Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

(Seafood tagliatelle from the Specials board – $23)

Nic and I ended up there for lunch one work day to catch up since I left my last work. We decided on Hardware Lane (Seriously, why would anyone decide on Hardware Lane if their intention is good food and good value? My bad.) because it was half way between our work places.

We went straight into a cosy dining space – which I suppose could be charming but for the fact that we ended way way too close to the next table when there are other seats in the restaurant, I’m not too sure that was the best go.

My personal rule of thumb: the space between the tables need to be proportional to the food price. This place unfortunately charged Hardware Lane price and gave us Chinatown space.

(Baked baby snapper with vegetables – $34?)

I’m Thai and Nic is Greek. So we naturally ordered seafood. We didn’t have too much more than an hour for lunch so we skipped out on entree. Good choice because food did take a while to arrive (I suppose cooking the whole fish would take a while. Bad choice, Nic!)

My second personal rule of thumb: if you are an Italian restaurant and you charge more than $20 for pasta at lunch, you need to serve bread. No bread here. We were asked repeatedly whether we wanted some garlic bread or bruschetta though.

Don’t get me wrong, both our dishes were lovely. My tagliatelle was good with lots of chunky fish and well seasoned, garlic and olive oil sauce and Nic’s fish and vegetables were perfectly cooked. But for lunch, it was way over-priced. You can get an equivalent food somewhere else in the city at lunch for much better value than this.

Il Nostro Posto
Address: 60 Hardware Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000 [ Google Map ]
Phone: (03) 9670 9939

My mother is an absolute steak nut. She’s crazy about eating steak that if you were to just give her 1/2 kg piece of perfectly cooked steak and nothing else for dinner, she’d be happy.

So when we went to Japan, what better gift to bring back than a couple of pieces of authentic wagyu – the famous Japanese beef with all the marble you’ll ever desire. Let’s just say we blew our souvenir budget by a long shot and everyone else got post cards! Mum should realise how lucky she is to have a daughter like me!

(a piece of Australian wagyu)

Now when you have just forked out about $100 for 2 pieces of 100g steak (yes, really, you think $200/kg for Australian wagyu at some posh Toorak butcher is expensive, try the real stuff in Tokyo), you’d hope to god that you don’t ruin in with your amateurish ways.

The lovely pieces of wagyu steak I bought in Tokyo were lovingly wrapped up in a dried bamboo leaf (I’m sure it’s organic and had a great life too), then a posh wrapping paper, then tie with a rustic looking ribbon then a special wagyu sticker. They were then presented to you with a bow. At this point, you know it’s going to be damn good*

(searing the steak)

Which brought me to the next point, this is going to be the most expensive piece of steak I have ever had, surely, I can just easily go and completely ruin it by not knowing how to cook it properly. So I researched around (do you know how hard it is to youtube a video on my parent’s 56k modem? yes, that was blood, sweat and tears), took a deep breath and had a go. It turned out beautifully and since Australia is lucky enough to have Australian wagyu** I keep taking back a few pieces of wagyu to my Mum in Thailand for her to enjoy each time I visit. Thank god, it costs nowhere near as expensive as the real deal and it’s not as good either. But it’s still the best bloody steak you’ll ever try.

So without further ado, Spatula, Spoon and Saturday presents…

How to Cook Wagyu Steak at Home (on a BBQ)

Bring the meat up to room temperature – This is really important because you will be cooking the meat for a very short time on very high heat, so the meat needs to cook relatively evenly. A boring food safety notice: once you’ve brought your meat up to the room temperature, you must cook it straight away. There’s no going back.

Heat up your hot plate – I have decided against direct flame on the barbie. My own logic concluded that the flame will melt away the fat in the marbling but won’t actually cook it. I could be wrong but all my research points to the Japanese teppan so I figured the barbecue hot plate is the next best thing.

Sear each side of the beef for about 30 seconds – you need to keep the meat moving and distributing the heat. Turn it over a few times for no more than 30 seconds each until it browns to the picture (while the inside is still totally rare). This shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes in total.

Slice the meat into bite sized pieces – use a very sharp knife and slice them. I got this idea from watching teppan chef slicing the meat.

Sear each side of the slices – again just fast searing on all side. Keep the meat moving around the hot plate to get maximum heat each time.

That is it. Quick as a flask. Serve with a spoon and no more than two pieces per person. Otherwise it won’t be special. Trust me on this one. So soft and meltingly tender. It’s just one of those must tries.

Where to buy wagyu in Melbourne?

Many specialist butcher’s shop sells wagyu in Melbourne but if it’s your first run at cooking wagyu at home, start with the not-so-expensive-but-still-special at this Japanese supermarket (in my ‘hood by the way):

Suzuran Japanese Food Trading
Address: 1025-1027 Burke Road, Camberwell VIC 3124 [ Google Map ]
Phone: 03 9882 2349

* Really I should have taken a picture of that but that was before I started a food blog and took pictures of everything I eat.

** Now, as far as I understand it Australian wagyu literally means Australian Japanese beef. This does not compute when brought up with any Japanese I know but let’s just let it go. Like I have with the whole goat vs. chevon thing.

(Garlic prawns with cauliflower puree and preserved lemon – $15)

Syracuse is one of those restaurants I have been wanting to visit for a while. One Friday night saw us landed there for dinner on one of our date nights (don’t know why we need date nights, seriously). Syracuse situates itself on the Bank Place cafe and restaurant strip on a lovely building. The dinging room itself was gorgeous and spacious, high-ceiling and warm! (why can’t we get our high ceiling place to do that!?) Albeit it trapping all the noise, the Friday work drink crowd was welcomely absent.

(the menu)

Syracuse does your normal lunch menu but it turns itself into a wine/tapas bar during the dinner hours. The menu consists largely of tapa/shared dishes with very few main-sized dishes to suit those who wanted a full dinner. We settled on the shared dishes since they were a hell lot more interesting!

(complimentary bread and butter)

It was quite empty when we got there and they set us on the tiniest round cafe style table. You know those really tiny tables that cafes use because they don’t have enough space? Considering we were one of the four people in the large dining room, I thought that wasn’t necessary.

(Grilled octopus with chorizo, potato, paprika and pickled garlic – $14.50)

Our first dish arrived – grilled octopus (we had this ages ago, although it seems to be en vogue with the German and Dutch fans nowadays!). The octopus was lovely and tender with strong smoked paprika flavour shining through complimenting the chorizo. It was rather awesome. The garlic prawns then arrived. I have never tasted garlic prawns so lovely and refined before (nor paid $15 for 3 prawns either!) but it was definitely one of the highlights of the night. Read the rest of this entry »

Cookbook Challenge Week 33

Book: Thai Street Food by David Thompson Theme: Seafood Recipe: Prawns with Glass Noodles

This is one of those well known Chinese-Thai seafood dishes that simply aren’t heard of here in Melbourne. Since it’s really simple to make (and I want to show off my newly purchased claypot) I thought I might give it a go. There are a couple of ways to approach this Thai dish of Chinese origin. One way is to strip this dish down to the bare minimum – essentially the Thai way or add a couple of Chinese ingredients to make this more of a Chinese-style hot pot type dish.

I consulted David Thompson’s Thai Street Food and it seemed like he went with the bare minimum Thai approach, so I figured I might just give it a go. This dish is originally made with pork fat (of course) but the new modern Thai twist calls for smoked bacon so I went with that. It didn’t make me happy to be bastardising it in such manner but Josh loved it. So I guess it wasn’t a bad go.

Read the rest of this entry »