Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

After drinking so much of former housemate’s homebrew, it was about bloody time I tried my hand at brewing my own beer. Nothing ridiculously special or fancy at this stage.

First brew was Cascade chocolate mahogany porter kit, which has now been bottled. Apparently in another week it’ll be at its taste peak (other better persons tell me). As far as I’m concerned, if it’s not infected, it’s okay! I’ve tried it and it’s drinkable but there’s no complexity in the flavour.

Second brew, done yesterday was using a Black Rock IPA kit with Brewcraft #76 sugar, Cascade hops and some lager yeast…going for a steam ale *cringes*. The yeast wasn’t all crazy like the previous one, so I’m a bit worried (I know, I know, no one uses kit yeast, but I figure it’s okay for newbies to do it…use the better stuff as you improve and all that).

In any case, it was pretty exciting to actually try one’s hand at it. Even if the bulk of brewing is so much fucking cleaning, ugh.

I’m not big on cooking. It isn’t that I don’t like to, but I rarely get the kitchen to myself (read: mother is always at home).

An initial scrounging in the fridge and pantry revealed the following available ingredients that we chose to use:

• two salmon fillets
• mushroom soy sauce (seriously, what Asian household doesn’t have regular soy sauce? FAIL)
• baby spinach, mushrooms & spring onions
• lime chutney (stay with me)
• white wine
• minced garlic
• butter

We had no lemons and I wanted to marinate the salmon in soy and lemon juice. So at a pinch, I thought watered-down mushroom soy sauce and Indian lime pickle would suffice. Put in a small amount of mushroom soy and add three to four times the amount of water. Spoon generous teaspoons of pickle and mix well till blended. Put salmon in bowl and pour marinade on top and don’t be shy to massage marinade into the fillets and let it sit.

Chop 4-5 mushrooms and finely chopped spring onions and sauté in a tablespoon of butter. After it’s cooked, add a clove’s worth of minced garlic and mix well.

Place the salmon in a very hot wok and add a cup of white wine. Put a lid on the wok and let it cook till well done. Put the salmon on a bed of baby spinach.

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The beer in photo is most likely Mountain Goat Steam Ale, which I’m enjoying immensely at the moment.

I love poverty. Okay, I don’t really, but I’m glad it’s forcing me to be…resourceful.

Two consecutive days of me scrounging in the kitchen. I thought I’d try to honour Dad by making cheese and bacon omelette. No, Dad’s not dead (thankfully), but he’s out of the country and it feels like he’s been gone a while.

I found other stuff in the fridge, and so kitchen sink omelette it was instead.

I’ve never made an omelette in my life. Necessity is an excellent teacher and motivator.

Serving three people, I beat seven eggs in a bowl. Chop up half a medium-sized onion and eight rashers of bacon and then fry onions in a bit of olive oil till green-translucent. Toss bacon cubes in and fry till onions are brown-translucent. Add finely chopped spring onion sprigs (we had about three hanging around).

Right at the end, add three mushrooms roughly chopped and set aside when cooked.

In a lightly buttered wok or non-stick pan, pour half of the beaten egg mixture and fry till it starts to look cooked. Gently heap fillings on top, and pour the rest of the egg mixture to cover. Heap on loads of grated cheese. This won’t set as much as you’d like, so in a heated oven or grill, get the wok and place it under till your omelette looks like it’s crispy and firm.

I guess you could flavour with salt and/or pepper, but I didn’t even think of it, oops! Very, very slowly, I’m getting my cooking mojo back: am notoriously appalling at making things with what’s already available in pantry and/or fridge.

Feel much better now that I’ve used up pre-existing things!

Scarf it down after you’ve divided it fairly. Thankfully, it was well-received, phew!

Here’s half the bastard. Not a great picture, but just so you know what it looks like.

This morning, I read food writer Phil Lees’ blog post on the nature of food blogging and I have to say, it’s really inspired me to consider the question seriously.

I should actually get around to explaining this on eat, drink, stagger sometime, but for the time being, my ruminations will be housed here.

I really like to write, and as of a year ago, I didn’t think I was writing enough. I read heaps (yea insomnia!) but for health reasons (I later found out), writing wasn’t coming easily.

I feel like shit when I don’t write.

I started a dream blog which helped with writing and output immensely.

Then, a few months ago, I decided to start a food blog. I love dining out, and wanted a record of my experiences. It seemed a natural progression to start blogging about it as another way to practise writing. To take away from the stress that is writing poetry, I wanted my food blogging to be casual, but to still try and write well.

I don’t know if I am successful in that regard, but I’m really enjoying it. Am no food expert by any means, so it was liberating to just write and not pain over every single word (like I do in poetry. Don’t get me wrong – I adore that about the poetic creative process, but it does get draining).

Embarrassingly, before reading Lees’ post, I now come to realise that food blogging became a slightly competitive, obsessive pursuit. Instead of just documenting my dining experiences, I now started to care about where I wrote about, if it meant I might have more readers. If you will permit me the confession, I wanted to start blogging about the same places all the ‘cool kids’ were blogging about. Go to the same events. Wonder why Tom, Dick and Harriet were going to the inaugural Australian Eat Drink Blog conference and I wasn’t. Pretty lame, eh? I purposely didn’t register my interest in the conference because I thought that more experienced bloggers should go, but then got annoyed. There’s always next year, Gem, sheesh.

So, for me, I pretty much nearly jumped the shark. Got ridiculous.

I need to be honest with myself. I have a chronic illness so I can’t afford to dine out as often as I like (because I work part-time), or at the more top end places that some of my (fantastic, I might add) food blogging colleagues do. I need to accept that. So, in the next two or so months, I’m going to focus on eating out less, and cooking more. Get back to my roots and remind myself, this is not a competition. I intend to review more places local to me (living in the north of Melbourne, I am nowhere near the city). More oh-fucking-god-will-this-work kitchen experimentation. I’m so scared of failure in the kitchen. Why? As long as it’s edible, who cares? Better to try and make and fail.

I’m really grateful for Lees’ blog post. It’s been an excellent reminder that this fun hobby/chronicle was starting to exist for different reasons to why I began.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop caring about readership. So many people have given me fantastic, inspiring feedback about eat, drink, stagger. I will always do my best to put out content I am happy with, and happy to have read and critiqued. I will continue to review places I have eaten at at my own expense. I will continue to learn. I will continue to read food blogs and let them inspire me.

On that note, it’s time to consider dinner options. I have an Entertainment voucher for Crust Pizza and by golly, I’m not afraid to use it.

Ever since I listened to a New Yorker podcast about poutine, I’d been craving it something chronic. I know it sounds disgusting – chips with gravy on top and mixed with cheese curds!

Apparently it’s something of a favourite amongst Canadians after a bit of a good ol’ binge drinking session, bit of a craved fast food delight.

The time came to try and recreate this culinary behemoth.

First, you have to make cheese curds. Get a 2 litre bottle of full cream milk and pour into a saucepan. Heat till it begins to form a skin – it’s very important not to let it boil.

Next, you add a fluid ounce or 60mLs or so of white vinegar into the mixture. It will immediately start to curdle (yea!). If less of the vinegar is needed, don’t fret, just put as much as you need for curdling to begin. After that, you need to squeeze out all the liquid – you can do this by putting it in a clean teatowel or cheesecloth and making it form a ball. Then, rub some salt into the drier curds before wrapping up again.

This needs to be weight-compressed overnight. My weight compression was very makeshift (plates, six-pack of beer)!

Next day, bought two large serves of chips from KFC (these are perfect because you need the chips to have crunch on the outside, but be soft in the middle). Crumble the cheese curds on top and then pour hot gravy (we just used a sachet of Masterfood lamb and rosemary instant gravy) over the top.

Some notes: needs more salt on the curds and we’ve got to get them squeaking. Also, have to get the gravy steaming hot so those bad-boy curds will melt! But overall, I think it was a success for a first go!

I have an odd comfort food dish, and it’s fairly guilt-free. Just decided to drum it up for myself and the partner for a very late lunch.

You’ll need:
soy sauce (I recommend Kikkoman’s salt-reduced one, as it’s also not thick and overpowering in flavour)
rice wine vinegar
sesame oil
soba noodles (Hakubaku brand is one I recommend)

optional:
instant miso soup (my fave instant brand is Hikari)
extra dried wakame
gen mai cha (find this at tea shops and Asian grocers, this is what it looks like
black sesame seeds

All of these are available at most supermarkets, except for the dried wakame and gen mai cha.

Boil water in saucepan. When bubbling vigorously, add soba and cook strictly for four (4) minutes. Yep, just four. You don’t want them to overcook. Immediately put into a colander and run them under cold water – the colder, the better. You may even want to gently rinse them in chilled water (not too much). Put well drained noodles into large bowl.

Get a small mixing bowl or tumbler and add your desired proportions of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce. This is totally trial and error. Some days, I like more vinegar, some more soy. For a rough guide, you want 20-30mLs of each. Then add just under a teaspoon of sesame oil and mix well. Pour this over the noodles in the bowl, and gently mix.

Done!

Here’s the fancy stuff:

With finished bowl of noodles, sprinkle black sesame seeds for contrast.

Serve with gen mai cha (roasted rice Japanese green tea). You might also like to have miso soup too. I like to snap dried wakame and add it to the miso.

I love cheese.

I love pastis.

So when I saw a recipe in a French cookbook that not even I could fuck up involving the marriage of the two, the angels sang, rah rah rah.

Take a circle of camembert (I actually used brie and it tasted just fine). Unwrap, put on larger piece of foil. Prick the bastard to death with a fork (though I might try slitting it with a small, sharp knife next time). You’re doing this so you can pour 2 tbsp of pastis (Pernod, Ricard, or absinthe – all are in the pastis fam). After you have liberally poured your liquid in its wounds, wrap up in the foil snugly.

Don’t worry if you don’t have pastis – just use white wine.

Shove into a preheated oven for 10 minutes. Your oven’s temperature should be at 200 C.

Pull out, unwrap and get stuck into it. The recipe said to spread on hard, crusty bread, but I with no guilt whatsoever hoed into my cheese-pastis goo with a spoon.

This is what tonight’s looked like:

Again, cannot claim any credit whatsoever for the brilliantly alliterative post title – that goes to my dearest dining companion.

It’s winter. I was low. The initial plan was to check out some delicious vegetarian fare but sometimes the good ol’ fatty stuff hits spots when you’re down and out.

So a second trip (for me) was in order to the wonderful Misty’s Diner in Prahran, Melbourne. I’d been here before, but my companion had not and I was most eager to pay another visit. This time round, I also tried to get better photos of the wonders consumed.

First ordered were a thickshake each – pictured, on the left, we have a Reese’s Pieces-based one (tasted like vanilla wafers and sweet peanut butter), and mine which was a cherry chocolate one. Mine had small crunchy pieces of chocolate and was divine. I drank it pretty quickly! I love how 50s retro they look.

T had never been here before, and I’d said that my friend insisted as rite of passage I had to try the cheesy chilli fries, so we shared a basket. I chose ‘spicy’ for the chilli hotness which had just the right amount of kick and flavour without burning the almighty fuck out of my mouth. We didn’t finish our serving but only so we’d have room for the mouth-watering burgers to follow. Cheesy chilli fries are a messy, beany mass of oozy fatty goodness!

I’d tried the cheeseburger before, so ordered a burger with blue cheese dressing, and this time, I remembered my condiments of ketchup and mustard! Here’s a photo of T’s burger – he ordered a cheeseburger without tomato, and an added piece of bacon. I love cheeseburgers, but have to say I really enjoyed the blue cheese dressing burger I had more so than the cheeseburger I had on my initial visit.

Also, note the authentic gherkin skewered to the top! I love pickles so I ate mine with much love.

Alas, no space for dessert, but a few American confections were purchased. At the counter where you pay your bill there are quite a few to choose from – sweets, pastry goods (like Pop Tarts!) and American soft drinks. Didn’t get to see Misty on this visit, sadly, but the staff are friendly, attentive and relaxed.

I definitely want to go back – every time I read the menu I find new cholesterol-laden goodies that makes me salivate. Plus, one day, I’d love to share an actual banana split with a close friend. It’s certainly an impressive place. Can’t believe I (wisely) chose to leave having dessert and thus kept my ‘carbicide’ (cheers Bruno / Sacha Baron Cohen) to a socially acceptable level.

Though I am partial to the usage and application of alliteration, alas, I cannot claim credit (ha!) for the post title – it was the invention of my dining companion.

I’m not one for stereotypes, but I have to say…it seems like every girl has at least one gay boyfriend like this: the one who knows all the good films coming out, the one who knows all the nice bars to lounge at, the one who knows where all the cool eateries are. For me, I think I’d say that person is Ryan.

He alerted me to the existence of the Oriental Tea House on Little Collins St in the centre of Melbourne and that they are having duck month this month. I know that there is one in South Yarra (for non Melburnians, that’s not too far from the city centre) and I wanted to go desperately on account of their tea menu.

My date for the evening, T, had not dumplings in a very long time and was rather bemoaning the fact, so after consulting the menu online, I decided to take him here.

As soon as we entered, we were warmly greeted. Before the tables, there is a sort of tea trial station – several teas in pots (some warmed with candles, others not) and sample cups with cups full of the dried product for show. Greedily we helped ourselves as directed as they prepared our table. I got to taste a cherry fruit tea – sweetened, and cold, and another which was warm (sadly its name eludes me as we were called to our table then).

At first, we ordered quite modestly, thinking that we could order more if needed later. I insisted in quite the gluttonous fashion that we get the Peking duck and barbeque pork buns – the latter which I’d been craving
for quite some time. To that we added some battered calamari which was perfectly garnished with freshly chopped ginger and red chilli, and chives dumplings. We had beer and tea – the first tea we tried had wolfberry and chrysanthemum.

The chrysanthemums looked gorgeous when in the water.

Being not yet sated, we ordered more. I suggested sticky rice with chicken and Chinese sausage, scallop dumplings, and football dumplings.

As you can see, the scallop dumplings come with the scallop on the top of the steamed dumpling. They looked as good as they tasted!

The football dumplings, we both agreed, were more representative of the amalagamation of Western and Eastern tastes…

But they did look cute, giggle.

To accompany that (I do confess to scoffing down my first tea, now there’s a surprise), I ordered their Chinese royal tea which was a black tea called kee mun. It’s surprisingly delicate on the palate, for a black tea.

For dessert, I insisted upon egg custard tarts, like the spoilt child I am. There are no photos because I’m a glut!

I really enjoyed dining there and would definitely go back, and my companion seemed to like it too. The service is excellent and the place is very nicely set out. It’s classy, but not intimidatingly so.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine met me for dinner in Box Hill which has quite a good number of Chinese eateries. He took me to a place called First Taste which serves hearty soups and humble claypot dishes.

It was freezing that evening and soup was definitely called for. I chose the ginseng pork soup, which is tangy and meaty.

I know it looks a bit scary, but I can assure you, it hit several spots. You get this cute ceramic canister with a lid. It managed to revive me somewhat.

Dave recommended a few dishes from the claypot section of the menu and I decided on one that essentially had a pork pattie placed on to of claypot-cooked rice.

I tell you what, those things are filling! I love the crisp, slightly burnt rice at the bottom of the claypot (as did my maternal grandfather, I’ve been told).

Our meal didn’t even cost $15 each and tea is in free and abundant supply. First Taste doesn’t make fancy food – it’s more hearty and reminds me of the kind of food my mother likes to make when in a rush or someone in the family isn’t feeling well. It’s unpretentious cuisine at its finest and I look forward to returning. I understand there a few branches of this said establishment peppered around Melbourne. If you like simple, cheap Asian fare, then this place comes highly recommended.

After my dining experience at First Taste, I called a friend in the hopes of catching a drink with him in his hood.

Not sure when, but quite some time ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a true Renaissance man. His name is Justin. Alas, he decided to leave Melbourne for more adventurous climes, that being Istanbul (who, seriously, just ups and goes to Istanbul?! Justin, that’s who).

I do not use the term ‘Renaissance man’ lightly: Justin is a tech geek of the highest order, who makes me hard whenever we talk lit. I fondly remember him reading me passages of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men In A Boat as I drove us to the local fast food joint for disgusting burgers. He likes good music. He taught me to play croquet. He did aikido. Alas, I am reliably informed he can dance, but I never witnessed this. He’s also a fellow flute-player.

In his last week in Melbourne, we caught up at a bar near his place that he became very fond of – for good reason. The staff are knowledgeable without being snotty. They also serve Young’s Chocolate Stout. If you live in the North Fitzroy area, you should definitely visit Deco Bar on St Georges Road.

The sign above was taken inside Deco Bar and harkens back to my modernist sluttiness, so I had to snap a pic.

We miss you, Justin.

After a weekend in the bracing country, I begged my friend Derek to take me to Misty’s Diner in Windsor, Melbourne. Misty’s is an American-style diner – there’s lots of film and music paraphernalia in a 50s style diner, just like on telly. The service staff are dressed up to suit the theme of the restaurant and Phoenix-born Misty herself might just come out and say hello.

Upon friend’s recommendation, for starters we shared cheesy chilli chips. You get a plastic basket with French fries and piled on top with cheese, beans, tomato and onions. It sounds so wrong and so unhealthy, but it’s delicious. (note: sadly, I’m still struggling to embed photos into my posts properly, but you can click on the photos and open up in a new tab to view larger versions)

I know, it doesn’t look pretty but I assure you it is deliciousness incarnate. Even while the fat is sliding through your arteries…

While D went for the “Misty’s American Burger” (which I stayed away from because it has an egg!), I chose the much simpler, more humble cheeseburger. Silly me, I forgot to load it up with mustard and tomato ketchup! Sadly, I cannot get my photo of said cheeseburger to load with the correct orientation, so you don’t get to see what it looked like.

The patties are fabulous – you actually feel like you’re eating meat and not some gristly brown substance ground to resemble a beef pattie. All burgers are also available with vegetable patties, there are some “healthier” options on offer and also dessert! It might not be high-end dining, but I am definitely going back to try some of the other gustatory delights. They also have all-day breakfasts. Seriously, this place would be heaven to those nursing a hangover. Not the place you’d want to go to if you’re watching your weight! Beverages include the usual, with a few North American beers. I didn’t get to try one but ogled the thickshake menu all the time I was there.

Misty did come out and personally ask us how our meal was which was lovely. If you’re in the mood for some good, hearty junk food with a touch of kitsch, I’d warmly recommend a visit. Already, I’m plotting a second trip!

Not wanting all of you to think I’m a moany old git who doesn’t want to do anything to help myself out of my less than savoury mood, I’ve come up with a fairly cheery plan for autumn.

I’m going to try and find the best slice of chocolate mud cake and/or hot chocolate beverage I can in Melbourne, but only for autumn. It might extend to winter too. Hopefully walking around the city centre will help keep me from gaining too much weight.
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