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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!

Australian Garden Show 2013

Food For Thought September 10, 2013 1 Comment

I was very lucky to get double passes to this year’s Australian Garden show from Destination NSW and Sydney.com. Those who know me know that I’m not the most outdoorsy person, but as part of being obsessive about food, I’m trying to grow my own food.

And summer is approaching, shouldn’t we take advantage of this gorgeous growing weather?

At any rate, I’m trying my luck to see whether I’ve inherited any of my mother’s green thumb. She’s a horticulturalist, so you’d think that I would’ve learnt something after all these years. I remember the amazingly gratifying feeling of eating freshly grilled corn that was harvested from the garden earlier in the day. It gave me so much more appreciation for the food that I was eating.

Lindeman’s had a beautiful tree of hanging garden pots. They were giving out little hanging pots to each person, and a 3 little plants – 1 herb and 2 flowers – for each to plant. You got to create your own little pot, then hang it on the tree with your name till you’re ready to bring it home. I had mint, a marigold and a pansy…but we all know that the mint is what I really want.

They also had plenty of stalls and displays to inspire – I particularly loved the ideas for planting in small spaces. I live in an apartment with no balcony, and so I’m hard pressed for window space, and I’ve currently got a little milk crate garden bed going.

I got some excellent advice from the people selling these seeds on what I can and can’t grow – I can’t grow potatoes successfully in a milk crate for example – and I ended up getting beetroot and a micro greens mix. Microgreens are really just the young underdeveloped shoots of edible plants – this mix had sunflower seeds included – and they had it growing out of coffee cups. SO CUTE! Apparently it takes as little as 7 days for you to have your classy meal topping.

From a food perspective, I’ve just learnt so much. I think that it is so important – if you’re into your food – to not just strive to cook food well, but to also have the best produce to start off with. And if you’re a control freak like me, you’ll start wandering into gardening territory, just so that you can control the produce as well. Now just to wait till I get to harvest my food!!

Note: Tammi from Insatiable Munchies and her guest attended the Australian Gardening Festival as guests of Destination NSW and Sydney.com

Good Food and Wine Show, 2013

Review July 2, 2013 4 Comments

My stash: (Clockwise from left) Scarmoza Blanca from La Latteria, Colgate tea flavoured mouthwash, Kumquat spread from St Dalfour, Truffle Tapenade from Wine and Truffle Co., Flavoured salts from Smoke and Roast, Smoked garlic from Smoke and Roast, Porcini salt from Salt Meats Cheese.

FREE FOOD. Need I say more?

The Good Food and Wine Show is one of the bigger food expos that I attend every year. Beyond the aforementioned free food, I love the opportunity that I get to have a chat with small producers whom I might not otherwise get a chance to talk to, or might have to travel far to meet.

For example, meet Larry.

Larry is, in his own words, “the truck driver, the harvester, the everything” at the Handorf Hill Winery. Not having that much experience with wine – and not being very good with alcohol – I had many questions, and Larry patiently and eloquently explained to me the intricacies of the flavours and aromas of wine, and especially how the weather and microclimates affect them. The most interesting thing I learnt from Larry was the effect of the cool weather on tannins.

Tannins are compounds that are present in things like tea and wine, and contributes a certain kind of astringency that gives you that slightly dry feeling in your mouth. Because tannins are found in the grapes, the rate the grapes ripen will affect the amount of astringency that you get in your wine. From what I understand from Larry, the cooler Adelaide climates allow the grapes to ripen slowly, allowing the tannins to mellow out, resulting in a gentler wine. How cool is that?

There were also plenty of other producers:

ChocoMe had the most beautifully presented bars of chocolate I’d ever seen.

Robinvale estate, with their adorable graphics adorning their myriad of flavoured oils and vinegars.

Salumi Australia had a MASSIVE and impressive display of cured meats in every shape and form. And had these little cones at $5 a pop, besides the samples that they had on display.

Smoke and Roast had a very energetic spokesperson, and had the most beautiful-smelling smoked garlic and flavoured salts. He was sharing recipes left, right and centre and inspired me to try out his salts on a slow roasted pork belly. He said to different salts on different sections, to create a sort of rainbow of flavours, depending on which piece you eat.

The Wine and Truffle Co. had a great array of truffle products, and an impressive piece of truffle protected by a glass cloche. I was impressed that they could tell me off hand when the truffle was harvested – it’s very important to ask when buying truffles because truffles tend to go stale after about 10 days – and I loved the truffle tapenade so much that I bought one home for myself.

Kikkoman had a genius way of getting people to try their soy sauce – rather than getting people to dip crackers in (I’ve seen this happen, who gets people to try soy sauce with crackers?), they actually had little pieces of salmon and cucumber sushi for people to try with their sauce! I know it sounds simple, but I don’t think that I would’ve thought of that.

This is the most exciting bit of the day for me. Bohemian Delights had wild mushrooms out for sale, and there were samples of Slippery Jack mushrooms (right) which were simply sauteed with salt, pepper and some caraway seeds. SO DELICIOUS! There was also a man at the stall – the owner’s father – who told us that his wife uses Pine Nut mushrooms (left) in her goulash, instead of meat, before saying (with a wink in his eye) that Czech women make the best cooks.

And that was my Good Food and Wine experience. Did you go? Which were your favourite stands?