Super bowls: scoring great noodles in Perth

From the winter 2015 edition of Scoop's Perth Guide, a wrap of some of my favourite noodle places in Perth. Since the piece was published, there's been a bit of movement in some categories - Trang's Cafe in Girrawheen is now my go-to for pho dac biet, plus the discovery of house-made soba at Sasuke is an exciting development - but I still think the list makes for good reading.

She Hit Pause Studios

Just rediscovered one of my favourite Polaroid photographers after he popped up on my Twitter feed. For fans of grungy and dreamy imagery, do yourself a solid and spend some time at She Hit Pause Studios.

Throwback Thursday. Sort of.

Considering the Balingup Summer Long Table is little more than a week away, the (re)discovery of these images from lunch at Millbrook in March 2011 is a timely one. I remember being particularly impressed with that carrot centrepiece in the first shot. 

Perth holiday drinks

It's been a good year for bending the elbow. As published in last week's STM magazine, here are five new Perth bars worth checking out over the long break.

2014: the year in dishes

I’ve been lucky enough to eat some great things in the line of duty this year. Here’s a dozen of the best (in a sort-of chronological order from latest to earliest, plus any relevant online links), starting in the top left corner and finishing in the bottom right. 

1. Impossibly fatty Geraldton yellowfin tuna belly nigiri at Miki’s Open Kitchen in Margaret River.
2. Chase Kojima’s "tai-nori" uni sushi, as seen at the Sokyo sushi bar. 
3. Attica’s super-pretty (and super-delicious) broad bean flower, sheep’s milk yoghurt and pumpkin seed construct.
4. The “sweet corn arrancini” at Torrisi Italian Specialties starring sweet corn, baby chives and a mochi made using Tamaki gold rice.
5. Benu’s unbelievable lobster coral xiaolongbao. 
6. That brilliant smoked duck and barbecued cabbage one-two the crew at Momofuku Seiōbo were doing in the middle of the year.
7. Thomas Lim’s scallop ceviche accessorised with fried Jerusalem artichoke and a sake vinaigrette (Goldie’s Los Angeles).
8. All the Hainanese sticks at Shi Xiang Satay in Singapore’s wondrous Chinatown Food Complex. 
9. That legendary braised bone marrow you can enjoy at Lalla Rookh in Perth.
10. The pork and bone marrow sate at Sate Plecing Arjuna in Denpasar.
11. This year’s first taste of whitebait care of Chameleon, the in-house restaurant at the Intercontinental Wellington. 
12. The bargain-priced nasi Bali at Warung Liku. 

It’s been an unbelievably delicious 2014: I have no idea how 2015 is going to compete with all this but for now, here’s wishing you and yours a safe festive season and all the best for the New Year. Thanks for reading along through the year and for your support. I'm looking forward to picking up where we left off in the new year.

Basement Dinner Sessions

What's this? A series of (literally) underground pop-up dinners from the funsters at El Publico? Hot diggity this is going to be fun. Kicking things off will be an event on Wednesday November 26 with guest Sydney chef and newly minted cookbook author Dan Hong of Mr Wong, Ms. G's and El Loco notoriety, then Mary Street Bakery head pastry chef Courtney Gibb will be throwing down with an all-dessert dinner on Thursday. Finally on Friday, everyone's favourite gardening chef Guy Jeffreys will be bringing the Millbrook show to the big smoke. For those who've wanted to enjoy Jeffreys' vegie-centric cooking but haven't yet made the trek out to Jarrahdale, your ship's come in. Get a posse together, then hit basementdinnersessions.eventbrite.com.au to book tickets. See you there.

Plentiful in Portland

A love letter to the eats, drinks and general weirdness of Portland, as seen in the August edition of QANTAS The Australian Way. 

Force 15 - Bulls 9

"The quality of the man behind the player is the thing that’s getting us a lot of those results."

Eating out in Singapore

For travellers, food is one of Singapore's major draws. While you don't need me to tell you the odds of finding a delicious meal in Singas are very, very good, I reckon the below dishes and addresses deserve to be on any to-eat list (disclaimer: I've basically mirrored a stack of Instagram posts from my last few visits to the country and added footnotes and map links).

Since I'm not a Singaporean local, I wouldn't dream of labeling anything "best of", but I'm confident that all the below are solid examples of their respective genres. At the very least, they're priced really well and should help free up some extra dollars to invest at the country's new generation of watering holes.

Char siu and siu yook rice

After scoping this joint out over this year's Asia's 50 Best weekend, I finally got there in the middle of the lunchtime crush. I was lucky enough to nab a table near the counter and watch the team in action. One very, very well oiled machine with a couple of the waiters able to fill in for various stages of the order taking and filling process. The char siu (neck, I believe) was of the juicy and fatty variety but gosh was it sweet. Some heavy honey and/or maltose action here, and this is from someone that doesn't mind a bit of sweetness. The roast pork was charry and meaty rather than the five-layer Hong Kong style. All in all, a solid barbecue joint worth having in your Singapore black book (so long as you can handle the occasional rush of sugar).
Foong Kee Coffee Shop, 6 Keong Saik Rd, Singapore

Roti canai

I finally found it it! Mohamed Muslim Food is in a small cluster of shops behind the Golden Mile Food Centre that fronts onto Beach Road. The sign can be a little hard to read (I missed it the first time) so look for the blue awning and the colourful Warong Cik Jali sign. The throng of diners is something of a giveaway too. Lots of bowls of curry and plates of bread in front of eaters which is always encouraging. The $2.60 spent on the roti canai and the one-buck teh was a sound investment. Dense, flaky roti. Deep liver curry. Additionally, the walk from Bugis MRT station to here was great and included a stroll past the fantastically named Kampong Glam Community Club. The stall's next door neighbour - Sri Cempaka - has a healthy assortment of Indonesian breakfast items (mee rebus! Goreng pisang!) and its neighbour - Beach Road Home Made Pau Dian - is all about the bao.
Mohamed Muslim Food, Blk 17 Beach Rd, Singapore

All the satay

Impromptu satay showdown after visiting Gardens by the way (worth the price of admission alone because the domes are air-conditioned). And the winner is: Sri Geylang Saté (bottom of screen, mutton and duck)! In addition to having the heftier sauce (rich and spicy with good peanut chunkiness), reckon their sticks had the better char. Interesting to note each stall was grilling over different temperature coals. Sri Geylang was cooking over fiery coals while team CitySatay let its wood die down. Wish I'd seen the menu at Sri Geylang first: we would have gone a lot harder on the liver, heart and other offal sticks. Don't make the same mistake we did.
Satay by the Bay, 18 Marina Gardens Dr, Singapore

Singapore-style ramen

Intriguing "Singapore-style ramen" from a couple of fine dining escapees. For mine, the noodles are more miss than hit but damn the chashu, wontons and egg are on point. Wonder if they'd sell the pork belly as a standalone? At any rate, one of three winning lunch dishes we rocked that day at the Amoy Street Food Centre.
Amoy Street Food Centre, Stall #01-39 Tanjong Pagar Rd, Singapore 

Hainan chicken rice

You know what this is all about. Mad good rice, but so solid across the board. Excellent specimen of the national dish, as recommended by Singaporean food bible, Makansutra. If you're headed to Singapore, do yourself a favour and spend some time on the site and then buy a copy of the current guide the moment you get to Changi airport. Interestingly, some Singaporean fine dining figures also name-checked this place as one of the city-state's realest chicken rice examples together with the well known Tian Tian. Check it out as part of my man Pat's wrap of Singapore's new dining heavyweights.
Wee Nam Kee, #01-08 United Square, 101 Thomson Rd, Singapore

Chicken satay

I've been fortunate enough to eat great, charcoal-grilled satay in plenty of places but the sticks from Shi Xiang (one of the Satay Club originals) remain my benchmark: it's all about the nugget of fat they thread onto every skewer. While the Chinatown Complex deserves a starring role in any food trip, the presence of craft beer stall The Good Beer Company makes Smith Street's multi-level eating house a no-brainer.
Shi Xiang Satay, #02-079 Chinatown Complex, 335 Smith St, Singapore

Frog porridge

Always order frog porridge as two separate dishes. Always. You want your steaming congee in one pot and your sizzling gung bao frog in another, leaving you free to combine them yourself. When cooked in the porridge itself, the frog loses a lot of the silkiness that makes it such a tremendous protein. Very, very righteous gong bao frog from the wonderfully named Eminent Frog Porridge ($8, at your 3 o'clock, plus the congee at your 7) and a compelling reason to check out this 24-hour food centre. There's also a well regarded wonton mee joint here called Kok Kee (its wares are at 12 o'clock in the picture and the hawkers themselves are the hero picture for this post). Sure it's cheap, but the noodles were forgettable and the char siu dry and thin. Maybe it was an off day, but we didn't get what all the fuss about. Kermit, for mine, was hands down the star.
New Century Food Paradise, 380 Jalan Basar, Singapore 

#forcefiveinarow

"Absolutely bloody stoked."

Hopped Negroni

Although I’ve been toying with hop-infused booze for some time, it was the cold-drip Negroni at – deep breath – Enrique’s School for to Bullfighting that convinced me to get a move on. It also steered me towards a bit of drink-making kit I already had in the cupboard and was familiar with: ye olde Vietnamese coffee filter (I should also mention that David Nguyen-Luu had a cocktail on the Rockpool Bar & Grill Perth menu that also involved the same filters, but alas, I'm yet to road-test it). If you haven’t got one, a visit to Tran’s Emporium or your nearest Asian supermarket is a must. You’ll be able to pick up a complete kit consisting of filter, tray, tamp and lid for less than a fiver. As well as allowing you to explore the wonderful world of hop-enhanced cocktails, you’ll also be able to brew your own condensed milk-enriched Vietnamese iced coffee (ca phe sua da) in the mornings.

Like all things Negroni-related, don’t think of this as a set-in-stone recipe, but more of a suggested itinerary. From the type of hops and the amount used to the spirits and their ratios, there’s plenty of room for creativity. I might mention, however, that opting for a drier, more restrained vermouth (ie not Antica Formula) would probably help accentuate this drink’s bitter notes. In this instance, I reached for a bottle of Cocchi Vermouth di Torino rather than my usual Negroni vermouth-of-choice, Dolin Rouge.

And now, the hops. Before beer geeks don their battle flannel, I’m no home brewer. This drink is about taking one (a la mode) aspect of brewing and incorporating it in the fine art of making drinks. Perhaps there are more appropriate hops for this exercise. I'd be stoked if there was. But as a starting point, I’m chuffed with how nicely the Negroni played with the Saaz hops I'd bought from my local homebrew store. Straight out the bag, the hop pellets are a little too big to work in the filter so they'll need to be grounded down with a mortar and pestle (ground the pellets till the hops are about the same coarseness as, funnily enough, Vietnamese coffee). While I’ve settled on a ratio of one heaped tablespoon of crushed hops to 90ml of (undiluted) Negroni, feel free to get as oppy as you like. My advice, however, is start small and, if necessary, pass the drink back through the filter. Like the old cooking adage goes, it’s easier to put seasoning in than take it out.

Best of all, once you get this technique down pat, you can use it to flavour other drinks, perhaps using flowers that are local, in-season and not shipped in from elsewhere on the planet. Also, a disclaimer of sorts: while Google searches for “hopped Negroni” didn’t unearth much, this technique isn't new new and I'll willingly acknowledge that people have been flavouring booze since the advent of distillation. Still, it's relatively straight-forward and doesn't require anything woundingly expensive. And if it adds a new string to your drink-making bow, I'm happy. Oh, and I’m pleased to report it tasted how I hoped it would. Resiny hop aromatics with a pronounced bitterness to the usual Negroni flavour profile. Good luck and keen to hear any thoughts you might have.

Hopped Negroni

30ml Tanqueray 10 gin
30ml Cocchi Vermouth di Torino

30ml Campari

1 heaped tablespoon of crushed Saaz hop pellets

Stir gin, vermouth and Campari over ice for 15 seconds. Strain into a Vietnamese coffee filter filled with crushed hops and allow liquid to slowly pass through (this should take around four minutes). Pour hopped Negroni into a rocks glass with two large cubes of ice. Serve at once.

July truffle market in Perth

The below has been (lazily) copied and pasted from an email from the Gala Restaurant's Hans Lang. Anyone else thinking a hangover-busting bacon and egg roll souped up with fresh shaved truffle?:

Yes, this year's Truffle Festival in Mundaring has been cancelled. However, the Gala Restaurant together with the Farmers Market on Manning and The Wine & Truffle Co (the pioneers of truffle growing in WA) have joined forces and we will offer Fresh Manjimup Black Truffle and other Gourmet Truffle Products at the Farmers Market on Manning. The small “Truffle Market” will be on Saturday 6^th, 13^th and 20^th of July only. Products available will include fresh Manjimup Truffle, Truffle Mustard, Truffle Salt, Truffle Honey, Truffle Aioli, Truffle Oil and of course the Gala Truffle Butter and the Gala Truffle Ponzu Dressing.

The Farmers Market on Manning is located at Clontarf Campus (opposite the Chem Centre, Curtin University), 295 Manning Road, Waterford.

ANZAC Day, Kings Park

"They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted.
They fell with their faces to the foe."

Memories from the Polaroid tin

Ask people to pose for a Polaroid and they almost always smile. What's not to love?

Ben Shewry (Attica) and Christian Puglisi (Relæ), Attica, Melbourne, March 2012

 Clare Valley, South Australia, February 2012

Hendrick's Theatre of Curiosities, Sydney, April 2012

 

Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, New Zealand, July 2011

Dinner with Doris (Saturday November 17)

Just wanted to spruik an event featuring Anthony Georgeff and Jane Cornes - she's on the right in the above picture; with her is friend and other half of music duo Doris, Margie Hanly, not Mr Georgeff - two (retired?) food and drink writers who've played big roles in helping Western Australia eat and drink a little better (Anthony used to edit the sadly defunct Spice Magazine while Jane was Australian Gourmet Traveller's former WA state editor before I took over). Great part of the world, Balingup. If you're after an excuse for a south-west road trip, this'd be a good one. Details of the dinner below copied from press release.

Join WA’s favourite gal duo for a night of good food and fine original music. Includes a three-course long table Spring Feast created by Anthony Georgeff

SAT 17 NOV

6.30pm, Balingup Lesser Hall

$65 per person BYO

Bookings essential – book online at trybooking.com/35768 or at Taste of Balingup

Golden King BBQ Express, Morley

Seeing as search engines don't crawl instagram comments, I'm going to start reposting images in a blog-ish format for the benefit of those eating out in Perth. First cab off the rank is Golden King BBQ Express in Morley, a spin-off of the Northbridge mothership on William Street. Small place. Eight chairs. BYO. Service standards appear to be set at perfunctory, but really, people who get shirty at brisk service at low-end Chinese restaurants need to check themselves. To the food: the pork in this two-meat combo ($9.30) is a little leaner than I'd like but does what's asked of it. The duck ($9 in the same rice, meat, gravy and vegetable combination), however, is the real star. If more places roasted duck like this - crisp skin, fat properly rendered and the meat pleasingly juicy as - I'd probably promote it from third in my Chinese barbecue rankings. They're not shy with the star anise either, both on the duck itself and, by extension, the gravy too. The chilli oil tastes like it's out of a jar. Not a patch on the deeply flavoured house made version at Aberdeen's excellent Hong Kong BBQ House. All in all, fair value, and a far comelier prospect for a feed in Morley than tackling the hordes at The Galleria.
Shop 19, Morley Market (Walter Rd West), (08) 9375 5556, Mon-Sun 10am-9pm

Gosling's Family Reserve Rum

Well look who remembered his Blogger password. Life happens. Blogs get neglected. It’s a recurring theme. I hope you’ll find it in your e-hearts to forgive. A peace offering of sorts, a few thoughts on a premium rum I hadn’t seen around these parts. Champagne bottle. Hand-numbered. Dipped in black wax (hence the Gosling's "black seal" name). All things that denote something special. And pricey. Maybe this might be of interest to Perth locals eying off a bottle (I bought this at the excellent Raffles Liquor Merchants on Canning Bridge) or anyone completing some pre-purchase recon via Google. Atypical rum aromas of nuts and honey. Based on olfactory and visual cues, I’d probably believe you if you told me this was a glass of muscat. Entry in the mouth is very gently-gently with little spirituous thwack (this is a 40%ABV bottling). Refined isn’t a word one normally associates with brown spirits but in this case I’d think long and hard about allowing it. Gingerbread through the finish together with a handful of similar flavours. Long, assured, hard to see where the joins are. A rum whose flavours fall somewhere between the vegetative lift of agricoles and the flavour king-hit of older rums. Not quite well-priced, but still glad to have it in the collection.

Hemingway Daiquiri

Just in time for World Daiquiri Day tomorrow, here's my current method for making a Hemingway. If you haven't got all the ingredients in your cupboard, do yourself a favour and order one at your favourite bar. In the same way not not everything poured in a cocktail glass is a martini (or blah-tini), daiquiris aren't just restricted to the contents of a frozen slushee machine.

While great, the agricole blanc called for in this recipe is entirely optional - feel free to swap out your fave white rum or even white spirit. I've used gin in the past with good results, although calling it a daiquiri doesn't seem quite right. Anyone got a good name for a Rose's-less gimlet with a dash of maraschino?

As history tells us, Papa Doble drank his daiquiris without sugar, however this was merely a survival tactic as the great author was diabetic so don't feel like you've got to grit your way through a cup full of citric acid in the name of tradition.

Also, this recipe assumes you're using ruby grapefruits rather than the tarter white ones (which are hard to find at the moment in Perth). If you do luck out and manage to get some of the white variety, maybe add a touch more simple syrup - I make mine using a 1:1 sugar to water ratio, the sweetness of yours will dictate the amounts added - to snap the drink into balance.

I'd also like to credit Imbibe magazine and 320 Main for hipping me to the lime-shell-in-shaker trick to ramp up drinks with extra pithy-ness. Hooray for resourcefulness, I say.

Hemingway

45ml PMG Rhum Blanc Agricole
22.5ml grapefruit juice
15ml lime juice
7.5ml Luxardo Maraschino
5ml simple syrup (or to taste)
1 spent lime shell¹

Combine over ice in a mixing glass and shake for 15 seconds. Double strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

¹If you've got time, cut the lime shell in half again to maximise surface area and thus flavour extraction, but don't sweat it if your citrus goes straight from the cutting board into the shaker either.

MAD 2012 Polaroids

In keeping with the retro photography theme of this blog, here's a selection of Polaroids from my recent trip to Denmark for a friend's wedding and the MAD 2012 Food Symposium. I'm slowly coming around to the new Impossible Project film, but expired original Polaroid material is still number one in my heart and worth shelling out the extra bucks for.