulent and correctly dressed with a well-balanced fish sauce and lime vinaigrette. P's fried rice was tasty and aromatic with chewy individual grains of rice kissed with garlic oil. (This last turn-of-phrase is a nod to the "sun-blushed" tomatoes I saw in the deli up the road from me.)

Notice in the website that they do not advertise themselves as being a thai restaurant, but an Oriental one. This is an interesting distinction, as the entire menu is thai. There is not a note of Chinese, or even more closely related Vietnamese or Malaysian dishes. This must be a marketing strategy - perhaps they don't want to associate themselves with pub food or tacky restaurants, which are the places where Thai food is mostly served in London.

We also ordered dessert - I had lychees on ice whilst P had mango ice-cream, which turned out to be Tesco's mango sorbet. A little disappointing, but when he complained to the manager she apologised and took the charge off the menu.

Kombucha

2005-11-07T07:56:00.000+11:00

A fermented tea beverage, known as Kombucha, consists of a fungus colony that looks a bit like a giant cow's tongue, according to my friend James. He tells a very funny story about how his friend/flatmate brought a small colony into the house, sat it on a plate in the fridge while she drained its exudate and drank it everyday.

Well, the other day when I was in Dublin I stumbled across Kombucha drink in bottles at the local supermarket. This reminded me of James and his funny story so I took a picture to tell him.

Shaquile's

2005-11-04T11:16:00.000+11:00

Brick Lane is near Liverpool St station and it's lined with Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants. I went there tonight with a group of collegues and we were ten. Apparently what happens is you walk along the road inspecting the menus and the manager will come out and try to entice you in. Then you try to negotiate a free deal, e.g. free poppadums, a round of drinks or a discount. In some cases the more seasoned co-workers were looking at getting a 25% discount on the prices.

We settled on Shaquile's; a Bangladeshi restaurant. I had the Lubi Gosht, which is a lamb curry with green vegetables (very Bangladeshi I'm told by the menu). This was very tasty and my Chinese colleague Tao, who thinks that Chinese food is the best, proclaimed, "This is very tasty. It's like Chinese food." [trans. because only Chinese food is tasty] - high praise indeed.

There weren't many of the classic Indian dishes like Rogan Josh or Lamb Korma, but I did see Chicken Tikka Masala (a wholly Anglo-Indian invention I discovered during a documentary) and various Kormas of meat and vegetable. There was a whole range of different dishes here that I'd never heard of before. I think the competition is so stiff that the quality and value is actually quite high in this area.

I ordered a Palak Paneer to accompany my Lubi Lamb and some Naan. There was a special deal going for £6.95: starter (not seafood), main, rice and naan. I didn't get that, but about four people did. PhD scholarships are on the order of £12,000 pa so budgets are tight in a town like London. I actually can't imagine how they survive. I'm barely coping on my salary as it is.

The total for 10 people was £135.

Conceptually confused

2005-10-24T07:19:00.000+10:00

The benefits of working in a university is that you find out where all the students eat. Tonight I'm eating at a conceptually confused Japanese restaurant. The proprietor speaks Mandarin, there is kimchi noodles on the menu along with special fried rice and roast duck. I order Singapore noodles, shying away from the fatty katsu curry. My dish it is tasteless but redolent with turmeric.

I spy a plastic container on the bench containing what looks suspiciously like cold Singapore fried noodles. Obviously it's been a while since my noodles have seen any frying, but they do know the insides of a microwave intimately.

I guess I can't complain at £4.50.

I find myself here again, but only because my first choice, Oriental Canteen, is closed. What kind of eatery closes at 9:30 on a Friday night? This time I order roast duck and rice. Dionne Warwick is singing Why Do You Have to be a Heart Breaker in the background. I am the only Asian (Oriental) face here aside from the proprietors – this is telling. It comes with a weird sour-sesame cabbage salad thing.

I won't deign to give Oriental Canteen a picture. They're the best deal for Chinese food in the area and they know it. They wouldn't last two seconds in Sydney of course, but here because the British put up with so much, they do. One afternoon I ordered Char Kuey Teow and asked politely if I could have extra vegetables with that. To which the mainland Chinese girl replied, "No! Only one size." Their roast duck/pork/bbq pork/etc. is just meat and rice - not even the token three green vegetable strands. Their food is passable, but I sense far too much microwave cookery here for my liking. I spy a plate of Singapore noodles that are whisked out of the dumbwaiter almost before the waitress has a chance to shout the order down into the basement kitchen.

Update

2005-10-24T07:14:00.000+10:00

Sorry I haven't been responding to comments. I've only got dialup at the moment while I wait for IT expert boyfriend to come over from Sydney. He's going to decide on the best broadband deal.

I've been waiting for nearly two months now - but at least I know he's sent our boxes over by ship and stored the rest. If he ever wants to see our stuff again he'd have to come over here.

It's been interesting setting up house by myself. The bureaucracy in the UK is quite...stupendous.

UK Food TV: The Slimming Club

2005-10-02T10:16:00.000+10:00

Another funny segment I watched was all about real life foodies and their kitchen. This particular one documented a old woman making beef wellington for lunch with the ladies. She laboriously made the butter-puff pastry by hand using 300g of butter for pastry used on one fillet of beef, rolling and folding it deftly a million times.

The pastry-lined bottom of the tin was slathered with homemade chicken liver pate, then the beef put in, which was previously browned in a mixture of butter and oil, then folded and baked. It looked absolutely amazing when she served it - I have a soft spot for beef wellington although having only eaten it once. I think it is quite an amazing dish.

She served this to her friends with potatoes dauphinoise (cooked in butter and cream), red cabbage and broccoli. Dessert was a pavlova stack with cream and raspberries. It was lunch for the weekly meeting of The Slimming Club where all the ladies would weigh in to record how much weight they'd lost.

Kinda like going to the pub after an AA meeting, perhaps?

UK Food TV: Slow Food

2005-10-02T09:59:00.000+10:00

One of the benefits of having cable tv is the UKtv Food channel: all Food, all the time. Unfortunately they tend to bunch up all the chefs, so it will be either Rick Stein and his multitudinuous Seafood Odyssey incarnations, or a wincing Gary Rhodes for 3 hours on end.

They also have a segment called Great Food Live where this middle-aged posh lady who wears too much purple and speaks with half-lidded and gold-rimmed eyes in an off-handed casual (slightly drunk) manner interviews the audience or brings in chefs for themed events. This is live TV gone wrong. Whose stupid idea was it to have a cooking show live? Don't the channel execs know that there are lots of boring bits in cooking? Why-ever do you think cooking on TV popularised the phrase "And here's one I prepared earlier..." Anyway, the funniest segment I ever saw was when purple-woman introduced the Slow Food movement chefs.

Now, I admire the Slow Food movement. I agree with many of their principles, in principle. However, I do think that these people that have the freedom to participate in a Slow Food lifestyle, also don't have careers to build, laundry to wash or tasks like cleaning the house. They have people do that for them. Anyway, Great Food Live is showcasing the Slow Food movement and three slow food chefs have to prepare and serve their favourite dish in 45 mins. Does anyone else see the irony in a Slow Food chef being forced to work to a TV deadline? I mean, these chefs are all about growing the vegetables, nursing them slowly, picking off each leaf from the watercress one by one over a long leisurely afternoon whilst nibbling on homemade brine-soaked olives and bread.

Of course each one decides to do a stew - and none of them would use a pressure cooker as that's against the Slow Food philosophy. One even attempts a rabbit confit to be cooked in 30 mins - HA - foolhardy for I have cooked rabbit and you need at least an hour (preferably two) to render the flesh tender.

I didn't watch to see how the segment ended. I didn't want to see proponents of Slow Food rushing to cook food - it wouldn't have been natural.

Carluccio's

2005-10-02T09:49:00.000+10:00

Carluccio's is a chain of café-delis around London, usually located around the posher areas of town. He's this stereotype of an Italian cook with his big round face, salt and pepper hair and rolling Italian accent.

To celebrate the return of all my banking facilities (an address confusion followed by an overzealous sales assistant meant I only had internet access to my money and credit for two weeks) I treated myself to a chocolate tart from Carluccio's in South Kensington. This was far too big for one sitting so I had the remainder for afternoon tea.

The tart is dark chocolate and only semi-sweet. The pastry is buttery and crumbly to perfection. Carluccio is obviously making a mint with his name and brand - the shop itself is pretty good if a tad expensive with ready access to glorious olives, wild mushrooms and artisan pasta.

Name change

2005-10-02T09:47:00.000+10:00

I've changed the name of the blog from "A Banana in Australia" to "Banana Tikka Masala". This is to reflect the fact that I'm now based in London instead of Australia. It's a lot more curry here - less Thai. I'm missing the fresh food and veges, although it's actually not as expensive as people say. You can get fresh fruit and veges at good prices if you look, e.g. at markets and at certain supermarkets.

Whale restaurant

2005-09-03T06:50:00.000+10:00

My last meal in Japan was at the Tokuya (House of Virtue) whale restaurant. This is the logo of the place which is proudly displayed everywhere even on the giant neon sign above the highway on the way to the airport.

Even the chopstick rest is whale-shaped.

A array of little whale treats, we chose: deep-fried whale heart salad, whale breast sashimi, whale tongue sashimi, whale tongue bacon, etc. We also had a whale hotpot with udon noodles. That was quite nice and probable the only tasty thing. Whale is very tough and otherwise tasteless. The blubber and skin were just very fatty.

You can read more about our whale experience on my sister's blog.

Okonomiyaki

2005-09-03T06:42:00.000+10:00

Now I'm in Osaka visiting my sister.

We stumbled across the Negibijintei (Beautiful Onion Woman) okonomiyaki restaurant while searching for some rice for lunch. This place is near the Umeda train station and is amidst a one of those restaurant floors in a multi-level transportation/shopping complex. [corrected "Senri Chuo" to "Umeda" 4 Sept 2005]

I ordered a standard okonomiyaki and my sister chose the seafood one. According to my expert sister, this place makes okonomiyaki with a lot more spring onions than usual. The fritatas come pre-made and you warm them on a hot plate set in the middle of your table. You can brush a sweet soy sauce and sprinkle bonito flakes on top while the plate keeps it warm until you're ready to eat it. Then you use the little fish slice to cut a bit off and eat it.

Sukiyaki

2005-09-03T06:35:00.000+10:00

My second dinner in Tokyo was at the Mo Mo Paradise sukiyaki/shabu shabu restaurant. My dining companions, my friend L that I've known since I was 8 years old and her husband D, reckon that it's actually supposed to be the Moo Moo Paradise since there's giant cartoonish cow on the signboard.

My first time eating this dish and it was delicious. The broth is sweet, savoury and very tasty. We flavoured it with the thinly sliced beef as well as enoki mushrooms, spring onions and rocket.

Yakitori at Naka-meguro

2005-08-26T01:29:00.000+10:00

I'm in Japan at the moment - it's a crazy old place. Not much has changed since I was here last year. Same old bustling downtowns with croquette and curry places all over downtown.

I'm staying with my good friend L and tonight we ate yakitori at Kushiwakamaru (03 3715 9292). This is a gaijin friendly yakitori place in Naka-meguro, i.e. the menu is also in English. They really know how to eat here; yakitori is all about tasty grilled bits on a stick, we had tonight: chicken wings, beef balls, chicken gizzards, chicken and leek, capsicum and cheese, eringi mushroom, eggplant and bonito shavings, chicken and perilla leaf, chicken skin and a few more that I can't remember.

I even washed it all down with a small serve of Japanese beer.

We finished with a small bowl of rice in a fish broth with shredded nori and bits of salmon: the most delicious rice broth that I've ever tasted.

Bad places I've eaten lately

2005-08-15T10:56:00.000+10:00

At the risk of turning this blog into a bitch-fest...oh what the heck, here goes.

Toss'n'turn, next to the Capitol Sq light rail stop, is a crêperie that is truly crâpe. I ordered a crepe with seafood, mornay sauce and parmesan cheese and what I got was a nice enough crepe, but filled with tasteless frozen seafood half-heartedly heated through with some pasty grey sauce. The parmesan was not noticeable at all.

Golden Fang Malaysia (sic) and Chinese Restaurant is located on City Road, Chippendale, next to the University of Sydney. This place has always intrigued me because Malaysian cuisine is very rare in Sydney. It also always seems packed on Friday nights, so I figured it might be worth giving a go for a late dinner on a Monday night.

Alas alack, what a disappointment - they had run out of Hokkien noodles, so my first choice of Hokkien fried noodles was unavailable. My second choice of salted fish fried rice arrived within a minute of me ordering it: highly suspicious if you ask me, but nice quick service.

The neurotic and megalomaniacal manageress bossed her down-trodden waitress around as she showed me to my seat. I bet she couldn't wait to go to the Ball.

The fried rice was incredibly oily, soft and the salted fish of poor quality: very salty without a lot of flavour. The rice grains were squishy and overcooked, liberally coated with oil: yuk.

The roast pork with belachan sauce caught my eye so I ordered it for takeaway. It arrived before I finished the fried rice, so I sampled a bit. I like a bit of stinky belachan - I think it smells delicious.

But this is where I was wrong. This dish assaulted me with it's poor execution and lack of thought. The belachan was not roasted, nor was the onion base given enough time to reduce and caramelise. The whole dish stunk of wet and raw onion. I was nearly tempted to leave it on the table as a message that it was incredibly unapalatable. I took it home, nevertheless, as I hate to waste food. Perhaps I can push this onto the bf, pair it with some rice or noodles. Perhaps I can improve it...who knows.

After leaving the restaurant I was accosted by a strange Asian man who held a small card up for me to read: Can you give me $10 for some food and a ticket to Melbourne, all written in the Chinese cursive roman script. How odd, to beg with a note. I rudely sniffed at him and turned away, but had an after thought that I should have given him that awful belachan roast pork. Oh well, perhaps it was for the best; I wouldn't have wanted to subject him to that offensive dish either.

A Romantic Evening

2005-08-15T10:50:00.000+10:00

The complaints of neglect were reaching danger level - dull warning beeps were now wailing sirens, but I only realised at the last minute.

I found myself in a romantic emergency: something needed to be done fast. I pulled out all stops and created a Romantic Sunday Night for the two of us.

I made a quiet-ish dinner for the two of us; well, as quiet as living with three other people can be. I kept it simple because the main event was not the dinner:
Goats' Cheese Salad with Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing
Prawn skewers grilled with Thai Sweet Chilli sauce
Turkish bruschetta with King Island blue cheese and basil
Blue swimmer crab and prawn ravioli with spicy capsicum and tomato sauce (not shown)

Then afterwards, while I prepared Part II of the Evening, he listened to a special playlist I compiled for him:
Especially for You (Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan)
Forever Love (Wang Lee Hom)
One of Those Days (Whitney Houston)
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do (ABBA)
Make No Mistake, He's Mine (Barbra Streisand and Kim Carnes)
Nature Boy (Nat King Cole, sung by Natalie Cole)
Stay (Paul Mac)
What Sound (Lamb)
Another Chance, Acoustic remix (Robert Sanchez)

I had previously taken out the mud mask from the fridge so it would be at a nice room temperature. I used Wow wow from Lush because he'd always wanted to try something from their Fresh range. He'd expressed some comment on the winter dryness, so that's
why I chose it. So he sat patiently with an improvised towel over the hairline, cucumber slices soothing his eyes and a thick coating of mud pack on his face whilst
Chillout Sessions Vol 3 played quietly in the background.

I lit some tealight candles and a few rose scented ones, then drew the bathroom curtain/door closed as he waited for the magic to begin.

I scattered a box of rose petals I had previously ordered from Pearson's florist all over the bed, the bedroom and the floor.

After a quick shower, he dried off and stepped out into the bedroom. I don't he quite believed that I did all of this. Well, I think I needed to; but I can't claim
complete credit for the inspiration. A mutual friend has compiled a list of Romantic Things to do one day and I springboarded off one of his ideas.

I gave him a full back and leg massage with cold-pressed macadamia oil. I used to go out with a masseur who drilled me in Swedish techniques and how to read muscle knots. I also attended a Shiatsu course once, so my technique is a little combination of both. I don't claim to be therapeutic, but I think it works for him.

After a thorough massage where I managed to work up quite a sweat, I brought out a little box of handmade chocolates, pairs of: strawberry ganache balls, penguins, praline baskets.

He seemed quite pleased - I'll end the story here, kiddies.

The latest Beijing food posts

2005-07-11T17:52:00.000+10:00

Lychees

Le Quai - Chinese cuisine with French influences

Imperial style cuisine

Lunch on Wed 8/6/05

Beijing Roast Duck Dinner (Peking Duck in Peking)

Beijing - First Eats

2005-06-27T11:58:00.000+10:00

Another cross-posting. Hopefully I'll get the rest of my food exploits up.

http://spaces.msn.com/members/dragontales/Blog/cns!1pwVsdMdq0ZGqI6VzjfEOIZg!348.entry

Meme - The Cook Next Door

2005-06-24T10:06:00.000+10:00

All right, I've just been to Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Hainan (Haikou, Xia-Shan, Xinlong, Sanya) and Shenzhen and nary a word on the China leg of the food adventures. It's been a week since I got back but, understandably, the photo editing, compilation and making things not-boring is a slow ongoing process which competes with day-to-day life and preparing to leave the country, not to mention an attention starved lover.

But this arrived recently and having not posted in ages, I thought this would be something quick and interesting to post. A cooking meme has been started by Delicious Days and it has gradually reached me via Epicurean Debauchery. You know those "Getting to know you" emails that we've all received and passed on, the ones that ask odd things like, "What colour underpants are you wearing now?" well, this is also a "getting to know you" type of posted, but about our food habits and usages. It's being compiled in a great fashion (all family tree-like) by Delicious Days, so it will be interesting not only to read, but to see how our network is formed.

Anyways (as they say in LA - we say "anyway" in Antipodes) here is my contribution.

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
As a male child growing up in Malaysia, I was strongly discouraged from the kitchen. The many searing gas burners, precariously balanced woks, heavy tree-stump chopping boards and glinting giant cleavers were deemed too dangerous; not to mention the fact that men never cooked (unless they did that for a living, like my grandfather who cooked for the British colonials) but acted as the food critic.

My first attempt was actually a recipe from an Australian cookbook for children: Cooking with Sheri, her Apple Snow (apple puree in uncooked meringue) recipe. Needless to say, I was a major inconvenience to my grandmother at the time with my demands for kitchen access. She was very busy as she had lard to render, prawns to peel, chicken to slaughter and fish to clean. Needless to say this first attempt was rather unsuccessful as the stewed apples were lumpy (I didn't have access to a masher or blender to make the puree and had to squash them with a fork) and the meringue tasteless. My mother took pity on me and help me work with the egg beater to achieve the required texture, but revelled in her prediction-come-true that the end result would be tasteless and bland.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?
My mother's uniquely Malaysian (Chinese) sense of the gourmet has the most influence on me. She was the one that taught me about the necessity (if somewhat fallible) chef pedigree viz. "Don't order the curry from [a Malaysian restaurant]. They're Chinese and don't know how to cook good Malaysian curry." She was the one who showed me how to make curry pastes, fried noodles and other essentials necessary for the running of our takeaway at the time. I think it was more out of practical necessity rather than a desire to pass on knowledge that I got educated - but I choose to see the love behind it.

I also have strong influences from the River Café cooks and Delia Smith primarily for their treatment of ingredients and the fresh and clear flavours they espouse.

Do you have an old photo as 'evidence' of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
I'm sure there's a photo of me somewhere with chocolate cake smeared all over my face, but it's in my familie's photo vault in another country. There may be one of me eating noodles as well. Fortunately I have lots of childhood photos, unlike my aunt, whose only photo got ripped up and urinated on by a marauding Japanese soldier looking for comfort women (that's another story for later).

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
Anything with the instructions, "Now working quickly, simply..." Usually this applies to chocolate or other high-fat and low-melting desserts that need to be shaped before they come to room temperature, or only have a very narrow pliability temperature range. I get scared, my hands sweat, they increase in temperature, they heat the food, it melts as I touch it - it all goes wrong.

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest let down?
I don't tend to use a lot of kitchen gadgets as I've been living an itinerant lifestyle for the last 6 years or so. I bought a hand-held mixer which has been invaluable in cake making, whipping, etc. I also love my citrus zester which has given me plenty of palate-lifting rind.

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like - and probably no one else!
Savoury oat porridge. I like my oats (porridge) savoury with (in preferential order): bacon, sausage, smoked meat, butter and chives, tomato sauce, scrambled egg. I've also managed to convince my bf of the value in the savoury so it can't be that weird!

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don't want to live without?
Butter, fish sauce, noodles. I could live on noodles (but I'm having a break from Chinese food as I'm all Zhong-Guo'ed out from the last two weeks). Butter is the salve of heaven; I recently discovered the Danish butter Lurpak - I never thought butter could taste so good! Fish sauce is another elevating ingredient for me, it converts anything into savoury magical goodness.

Quickies
Favourite ice-cream: Not really into ice-cream but gelato is the rage here in Sydney at the moment. I would pick wasabi if given a choice.

I will probably never eat: Scorpion, snake, ants, day-old mice - anything vaguely medicinal that is derived from vermin, invertebrates or reptiles. I saw lots of 'tonics' involving the above ingredients in China, usually in giant glass jars in front of the restaurant. I'm curious to try deer penis liquor though.

Signature dish: Very basic, this one - bacon and egg fried rice.

A common ingredient you just can't bring yourself to stomach: Radishes. Odd I know, but there's something bitter and icky about them that doesn't diminish no matter how I've tried them: boiled, baked, roasted, deep-fried, thinly sliced. They're so pretty and evocative to look at but I've never enjoyed eating them. Perhaps I lack the delicious-radish enzyme to release it's true flavour?

Ok, now to pick the lucky three. I'm going to choose Umami, AromaCookery and Tabetai. Not sure if they will all respond, but hopefully this should add to the Asian flair.

Cheers!

Holiday: Dinner - Day One

2005-06-06T11:55:00.000+10:00

And here's what I had for dinner.

Holiday: Day One - Breakfast

2005-06-05T23:26:00.000+10:00

I'm on holiday visiting relatives in Malaysia and China at the moment. Here's what I had for breakfast on Day One.

Sapore

2005-06-04T08:55:00.000+10:00

Location: Leichardt, Sydney

Sydney is full of ethnic enclaves. Certain suburbs are like small versions of the original countries. Punchbowl is popular with Middle-Easterns; Cabramatta populated by Vietnamese; Ashfield, Burwood and surrounding suburbs by mainland Chinese (the size of that country takes up a correspondingly larger amount of suburb area).

Leichardt is considered the mini-Italy in Sydney. Thus, a plethora of Italian restaurants.

It was my last night in Sydney before I depart for China and bf took me out to dinner. Our friend S had recommended before that we try Sapore at the forum. The first time we went there with our other friend K, it was Mothers' Day and of course totally packed. That time we went to Dante instead and had a very enjoyable meal.

This time Sapore was busy, but we were shown straight to our table as it was just the two of us. The waiter was incredibly friendly and jocular. We felt very comfortable in his care.

We ordered calamari fritte (deep-fried squid rings) to start. I ordered a linguine gamberi (linguine with prawns in cream sauce with snow peas and sundried tomatoes). Bf ordered a mushroom risotto,

The meal was overall ho-hum. We didn't really like it but the price was ok. A list of what was wrong with the meal:

1. Frozen calamari was used - there really is no excuse for using frozen seafood in Sydney. It possesses the 2nd largest fresh fish market in the world. Japan has a bigger one.
2. The deep-frying oil needed to be changed - You could taste the degraded and burnt fish oils in the batter - not nice.
3. The risotto was made with the aid of a stock cube - I'm not against the use of stock cubes, but this was patently obvious and of low quality.
4. The prawns in my linguine were frozen - see point 1.

If choosing to dine here ask to sit inside. We sat on the 'patio' section and were surrounded by people who thought cigarette smoke is the perfect accompaniment to Italian cuisine. Imagine holding a cigarette and fork in one hand while cutting your steak with the other. Ugh.

So, if you're at the forum, I recommend going to Dante instead. Also ask to sit inside because of the ubiquitous carcinogen problem.

Entrées: $6 to $9
Mains: $14 to $18 for pasta, $20+ for grill dishes, e.g. chicken or steak

Some random photos

2005-05-30T14:14:00.000+10:00

Some photos that were lying around my hard drive. I thought these looked pretty.

Pomegranate seeds

It's no longer pomegranate season, but I indulged and bought two whole pomegranates, juiced them and made some pomegranate agar with some grenadine. Bf said it was only just palatable with a large dollop of double cream. I tended to agree. But they do look pretty - like sticky jewels.

Roasting peppers

Apparently this is how Nadine Abensur first introduced the British public to roasted peppers. She describes their wide-eyed wonder when she put a whole pepper on top of a gas burner to roast. It works quite well, but I think next time I will just buy roasted peppers.

King Island Roquefort-style blue cheese

They've finally been approved to import the mould into Australia and this was on sale at the Blackwattle Deli. This is a very creamy and aromatic blue cheese. Quite sweet and not sharp at all. Best to cut this when chilled slightly otherwise the inside just looks like a rotten sweaty stinky mess.

Rempah for chicken curry

I made a rempah for chicken curry as I was feeling homesick. This recipe calls for several large onions blended with a small amount of water which is then fried till most of the water evaporates and the oil starts to show again. I then add curry powder (Bird brand from Malaysia), some roasted spices (in this case cardamon, fennelseed and cinnamon), squashed cloves of garlic and a fresh paste made from ginger and rehydrated dried chillies. The mixture is slowly fried over low-heat and oil added occassionally until it reaches this golden colour.

This paste is suitable for most meats except seafood. Seafood curry pastes need fenugreek and a slightly more aromatic lemony tang to them, e.g. from lemongrass or fresh curry leaves. All you need to do now is to add chicken and some water then simmer until cooked through. A can-ful of coconut milk or cream (depending on how rich you like your curry) stirred through at the last minute is everything else you need to add for a rich satisfying Malaysian-style curry like my mum makes. Sometimes people like to put some roasted belachan into the paste - it definitely makes it a lot more aromatic that way (I love belachan), but I didn't have any on hand, and I didn't want to stink up the house either.

Paper Chef #6

2005-05-12T16:22:00.000+10:00

Sweet desserts, ah, sweet desserts; after an extended savoury Paper Chef repast we welcome a lovely sweet in-between.

There were some lovely ideas and everyone was so creative and took such great care in crafting their dish(es). Two themes emerged along the lines of: biscuity-brown thing with soft white cold dessert and sweet sauce, and cake-y thing with sweet topping. Decision, as always, was hard due to the high standard that all Paper Chef entrants continually exhibit.

So, without further ado, Paper Chef #6 (Ricotta cheese, Almond paste, White chocolate and Strawberry) goes to A Finger in Every Pie for her Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote with Ricotta-White Chocolate Gelato and Scented Madeleines. I was most impressed with how she made the most of the ingredients available. She knew how to handle less than perfect strawberries to heighten their flavour - something that a lot of entrants needed to do as only in Berkeley do strawberries seem to be at their best at the moment. Her madeleines look so beautiful, the delicate clamshells are so pretty. The gelato recipe, whilst being plain, would highlight the strawberries and delicate almond flavoured madeleines.

I also thought some entries were worth mentioning and so I've given out some extra awards:

Best Plating and Photography go to Belly-Timber for the Quinoa crusted prawns and associated ensemble. This would probably get most innovative use of the ingredients too; it also sounds delicious. You can really see the chef training coming through in this entire blog's writing.

Most Impressive Use of the Topical Ingredient goes to Delicious Life for her tiered White Chocolate Ricotta Cheesecake. The strawberries look simply amazing - and I suggest throwing a Cheesecake Factory cake in the face of anyone that dare suggest it is better than your own handcrafted treat.

I bow down to everyone who made a tuile - they look difficult and impressive. Now I'm in such good company, I'm challenged to make one myself.

Congratulations to everyone for entering - this event is turning out to be such a joyful and fun celebration of quick-thinking food. Everyone that participated has invested so much care and thought into their entries. With such innovative and versatile recipes at our disposable, we're all going to make a splash at our next dinner party. I look forward to reading about it all!

Café XXII

2005-05-01T11:52:00.000+10:00

Café XXII
Union Square, Pyrmont

Friday night and some friends were coming over for dinner and a spa. The flatmates looked knowingly at me and repeated, "Coming over for a spa, eh?" when I told them. "Yes, just a spa!" I replied. Bf and I seem to have developed a bit of a reputation with friends "coming over for a spa" so now something so totally innocent and relaxing has such sexual overtones.

Anyway, it was a toss-up (ooh er) between the Taiwanese takeaway Grain, or Italian. I had originally planned to make spinach ricotta cannelloni but to my dismay, the ricotta had started to ferment, I ran out of unsalted butter and there was no whole milk to make the bechamel. This was almost enough to put a frazzled end-of-the-working-week me into tears. Well, mock tears with a fake temper tantrum on the bed before the bf told me to snap out of it and stop messing up the bedsheets.
Our friends arrived and we went to Café XXII a local joint that bf is quite fond of. They obviously plan to be there for a long time because they've engraved XXII into the step leading to their café.

The menu here is small, only about four entrées and six mains. But a nice number given the size of the establishment which seats about 20 people at full capacity.
There is a blackboard menu with a nice variety of pasta, meat, chicken, risotto dishes (one of each). We elected to share a plate of XXII calamari which was floured, deep fried and served with some spring onions. Lovely fresh seafood flavour but a little bland. They also weren't as crisp as I'd like them.

I elected to have a king prawn risotto with dolce latte (blue cheese). Bf had the chicken saltimbocca with steamed asparagus whilst N had rotelle pasta and his bf J had the kumera and provolone ravioli with sage butter.

The best executed dish I think would have been the ravioli. It was certainly the most interesting with the brown butter and sage sauce. Rotelle pasta turned out to be pinwheels which was very cute. This was served with a speck (german smoked ham) and tomato sauce. Bf's grilled chicken looked a little lonely on top of steamed asparagus spears. My risotto was perfectly cooked with even grains and a light creamy texture. The king prawns were fresh, flavoursome and delicious.

I can't fault the cooking but the menu was a little on the unimaginative side. They claim to be modern Italian food - this is correct. It's definitely not stick-to-your-ribs stuff; we were concerned at the small servings at first but we were comfortably full at the end.

I had a glass of chianti with the meal, which alleviated my traumatised state. My ricotta worries were well and gone by now.

Oh, and the spa was lovely innocent and NO naughty business eventuated, I'll have you know.

Entrées: $11 to $15
Mains: $15 to $21