Saturday, September 5, 2009
Crunchy, spicy fish - Thailand
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Kaikoura crayfish
A highlight of the trip apart from PDC's mammoth half marathon PB time, was the most lovely cocktail party that was thrown for us, one of the food highlights of this evening was some very special Kaikoura crayfish.
I've been through Kaikoura a couple of times, it's a small town on the north-east coast of New Zealands south island. The thing I remember most clearly is the fur seal colony that lives along the coast there and the linked foodie thing about seeing these seals that explains my keen interest in this town, seals love crayfish and so do I.
Luckily for both of us Kaikoura translates from Maori as 'Meal of Crayfish' - needless to say there is crayfish to be had for both the Aussie tourist and the seals.
The crayfish canapes you can see in this image I made from two crayfish that my mother-in law bartered for from a licensed Kaikoura diver. Apparently only licensed divers can catch the crays and this guy had more than he needed. (...great to see that smart old fashioned barter is still alive and well)
The crays nearly fell victim to a mornay sauce *phew* before PDC and I decided to take charge and made these ooh-la-la canapes.
The baguette we baked for the croutons was already on hand and we whipped up some mayo quicker than getting in the car to go to the supermarket (if you doubt that, look at my recipe here) the garnish was the tricky part.
An avocado slice and dill was a logical classic combination but never being just satisfied with the easy option I decided to add another flavour combo to the other half.
Persimmons were in season and perfect at the time and I had one waiting for my breakfast the next morning. Thinking about the flavours I decided (with testing on myself, of course!) that the vanilla characters of the persimmon reminded me of a frenchy vanilla sauce sometimes served with fish and the crunch well that went without saying, the decision was made.
So a smear of mayonnaise, a medallion of crayfish (that we had cooked earlier that morning) and then some match sticks of persimmon.
They were gone in a flash. Lucky that cray diver was quicker than a flash
*I opened my blog account and found this as a draft post from what seems like it was from so long ago it was a fairy tale, hence I just had to start with 'once upon a time'.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
My Tuna and Bean Salad
Thursday, January 29, 2009
A 'hot' salad
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Kiwi Klassic - Whitebait fritters
I remember one of my first trips to PDC’s family nearly ten years ago; I was served them as an arrival ‘nibble’ with a fabulous glass of off-dry local Riesling. I remember seeing the little fishes eyes googling me as I devoured the warm fish fritter. They are softly textural, slightly fishy and salty, but mostly a bright fresh taste of the sea, just like a good oyster.
I definitely ate more than my share; I had no idea of the costly nature of whitebait, and I have since learnt it’s available in the local supermarket freezer chest for $120 per kilo. Whitebait fritters are especially expensive because of the way they are served, no mucking about, the baby fish, egg and some flour, into a very basic batter and then a hot pan, served warm. Not served like caviar or other delicacies, as just a garnish, the produce is the main ingredient and star.
This whitebait is from a ‘trench’, the term used for the permitted whitebait fishing spot, near the mouth of the Hokitika river on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island.
Whitebait are sprat galaxiid, if you happen to see Hunger for the Wild, a Kiwi series from the chefs and owners of Wellingtons Logan Brown Restaurant, you should watch the whitebait episode, just intriguing. Note: this is nothing like what we call whitebait in Australia, this recipe is only relevant for the true kiwi classic.
New Zealand whitebait fritters
About 400g New Zealand whitebait
3 whole eggs
1 tbsp plain flour
S+P
Whisk the eggs until foamy and then add the flour to create a simple batter
Add the flour and a little S+P, mix, essentially you are trying to get the texture right, add a little more flour if it is too wet
Add the white bait and then spoon onto a buttered hot pan
Fry until golden and serve warm with a squeeze of lemon and a little sprinkle of salt
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
MoVida Next Door
My Dish of the Month for October is an inspired tapa from MoVida Next Door. The reason I am so torn is because my very first dish of the month, back in September last year was from MoVida, before the little brother next door was born.
I hate the imbalance of two dishes of the month from the same group of chefs, but the food tells me it was the best that month and trust me it was fantastic. So I can't deny it...
October Dish of the Month - Cantabrian anchovy with fresh curd from MoVida Next Door
A crunchy, golden breaded, anchovy served on top of a disk of fresh curd (so perfect you could still see the drainage hole marks from the mould) a sprinkle of chopped parsley and a drizzle of olive oil $4.50 each
PDC and I dropped in for a bite, late last month, just before I went across the road to have a look at the über savvy Greenhouse by Joost.
We had been warned by experienced Next Door addicts, to be there very early and be prepared to wait for space - even a 6pm. So there we were, at 6 on the dot and managed to secured the last free spaces for what I am sure would have been the rest of the evening.
We managed to eat our way through most of the offerings but the anchovy and fresh curd has been lingering on my mind ever since.
So much so, I just had to phone and ask some questions so I could give you the full run down (this is definitely a first for Eating with Jack).
I spoke briefly with Dave Roberts the head chef at MND and was very pleasantly surprised to learn that they make the fresh curd every morning in the kitchen. Just normal pasteurised cows milk (though he said they would like to use sheeps milk in the future) and a little rennet left at 38C in moulds and then voila, fresh curd. Topped to order on a rustic looking plate with the fried Spanish anchovy.
Next time I'm ordering two, actually maybe three!
If you haven't been to MoVida Next Door yet, you really must.
Monday, November 17, 2008
School prawns and fresh garlic
The freshest, hot enough to make you squint, garlic.
The most vividly fresh, green school prawns.
If you love simply prepared produce as much as me, you make...
Crispy fried school prawns with PDC's "forget tomorrow" aïoli
Inspired by Giuseppe Arnaldo and Sons, but they would never be brave enough to serve as devilishly, vampire repellent aïoli as this is.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Dish of the Month - August and September
A hiccup in my blogging world has lead me to combine August and September dishes of the month. This really needs to stop I know, but I'm none the less glad to share this with you, belatedly.
Dish of the Month, and probably dinner of the month, for August belongs to Cumulus Inc.
I had a mammoth 4 hour experience there grazing at the bar, watching the chefs, sipping wine, chatting to friendly faces and just loving the space.
I could include any number of dishes; from the broad selection of interesting charcuterie, to the salt cod soup, the sows ear silk purse or the as-boozy-as-you-can-bear rum baba. But the loving care that the shucked to order oysters received, has to make them extra special.
August Dish of the Month
Oysters at Cumulus Inc
Carefully, a wiggling shucker breaks the seal into the oysters briny home, pops the top off with a slip of the knife and they are ready to go. Plated with a cheek of lemon and perhaps a little swipe from a tiny artists brush to remove any shell remnants, you can watch them twitch as a squeeze of lemon juice dresses them before the plunge of your oyster fork.

The night we dined, I tried all 6 that were on offer, the Moonlight Flat angasi were the stand out. The menu lists that these have been identified as nearly identical to the celebrated French Bélon oyster. Meaty, iodine flavour with firmly textured flesh and a large white adductor muscle.
September Dish of the Month
Gravadlax at Gills Diner
An incredibly generous portion of house cured salmon, cured Scandinavian style with salt and sugar, also known as gravlax. Sliced thinly and served with a salad of picked soft herbs, some sliced cornichons, a lemon cheek and a quenelle of herby crème fraîche.
Clean, bright salmon flavours perfectly seasoned and utterly moreish, just the thing to accompany the fantastic house made breads.
I still have not gotten past the entrees at Gills, the portions are just too generous and we love the selection of sharable dishes.
I can't wait to get back to both of these Melbourne dining institutions in the making. No doubt with the current economic woes, casual dining spots like this - were you can feel comfortable having as much or as little to eat as you like - will become even more popular to the detriment of the formal experiences.
I for one, will not stop dining out but will probably be a little more tempted towards the accessible end of the market then the fancy end. I think dining out has become cultural for many Australians and giving up a key social part of the week will not happen, it will just become a little more informal, laid back and in line with the dining experiences of Cumulus Inc and Gills Diner.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Simple Thai style garfish
Such a slender elegant looking fish that is a little misunderstood. See, I can think of nothing better than these just dusted in seasoned flour and panfried until the skin is crispy and flesh vivid white, yet others think of them as bait... well that's what happens at my fish shop.
Just recently, I was patiently waiting as a elderly man ahead of me purchased 4 small gars, as he was gathering his coins I placed the same request, smiling I made small talk,
"you like the small ones as well? Just perfect with a salad" I volunteered,
"erh no, these are for bait..." and off he went.
If only he knew.
These cleaned baby garfish are from the Claringbolds fish auction that I mentioned last post. Well was I mistaken or what, no it wasn't 7 garfish for $5 it was 13! All cleaned and beheaded (unfortunately) and ready to go.
Not up for a mess of the kitchen, I cooked them the simplest way possible, dressed and then baked in foil. Simple Thai style garfish
Whole cleaned garfish (guts removed, scaled and preferably head on)
Nam Prik
Coriander roots and leaves -washed
Whole hot red chilis -birds eye
Shallots - roughly chopped
Garlic - roughly chopped
Fish sauce
Palm sugar
Lime juice
Pound in a mortar and pestle about 6 coriander roots, 2-4 red chillis, a tablespoon of each shallot and garlic.
Pound to a chunky paste.
Add equal parts fish sauce and lime juice and then add about 1 tablespoon of palm sugar to taste.
It should taste sweet, sour, hot and salty.
Place garfish on a large square of aluminium foil, top with a few tablespoons of the nam prik, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some chopped coriander leaves.
Cover with more foil and tightly seal the edges.
Bake in a hot oven until you can hear it bubbling inside, about 10 minutes in my case.
Tear open the foil and serve the fish and cooking juices. Drizzle with the rest of the nam prik and garnish with extra coriander.
Hopefully your plate will end up looking like this.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Catch up...
Yum Cha or Dim Sum is a favourite past time at home, so in Hong Kong it was a must. I had loss sleep in the lead up thinking about it; where is the best place? Will it be as I expect? Will it be carts? I'll explain further in my Hong Kong piece, but this was my favourite dumpling of the trip. A vegetarian number with mushroom, bamboo shoots, water chestnut and chives.
A great way to start the day, a Vietnamese coffee with 'milk' - condensed milk and ice. Not quite a caffe latte at The Wall in St Kilda (we miss you!!) but pretty delicious and a definite coffee kick.
A snorkeling boat tour lead to an interesting offer, fresh sea urchin that the divers would collect for us. Probably illegal and perhaps a little unethical but a proposition that we could not deny. A plate of raw urchin some onion and a lime and salt pepper mix. Intensely rich and a hedonistic treat.
After holidaying in Vietnam three years ago, I was eager to have one of these creme caramels again. Generally available at carts in the evening the better ones are from the little dessert shops with access to ice. There the caramel was turned out and topped with crushed ice, a coffee syrup and condensed milk straight from the can. I could eat five if it didn't seem greedy.
A very pleasant surprise was the Louisiane Brewhouse on Nha Trang beach. Beers are brewed on site by an Aussie and served in several styles. I enjoyed the ginger beer (alcoholic of course, it is holidays!) flavoured with fresh ginger and a little lemongrass. Great ginger beer in a style that fits with the local food, perfect.
In Dalat, in central Vietnam, we undertook a regional tour that included one of the many coffee plantations in the area. This is ripe bean (yet harvest is not until November), the red outer hides two halves of the green coffee bean. An extended post about all the sights is on the way with highlights as wide ranging as coffee and tea, to some very hungry silk worms, mushroom farms and beautiful flowers.
I promise to work on the Dalat and Hong Kong stories, I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you. Must pop off now for some fiery Thai for dinner and hopefully not too many tears!
Friday, June 27, 2008
The ultimate diet food
Yes that's right; virtually no fat and low in energy (less time on the treadmill!) and with more zinc than any other food and more iron than red meat.
They also have heaps of vitamins and minerals and gram for gram are better for you than white flesh fish.
Oysters can seem somewhat celebratory in nature, but don't wait, crack a few (dozen) open now as they are gorgeous at the moment.
Have a look inside?
Monday, December 3, 2007
Dish of the month ...and a whinge
I dined there very late last month and was disappointed to find that I could not list any one of the 9 dishes I saw that night as one worthy of the title... perhaps more needs to be said in other post, but it wasn't bad just not, I guess, me. Gosh sounds like a bad breakup excuse!!
So I therefore I get to nominate a traditional yet inspiring, 'Dish of the month' from dinner at Comme kitchen a couple of weeks ago.
I've raved about this intimate dining room before, about their Frenchy-Spainsh food, that has me bubbling with dining excitement as I read the menu (very rich coming from someone who writes menu descriptors for a living...!, or perhaps chef Simon Arkless has gotten into my brain??)
Comme truly offers, and supplies some of the best food in Melbourne.
The dish actually was ordered by PDC, but I used some of my best negotiation skills, to secure as many tastes as reasonable possible. Essentially it was a pot of brandade served with some pretty little farga olives and some impossibly thin and crispy croutons. On the palate it was a combo of warm and fluffy textured salt cod mixed with a rich potato, garlic and olive oil combo. The finished product was a sophisticated dish, perhaps best for sharing (lucky that, and yes that was one of the excuses I used!) that looked somewhat unexciting but was a marvel of the lightness of touch and considered balance.
November dish of the month
Brandade of salt cod, Spanish farga olives, croutons - Comme, Melbourne
Jack
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Sydney Rock Oysters


Saturday, July 21, 2007
Percebes (!!??!!)
Before the recent trip to Spain, I was doing some research on Chez Pim and came across an image of these in one of her posts. They instantly went on my must-do food list, along side looking at a broccoli romanesco, eating some northern waters fish (posts to come) and eating as much unpasteurised cheese as possible (hey look, Australian Government, I'm still alive...!)
Any way... After seeing the percebes at the Barcelona food market, La Boqueria and a few other Spanish markets that I dragged PDC through, I knew I had to find them on a menu sometime before we left the country.
Up close the percebes are quite scary looking, perhaps like a small clawed leg from a strange bird, with a hard shell at one end and a leathery tube that attaches to the rock.
They are typically steamed or flash boiled (I read a beautiful story that locally the women cook them in boiling water for as long as it takes to say the Lords Prayer).
The correct way to eat them is to squeeze the leather tube right near the shell and then twist, and suck the flesh out. We didn't know this at the time and because we couldn't ask our intimidating waitress, there was no way to find out how to eat them once they were in front of us. So I just dived in, knife in hand and prised open the shell like a oyster and then just torn it apart to get to what I assumed must be flesh of some kind inside. After a few I had developed a technique to suck them out once breaking open the shell.
Since I had insisted on ordering them (at 110€ a kilo! -about $200AUD) I guess PDC decided to sit back and watch me go first with the breaking open and eating.
We shared 300g of these over a bottle of Veuve Clicquot as an entree and found them messingly interesting and perfect with the champagne, but 300g was definately plenty. A fun food adventure that I look forward to eating again next time I'm in that part of the world.
Jack
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Vin Cellar
Cut forward to recently, I had read that a chef that I know, Damian Jones was now head chef at Vin, hope was revived.
Vin is a ten minute walk from my house, therefore I have a vested interest in Vin being good. It is a moody bistro space with bottle lined walls, leather couches and candle light. It has an erratic wine list that is an editors nightmare (read: full of strange bolding, typos and weird formatting), yet is full of the kind of things I want to drink. Interesting wine, at great bottle shop prices, plus $5 if you want to ‘dine in’ as opposed to ‘takeaway’. The service staff the night I dined this week where fantastic, old school skills, well executed and the menu, well it’s kind of hard to explain, but reading it filled me with confidence, not fear.
Damien’s food reflects his background, modern Australian food and technique with a very heavy influence of the type of Thai food you would eat in the fanciest Thai restaurant you could find in Bangkok (he worked with Sydneys modern Thai guru, David Thompson, at his London restaurant Nahm). The menu reads confidence; ‘clear broth of chicken, crab, young coconut and thai basil’; an elegant Thai scented chicken consommé, poured at the table over a centred salad of flaked chicken and crab meat. The broth is tonic like, slightly sweet from the young coconut, herbal and delicate. A gorgeous dish.
We loved the ‘chicken liver parfait with figs, salted biscuit and sweet wine jelly’, a crumbly broken salty biscuit, smeared with a generous dollop of rich chicken liver parfait, a little pile of sweet, winey jelly and fig quarters. I would have liked some more biscuit, but maybe I was just being greedy.
Oysters are one of my key indicators of restaurant quality. A restaurant that shucks to order (and not ‘just before service’ and then squirt on some oyster liquor to serve; but as they are ordered, to the hell if the customer waits an extra few minutes), perhaps leaves the foot attached and doesn’t rinse the oyster under water, is the place I want to eat at.
I usually prefer Sydney Rock Oysters as they are smaller than the usual Pacific oyster and the unusual Angassi or native oyster. Knowing from nasty experience, not to order oysters in the hot summer months (the best places will take them off the menu), I was still mildly cautious since it is still quite warm, but was tempted by Damien’s Thai dressing. I was particularly interested in being told that they were ‘triploid’ pacific oysters. When I inquired what this means I was, told that they were breed not to spawn! I later made the necessary googles to discover that they have 3 chromosomes and are sterile (a seedless watermelon is also a triploid), the advantages are many, but the main benefit to the eater is that they do not get all creamy and unpalatable at Christmas just when you want to eat them. Enough with the biology lesion, the oysters served were as I would hope, in perfect condition (the foot had been cut from the shell though), and the dressing was the strategic balance of hot, sour, sweet and salty with crisp shallots and spicy coriander shoots on top.
Another marvel of the food this evening was my permanent dining companions caramelised salmon dish. For a mere $23.50 a generous serve of salmon was topped with a combination of shaved ‘sour fruits’, essentially an amazingly fresh salad of Asian leaves, apple eggplants, so many ingredients I’m not entirely sure. The salmon had crust of salty sweet caramel around the edges. There is some very sophisticated technique in this dish, it was outstanding.
Vins bottle shop priced cellar/winelist is available to ‘drink in’ at an additional $5 a bottle, it makes it hard not to get carried away when you feel like you are getting such a bargain. The bottles of tap water are cute feature of Vin. They use empty champagne bottles, of which I’m sure the waiters get more than a good run of jokes with, as they pour it out to the initially flabbergasted guests tumblers.
My fear of dining at Vin has obviously evaporated, it’s encouraging the difference a great chef can make to an experience, the level of trust has been restored and a good night can be enjoyed. No fibs required….
Vin Cellar
212 High St Prahran, Victoria
Ph: 9529 8299
http://www.vincellar.com.au/
Jack