eat our way up high street project

Goodbye High Street, Hello Lunch

2011-02-28T00:42:00.000-08:00

After a few months without a post, you might have wondered "what ever happened to Eat Our Way Up High Street?"

Well, you may not have wondered that much, but in the last few months there have been changes in the editorial office at Eat Our Way.

Michael has now eaten his way up High Street to his satisfaction and has popped off for lunch. More particularly, the Illusion of Lunch. He'll be writing about food and other stuff. Mostly food, because what else is there to write about, other than cheese?

Mixtape

2010-12-06T01:38:00.000-08:00

Gingerboy. Go there. They have a big neon sign. It says, "Gingerboy".

In the early 16th century, the great Christian humanist Erasmus railed against printers, those anarcho-informationalists of his day, that worked to

“fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness"

I read those words and immediately thought of those who prattle and rant about food as though it was a religious experience while blogging about the most trivial of matters and expect a readership to be impressed by their delicate sensibilities and refined tastes.

Not that I'm talking about anyone I know. *blushes*.

Anyway, the last month has seen some mixed dining experiences, from the sublime to the, well, not sublime, and rather than spend 500 words per piece filling the world with words that were foolish, ignorant, malignant etc, I thought I'd cram a few into a single mix tape that you can play in the car or give to someone special as a taster of what "Eat our Way" is all about. Think of this as a touring melange of tastes and ideas.

Gills Diner

The night I went to Gills Diner I had my professional hat on, and was having dinner with a man considered to be a world authority on car parking. No, he doesn't park cars; he's studied the impact of car parking on cities - the financial, environmental and opportunity costs of car parking in our cities. Disclaimer - I was a guest of the extravagantly named 'Institute of Sensible Transport".

Our local professor on the left. Car parking professor not in shot.

Anyway, sensibility aside, Gills Diner is tucked away in one of Melbourne's hipster alleys and is appropriately hard to find. It's got a cool, ex-industrial feel and warm staff and the food is good bistro nosh. On a rainy Melbourne night I had pork belly with pan-fried apples on a bed of humorous little lentils and a couple of 3 Ravens. The food was simple but perfect for the evening, while the conversation was focussed on the complexity of car parking and urban form. Note to self: two professors per meal is probably my limit.

Thanh Thanh

Meh

If it wasn't already obvious, I'm a bit of a fan of the old pho and other noodle soups. So in the ever continuing quest for the perfect pho, I dropped in to Thanh Thanh on Victoria Street in Richmond. I'd love to say they were great, but they weren't.

The magic of pho is in the stock and the stock here wasn't up to much. It lacked depth, spice and most of all, magic. In summary, "meh".

Gingerboy

Gingerboy, like Gills Diner, is Cool, and although the alley it's tucked away in is larger and easier to find than that of Gills Diner, that just means Gingerboy focusses on being just a gem rather than a hidden gem.

Gingerboy does wonderful, up-market versions of SE Asian street food without the humidity and with a greater range of cocktails. Dishes come in a potentially confusing (but well explained) mix of small and medium dishes, all of which had a complexity and a depth that comes with a blend of high-note herbs and the basso profondo of belachlan.

Silken tofu - the (almost vegetarian) bee's knees

We started with Chinese cabbage and chicken dumplings, which had a beautiful, essential filling, although the wrappers were a little chewy. Small, salt and pepper spiced chicken ribs in a crisp, light batter were served with a blistering and wonderful sauce - the Kentucky chicken of the gods. The last of the small dishes was soft-shelled crab with a green papaya salad - wonderful, with a papery shell and a tart salad.

Two large dishes finished the meal - a wonderful and rich salad of wagyu beef and soba noodles and some gentle kim chi (at least by kim chi standards!) and some beautiful silken tofu with mushrooms and XO sauce. This was the surprising and wonderful dish in its balance and complexity; almost the dish that could convert me to vegetarianism (except for the shrimp paste in the sauce).

Soft-shelled crab and papaya salad. Let's do this again!

Gingerboy is the standout of this bunch - a small but perfectly formed restaurant with attentive staff and a intimate (yet busy) room and truly wonderful food. A keeper.

Alfio's

2010-11-16T02:36:00.000-08:00

FIDO, courtesy wispfox

Not in High Street perhaps, but a short ride away via traditional northern suburbs transport (Vespa or a fixie), Alfio's Cafe is in Station Street in Fairfield, just up from the glorious FIDO. Alfio's is a Fairfield stalwart and was one of the oldest of the current generation of cafes. It also hasn't changed much in years - it was much the same in 2005 and 2006 (and indeed, the blackboard behind me in 2006 has exactly the same cocktail list).

Alfio's is so much part of my mental landscape of Fairlfield that I wouldn't have bothered writing about it except that I've only just discovered they serve the best mega-breakfast in the northern suburbs. Not the best breakfast all up, but certainly the best mega-breakfast in the FEB-style.

Hail King George

Alfio's call their mega FEB breakfast, "The George". It contained a pile of wilted spinach; a couple of poached eggs (slightly over-done); two slices of pale toasted baguette; some sauteed mushrooms (good but not spectacular); two halves of grilled tomato (good but with extraneous cheese on one half); a pile of crisp bacon (excellent!); a Hungarian-style paprika and garlic partly-cured sausage (brilliant!); and a lamb kofta (not a lot of flavour but cooked perfectly). It also had, buried underneath, a superfluous, freezer-bag hash brown. When I can work up the energy I'll rail against these, but honestly, who cares enough?

Oh, and there were beans. Very good. Home made, not too light and not too stodgy either - Goldilocks beans.

All in all it was, well, huge. Pretty damn good for a late breakfast verging-on-lunch. Oh, and the coffee is, and always has been, fantastic. Go there, but expect to see some of your work colleagues striding past in their Saturday morning finest. Well, that's what I saw, anyway.

Stephen Colbert Scooby Snacks

2010-11-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

Martha Stewart explains strangling turkeys to Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert mushes Devon/Berliner/Fritz/Baloney with tomato sauce and serves it on crackers.

Stephen Colbert sucks the lapel of a 69-year old former stockbroker and jailbird.

Watch it here.

China Red

2010-11-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

Technology has come a long way since I was a small, innocent child. Tonnes of metal fly through the sky every day (mostly safely); gamma radiation from galactic bubbles abounds; and people cheerfully wear clothes made of magical man-made fibres. At the same time, the intertubes have revolutionized our lives and information swirls endlessly through pipes, blessing us with almost instantaneous satisfaction and answers through tubes. Water, however, still comes in bottles.

I only raise this because I have this great idea that's going to make me rich. I'm going to tell you, discretely, but you have to promise not to keep it to yourself.

You see, it occurred to me that if everyone uses water every day, then surely it would be great if we had instant access to it, just like we have instant access to information. Indeed, what we need is some sort of "water internet". This "waternet" would be, like the internet, a series of tubes, but in this case delivering water, instead of information, directly to our houses! It's a crazy, science-fiction idea (I know!), but perhaps one day it will be more than fantasy. Maybe in the future we'll be able to abandon bottled water for a "waternet", where water is delivered through "pipes". Maybe not in my lifetime perhaps, but hey, we can dream.

The future of dumplings is here already

Of course, not all technology is fantasy. While the "waternet" eludes us, the great dream of a dumpling internet (the legendary "dumplenet") has already arrived. Somewhere in the world, the Tim Berners-Lee of the dumpling world is resting on his laurels and these laurels can be found at China Red.

China Red is a small, tastefully discrete modern restaurant in a mall between Bourke St and Little Bourke, just off Melbourne's China Town and is truly a marvel of modern technology. While one day in the future we will surely be able to access the dumplenet from home, in 2010 we are limited to dumplenet cafes and China Red is at the forefront of this exciting phase of civilization.

Spring onion pancakes. Donuts, but with onions and crisp.

Using the amazing touchscreen dumplenet technology, Miranda, Helen and I (early adopters all) ordered our dumplings "on screen" and without recourse to human interaction!! This felt both staggeringly modern and never too far from being exciting. Screens were touched; virtual buttons were digitally manipulated and food arrived shortly after, albeit delivered by humans rather than the robots I hoped for. You can check what you ordered at any time, with delivered dishes signified with a digital steaming bowl icon, while food you've ordered but is not yet delivered shows as a rather sweet animated chef cooking up a storm.

We ordered spring onion pancakes which were exceedingly crisp and onionesque; green (snake?) beans with minced pork and chili; some chili oil dumplings; and some pot-stickers. The beans were wonderful and smoky, although the pieces of chili they were served with was staggeringly, blisteringly hot, while the chili oil dumplings were somewhere greater than good but less than spectacular. The pot-stickers (I know they had a proper name but I can't remember what it was) were also good, but no more, and came with a chewy and gelatinous wrapper.

Pan-fried dumplings (pot-stickers) and the blistering beans

All up the food was good city lunch time fare. Good dumplings, but not great, with a bit of digital fun watching the little man on the screen. Go, have lunch and pay very little, but most of all marvel at the first fledgling steps of what will become the great and ubiquitous dumplenet.

Christmas in November - Reflections on Panettone

2010-10-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well, Christmas is only months and months away so the shops are in full Christmas swing. Decorations that look like elves have been dropping LSD; hampers full of the stuff they didn't sell last year; and belt-fed plastic machine guns that fire whistling foam bullets in the toy catalogs (oh to be young again...).

Panettone bread and butter pudding - the true spirit of Christmas on a plate

Luckily, there is one aspect of Christmas that can't come soon enough, and that's panettone season. The smell.... The texture.... The bread and butter pudding..... So in the lead up to the festive season, here are a few thoughts from the gluttons at Eat Our Way regarding this highlight of Saturnalia. These were all purchased from the local big-name supermarket.

Ital Traditional Panettone - This was not a great way to start the season. This spoils Christmas as much as Scrooge McGrinch and, quite frankly, it can $%$#@ my &^%$. Dry, only a faint smell and not much fruit, it completely lacked that overwhelming moist, boozy, vanilla-toasty smell that shakes you by the neck and says, "IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!" Instead all it could offer was, "Christmas? Oh yeah, I bought you a sack of charcoal. By the way, it's your turn to take out the rubbish bins."

Buinissomo Panettone Classico - My word, this is indeed the shizzle, as Mr S Dogg would surely attest. It looks as if Michelangelo had designed the packaging for Paris Hilton, as it comes in a cardboard Sistene Chapel of glory. Definitely better than the Ital, it offered fruit and a much more traditional panettone smell with an added citrus perfume. If anything, it erred slightly on the side of being a little too moist, so that it compressed in your mouth. All up, very good and made a truly excellent Bread and Butter Pudding.

Bauli il Panettone - The curate's egg of a panettone; it had an excellent moist but open texture and was generous with the fruit, particularly the orange peel. It also had a lovely citrus scent which, although it was very appealing (pun intended), it lacked the overwhelming panettone aroma that the Buinissomo had. A delicious fruit bread but without that merged magic vanilla-toasty-citrus smell that makes panettone what it is.

But apart from eating it, toasting it and generally elevating a humble cup of tea to a religious experience, there's one thing you can do with panettone that takes it from a bread-based confection to the food of the gods. This dessert is truly salvation in a baking dish.

Bread and butter pudding

Panettone Bread and Butter Pudding

Take the best part of a panettone and slice it thickly. Toast it lightly if you can be bothered, but it's not necessary. Butter each slice lightly and spread with a favourite preserve - we use either the quince jelly or kumquat marmalade we make.

Lay the slices in a buttered baking dish and cover with a rich custard mix - maybe 10 eggs to a litre of milk, with a few tablespoons of sugar and some vanilla.

Allow it to soak for a few minutes before putting into a slow-medium oven until its almost firm in the centre and golden on top. Serve warm or cool, but not hot.

Cooking with Al

2010-10-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

Al is learning to cook, partly through school, but also with us as well as a great big dose of teaching himself and practicing. There are few things more satisfying than watching someone try cooking a dish for the first time, practice the technique, try the result and then comment sagely on possible improvements. If I sound like a very proud parent, I am, but I'm also trying to be restrained in my comment so I don't embarrass him out of the kitchen....

He made Beggar's Chicken, something I've wanted to try since, well, I was probably about his age and saw it in a Women's Weekly cooking book. It looked magical, yet in my teenage mind was wildly profligate (throwing away a kilo of salt?) and required a lot of faith. Al, on the other hand, leaped after the briefest of looks and was well rewarded. In fact, we all were...

The result was worth the palaver. It looked roasted but was floating in juices and was the most incredibly tender chicken I've ever tasted, as though the meat fibers had been individually softened. The flavour was perfect - the smell of a little soy, ginger, spring onions and five spice wafted above the juices. It was truly wonderful.

Vanilla Slice - You'd have to drive a long way to get one this old school

He also made a Vanilla Slice worthy of a country baker and last week made a goat curry (he has no fear). All wonderful, and I am hoping for much more.

Goat curry - rich and heady with fragrance. Everyone loved it (except the goat).

Hanuman

2010-09-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

A bit more than a year ago we started "Eat our Way" with the intention of capturing our thoughts about our local restaurants at a point in time before they became too popular, swanky and/or wanky. The deal was simple; I promised to focus on High Street and never use the word "authentic" and you promise not to complain about the humble scope of this blog.

I say this really just to confess, in advance, that this time we're a little out of scope. No, that's not quite true; we're well out of scope. We had a couple of days in Darwin last week and had a lovely evening eating great Nonya food at a place called Hanuman, and this is our humble record of that evening. Think of it as "Eat our Way goes Mad in the Tropics".

Drinkiepoos

Hanuman was just around the corner from our hotel and looked pretty fine from the street, and like everywhere wonderful in Darwin, it's open to the elements.

We don't often start a meal with a cocktail, but then we're not often in a different city without children for a couple of days either. I ordered a Hanuman Martini, which was flavoured with a sweet green tea liqueur, while the seahorse had a Cosmopolitan. The martini erred on the sweet sidewith a clean fragrance, but the Cosmo was a damp and diluted squib - a pale, faded pink shadow of the Platonic Cosmopolitan, like 1980's office decor - pale pink and grey like a galah. Afterwards the seahorse did complain her ears had fallen off, so perhaps it wasn't that diluted....

Oysters in sweet little pots

We ordered two entrees - oysters baked with ginger, soy and chili, and "Money Bags" - plump, fried wontons filled with a ginger-garlic chicken mousse. The oysters were intense and at the very limits of what I'm prepared to see happen to an oyster. They come in a beautiful terracotta dish, individually lidded in a sharp, hot sauce. There was still enough room for the oyster to shine through, but only just. Enjoyable, but not essence of oyster which is what I enjoy most in an oyster.

Moneybags of... chicken

The Money Bags were wrapped in a thin, crisp tofu skin and served with a sweet chili glaze. Plump, lovely and sweet, like... I could get into trouble now so I'll shut up.

Hanuman Prawns

Main courses were a coconut milk prawn curry that was unctuous, mild and warm and pork belly cooked with star anise and cinnamon. Both were fabulous on their own, although in retrospect they were both rich dishes with little spice, and choosing at least one dish with a bit more spark would have been a better idea. We also ordered roti, which was great, and raita which was a little sweet for my tastes.

Pork Belly

Hanuman served up the best meal I've had in the Northern Territory, which to a southerner might sound like a backhanded compliment, but I've had some fantastic south east Asian food in Darwin that had a freshness that would be hard to beat. Green papaya salad and oodles of rice noodles at various markets mean my northern expectations are pretty high and Hanuman met these.

I didn't mention dessert - Black Rice Brulee. It was of the Gods.

Chowhound

2010-09-20T03:33:00.001-07:00

I think it's only fair that at this stage in our relationship, dear reader, that I disclose certain editorial and research standards at Eat Our Way. Now, I know those who've been reading this blog for any length of time will find the suggestion that I have standards a little hard to fathom and may even dart off to re-read old posts looking for evidence of such. My general rule is that it takes a certain number of meals to justify an opinion, meaning a single adult journey to a venue generally requires a second validatory expedition before mere words are committed to type.

Because drinking at breakfast is cool yes it is shut up.

In this case, however, I'm going to break that rule, largely because it will be a while before we get a chance to go back, and, albeit based on scant evidence, we will be going back. So, dearest reader, understand the limitations of my opinion but recognize that I'm going to have one regardless of what you think.

I went with the smallest tribe member for a walk to the park (child exercise) followed by some a stroll up Ruckers Hill (adult exercise) to get some late Sunday breakfast. Chowhound is towards the top of the Hill on the western side, a short walk down from the town hall. It's bigger than many of its peers and is a pleasant, relaxed space that's not too high on the Wank Scale (where your lounge room gets a "zero" and sparkle laminex and mixed 1950's vinyl chairs gets an "8").

Beans, eggs, proscuitto

So I ordered the baked eggs with baked beans, proscuitto and toast with a Bloody Mary while Will had Macaroni Cheese from the menu for kidlets.

The beans were not the slow baked, rich, slightly sweetened and well cooked beans that I make at home, but were lighter, with firmer white beans in a fresh tomato sauce. Not what I was looking forward to, but not bad either - they were Kylie Minogue when I was expecting Wagner. The eggs were baked on top of these and were alright, but the yolks were a little harder than perfect and there was a splodge of uncooked white in the center. A quick stir into the beans fixed the white problem but the yolks were well beyond translucent and thus repair. The prosciutto was crisp, salty and thin. A not-at-all bad dish, although potentially improved by breaking the egg yolk into the middle of the dish where it will cook the least.

Macaroni cheese and boy

Will's macaroni cheese was generously cheesed, baconed and onioned. The onions in particular were golden and lusciously sweet, and the whole sticky ensemble was crunchily crumbed.

Everything else was tickety-boo; the staff were helpful, it was quiet and generally relaxing. So in summary, while I can't speak definitively about Chowhound, I can speak positively enough to say we'll go back and try breakfast again.

On the other hand, the name's a bit naff...

Gold Leaf

2010-09-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

There's something fantastic about Gold Leaf in Preston and I mean fantastic in the true sense of the word. From the street, Gold Leaf is just a staircase at the end of a pretty grungy walkway that connects High Street with a car park, but once you step over the empty boxes, newspapers and freshly delivered bean shoots and climb those stairs, POW!

Like walking through a wardrobe and discovering a winter wonderland, you step inside out of the gloom. Gold Leaf, however, is no monochrome land of restraint ruled by a White Witch; the decor in the foyer is straight out of Tom Wolfe's Electric Cool Aid Acid Test. As if the Merry Pranksters have driven their bus through Hong Kong on their way to Las Vegas, bold lighting, bright colours and revolving chandeliers mix with lobsters in tanks and an overall sense of chaos. At this point if the maitre d' turns out to be an octopus in a gold lame jacket you'd probably take it in your stride.

Obey the dumplings

Once you're past the entrance, the other surprise is Gold Leaf's sheer size - it's huge and there are far more people scarfing dumplings gathered together in one room than you would expect from the street. And while it's noisy and there are hard surfaces everywhere, it's not too loud.

Although Gold Leaf does yum cha/dim sum every day of the week, Sunday for me is The One True Yum Cha Day.

Dumpling-on-Dumpling Action!!

Tea comes quickly (and is refilled often, as it Was Meant To Be) and within moments you're fighting off the trolleys. There's plenty of the normal fare done really, really well - steamed dumplings; seafood in all sorts of guises; gai lan; prawn wrapped in bean curd wrappers; scallops on tofu; little fried wantons and other crunchy parcels; and sheets of unctuous, pearly-white rice noodles with more seafood.

More please!

For me the perfect yum cha experience has a mix of the new and the familiar, and "new" this time was slices of eel, cut like tiny fish steaks and cooked in a dark sauce. This was luscious and fatty with a sweetness to balance the fish.

I can haz eel?

In the "familiar" category, apart from dumplings upon dumplings, I have a soft spot for turnip cake. There's something wintry and comforting about these fried slices of bland daikon, studded with Chinese sausage, ham and spring onions, even if they looked like slices of congealed dishwater that have been shallow fried. Balanced with light, prawn dumplings and scallops on ethereal soft tofu, they make up the important stodge course.

Turnip cake. Mmmmmm....

And that's what yum cha (or dim sum) is all about - balance. It's the balance of chaos and comfort; the familiar and the unfamiliar; the steamed and the fried; the subtle and the spicy; the light and the filling. Of course, yum cha also requires that there are children running around tables, the noise is rambunctious and there's a four-trolley pile up threatening to cover you in steamed dumplings and gai lan. And, perhaps strangely, in the middle of this chaos on a Sunday morning I find a kind of peace and some time to contemplate my lot. There's a joy about yum cha that reminds me of how good life and family can be.

Emily and the octopus

Alex dumples

A trip to Preston Market becomes Paella

2010-09-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday at Preston Market. Mission: to make paella.

We bought some fish...

...and some prawns....

...and some mussels.

Will was hungry...

...so we had a slice of pizza for lunch.

We said hello to some old friends...

...and met them again after they'd had a makeover.

I cooked some capsicums, garlic, bay leaves and onions with oil and smoked paprika...

...which came from a cheerful tin.

Felicity's talking, suicidal prawn amused Will with his constant refrain of "rip my head off!".

Some fish, browned chicken legs and browned chorizo went in the vegetables with the rice.

Some stock and saffron went in and it simmered for a bit before I added the mussels, prawns and pippies.

It was pretty good.

Shanghai City Restaurant

2010-09-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

Shanghai City is a small, cheap, noisy Northern Chinese restaurant in the Preston end of High Street that specialises in dumplings and hotpot. Half the walls in the restaurant are given over to bain-marie filled with all sorts of meats, fishes, vegetables, noodles and other stuff and the idea is to help yourself and cook what you will in a simmering pot of soup on the table. I'm not usually a fan of restaurant DIY, particularly when I have no idea of the etiquette, but the staff cheerfully explained the procedure and so we happily gave it a go.

Shanghai City Restaurant

We were given the choice between chicken soup, chili soup or a half-and-half pot that meant we could try both, and this we did.

The chicken soup was flavoured with some floating dried herbs, flowers and seed pods I couldn't identify, but it was comforting and perfect, given the wet, cold wind outside. The chili soup on the other hand was a rich red colour, with more chopped chili in every scoop than I would normally eat in a week. It wasn't as hot as it looked, but it was still very, very hot.

Soup to the left of me and soup to the right; here I am fishing around for some lamb

We cooked fishballs, beancurd, pork, cooked lamb, cabbage, dried mushrooms, bean shoots and glass noodles in the soups and tried a few of the dipping sauces. There's a wide selection, although the waitress wasn't sure what some of them were called in English so I can't tell you what they were. The chili sauce (more chili!) was roughly cut and hot, and I think it might have been the same stuff that went into the soup. There was a peanut sauce, possibly a garlic sauce and other mystery sauces, including a dark green one that Emily described as "salty and fishy and a bit ummmm".

The hotpot also came with some excellent spring onion pancakes which were flaky and crisp and a very generous plate of dumplings. These were glutinous with crisp, brown bottoms and filled with a juicy and rich pork mixture. The filling was unctuous - definitely cold weather food. They also have a range of other cooked dishes that don't require hotpotting and these looked pretty good for stuff in a bain-marie.

Spring Onion Pancakes. Crispy....

Now I'm no slouch when it comes to the old hot stuff, but I have never before eaten so much chopped chili. By the time we finished my bowl was almost half full of the chopped chili I hadn't eaten, and I suspect I ate at least the same amount.

Al cooks it

Shanghai City is a fun place to have a comfortable, if slightly messy, DIY hotpot. The staff are cheerful and helpful and the food is great (hey, it's not like I can fault the cooking...) and generous. It was about half-full of people when we arrived and although it only got busier, it was never too loud, even with the Chinese soap opera playing on the telly. And best of all, it's quite a lot of fun.

Cheese Club Nine - Bride of the Son of the Revenge of Cheese Club

2010-09-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Cheese Club returns for its ninth time, and frankly it was touch and go there for a few moments. A number of last minute withdrawals due to illness, morning sickness, hangovers and being in Malaysia (not all the same person) meant Team Cheese was a bit thin on the ground. This was exacerbated when co-host textileseahorse got bogged in the country rains and didn't arrive home until well after kick-off. Luckily, quality counts for much and I was joined by Eat Our Way stalwart essjay and Team Cheese star recruit, Dapper Del. So without a moment or skerrick of cheese to waste, let's hear from the cheese...

Holy Goat Batman! Let's put on our Batsuits and go rolling around in it!

Holy Goat Pandora - Holy liquid cheese, Batman! From the outside it looks like a lot of the other surface ripened, white mould goats cheeses (like this one) but on the inside it's something else all together. In fact, it's little more than a gooey, liquid cheese poured into a white mould tube cunningly disguised as something more solid. When I cut the top off ours, as if for a boiled egg, the texture inside was like a thin pouring cream with a small floating centre that hadn't quite ripened. Cutting the side resulted in a torrent of cheese that required bread to sop it up. Beyond the cream the flavour was slightly sweet with a little mushroom flavour and without any goat tang. A cheese that demands an audience.

Fromage de Meaux. Far, far better than a silk stocking full of shit

Fromage de Meaux - A cows' milk white moulder from Ile-de-France and like all great French cheeses, this Brie has a long and amusing history. Charlemagne praised Brie in the ninth century and it was dubbed "the King of Cheeses" by the diplomat Tallyrand (a man famously described by Napoleaon as "shit in a silk stocking") in the nineteenth. This was a lovely Brie, but not as intense or salty as some of the other French white-moulders we've had (such as the Brie de Nangis). A mild, rich flavour that's easy on the palate and doesn't require a whole lot of thinking. This is an introductory Brie, or perhaps a gateway Brie that leads the first-time taster to a life of crime to fund an obsession with the sterner stuff...

No, not "little monster"; Petit Munster. Same origin as "monastery"

Petit Munster - Not, as one might have been led to expect, a small monster, but instead a modest washed rind cheese from the Alsace. Although Munster is considered one of France's more smellier cheeses, this was the pocket-size model that don't have quite the same terrifying reputation as its large-wheel bigger brother. This is not an overwhelming washed-rind biological weapon, but is a beautiful cheese with a luscious, smooth texture and a balance of washed-rind stink and sweet cream. It doesn't have the yeast/Vegemite smell that some of its friends-and-relations do, but would be the perfect follow-on from the Brie on the path towards cheese dependancy.

Roy des Vallees, or we as like to call it, Master

Roy des Vallees - On the surface this appears to be a modest semi-hard cheese ball, about as big as a cantaloupe, made from sheep and goats milk in the Basque-Pyrenees. But its modest looks hide the fact that this cheese is a supervillain in a cardigan; one which DEMANDS TO BE DESCRIBED IN ALL-CAPS!! THIS IS A BLOODY MARVELOUS, RICH, NUTTY, CARAMEL FLAVOUR THAT LASTS ABOUT SIX MONTHS IN YOUR MOUTH! BOW BEFORE THE CHEESE, YOU COWERING, INSIGNIFICANT MORTALS FOR YOUR TIME HAS EXPIRED! THE TIME OF THE BIG CHEESE HAS ARRIVED AND YOU PUNY WALKING HUMAN SAUSAGES WILL BE RENDERED DOWN FOR TALLOW TO SERVE YOUR LACTIC OVERLORDS! BOW!

Sorry Cantal, you were nice but I was thinking about Roy...

Cantal - Cantal is semi-hard cow's milk cheese from Auvergne. It's texture was somewhere between a not-too-old Cheddar and a Gruyere - tight and smooth but with a dense flavour that has just a little sourness to balance the nuttiness. This suffered a little by following the Roy de Vallees, but stood proud when taken on its own the next day. At the time we all nodded and spoke highly of the Cantal, but secretly we are all thinking about the Roy...

Carles Roquefort

Carles Roquefort - The Lord knows I'm not a religious man, but every time when we finish Cheese Club with a soft, buttery blue cheese I can't help think that is How God Meant It To Be. All good things should end with blue cheese, and this would be a fine Roquefort to finish many things; a meal for example, or perhaps a long evening of wine, or even a life. Without getting onto the morbid subject of deathbed cheeses, this would have to be on the shortlist (although, to be fair, my shortlist has about 20 cheeses on it). Creamy yet tart with both a sheep's milk tang and a powerful blue punch, this is a noble and powerful cheese; the sort that looks imperiously down on you from the back of a horse. You don't argue with a cheese like this; you just don't.

Oh, and the mystery guest with the stripe? It's our old friend, Fin Briard aux Truffe

Pho Dzung

2010-09-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

So last night was a lot of fun but I did wake up feeling a just a trifle worse for wear. Even though I lounged around the house for most of the morning, rest was not enough and to properly shake this morning-after malaise only pho would suffice. So off we trotted to Preston.

Pho Dzung is in the Preston end of High Street and is a cheap, unassuming Vietnamese restaurant with a healthy buzz and fast turnover. Like all the best pho shops, this one has a picture of a smiling cow and chicken in the window (which always reminds of me of this).

Pho with rare beef and beef brisket

Not that buzz matters all that much - it's really all about the soup, and their pho ba is wonderful and restorative. The broth is rich, warm and fragrant with cinnamon and star anise; both the braised brisket and the rare beef slices were perfect; the noodles were as they should be; and the herbs and bean shoots were perfect to spark up the soup with both scent and crunch.

As long as the basics are right, the strength of a good pho is in the broth, and the broth here is just what the doctor ordered, or would have if he'd had any sense. He doesn't, of course. But if he did....

Voodoo Courtyard Cafe

2010-07-31T02:19:00.000-07:00

Voodoo is an unassuming cafe towards the lower third of Ruckers Hill but just higher than Separation Street. With plenty of places vying for the "eclectic" label (damn their eyes!), Voodoo manages to be eclectic but comfortable, chaotic to look at and yet still relaxed. Others try hard but Voodoo just does its thing, and its thing is a vaguely Chinese look with lots of rich reds and gold framed mirrors and a comprehensive collection of what at Eat Our Way like to call "crap" - knick-knacks, curios, carvings and tchotchkes.

The Voodooistas are as charming as charming gets, well before charming gets weird.

Vegie breakfast

The "Grazer" vegetarian breakfast was couple of perfectly poached eggs on a disappointingly fluffy half-bun but the spinach and mushrooms were as good as you'd like them. The grilled tomato had an unexpected spicy sheen which caught me unawares - lovely by all means but far hotter than its modest look suggested. Will's chicken sandwich was pretty good too (as far as sandwiches go) - the chicken had just been grilled and the bread was better than my fluffy stuff. Full marks for the coffee!

Voodoo also has a tiny, narrow but very green courtyard out the back where we've enjoyed a lazy breakfast before. All in all a keeper.

What?

Maize

2010-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Maize is in the Thornbury Village section of High Street and is pretty typical of the small cafe/breakfast spots everywhere between Westgarth and Preston. Their menu is long and their coffee is good and they (like so many of their peers along High Street) pride themselves on using words like "organic" and "spelt" and "wholegrain". All good and all worthy.

Some bits of this morning's breakfast were pretty good and worthy too. The cheesy scrambled eggs in particular were creamy, cheesy and light, although there was far too much for me. But this dish was, allegedly, huevos rancheros. Described as scrambled eggs with sausage and a tomato salsa, I'd expected it to come with a tortilla, not a couple of slices of damp wholegrain bread. The sausage was sliced kranksy (or sim), well grilled and nice enough. The tomato salsa, alas, turned out to be diced tomato with a few chives. Not in the slightest bit Mexican and not even in the most subtle way was it spiced. All in all this was scrambled eggs, sausage and diced tomato and I was disappointed.

Huevos Rancheros? Nope

There's lots of competition for breakfast along here, and Maize didn't stand out as anything special. And I still want huevos rancheros...

Cafe Troy

2010-07-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

Cafe Troy makes kebabs. Good kebabs. Kebabs on Turkish bread rather than wrapped in flat bread. Lots of lamb. Just enough garlic sauce that isn't overpowering. A little bit of chili if you want. Great kebabs. Did I say that already? The pides are ok too, but the doner kebab is fantastic. Great kebabs. I could go on...

Great kebab... Did I say that already?

Cafe Troy is only on High Street in a metaphorical and otherwise untrue sense. In the real world it's on the corner of Nicholson and Pigdon Streets in North Carlton.

Cheese Club Eight - Night of the Living Curds

2010-07-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

The gear

When a barman knows your name it's probably time to reflect on your life so far and wonder if the next few years should be quite as well lubricated as the last few (which, when you think about it, have gone past in a bit of a blur). I was having similar thoughts earlier in the week when Parma at the cheese shop not only recognised me but called me by name. Yes, I realise that I know her name as well, but that doesn't really make it any better.

Two of the Cheese Club 7

Nevertheless, Cheese Club carries on and, like my cholesterol levels, is ever growing. This month the Cheese Club crew grew to seven, so there was no shortage of opinions and definitely no shortage of wine. Team Cheese was textile seahorse, Tom, Francesca, Dandy, Scott, Eat our Way stalwart Elisabeth and myself. The challenge was facing six Italian cheeses with no assistance except for some wine, bread, cornichons and a few biscuits.

Revolutionary biscuits of Italy,
Rise up out of your box,
You have nothing to lose but your wafers
Yum, yum, yum.

(Alexei Sayle)

Two more of the Cheese Club 7

So without further ado, and definitely without any further revolutionary poetry, we begin...

Occell- Tuma dia Paja - like the Easter Show, but flatter

Occelli Tuma dia Paja - This is a humorously flat, striped white-moulder that looks like a Camembert that was sat on by a pig wearing corduroy. The texture was soft like a perfectly ripened Brie but not as dense, while the flavour was mild and rural. Scott described this as "smelling like the Easter Show" - a mixture of hay and farm animals, not surprising given these are ripened on straw. It's made from milk from cows, goats, sheep, ducks, sparrows and... sorry, got carried away there... No duck or sparrow milk, but it does have cow and goat, and the sheep milk was clearly evident. A very good cheese to eat before getting down to the real business of eating cheese.

Ribiola de Grotto - the 1960 station wagon of packaging

Ribiola di Grotto - The most surprisingly packaged cheese I've seen yet. Wrapped like a bar of soap and then a layer of thin wood laminate on top and bottom, it looks like the lactic equivalent of an 1960's woody station wagon. A washed rind, cow's milk, this is one of the best washed -rinders I've tasted in a while. The texture was perfectly smooth with the slight crunch of salt(?) crystals while the flavour was salty and creamy but balanced with the bright orange pungency. Described as "excellent drinking cheese", as each salty bite needed a mouthful of wine.

Occelli crutin tartufo

Occelli crutin tartufo - Regular readers might get the impression we've gone a little truffle-mad here at Eat our Way Up High Street and honestly, it's hard to argue otherwise. This is a cylinder of truffle infused, semi-hard cheese made from cow and goats milk and it left us all reeling. Crumbly, and without the truffle it would be a nice enough - medium fat with a goat tang to finish with. With the truffle though... Phroaghhhhh.... Like a boardroom in a 1980's advertising agency, we passed the plate around from nose to nose, snorting deeply and talking rubbish, such was the intensity of the aroma. Somebody said, "Christmas in July!" Truffles really need fat to help spread the love, and truffle-in-cheese can be even better than the otherwise madcap truffle butter. Pecorino with truffles has been a favourite for a while, but the Occelli is its glorious, scented peer.

Sovrano

Sovrano - a hard cooked cheese from Lombardy made from cow and buffalo milk. A slice from a much larger (35kg) wheel, this is a lovely, pale coloured hard cheese with a bright, slightly sweet flavour. It has a slight crystalline crunch and a long, rich finish balanced with a little tartness (but not too much). This was a hearts-and-minds cheese - a lovely hard cheese for shaving that's not so intense that it can't be used with reckless abandon (and you know how much we love reckless abandon).

Pasti with crumblepaste. Weird.

Pasti - Another hard cooked cheese, this one quite a bit more intense than the Sovrano. It was a much darker, almost orange colour and had a flavour was deep and complex - rich and buttery but with esters that emphasise tropical fruit fragrances. Very intense and crumbly but with an odd textural finish. There were a few awkward moments as we looked at each other wondering, "am I the only one?" but it was consistent for all of us. The cheese 'clumped' and stuck in lumps to our back teeth. Nothing a cleansing raisin or bit of bread wouldn't fix, but disconcerting nonetheless. An intense success, but don't say I didn't warn you about that finish...

Erborinato

Erborinato - A cow's milk cheese attacked with all sorts of wonderful infection, being both a washed-rind and a blue-moulder. This was a cute, fist-sized cylinder with a cute, fist-sized punch. Soft, but the smooth, creamy soft of a washed rind cheese rather than a buttery blue. I can imagine the battle between the blue mould and the orange mould could leave large tracts of land uninhabitable with fall-out, but this cheese brings them together in a controlled way, balancing the competing forces into something pretty special. The blue is intense but it's a broad intensity, like a punch in the head, rather than a scalpel-scythe to the palate.

Another great moment in Cheese Club history.

Cedar Bakery

2010-07-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Outside

Cedar Bakery makes Lebanese 'pizzas' and pastries and is also the largest Lebanese supermarket within a lazy bike ride from home. We know them fairly well - weekend lunches are often a few of their joyous pizzas, and if you need dried apricot paste in a sheet this is the place to go in Thornbury/Preston. They also have a huge range of Mediteranian stuff - olives, nuts, cabbage rolls, oils etc and also do roast lamb for events.

Hard to get excited by a photo of a supermarket, I know...

On this day we ordered four pizzas (they're quite small) - two lamb, one herb and sesame and a salami. The lamb is literally just a thin spread of very finely minced lamb on soft, thin bread spiced with lemon juice and chili; the herb was almost overpowering in a resinous way; and the salami was lovely, although a bit too much haloumi (or W calls it, "squeeky cheese") for my liking. The lamb pizza is the standout - just perfect.

A nice place to pick up a cheap and easy Saturday lunch, and to wonder whether next time we might get some take-away cabbage rolls. A modest highlight on High Street, but a highlight nonetheless.

Lamb (Lahem Bil Ajine); herb and sesame; and salami with squeeky cheese -
make sure you fold the lamb in half

C-Culture & Achillion Cakes

2010-07-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing with our new-found Preston joy, C-Culture is a jaunty Chinese BBQ and seafood restaurant in the northern climes. Despite its stupid name, we spent a lovely Friday night there and we ate far, far too much protein, although that says as much about the way I like to spend Friday night than it does about anything else.

Looks

C-Culture (I cringe as I type that name) is large by High Street standards and was boisterous with families, couples and groups of all shapes and sizes, like a low-rent Benetton commercial peopled with people instead of models. Although not pretty to look at, the decor is not offensive and the noise levels are rambunctious rather than painful. Best of all, hanging in the window are a picture-show of red-ruby ducks, golden chickens and bits of pig so beautiful I almost cried.

Having seen such beauty it was impossible to resist the lure of the hangings, and so we ate very, very high on the food chain.

We started with prawn spring rolls and a quarter of a soy-sauce chicken from the window. The spring rolls were little more than simple, roughly chopped prawns in a cigar wrapper with almost nothing but the flavour of the prawns, while the chicken was moist and beautiful.

We ordered six main courses (for seven, including children), which was probably one too many. Being enamored with the window-hangings, we tried the crispy-skin roast pork belly which was absolutely fucking perfect, although as regular readers will know (sorry about the swearing Mum!) my views on pork are generous and can't be trusted, especially if you happen to be Muslim or Jewish.

The prawn omelet was pretty good and the mixed vegetables with Chinese mushrooms and tofu was, well, as you'd expect it. I'm usually a fan of Ye Olde Tofu And Veg, but we had so much animal protein that tofu seemed a bit, well, "disappointing", he said, in a faintly patronising way. The duck was not from the window, but was cooked much the same as our local take-away "Duck and Chinese mushrooms", which is to say it was nice, but I'm prepared to let the word "nice" just hang there...

Everything except the girl (and the barramundi)

Being billed as a seafood restaurant, we had a whole steamed barramundi with ginger and green onions and pippies in XO and chili sauce. The barramundi was steamed perfectly although with the slightly odd, soapy flavour that barra sometimes has. The pippies were, on the whole, wonderful, a few were still sandy (which is always a bit of a shock) and the sauce was a bit too thick, but not so bad that I didn't eat almost all of them myself.

Despite sounding like a nasty pathology procedure, C-Culture is a better-than-average Melbourne suburban Chinese restaurant. It does its own roast pork and chickens, which in my mind automatically elevates them, and is a perfect place for a casual family dinner.

This is how I like to spend a Friday night - with extended family, in a relaxed yet bustling room that offers food that everyone loves and makes all feel welcome. C-Culture is not a place to dress up for (although the local B-Boys had clearly made an effort), and it's not a place to invite your gastrosexual friends, but is a place to relax and wonder about the many and glorious ways of the pig.

I've previously reminisced about our family tradition of following great Chinese food with European cakes, and tonight, having parked the car outside a Greek bakery, we walked in those sweetened footsteps.

Greek cakes!!!

Many people make the mistake of assuming that Greek desserts like Baklava and Galaktoboureko are made by pouring an almost infinite quantity of syrup over pastries of various sorts, but this is to overlook the exquisite balance and pitch-perfect judgment required.

There is a fine line between insufficient syrup and too much, and Greek pastry chefs must walk this path, wide as a hair's breadth, every working day. Like the famed fugu chefs of Japan, they are well-trained because they, too, skirt the shores of death. Too little syrup and the diner will fail to encounter the famed glucose hallucinations; the "sugar-fairy" visions and the sucrose equivalent of the other side. Too much syrup, of course, and the diner instantly slips into a diabetic coma and death quickly follows.

Greek desserts - choices, choices....

On this night the masters at Achillion cakes judged them perfectly, and after the blissful visions and after the shadow of death was lifted, all that remained were aching teeth.

A Lunchtime Walk through the Preston end of High Street

2010-07-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Today saw a short jaunt to High Street in Preston to drop off F's sewing machine at the sewing machine shop for its annual lube job and a new set of piston rings.

While there we collected menus for a number of enticing restaurants, predominately Chinese and Vietnamese and visited the most extraordinarily crappy $2 shop. We also dropped into the oddly-named "Bread Top". Bread Top is a franchise that specialises in asian-style buns - the sort that always look beautifully presented and taste, well, unexpected and usually sweet. Having seen Bread Top pop up around Melbourne's CBD, and often having wondered about the food, we did a test run.

Clockwise from top left - sausage inna bun, strawberry cream bun, bamboo charcoal bun, raisin brioche, custard tart and chicken puff

It was pretty much what I expected. Unnervingly sweet, they all look perfect and beautiful, although in a slightly unsettling way. Oh well, we live and learn. On the other hand, I got a good price on both a Jesus and a Ganesh.

Jesus and Ganesh; window buddies

Noodle Kingdom

2010-07-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

"When beetles
fight these battles
in a bottle
with their paddles
and the bottle's
on a poodle
and the poodle's
eating noodles...

...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle."

(from Fox in Sox by Dr Seuss)

It is our first foray to the North end of High Street, in Preston, and we do it without a noodle-eating poodle. Although regulars at the Preston Market, we haven't tried any of the increasing number of restaurants nearby in High Street, so Noodle Kingdom is the beginning of something new for us. Oh, the places we'll go....

Noodle Kingdom is a modern, bright and wonderfully chaotic room off a bright and wonderfully chaotic section of The Street Previously Named. Noodles are hand-made by a noodle hand-maker who sits in his noodle-booth near the noodle-window, and my word, they are wonderful (noodles).

Emmy and I ordered well-noodled noodle soups (with noodles) - mine was the Lanzhou beef soup, Em's a wanton wonton soup. W dumpled.

The beef soup was simple and fragrant - a wintry warm, rich and scented broth with sweet aniseed-like spices and firm, poodle-free noodles that were fun that was funny. It was adoringly adorned with slices of beef brisket that were melt-in-the mouth tender and would have been lapped up by any self-respecting lap poodle.

Em's wontons were wantonly wonderful - juicy pork flavoured with ginger; far better than fish-in-a-pot. Both dishes were served in enormous and staggering Horton-sized bowls. The dumplings, pot stickers, were less wonderful but still fine.

Like reading Dr Seuss to a five-year old, Noodle Kingdom is a simple but cheerfully boisterous experience. Getting your tongue around these hand-made poodle-free noodles is easier than reading Fox in Sox and just as rewarding.

Chateau Yering (or Brillat-Savarin Gets Quite Excited in the Yarra Valley)

2010-06-27T03:20:00.000-07:00

Monster Truffle!!!

“Whoever says “truffles” utters a great word which arouses erotic and gastronomic memories among the skirted sex, and memories gastronomic and erotic among the bearded sex."

Well %$#@ me silly and call me a mushroom, but Brillat-Savarin was on to something here (said the author as a beardy member of the bearded sex).

"This ... is due to the fact that the noble tuber is not only considered delicious to the taste, but is also believed to foster powers the exercise of which is extremely pleasurable.”

My word, is it hot in here? Anyway, last weekend we tested the power of these noble tubers at the 2010 Truffle Degustation lunch at Chateau Yering in the Yarra Valley. Chateau Yering's restaurant is a long, formal room with windows on all sides overlooking the Valley, and was a perfect setting for a grossly extravagant lunch. It was made even perfect-er because wines were provided by Domain Chandon, Moet and Chandon's southern offshoot.

The first real course was an Amuse Bouche (which is a French expression for "one who finds the Mighty Boosh amusing, but not particularly laugh-out-loud funny") of a Parmesan panne cotta with a noodle of truffle jelly. At the first spoon the warm, rich, underground scent of truffles was bursting out, and the panne cotta was creamy and resplendent with fat. Fantastic, and it went down a treat with the Chandon Brut 2006.

An amusing boosh

“It is safe to say that at the time of writing (1825), the fame of the truffle is at its zenith. Nobody dares admit to having been present at a meal which did not include a single truffled dish. However good in itself an entrée may be, it makes a poor show if it is not garnished with truffles."

Our entree met this criteria handsomely - it was a Persian feta cigar, made of brik pastry and filled with Yarra Valley Dairy feta and served with a salad of shaved beetroot and truffles. The cigar was lovely but not particularly worthy of words, but the salad was a crisp disappointment. Both the beetroot and truffles had a nice enough crunch but not a lot of flavour. Shame, but the benchmark had already been set pretty high. This came with a Chandon Brut Rose 2006.

Yarra Valley Dairy Persian Feta Cigar. Can I get you a light?

Having been brought a little way back to Earth, we were quickly elevated again with the next course - a potato and truffle ravioli with salsify, wild mushrooms and a nasturtium coulis. A single ravioli, stacked up and filled with potato foam had the potential to be a ball of fluff and nothing, but was soft, unctous and bursting with the magic scent of our deep-down friends, both tuberous and fungal. The pasta was, of course, perfect and its gay, verdant sauce was just verging on the underwhelming. Otherwise, wow.

Potato and Truffle Ravioli

And now onto the almost main course - squab roasted in liquorice, with a parsnip puree, truffle bread and butter pudding and violet emulsion. Let's dispense with the violet emulsion - it was an intensely floral foam, and in decades previous would have been used for washing your gran's hair. Nevermind - everything else was slightly magical. The squab was tender and the spicing was perfect, and the small cubes of bread and butter pudding were crisp on the edges and soft within. I could have eaten a pile of these. This came with a 2008 Chandon Pinot Noir.

Squab (and scented foam, alas)

Finally, the dish I'd been waiting for - a charcoal grilled wagyu beef fillet with a white onion puree, bone marrow jus and a Jerusalem artichoke gallette. This was the ultimate winter dish - beautifully coloured and browned winter root vegetables with a piece of perfect, tender pink beef with a thin sheen of charcoal to get the bitterness *just* right. The beef was beyond belief and the vegetables were heart-warmingly generous. This was a perfect way to finish the real (ie non-sugar) part of the meal, and although not strong in truffles, it neither needed them or would have been improved by them. Served with gusto and a glass of the same (or at least a 2006 Domain Chandon Barrel Selection Yarra Valley Shiraz).

Beef on a plate

Beef up close and deeply personal

Dessert was a Banana and Truffle Semifreddo. It was, quite frankly, beyond amazing. The truffles really worked well with the earthyness of the banana and the whole effect was lush and sensual. It was also wrapped in a cute ribbon of firm maple jelly, which failed to give it a "Hello Kitty" effect and so can be forgiven.

Banana and truffle semifreddo

Brillat-Savarin tells the tale of a woman “who is witty but unpretentious, virtuous but no prude, and for whom love is now only a pleasant memory.” In the story, the woman dines with her husband and his friend, described as “harmless”. The husband is called away, and after a truffle-fuelled meal, the friend metamorphoses from complimentary to expansive to affectionate to tender to importunate. Ever after she ate truffles with a sense of deep mistrust.

Not making a gesture

I know what you're thinking, but I'm far too much of a gentleman to say. Nor will I be photographed making gestures. To change the subject quickly, I''l leave the final words to Brillat-Savarin, who clearly thought of himself as a voice of authority:

“It only remains for us to discover whether the truffle is indigestible. Our answer will be in the negative. This official and final decision …”

No, I didn't think so either, but I'm not sure I can sound so definitive. Or official.

Waiting for dessert

Unicorn - The Other White Meat

2010-06-22T04:57:00.000-07:00

After having read this story there were a few moments there that I was really getting excited by an inspiring recipe using an exotic ingredient which, apparently, is "an excellent source of sparkles". I've never eaten unicorn before, although I've had Mock Unicorn a few times, and once eaten Dugong, which was distressingly wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that at the time of tasting I was beginning to see the causal chain between "delicious" and "endangered".

Alas, it turns out that unicorn is not "The Other White Meat"... That honour belongs to Eat Our Way's favourite animal, the pork-beast. Oh glorious pig...

The official apology for any confusion can be found here.

Cheese Club Seven - Whey to go, dude!

2010-06-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

Friday night was Cheese Club night, and on this night we shared it with Suzanne, aka essjay, some lovely wine, the usual accompaniments and were aided by a copy of French Cheeses by Kazuko Masui and Tomoko Tamada (which we will return shortly, promise). As Cheese Club goes, this was heavy on the semi-hard and hard cheeses and with a preponderance of Appellation d'Origine Controlee cheeses. AOC, for those who don't know, is a French expression translating roughly as "we know where it came from because it says so on the label". This edition of Cheese Club was an intense, high-powered occasion with some strident flavours wearing the gastronomic equivalents of shoulder pads and power suits, and was joined with some vin-not-so-ordinaire, including a jolly 2005 Curly Flat Pinot Noir. Noice.

Saint Mercellin. Think you're a tough guy, eh?

Saint Marcellin - Superficially, this comes from the same family as the Saint Felicien we've previously loved. But this is the younger brother - the one with short-guy Napoleon complex. Like the Saint Felicien, it comes in its own ashtray and looks like its skin is the only thing holding it together. Underneath, however, it's aching for a fight and is ready to punch you in the face before running away and taunting you from *just* outside striking distance. Like the best French cheeses, it comes with a legend involving a bear, a future King, two woodsmen and a particle accelerator (OK, so I made up the last bit) but the legend is more than 500 years old and so can be described as "venerable". The cheese is smooth and thin-creamy like the Felicien, but has a much stronger and intrusive flavour.

Agour Pur Chevre

Agour Pur Chevre - This has the lovely white, near-translucency of a semi-hard goat's cheese and is from the Basque Pyrenees in France. Amazingly nutty and smooth, almost-hard texture with just the barest whisker of crystalline crunch. If it wasn't for the ivory colour, I would have assumed this was cow's milk. Nutty and smooth like a cooked curd cheese, but with a lighter finish. Lovely.

Comte heaven

Will Studd Select Comte (AOC) - This is a Gruyere of mighty power and lusciousness and is the most popular of all cheeses in France (I read it in a book so it must be true). It's a Gruyere, so it's smooth and a bit nutty, but this one was stratospherically luscious, moist and sweet as well. The flavour had a slight caramel and the texture was as smooth as a very smooth thing that was having a particularly smooth day. Fondue heaven awaits, and it's not in the back seat of a limo - it's in a slice of this.

Heidi Tilsit - relax...

Heidi Tilsit - This is a Tasmanian semi-hard washed rind cheese of cow's milk. In previous editions of Cheese Club, I've mocked Heidi as various Swiss cheeses have come up, but I haven't actually had a cheese named after the lass herself. This is much more of a soft, elastic cheese than most Swiss-style cheeses, and although it has a rich flavour with a nice follow-up tang, it just didn't come together as well as some of the others. A good cheese, to be sure, but on this night we tasted so many similar cheeses that were much more intense and exciting. The RHCL tasting notes talk about a wet-hay flavour, and who am I to argue? But equally, who am I to care?

Abondance. &^%$ yeah.

Abondance (AOC) - From the same family as the Comte, another mountain cheese. This one's made from raw cow's milk, so in theory (according to Quarantine), this one should taste of instant lactic death. While many of the cheeses in this family look pretty similar, this one has distinctive concave sides and it is obviously a drier cheese than the others. Of the four semi/hard fondue-style cheeses, this is far and away the most intense, with less nutty-smoothness and more a vigorous tang. This is a sharp and big, pointed cheese which should be approached with caution and much respect.

Blue de Laqueuille

Bleu de Laqueuille (AOC) - When I was growing up there were (as far as I can remember) about three different types of cheeses. One of them was a blue cheese, and it tasted remarkably like the Laqueuille, although it was called "Danish Blue". This is a lovely cow's milk blue cheese that has soft and rich paste without being buttery and can still crumble, and a strong but not frightening degree of blue mould. Not quite the blue cheese of my childhood, but a lot like it.

Baccala al Prezzemolo

2010-06-13T01:22:00.000-07:00

This recipe is a long-time favourite from Elizabeth Romer's "The Tuscan Year", and attributed to her friend (and subject of the book) Silvana. It takes a bit of preparation and time but not a lot of effort - it's a good one for the weekend.

Baccala

It always feels slightly ridiculous to pay more for baccala than for most kinds of fresh fish but it should be no great surprise. After all, prior to refrigeration a lot more effort was required to make sure fish could be kept for the innumerable Catholic fasting days (which, for Fridays at least, are still recommended).

Cod was plentiful through the middle ages, but not everywhere and not throughout the whole year, so for many centuries baccala was a major source of Friday protein. Baccala can safely be eaten during Lent without fear of The Man Upstairs Who Could Visit You With Plague And Could Do Scary Stuff With Lightning, so for most of history, baccala was what you ate when you were doing penance or abstinence. It is to fresh fish what ham is to pork - a means of once tiresome preservation, no longer required but still desired for its flavour.

Ingredients

Pellegrino Artusi, the nineteenth century author of La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well) managed his reader's expectations by telling them not to expect too much of baccala, and that seems to have been the spirit of the times. Like going to Church, it was dead boring but you did it because you had to. Artusi actually says at the end of his recipe for Baccala Fritto, "If ... you still find this to be an inferior dish, it is your fault for wanting to try it." So, having dampened your enthusiasm, why not try this wonderful dish? The fish has a dense, almost chewy texture and soft, creamy-fish flavour.

Layered fish and potatoes

So, the recipe.

1kg or so of baccala. Whatever you do, remember baccala's the salty one - don't try and use stockfish which have been mummified instead of salted.
500-700g potatoes
an onion
half a bunch of parsley
olive oil
a few ripe tomatoes

The day before, take the fillets of baccala and soak them in a lot of water for a day. Change the water a couple of times - there's a shirt-load of salt in them and things will get nasty if you don't. Gently simmer the fish in just enough water to cover for about 30 minutes and cool in the liquid. Flake the fish (removing the bones) but not too finely. Chop the parsley finely.

Hmmmmm....

Thinly slice the potatoes and the onion, and in a heavy casserole lubed up with olive oil, make layers of potato, fish, onion, parsley, anointing each layer with a drizzle of olive oil and a grind of pepper. Drizzle a little (a few tablespoons only) of the liquid the fish was cooked over the top and then add the sliced tomatoes. Stick into the oven for an hour or so until the potatoes are soft and have absorbed the flavours of the fish, onion and parsley. Fragrant and comforting - not a grand and pretentious dinner, but a warm and friendly dish for a cold winter weekend.

Anada Bar & Restaurant

2010-06-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

A sign!

I know it appears our devotion to High Street waxes and wanes, and I know that Anada is technically not on High Street. It is, however, on the same tram route as High Street, and the very same tram (Route 86, for the Melbournians) that takes us from home to work every day passes Anada. That's damn close to close enough for us to meet our mission statement, so we'll treat it as being in the general purview of High Street. (See that? I wrote "mission statement" without vomiting!)

Inside

Anada is a small Spanish restaurant with a menu of tapas and raciones (which are, basically, big tapas) in the short, sexy segment of Gertrude St in Fitzroy. I booked an hour or two before (we were skiving from an official Event) and we were offered an early sitting. I was a bit concerned about being rushed given recent experience, but I will generally crawl naked over broken glass for great Spanish food and a glass of fine fino sherry so we pressed ahead. Luckily the evening we were not rushed, no-one was required to go tackle-out and broken glass was not involved.

We snacked high on the food chain and the souls of many dear, departed woodland creatures and their seaside brothers were dispatched in the interests of.. well... yum, basically. We ate:

Calamari

Barbecued and stuffed calamari with sumac - these were tiny and wee, with a softly-scented fragrant filling. Cooked perfectly - we ordered a second.

Salt cod and garlic shoot croqueta - I'm a sucker for salt cod (more of which in the coming weeks) and salt cod croquettes are one of those favourites that I could never be bothered making myself. In this case they were crisp on the outside and creamy-smooth on the inside - almost too creamy-smooth, like custard. Nice, but not outstanding like so many of the other dishes.

Rabbit empanadilla - Yum! Perfect light pastry crunch with meaty filling that had the subtle game-like smell of pounced bunny with a gentle sweet spice (cinnamon?).

Sweet little quail

Grilled quail with frekeh and pomegranate salad - Another that we ordered twice. The quail was juicy, charcoaled goodness, although was probably cooked slightly longer than it needed, but the salad was gorgeous. F, who has no qualms about noshing sweet little birdies (despite the plaintive looks of the woman at the local butcher's shop), and who generally turns up her nose at the word "salad", rated the salad on par with the quail. Wow.

Even the salt was pretty

Crumbed lambs brains with pork belly red lentils -The crumb was large-grained and perfectly crisp and the brains were as rich as brains should be. The highlight was the balance between the lushness of the brains and the (what I think was) sauce of bread and sherry vinegar. I could be wrong on the sauce, but not on the strength of this dish.

Serrano Jamon

Serrano Jamon - This was paper-thin and almost melted in our mouths. The flavour was perfect - just enough salt to balance the dry ham while still being joyfully fatty enough to melt away.

Beetroot and mint salad with labne - A lovely foil to the some of the more rich dishes.

Eating pork belly

Pork belly with fennel seeds - see that expression up there? That was the pork belly. The skin was light and crunchy while I could have eaten the meat with a teaspoon it was so soft and unctuous... The almost licorice-flavour of the fennel was pronounced but not overpowering while the lusciousness of the meat and fat was almost overwhelming. Now, I confess that I'm a big pig fan, but this was something else. Extraordinary.

All in all a huge success. The service was fabulous (despite the time pressures); the food was brilliant and the atmosphere, even in a packed restaurant where we sat very closely to our neighbours, was intimate. The service was wonderful and attentive without being weird; the room was intimate without being perverse and both the noise and the light was low. We felt welcomed. We'll go back, but we'll take others with us to share.

Pizza Meine Liebe

2010-06-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

With wonderful English understatement, Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason once described the months before the band tore themselves apart in a whirlwind of mutual loathing with the sentence, "things got so bad, someone almost said something." And that's how we felt about Pizza Meine Liebe and why we won't be going back.

Pizza Meine Liebe is a few doors up from the brilliant Estelle, and has a plain but inviting front room surrounding its pizza oven. It looks like a suburban pizza shop from 1980 set in a shopfront from the 1960's, which is obviously very Northcote, what with nostalgia having only been invented in 1952.

Outside

We'd been told over the phone that they had two sittings and we booked for an earlier sitting, knowing we wouldn't be able to linger. That should have been ok.

Only once before on High Street had we been told we were booking in the earlier of two sittings and that was at Otsumami. Our experiences couldn't have been more different. At Otsumami we never felt rushed; we were served quickly but not once did we feel under any pressure to order or to eat faster. At Pizza Meine Liebe, however, we felt continually pressured to order, to eat and to leave. We were not even half way through our pizza when we were asked if we wanted dessert. We declined.

We ordered four pizzas, a truffle-paste-and-potato pizza that was resplendent with the heady scent of the great black stuff; another with potato, caramelised onion and Taleggio (which was beautiful); one with mozzarella, mushrooms and rocket; and something called a superMario which, although generous with anchovies, was not nearly as interesting as the ingredient list had suggested. The bases were lovely - just thin enough and chewy with puffy edges and the toppings erred on the side of excess.

The truffle and mushroom paste one

A pear, walnut and fetta salad was alright. Nothing more to say. The wine list was short but good and we had a bottle of breezy sangiovese.

The service wasn't rude, but it was perfunctory and focused on getting us out of the door. Pizza Meine Liebe was also, without question, the noisiest place we've been to on High Street and the volume was, frankly, unbearable.

The mushroom one

It's a shame, really. Pizza Meine Liebe makes good pizzas that compare well to its neighbours, although it's nowhere near the best in the area. Both I Saluti and Pizza Farro are on par, with Pizza Farro being better than Pizza Meine Liebe, but both have the bonus of welcoming service and not feeling like you're in cattle class. At Pizza Meine Liebe I felt like just another inconvenient customer gumming up the efficient operations of a restaurant.

Of course, if you don't mind going a little further to North Fitzroy, Supermaxi is in a different class altogether. Their pizzas are a little better but their other dishes are suburb and the service, even in a place so busy, was excellent.

Pizza meine liebe? Nein danke.

Brillat-Savarin and the very bonnest of mots

2010-06-03T05:14:00.001-07:00

A small divertissement, if you will be so kind as to indulge me.

This week I’ve been reading Brillat-Savarin’s “The Philosopher in the Kitchen” and it’s wonderful. I have a modest passion for the history of cooking and attitudes towards food and I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, but F dropped a copy in my lap and it’s been good cheer ever since.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote at a time when hyphens were plentiful and Napoleon was fading from memory. He was a lawyer and a politician, a violin player and teacher. His legend was written with the release of his “The Physiology of Taste” and dashed when he became the spiritual leader of Iron Chef.

It’s fun in the twenty-first century to read Brillat-Savarin and to savour the gap between his world and ours. For example, he offers a typology of gourmands which elevates the love of food to something close to deity. Some of us are doomed to be denied the pleasures of the (cooked) flesh, whilst others are born to lustfully enjoy oral (and gastronomical) sensual pleasures. To quote the man, “I believe in innate tendencies.” You either have it or you don’t.

Savarin (the cake, not the man)
photo by flickr user open-arms

The revolution is clearly long gone in France by the time Brillat-Savarin writes, and for him a man must be measured by his birthright (and his inherited assets). You can either enjoy the culinary arts with a pleasure that glides from the curves of velvety sensuality to the apex of fiery lust, or you can eat shit and die like a peasant. Are you with us, or do you smell like a turd in a barn? Anyone who calls financiers “the heroes of gourmandism” did not live in the same century as Macquarie Bank or Goldman Sachs.

Brillat-Savarin’s taxonomy of gourmands suggests his higher thoughts were well and truly taxed. Gourmands were born, and these could be spotted at a distance by their “ unusually acute perception of certain sensations” and a passion that “acts on the muscles… and… leaves visible traces, and so give a permanent and recognizable character to the physiognomy.”

Indeed, those predestined to be gourmands are “generally of medium height; they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips, and well-rounded chins.” Except, of course, for the women who love sweet things, for they, “have finer features, a more delicate air, neater figures, and above all, a very special way with their tongues.” Nurse!

Of course, those who “refused an aptitude for the pleasures of taste, have long faces, noses and eyes, whatever their height”… I’ve got a bad feeling that could be describing me.

In any event, Mr Brie has been a jolly good read and there’s much I want to share, cut into fat slices as befits a nineteenth century gentleman and gourmand, so over the next few weeks I’m going to dip into the old Jean-Anthelme Yeast-Cake and pull out some of the bonnest of mots. Bon appetite!

Rillettes de porc

2010-05-29T01:28:00.000-07:00

Roasted garlic for roast lamb

In the spirit of posting something, but still not having eaten on High Street for a bit, I offer you the following visual evidence of food. Yes, I'm sure you've seen food before, but this is what it looks like in our house. Or at least what it looks like when it's worth getting the camera out...

So in the last post I was making quince jelly. It's now finished, jarred up and being eaten rapidly. We swapped a jar for Emma's quince paste, which was equally magnificent.

Quince jelly

I had a crack at making rillettes de porc for the first time in mmmyears. Next time I'm going to be the bunny and try rabbit rillettes - the pork was lovely (and I love pork) but this pig richness needs some rabid wildness for balance.

Pork, garlic, salt, pepper and bay leaves

The recipe is from the big orange book. A kilo and a bit of pork belly is skinned and chopped into pieces, and is then rubbed with about a tablespoon of salt and put in the fridge overnight. Dump into a heavy casserole with a couple of cloves of garlic, some thyme, bay leaves and pepper. *Just* cover with water and a lid and put into a slow oven for a couple of hours. Drain, taste for salt, shred, add the liquid back and pack into bowls or ramekins. Seal with a kiss and with lard. Eat with cornichons, crusty bread or toast and a glass of vin ordinaire. Have cholesterol tested. Panic.

porc de rillettes

Hopefully there'll be some more posting about High Street food soon.

Home Cooking is Killing Fast Food

2010-05-17T04:51:00.000-07:00

Well, despite the objections of George, Madonna, Adam and Kylie et al, we continue to indulge in home cooking. Although we suffer constant threats of legal action from the restaurant industry we soldier on in the face of starving artists. Yes, I understand that every meal I cook at home is taking money out of the mouths of desperately thin restaurateurs and critics, and yet somehow I continue to live with myself. We shopped hard at Preston Market on Saturday and we enjoyed every moment. Relentlessly.

I'm not ashamed to say that this week we went nuts. We ate like champions. We snacked high on the food chain and when we looked down, we sneered. Like a God-like hungry caterpillar, we chomped our way through the lesser beings, one after another, and then we stood triumphant, slightly moist and quite salty, but we had devoured all before us.

On Saturday we ate oysters

We ate oysters with Guinness and bread

Later, okra was involved

...in a prawn curry

The prawn curry was directly copied from a Television Production as aired the night before. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped - it ended up with too much tamarind and its fruity sourness was just a little too clever and not charming enough. And it was very, very brown.

But on Sunday night we had fish. Easy fish, because it was Sunday, but good fish, because it was flatheat. It was easy (as mentioned) and fried in a batter that included spices I really can't remember but look quite pretty in the photo.

On Sunday we made batter...

...for flathead. It was good.

On Monday we had veal. There aren't any photos, but it still happened. And then on Tuesday we had beans with speck and some German smoked sausages. They were fantastic. Mr 15yo had been nagging since the weekend, and with just cause.

...and beans on Tuesday. It was very good too; very good.

The other thing that happened on Tuesday night was the Significant Fruit Conversion. Some ugly yellow fruit was taken and elevated into something approaching rapture. Quinces were vigorously jellied with malice aforethought; their step towards the divine almost complete upon mad, mad boiling.

Quinces, pre-conversion

Mid-conversion....

And it was fabulous.

Cheese Club Six - Revenge of the Curds

2010-05-09T01:44:00.000-07:00

Hardcore Neutrality

Cheese Club has returned, this time with revenge, vengeance, more revenge, a club with nails in it and a glass of wine. Oh, it's had sand kicked in its face by a buff lifesaver before, but now it's back with cheeses strong and ruthless enough to melt your head from the inside out. So surrender now, before Cheese Club gets all fromagier on your arses (or "asses" for our American friends).

Perigord goo

Besace Chevre Affine - After the damning-with-faint-praise disappointment of the Le Chevrot during the last Cheese Club goat experience, expectations weren't high for the Besace. Expectations weren't helped by the sight of this ugly, abstract beast of a cheese. Between the normal wrinkles of a surface-ripened goats cheese; a light dusting of ash; a protuberant, translucent layer of soft-ripened flesh; and a shading of blue and grey mould over the surface, this cheese would strike terror into the weak of heart. But not into mine, oh no. And lo, I was rewarded, for this is a cheese of Perigord and 0f glory. Although it had a modest heart of chalky fudge, it was mostly surface-ripened gooeyness. It was light on the goat tang (while still being balanced) and rich in the layers of mould and flavour. Oh, I love this.... Oh... Oh... I'll umm... stop now. People are watching.

Oh lord... Less than pretty. But so wonderful...

Rouzaire Camembert - As regular readers (I'll return your mower on Sunday) will know, I'm historically not a big fan of the surface-ripened white-moulders, but you know what? I'm beginning to come around. We've had some great ones (the Brie de Nangus in particular) with deep, earthy flavours, and this Camembert is close to its equal in raw power. Still with a stripe of chalky crumblation in the center, it was soft but firm with a rich flavour of mushrooms and cauliflower. This is glorious, but in a relaxed way. It's still got a week before it ripens properly but still, eh? Eh?

I want to believe

Saint Vernier - This episode of Cheese Club was turning into a lesson of surprising power, but this is the exception that proves the rule. Washed rind in name; washed rind in appearance but white-moulder in taste. Weirdly, this was a far milder cheese than the Camembert. A glorious orange tint underneath a white-mould fuzz, this looks like a small Camenbert that's been inadvertently tinted. And that's what it tastes like. It has a subtle washed-rind stink (if that's not a contradiction in terms), but once you taste it you wonder where all that smell went to. This still has some chalk in the centre, so I'll give this one a couple of weeks and see what happens. Sweet packaging by the way: it nestles softly in a plywood sunflower. Awwwwwww.

Nothing to fear here

Coolea - Coolea is an Irish, cow's milk cooked curd cheese in a Dutch style. Obviously. This was a couple of years old and was a luscious, buttery cheese with an intense nutty and caramel flavour. It still has a little cooked-curd smoothness, but with an almost imperceptible grain. It's not as an intense as the Lindenhoff, and thus isn't subject to enforceable standoff distances, but it is still wonderfully intense. Deep without being scary, like Radio National. Wash it down with a Toohey's Old or a 3 Ravens smokey one.

Coolea than you'll ever be

L'Etivaz - I have this ongoing problem reconciling my Cheese Club experiences with the proclaimed neutrality of the Swiss. This picturesque, peace-loving, clock-making nation, supposedly wielding nothing more dangerous than an implement designed to remove stones from horse's hooves, produces cheeses that our Aunt Agatha describes as "total ball-tearers". Of course, aunts have changed since Bertie Wooster had them, but these cheeses haven't. And L'Etivaz has all of the rich, grinding gorgeousness of an older, more voluptuous hard cooked curd cheese. Swiss cows that live downstairs in chalets; milk cooked over wood fires; banks that respect anonymity. What a life...

L'Etivaz. Stand well back.

Crozier Blue - Carrying on this edition's focus on intensity and approachability, the Crozier Blue is a blue sheep's milk cheese from Tipperary, meaning the UK is effectively surrounded by tart Roquefort-style cheeses, both East and West. I'd be surrendering pretty much straight away if I was them, hopefully to be welcomed into the creamy acidity. Lovely blue tart balanced with a soft texture, buttery but light. Again, a cheese intense but not overwhelming. This is an excuse to open a bottle of something sticky, and so I shall.

Crozier Blue. Nothing to add.

Denn

2010-04-22T05:40:00.001-07:00

I've been watching Denn out of the corner of my eye for quite a few months now. It's exactly at that part of the tram journey in the evening between work and home when I look up from a novel (or from ^%$#ing emails) and think, "sigh.... almost home". I'm a committed snacker, so anywhere advertising tapas will always get a second look.

Denn is in* the Westgarth end of High Street between the organic vegie shop and the weird second-hand shop full of antique clothes and bric-brac-knick-knacks. I know that sounds like a Northcote inevitability (or parody), but I'm not kidding.

It's a sign

We had such high hopes for Denn that we were prepared to share the night with some wonderful friends who'd flown down from Canberra that morning, food untasted. I should explain we spent almost ten years in the national capital through no fault of our own, and I still get flashbacks whenever I see a roundabout, frost or rubbish 1980's architecture.

Julia was one of the first friends we made in Canberra and she did much to help us adjust quickly to the strange customs of the capital. She had already made the transition to Canberra from earlier years in Malaysia and London, so helping a couple of arts graduates from Melbourne acclimatise was a doddle for her. A decade later, after we left for Melbourne, she met Graham, her wonderful husband and obvious soul mate. Indeed, in proof that serendipity abounds, Julia was visiting us in Melbourne when Graham first called her to ask her out. We were recovering after a weekend at Earthcore (2003?) when the call came, and I still remember her smile.

Alex, Graham and ~~his dignity~~ Julia

Anyway, the point that they are good friends of ours is made. And like most of our High Street jaunts, although the restaurants have sometimes been great, it's the good friends that make the nights wonderful.

The food wasn't that bad...

Denn's menu looks simple but is bistro impressive with quite a few tapas dishes that look perky, interesting and modest, as well as a few simple pizzas and mains. The service was charming and prompt.

We ordered a platter of vegetarian tapas and some wedges of crisped pita. They were ok. Olives good; dolmades ok; haloumi great; pita pretty good too. Nothing great, but to quote Stephen Fry, not too mild neither. The mushrooms had a wonderful flavour, but about half of them were tough - halfway between crisp and chewy. This was not good.

Tough mushrooms and other stuff

In a fit of seafood enthusiasm, almost all the over 6's ordered paella, except Em, who with a wisdom beyond her tender years ordered the porcini risotto.

We were given a "it takes 20 minutes" warning, but it certainly didn't keep us waiting. Alas, it was not spectacular. The paella had been cooked vigorously in the pan and was quite dry. Although the flavour had the bold, caramel courage that paella needs around the edges, it was pretty uninspiring and didn't offer much of a variety of texture. And apart from the rice, there wasn't a whole lot else. The chorizo was thinly sliced and crisped (and bereft of juicy flavour); the fish was sparse; and the prawn was dry.

Poly-paella

Emily's porcini risotto was wonderful. Like a perfect system of government, it balanced the rights of the individual (grains of rice) with the rights of the collective (the starchy, conjoined wetness) into a perfect mass of texture and democracy. The porcinis offered the correct amount of passive resistance while still yielding to a higher authority.

Emily's risotto art (with poor spelling - it was meant to be "rhombus")

We ordered dessert. The caramelized fig ice cream was spectacular, and the chocolate ice cream that went with it was as appealing and bitter as an overpaid Hollywood starlet, but with a much more luscious fullness of figure.

Saint Felicity (and child)

In summary, Denn would be a lovely place to drink a bottle of wine and eat some small bits and pieces while talking rubbish with a group of pals. The food was ok, but not particularly inspiring (except for the wonderful caramelized fig ice cream); the wine list was good and the staff were friendly and elite and crack and wonderful (and they looked good in black). The room is gorgeous without being pretentious and we could talk without having to shout, which counts for a lot.

I'd love to go to Denn with a large group - the sort of evening where I was more focused on the company than the food. Although the setting and service are among the best on High Street, the food was lackluster. Go there; have fun, but don't expect to reinvent your taste buds.

*pronounced "denizen". Ha!

The Estelle

2010-04-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

What's new, Pussycat? For us it was a trip back to High Street where there's always something there to remind me. Whenever I have to cancel a High Street jaunt I just don't know what to do with myself.

Not knowing what to do with myself

If it wasn't obvious already, last night we went through Hal and Bacharach, but I would still do it all again.

The Estelle (their definite article; not mine) was a recommendation (thanks Niels) which might have otherwise skipped our attention, except that it was reviewed kindly by friend Essjay. While its spatial location is clearly high on High Street, its temporal location skips between the late 1950's and early 60's and the present.

The first thing you notice are the windows and door and decor. (The) Estelle has beautiful windows with a lovely view of High Street and its glorious wandering haircuts and horizontally-framed glasses. Inside, it's tiled walls, almost-kitsch decor and steel-framed vinyl chairs with studs on the back. In a word; swellegant. There's also a meat theme, with what could be a knitted leg of lamb hanging from one wall and a "Madonna and Lamb Leg" icon on the other. Felicity described it as polyester erratic with a soundtrack by Burt Bacharach, for Burt did indeed meet our musical requirements for the evening and then some.

The evening started quietly (we booked for 6.30pm) but later it was not an empty place. It was also strangely dim and I really struggled to read the menu, seemingly printed on apricot paper under apricot lighting. We ordered a jug of "Eldorado Gold" to start with. Now, I have to admit I'm a big fan of the jugged punch (such as the ones from Madame Brussels) and this jug of golden rum, dry ginger, strips of ginger and orange peel and possibly star anise was gloriously scented and fresh.

We ordered some warm olives, "Thornbury smoked meat" and a duck parfait to share. The olives were a mix of enormous meaty green ones and some almost spherical (ok, oblate spheroid) black ones. The "Thornbury smoked meat" (ordered out of suburban patriotism) was a thinly sliced dry(ish) salami with slices of a fresh pickle of cucumber. The salami was nice enough, as was the pickle on its own, but together the pickle had way too much upfrontage and the salami was left peering around the curtains in the background, mugging like crazy but largely being ignored.

The duck parfait, however, was perfectly light and creamy with just the right balance of fat and cloud-like fluffiness. Promises, promises, but in this case, well fulfilled.

Felicity ordered ox tongue which was melting and creamy, and perfectly undercut by a beetroot confit and soothed by a delicate celeriac puree. I thought the texture was a little slack, but tongue's never really been my cup of tea.

Emily's duck was a caramelly rich roasted duck leg on a settee of red cabbage that was lush with lardon flotsam. Just like Emily, we were ready to sing of our longing* for the duck.

Al and I shared a standing rib roast of pork which combined the best of old-school pork (crisped-fat flavour) and new-school (juicy and without an excess of fat). It came on a bed of gently but warmly spiced carrot puree , some chickpeas and with a thinly shredded fennel salad. The carrots were lovely and just sweet enough to balance the pork while the fennel salad was soft and paper thin (and so not very aniseedy, which wouldn't have been a bad thing).

The main dishes came with some braised mushrooms were beautiful and would be a perfect winter vegetable dish, especially if Melbourne ever has another winter, and although the small roasted chats in duck fat were nice enough, if I am roasting potatoes in duck fat I whip the skins off first.

Lemon Posset?

We all ordered the Lemon Posset with Rhubarb as a dessert. Cheerfully good and just tart enough to wear a miniskirt in public without being vulgar.

The Estelle is an unexpected oasis of good modern food with a cheerful and self-effacing style where there is an awful lot of wank about. The food is damn good, the staff are cheerful and just attentive enough (one having a very fetching floral pocket on his apron) and the decor is both cheerful and interesting without being silly. The Estelle is a modern stand-out on High Street for us, and although it's not perfect, it has the courage to try something new. I'm prepared to say a little prayer and wish and hope that others on High Street will be as bold.

In short, Estelle is exactly what the world needs now, and Estelle? If it wasn't obvious already, this guy's in love with you.

But although the night was almost perfect, there was one question left unanswered; "Do you know the way to San Jose?"

*The irony of a link to Karen Carpenter in a restaurant review is not lost on the authors.

Sympathy for the Devil before Chicken Soup for the Soul

2010-04-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

"A Chicken Soup for the Soul story is an inspirational, true story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It is a story that opens the heart and rekindles the spirit."

This is not a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" story. It's far, far better than that. It's a chicken soup story. I'll resist the temptation to tell you to duck yourself, but only just.

Chicken (not in soup)

I woke up yesterday with a cold and a throat infection, which made swallowing painful and me grumpy. Not surprisingly, I've had a craving for chicken soup as something both nourishing and easy to imbibe, and so went looking for a simple recipe. Early in my search, I found Chicken Soup for the Soul, from whence the above quote derives.

I know it's easy to be dismissive of self-help books and websites, but there's a reason for that - they're shit. Wide-eyed, sing-song nonsense spouted by the gormless to a mouth-breathing audience of the unfulfilled does not, in my eyes, justify the extra distance I have to walk in my favourite bookshop to get to the proper books, you know, the ones about food, war, ethics and architecture. I've never quite understood the sheer arrogance of writing down a bunch of homilies and expecting people to be grateful, or in the case of a book of this rubbish, pay. Worse are the ones that go beyond the simple "I changed my life by not being sad and adopting a sunny disposish," and suggest that we can wish the universe to be a better place, often making reference to quantum physics, as though talking about science is the same as understanding it (spoiler alert: it's not).

The funny thing is there is some actual, factual, real-life science that suggests that chicken soup may be good for you when you're poorly, although to be completely honest it's only in dribs and drabs. There aren't any major studies or meta-analysis and nothing at the Cochrane Collaboration, which for those unfamiliar with it, or who think it's an R&B band, is pretty much the bee's knees when it comes to medical evidence.

Chicken (about to be soup)

So I made some chicken soup. I stuffed some carcasses (politely called "chicken frames") into a pot with a couple of sliced carrots, a leek, a handful of parsley and some celery and a few dried mushrooms, before simmering for three hours to make stock.

Chicken (becoming soup)

Half the stock was frozen for later use (risotto, probably) and the rest had some chicken thighs (and their bones) added, along with some more carrots, leeks, potato and parsley. After some lengthy period the bones were removed and the meat shredded. Some modest noodles added and cooked and the soup was completed and perfected. Sticky with natural gelatin and calming with organic... ummm.. organisms.

This is a "Beggars Banquet" kind of soup. Like 1968 for the Rolling Stones, it was a turning point in my illness; a pivot around which my fortunes revolved. There was "before soup", differentiating the early formulaic blues soup from the "after soup", which was up-beat, more focussed and without Brian Jones, although to be fair, Brian wasn't there for "before soup" either. Like Beggar's Banquet, this was also a little bit country 'n' western, but not in an insulting way.

Most importantly, although I wasn't enlightened after eating the soup, I did feel better. Not in an uplifting, spiritual, optimistic kind of way; but more in a "at-least-my-throat-doesn't-hurt-as-much" kind of way. And that's what matters.

Because there is no Answer; there is no Secret and there is barely any Fucking Point*, other than the one we make for ourselves, and that, dear readers, is the only one that matters. Except for soup.

Oh crap, now I'm spouting off unfalsifiable rubbish... Maybe that's why they do it - it's so easy.

*My book based on this title out soon.

Reminiscing - Bamboo House

2010-04-03T02:02:00.000-07:00

Another episode in this increasingly inaccurately named blog. Once again this post is not about High Street, but it is set in the same city (broadly).

A few years ago we saw Lano and Woodley on their farewell tour, which was funny, poignant and touching, but I hadn't realised what made them such a great act. Both of their characters are wonderfully naive and childish, but while Frank is innocent and wide-eyed, Colin was the nasty and vindictive child... I'm resisting the temptation to make an easy comparison to John Lennon and Paul McCarthy, except that I just have, so I won't develop it any further.

So this Friday night, Good Friday, we saw Frank Woodley at his show (Bewilderbeest) at the Forum in this year's Comedy Festival.

By himself, Frank was very funny but perhaps a little narrow. He told a wonderful story about using a rare opportunity to tell a joke about an ocelot; a joke that which I remember from the joke page on one of the few Playboy magazines* (no, really) I've seen. The joke goes:

Q: How do you titillate an ocelot?

A: You oscillate its tit a lot

I won't spoil the story, but it does involve his increasingly frustrating attempts to tell this joke to a zookeeper.

Before the show, though, we had dinner at Bamboo House in Little Bourke Street.

Hmmm.... Glossy....

Bamboo House does a mix of Northern and Szechuan dishes (up front, at the proud part of the menu) and Cantonese dishes (at the back of the bus). Here I must confess that one of the reasons to go to Bamboo House was that my favoutite Szechuan restaurant in Little Bourke Street, Post Deng, hadn't answered their phone in the afternoon, and I assumed they were closed, what with it being Good Friday. Bamboo House, on the other hand, had a telephone that worked.

Pork Hock, Drunken Chicken - cold, but perfect for winter

We ordered some cold Szechuan entrees - sliced pork hock and Drunken Chicken. Both were sliced beautifully - the pork thin and softly spiced, while the chicken was firm and moist with red tinges at the bone but lush with fat. Fat was important to both without being the dominant flavour.

I'm removing a chicken bone, not my teeth

As it was Good Friday, Felicity eschewed meat and had Ginger Scallops as an entree. These looked beautiful and were described as fresh and fabulous.

Ginger scallops

Being respectful of Felicity's attitude towards food on Good Friday (and a day without meat never hurt anyone, or so it is alleged), we ordered a seafood bird's nest and a whole steamed barramundi. The bird's nest was excellent - the seafood was generous and cooked perfectly, but the barramundi was the hero of the hour. It was amazingly moist and still firm, and the soy and ginger sauce was strong enough to add something to the fish without threatening it. Some stir fried gai lan to go with it and it was fantastic.

Barramundi is good. That's all I have to say

The only restaurants I was taken to as a teenager (at least, that I can remember) were Cantonese. The Panda in Hawthorn and the Fairy Stork in Acland Street in St Kilda were the ultimate destinations (the latter having the benefit of glorious cake shops as neighbours) in the early 1980's. Indeed, while I was at university in the late '80's, I worked as a cocktail barman and the two best tips I got were (a) from Andre the Giant (another story altogether); and (b) from some blokes I'd recommended the Panda to.

Cantonese food is not particularly fashionable at present, which means the stalwarts like Bamboo House have to work a bit harder to keep up with the pack, and they do. The service is great and the food is wonderful. The room... well, it's not particularly fashionable and it's a bit bright, but it wasn't too noisy for a Friday.

Southern Chinese food is not on my shortlist of favourites, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it and have a place for it. Great Cantonese food always looks beautiful and the contrast of textures is something I have grown to love. Familiarity will never breed contempt, but perhaps it has created a smidgen of indifference. It's something I'd hate to see relegated to just a memory.

*I must me one of the few men of my age who remembers the jokes in Playboy, because the only other thing from the Playboys I saw as a lad and remember was a limerick:

"Whilst Titian was mixing Rose Madder
His model was perched on a ladder
Her position to Titian
Suggested fruition
So he went up the ladder and 'ad 'er."

Brilliant, eh?

The Physics of Dumplings

2010-04-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

The research team

Up until recently, high energy dumpling research in this country has languished, the victim of budget cuts and a research community focussed on turning tricks for the private sector. However, with the recent opening of the Hu Tong Dumpling Research Facility in Market Lane, primary dumpling research has started the long march into the 21st century. With the failure of the Large Hadron Collider, allegedly as a result of being sabotaged by a future God in order to save the world, the Hu Tong facility may be mankind's last greatest hope of understanding the dumpling, and the fundamental particles that theory suggests it consists of: the dumpleton and the souptrino.

Evidence of Garlic Field Theory

Professor Helen, Director of the Transport Dumpling Institute, leads the multinational research team at the Hu Tong facility, and she is joined by researchers Miranda, Kathryn, Stephen, Nicola, Dominica and, of course, Dr Phil and his research assistant. Today, the team was focussed on one of the major questions left in the field of dumpling research: the mystery of the Shao-long Bao dumpling. If the team could explain this strange phenomena, they would then have the basis for a truly Grand Unified Theory of Lunch.

Testing begins

Ever since Schrodinger put a cat in a box (maybe), scientists have longed to understand the drive to put things into other things, and never is this more manifest than the study of food. If cheese can be put into a sausage; if a sausage can be put into a pancake; then putting soup into a dumpling must be possible. And that is the grand claim of the Shao-long Bao dumpling - that these Schrodinger's dumplings exist in a state of quantum indeterminacy, where probability wavicles collapse into a flood of glorious soup once bitten.

The sauce substrate

So this was the purpose of today's experiment - to understand what was in the core of these four-dimensional quantum dumplings, and whether the dream of soup-within-a-dumpling is just a dream and nothing more. Previous attempts, involving the acceleration of souptrinos to near light-speed, had ended tragically with a dry cleaning bill of almost $16.

This time, however, the experiment started well. First a pork dumpling, flavoured with ginger and spicy with chili oil was used to fine tune the equipment. Lacking soup, or even the theory of soup, made it the perfect control subject.

Control dumplings. Perfect, and free from soup

Once the testing apparatus had been confirmed, two further rounds of dumplings, one a plain pork, the other vegetarian, and some braised leafy vegetables were assayed. The greens displayed high levels of garlic, which was consistent with predictions made using Dirac's little known Garlic Field Equation.

The test subjects

It was time. The Shao-long Bao dumplings were brought into the laboratory as a hush descended over the table. Was there actually soup inside these dumplings, or was current dumpling theory wrong?

The first result was disappointing. I lifted a dumpling too quickly from the bamboo petrie dish and tore the skin. While there was visual evidence of soup, none was tasted. On the second and all subsequent tests, however, evidence of soup was clearly identified. Celebration! Success! The soup/dumpling relationship, previously only theorized, was true! We arranged a hasty media conference and announce our results to the world. The rest, of course, is history. And lunch.

Pausing to celebrate

Cheese Club V - The Cheeses and Dairy Chain*

2010-03-30T04:22:00.000-07:00

Cheese Club is back, this time with a hardcore experience for the strong of heart, steady of resolve and supple of liver. There were moments of calm and light, but most of all it was full-on, full-tilt, three-chord screaming and messing with your head. We were joined by Miranda, James and Felix, the Hyphen-Warlocks, and some continent-spanning wines, from the lovely Vasse Felix Shiraz in the west to the perky Brokenwood Cricket Pitch in the east. And so, down to business...

Le Chevrot. Yeah, ok....

Le Chevrot - you know the biggest problem with Cheese Club, apart from the cholesterol? Expectations are raised; raised some more; and, just when you think there's no cheese ceiling left to shatter, you're brought crashing down to Earth covered in feathers and goo. And that's what le Chevrot was to me - a nice enough surface ripened goat's milk cheese, but that's all. A gentle goaty tang; some almost interesting (but calming) white mould and a mostly uniform texture. With a ruffled skin it was largely homogenous, and most unlike some of the other more interesting surface-ripened goat cheeses we've tried (say, the Buche Chevre de Poitou). Like Richard Dawkins, it's enjoyable without recourse to magic.

Making moonlight music; mighty nice**

Fin Briard aux Truffe -This is basically just a brie with a layer in the middle infested with truffles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a surface-ripened cow's milk cheese with some black bits in the middle. But... But.... What are those black bits again?

This is wonderful stuff. The texture is just like a lovely brie - creamy with a moment of chalk in the middle and a soft and fuzzy rind, but the flavour is deep, sweet and richly earthy. Most of the flavour is in your nose, and it's a warm, infused flavour that comes from underground. If chocolate, compost, damp gardens, beef stock and a touch of Vegemite could combine into something grand, it would be this. We didn't taste much but the memory remains...

Miranda told me the next day she dreamed of this

St Felicien - This made me feel like a cat in heaven, but only because it's like drinking cream from a saucer. I could nod politely; I could roll this around in my mouth while making "hmmmmm..." noises; I could "ummm" and "ahhhh...", but this is like nothing we've had in Cheese Club to date, and by criminy, it's amazing....

It comes in its own terracotta landing pod and with its wrinkled skin looks like a Dr Who brain-villain lurking in the bottom of a gravel quarry. To quote Felicity; "it tastes like it's alive!" But then when you stick a knife in it, it dies quickly and liquifies. This isn't eating cheese; it's drinking cheese. A mild, gentle flavour and texture like thin pouring cream, like a cheese-stick drinking yoghurt... A Lady Gaga cheese - sexy, but thin and a little bit disturbing.

Polish your shoes, guvvna?

Pave de L'Ayeron - Oh no... I'm getting the fear.... This is seriously weird stuff, man... Dennis-Hopper-in-a-tweed-jacket-and-tutu weird... This is a sheep's milk washed-rind cheese; a cheese that looks runny and gooey with a crust of soft, warm colour that speaks of a luscious mouth-feel and a gentle but assertive washed-rind flavour. And it is those things, but it's got something else that takes it beyond the creamy towards a perverse, glue-sniffing experience. It has undertones of industrial solvent and, to quote Emily, the scent of shoe polish. This cheese is beyond good and evil and anything we don't eat will need to be disposed of in a concrete and lead-lined pit. I will eat some more, but mostly out of morbid curiosity.

Careful with that axe, Eugene.

Lindenhoff Aged Boerenkaas - This is the cheese equivalent of an aging hippie turned into a knife-wielding lunatic. In theory it's a Gouda, so it's a cooked curd cheese made of cow's milk, but the Dutch have been keeping this one in their stash for the last four years, next to the golden hash from Morocco and the hydroponic skunk weed. It looks nothing like those soft, doughy balls of flab that I usually associate with Gouda, but instead crumbles like a hard cheese, while the intensity of the flavour is like being stabbed in the head with a windmill full of clogs. Crumbly, crunchy moments (of calcium crystals, apparently) in a rich, stewed, deep flavour with a vicious edge. I'll be cooking with the rest of this - it's far too intense to expose to the naked human taste bud, but should be fantastic in a sauce with broccoli...

A little bit sexy, but only a little bit

Bonta Della Bontazola - This is a creamy blue cow's milk cheese that is near the bottom rung in the intensity hierarchy of Gorgonzolas. At the sharp, pointed peak sits the Gorgonzola piccante, a very blue cheese with a strong tang against a creamy base. In the middle is the Gorgonzola Dolce, just as creamy but with a milder blue mould tang. Almost at the bottom, just above cream, is this Bontazola - a rich, creamy and smooth cheese with just a hint of blue. This is very much the dessert cheese. Cheerful without being assertive, like that nice councillor you know, only a little more blue and without the sandals.

*I can't take the credit for this. It belongs to Alex James, Blur's bass player and cheesemaker.
** with apologies to Dr Seuss.

Supermaxi

2010-03-26T04:07:00.001-07:00

Yeah yeah, so Supermaxi's not on High Street, but it is on St George's Road, a ten minute stroll from the Westgarth end of the Street Referred To In This Blog's Name.

Cool.

It's also in North Fitzroy; it's right next to the bike path; it's only been open a few weeks; and, between us booking and eating, got a good review in the broadsheet. In other words, it's exceedingly hip, extravagantly groovy and crowded with coolhunters. Which suits me just fine, because I am a coolhunter hunter, focused not on the next cool thing, but on the people who will find it. It's all very meta and self-referential, so from time to time you'll have to forgive me for talking total wank.

Somebody's talking wank here.

On this night we'd been invited by Suzanne and JB, who were seeking out my coolhunter hunter skills not because they needed them, but because are specialist coolhunter hunter hunters. Amazing really - sometimes I can't remember if any of us really exist or who's following who. Also in attendance was Mel* and Matt, who are just cool, three teens (or proto-teens) and two small humans.

Supermaxi 's minimalist decor and maximalist crowd noise provide an intense backdrop for the food and for a cheerful shouted conversation. Being coolhunter hunter hunters, Suzanne and JB reported that they'd been there a week or two earlier and that the food was worth the layers of self-referential, nested conversations about who was a coolhunter/hunter and who was just hungry and wanted dinner.

Battered Beetroot - earthy, powerful and red with an attractive exterior.
(Insert Julia Gillard reference *here*.)

Organising a table of 11 to get their act together to order is hard at the best of times, but Suzanne took charge of the situation and the entrees. The Cauliflower fritters were creamy and soft in the middle while still firm and the batter was perfectly crisp. The onion jam that came with them was sweet and tart. For a glorious colour hit, the Beetroot fritters were earthy and sweet. Simple, smoky grilled prawns in their shells quickly followed and were promptly devoured. Cool.

Cauliflower Fritters

The only thing that arched an eyebrow or two was the Oysters Kilpatrik, mainly because no-one could remember if they are meant to be retro-cool; nostalgically comfortable; neo-seventies or whether they've gone right through to "were popular years ago, then shunned before passing through charmingly naff and retro but are out the other side back to being mocked". That's the problem with being a coolhunter hunter - sometimes you have to draw a flowchart to remember where a particular meme is up to.

Anyway, although these were good, I prefer oysters to be a bit more like Ursula Andress - not covered in much and fresh out of the sea.

We ordered a mix of pizzas and other dishes. The pizzas are the best we have had yet in the area, edging ahead of both I Saluti and Pizza Farro . With thin and asymmetrical non-conformist bases, all were both comforting and interesting enough to hold your attention to the last bite. I had the pizza de jour, which had broccolini, anchovies and chili, and thanks to a mix up in the order, got to share it and the fish of the day with Matt.

The pan fried fillets of white fish had a glorious crispness and a lingering taste of butter. It was cooked perfectly.

Fish of the day, but I can't remember what kind it was

Others ordered the pescatore pizza, which was described as perfect; a "GTV" with eggplant and which was named after the chef's Alfa Romeo; and a beautiful pancetta and Gorgonzola pizza which I will definitely be ordering at some time in the future.

Idiosyncratic like an Alfa Romeo, but more reliable

I didn't get to taste Emily's artichoke ravioli, but after she'd eaten it she was sitting back in her chair and black leather coat, looking both satisfied and, of course, cool.

Put the camera away mum - it's very uncool

We had some beautiful Italian wines, but don't ask me what they were. Remembering wine labels is passe and verges on the gauche.

We almost all ordered dessert, which is a damn good sign, and these didn't disappoint. The fried custard was thick and gloriously unctuous, and was served with a drizzle of honey giving it a beautiful Moorish sense of mystery. Emily had the chocolate panna cotta and raspberry, and it had the light touch of a great panna cotta, perfectly balanced between richness and light with the slight bitterness of good cocoa.

The skeptical looks typical of coolhunter hunter hunters

In summary, Supermaxi has cool food, good service (although the night was frantically busy) but is amazingly loud and required some uncool raising of voices. There were no surprises either way with the bill, and in the best sign of a good night, it wasn't until I got home that i realised how amazingly tired I was. I'd go again, but once I've been somewhere it generally doesn't stay cool for much longer. However, I will be going again once it becomes passe, because that's when I feel most at home.

Downunder Curry

2010-03-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

Friday night on High Street and it's time for further exploration. Tonight's fare is standard Indian food, augmented with a few Nepalese dishes from the convenient but regrettably named "Downunder Curry".

Smile! We've ordered!

Our guest for this evening was Ian (no relation). Ian (no relation) and I used to work together and share a surname, although not as far as we know, any genetics. Accordingly, we are (no relation).

Downunder Curry occupies a surprisingly large room which on a Friday night was moderately busy. Ordering took a bit longer than expected, but the manager's party trick of remembering seven or so dishes and a complicated round of drinks without notes was impressive (although it did result in us getting two paneer dishes instead of the one we'd ordered.)

"Do you have this roti?" I asked, pointing to a photograph of some beautiful, layered looking roti on the back of the menu.

"No, that's just a photo on the menu. It's not actually on the menu."

The same applied, less worryingly, to the apparently random photos of kangaroos, kookaburras and trams. Tram was not on the menu, although the manager did say if there was a call for kangaroo, he'd go and buy some. Finally, after the usual ration of us faffing about we got our act together and ordered.

To drink, Ian ordered a raspberry lassi which was made with ice cream syrup, and ordering a second said "surprise me." What came out was nothing if not surprising. With a layer of pink syrup on the bottom, a layer of custard-yellow lassi in the middle and topped with both froth and... wait for it... Milo! Ta-dah! Those glorious, malt-based crunchy granules that never fail to fail to dissolve in milk. The sight was not for the faint hearted, although Ian thought it "merely a trifle". And as the photo suggests, it could have easily passed for a 1970's trifle-parfait extravaganza. I was offered a taste but my teeth were aching just looking at it. Wow.

Entrees were ok but not spectacular by the standards of Melbourne suburban Indian food. The highlight was a perfectly tender lamb cutlet on the tandoor platter, but the sheek kebab was too dry (although gloriously coloured).

Mmmm... yeah, ok.

The rogan josh was ok but was a little sweet, which it could have done without. The Nepalese-style goat curry was strong with garlic and resplendent with depth and was far, far and away the most memorable dish of the night. The fish Madras was almost perfect- thickened with coconut with warm and lush spices, but lacking in any real heat.

Saag paneer was an excellent choice - the paneer was fresh and the spinach was rich. The (bonus) palak paneer, on the other hand, was sweet and bland. The naan was good but not particularly inspiring.

(No relation)

It wasn't until after we'd eaten we noticed that on the bottom of the menu was the offer of informing the staff how hot you'd like the dishes. And that's when I realised how mild everything had been. We hadn't been asked, and if we had would have asked for the dishes with a mix of heat - I'm a big fan of spicy fish curries in particular. Maybe a judgement had been made that we were anglos/had children/were religiously opposed to chili. I'm not a fan of other people making those judgements for me, especially when it's my dinner at stake.

Nepalese goat curry - one to order again

This blog is a week away from its first birthday and during the year we've shamelessly whipped out our camera and photographed food, the decor and each other, much to the consternation of the children. This was the first time, however, we'd ever been asked if we wanted a group photo. Although the service was a little slow to start, once they hit their stride they were efficient, charming and accommodating.

Taken by mein host - there's a first time for everything

We took desserts home as Will was on his last, grumbling legs, and they could have come from any Indian take away or local restaurant.

Downunder Curry is a good, standard-fare Indian restaurant that offers no surprises, and that's ok. It's pretty cheap, the service is good and the food was alright, although with some dishes erring on the sweet and shying away from heat (unless, perhaps, you ask). I might be wrong, but I believe most dishes have a natural level of heat that balances with the rest of the dish, and for me that was lacking. It was certainly better than its nearest rival, Curry Masala, but the subcontinental favourite for us on High Street is still Sigiri.

Sausage in a Pancake.

2010-03-16T20:31:00.001-07:00

This blog didn't start out to be anything other than a collection of eating experiences from restaurants, grand and humble, from our neighbourhood. I certainly didn't see this as a sort of "amuse bouche" blog that just provides entre-like links to a lot of other people's work and is little more than an aggregation service.

However, today I feel compelled to offer you the following link to an article about convenience food in the US, using the product "Jimmy Dean's Pancake and Sausage on a Stick" (also seen here with chocolate chips) as its centrepiece.

Photo source here, thanks to littleREDelf

You can learn a lot about a culture by looking at the products (and food) that have proved popular over time (including the now decade-old pancake and sausage on a stick!) and those that didn't quite make the cut. Cheese-filled hot dogs and microwavable bread might have failed, but they have nothing on the extraordinary "IncrEdibles..."

"...a late '90s convenience food product. Packaged in cardboard tubes and available in flavors such as Macaroni & Cheese and Scrambled Eggs with Cheese & Sausage, IncrEdibles featured a stick at the bottom of the cardboard tube, so after you heated them up in the microwave, you could simply push into your mouth without utensils."

OK, so they failed, but clearly somebody (manufacturers, marketers etc) thought humanity had sunk to this pathetic and disgusting state. Now, it's easy to mock (and fun, too!), but clearly there is something pretty fucked up about this corner of the world if IncrEdulous IncrEdibles were contemplated for a nanomoment longer than anyone could say, "ewwwwww."

Yes, I love a good pizza and a Chinese take-away every now and then. Yes, I'll eat a homogeneous frankfurt and enjoy it. I'll always have a pie at the footy and sometimes I'll have oven chips at home. But Sausage in a Pancake? Madam, I may not have much self-respect, but I have just enough to say, "no thank you, I'd rather mince my own head and feed it to the cat."

Crunch

2010-03-11T01:10:00.000-08:00

When we first moved into the house where we now live, my oldest and dearest friend dropped in for a cuppa and viewing. I did the two-minute tour of the house and being the middle of the day, we decided to walk down to High Street for coffee. Taking the shortest walk, we got to High Street next to Brown's Motors, opposite Crunch. Pointing at Crunch, Mark said, "let's go there." By complete coincidence, Crunch was owned by Mark's sister Jenny.

Seussian Eggs

I'd first met Jenny decades ago when I was a gormless teenager and she was one of the few groovy adults I'd met. We met again some years later in the late 1980's when Felicity and I moved into a house in Tanner Grove in Northcote and Jenny lived a few streets away. I remembered Jenny as cool and having a relaxed charm back then, and she was the same at Crunch in the early 2000's. We ate there a couple of times after, chatting briefly and always smiling.

Crunch changed hands a year or so ago and Jenny and her family moved to Queensland. The coffee's still pretty good, but despite being the closest great coffee to our front door, I can't say we frequent Crunch. There's no particular reason, mind you, it's just not something we do

So this time was the first for a while we'd been to Crunch but it still felt familiar and welcoming. The coffee was really, really good (which makes such a difference at about 11.00am); the food was wonderful, and the service was OK.

F had the Seussian "Greens, Egg and Ham", which was a cross between Eggs Florentine and Eggs Benedict. Perched on slivers of Turkish bread was some spinach puree, acceptable ham and a couple of perfectly poached eggs, complemented by a small dish of lovely rich Bearnaise sauce with *just* the right balance of acidity.

I had a BLT augmented with avocado (aka "the BLAT"), again served in a modest Turkish roll with a thick layer of mixed baby salad leaves and some freshly made mayo. It wasn't intense, and the balance of bacon and tomato/avocado/salad erred towards the herbivorous. We got everything we ordered without hesitation but without a lot of good cheer either.

BLAT!

Crunch has great coffee, good cafe food and a view from one side of High Street to a slightly more appealing side. It's a funny, empty kind of room that feel like a small box with some modest, modern Scandinavian furniture and few pretensions. Crunch is groovy without trying too hard, in a strip where 1970's sparkle Laminex is revered and mixed crap chairs are de rigeur. Even putting aside the distant friendly connections (that have long since expired), I really enjoy Crunch and the warm, familiar sensation I get when I sit down.

Pizza Farro

2010-03-06T04:28:00.000-08:00

It's a warm, humid Thursday night and we're walking down to the nearest pizza place on High Street to home. And the nearest pizza place happens to be Pizza Farro. Pizza Farro prides itself on making pizza bases from spelt. Well, you might ask; "what the %$# is spelt and why should I care? Is it some sort of hippie rubbish from the mountains of Tibet, only eaten by goatherds and unlucky goats?"

Alternatively, in a more polite universe, you might have wondered more discreetly... " What is this thing, this spelt? What does it spell? What did it spelt? What will it.. ummm... Spool? Spult?""

Spelt, according to the collective oracle, is apparently a hexaploid species of wheat. So there you go. Wikipedia says it is "a wheat species known from genetic evidence to have originated as a hybrid of a domesticated tetraploid wheat such as emmer wheat and the wild goat-grass Aegilops tauschii. "

Or maybe it was delivered unto us by aliens. Or maybe it's some sort of manna gifted unto us by the flying spaghetti monster. I'm not convinced by the theory of genetics - like the creationists, I think we need to give equal time to the theory of alien-gifted grain. Nor do I subscribe to the so-called "theory of gravity".

Sweet decor

And while I don't want to be drawn into religious matters, on the subject of the flying spaghetti monster, surely a flying pizza monster would be both more aerodynamic and more likely to be closer to divine perfection?

A family affair

Penny and Kent are about to fly into earthquake-prone Santiago. And when I say "earthquake-prone", I mean, "had a major one last week.. and.. well... just watch out, ok?". Tonight is about wishing them farewell, bon voyage and a degree of geological stability. It's a bit tough to organise a holiday and then discover your destination has been picked up by the ankles and given a rough and ready shaking until all city's loose change is rattling around your feet.

Anyway, we were there with Penny, Kent, Judy and nephew Matt who was staying with Judy.

Pizza Farro is directly opposite our favourite cheap and familiar pizza place, La Casareccia, which takes a more traditional Australian approach to home delivered pizza, if that's not an oxymoron, so the night made for an interesting comparison.

The first thing you notice about Pizza Farro is the warm and comforting decor. In the front half there's a bunch of friendly crap hanging from a rail (upside-down pot plants, nouveau-rustic implements); while in the longer rear section there is a wonderful collection of rolling pins hanging from the ceiling in elegant rows.

I wish I'd thought of that. It's perfect.

The staff are charming in a perfectly natural way (no artificial ingredients or training in how to smile) and efficient. Ordering was easy and drinks were brought out swiftly.

F, Judy and Will all had pasta. Contemporary accounts spoke highly of the spelt pasta, although from across the table the pasta looked a little grey. But F's marinara was very fresh with large pieces of seafood and a light lemon tang, and Will's special order of cheese only was accommodated without any hesitation.

Sisters

The rest of us had pizzas to share, and they were pretty damn good. We ordered a pizzas with prosciutto, broccoli, pancetta, ossobucco (?!) and sausage.

All the pizza bases were thin and slightly crisp -just perfect. Must be the spoolt. The prosciutto was light and salty; the pancetta had (I think) some melted nuggets of blue cheese that gave it another dimension and the ossobucco was rich and hearty while maintaining the grace of a thin pizza with a crisp base.

The broccoli pizza was wonderful, and so much better than I'd expected. The firm texture of broccoli, almost crisp, was balanced with formaggio and chili flakes - one I will order again.

Broccoli pizza - who would've thought?

Although expectations were high for the sausage pizza, it disappointed only by comparison to everything else. It was ok. The sausage was nothing special and the slices were thin. No other flavours set it on fire, and in the absence of fire...

A largely conventional sausage pizza

I was a bit surprised at the number of pizzas that had rocket dumped on top. Half of the pizzas brought to us were smothered in rocket. Now, I think the invention of rocket sometime in the last decade or so has been one of the great achievements of mankind. How else would I have taught my children about adult concepts like "bitter" and "salad"? But this time too many pizzas were given the rocket treatment and it gave them a homogeneity that they didn't deserve.

And then, in the middle of food and general bonhomie, O-week made it's appearance by virtue of a band of undergraduates marching up High St in identical t-shirts and diverse voices. I can't identify any of the many songs they sang concurrently in the moments they passed Pizza Farro, but that wasn't really the point.

The bon voyagees

I was a bit green and timid to really get into O-week celebrations, but by half way through my undergraduate year was traipsing through Fitzroy and Carlton with fellow students of physics and chemistry, engaged in both bold neurochemical empiricism (n=1) and lustful experiments in the most physical of physics.

But on this night the students were charming, chanting and deeply inoffensive. They marched past us in the restaurant, chanting something or other, looking young and perky, and it saddened me that I was not outraged.

The author, nephew Matt, Kent and Penny

Desserts were had by the few, and the reports were all positive. A rich, moist beetroot chocolate cake was enjoyed, and the gelati had both an intense flavour and just the right texture.

Pizza Farro is now the second quality pizza place we've visited on High Street (I Saluti was the other) and it compares well. The pizzas are great; those that ordered pasta dishes all spoke highly of them (putting aside the undead colour of the spelt pasta). It also has the advantage of being within walking distance from home, and that's got to be good. We'll be going again, and we'll enjoy it.

What are you looking at?

A diversion - Yum Cha at Plume

2010-03-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

My sister invited us to yum cha in Doncaster with mum and dad. We went; how could we not?

One of those... you know.. ummm....

We go a few times a year and I suspect I enjoy it more than others. For me it's a particular heaven - lots of new flavours, textures and tea. Regrettably, as my love of the conversation has grown my hearing has declined. Welcome to "being old".

Eggplant. Succulent and wonderful...

Late Sunday morning at Plume in Doncaster is usually a loud, rambunctious affair. The floor captains (there must be a real name for them) with their Secret Service earpieces shout instructions to a team of crack waiting staff, gesturing like semaphore across the floor, or as though they are guiding a helicopter to land behind the kitchen. The tables are full and the conversation is loud; family groups are everywhere and children tumble across the floor. The trolley traffic is chaotic but inevitably seems to work without roadkill, road rage and with a minimum of swearing. It's absolutely fantastic.

But this Sunday was different. Things were quiet; maybe too quiet. The wind gently whistled between the tables and tumbleweeds blew across the floor. The listless bang of a saloon door. A tall, silent stranger looked at me from across the table before finally speaking. "It's very quiet today. Everyone must be recovering from Chinese New Year," said my brother-in-law, before picking up some gai lan with his chopsticks and dipping it in oyster sauce.

Roger and the Urbane parent

Very clever that man, and he was right. There were a few empty tables in a room where I had never seen tables empty for more than a few minutes as crockery was cleaned away for the next sitting. Nevertheless, it was busy enough to be lightly manic with a side order of screaming from the kitchen.

I used to be pretty indiscriminate about yum cha, but now I know what I like and can tell it from "meh, yum cha..." yum cha. A mix of the familiar and unfamiliar; a few fried dishes but mostly not; a catholic mix of flavours and textures; chaos, conversation and chili. Plume hits the mark perfectly for me - the dishes are either warmly familiar or charmingly unexpected. The food is just fantastic.

Tofu with prawn stuffing. Whoa....

Plume is often rated among the best of Melbourne's yum cha venues and the food and the crazymad atmosphere make it irresistible. Doncaster's not too far from High Street and once you experience the indoor street theatre that is Plume, you'll know it's well worth getting out of bed early on a Sunday morning. Oh, and by "early", I mean 11.00....

Dumple, now!

Peacock Inn Hotel & 303 High Street

2010-02-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

According to their website, the Peacock Inn;

"was built in 1854 by Horace and Edwin Bastings. The following year they sold it to the 21-year-old George Plant. Plant was to become synonymous with the Peacock, holding the license until his death in 1895. His widow, Catherine then took over the hotel license until 1910."

Welcome to Northcote. Trains, trams and maybe a bus.

Cool. But Northcote has changed since then.

My mother tells the story of discussing Jane Austen in an English Literature tutorial at university. A young male student opined that Austen was clearly bourgeois rubbish, and believed he could smite a fatal blow against nineteenth century gentility with the profound and rhetorical question, "but where are the workers!?"

Fuck the workers; Lis declares victory over the lethargic

It was a fear of twenty-first century gentility that had made me reluctant to eat at the Peacock Inn Hotel. It's a lovely building with an almost Mexican, deco feel. As you walk past, however, through the window you can see the restaurant and its stark, modern furniture and hard surfaces. It bodes. Not of anything in particular; it just bodes. You expect the workers have well and truly been vanquished; gentrified away, somewhere well beyond the picket fences and sushi.

They had a groovy VicRoads/Metlink map of the northern suburbs. Cool, eh?

But no. Modernism aside, if you walk through the bleach-blond, overly thin, hatchet-faced restaurant, you get to the beer garden. A curvaceous, smiling and friendly beer garden with broad hips and.. oh, never mind. No "yummy mummies" here. No three-wheeled prams. A spacious beer garden full of... ummm... space... and... well... beer. People drinking beer, eating chips and smoking. Large people. Students. People talking philosophy, sports and shit.

*Smiles to self*

We also had great company - Lis, who has been with us on a previous journey to High Street, joined us for an evening high on the Hill.

Lis declares victory in general against, well, whoever

You don't go to a pub looking for authentic air-dried Japo-Scandanavian fish welts with a soupcon of green tea jus. No, you expect pub food; forty-seven varieties of schnitzel; the Ultimate Street Fighting Mixed Grill; chips with everything and maybe a token salad.

Lis ordered fish and chips, and by all reports these were pretty good. The fish was thick and moist and the chips were thick and crisp.

Al, F and I all ordered Veal Parmigiana (or in Al's case, chicken). Nothing says "pub meal" in Melbourne like Parmigiana. And this Parma (or Parmi?) was pretty good but not outstanding. Against it were a particularly sweet tomato sauce (although the tomato and onion were cheerfully and roughly cut), too much crumb; a slice of sandwich ham; and yearling masquerading as veal . In its favour, the beef was tender and the crumb was crisp.

I remember pub food in the 1980's as being utter, utter shit. These were the dark days of perverse liquor licensing laws in Victoria, and if you wanted to see a band, the pub was obliged to offer you food. Most of the time this meant getting a ticket when you paid the cover charge, which you could exchange for a plate of sandwich ham, potato salad and maybe some tinned three-bean salad. My expectations of pub food were set in this impressionable age, and they were set low. Since then, the food has only improved.

The Peacock Inn is not a gastropub (I still inwardly laugh, thinking "gastro-pub") but the food is decent pub food. The beer garden is spacious and there were a few free tables on Friday night, although plenty of people making plenty of atmosphere. Inside was similar, but with the now traditional large screen for sports. Charmingly, there are no poker machines.

We didn't stay for coffee or dessert. Knowing that there was an exhibition to support the opening of this year's Melbourne Ukulele Festival (MUF), we wandered down to 303 High Street for coffee. 303 has the ultimate location on High Street, being wedged between the Northcote Social Club and Lamb's (home of the second* best souvlaki on High Street).

We admired some hand-painted ukuleles.

My strong latte was good. F and Lis ordered some chemistry-set concoction called a "chai-latte-cino" (maybe). It was very milky and didn't have a lot of spice, strength or sweetness. Oh well. The band playing on the other side of the bearded door-bitch sounded fantastic, like a funky brass band on a billy-cart on their way to a hip-hop gig.

Lis has a collection of awesome tatts, but this is the best non-Escher one

It was a fun evening. In the absence of children I could have wandered into the back of 303 and enjoyed the band. But no, there were grumpy complaints, eye-rubbing and petulant foot-stampings. When the children had calmed me down, we agreed I needed to go home and have a nap.

*Ulysses is both the taxi driver's favourite and mine. One day I'll tell of our student days in the 1980's, eating double meat souvlakis and drinking chocolate milkshakes. On the basis of our then diet, I'm not sure how we lived this long... In the meantime, if your taxi driver smells of garlic at 4.00am, blame Ulysses.

We went back to Thy Thy two weeks later...

2010-02-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

Well, we did, but it was a night that was not really about the food, so you'll have to read about it elsewhere. But it looked like this.

Cheese Club IV - Death to the Lactose Intolerant

2010-02-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Cheese Club has returned for the first time in a while but was well worth the wait. Joined again by the Urbane Parents and Penny and Kent, we glided our way through six wonderful cheeses and some wonderful wines (a 2007 Clockwork Cab Sauv (Margaret River); a 2000 Elizabeth Semillon (Hunter Valley) and a 2007 Scotchmans Hill Pinot Noir (Bellarine Peninsular)). So without further faffing about...

Cheese! In a box!

Holy Goat Eclipse - Kicking off with a surface ripened, fresh goats cheese, this was a sweet and ugly pyramid of joy. From central Victoria, this was a perfect balance of sweet and sour; lightness and depth. It had a consistent texture of tight, fresh curd (unlike the chalky centre and runny edges of, say, the Chabichou du Poitou), and the flavour was fresh and exciting. Very much a Quasimodo cheese - a little terrifying to look at with its curled, dark rind but sweet and gentle to know.

Holy Goat, Batman! It's as ugly as something really, really ugly!

That's Amore Smoked Baby Scamorza - The other Victorian cheese, this is a smoked and stretched curd cheese, bundled in to a little ball of mozzarella-like cuteness and burnished with a bronze sheen. The curd wasn't as stretched as mozzarella though, and although it had a bit of bounce it was softer than it looked. It had a salami-like, smoked smell, but the richness of the cheese is not overwhelmed by the burny stuff. Very popular on the night, and the best smoked cheese I've ever tasted (out of a small pool, to be fair...).

No ashtray necessary

Edel de Cleron - a washed rind cheese for those who don't necessarily believe that "washed rind" is the same as "biological warfare". This is a cow's milk, surface ripened and washed rind cheese that has all of the rich, gooeyness of a white mould cheese and the flavours of something heaven sent. The washed rind aspect was powerful but not overpowering and the texture varied from the ripe, gooey centre to the resisting rind. It had many layers of scent tussled together into a luscious whole. I think we'll leave the remaining half of this for a week to complete ripening - everything was so wonderfully complicated about this that a bit of time might produce something even more amazing.

Hmmmm.... Just you wait, my pretty...

Fougerous Rouzaire - a Brie, a lot like the Brie de Nangus - strong, earthy flavours; more salt than most local white-mould cheeses but not quite as salty as the Nangus. Popular with the white-moulders. Me? Yeah, as good as any, but I'm not really in a white mould mood. This wasn't on RHCL's recommended list but was an addition to satisfy those pesky white-moulders. Let 'em have their cheese I say. More of the others for me.

Quite nice, but you're going to have to get up earlier in the morning to impress me.

Casa Madaio Acacio de Bufala is made from Buffalo's milk and is a hard, cooked curd cheese from Eboli, Italy. This was definitely the most unusual cheese of the six. Penny described it as being "like a Manchego without the sheep's milk taste", which was a good call. It's texture was unexpected - while it looks like a hard granular cheese, it has a hint of resistance almost like a stretched curd cheese.

The flavour is big and round - the tasting notes talk about a "rich apricot fruity flavour". It certainly has a lovely acid balance and a bit of salt . I'm not quite sure what to make of this; I liked it, but ate it frowning in concentration. Not necessarily one I'd buy again, but only because there are so many other cheeses to try.

Things that make you "Hmmm?"

The last cheese of the evening was Onetik Bluette, a blue mould goat's milk cheese from the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, France. Quite frankly, this knocked everyone's socks off without the sense (or smell) that somebody had just taken their socks off, and was a perfect cheese to finish with. The texture was a blend of softly buttery paste and the slight grain of the mighty mould veins. A blue that everyone could enjoy, without it being bland - not so much sharp as tingly. This could easily become a new favourite and is on the "keeper" list and the "buying again" list and the "yes please" list.

Things that make you go "yummmmm..."

We also took delivery of some Aphrodite Haloumi, from Cyprus. I'll grill that and report back later. All in all an excellent haul.

Taxiboat

2010-02-05T16:37:00.001-08:00

Westgarth used to be called Northcote South, which you'd think would just be reduced to "Cote". But it's not, so applying the logic of the existing name, I live in Northcote North; Clifton Hill is, in fact, South Northcote South; and my former little house in Collingwood is in East South Northcote West. If Westgarth insists on being called Westgarth, where the hell is Garth?

Nice sign

Taxiboat, ideally, should be visited in a taxi, which would be a Taxiboat Taxi. In the perfect world you would get the taxi from the Princess Pier, having got off a boat, which would be a Taxiboat Taxi Boat. Anyway, I could be recursive (recursive all day) all day, so I'll stop.

Taxiboat, as you may have guessed already, is in Westgarth, directly opposite the cinema in a groovy room with polished concrete and an enormous bar. As iSaluti does for its pizza oven, Taxiboat does for its bar, making it a major feature of a small room and giving it a remarkable amount of floor space. It's also a fairly loud space, even when seasonally adjusted for my hearing, and despite that there were only two tables and a scant dozen people.

We were joined by the Catman Malcolm, as well as Suzanne and John, having only recently discovered that not only did we work for the same organisation and share a love of BitTorrent for English panel shows, we also posted words about food. As Steven Wright says, it's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it.

I'm not sure how Taxiboat describes itself, but I'd describe it as a mix of Chinese and south east Asian dishes, brought out to share (as God intended, or would have if he'd bothered to show up for work).

Suzanne, John and Malcolm

We were attended to quickly and the service was enthusiastic and good natured. We spent a bit of time futzing over the menu (which was always going to happen), ordered, and the food arrived fairly promptly.

Spring rolls, as has been noted, are an easy choice and pretty much set the tone for the night. They were crisp, light and... well... didn't have a lot of flavour. Compared to the spring rolls from Thy Thy 1, these were more cigars than cigarettes and weren't dense with filling in the same way the Victoria Street ones were.

OK, but suffered by comparison to these from two days earlier

San Choi Bow is not something I've ever been a big fan of, and by reports there was no reason to make an exception for this. F described it as unremarkable. And that was all she could muster up.

Making rice paper rolls is like using a parachute. It's a little bit tricky, and unless you get it *just* right, people will be left somewhat disappointed. By all accounts these were adequate. Do you see a theme emerging here?

Meh...

The one thing I had heard about Taxiboat was that their dumplings were good, and they certainly have pride of place right up at the pointy end of the menu. Once again, however, the demon Bland visited the table, spread his cable-knit cardigan wings and exuded an uninspiring beige mist. I expected the ginger and seafood dumplings to have at least two flavours (don't make me explain which ones...) but we ended up with seafood and... And???....

Sigh. I thought about performing the Rite of AshkEnte to banish the demon Bland but couldn't remember which version it was that didn't cause instant death. That turned out to be my loss.

Bland turned up again for the main courses. A dish of Singapore Noodles looked lovely, but both of the prawns in the dish were sitting on top and although the noodles were cooked beautifully and their texture was perfect, they lacked any sort of real flavour.

A dish described as Chicken Teriyaki was softly sweet and apparently braised. The wagyu beef in sesame was similarly uninspiring. It was cut into small cubes, and although there was nothing wrong with the texture, there was no suggestion of browning or of the wonderful caramels of quickly cooked meat. Malcolm described it as wooden, but I think he was referring to flavour rather than texture. The dread demon Bland had done his job and had done it well.

The salt and pepper squid was certainly salty and surprisingly soft and had been cooked beautifully, but lack pepperiness. A plate of stir-fried pak choy and (I think) bok choy was recommended to us, and it was pretty good too.

The conversation was more interesting than the food

The highlight of the night was the Thai Red Duck Curry. Now, I have to say I've made this myself a few times and I'm not bad at it. A chopped up Chinese roast duck and lychees goes into a Thai red curry with the usual herbal extravaganza, giving a dish that's sweet, rich and complicated with the flavour of the roast duck and balanced with herbs. And this was good - it was sweet and rich and the flavour was lovely with an emphasis on the aniseed of Thai basil (although F felt that it lacked the requisite unctuousness). But the duck was thin slices of duck breast cut off the bone.

I often do the mental trade-off about the value of keeping the bone in when I cook a lot of things. Bone so often means moist and more flavour, but sometimes I want to be lazy when I'm eating rather than cooking. I've had beautiful pan-fried duck breasts (and if you want duck rare, it's the only way I trust myself to cook it that way), but my favourite duck dishes have all been on the bone (like this one).

Taxiboat was a bit disappointing, to be honest. The food certainly wasn't bad, but despite this writing, it wasn't (*irony spoiler*) worth writing home about. I'm trying to avoid damning with faint praise but that's about all I can do. The restaurant itself has a smart modern look yet is low on the wank factor, yet the clatter was a bit much and there wasn't much elbow room. The waiting staff were good-natured, but sometimes needed a reminder or correction (which is better in my book than the other way around); and all the food had lovely textures but tasted, well, bland. And in spite of the wonderful quirkiness of having a bath and shower in the lavatory, any bonus points were immediately lost by having nothing with which to dry your hands.

W was so disappointed he tried to hide

We didn't stay for dessert, instead walking up the hill to Coco Loco, which we will post about at some other time.

Thy Thy 1

2010-02-03T21:30:00.000-08:00

Despite rumours to the contrary, we have NOT been banned from restaurants in the northern parts of Melbourne; we just haven't been out much. That fabricated tissue of farragoes you may have heard about me losing my temper with a waiter because of a live lobster, the widow at the next table, dirty wine glasses and a rolled-up copy of Guns 'N' Ammo is almost certainly untrue. Nor do I have anything to apologise to Nicole Kidman for. My statement stands, and that's all I'm saying on the matter.

Now we've cleared up that little mess, we've decided to make a bit more of an effort and let other people cook. Today was a test run in order to limber up the blogging muscles, stretch the jaw tendons and give the taste buds a slight sanding and a freshen up. So where better than old favourite (and nowhere near High Street), Thy Thy 1 on Victoria Street in Richmond, in Melbourne's Vietnamese centre.

Reasons to love Victoria Street #7: Vegetables on the street

Thy Thy 1 is about as casual as you can get and although it's always busy, there's never any problem getting a table, although you might be kissing a stranger's elbow (no, that rumour's not true either). You ascend the pink staircase from the street to be greeted by laminex tables, gaudy painting and glowing paper lamps as colourful as a box of crayons after a mouthful of disco biscuits.

The magical staircase is all you can see from the street

Jars of chili, bottles of sauces and vinegars sit in a plastic peg bucket on each table. All very casual and very, very welcoming. Tea comes out and gay, chipper menus are distributed and orders are taken quickly. Food generally arrives within 10 minutes, today even faster.

Chili, sauces etc in a bucket

Although Spring rolls are an easy-cop-out cliche in many South East Asian restaurants, here they are beautiful, petit and come with a table salad to wrap them in. Lettuce, bean shoots and Vietnamese mint, and a nuoc mam cham dipping sauce. Crunchy, light and fragrant... Because we arrived late in the lunch session, we were the last to leave, and got to watch them being rolled at the next table.

We followed this up with fried egg noodles with seafood, which was pretty good, and a curry made with sliced barbecue pork and curry powder, cheered up with fresh herbs.

Neither were fantastic dishes, but they were good and very comforting. Thy Thy 1 is not fine dining, nor is it elegant, neuvo anything. Minimalist decor has been ignored for hallucinogenic colour and easy-to-clean surfaces. If it's a bit hip (and how the fuck would I know?), then it's because it's not trying to be. You get what you expect, as long as you were expecting cheap and cheerful food stripped of all pretension and stuck at the top of a magical staircase in Richmond. There's one or two decent bottle shops within a hundred metres or so, so you can get a bottle of wine at the last moment should you want.

Of course, you also get a walk along Victoria Street. Priceless.

Food we have et...

2010-02-03T02:59:00.001-08:00

So in the absence of real postings (real in the sense of "what we started this blog for"...), we have been doing a bit of cooking at home, plenty of which has been captured through the magic of the modern technique know as "Photo-Graphy". Here are some modest samples. Those of you only vaguely familiar with the emerging art of "Photo-Graphy" may rest assured that, despite current thinking, it does not "steal your soul". However, it is widely understood by learned Gentlemen that it may disturb the luminiferous aether, so all caution is advised.

Grating tumeric for a paste, which would then be pounded with coriander roots, garlic, cumin, ginger. The poundation was then mixed with tomato, saffron threads, salt, pepper and white fish cubes (of gummy shark) were marinated, later to be very slowly cooked. Chick peas were added to warm through; then chopped coriander.

I vouchsafe, Sirs, that it was Good.

Later, chicken salad was prepared upon an Indochinese basis. Cabbage, carrot, poached chicken breast, handfuls of herbs (mint, coriander, basil), thinly sliced red onion marinated in rice vinegar, sugar and salt, lots of ground pepper, lime juice and fried shallots from a packet. Lots of fish sauce, chili, sugar and vinegar to dress...

Black mussels, always to be preferred, were from the fishmongers adjacent to Psarakos in Thornbury, but a hop, step and swagger from here. Alas, F refers to them only as "Psoriasis Brothers". We've had them often, but today (being a holiday), Alex and I stuffed them with pork and either a pounding of green herbs and pepper or a mix of red curry paste and other accouterments . Truth be told, the hard work mussels (green) were not nearly as good as the slap-dash, liaise fare (red) ones... All good, but a lot of work and, methinks, one to do once a decade or so.

Cooking Quail

2010-02-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

I know, I know... It's a been a bloody long time since the last post. This week, however, we've got two kidlets in new schools and time to burn. Ecce homo, ergo elk, it's lots of time for cooking and for eating. Let's start with quail....

Mmmmmmmmm......

Cheesy Twirly Blue(y) Goodness

2009-11-09T03:05:00.000-08:00

I bought a piece of beautiful Roquefort today; Roquofort Carles. It was spectacular - creamy, crumbly, buttery and sharp; rich yet deeply salty and with a perfect tang.

You can read some more about it here (although be warned - the language verges on the wank and contains the word "artisanal") and I can recommend their website almost as much as the cheese. Once you see that arrow go around, you know it's the good stuff.

In the words of Google Translate:

"Placed on span of oak wood in magnificent caves naturally ventilated by a stream of air continuously cool and wet, Roquefort Carles will be refined for a few months later his inimitable flavor."

So, I raise a glass of Seppeltsfield Grand Muscat, sip quietly and wish my mouth would stop shouting at me. Wonderful, and full of his inimitable flavor.

White Bean and Tuna Salad

2009-11-08T01:18:00.000-08:00

We don't go out much anymore, and although it looks like we're losing sight of the original purpose of this blog, we do still eat and we do still have words to describe food.

Once again, tonight we failed to eat at somewhere on High Street, but this time at least we did eat photogenic. So with malice aforethought, I offer white bean and tuna salad, although I can't for the life of me remember where the recipe originally came from. What I can remember is that it's perfect when the weather's turned sweaty all of a sudden.

White Bean and Tuna Salad

You'll need:

2 tins of cannellini beans
2 0r 3 decent sized tomatoes, or at least a punnet of decent flavoured cherry toms
A big tin of tuna in oil
Half a red onion
Green olive oil
Lemons
Basil
Olives
Cos lettuce
Salt and Pepper

Rinse the beans in a colander and let them drain for a bit. Dump them in large bowl with chopped tomatoes, a handful of halved olives and the drained tuna. Slice the onion as thin as you possibly can and add it too. Make a sharp(ish) dressing with the oil and lemon juice and toss with the beans, salt, pepper and a handful of roughly chopped basil. It needs to be a bit sharper than usual because the beans have a bland taste (but a beautiful texture). Try not to over-mix it - the tuna should still be fairly chunky.

Dump into individual bowls on a bed of Cos lettuce. A bit more dressing to wet the leaves and you're done. Crusty bread, wine of any description and you're good to go. It's also great with a shirt-load of parsley.

A Night at Home

2009-11-03T01:29:00.000-08:00

We haven't eaten out in quite a few weeks. We've talked about it, but middle child has a whooping kind of cough, and although vaccinated against just such a situation, our GP tells us not to be surprised. "It's OK", he says. "It just a mild variation from the standard", implying it's the medical equivalent of one of the more dull Bach cantatas. Oh.. that's alright then. She's only got one of the four diseases she's not supposed to be able to get, but I'll accept that this might be ok....

So, as I'm not keen on leaving the house, tonight I offer two courses cooked at home.

Asparagi di Campo con Acciughe e Limone

This is, without any pause for thought, the best asparagus dish this side of something that's a long way away. It's gutsy and earthy, but still manages to emphasizes asparagusness, which is important for something that's ultimately a vegetable. The original recipe came from the book "Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style" by Viana La Place, but I've modded it over time and with considerable love and respect. It contains:

Asparagus
Anchovies
Parsley
Olive Oil
Lemon (Lime)
Garlic

Take a shirtload of asparagus - you know how much you like, but at least 4 or 5 stems per person. Steam or cook in water until *just* tender. Drain in a colander and refresh in cold water. Stop it cooking and keep it green.

A big slug of olive oil now goes into the dry pot the asparagus was cooked in... Once it's warm, drop in some finely chopped anchovies - at least two per person, and a finely chopped clove of garlic (one is enough). Let this gently frazzle for a few minutes. Add the grated rind of a lemon and the asparagus.

Toss the asparagus to make sure it's covered in the oil/anchovy/garlic/parsley/lemon/Sex God mix, splash on some lemon juice and serve. It's earthy, dirty, sexy and asparagussy...

Chicken, Chorizo and Paprika Stuff Hopkinsii

It would be jolly to claim that this is a classic Spanish dish that was passed to me from a Great Second Uncle's Third Aunt's Daughter's Neighbour, but, truth be told, I made this up and while it's still evolving, it's still damn good. It's part casserole, part soup, rich with garlic, sausage and paprika. For four, we used:

about 500g/a pound of chicken thighs, chopped into bite-sized pieces
two chorizos (the Spanish sort, ie dry like salamis, not fresh like sausages)
three decent sized potatoes
two red capsicums/bell peppers
a brown onion or two
three(ish) cloves of garlic
smoked paprika
cumin
some saffron threads (optional, but should be dropped in a scant cup of boiling water)
500ml/two cups of chicken stock
bay leaves
salt, pepper

Chop the onions coarsely into strips and gently saute in a heavy casserole. Add the finely chopped garlic and capsicums after a couple of minutes, then the chorizos, which have been chopped into bite-sized pieces. Fry for a bit until the smell forces you to taste a bit of sausage. Hmmmmm....... By this point you should be hungry.

Add a tablespoon or so of smoked paprika and a teaspoon of cumin and gently fry for a few moments. Add the chicken and stir-fry a bit longer. Once the chicken is coated with spices and coloured, add the stock, two bay leaves and the chopped potatoes, which have been chopped into large bite-sized chunks (and peeled, if you like), and the saffron with its water. Salt (a bit) and lots of pepper...
Simmer on a low heat (*just* bubbling) for about 35-40 minutes. Test the potato, and when it's soft, crush a few bits if you like (I do) to thicken the liquid.

Serve in bowls, sprinkle with a small handful of roughly chopped parsely (don't skimp on the parsely - this is important!) and pour yourself a glass of cheerful and assertive vin rouge. "Huzzah", he said, through wetted and slightly oiled lips. Nom nom nom......

The third rule of Cheese Club is if someone says "stop" or goes limp, it's time to stop eating cheese

2009-08-31T05:36:00.000-07:00

Cheese Club arrived again. Life is good, although my cholesterol is probably stratospheric so I shall continue to avoid having it measured. This bunch went from the "ho-humm" to the sublime to the "OMG WTF BBQ!" At least one here fails the urbane scrumping Cheese Club test of bare-chested Brad Pittism, but there are a few that will rail against the materialism and alienation of modern life while tearing your ears off. You may go limp, but you won't say "stop".

Chabichou du Poitou is a fresh, white mould goats cheese, and not surprisingly was similar to the previously loved Buche Chevre du Poitou. Like that cheese it had a series of layers of various degrees of ripeness, although the Chabichou had a thicker chalky centre with a lovely, goaty, lemony tang and less of the creamy layer of the Buche. On the outside was beautifully wrinkled skin like a Shar Pei, although there is nothing else doggy about it. Cleansing but still rich, like a goats cheese should be.

The Brie de Nangis was a lovely, perfectly ripe Brie, with a gooey, runny middle ("it's runnier than you like, Sir...") and a big flavour as far as Brie goes. To do this cheese justice you have to try and forget years of average, bland Bries that offer a smooth texture and not much else. This is as strong a Brie as I have tasted, and its slightly mushroom, sexy scent will stay in my mind until the next disappointing Brie. Until then, however, whooooaghhhhhh.......

Fromagella di Capra

Fromagella di Capra. Oh yes, this is the stuff for me. An Italian washed rind cheese of goats milk, it had a luscious creamy texture followed up with an elegant fist in the ear of flavour. Strong and rounded without being in the washed rind stinky league, although I think I'm not only becoming immune to increasingly orange rinds, but beginning to demand them. Today is father's day, and this is how I'm celebrating...

Jean's Cow Goat

Jean Faup Vache Chevre - So, this is Jean Faup's Cow Goat (ok, so my translation is a bit literal), or at least is made of both kinds of milk. Semi-hard, smear-ripened it is rippled with small holes. The texture is creamy with a little firmness, like a very soft Emmentaler and the layers of flavour are intense but still subtle. I kept going back trying more, looking for the goatyness (at least, that was my excuse) but I couldn't find it, although I suspect it made the cheese lighter than it would otherwise have been. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Tete de Moine - a Swiss, hard cooked cow's milk cheese. Strong, nutty and with a powerful and complex perfume, it's the bovver boy of the bunch, although the Fromagella di Capri is leering from behind the Tete's back. There's apparently a gadget you can by to shave the Tete de Moine with (because cheese with stubble is a little too casual), and I can imagine it sitting in the back of the second drawer in the kitchen doing the good work of the goddess Anoia. Unlike the gadget though, I will go back to this cheese again and again. So, to the monks of Bellaly Abbey we say "thank you for this glorious cheese. Oh, and sorry your abbey got turned into psychiatric clinic."

Rochebaron is a cow's milk cheese that looks and feels a bit like a white mould cheese but is also a blue, apparently. I say apparently, because although I can see small pockets of blue, it was exceptionally mild and like a not-very-inspiring brie. It looked like a Camembert dusted in charcoal. Best described as "safe for the kiddies". Everyone else liked it but I.... well, I like the sterner stuff.

(From top left corner, clockwise: Rochebaron, Chabichou du Poitou, Jean Feap Vache Chevre , Fromagella di Capri and Tete de Moine. The Brie de Nangis looked like Brie.)

Otsumami

2009-08-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time between drinks, not to mention High Street food, and in the last couple of months we've had the long distance runaround between Melbourne, Adelaide, Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Darwin, Rockhampton, Fraser Island, Sydney etc... Now we're home again and the High Street odyssey is underway some more.

Tonight we start at Otsumami, an elegant minimalist Japanese restaurant on the leeward side (OK, the west side) of High Street, high on Ruckers Hill. Minimalist in decor, but this being Northcote on a Friday night there was an encouraging buzz without being too noisy. This is important to me - although I practice that quizzical smile that is attentive while still projecting, "I can't hear a word you're saying but I am interested" - I'm not very good at it yet.

I'd booked only 45 minutes before we sat down and ordered and we'd been squeezed in, but only on the proviso that were out by 8.30 and we'd eat at a sitting-on-the-floor-table. As we were dining with a four-year old, time was never going to be a problem.

We ordered swiftly and food was delivered quickly with low fuss and high efficiency.

The Moriawase, a platter of mixed sashimi and sushi, was beautifully presented. The sashimi was sliced perfectly (I'm not into the thick cuts of tuna), although the tuna/salmon/kingfish trio is getting a bit too familiar. The Unagi Nigiri (a personal favourite) was luscious without being cloying and even Mr Four Year Old wolfed down some salmon.

The Tori Niku Gyoza, made with chicken and allegedly five-spice, were the one disappointment. The filling was bland and the dumpling wrappers were slightly underdone and chewy. One disappointment, but the only one in an otherwise wonderful meal.

I can never go past Nasu Dengaku, grilled eggplant with miso, when I see it, and this was great. Soft, sweet and unctuous without being heavy. When it's as good as this, it's hard to remember that, to me at least, eggplant is a predominately Mediterranean vegetable.

The Tempura prawns and vegetables were good. Not outstanding, but still very good.

The stand-out dish of the night, however, were the soft-shelled crabs. Stunning, and not a scrap was left. They were served fried in an ethereal tempura batter and a simple mayo-based sauce. I've never had soft-shelled crabs before, and when they came out was a bit surprised they were cooked whole, appendages akimbo. That the shells were entirely edible was fantastic, at least for us. Less so for the crab, who had popped his clogs* probably regretting he hadn't been born a hard-shelled crab. But no regrets, eh? Well, not from the humans. The meat was soft and the gentle scraps of batter did nothing to interfere with the soft flavour. Spongebob can keep his crabby patties - I'm having these.

The sake was good, which I put down to Otsumami having a short but good list, and luck on my part. My approach to sake is the same as my approach to substituted phenethylamines: I don't know much about them, but I know what I like and I'm probably not very discriminating.

The dessert menu is short with no surprises. (Insert former Prime Minister joke *here*.) The green tea ice cream was pretty good, but Emmy's cheesecake was a textbook Philly cheesecake. It was OK, but nothing special. The black sesame ice cream, on the other hand, was the standout dessert, with a rich nuttiness highlighted by sweetness.

Otsumami has the beautiful, light touch I associate with great Japanese food. The menu (divided into Sushi & Sashimi, Small Food, Medium Food and Big Food) meant we took a punt on quantities, but we did well. The service is quick and attentive, and although we knew we had been squeezed in we never felt rushed.

Japanese food is hitting that part of the fashion curve in Melbourne where proliferation is well upon us. Within 250 metres of my office (in the CBD) I can get a nori roll from one of a dozen places. Some of them are even good, although the average quality (across the board) is falling. With that in mind, I think we're pretty lucky to have a Japanese restaurant of Otsumami's quality this close to hand. Otsumami offers a gentle touch, a zazen approach to food which sets it apart from proliferating nori rolls. Lucky us!

*F points out that the crabs hadn't in fact, popped their clogs. They were still wearing them when we ate them.

The second rule of Cheese Club is don't talk about Cheese Club

2009-07-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

It was a truly great day. Cheese Club day always is. This time we were joined by the Urbane parents and the wines of the Rhone - a bottle of rounded red and a Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. The Richmond Hill blurb for the selection emphasised fondue, Switzerland and winter, and while it was cold and wet outside, inside it was warm and cheesy. The cheeses were either Swiss or from Alpine France, but there was nothing neutral or appeasing about them.

Fromeger des Clarines - Louche, lush, luscious, moannnnn... This is a surface ripened, white mould cheese that makes your average Camembert look as attractive as a lump of ripened soap. The emphasis here is on "creamy", and the lesson is "fat is your friend". The rind/mould has just the right amount of texture to stop the cheese from falling apart; the flavour is gentle and earthy but the texture of the middle is a thing that makes you go "mmmmmmmmm"... somewhere between a fully ripe Brie and creme fraiche...

La Graine des Vosges - Well, roll me over, call me slave and make me beg for mercy - this is a petite smack in the face with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick, to paraphrase Douglas Adams. It's cute and smaller than you expect (insert Kylie Minogue reference here), and while a washed rind, it's not in the cat's tray league - the orange mould is a subtle, yeasty tang (note "orange mould" and "subtle" aren't mutually exclusive) and the overall effect is rich, salty, creamy and vegemitey. Spruced up with a sprig of spruce, this Kylie, this looks pretty and has a particular nasal twang. Mmmm.....

Le Caviste de Scey - the first of the obviously mountainous cheeses, this is a cooked smoother than smooth thing that's been given a light sanding in preparation for a quick coat of varnish and a French polish. It has an intensity, but apart from the smoothy smoother smoothster texture, mark this one down as Captain Pleasant.

Cave Ripened Emmentaler - Heidi as slut. Unpasteurised, dirty and sexy, this is sweeter than the Caviste de Scey and dribbles a bit - the eyes are moist with a sweetened whey and the cheese itself has a slight but perfect grain. Nutty and verging on nuttiest, as though it's going to key your car and write a nasty farewell on your windscreen with lipstick. The whole wheels of cheese apparently weigh more than a Range Rover but look fetching in a pair of silk stockings. Switzerland, eh? Who would have thought...

Bresse Blue - F remembers this as having been mentioned in the "cheeseshop" sketch, proving only that she's as much a sketch comedy gunzel as I am. It's soft and has white mould, blue mould and a partridge in a mould tree mould. It's a mild and creamy blue, rich and not too tart. Like Joe Hockey, it's plump and mostly inoffensive, has a friendly appeal that doesn't particularly stick in the mind.