Posts tagged Lunch

Party Food Roundup: The Sides

Recipe

So we’ve covered mains, and canapés, and sometimes the poor sides get, well, sidelined. There’s always the usual pasta salad and potato salads, but here’s my take, on some of the sides I’ll be making for Christmas.

1. Heston Blumenthal’s Mac and Cheese

All the comfort of mac and cheese, but with the poshness of truffle oil and a white wine cheese sauce. Comforting and impressive at the same time! Recipe here.

2. Tuna, beans and Beetroot Salad

A salad you can make entirely from pantry ingredients, which would free up some space in your over-packed fridge. Practical, and tasty!

3. Roasted Brussel Sprouts

Maybe the most maligned vegetable ever, mostly because many people just boil them to death. Get the recipe for hearty brussel sprouts here!

4. Spicy Cambodian Mushroom Dip

For a spicy Cambodian kick to your meal, try this mushroom dip as a condiment. Great with crudités, or with your barbecued steaks.

5. Peach, Mango and Crispy Prosciutto Salad

A pure celebration of summer, this salad can lighten a rich Christmas lunch. Especially in an Australian summer. Recipe here!

Party Food Roundup: The Mains

Recipe 3 Comments

Smorgasbord

‘Tis the season…to get your eat on! And if you’re the cook in the house, you’re not just in charge of your own belly, you’re also in charge of feeding everyone else. So if you’re scratching your head of what to make this year, here’s a quick roundup of my favourite recipes to feed a party.


1. Twice Cooked Lamb Ribs with Basil Chimichurri

Lamb Ribs and Basil Chimmichurri

This recipe for golden brown and delicious lamb ribs takes a bit of effort, but also provides you with lamb stock for risotto, and lamb fat for your roast potatoes. It’s the recipe that keeps on giving. Oh, and did I mention that you can make this up to three days ahead as well? No stress on the day!

2. Pulled Pork Shoulder with Cabbage Slaw

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Pork shoulder is the new pork leg! This cheap cut of pork is super easy to cook, and can be left to its own devices for most of the day while you sip on your wine. You can then magically pull it out when everyone is hungry, and voila! Instant lunch. Recipe here.

3. Persian Burgers

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Everyone loves a good burger at a family barbecue, so why not make these Persian patties instead of your same old beef patty? Once fried, these patties can keep warm in an oven, ready to be part of the build-your-own-burger section of the table.

4. Korean Fried Chicken

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A cross between part of an actual meal and finger food, chicken wings are always a winner at every party. I first learnt this at a Korean cooking class, and it’s been a crowd favourite ever since. If you’re not a chicken wing kind of person, chicken thighs cut into pieces will do too.

Simply marinate your chicken in cooking sake (rice wine), and then drain and dust in a mixture of potato starch and flour. Blanch in hot oil once (150C) till lightly brown, then lay out in a single layer on a tray. Place in the oven at 180C to finish.

For a chilli glaze, sauté 1 tbsp minced garlic with 1/2 tbsp minced ginger till fragrant. Then add 3 tbsp kochujang (korean chilli paste) and tomato sauce (if you prefer it really hot, omit the tomato sauce). Stir till combined, then add 2 tbsp of liquid glucose. Once the glaze is runny, add the crispy chicken in and stir to coat. Serve hot.

5. Slow roasted Lamb Shoulder

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Australia has beautiful lamb, and it’s time to take advantage of it. If you like the idea of a whole roast and carving at the table, try this slow roasted lamb recipe. Sure it takes some time, but most of the work is done by just leaving it in the oven.

Wok On Inn, The Rocks

Review 2 Comments

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Street food features dominantly in Asian cuisine. If you ask natives for food recommendations, fine dining rarely ranks higher than a particular stall in the corner of a local market or hawker centre. My Thai friends, for example, are more likely to send me to a place with a name I can’t pronounce, than David Thompson’s Nahm, as nice as the latter might be.


I was very nicely invited to try out the new branch of Wok On Inn at the Rocks by 6dc. Sitting in the ‘fast casual’ classification, Wok On Inn is a chain of eateries that wants to deliver the restaurant quality food of casual dining, but with the convenience of fast food.

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The new branch of Wok On Inn is at located at a beautiful courtyard at the rocks. Surrounded by a few other eateries, this gorgeous venue gets plenty of natural light, and a cool breeze coming through every so often.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of Wok On Inn, it’s basically like a choose-your-own with noodles, with a few suggestions made. You get to choose your noodle, sauce, and toppings, with all the flavours inspired by the street food of Asia.

For lunch, I got to try a few of the suggested combinations.

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Drunken Noodles (Pad Prik King)

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Cashew Noodles

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Bangkok Noodles

What surprised me the most was how each dish had its own identity. Many Asian sauce bases have many common base ingredients, and it can’t help that in order to allow for the preferences of the Australian public – chilli levels, for example, have to be dampened ever so slightly. In order to help keep the flavours as authentic as possible – and to retain the core identity of each dish – the owner has developed a relationship with a chef in Thailand, to create these sauces with Asian ingredients local to the region, and then import these sauces to all of the Wok On Inn outlets, to keep consistency up.

In all, it was quick, delicious, and quality that you rely on. I also really like that there are child-size options as well, so I can indulge and try many more varieties!

What’s your favourite?

Note: Tammi from Insatiable Munchies dined at Wok On Inn as a guest of 6dc and Wok On Inn. 

I ate at:
Wok On Inn
(02) 9247 8554
17/31 Playfair St, The Rocks Playfair Street, The Rocks NSW 2000

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Pineapple Room, Hawaii

Hawaii Review Travel 4 Comments

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Furikake Crusted New Zealand, All Natural Ora King Salmon on Ochazuke Risotto. 

Located inside Macy’s at the Ala Moana Shopping Centre, the Pineapple Room is Alan Wong’s casual dining counterpart to his fine dining restaurant on South King Street. Not having dined at either, I was  originally a bit reserved about all the reputation surrounding both restaurants, especially when I read that the Pineapple Room is borne of a chef at Alan Wong’s expressing a wish to run his own restaurant.

I ordered the Tasting Menu – I always find that the best option if you don’t know what to order.

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Ho Farms Tomato and Watermelon Salad, with Hawaii Island Dairy Goat Cheese and Li Hing Mui Dressing

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Miso Garlic Butter Fish (Black Cod) with Curry Kabocha Potato Salad, Karashi (Japanese Mustard)  and Gobo (Burlock Roots)

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Braised Beef Short Ribs and “Taegu” Shrimp, with MAO Farms baby vegetables

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Walalua Chocolate Candy Bar, with Macadamia Nut Praline Crunch, Hawaiian Salt Caramel, Chocolate Ganache, Triple Chocolate “Brownie” Cookies

The food was excellent – the butter fish was divine and the watermelon salad was amazing in its simplicity and elegance. And did I mention the melt-in-your-mouth short rib? – but what really blew me away was the service. If you don’t know already, I really like asking questions, and the service staff not only answered every question I had about the food, they even brought out the sous chef to talk to me about the menu and its development. I had particular questions about the Sea Asparagus – which taste kind of sea salty and capery – and they even sent out a note at the end of the dinner with alternate names so that I could find out more information if I was interested.

The Pinapple room provided me with not only a great dinner, but a fantastic dining experience. Definitely one worth repeating if I was in Hawaii again. Yes, you can get more affordable food on the islands, but this is a place to treat your family and yourself to a nice dinner out. With a true passion for food clearly evident in every member of the staff, this is a dining destination for eager foodies.

SPAM, aka shoulder pork and ham

Recipe 11 Comments

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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 2 Comments

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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My Chocolate Shoppe, Kiama

Review

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I think high tea has somehow fallen out of popularity. I wonder why, because I’ve had fond memories of high tea from when I was a kid. My parents would bring me to high tea at a hotel, where everything was shiny and dainty and…mini! As a kid, I thought that high tea was about kids, because everything seemed to be kid sized – itty bitty cucumber sandwiches anyone? – but now I know better.

High tea – in my opinion – isn’t so much about the food, it’s about the experience. It’s about the dainty. It’s about the sipping tea and lunching with your friends.

My Chocolate Shoppe is one of the many shops along the main street of Terralong. It’s quaint exterior suggested a much more homely feel than the big chocolate shop boys like Max Brenner and San Churros, and the staff were warm and friendly. When I ordered the High Tea, $22, the staff seemed a little confused, so I guess it might not be often ordered, but it was brought out promptly, with minimal fuss, which restored my faith.

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While I appreciated that it was a good selection of what this little cafe had to offer, somehow I expected a little bit more from it. The savoury selection was average at best – the sandwiches and tarts were a touch dry – and the chocolates were incredibly rich.

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Which made them good chocolates, but also made them difficult to finish without something between to cleanse the palette.

But the piece the resistance…

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This place has got some rockin’ scones. Soft and crumbly, and smothered in clotted cream and jam. Sometimes scones do leave you with a dry feeling rolling around in your mouth, but this had a fantastic bite and did not leave a chalky aftertaste at all!

If anything else, I would suggest just ordering the scones. From what I understand, the scones are made fresh daily, and at $3.50 a pop, I think it’s well worth the visit.

We ate at:

My Chocolate Shoppe
106 Terralong St
Kiama NSW 2533


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Jean’s Chilli Chicken, Eastwood

Review 3 Comments

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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.

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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.

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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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