Gold Leaf

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

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

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.

Pho Dzung

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....

Cedar Bakery

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

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

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

"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.

Home Cooking is Killing Fast Food

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.

Preston Market, Saturday afternoon