Posts tagged Dinner

House of Crabs, Redfern

Review November 2, 2013 11 Comments

Oh crab, oh how you lay, with your legs crossed coyly, smothered in cajun sauce. I want to romance you, seduce you, connect with you…

I’MMA EAT YOU.

House of Crabs is the new hot place in town, with its unabashed obsession with seafood – particularly shellfish and crustaceans. The moment you step in, you’re thrust into gluttony and kitsch, and a LOT of fun. A HUGE crab greets you as you come up the stairs, and the little red booths and marine themed decor encourage you to let loose and have a chuckle.

The boil is what you ome here for, and the idea is simple: pick a type of seafood, and pick a sauce. There are snacks to help make it a meal and add to the experience, and while it might be tempting to think that these are but mere side-kicks, genuine thought has been put in to make them delicious and interesting.

The Redfern Prawn Roll came highly recommended, and didn’t disappoint. A soft, glazed, sweet bun was filled with succulent prawn and juicy mango – a celebration of summer. A creamy mayo bound it all together, and the lettuce kept it light and refreshing. The bun conveniently soaked up all the juice, and did a great job of holding together what could otherwise be a very messy meal.

The BBQ Octopus taco didn’t do as great a job of holding together, but was delicious and juicy nonetheless. Tender slices of octopus held the barest hint of a bite, and the fine slices of jalapeño and tangy dressing gave it a lot of sass. This was a messy one, but I’m not sure that you’d order a taco to be demure.

In the spirit of gluttony and excess, we also ordered the Lobster Fries. Shoe string fries were topped with lobster gravy, salty bacon bits and melted cheese. While the lobster gravy didn’t taste as strongly of crustacean as I would’ve liked, it was a very tasty dish, and addictive even when cold. I did much prefer it with the addition of the tangy hot sauce that was at the table, but I do like my chilli.

The Buffalo Cucumbers ($5) were – I think – meant to be buffalo wings, but with cucumbers. Lightly pickled slices of cucumbers were covered in a blue cheese sauce, and mixed with peanuts. This particular snack wasn’t quite as impressive as the others, but were refreshing and a good accompaniment. As far as pickled veggies go, I much preferred the jerk cucumber I had at Queenies, but that might be more because I like my food with a bit of a kick.

And for the main event, we chose Snow Crab with Cajun Sauce ($34 for 500g). In case you were wondering what 500g meant, we got pretty much a whole crab for it. You were encouraged to dump the crab out into the centre of the paper lined table, and just dig in. Gloves were provided if you wanted to be polite, but I gave up within the first 2 seconds because I love licking the sauce off my fingers. The cajun sauce had a slight hint of spice and a whole lot of attitude, and left me wondering whether I should buy home a tub to have with bread. Speaking of which, all the boil orders come with bread, for you to soak up those yummy juices in the bottom of the bag. DELISH.

The only dessert was the Nepolitan Ice Cream Waffle Sandwich with raspberry and almonds, and it was HUGE. This is definitely a dessert to share, and I was pleasantly surprised. I usually wouldn’t touch Nepolitan ice cream with a ten foot pole – because I just end up finishing all the chocolate anyway – but the tart raspberry coulis convinced me otherwise. A satisfying end to the meal.

In all, there were things that I wished that were stand out to me that I wish there were more of – extra sauce for the crab and extra raspberry for the dessert – but I had a really good time at the House of Crabs. The staff were really friendly, and the food was fast and delicious. The bill ended up slightly on the steep side – $107 between the two of us, including 1 beer – but we also ordered heaps of food. We walked away satisfied, but not stuffed, and were just left with memories of a really good night.

Great for a Friday night out with your friends, and a fantastic place to have a good food, some drinks, and more than a few laughs.

We ate at:

House of Crabs
(02) 9699 3177
305 Cleveland Street
Redfern, NSW 2016
Upstairs at The Norfolk Hotel

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Parramatta Lanes

Review October 28, 2013 5 Comments

I’ve finally popped my Parramatta Lanes cherry!!! After missing the previous years because, well, life got in the way, I finally managed to make some time to go! My mission was to stuff my face with good food, and I wasn’t disappointed!

There were 8 stops in total, hidden in Parramatta’s little laneways – hence the name.

The first stop was The Piazza – Town Hall Lane. A fantastically whimsical tram greeted me the moment I entered the laneway, looking like it came straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

La’Toosh is an old tram converted into a food tram – with a decked out kitchen and all that – and travel around much like food trucks to festivals and food events. They serve a range of coffee, teas and drinks, as well as sweet and savoury crepes.

Smoked Salmon and Spinach Crepe $15

The crepes range from $10-$15, and because I went there so early, the kitchen wasn’t quite ready and there was a bit of a wait. The staff were amazingly nice, and the coffee was excellent. The is great for a light meal, and it was hot and fresh.

But La’Toosh wasn’t the only one that was in the Town Hall Lane. There was also Grasshopper, which was a bar served built with milk crates. Super cute!

Stop #2 was the UNE Future campus, where Veggie Patch Van was conveniently parked.

Haloumi Burger, $10

The Haloumi Burger was tasty, with a generous amount of haloumi. The onion jam was a touch jarring for me, personally, but otherwise it was an enjoyable burger.

But the next sandwich for me, was the most memorable of the night.

Stop #3 was at the Craft and Cider Garden at Erby Place. Cantina Mobil made an appearance but after seeing people all atwitter about Smokey O’s BBQ I decided to go with that.

If you are a fan of slow cooked meats and go nuts over pulled pork, let me tell you that you ain’t tried nothin’ till you’ve had Smokey O”s pulled beef. There is almost all the dark flavour of beef jerky, but with the moistness of the slow cooked beef. IT WAS PHENOMENAL. I actually felt like getting a whole container of that beef and calling it a day. And accented with pickles and with the heft of the bun? It was transcendent. LOVED IT.

I also had it with some 69 Summer Ale from the Riverside Brewing company. It was light and fruity, and a fantastic accompaniment to the pulled beef.

I then moved on to the aptly named Laksa Lounge, in the Roxy Carpark. With appearances by Temasek, Spice and Lan Lans Shanghai Dumpling, this was a stop I should have made earlier on in the evening. I was absolutely stuffed by the time I got there, and only ended up ordering a Pad Thai and a Thai Iced Tea from Spice.

The pad thai was nice, but at that point of fullness, the Thai Iced Tea really hit the spot for me. If you haven’t already had it, Thai Iced Teas has an extremely strong tea base that can be sweetened with condensed milk. It usually is extremely sweet to start out with, and on this particular evening, the lady at the stand actually offered to add more condensed milk to my drink. It was like Thai Iced Milk Tea concentrate and was definitely a more a dessert item than a drink for me.

With my appetite satiated and my tummy full, I wondered back to the Connection Arcade, where I saw a fantastic take on container gardening.

Rachel from Vintaged Garden upcycles everything from Wine Boxes to wine glasses. Everything can be a little garden, and they have very smartly used the wine corks for little signs for the plants!

I really loved the way Parramatta Lanes was really organized for us to explore the hidden alleyways of Parramatta. Overnight, Parramatta seemed to be transformed into our own little version of Diagon Alley, with magical hidden worlds spread throughout Parramatta CBD.

All we need now is the floo network!

Night Noodle Markets

Review October 23, 2013 3 Comments

It’s that time of the year again! SMH’s Good Food Month has rolled around again, and the whole of October is filled with amazing food from all around the world. The Night Noodle Markets are a must-visit for me every year, which gives me my need-for-variety fix in one place.

This year there was an appearance of the Ramen Burger (pictured above) from On Ramen. The Ramen Burger – brainchild of Keizo Shimamoto – features a patty (beef, pork rib or tofu) sandwiched between two “buns” of crispy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside Ramen.

At about $12.50 a pop, the Ramen Burger seems to be coasting more on its reputation than what you get for it. It’s tasty and all, but TINY, and therefore, overpriced. Worth a try though, just so you can see what everyone is on about.

I then moved on to Jackie M’s stall, where you can get all the Southeast Asian delights for your Asian food fix.

The Otak Otak, $4.50, is soft and moreish, and I guarantee that you’ll want more than one. Flavoured fish paste is barbecued in banana leaves, imparting an earthy fragrance that you can’t get any other way.

Jackie M herself was on the front lines of her stall, braving the blazing heat and smoking woks to bring us our food. And if you don’t have the highest respect for her already after knowing that, then you should read this.

Infuzions was another stall that stood out to me – amongst the sea if dumplings and pad thai (some good, some bad), it was nice to see someone with a menu that wanted to try something different. I had the Apple Somtum with squid, and it was actually a really cool dish.

Somtum is one of my favourite salads – involving green papaya, chillies, garlic and all those fabulous Thai flavours – and this apple version carried all of the sweetness with none of the heat. Which is good if you’re not a chilli sadist like I am. The calamari was hot and fresh, which I give them props for, and was otherwise a nice salad to finish the day off with.

Pop down to the Night Noodle Markets while you still can – it’s running every evening at Hyde Park till Saturday night.

SPAM, aka shoulder pork and ham

Recipe October 11, 2013 11 Comments

Okay. I admit it. I really like SPAM. Short for Shoulder Pork and Ham, SPAM was introduced to me as ‘luncheon meat’. I fondly remember having fried, sliced luncheon meat on rice, with stir fried vegetables and sambal chilli on the side. It was a typical weekday after-school lunch that was amazingly comforting.

So when my challenge theme for this month was “Guilty Pleasures: Recipes Inspired By Cheez Whiz, Spam, Twinkies and Their Delicious Cousins”, I knew that I wanted to make another comforting meal, that’s maybe just a tad less guilty than my fond memories of SPAM.

Let’s have a look at their two components: Shoulder pork, and then ham. At about $5/kg, shoulder pork is one of the cheaper cuts of meat, with plenty of connective tissue running through it. Now usually, connective tissue means that this is a tougher cut of meat – hence the lower price. But when cooked low and slow, that connective tissue (collagen) breaks down, and moistens every fibre of meat, making it juicy, tender, and absolutely heavenly.

What about the ham bit? Well, rather than using two cuts of meat, I was more inspired by my favourite ham glazes, which usually have maple and honey through it. Maybe a barbecue sauce with maple and honey?

Pulled Pork Shoulder with Crackling Chips, Maple and Honey Barbecue Sauce, and Slaw

Pulled Pork with Crackling

2kg whole shoulder of pork, skin on (bone in, if possible. My butcher only had deboned cuts)
1L Apple juice
50ml Apple cider
Fennel Seeds
Cumin Seeds
Dried Chilli
Paprika
Ground Ginger
Whole head of garlic cloves, roughly crushed but unpeeled
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C. Place the spices – I just included what I used, feel free to use whatever you want – in a mortar and pestle with salt and pepper and grind to a powder. Score the rind of the pork with a sharp knife, careful not to cut through to the meat. Rub the rind generously with salt, rubbing into the scores. Turn the shoulder over and pat the ground spices into the meat.

Place the meat into a roasting tray – try not to use one that’s too big or you’ll waste apple juice later on – and put into the middle rack of the oven for about 30 minutes, or until you see the crackling start to happen. Then take the tray out, and spoon out most of the fat. Place the roughly crushed garlic cloves into the bottom of the tray and fill it up halfway with apple juice. Cover it with foil, leaving a tiny corner open for steam to release, and place back into the oven. Turn the oven down to 160C, and roast for about 4 hours, checking every 2 hours or so to make sure that there’s enough liquid.

The pork is done when you can pull apart the meat easily with a fork.

At this time I remove the pork to rest, remove the rind, and place it back into a 180C oven over a rack on a flat tray to finish doing its thang.

And the juices from the bottom of the tray? Well I save about a cup of it for the sauce, and reserve the rest to keep the meat sitting moist after I’ve pulled the shoulder apart.

Maple and Honey Barbecue Sauce

500ml passata
250ml juices reserved from pulled pork
Roasted garlic from the pork shoulder
1 heaped tbsp of tomato paste
1 heaped tbsp of dijon mustard
3 tbsp Worchestershire sauce
100ml maple syrup
50g honey. I used a hot habenero honey that I was very generously given from Honeycomb Valley

Squeeze out the roasted garlic into the bottom of the saucepan, and add the rest of the ingredients. I like my barbecue sauce on the sweet side, but if you don’t, simply add less maple syrup. Cook down the sauce till the desired thickness, and take it off the stove.

Cabbage Slaw

Cabbage
Parsley
Honey
Apple Cider Vinegar
Wholegrain mustard
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Shred the cabbage, and finely chop the parsley. Season and mix in with the other ingredients to dress.

To finish, tear apart the shoulder by pulling at it with two forks, then place into a bowl and pour over the juices from the pan to keep it moist. Serve with buns, sauce, slaw, and break up the crackling into ‘chips’ – I simply cracked it along the score lines.

I know it’s not exactly the SPAM of my childhood, but it’s my take on the comforts of days gone by. How about you? What’s your guilty pleasure?

Ginger and Shallot, Eastwood

Review October 8, 2013 2 Comments

Sometimes you want a change. Sometimes you want something new. And sometimes, you want familiar, comforting food in a new environment.

And that’s how we ended up at Ginger & Shallots. Every time I passed by this bustling, always-busy restaurant, I see fresh hot food getting brought out to tables of happy families and friends. Safe choice right?

More than safe, it turns out. The food was indeed hot, fresh, and incredibly tasty.

Salt and Pepper Squid, $17.90

After reading a few reviews, I ordered the salt and pepper squid as a base comparison. It was fresh and crispy, but just very slightly under salted when you compare it to places like golden century.

What was really nice though, was the Soft Shell Crab Vermicelli with X.O. Sauce.

Soft shell crab, $24.90

When I first saw this dish, I thought that it would be overpriced and not as satisfying. Boy, was I wrong. The portion is massive, and would have been more than enough for the both of us for lunch, without the salt and pepper squid. It was flavourful, crispy and well seasoned. I love the springy texture of the stir fried vermicelli, and it brought back old food memories in all the best ways.

Service-wise, the staff can get bowled over by the sheer amount of customers, but they are quite efficient once you get their attention, and there’s a very no-nonsense attitude to it. It was a really enjoyable lunch, and their specials look worth trying out the next time. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We ate at:
Ginger and Shallots Chinese Cuisine
02 9874 8066
Shop 25/1 Lakeside Rd Eastwood, NSW

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Jean’s Chilli Chicken, Eastwood

Review October 1, 2013 3 Comments

There has been a lot of brouhaha revolving around Korean Fried Chicken, but I think that there hasn’t been nearly enough recognition for it’s fiestier cousin – the chilli chicken.
I first had chilli chicken in Strathfield, after a night out at the bar with a few friends. The slow burn from the Korean Kochujang really hit the spot, and pieces of juicy chicken created an incredibly moreish and addictive mouthful, and left me loving that burn.

So I absolutely had to try the chilli chicken in Eastwood, after my Korean friend recommended it as being “very chilli, but very good”.

And it did not disappoint.

I ordered the chilli chicken with cheese, and it arrived in a sizzling hot plate with oozing, melted cheese draped over the top like a trophy wife. Fiery and decadent, the combination of punchy chilli sauce with chicken and cheese is surprisingly filling, even before you consider the sides.

It came with a lightly oiled rice that was dotted with various flavours like sesame seed, seaweed flakes and flakes of fish. The plastic gloves meant that you were meant to roll your own rice balls, which added to a sort of ‘hands-on’ element to the meal, though you could just as well eat it out of the bowl.

Creamy pasta salad and crunchy pickled radish both soothed and cleanse the palate from the relatively heavy – and heavenly – chicken. I wish there was more radish, but I’m really a pickle sort of girl.

In all, it was a very satisfying and filling dinner. The chilli chicken, which cost $38 at the time that we went, is really a meal for at least two people, but could easily feed 3-4. The staff are friendly and not in-your-face, which means that you’re left to enjoy your food in peace. There isn’t eftpos at the counter, but you can choose to pay at the bar of the hotel that the eatery is located in – which is where you’d have to order your drinks anyway.

Great for dinner, but better in a large group. Jean’s Chilli chicken is also open to the wee hours of the night, making it a perfect way to end a rousing evening out.

We at at:

Jeans Chilli Chicken
02 9874 1100
115 Rowe Street Eastwood, NSW

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What I ate: Fish en papillote

what i ate September 6, 2013 3 Comments

I’ve been interning at some food jobs lately – chase that dream! – and I’ve been taking home HEAPS of leftovers. Some of these leftovers are in the form of raw ingredients, and you know how I love repurposing ingredients. On this particular day, I scored a box of vegetables, and with spring upon us, I thought it would be a great idea to showcase the freshness of these vegetables – let’s STEAM THE SUCKAS!

Product Talk: Maggi Stir Fry Creations

Review July 30, 2013

As part of Product Talk by Nuffnang I was sent some Maggi Stir Fry Creations to try. And we all know how I feel about receiving things in the mail. =)

Each pack comes with two sections: the infusion paste and the finishing sauce. You’re meant to marinate the meat in the infusion paste, then fry off your meat and veggies in the finishing sauce. The idea is that it gives you two layers of flavours, in the most speedy fashion possible.

The back of the packet calls for 500g of meat and about 3 cups of chopped veggies.

I love that the instructions are basically to throw whatever meat and veg in that you have on hand. It’s a great way to clear the fridge, and provides flexibility for whatever is in season. And a great way to get in your 5 fruit and veg in a day! Just fry the veg off in order of hardness to softness, and add the meat. Then the finishing sauce, and you’re done.

The result?

Well, I’m partial to slightly more punchy flavours, so these are a little on the light side for me. I did add a little more chilli and a dash more soy, but I suspect that it’s also because I added extra noodles in. On the whole, it’s a great idea for a super convenient lunch or dinner, especially if you’re not the kind of person to have a pantry cupboard full of random condiments – as I have. And as with anything, it is always easy to tweak things if you’ve got a decent base to start with. And it’s a decent enough base.

It also managed to create a portion that was enough for a big serving for 4, or a medium serving for 6. And with all the veggies I managed to pack in, I was plenty full on a medium serving anyway. Definitely something I would use as a base in a pinch.

Kotlet Burger

Recipe July 28, 2013 10 Comments

I have a new found enjoyment of Persian food. The rice, the stews, the liberal use of turmeric…it all culminates in a beautifully delicious end product that speaks of decades of recipe refinement.

There is one particular recipe that ingeniously uses potatoes, mince, onion and spices to make little patties that are delicious over rice, with a fresh tangy side salad. Kotlets – which to me sound like cutlets – seem like a great way to stretch out the meat supply. I can’t actually find any history on these delicious morsels, but most Persians that I speak to recall these as their childhood favourite.

Slow Roasted Pork Belly

Recipe July 20, 2013 4 Comments

Crackling. I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like good, crispy crackling. And it’s actually easier to achieve than you would expect. Impressive, because it tastes great and because you have to do a ridiculously small amount of work.

Slow Roasted Pork Belly

600g slab of pork belly
Oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat your oven to 160C (not fan forced. If you’re can’t turn off the fan, I would suggest 140-150C).

Score the pork belly to what your portions would be. I would suggest using a very small paring knife if you have one – you want to score just into the fat but not cut the meat. Rub a little bit of oil – I used just enough for a light coating – onto the pork belly, followed by a generous rub of salt and pepper, making sure you get into the creases. I scattered stripes of flavoured salt from Smoke and Roast that I got from The Good Food and Wine Show, and it gave me interesting bursts of flavour in every piece!

Simply roast it over a rack for a couple of hours till the rind is nice, puffed and crispy. I tend not to worry too much about the pork cooking through – at those sort of temperatures the pork is always done by the time the crackling is. If you have a much larger slab of pork, I would suggest cutting it into smaller slabs before you put it into the oven.

It’s the most foolproof recipe for pork and pork crackling I’ve ever used. Simple and effective, I like to serve portions of the pork just with some roasted veggies, no gravy required!

What’s your favourite tips to making great pork belly with amazing crackling?