Quick tastes: a blog amnesty post

Time for another blog amnesty post! Here's an assortment of dishes I wanted to share on the blog, but rather than write individual posts I thought I'd stick them all together in the one place. Looking through the collection of photos, I realise that today's post has a strong focus on all sorts of weird and wonderful meats. You might like to look away, vegetarians...

First of all, how cute are these tiny native desert limes? Matt Wilkinson gave me a taste of them on my most recent visit to Pope Joan. At the time, he was experimenting with pickling them and putting them through a grain salad. Hopefully they'll also be muddled in cocktails at the bar he's going to be opening next door to Pope Joan, The Bishop of Ostia (named after the illegitimate son whose birth revealed Pope Joan to be female, if Wikipedia is to be believed).


The best thing on the current Auction Rooms brunch menu (apart from the knuckle sandwich) is the salmon pastrami on a potato and quinoa rösti (the quinoa gives the rösti a really interesting texture) with a poached egg, pink grapefruit, rocket and crème fraîche ($16). Auction Rooms has also added Bloody Marys to its brunch menu. This pleases me greatly.


The Japanese/French hybrid thing they've got going at Heirloom extends to their breakfast menu. When we visited on one of our recent Bourgeois Breakfasts, a highlight was the panko crumbed free range egg and asparagus with smoked almond, preserved lemon and burnt butter ($16).


Delicious horse tartare, at an Italian restaurant whose name I will not mention given that last year, following the legalisation of horse meat for Australian human consumption in July, death threats were sent to WA butcher Vince Garreffa from Mondo Butchers and to the other Melbourne restaurant which held a special horse meat dinner I attended.

I've eaten horse meat a few times in Italy and love the lean, mild, sweet taste of it. While I understand why some would have a cultural/sentimental aversion to eating horse (similarly, I could never bring myself to eat dog, because I love these two too much), I am bewildered by those who want to attack other people and restrict their freedom to choose whether or not to eat a meat which is perfectly legal (horse meat has been produced in Australia for human consumption for years, but prior to last July it was all exported). Given that these particular animals are slaughtered by Mondo Butchers under government-approved and closely scrutinised conditions, it also seems inconsistent to me that such people would protest outside a restaurant serving horse - as was the case at the horse dinner I attended last year - but not outside restaurants serving, say, lamb.

If dog meat were legalised tomorrow, I sure as hell wouldn’t be buying it (and would probably give Monty and Nessie an extra pat and cuddle next time I went to Mum and Dad’s) but I wouldn’t be protesting outside a restaurant serving it or sending death threats to the butcher!


Moving on to a different restaurant, the $15.50 vitello tonnato at Jorg consists of discs of poached veal interspersed with discs of pepper crusted, seared tuna. When I was taken there by M and Zia P, it was my favourite dish.


Mamasita braised veal tongue and ox cheek tacos with pickled vegetables and ghost chilli mayonnaise ($6 each). YES.


I've written before about the special four course Sunday lunch at Embrasse. What I didn't realise was that they also do lunch Thursday to Saturday, $38 for two courses or $45 for three courses - but of course in my opinion you MUST also order a serve of the aligot (crazily elastic, cheesy mashed potato) for your table to share.

A few weeks ago I organised a big group of people to have Saturday lunch at Embrasse to celebrate the lovely Chontoozie's birthday. The highlight for me this time was the dessert of local berries and cherries with honey custard - simple and beautiful.


How do you like your house martini? DECONSTRUCTED, that's how. From the new Autumn cocktail menu at Der Raum.


Gerald's Bar
386 Rathdowne St, Carlton North (map)
9349 4748

A few weeks ago I finally, FINALLY visited Gerald's Bar, the Rathdowne Village locale Gourmet Traveller dubbed its 2010 Bar of the Year (and which David Chang memorably likened to being on mescaline).

But I wasn't sampling the usual fare Gerald's has on offer: Matt Wilkinson had taken over the kitchen to test out some dishes from his first draft menu for the opening-later-in-2011 restaurant, Hen & Coq. The meal was a bargain at $55 for five courses or $85 for nine courses, and my charming dining companions were Matt C and (frequent Melbourne Gastronome hand model) J, both Gerald's Bar devotees. As we walked in we sniggered at the sign in the front window: "To showcase Matt's new venture, we have suspended our usual menu. Tomorrow it's back to the slop Gerald cooks".


The negronis were flawless. As we drank them, we munched on what Matt described on the menu as 'classic butcher pork scratchings'.


Other highlights were the Cuban sandwich, and a dish which Gerald insisted everybody eat first before he'd tell us what it was: smoked ox heart and crumbed sweetbread salad. While I'm quite partial to sweetbreads in small doses and guessed what they were right away, I confess that I'd've approached the dish rather more tentatively if I'd known it was heart. But ignorance is bliss - we loved it!


By this stage in the meal we'd moved on to a bottle of Mornington Peninsula lagrein (I hadn't been aware that much lagrein was grown anywhere outside of Northern Italy, let alone in Melbourne's own backyard!). The high acidity helped with the outrageous richness of the next course: Warialda Belted Galloway bone marrow, crab and caviar. Oh, MR WILKINSON.


We finished off with what the menu rather conversationally described as 'a pot of custard or as the French say “crème Anglaise” with doughnuts'. Once again, J acted as the Melbourne Gastronome hand model. It was a fun night that not only made me look forward to the opening of Hen & Coq down the track, but keen to return to Gerald's ASAP. I keep reading Essjay's tweets about her frequent meals at Gerald's, and they always sound so bloody good!

Have you tried Der Raum's Summer 2011 cocktails yet?

I ask because they're really rather special.

Der Raum
438 Church Street, Richmond (map)
9428 0055
website


Pictured from left to right: Ben Shewry (an instant classic!), Death in the Afternoon and, from the new menu, PB & J.
Every three months those clever alcohol alchemists at Der Raum create a new cocktail menu (though classics such as the Pharmacy, the Latin Threesome and the El Moroccan Blazer are still available). One hot Saturday a few weeks ago b-f-K and I had a dinner reservation that wasn't until 9pm, so we decided we'd meet up a few hours earlier and work our way through the five new Der Raum cocktails while we waited.


I've written before about how much I love my local cocktail bar and their fancy, inventive but perfectly balanced liquid creations. Der Raum is the first bar in Australia to use a rotary evaporator, an elaborate distillation device whose vacuum system lowers the pressure and the boiling point of liquid over several hours (as used to great effect with food at Attica). The rotovap is a recently acquired toy that Matt and others have been using to distill various elements for the new cocktails.

The palate-cleansing drink served on arrival was the 'Chamomile Chroming', a sous vide infusion of French vermouth and chamomile emitting wisps of dry ice vapour. When I popped in for a drink two nights ago with the lovely H, the drink on arrival came in a ridiculously skinny glass and was infused with rooibos tea.


The first of the Summer 2011 cocktails is the 'Gomashio Kanpai' ($22), made with sesame spirit, lime, cucumber juice, bittersweet orange oil and a hint of ginger, salt and pepper to fill out the palate. It's served with a stick of cucumber pressed with gomashio (a Japanese condiment made from sesame seeds and black salt). It is refreshing and salty and ENTIRELY delicious - probably my favourite on the menu.


The second cocktail (with a price of $20) has one of the longer cocktail names I've heard in recent memory:
'No blossoms and no moon,
and he is drinking sake
all alone'

(!)

For simplicity's sake, it gets shortened to No Blossoms. Perhaps it's best if I just let Der Raum explain the origins of this one: "While the name may be the work of Haiku master, Matsuo Bashō, the most famous poet of the Edo period, the drink itself is the work of our friend and former Der Raum alumni, Joel Fraser, a self proclaimed Bashō of the bar."

It's made with sake, French vermouth, pressed citrus and orange blossom, and a lemon verbena distillate is sprayed over the top just prior to serving. I was less enamored of this one due to my dislike of lemon verbena, even in trace amounts (to me it always tastes like an aromatherapy candle).


We both loved the 'PB & J' ($25) though. It's made with Makers Mark, crème de framboise, strawberry vermouth and sparkling rosé. Into the jam jar containing the liquid is poured the pinenut fog (made with liquid nitrogen). The lid of the jar is then closed to allow the flavoured fog to infuse the drink for a while. I love the flavour fog cocktails at Der Raum - last summer's Mel Tormé-inspired 'Velvet Fog' was my all-time favourite.


The penultimate cocktail was the 'Life on Mars?' ($25). I love that the cocktail named after my favourite Bowie song is written properly (with a question mark), and that the menu exhorts guests to raise a glass to "my mother, my dog, and clowns"!

I completely geeked out over this cocktail - the contrasting textures (neither of which are liquids) and temperatures reminded me strongly of the Snow Crab at Attica. The base is an icy, crunchy liquid nitrogen granita made with Matusalem Platino white rum, capsicum, lime and agave. The crunchy texture is quite extraordinary. On top of that is a luscious, gooey cocoa butter and soy emulsion, heated sous vide and served warm (similar to the '+/- Piña Colada' they were doing last year) . It's finished off with a sprinkling of minuscule flowers and Sichuan pepper.


And last of all, the 'Tzatziki Sour' ($22): "a summer tribute to Richmond's Greek heritage". It's made with muddled cucumber, mint, lemon, a spoon of yoghurt, Martin Miller's and absinthe. I approached this drink frankly dubious about the yoghurt factor, but it turned out to be much lighter and less viscous than I'd anticipated (and I loved the oodles of mint). Miller's and cucumber go so well together.


I've booked my ticket to go along to Reinterpreting Dessert, the dessert and cocktail degustation Der Raum will be doing with Burch and Purchese at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. During MFWF, Der Raum are also hosting a Bar Food, Not As You Know It evening with Ryan Flaherty, the chef recently returned from stints at Fat Duck and El Bulli. If you're quick you may still be able to book tickets!

Drinking a Ben Shewry at Der Raum

Der Raum
438 Church Street, Richmond (map)
9428 0055


The Melbourne food nerd in me just about died of happiness when I opened the brand new 2010 Spring Collection cocktail menu at Der Raum on Monday night and saw that they're currently serving a cocktail named after Attica wunderchef (and recent recipient of The Age Good Food Guide 2011 Chef of the Year award) Ben Shewry.

Love it.


It's made with chilled umeshu, absinthe and fresh basil, which is fed into a bulbous beaker glass containing a thick stick of ice. The beaker is itself placed inside a big gobstopper jar containing rosemary and star anise which, having been attacked by a handy blowtorch, are charred and smoking.

The jar is then closed and the contents of the jar are given a few moments to smoke the contents of the beaker, in a method that echoes Shewry's famous dish of smoked trout broth with crackling, basil seeds and fresh smoke.


And the taste? I'm not usually much of a fan of aniseed flavours, but I just loved it tempered with the sweet plum from the umeshu and the freshness of the basil. And loved that hint of smoke characters too!


A few guys and gals from the Attica team were in on Monday night, to taste the cocktail.

My cocktail companion, the lovely H, chose a different cocktail called Sausage Fingers. It contained CHIPOTLE AND MANGO TEQUILA, pressed lemon and agave, and tasted smoky and fresh and sweet and spicy all at once. Der Raum cocktails are not cheap (these two were $22 each) but boy oh boy do we love them.


It was a Monday night and we'd promised each other we'd stop at one cocktail. But I'm keen as mustard to get back there ASAP to try the Midnight in Sicily: Averna, Campari, blood orange and Strega mist. Be still my beating heart!

Blog Amnesty: Winter Edition

It's Blog Amnesty: Winter Edition today. There are lots of things I've wanted to write up in brief on the blog, so I thought I'd put them all here in the one post. Item 1: gorgeous Bastille Day tricouleur macarons filled with vanilla butter cream and a home made raspberry jam, from Pierrick Boyer's Le Petit Gâteau. Trop mignons ces petits macarons!


Cherry Tree Hotel
53 Balmain Street, Cremorne (map)
9428 5743

Item 2: One of my favourite places to hibernate this winter is in front of the fireplace at my beloved local, The Cherry Tree (which I have previously written about here and here). On Tuesday nights, Chrus saves me the food sections of the newspapers so I can read the reviews aloud to him and either enthuse over or decry them (or sometimes both) as he serves me a beer. It's a great pub and I can recommend their shepherds pie with buttered cabbage ($16) - the best thing on their winter menu, in my opinion.


Item 3: You heard it here first. 506 Swan Street, Richmond, the site next to the Burnley netball courts that was until recently home to Indian restaurant Fuzion, is being fitted out and transformed into a brunch cafe from the team that brought you Porgie & Mr Jones. I heard this from Mr Jones himself, Jason Jones, when I had brunch at P+MJ the other week. Given that P+MJ is one of my favourite brunch destinations (previously written up here), I was delighted to hear that his new cafe will be in my neck of the 3121 woods.


Tea House at China Town
11-17 Cohen Place, Melbourne (map)
9639 2526

Item 4: Next time you want to go somewhere a bit posh in Chinatown, go down the little laneway to the Chinese Museum and visit the restaurant opposite, The Tea House at China Town. Their fluffy omelette with lobster meat ($12.50) is *sensational*. The barbequeued pigeon and steamed scallops served three ways are very good too.


MoVida Aqui
Level 1, 500 Bourke Street (access via Lt Bourke St), Melbourne (map)
9663 3038

Item 5: It's pretty easy to make me happy. For example, sit me down at the bar at MoVida Aqui with a glass of La Goya Manzanilla and a bocadillo de calamares and I am HAPPY AS A SANDBOY. But to make a visit to MoVida Aqui really *choice*, order a Martini Aqui: their crazy, fishy take on a dirty martini. Ask the charming Josh Begbie (former head bartender at Der Raum) to make it for you.


The glass is rinsed out with manzanilla rather than vermouth, and the garnish is not olives but rather a white anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper. There ain't no anchovy like a gin-soaked anchovy! Just don't freak out when your glass ends up coated in a slight film of fishy oil.

Vegetarian drinking companions can opt to have a sans anchovy version.


Der Raum
438 Church Street, Richmond (map)
9428 0055

Speaking of Der Raum brings me to Item 6: I feel everyone needs to know immediately that the Der Raum winter cocktail menu includes a cocktail that is SERVED IN A MINIATURE WATERING CAN.

Oh yes. It's called Pushing Daisy's (sic) and it's an entirely delicious combination of Compass Box Asyla whisky, a house-made thyme syrup and a "soil" containing dark chocolate, almond and mushroom. The other cocktail from the winter menu that I just adore is the Big in Japan: made with saffron sake, Dubonnet, pressed citrus, palm sugar and artisanal winter aromatics, prepared in a coffee syphon and served warm.


Ladro (Greville)
162 Greville Street, Prahran (map)
9510 2233

Item 7: The new Ladro (in Greville Street, Prahran) opened a month or two ago. I ducked in there the other week with an American gentleman of my acquaintance, old dependable D, on our way to watch Greta Garbo movies down at the Astor.


The interior is larger but from what I could see, the decor and menu at Ladro Greville is identical to that at the original Ladro Gertrude. A word of warning - the Ladro website streams clips from Ladri di biciclette, one of the more emotionally devastating Italian neo-realist films. Proceed with caution!


Old Dependable enjoyed the pizza with mozzarella, potato, taleggio, rosemary, truffle oil and basil ($22) and I went for one I'd never had before: the Lazio with mozzarella, parsley, carciuga (artichoke and anchovy paste) and lemon ($21.50). Loved the paste and lemon combo, and the wonderfully bitter flavours in the radicchio, chicory, fennel and witlof salad ($9.50) that we shared. Definitely worth a visit if you're jonesing for pizza south of the river.


Thanh Nga Nine
160 Victoria Street, Richmond (map)
9427 7068


And Item 8: the place that's become my favourite Vietnamese on Victoria Street, Thanh Nga Nine. I've been there three or four times over the last six months, and each time the food has been excellent and the service frantic but friendly. Triet, who runs the front of house, is particularly nice and informative about the menu, which contains a number of items you don't see in your run-of-the-mill Vic Street joint.


My picks are the Sóc Trăng style mini pancakes ($9, can also be ordered as a vegetarian dish). They're made from rice flour with a crispy base, and topped with prawns, mung bean paste and tiny orange sprinkles of dried crushed prawns. Use both sauces (the fish sauce and the coconut cream) for maximum awesomeness.


My other favourite dish is one of the special dishes, the pork casserole in claypot ($25). The soy/fish sauce is sticky and the slow-cooked pork is beautifully tender.


They also do a particularly good coleslaw, about three or four different types of phở and have an extensive vegetarian menu. And I'm yet to visit upstairs but apparently there's free karaoke up there if you book a function. Score!

Martini Masterclass at Der Raum

Der Raum
438 Church Street, Richmond (map)
9428 0055


This week I went along to the Martini Masterclass at everyone's favourite molecular cocktail bar, Der Raum. To accompany me I requested the presence of the charming J and his camera: many thanks to J for allowing me to use his photos in this post. As you can see, his lens is far, far, FAR superior to mine (I've learnt from bitter past experience that my camera and Der Raum just don't like each other)... I'm thinking that from now on I'll have to ask J to join me each time I'm dining in a dimly-lit restaurant. Either that or I'll just steal his camera.

The masterclass was conducted by Tanqueray brand ambassador Greg Sanderson (looking very suave in the photo below), with the Der Raum team assisting. We learned about the evolution of the martini, and tasted four variations (plus a taste of a fifth that Greg snuck into us). The class was excellent value at $60 a head ($45 for MTS members).


We arrived at 8pm, after a stomach-lining, booze-free dinner around the corner. Upon arrival we were given a palate-cleansing Chamomile Chroming: a sous vide infusion of French vermouth and chamomile, with delicate wisps of dry ice vapour sighing their way out of the little bottle (marked 'Poison') in which it is served.


The first cocktail, prepared by Luke from Der Raum, was the Chuncho Martini (named after the Peruvian Amargo Chuncho bitters included in its ingredients). The Chuncho Martini also used Tanqueray, Lillet Blanc and Marlborough syrup (a simple syrup made using Sauvignon Blanc instead of water). The grape used as a garnish had been carbonated (J dubbed it the 'Han Solo Grape', har har) using Lillet Blanc, so biting into it produced a crazy fizzy sensation on the tongue. We both LOVED this martini.


Then Greg took the reins and talked to us about the origins of the martini, generally regarded to be the Martinez cocktail. Various legends have sprung up regarding the Martinez origin story, most involving the Bay Area mining town of the same name.

Thank you to Greg for allowing me to reprint his Martinez recipe:
- 30ml Tanqueray
- 60ml Sweet Vermouth
- Dash Sugar Syrup
- Dash of Maraschino Liqueur
- Dash of Boker's Bitters (Angostura as a substitute)
- Stirred, into a chilled martini glass, large lemon twist garnish

It was at this point in the evening that the class got interactive: audience members were invited to come behind the Der Raum bar to mix up cocktails ourselves (with helpful tips from the staff). Nice! Here's the Martinez that J prepared.


For the third martini - the vodka martini - it was my turn to go behind the Der Raum bar and play bartender. After explaining (for the benefit of those who didn't know) what a dry martini is, Greg discussed various methods of getting the vermouth into a martini.

For my Vodka Martini (made with Ciroc Vodka), we coated the pitcher with vermouth, stirred it, then poured it out and added the vodka. Very dry. The olives as a garnish were skewered on a pipette filled with vermouth, so that the drinker could make the martini less dry by adding more vermouth if he or she chose to do so. Ay caramba, this martini was strong.


We also learned about the key botanicals used in gin: juniper berries, coriander seeds, chamomile flowers, licorice root, angelica root and citrus fruits such as grapefruit and bitter orange.


The extra martini we sampled was a Montgomery Martini made with Tanqueray 10 in a 15:1 ratio of gin to vermouth.


The final cocktail was a James Bond Vesper Martini. Greg read aloud the Ian Fleming passage from 'Casino Royale' in which the recipe is revealed:
"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."
"Oui, monsieur."
"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

Kina Lillet has been unavailable since the 1960s (alas, when Daniel Craig orders it in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, it's an anachronism), so we had Lillet Blanc instead. The vodka was Smirnoff Black.


Greg brought along a number of martini accoutrements, including this curious little martini scale.


The class ended, but we stuck around chatting to fellow class participants. The Der Raum boys started making regular cocktails for those who (unfathomably) were still up for more alcohol. I spotted Josh making Der Raum favourite, the El Moroccan Blazer: a Hennessey, Cognac and sweet port concoction that involves flamed lime and pineapple, caramelised with a blowtorch in a miniature skillet.



Luke presented a Tanqueray 10 martini the way they are prepared at Der Raum: chilled with clouds of witch's-brew liquid nitrogen. The theatre of the Nitro Martini is always a crowd-pleaser!


Eeeeevil. But delicious.


My favourite line of the night was Greg's praise of the Der Raum team: "Coming to Der Raum and just ordering a vodka, lime and soda would be like going to Vue de Monde and just ordering a cheeseburger." :-)