Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

I am never a big fan of the whole ‘Asian-inspired’ or ‘pan-Asian’ type cuisine – not even when it’s drilled down to be ‘South East Asian-inspired’. Let’s face it, there is no such thing. But when the lovely fellow food bloggers Michele (of Iron Chef Shellie)  and Kat (of Urban Cook’s Journal) asked whether I wanted to go along for a LOLWL (Ladies of Leisure who Lunch) session at St Ali’s (at the time) brand new noodle house in South Yarra and my mother-in-law offered to watch Mini Me for a few hours, I promptly said yes. No, I’m pretty sure I said hell yes!

In fact I might have been hummimg Free as a Bird walking down Yarra St.

We got there a bit early on a weekday and were the only people in the restaurant. Our waiter had rocked up to offer us drinks. The drink list, at the time, was limited to a very small selection of uninteresting Asian beers and a couple of wines.

(Beers!)

The restaurant had a cool vibe with its simple decor and a very funky looking panda mascot (that I regret not having a picture of). Our waiter was friendly and service casual to reflect the style of this eatery.

(A part of the menu)

The menu at MoPho was divided into categories of soup noodles, wok noodles, salad noodles, curries and sides. Michele spoke of a sichuan pepper chicken wing dish that was featured on another blog that she had wanted to try. And who says no to chicken wings? Nobody, that’s who! We were all dead keen on the wings but unfortunately they weren’t available at lunch time.

(Glass noodle, grilled pork belly, Asian herbs, sweet fish sauce, tamarind and scud chillies – $15.50) Read the rest of this entry »

For once I feel like I’m keeping up with the Melbourne food trend. No. Not really. But I have been going back to my old materials and found out that I really cannot remember about things I ate last year! So I figure I might try a different tact and post about a restaurant I’ve been to recently.

Just in case you haven’t heard of China Red (And why haven’t you? Jess, Billy, Penny, Dani have all written about it), it’s a new dumpling place in that newly renovated arcade on Burke St. We rocked up on the very first preview night of Hairspray* at the Princess Theatre and we were looking for somewhere to grab out dinner. Jacqui wanted to hit the pub but, you see, I haven’t had dumplings in 22 days. Did you get that? I went twenty two days without dumplings. Suffice to say, we did not go to the pub.

(Eight treasure noodles – $9.80?)

You might have also noticed that the novelty of this place is the touch screen ordering. Where you simply choose what you want, go through a couple of  ‘Are you sure you want to order this? There is no cancelling it, you know?’ warnings on the screen and about 5 minutes later, your dish arrives. Loves it. No fuss. No talking to waiters over noise. No mispronouncing xiao long bao (seriously, does anyone know how to pronounce that word?). So it’s all great. Except, well, notice how much food we had for 3 people? Yeah. That. Be careful. Sooooo easy to over order. And also bear in mind that it is a nice dumpling place – not your average hole-in-the-wall cheapo dumpling place. The prices are slightly higher. Read the rest of this entry »

(Pad Thai from a Bangkok street)

This is a bit of a left over of ‘What I Ate in Thailand‘ series.

We Thais love our noodles. Although we never really invented any of our own noodle dishes, we have managed to bastardise a few. And they are really genuinely good. One of the ones that Thais will proudly claim as their own is the pad thai (above). It’s not really. It’s still bastardised Chinese dish but with some distinct lovely Thai touches.

(a pad thai is usually served with fresh banana flower, lime, beansprouts and garlic chives)

A pad thai needs to have relatively bitey noodles (so soak these rice sticks in warm water for longer, don’t boil them) with a good complex sauce made of fish sauce, tamarind, palm sugar and other goodies. I have a pad thai recipe on this blog somewhere but I’m quite embarrassed by its half-arseness.

While we’re on the scale of Thai-ness, this is a yum – or a salad. The word yum really doesn’t translate into salad quite nicely but it is indeed yummy. This noodle salad is made by blanching seafood, fish sticks, Vietnamese sausages, a pack of instant noodles (yep), a bit of vegetables and some herb (in this case Chinese celery leaves) and pile on the really hot dressing made of chilli, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and naturally a heap spoon of MSG. I have had some really good yum mamaa (instant noodle salad) but this one was truly awful. But you can’t really tell from the picture, can you? Read the rest of this entry »

Book: Jamie’s America by Jamie Oliver Theme: Noodles Recipe: Dan Dan Noodles

I have had dan dan noodles a few times at a Taiwanese cafe – which was awesome. However, I have always suspected that the whole Taiwanese home-made style cafe doesn’t lend itself to this authentic Szechuan dish.

As I had no benchmark*, I figured Jamie Oliver’s version is as good as any. And, guess what? Killing two birds with one stone (and breaking the Cookbook Challenge rule since I made this on new year’s eve), I present you this dish. The recipe has been highly bastdardised due to availability of ingredients.

Read the rest of this entry »

I took my friend Rowena who was in town for the week from good old Queenstown in New Zealand. So I figured I should take her to the Queen Vic market for some boreks and German hotdogs – my favourites! I can’t say which one is my favourite borek because I love them all and just rotate what I get.

But nope. She had one borek (didn’t even like it because it had too much parsley in it) and decided that that was enough bread she could handle for one meal and that she missed good old Cantonese style food. So, wouldn’t you know it, we ended up at the food court. You know, Row, if I had know you wanted Chinese, I would have taken you to China Town! Much closer!

The food court (I’m assuming it’s new because I haven’t been there before) was nice and spacious. Best of all lots of good natural light for photos. Which is why I want to write this up as the photos are much better than the food! I’m really generally not a fan of food court food (but that’s me being fussy, innit).

Row decided on braised beef with noodles, which was noodles topped Cantonese style beef stew and stock. She put liberal amount of chillis on it and loved it. I just like this photo!

Row enjoyed it immensely because apparently you don’t get this sort of food in Queenstown. But she lives in the most gorgeous house by the most gorgeous surrounding – I think that might be compensation enough!

I settled on Laksa. I’m not too sure why. It was very average. I have had much better laksa in my time. It didn’t come with coriander though. Row didn’t like it on hers so she piled it on mine. The eggplant that was on the laksa was quite good but that’s pretty much it.

Personally, I would have gone for the hot dog!

We made a trek up to Box Hill one fine afternoon, as I was going through my dumpling phase, I decided ‘Hey, they call themselves Dumpling King! Surely, there must be some good dumplings there!’

(from the outside)

Unfortunately, the dumplings were average. But we discovered a new treasure.

(a view from our table)

We went into a restaurant that looked quite shabby on the outside, surprisingly the decor exceeded my expectations. I read a few reviews of the place that complained about the interior. But then again I have always been a sucker for old brick walls and warm wooden colour scheme. Or maybe my expectations were low or perhaps they changed since those reviews. Who knew?

(our complimentary Chinese tea)

We browsed through the menu. The first thing we noticed in that in the dumpling/noodle categories, there were two prices for the same dishes: one for lunch and one for dinner. Since we were there at lunch, we didn’t mind so much. But I’m pretty sure I would have been grumpy if I had to pay a dollar or so more for the same thing because of the time difference.

We decided on the standard boiled dumplings (of course), steamed chicken dumplings and Beijing Style Noodles with Meat Sauce. I earlier had this noodle dish in Singapore at the famous Qun Zhong Eating House on Neil Rd and found that I was craving for more.

(Beijing style noodles with minced meat sauce – $8.80 at lunch)

Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly considering this always happened to us  in most dumpling restaurants, despite the dumplings being marked as entrée, the dumplings always arrived last. Our noodles rocked up first and as we were starving. We were given bowls so we both heaped some noodles onto our little bowls and dug in.

(a close up of the noodles)

The noodles were delicious! They boasted homemade noodles at Dumpling King and while I generally don’t really like Chinese-style wheat ‘homemade’ noodles (not a fan of the texture), I was in love with this one. The sauce was on the salty side at first but once combined with the noodles and crunchy cucumber it was perfect. I honestly thought this very same noodles at Qun Zhong in Singapore were unmatched but Dumpling King’s version is even better!

(yummy noodley goodness!)

We were both very impressed with the noodles and just for the virtue of this dish, we are going back.

(Beijing style boiled dumplings – 12 for $7.80 at lunch)

Our boiling dumplings arrive. I have to say I was rather disappointed. The dumpling skin was much too thick for my liking and I found that it sort of ruined the dumplings because the too-much pastry distracts from the filling. The filling was pork and garlic chives which had nice flavours but was rather wet and oily when you bit into it.

(the inside of a boiled dumpling)

We also ordered the steamed chicken dumplings which came in a bamboo basket.

(steamed chicken dumplings – 4 for $5.80 at lunch)

I didn’t find anything special with the steamed chicken dumplings although Josh rather thought they were ‘interesting’. That’s his code for something that tastes unlike what he expects it to taste in a good way. Again, the thick dumpling skin ruined it for me.

(inside of a steamed chicken dumpling)

Can’t say I was too impressed with the dumplings. The service was quite average (but then I find most Chinese restaurants have rather dismal service, why!?!) but the noodles! Oh the noodles! I’m going back for the noodles.

Dumpling King Chinese Restaurant, 572 Station St., Box Hill

So I’m new to Singapore and its food. I do make it my life ambition to try all the local cuisine wherever I go and since I will be in Singapore for a while, I figured I should blog about all the unique Singaporean food that I try along the way. Although I make it a point not to eat out too much, I still have food out quite regularly. The reason being it’s readily available, cheap and relatively decent.

Singapore has this hawker culture where a lot of food vendors come together in a single building and each set up their own specialty. I generally eat at a hawker centre near work (at lunch time when I don’t bring lunch) and a market near where I live. I don’t really venture out of my way for hawker food, since I find them all very similar. That, and the fact that I’m too lazy to travel!

In Australia we have this dish called ‘Singapore noodles’ which differs slightly from place to place but the gist of it is fine rice noodles (sometimes referred to as ‘vermicelli’ but as far as I’m concerned ‘vermicelli’ is a shape of Italian pasta) stir fried with egg, prawns, char siu pork, beansprouts and has a bit of curry powder in it for flavouring. My friend Kenneth told me that this dish does not exist in Singapore. He’s right. I have yet to find ‘Singapore noodles’. So I suppose if there’s a dish that can be classified as Singapore noodles, this fried hokkien mee thing might be it.

I was watching ‘$2 Wonderfood’ today and they were talking about fried hokkien prawn mee. I thought that sounded interesting. Let’s try that. So off I went to a nearby hawker centre and ordered my own plate of fried hokkien mee. Surprisingly enough, I found it to be really good. As Josh commented, it doesn’t really look all that appetizing. I think that’s probably the main reason why I haven’t tried it until today! He reckons it looks like worms swimming in sauce.

What fried hokkien mee is from what I gathered, is two types of noodles (egg and rice) stir fried with beansprouts, prawns and squid (sometimes with pork and fish cake) flavoured with prawn stock. They serve it with some chilli and a little lime on the side which I ignored because I thought the flavour of the dish was already pretty good without the added conditions (which I feel would somewhat ruin the flavour).

But hey, I have to say, it’s pretty good! Definitely something I’ll have again.

Oh yeah, I LOVE fresh sugar cane juice. If there’s one thing I really like about the Singapore food scene, it’s the fresh sugarcane juice.