A week of dislikes!

I'd like to think of myself as 'broad-palated', willing to have a go at whatever is offered and I am able to scoff at the ever increasingly uttered phrase 'do you have any special dietary needs?'. (I hope I don't develop any nasty food intolerances/allergies in the future). But recently I seemed to hear myself saying, 'I don't like that’ far too often. What’s more this occurred in the workplace where I am frequently striving to encourage students to try something new.

It all started with a traditional Indonesian salad. An otherwise excellent Gado Gado (well done Vivien), which featured a wonderfully balanced satay sauce, included some fried tempeh. Made from soy beans much like my beloved beancurd, tempeh with its whole bean texture and fermented 'twist' is just plain nasty to my taste. It didn't make it on to my Love 'em or hate 'em list last time probably because it is so far off my radar but is definitely one more to add. Often described as having an earthy flavour - all well and good if you like to eat dirt! When I heard a Nutritionist suggesting that she might modify Hestor Blummenthals 'Masterchef' burger with a tempeh pattie - really!!!! Good luck with that!

The next in my week of "I don't really like that", was a canapé on a base of pumpernickel, perhaps equally one could describe this too as having an earthy taste and with the added bonus of a dry cardboardy texture! Perhaps I just haven't had good pumpernickel yet. I do like all sorts of fungi and truffles in case you're going down the anti-earthy road.

And to finish the week a student bought to class some Zongzi he had made for us to share (thanks Roy). Traditional Chinese steamed glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves each with a different filling including pork, Chinese dates and red bean paste. And there it was red bean paste - it's the texture I struggle with when it comes to red bean paste - claggy.

I feel purged now having exposed more of my dislikes. Given the range of cuisines I indulge in I still think my list of dislikes is minimal and I can continue to proudly take my place amongst the food lovers of the world. Besides at times it is the simplist of foods that can provide the greatest of pleasure.


“Plain fresh bread, its crust shatteringly crisp. Sweet cold butter. There is magic in the way they come together in your mouth to make a single perfect bite.
- Ruth Reichl

I confess.....

I've been reading all the hype about St Katherine's since it finally opened in May and its a very mixed bag of comments. Wanting to to give a new venture, especially such a huge one, a fair go to get up and running I've waited for a bit. But there still seems to be what I see as teething issues and I have to confess (that's a pun!) that I'm in two camps. Yes I'd go back, because I like the fact that it's close by and saves the usual drive to inner city/city establishments to enjoy that cosmopolitan feel and on the whole the food is good. BUT not all the dishes hit the mark and neither does all the service.

Here's a little insight of my experience - After enjoying a range of shared savoury dishes the table was cleared in the most ungainly of manners reminiscent of the local 'ladies' who staff the pub in the small country town of my raising. And all before all of the ordered dishes had been served. When our original waiter invited us to order dessert and coffee we inquired about the quail, which he checked on, came back to ask 'if we were sure we hadn't received it' and then promptly returned with said quail. It was a little dry - perhaps because it had been sitting under lights for awhile and a serve of 'leaves' (salad) never eventuated. The later baklava also a little dry and chewy. St Katherine's labels itself as a blend of Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern so dishes such as Vietnamese style duck spring rolls are a tad surprising on the menu. If you like a little theatre then the food is fun, bread in a bag, mini buggers, KFC, Mr Whippy style ice-cream and all manner of service plates/trays/platters. The hummus is creamy, the pide excellent and coca-cola lamb ribs tasty and moist.

In response to the some of the many criticisms - I don't mind the cutlery in the tin on the table, I might be able to get cheaper pide in Sydney Road but I won't have the diversity of fillings and I too dislike 'I'm too cool for my waiters apron' attitude. So it may well be all about customers preferences although I am curious as to whether anyone thinks aloof service is suitable in a service industry??

One would expect there to be changes over time. Are the 'faults' part of the casual style or will they be remedied or will the customers just accept things as they are? I have many questions. No doubt time will be telling on whether St Katherine's is the success of the groups other ventures.

St Katherine's, 26 Cotham Road, Kew

 

Bloggers Block!!!!!

Help me, I have bloggers block! There are 20 drafts sitting in my posts awaiting completion and I just keep adding more and posting few. They vary in state of production, some just a title and a few ideas. Others a mere series of pics from the last few dining experiences. And no that’s not why the last post (Attica) was so minimalist re text – I felt the pictures informed the occasion, leaving me just a few supplementary observations to add. One draft is all but complete just waiting for the pics then it's ready to go.

A friend suggested that possibly it's just the dreary winter weather impacting on my capacity to get things finished. Nah, I love winter, it is my preferred season. Nothing better than settling in at a cosy eatery or a long afternoon in a steamy kitchen. After all it is the season for slow cooked beef cheeks, root veg mash and hearty puddings. So it's not the weather.

I mused over what else may be impeding my usual enthusiastic undertaking to upload yet another of my perhaps self-indulgent views on subjects pertaining to the culinary world. Maybe I just don’t have sufficient to do right now while I’m on semester break, admittedly the biggest incentive to blog or cook or knit for that matter is usually to facilitate procrastination of paid tasks or domestic drudgery that should be winning priority. Well holidays pass quickly and all too soon I shall return to the typical plenitude of responsibilities. In the mean time I'll just bake a batch of Anzac biscuits (take a pic for the blog – lol) have a cup of tea and wait for the bloggers block to pass.....

Attica

It went like this........ 

Well done team Attica!

Fabulous food - seasonally focused menu, ingredient integrity, technically masterful, clever flavour harmonies, textural variety, visually stimulating and just a bit playful

Excellent service - especially knowledgeable, calmly proficient and unpretentious (I enjoyed swapping stories about aunties and tongue!)

Shinning stars:

• 'A simple dish of potato cooked in the earth it was grown' - just because I'd heard/read so much about it.
• 'Raw Chestnuts, salt baked Celeriac, Pyengana' - because WOW and I adore Pyengana cheddar.
• 'Beef Tongue, Vanilla, Myrtus, Lettuce stems' - mmmmm tongue.

Details @ http://www.attica.com.au/ 
or 

Meaty menus

I've been wading my way through a list of cafes that seems to be ever expanding. My focus is mainly from the brunch perspective - for those that haven't noticed its definitely a favourite meal period. And along the way I've become increasingly aware of the appearance of two distinct varieties of menu. One with lots of choices and another that seems to be a little limited and not always because of the number of dishes. Both styles usually have a few of the conventional English style breakfast items such as eggs with bacon and sausages together with selections a little less traditional such as beans or mushrooms. But even so, at times I feel it's a battle to choose a dish, why I ask?

Now I'm no vegetarian, not even close. But I do like menus that allow me to choose a dish that has a balance of components and scrambled eggs, even if they are truffled, served with pork and fennel sausages is a lot of animal! Consequently it’s the menus with a little less meat that I find most appealing and seemly I find these in business staffed by lots of women. Now I know that physiologically we girls require less protein in the diet and meat provides higher percentages of protein than say cheese or legumes but does it really impact so obviously on the way the menu is structured???  A question to explore further I think,  do women write less meat based menus?

Any way the menu at Milkwood is meaty without all the meat! Even the pork and fennel sausages come braised with heaps of onions, which created a better balance. There's also tomato butter beans with feta, lemon thyme mushrooms with ricotta, avocado with lemon oil and potato gems just to mention a few of the choices. And the sweet and fruity porridge, muesli and pancakes all sounded good too – ah next time! (The lunch baguettes and cakes on display looked appealing as well). Besides the grand choices I particularly liked the structure of the menu where one could almost 'build' your own dish. Tasty and generous serves of real food I feel. And efficient service to boot.


Milkwood, 120 Nicholson St, Brunswick East.

Fresh is best

'Unherbed' pho

New to my list of Bridge Road favourites but already well discovered by many of Melbourne's pho lovers is Pho Chu The. I love the simplicity of a Pho Restaurant - Beef Pho or Chicken Pho (pronounced 'fer'). For those in the know, as there is not much of a menu as such, a few extra treats for your pho can also be ordered, like tripe; beef tendon or congealed blood! And for the really hungry or those needing textural contrasts, the other option is to start with a plate of crispy Vietnamese spring rolls - the ones that you wrap in the lettuce with a few herbs and dip into Nước Chấm.

As I was simultaneously inhaling the warm aromatic steam and picking fresh herbs into my broth the conversation on the next table, which is never very far away in such establishments, caught my interest. The mention of ex-students often draws my attention. This conversation is about how ludicrous the advertisement for a well known supermarket chain by a celebrity chef is. "I only want the freshest and the best", the Chef states. "What chef would want old and the worst", the young man jeered. It seemed a particularly relevant comment when I inspected the supreme freshness of the crisp mung bean sprouts which were about to follow the seemingly ‘just-picked’ holy basil into my bowl of fragrant broth. The essence of Vietnamese cuisine, as it differs from other Asian cuisines, is in it's defining simplicity and freshness. And certainly when I was shopping for food, cooking and eating in Vietnam, a few years back, the focus on these elements was paramount and seemingly far removed from the mind set of the 'one-stop' supermarket shop on a weekly/fortnightly basis that has become a common Aussie routine. So I say ditch the 'Big Two', shop local, shop small and shop often.

Pho Chu The  Bo Ga
270 Victoria Street, Richmond

Nyonya Kueh

I tried so valiantly to eat my way through the cuisine of Malaysia during my recent trip yet since returning I have discovered I didn't even scratch the surface. And it seems I did a pretty average job at 'Nonya' style dishes in particular, perhaps in part because we didn't get to Melaka in the south - next time for sure!

The Otak Otak Prawns or Fish (Nonya fish custard wrapped in banana leaves) at Lims Nonya Hut is missing the banana leaves, difficult to get Lim tells us. The prawns are however tenderly cooked in a creamy custard of deliciously balanced coconut, kaffir lime, chilli, lemongrass, galangal, turmeric and shrimp paste on a base of betel leaves. Wow. As there was just the two of us we limited our ordering to just two dishes, our other choice a vegetable acar (a dish of mixed pickled vegetables and peanuts in spicy and sour sauce) oh and steamed rice.  The acar was maybe a little overpowering with the Otak Otak but again great textures and flavour balance. Next time I look forward to trying some old favourites like laksa and char kway teow.

And I couldn't resist ordering a serve of sweet sticky black glutinous rice with coconut milk; Malaysia being one of the few Asian cuisines that really does sweets. I think I became just a little addicted to the slightly gluey pudding like texture of glutinous rice as well as Kuih (Cake) also spelt Kueh. Kuih are bite sized Malaysian snacks made from glutinous rice, tapioca or mung beans and flavoured with coconut,  pandan leaves or gula melaka (palm sugar). Lim had just freshly made a few varieties of Kuih so we were treated to a 'small' selection including her Kueh Talam. Consisting of two layers, the top layer is made from coconut milk and rice flour and the bottom layer is made from pandan leaf extract, mung bean and rice flour. As you can imagine after already indulging in dessert, and not a light one at that, this last offering was just a bit much and we waddled out like oompa loompas, but thanks Lim great Nonya flavours.

Lims Nyonya Hut, 240 Blackburn Road Glen Waverley