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.

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 

ANZAC Day, Kings Park

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

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.

Etiquette for flyers

Great snippet from a piece with Andrew W.K. in the current edition of the excellent Aussie skate, art and subculture quarterly, Monster Children. And it's true. Being in the middle seat has zero benefits. No view out the window and being able to crash out on a long-haul flight. Not being able to grab stuff from the overhead locker or go to the bathroom without having to disturb others. While we're on the issue of airline etiquette, do people really need to put their seat back all the way the instant the seat belt light goes out? On certain planes - the swanky Airbus jets that Thai Airways fly between Perth and Bangkok, for instance - the economy class seats recline so far back that it's actually impossible for the person behind to eat their meal or watch their television screen. Yes, first world problems, indeed, but I don't think there's anything wrong with making a call for considerate behaviour either.

Largesse Dining #6

“What was your favourite dish?” A tough question at the best of times, even more so at June's Largesse Dining finale – or is it? – at Petite Mort in Shenton Park.

For the discerning diner’s consideration: Kiren Mainwaring’s artfully plated house-cured ham, yolk and wild herb number that might well have suffered from being first cab off the rank. Initially it was to be Scott O’Sullivan’s dish of squid, chilli soil and an almighty C-size battery of smoked trout that was opening the batting, but events led to a last minute top order shuffle. The night was none the poorer for it.

Jason Jujnovich’s dazzling tortellini with radicchio leaves and a shower of Fontina cemented Divido’s place atop Perth’s Italian food leader board. Duck, chanterelle and cep mushrooms and a thumb-sized “sausage” of braised venison and liquorice root ended the savoury courses in typically meaty territory. Props, respectively, to Todd Stuart and Shane Middleton of Clarke’s of North Beach, Stephen Clarke’s stand-in on the night who lived up to his boss’ reputation.

To close, chocolate marbles, a puddle of ridiculously good caramel and Styrofoam-like triangles of sorrel “meringue”: typical of Restaurant Amuse’s leftfield yet brilliant desserts. Make no mistake, each chef and his brigade brought their A-game to the kitchen while wives – many of them managers at the restaurants involved – played their part in keeping the ship out front on an even keel (with the exception of Todd Stuart’s missus Esther who, as she did for the first dinner, scrubbed dishes out back. Now that's love).

Meanwhile, ace matching wines and the feel-good factor of supporting a worthwhile charity like the Royal Flying Doctor Service helped keep diners warm on a brisk winter Monday night.

Busselton Pistol Club

And in today's episode of unusual South West ephemera discoveries..

Too Soon? and Campden Cocktail

Another World Gin Day, another gin-plus-Milanese-bitters-plus-lemon-equals-grapefruit cocktail discovery. Last year it was James Connolly – then at Defectors in Mt Lawley – hipping me to the pleasures of the Jasmine, this year it was the Too Soon? by NYC-based Aussie Sam Ross (of Milk & Honey fame), although I didn't get the cocktails' similarities initially. If you’ve enjoyed a Jasmine or two in your time, this lively, lemon-driven drink is worth adding to your repertoire.

Although my gin cocktail experiments ended on a high note, not everything I mixed was a success. I’m not a fan of sweet martinis and the Savoy Cocktail Book’s Bronx Terrace – basically a 2:1 martini with a squirt of lime juice – did little to change my mind. With all due respect to history and the Europeans maybe vermouth-heavy drinks aren’t for me (hey, I tried). The Campden, thankfully, restored gin enjoyment levels back to normal. Another citrus-powered winner - and Savoy Cocktail Book recipe - this succeeds largely on the combined marmalade and orange thwack of the triple sec and Lillet whereas the Too Soon? relies on the zing of fresh-squeezed lemon juice.

Here’s hoping everyone had an enjoyable and educational World Gin Day.



Too Soon?
(Adapted from a recipe by Sam Ross, published in Gaz Regan’s Annual Manual for Bartenders 2011.)

30ml The West Winds The Cutlass gin
30ml Cynar
22.5ml fresh-squeezed lemon juice
15ml simple syrup¹
two orange wedges

Combine over ice in a mixing glass and shake for 15 seconds. Double strain and serve in a chilled cocktail glass.

¹ Combine equal parts sugar and water over a saucepan over low heat until combined. Allow to cool and then bottle.

Campden Cocktail
(Pictured above, based on a recipe by Harry Craddock published in The Savoy Cocktail Book)

30ml Brokers
15ml Lillet Blanc
15ml Cointreau

Stir over ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Foxtail

Rather than dig up an old school cocktail, here’s a more recent concoction from the States, originally designed to showcase London-distilled Oxley gin. No Oxley in the ol’ Mother Hubbard I’m afraid, but after doing some research on Oxley, it seemed that ol’, ever-reliable Tanqueray 10 might be a suitable replacement in terms of its proof and botanical profile (whole white grapefruit, it seems, is common to both gins).

Sadly, no white grapefruit to be found at my local grocers, so in another last minute sub, in went ruby grapefruit to take its place. With two of the three key ingredients absent, I’m not even sure I should be dubbing this a Foxtail, but improvisation is a necessary part of life at times. On top of that, not crediting Rumor Lounge's Thomas Kunick for the inspiration would be a dog act.

To taste: rich, viscous, a distinct caramel top note to the citrusy palate. There's some almond tucked away in there and the cleansing, dry finish is, what I call, aperitif-like. Although not my usual style of gin drink, there’s a lot to commend about (this knock-off of) The Foxtail. I get the feeling the drink was missing the extra tartness white grapefruit brings to the party, so I’ll be mixing this again once I get my hands on some: hopefully tomorrow if I get lucky with the growers at the Manning Farmers Market.

The Foxtail
(Adapted from a recipe by Thomas Kunick, Rumor Lounge, Las Vegas, NV, published in Gaz Regan’s Annual Manual for Bartenders 2011. Although if you subscribe to Mr Regan's excellent free newsletter, you might have received this recipe - for nix! - in the last week or so.)

30ml Tanqueray 10
30ml DOM Bénédictine
30ml fresh-squeeze ruby grapefruit juice

Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.