Small Lust interview

I was interviewed last week for Small Lust, an online magazine about art, design and culture in Melbourne. Each month is dedicated to a different topic: December is Food Month, and I was interviewed about the facebook group I set up dedicated to the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book (see the Melbourne Gastronome post in which I wrote about it here), and about the impact of the Book more generally. Unfortunately Friday was also the day of the work Christmas party, so I was a little tipsy when we had the phone interview... my ramblings in the article are somewhat incoherent.

If you're interested, you can read the article here.

Pre-Spiegeltent dinner at Pacific Seafood BBQ House

Pacific Seafood BBQ House
210 Toorak Rd, South Yarra (map)
9826 3838

The other weekend, a group of 17 of us had tickets to see La Clique at the Spiegeltent and we all had dinner together in South Yarra before the show. We dined at the Pacific Seafood BBQ House, the South Yarra chapter of which is on Toorak Road near the train station.

Luckily B had thought to book well in advance, otherwise there's no way 17 of us would have been able to get in, even on a Sunday night. Seeing as I now live between the two, I am a frequenter of both the North Richmond and the South Yarra PSBBQH restaurants - both serve up delicious Cantonese food at terrific value for money given the quality of food on offer, both are always packed full, with slightly chaotic service, and both have bilingual menus on brightly coloured pieces of cardboard, making the walls look like they're decorated with oversized Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags.

We started off simply, with san choi bao. I chose to get one with chicken, as we were getting duck in the very next dish. The san choi bao was rather mild in flavour and wasn't as saucy as they often are in other restaurants, so the lettuce didn't get too soggy.

Next up was Peking duck, served (natch) with a scrumptious Pinot Noir. We got a few ducks given there were 17 of us. The Peking Duck at PSBBQH is excellent - just looking at the photo at the top of this entry makes me drool like a Saint Bernard... that crispy duck skin is so sinful but SO GOOD! :)

Speaking of sinful, the next dish that came out was the charred green string beans with minced pork. This is a favourite dish of mine, even if it was a little on the oily side that Sunday night: what really clinches it for me is the inclusion of tiny little whitebait, to give the dish a salty crunch. Highly recommended!

Playing with the macro setting on my camera... :)

The fish was brought to the table for our inspection prior to it being prepared: we'd chosen a coral trout (but often we get barra instead). We asked for it to be steamed with spring onion, ginger, soy and coriander - it arrived fantastically moist and soft. Just like he always does, C snaffled the flesh from the cheek of the fish - it's his favourite!

The trout after it was deboned. Wish I'd taken a shot of the trout when it was first brought to the table, before it was cooked...

The final dish was filet mignon with black pepper and honey sauce. The meat was very good, but I'm not sure I'll rush back for this one - the sauce wasn't really peppery enough for my tastes. The sugar peas were still slightly crunchy though - very moreish.

I'd already seen La Clique in previous years at the Spiegeltent, but I just adore it (especially David O'Mer, the guy in the bathtub..... mmmm.....) and go along each time they roll into town. Some of the acts change, some stay the same, but the one act that I can only watch through my fingers is the spectacle of Captain Frodo dislocating his shoulders and passing his entire body through the frames of two tennis rackets... watch this youtube clip... if you can....

King / Bourke Quest Part 10: Ortigia

Ortigia
443 Little Collins St, Melbourne (map)
9670 0774

My Quest to find decent lunch-hour food a quick walking distance from King St and Bourke St continues. One North-wind-hot lunchtime last week I met F, M and A at Ortigia, a cafe across the road from Vue de Monde. Ortigia's interior is rather fancy - airy cathedral ceilings, marble benchtops, Gothic framed menu chalkboard and a chandelier - but we managed to snaffle one of the outside tables in Bank Place instead. At Ortigia they tend to have one of two varieties of pizza al taglio and a few specials (eg lasagne, frittata, homemade pie) as well as a bunch of panini.

We had a good and a bad experience. On the plus side, the panino I had - crammed with capocollo, fennel, green olive tapenade, rocket and provolone - was one of the best panini I've had in recent months. On the minus side, at only 1:10pm Ortigia had no vegetarian food left (other than the fruit salad, which was suggested as a meal for her - !!!!!), so poor F couldn't order anything to eat! She insisted, however that the rest of us eat as she drank her coffee.

Alas poor F - but personally, I love capocollo. My Nonno makes his own capocollo every year for Christmas, hanging his cured meat for months in a funny little flyscreen-wrapped cage in his garage. Mum and Dad's Christmas present each year is their very own capocollo - he used to make them a leg of prosciutto each year when I used to live at home, but although we'd feast on prosciutto all summer long, we'd never finish it in time! :)

Post-election Yum Cha at Red Door

Red Door
1 McIlwrick Street, Windsor (map)
9510 9658

The advent of the silly season means that, blog-wise, I'm a little (um, actually a lot) behind, but I wanted to write about the yum cha we had the day after the election. Because planning the yum cha was left to the last minute it wasn't really a proper Yum Cha Posse, but the three of us that went had a fine time.

Feeling rather tender after the excitement of election night (I had been to three election parties; at the last one, F and friends had made beautifully decorated pinatas representing 16 of the most marginal seats, and each time one was declared, we'd bash the appropriate pinata to the strains of the "Keating! the Musical" soundtrack), I rocked up with R and H at Red Door.

Red Door is both a Chinese antiques/furniture store and a yum cha cafe, located just off Chapel St near Windsor station. Although the Orient Express in Victoria St Richmond was first in combining Chinese antiques/furniture store with cafe, Red Door is the first I've heard of in Melbourne to serve yum cha. It makes for a fun experience eating yum cha surrounded by carved beds and cabinets (if it had just been two of us, we totally would have sat in the little alcove in the top photo), but there are no yum cha trolleys.

As Elliot from the blog 1001 Dinners 1001 Nights wrote in his recent review of Oriental Tea House (another Chapel St yum cha restaurant eschewing trolleys during the week), having to order yum cha from a menu does not permit the instant gratification of seeing what you are getting and having it immediately, but it does ensure that whatever you do have has been cooked only a moment ago especially for you.

Personally, I'm a sucker for the trolley dollys and miss that spontaneity - plus at Red Door each dish took a noticeable interval before arriving, so we had to PLAN our meal a little more than I would have liked. That said, however, the food itself was delicious and I'm happy to forgo the trolley experience occasionally for something a bit different!

We started with Northern Chive dumplings, which came in a separate dish with their own special soy sauce. They were different to the chive dumplings I've tried at other yum cha establishments - slightly spicy.

Next was tofu skin rolls with prawns, very juicy and fresh, followed by meaty Shanghai dumplings.

Pork and peanut dumplings, with shards of peanut clearly visible through the translucent dumpling casings, only just managed to stay intact as we picked them up with our chopsticks, but were delicious. Also very good were the prawn and crab dumplings. We got seconds of these... :)

To finish off, there were three varieties of warmed sweet buns to choose from: custard, lotus and red bean. I went with custard, which turned out to be an excellent choice. If you feel like a yum cha that's a little out of the ordinary, head on down to Red Door!

Bali Gastronome

In March this year, my best friend K and I saw Toute la Beauté du Monde, which was filmed almost entirely on location in Bali, at the French Film Festival. We both agreed that as films go it was a rather tepid, boring romance - but hot damn, Bali sure did look fantastic! The following day at work I checked online to see if Jetstar flights to Bali were as cheap as my tram stop billboard hinted they were, and before we knew it, K and I had booked a ten day trip to Bali for late August!

Although it was some months ago that we went, I'm posting about it now because only yesterday did I find the little notebook I'd taken with me on my travels, then mislaid upon my return to Melbourne. Sadly, the contents are mainly unfocused ramblings rather than succinct gastronomic notes... so please forgive the lack of research and detail. What follows is a potted summary of the sights and food highlights we enjoyed on the Island of the Gods.

We stayed in three places, all of which I found through a combination of research on the Lonley Planet Thorn Tree forum and Trip Advisor, and all three of which I would highly recommend.

First up was four nights at Ellie's, a wonderful little boutique hotel in a quiet residential area near Nusa Dua, away from all the resort ghettos. The rooms were chic and the prices extremely reasonable (our sea view room was only 450,000IDR (AUS$55) per night). Van, the personable British hotel manager, really helped to make our time at Ellie's special - he was like our personal concierge, helping us plan day trips, mixing wicked gin and tonics and telling us about all the best restaurants and white sand beaches that aren't in the Lonely Planet. Stay there!!

French toast and banana smoothies at Ellie's on our first morning.

The rooftop terrace at Ellie's - site of much holiday reading and G&T drinking at sunset. If you do stay at Ellie's, you MUST get a massage on the rooftop terrace from Wayan, the local masseur. It was my first deep tissue massage, and the knots I've been carrying in my shoulders for the last decade were all worked out of me - Wayan is a true artist! :)

One evening we went to Jimbaran, a town by the bay famous for seafood restaurants on the beach. We went to Cafe Ayodya, selected the seafood we wanted (the snapper on the left and some squid) and sat at a table on the sand under the stars. The fish was scaled, split and roasted over a bed of coconut shells with garlic, lime, oil, tomato, candlenut, chilli and palm sugar. It was delicious and the setting was great - even the Indonesian mariachi band that roamed the length of the beach serenading diners with Beatles songs was kinda fun!

The only time we went to a really "posh" restaurant was in Seminyak. We'd strolled the beach at sunset watching kids playing football on the sand, then wandered over to Gado Gado, where we dined on dishes such as soft shell crab tempura, vegetarian millefeuille and bresaola with caper berries, washed down with a crisp Australian Sauvignon Blanc. The food was extremely good mod international fare, but K & I decided afterwards that we'd prefer to stick to more local cuisine - we could get enough of that sort of "posh" food in Australia.

Schoolchildren riding bicycles in colours of Indonesian flag and Balinese men awaiting Indonesian Independence Day celebrations.

At Balangan beach I got peckish after a morning of swimming and reading, so sat at a nearby warung run by a gorgeous little lady called Wayan wearing a Winnie the Pooh tee-shirt. The Mie Goreng she whipped up for me in her rudimentary kitchen cost a minuscule fraction of what the Gado Gado meal had cost us, but was simple and really tasty. Wayan laughed and gave me a hug when I told her that her noodles were "delicious" in Indonesian and in Balinese (a most important word to learn in any language!)... :)

The other sliver of opulence we treated ourselves to was drinks at the swanky new Bulgari resort. The fabulous Van at Ellie's had informed us that you didn't need to be a guest at the resort to go to the cocktail bar - so we just rocked up and were whisked in a little golf buggy from the impressive lobby past all the resort villas and down to the edge of the cliff to the even more impressive cocktail bar. We ordered long island iced teas, looked out over the infinity edge pool and briefly fantasised about being ludicrously rich.

Two tourists (not K & me!) seemingly oblivious to the charms of Geger beach, and a monkey at Uluwatu temple eating a plastic hair clip it had snatched from a tourist's hair - watch out for these vicious little buggers!

Our last night in the Nusa Dua area we dined at a great little local warung called Marina, where we dined on Pepes Ikan (spiced fish baked in banana leaves), Plecing Kankung (water spinach with sambal) and Sate Lilit (the Balinese version of sate which consists of spiced minced meat pressed on to skewers).

Next we traveled to Amed, a series of remote fishing villages on the east coast. We stayed at Blue Moon Villas, which was very pleasant and comfortable. Above is a breakfast of banana pancake with palm sugar syrup and lime, accompanied by guava juice. K & I, in between devouring novels and lazing in the sun, went swimming each day in the lovely warm ocean and enjoyed snorkeling over the Japanese shipwreck at Banyuning, looking at all the brightly-coloured tropical fish.

The food at Komang John Cafe, the restaurant adjoining Blue Moon, was consistently excellent. Starting top left up above and going clockwise, their vegetarian tempura was some of the freshed, tastiest veggie tempura I've ever tasted! We also enjoyed the Nasi Campur (literally "mixed rice" - rice served with a variety of meats, veggies and tempe), the Westernised Sate Ayam (chicken satay skewers) and Soto Ayam (chicken soup).

Effigy to be burned in a cremation ceremony, and jukung fishing boats lined up on the shore at the village of Lehan.

Probably our favourite meal in Bali. In the poor fishing village of Lipah, two little boys across the dirt road from us were having enormous fun running along with an old plastic bag as though it were a kite. We stopped at Warung Makan, a modest little warung where we ended up having some fantastically fresh fish, caught mere hours ago. K had the Pepes Ikan which arrived still wrapped in banana leaves accompanied by some Jukut Urab (a salad of mixed vegetables with grated coconut), and I had Jukut Urab with Coconut Barracuda. We both couldn't get over how good the food was at Warung Makan. Sublime!

In between reading and lounging by the pool and on the beach, we took a day trip to the Tirta Ganga water palace and the Bale Kambang (Floating Pavilion) at Amlapura. From the Amed - Amlapura road once can see some of the prettiest rice terraces Bali has to offer. I like this shot of a family working the rice paddy together.

Bajing, one of the guys running Blue Moon, had remarked upon my interest in Balinese cuisine. He offered to prepare a traditional Balinese meal for us for our final night in Amed. We agreed, and so one day in advance one of the boys went down to the market to buy a duck which could undergo 24 hour preparation for the main dish, Bebek Betutu (a whole duck stuffed with herbs, ginger, lemongrass, chilli etc and roasted in banana leaves - a sample recipe is here). The delicate flavours and texture of the meat were wonderful - and look how cute the little leaf cones over the rice were! :)

Our third and final destination (following a quick visit to Kertha Gosa, the ancient Balinese Hall of Justice) was Ubud. I'd remembered Ubud (from the other time I'd visited Bali 11 years ago on an art and cultural trip in high school) as a tranquil hideaway in the hills. Well actually, it's a hell of a lot more touristy than the other places where we'd been, but K & I still had a great time staying at the wonderful wonderful Tegal Sari.

Tegal Sari has been voted #1 of 80 Ubud hotels in the Trip Advisor popularity index, and with good reason - prices are extremely reasonable given the quality of the rooms and the stunning aspect, set in the middle of lush rice paddies. The hotel is outside of the main centre of Ubud, but the complimentary hotel shuttle can drop you off and pick you up from wherever you want to go whenever you want - plus we rather liked a bit of a walk after so much lying around and reading... :)

If you're thinking of staying at Tegal Sari, BOOK WELL IN ADVANCE - their rooms fill up quickly. We can highly recommend staying in one of the Wooden Rooms (incredibly, only 400,000IDR (AUS$48) per night) - ours was up on stilts, with a gorgeous carved wooden four poster bed. Having breakfast each morning on our private balcony overlooking the rice paddies was a real treat.

Monkeys in Pura Dalem Agung, Monkey Forest Sanctuary, Ubud.

When we felt like a break from Indonesian/Balinese food, we had Thai food instead... this Pad Thai at The Waroeng, a little jazz cafe off the Ubud main drag, was particularly good.

A cremation ceremony procession heading down the Ubud main drag, sheets of plastic and umbrellas keeping the offerings (and people!) dry. An excellent description of what a Balinese cremation ceremony entails can be found here.

One night we went for Balinese 'tapas' at Nomad, a restaurant that has become something of an Ubud institution. It was good to taste a variety of dishes all at once (the tastes included Sate Lilit, Jukut Urab, Ayam Betutu and Tempe Kering), but we couldn't help feeling it was all rather bland and Westernised. We liked their lemongrass tea though. :)

Balinese woman setting out canang sari offerings in the rain.

My final lunch in Bali was at a Padang restaurant in Ubud. Padang restaurants specialise in Minangkabau cuisine from West Sumatra, noted for its strong flavours and spiciness, and being the birthplace of rendang. In a Padang restaurant all the dishes sit on display, but they're cooked to withstand refrigeratorless environments, and are served cold over warm rice. The serve I had was full of fiery goodness...

Sorry for such a long post! If you're thinking of a tropical holiday, please consider going to Bali. At no time during our trip did we feel unsafe - not that we'd want to go hang out in crowded souvenir markets or Kuta nightclubs, anyway - I urge you to support the Bali tourism industry (steering well clear of the bogan rat race, of course!) that so many of the friendly and peaceful Balinese are reliant on.

Oh, and the food's great, too! :)