Deep Dish Dreams

Food Bloggers as Marketing Puppets | Part 2. Marketing Tricks and Psychology

2011-10-26T17:17:00.001+11:00

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
Carl Gustav Jung
Swiss psychiatrist, Psychologist and Founder of the Analytic Psychology, 1875-1961

Hook, line and sinker

In Australia if the traditional Food Mediawant to incite an online riot of opinion, they merely need to criticise FoodBloggers. It’s a story guaranteed to hit a raw nerve that is common to allbloggers: the validation of their medium. The provocation will result in debateand a frenzy of hits and backlinks to the article from bloggers, tweeters andreaders who subsequently comment across many social media platforms.

But what many amateurs in the onlinespace do not realise, is that they have deliberately been tricked into rage. Thewhole exercise may have been calculated to create a spike in online newspaperreadership figures, to lift the number of page-views, organically boost thepaper’s SEO and online influence figures. So the respondents involved will haveplayed right into the hands of the newspapers for marketing purposes.

By publicising the story and spreadingthe word in social media, the bloggers and tweeters have unconsciously createdsufficient free PR to yield above average traffic to the newspaper. Theresulting online figures now look great to advertisers contemplating whether topay for ad space in their publication, iPhone app or online edition.

Some might consider this calculatedemotional abuse. For the paper it’s an easy win, requiring no financial investment,and with their readership looking reinvigorated, they can potentially rake inhundreds of thousands of dollars from brand media buyers. Thanks to bloggers,the sales and marketing team will likely have hit their projected targets.

These stories are known as linkbait. It’s a controversial marketing ploy and is not the only time thatAussie food bloggers fall for commercial tricks.

This works through psychologicalmanipulation. The technique in this case is known as ‘shaming’ and ‘vilifying’.Think of it as the overbearing parent who tells their children that theirgrades aren’t good enough. It’s bound to get a reaction from most on thereceiving end of the criticism. And yet the same result can come slyly packagedas flattery, for the same purposes.

ModernMarketing Ninjas

As long time readers of this blog will know I have spent aquarter century in the business of advertising and marketing. My profession hasbeen to make all manner of things desirable to the general public via a mixtureof manipulative psychology, beautiful imagery and by generating hype. My techniqueuses a combination of strategy based on psychographic manipulation and lateralthinking combined with creative input.

Today anyone marketing a product, service, venue etc, faces toughtimes. The general public are now more sceptical of marketing imagery on TV andin print than they ever have been. They can filter their entertainment to avoidmost advertising that they find intrusive or annoying. Some products have even beenbanned from traditional advertising media. So with marketers facing increasingsales targets from their employers, the search has been on to find a way toadvertise surreptitiously.

And what exactly is this hidden advertising or guerrilla marketing?The most common ninja deployedis product placement. Take Australian Masterchef for example. The products yousee being used have been provided by the brand advertiser in exchange for sixfigure sums to the TV production company.

This may be reinforced by advertising around the show, costingmillions, paid to the TV network - whether aired on TV or their magazine’s adsor even on the Masterchef website and recipe fact sheets. The aim is that thegeneral public will subconsciously identify branded products as being desirableor necessary next time they stock their pantry. The wealthiest brands also useproduct placement in Hollywood movies and popular drama or comedy TV series,reaching significantly larger audiences.

But shows like Masterchef are not on TV all year, so food brandsin particular - and especially those with smaller budgets - are forced to bemore creative in finding their target market.

The trending buzzword for advertisers is ‘Word of Mouth Marketing’.The power of recommendation by a friend or trusted source is now recognised asthe ultimate way to convey a marketing message that will generate sales.

Magazine or newspaper Advertorials are a word of mouth option. Itlooks to all intents like a magazine story, it has been composed by ajournalist and the staff photographer, but it’s actually a sponsored piece, arevenue stream for publications. It costs the advertiser in design, photographyand media placement fees.

Advertorials are designed to trick you into thinking the‘discerning Magazine Editor’ prefers that product/brand. Advertorials state‘advertising feature’ or ‘promotion’ at the top of the page revealing its truenature. But even this is wearing thin with the public. So where else canadvertisers create hidden influence?

There is a marketing term, “Hitting all the consumer touchpoints” and that now also includes product placement and advertorials or infomercialson blogs. So bloggers who have appeared in mainstream media stories, who havereleased details of high page view numbers, or high Twitter follower counts anda track record of influence, are the new target for marketing.

They are known generically as ‘online influencers’ and are nowsubject to heavy lobbying by PR companies and advertising agencies. Many of usin food blogging know it as the dreaded PR spam in marketing circles it isknown as Blogger Outreach Programs and Blogger Bribes.

The attraction lies in the notion that an advertiser can covertlytarget the exact demographic required through a food blog. Just as they can inthe food press, but with possibly an even narrower skew – such as Baker blogshaving a high readership of those who also love to bake, or venue review blogsthat back-link to Urbanspoon and attract people who regularly go torestaurants. Plus bloggers are more adept at using multiple social platformsincluding Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon and Facebook in their broadcast mix thantraditional food media, which equates to even more publicity hitting thetarget.

Your new BFF

So, in Advertising strategy, bloggers are now seen as cheap andeasy puppets for marketing messages as compared to traditional forms ofadvertising. By example, many food bloggers have already shown a predilectionfor going to events and receiving freebies in exchange for a blog post on theirattendance or promotional item, so why not cosy up to them? Brands now aim tobe your BFF.

After all, most who writeblog review posts, will happily spend their own money trying venues andunsuspectingly giving free PR to the venue, so in advertising terms, why notextend that to products, loyalty clubs and services too? The potential is therefor a brand’s new online ‘friends’ to generate free blog advertorials andextended social media broadcast too.

For brands, blogger outreach is significantly cheaper than payingpublications for the same. Plus the blogger does all the design work, copywritingand photography for free - services that cost tens of thousands of dollars tocommission professionally. Giving away samples, organising an event or junketto bloggers can be much cheaper by comparison.

It’s also a way for PR agencies and Blog Harvesters such asNuffnang, Technorati and Foodbuzz to farm bloggers in order to make money onthe back of this free resource. Typically it works by charging brands forharvested email databases or for permissions received from the bloggers. Some harvesterswill potentially pay bloggers a small fee lower than market value forcommercial digital insertions in return.

Others companies to farm bloggers are market research companies andnew hybrid harvesters who charge bloggers to be part of a directory that willbuild page rank and SEO plus marry your blog with advertisers and PR agencies.

Trust issues

It is a given that journalists’ salaries are derived frompublications’ advertising revenue, and hence edited opinions can be biased. So blogreaders typically cite their interest is due to content being unrestrained byeditors, advertisers or a commercial publication’s particular values orpolitics. Marketers are aware that many of the public have eschewed papers andmagazine for blogs, in search of the truth.

So blogs appear to have integrity. It is generally supposed bythe public that they are not affected the way that news has been tainted. Theyrepresent Jo Average’s opinion. So when a blog broadcasts about brands, thereader assumes it is a personal and unbiased opinion and recommendation thathas not been initiated by an advertiser or fuelled by supplied content.

But this is increasingly not true. A blog post can be a ‘Stealth Marketing’brand ninja, especially where many amateur food bloggers have not publiclydeclared their shift to becoming professional salesmen, or pro-bloggers inexchange for gifts or money.

This is compounded by the fact that bloggers seem to be unaware ofthe ACCCAdvertising and Selling standards stating advertisers should “ensure thatconsumers are aware of the fact that a commercial message is being presented”.

Bloggers are required to clearly mark that the post is a sponsoredpiece, as per an advertorial or infomercial is transparent about its bias. It’spossible that many PR agencies and marketers seem not to know this either orperhaps are happy to parlay the deception and puffery?

Since some food blogs have already fallen under the spell of thePR machine, the term Flogger-Blogger has emerged. By this I mean when a blogthat feels to all intents as though most posts are actually subliminal ads,designed to have your friends share the good word and generate publicity for abrand by spreading the post across the internet, conversations and by email. Ultimatelythis is the goal of marketing through amateur bloggers.

TheSeduction of Eve

I think that most Australian foodbloggers have innocently entered the media as a place to air their thoughts,but appear vulnerable to the potential traps of that space. The traps I referto are those of potential loss of integrity and falling victim to commercialmanipulation. And I sense that some Food Bloggers are falling victim to Fox and Crow syndrome.

So what are the tricks to look out for?Behind most modern marketing tricks is psychology - the study of humanbehaviour - and how to take advantage of these insights to assist sellingthings.

"According to George K. Simon, successful psychological manipulation primarily involves concealing aggressive intentions and behaviours. Also, knowing the psychological vulnerabilities of the victim to determine what tactics are likely to be the most effective."

The most fundamental aspect that istaken advantage of by marketing and advertising is the human desire to feelgood. It is thought that we tend to see our life as judged against other peopleand that our happiness is relative to this.

We compare our lot against others.Richer people do get happier when they compare themselves against poorerpeople, but poorer people are less happy if they compare up. That is why Marketerstarget our self esteem when aiming to seduce us for their purposes

NathanielBranden in 1969 defined self-esteem as "...the experience of beingcompetent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness".According to Branden, self-esteem is the sum of self-confidence(a feeling of personal capacity) and self-respect(a feeling of personal worth).

He also claimed that any positivestimulus or incentive will make a person feel comfortable, or, at most, betterwith respect to themselves for just some time.

So when a PR company, brand or Marketerapproaches a blogger to promote their cause, they will – like Eve’s serpent –cajole and flatter us, tell us that we are deserving of special treatment andoffer a sense of personal exclusivity that will make us feel a step ahead ofothers. They will talk it up with honeyed terms such as “You have beenespecially chosen to become a Brand Ambassador” or appeal to your desire tohave something you can’t afford.

Society has been warned against thisbehaviour for all of time. Religion and the arts play it out as an enduringtheme, cautioning against allowing our shallow desires to trip us up. Yet itproves constantly irresistible to this day, the tactic of ‘positivereinforcement’ is one of the most powerful to encourage Bloggers to generateincome for others with no significant remuneration in return for theirservices.

Amere pat on the head

I like to think of the next trick assummed up by the adage ‘Beware Greeksbearing gifts’ the ‘TrojanHorse’ analogy. While we may warn children not to go with strangers offeringgifts, bloggers seemingly also neglect to take that advice. Instead, they arefooled into dropping their guard.

A blogger’s vulnerability in this caseis typically coined in psychology as using ‘reciprocity’.The trick is, when given something for free we feel obliged to return the favour.So in our circles when offered a free meal, product, event, book etc, we feelindebted to write a blog post about that gift, often without criticism orsignificant insight.

Like a dutiful child, we write a publicthank you note on social media platforms, which form free publicity for themarketer, brand, service or venue. We take photos, design and cultivate a post –often giving away our intellectual property rights in the bargain – and with theoreticallyeven better results for the brand than ads, because blogs communicate toexactly the right consumers for the promotion.

So the marketing goal is achieved. Forvirtually a fraction of the cost spent on advertising or loyalty marketing, theblogger has obligingly become a puppet, as a brand salesperson.

In return, the blogger likely receivesa regular deluge of press releases with the expectation of future publicationeach time, with little or no further reward or remuneration for giving awaymany thousands of dollars of free PR. Inthe psychology of persuasion this is known as ‘consistency’. People wantto be consistent with previous actions. If they said yes to something in thepast, they’re more likely to say yes in the future.

Meanwhile the PR agency that approachedthe blogger in the first instance will be receiving a monthly retainer fortheir services and possibly project fees – but who really is doing all the workhere? Who has generated the sales? Who deserves to be paid? It is the Blogger.

In some other blogging circles –particularly pro-blogging and the influential fashion, beauty and parentingblog communities – this has begun to change, with some bloggers receiving feesdirectly for their publicity.

Sexand greed, and power

The adage ‘Sex Sells’ referring toscantily clad women in advertising is an old cliché. But sexy is not always soliteral. The psychological equation for using sexy persuasion on a blogger forthe purposes of converting them to brand salesmen is greed + power. The tactic used appeals to their materialisticimpulses, to narcissism and to jealousy.

The technical psych theory is sexual attraction arises when the person is stimulated through the vanity mode of narcissism. It engenders admiration for compatible personality characteristics. Excitement arises when the person is stimulated through the self-pity mode of jealousy, engendering physical intimacy and passion, which theoretically will result in eager and enthusiastic broadcast.

Relative to bloggers, for the social type person, power is channelled through jealousy. For example subconsciously: “This blogger junket will make me feel good and my friends, colleagues etc, envious – they’ll likely find me even more fascinating”, hence the blogger may unconsciously feel sexier for there is social approval and admiration from others.

For the self focused person, power is channelled through narcissism, eg. “They’ve spotted how good I am, so they’ve given me a ‘money can’t buy’ experience, I’m getting something huge for nothing”. The subconscious perception of social reinforcement makes the blogger feel powerful and that in itself is sexy to many.

The overall picture is most people, unless aware of the tactics, can be manipulated. In Blogger Outreach programs the brand they will promote is getting the blogger’s services and time for a fraction of the usual marketing budget, by making the blogger feel a bit sexier, giving them a sense of power and all by appealing to their vanity in order to make them brag. In return the blogger gets a temporary hedonistic head rush and feels an obligation to the brand when they come down off the back of their experience.

The Spin Cycle

So how do else do marketers appeal to a blogger’s deep human impulses for commercial manipulation? They use ‘Spin’.

Spin is “Making a silk purse from a sow’s ear” or “Spinning gold from straw”. It is a form of deception to make something more enticing than it may appear in the cold light of day. It takes the consumer’s aspirations and projects them on a product, venue or person.

Often putting spin on an item avoids facts and focuses on implied benefits. And when applied to politics, is termed propaganda. Using psychology to understand what pulls at the heart strings of the target market, an advertiser will know exactly how to project something to make it seem enticing and highly desirable to consumers.

Spin Doctors are primarily the creators of consumer zeitgeist, ‘future cool’, Cool Hunters and the initiators of global trends. They read public sentiment, understanding how economic movements affect public values and shape cultures. Now when something is suddenly ‘hot’ often it is because key community influencers, like bloggers, were persuaded by the hype, publicity and promotion generated by Spin.

As an example, consider the current Australian fascination for macarons. It started buzzing amongst sweet and bakery enthusiasts and was identified by Spin Doctors as a possible emerging trend within the culinary fashion for small indulgences, such as dim sum, mezze and tapas.

From here it began reaching into online food communities – sometimes via astroturfing, sock puppetry and link baiting.

Advertisers and journalists now typically eavesdrop on social media platforms, so once they picked up on the emerging vogue, the macaron buzz then made its way into commercial marketing and food media. And the coup de grace was an appearance on Australian Masterchef, which in turn exploded its popularity into popular mainstream appeal.

The concept has rippled back from the mainstream into blogging communities beyond food and across Twitter, Facebook and other popular communities. There have been a flurry of macaron shops, books, recipes and classes by those jumping on the bandwagon and finally, it has resulted in a demand for $400 macaron towers. That’s a purchase that three years ago would have sounded totally absurd and not at all enticing to the general public. And it was all in the Spin.

Nailing your colours

In my last post I stated that I feel it is time for food bloggers to nail their colours to the mast. I have witnessed the original integrity of blogging as being diluted by advertorials and product placement.

While I have my doubts about the value and quality of Blogger Outreach in Australia, it is not something that is going away. My stance with clients is that online influence and viral marketing reach in Australia comes voluntarily from bloggers perceived as having high integrity, not just whoever responds to a PR call.

Those who write commercially sponsored posts, have a duty to inform readers or subscribers that a post is an advertorial, which will allow them to determine bias.

Unless presented with a contract or express a commitment to do a piece, a blogger is not obliged to write about a Blogger Bribe they have received. And should a blogger consider publishing a sponsored post based on a product, event or reader giveaway, I feel that they ought to be entitled to ask for payment ahead of posting it. It is to all intents an advertisement for which the blogger provides the media and the content.

If you have no desire to engage with brands and no wish for your blog to be a vehicle for their sales pitch, you may already be annoyed by spam press release emails.

Because there are some grey areas regarding permissions, the ACMA recommends those who do not wish to receive commercial offers, put a non-solicitation disclaimer on your blog. Just as I have in my sidebar, under the subhead ‘email’. I placed it there because typically email is the key word a commercial email harvester is looking for.

When I receive PR spam in spite of this, typically I respond by drawing attention to the statement. In Australia, by law there should also be an unsubscribe link on the email, which I will use if I trust that it is a verified Australian PR agency. And if the spam persists, I am not above reporting the email as contravening the Spam Act 2003.

In deciding whether to participate in promoting commercial messages on your blog, consider the theory of the Hedonic Treadmill. “According to this theory, as a person makes more money, their expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness”.

After years of working with brands, I find I don’t need much in the way of consumer durables and hedonistic activities to be happy. Close ties to friends and family, plus good health are the things that count most to me.

I don't merit grinding away on the treadmill to generate money for brands without being paid for it. When I come across something I like, I will tell you about it and you can trust that it was not skewed or initiated by a third party.

Most crucially, I’ve learnt that keeping things simple ultimately makes you happier and better respected. With this integrity your opinion is trusted and well regarded. And unlike free gifts it brings lasting happiness.

Food Bloggers as Marketing Puppets | Part 1. Evolution

2011-08-16T20:26:00.009+10:00

Photo Marialuisa Wittlin

Warning:

This is a food blog that encourages readers to not only think but to ruminate. This will not be a short post.
There will be two additional posts on similar subjects.
If you want pretty food pictures this isn't your kind of blog. Go directly to Stickifingers instead.

Online food media is a rapidly growing space.

When I started the Deep Dish Dreams food blog in 2007, the number of food bloggers in Melbourne was sparse. After a meet up at VegOut Community garden - where we shared a meal cooked together in the garden’s wood oven - a core group of us grew into a tight knit community, that when Twitter began to grow tentacles was transferred into ‘The Melbourne Food Mafia’ or ‘Food Twitterati’.

I really enjoyed the interaction of this emerging community because our hearts were in it merely for pleasure. For the most part our blogs were read by friends and each other. There were no financial motivations involved, nor popularity contests, just a genuine sharing of the common interest in topics related to food. I was buoyed that I had found some kindred spirits beyond my family and professional networks.

At that time we bloggers were low on the local media radar. While in the USA, known bloggers were beginning to be refused entry into venues by chefs who felt aggrieved by them and threats of lawsuits were emerging. Back here, we were quietly minding our own business and enjoying each other’s food, company, blog comments and repartee. Just as in a sports or social club, blogging was our mutual hobby.

After a while, some of the group stopped blogging but still remained in touch. There were some debates between the ‘What I ate or cooked last night’ Bloggers and the amateur ‘Restaurant Review’ bloggers. The Mummy cooks graduated over to new parenting blogger communities and a bunch of the Generation X bloggers bonded over ethical food philosophies, preferring more academic or opinion driven posts. My own blogging style evolved into storytelling and I went on to create other niche blogs too.

Smart phones and Twitter

Since then, the rising popularity of smart phones and Twitter in Australia has significantly changed the food-blogging landscape.

I have read speculation that there are now over eight hundred food blogs in Australia. I see that many of those initially connected to each other using Twitter. It certainly broadened the Melbourne Food Blogging scene, sparking a growth in semi-professional niche review blogs that felt more like magazines in their focus.

Twitter started a rise in physical connections beyond our mere start up session at VegOut. And as more bloggers came on board we all went on tweet-ups to chew the fat, literally.

Now a number of the blogs also now have associated Facebook pages and some of the Melbourne Food Bloggers have joined a discussion group on Facebook. Food bloggers have increasingly become savvy at driving viewership by using multiple social media platforms, organising events and by appearing in traditional press articles.

For me that’s no surprise. It is a natural evolution. The internet is now rich with resources on how to capitalise on RSS and viral sharing tools, which blogging platforms to use, plug-ins, link sharing and how to choose a hosting platform, domain name, hook into smart phone apps etc. There are webcasts and local social media events detailing how bloggers can monetise their hobby, draw readers and get freebies.

The culture of food blogging

In the space of four years, the culture of food blogging in Australia has shifted significantly. I’ve noticed that the content of the newer blogs has a different format. For my part I find the posts of many reflect the global trend to diminished substance, lack of concepts and a starvation of rich language. I recognise that the popularity of this style has resulted from an overall lower attention span by readers in the first world. Some would argue that this is because we are suffering from information overload and media saturation.

In professional writing, this current trend in blogging could be considered an offshoot of the dumbing-down of traditional media – ie. blogging as parallel to tabloid forms of news entertainment. Many newer blogs are flush with more pretty photos than actual opinion or insight, and it is now not unusual to witness people pointing DSLR cameras at their food when dining out to fuel vapid but pretty posts created as soon as they return to their computer.

For the most part, these blogs are dining diaries and cooking journals, online brag pages if you will. Some merely repost imagery from other blogs; vicarious blogging - a style that has developed in a world where intellectual property rights are increasingly blurred by link sharing.

I myself have also created a photo-centric food blog on Tumblr. It’s an adjunct to this blog, which connects to my Twitter and personal Facebook networks as the main audiences. You’ll see a widget for it in my sidebar. The language is rich but the posts are short.

Another aspect of the rise of mobile technology influencing blogging and social media, is through photos and instant blogging apps. Most of the images on my Tumblr blog, ‘Stickifingers’, have been taken on an iPhone and the phone is utilised to publish posts. By popular demand, I have also created similar blogs for my clients, as bite sized chunks of visual media to be viewed by time poor fans.

Puppetry is Trending

In recent years, Food blogging has borne witness to sychophantic behaviour towards chefs. This mirrors the global trend toward entrepreneurial chef as rock-stars and product endorsers. It’s a wave of mass media that now also has an outlet in food blogging. While I feel personally disquieted by this, I do acknowledge that these blogs have their place in society as the generators of hype and publicity for venues. Essentially, they have become puppets in the food marketing machine.

Marketing has also given rise to the food blogs for which most posts are paid for promotions. These blogs also use link farming - online blogger contribution events - as a way of building viewership statistics. This is vital if you want to attract paid promotions, as brands want to monitor the blogger’s reach, influence and effectiveness.

Sadly, on these food blogs, back to back posts seem to be a roll call of sponsored items: from pushing a food product given to the blogger, some cookware or an appliance; a sponsored cookbook review; a PR event; a soft opening, discounted or free meal; sponsored travel; an advertiser created competition, meet the chef, etc. For some this has crept up softly so the question of manipulation by promoters is only just now arising.

When promotional posts are interspersed with link farming recipe swap events, it sends a clear message of the blogger’s motivation. That is, they’re in it for as much free stuff as they can get; it’s an embarrassment of greed. The really ugly side is, that for some it has become competitive accumulation between rival Australian food bloggers, as though those with the most toys ‘wins’.

I’ve witnessed this bring a spot of joviality at the expense of bloggers in marketing circles. In fact some bloggers of this calibre, have been referred to as "Cheap Brand Whores" who will "Fall for Blogger Bribes". It has resulted in companies such as Nuffnang and FoodBuzz jumping in for a slice of the money by wrangling bloggers as a commodity. The blogs are then traded as being willing pawns to the service of selling brands.

To me, these sorts of food blogs lack interest or entertainment. They’re rather like watching hours of poorly written advertisements – no one likes that. I wouldn’t read a food magazine if it were composed solely of ads, so why make a blog like this?

It has occurred to me that some readers may not have realised what is going on behind the scenes of these blogs, but I also have seen plenty of discussion on twitter deriding this blogging direction. I believe the trend has coincided with the decreased average age of food bloggers and their readers. It may also be a matter of ego or a subconscious desire by a certain type of personality to fill an emotional void.

The millennial generation’s adoption of food blogging is a natural progression, given that the early adopters here were Gen X, but the popularity has gained momentum via the broad and rapid adoption of social media. So it is with this in mind that I feel the growth of food bloggers as ‘Floggers’ of venues, brands, chefs, products and events, may be the result of being naive to the machinations of marketing ploys.

Criticism

With this comes harsh criticism of bloggers from the traditional media for making a poor show at mimicking journalists and for eating into the press junket scene. Admittedly I have become weary of the injured refute from bloggers. Because to some degree, I think that we food bloggers may have left ourselves open to being niggled by jibes, by not clearly staking our ground.

What do we actually stand for now? For many it is no longer a mere hobby. And for the food bloggers who wish to be considered professional, isn’t it time they behaved as a business and defined their brand values?

Right now their credibility is brought into question by their willingness to disguise branded selling as candid, amateur posting and they’re dragging the opinions of others down in their wake. And those bloggers who believe that they are deserving of the same public status and remuneration as professional restaurant reviewers, isn’t it time they learnt more about the venue and the industry before posting commentary that could endanger the livelihoods of those in hospitality venues?

I expect that it’s the rapid growth of food blogging that has seen us all lumped together regardless of the style of our weblogs. But I think that will change. It will become evident that there are those for whom blogging is an online journal or amateur review, others who will fall into a commercial stream and some who will tenuously attempt to blend the two.

Schisms have emerged in our culture. Aussie Food Bloggers, I believe it is time to nail your colours to the mast.

In the next post, Part 2. I look at marketing tricks and branded blogger bribes.

In Part 3. I’ll tell you about building your own personal brand.

The Fat Duck. Food for Thought

2011-06-18T11:43:00.006+10:00

John Malkovich: I have seen a world that NO man should see!

Craig Schwartz: Really? Because for most people it's a rather enjoyable experience.

Being John Malkovich, 1999

I was trembling with excitement. The hard earned moment had arrived. A moment that I had dared not dream of had arrived. A moment that I considered had come about from sheer hard work and an ounce of luck.

The hard work had brought me the money to afford this experience and the luck was having actually managed to get my bum on this seat. In fact I was awed that we had managed, among 30,000 other hopefuls a day, to have actually got through to make a reservation at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, UK.

So where do you go from here? I thought.

Is this where food pretentiousness begins? Will I now be presumed to belong to the particular clique of Foodies that has always annoyed me? The clutch that have always struck me as sycophantic, where famous Chef’s names are dropped with such regularity as if to claim the superiority of the individual over other diners? The one where the list of meals recounted begin to sound like scalps taken in battle? I surely hoped not.

This philosophical thought kicked in around course number eleven at the celebrated restaurant. At the time of dining, The Fat Duck was placed at number one in Britain and number three in the San Pellegrino 50 World’s best restaurants, behind Noma of Denmark and El Bulli in Spain.

It was also number two on Mr Sticki’s list of places to mark his personal half century on the planet. El Bulli was his first choice, but we were unable to secure a seat in the annual email ballot, where you - and a million others - plead in Spanish to reserve a seat at some point during El Bulli’s six month open season.

By comparison it seemed a much more democratic system to secure a table at The Fat Duck. Exactly two months to the day that you hope to attend, you battle with thousands of others for a place among the 40 seats, by phoning the restaurant’s call centre from 10:00am London time. There is a clock on The Fat Duck website that counts down the minutes until lines open. After that you are in the hands of the Telecommunications Gods.

We had planned to be in London for five days. One of those was a Monday when The Fat Duck is closed - leaving us only four chances to make a reservation. After multiple redials over three days, engaged signals and attempts that reached the answering service only to be rejected, we were prepared to face defeat. In fact, had I not prompted the call on the final day Mr Sticki might not have bothered at all.

So, on the final possible day to reserve a seat, Mr Sticki got through 20 seconds before 10:00am - that’s 7pm in Melbourne - and was yet again rejected. He continued to redial and incredibly at eight minutes past the hour he got through, securing a booking for our final day in London. Hanging up the phone we jumped for joy around our little home, like a couple of old punks pogo-ing at a Hüska Dü gig.

I think Mr Sticki’s interest in premier league dining possibly stems from certain TV shows and Ferran Adria’s Ell Bulli documentary that we saw at the la Mirada Latin Film Festival. Without exposure to Chefs Ferran Adria (El Bulli) and Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) via film media, I doubt that the suggestion would have been made for either restaurant. And it puts an interesting spin on what you come to expect from the dining experience. It can make for disappointment for some, but I can honestly say that in my case the experience was all that I imagined it would be.

Image via Wikipedia

From what I had read of Heston Blumenthal, my expectations were very high. He is described as driven, a man that channels an enormous energy into whatever he believes in. There have been anger management problems, often seen in the super intelligent, young and bored; issues in Heston that have since been addressed and channeled – one would imagine – creatively.

As a chef he is self taught. As a food scientist he is self taught. A natural lateral thinker, his approach to food is not dissimilar to the thought processes I learnt to become a creative type in the advertising industry. The creative process follows this path: you start with a single unique proposition. Standing back you look at it objectively, break outside the box of traditional perception and you bend that proposition in every direction until a certain clarity is achieved, resulting in either a ground breaking new concept or inspired re-invention.

In the same manner as I do in my profession, he appears to gather other people around him who are able to help flesh out his concepts. While he has the ideas, he hires those with greater knowledge or skill in certain areas, yet with the same passion to create and innovate.

One of his waiters mentioned that there were 51 staff involved back of house at The Fat Duck. I expect this also extends to Heston’s other projects - including The Lab and his pub, The Hinds Head, just metres from the restaurant - not just the restaurant’s prep kitchen and service. Those numbers have probably swelled since opening his latest venue in London.

Heston appears to have a great thirst for challenges. I imagine that his mind is seldom still. He has described himself as being obsessional, totally immersed at the expense of his family. In that he reminds me of my father, and I wonder if Heston too has some form of genius based autism spectrum condition, like Aspergers Syndrome.

As well as the restaurant, he has been involved in creating menus and dishes for a British hospital. He recently opened a more casually oriented restaurant ‘Dinner by Heston Blumenthal’ in a London Hotel, and has a range of packaged food distributed through Waitrose supermarkets.

Against the odds of apparently dealing with recalcitrant staff and management in front of TV cameras, Heston has also tackled the challenge of reinventing the British road-side diners, Little Chef. The most recent show aired, 'Heston's Mission Impossible' saw Heston reinvent the way the British Military manage food operations, and a range of challenges from getting hospitalised kids to eat nutritious meals and using food science to deliver tasty food to economy class passengers travelling on British Airways.

The man seems always keen to bite off more than most would be able to chew. Such is his nature I suppose. A restless mind moves constantly forward to the next project. In his case it would appear that the previous projects continue to tick over, with his vision intact thanks to his army of collaborators.

Watching the TV show Heston’s Feasts, I imagined that each of Heston’s dishes at The Fat Duck would be playful, conceptual and delicious. Thankfully there was no anticlimax. My assumption was correct. Heston’s ‘thinking outside of the box’ to titillate and stimulate was clearly on show in the line-up of courses that make up his Tasting Menu.

I have often asked myself ‘What is the point of molecular gastronomy in most restaurants?’ At The Fat Duck it is brought into sharp relief as a means to an ends in manifesting a concept. Unlike those chefs that miss the point - by casting with abandon, foams that resemble sputum and pearls that do little to enhance a dish - at The Fat Duck, molecular techniques are neither used faddishly nor fashionably. It’s a tool used to recreate Heston’s imagination of an event.

Eating at The Fat Duck is a dining experience that goes well beyond merely eating something delicious. I felt as though I was living some of the more poignant moments in his life, portrayed by a tableau of food. So the tricks, for which he is notorious, seemed to just blend seamlessly into the whole idea of each dish.

And the venue itself offers no distraction from the food. The small dining room has no outlook onto the picturesque olde worlde village surrounds, yet despite being low ceilinged it is bright, white and convivial. Exposed traditional oak beams frame the space and an incongruous modern sculptural glass room divider serves to shelter diners from gusty blasts that may emanate from the door opening onto the street.

Starched linen and simple table décor meant that the diner’s focus was expressly on the food. In fact all there was to distract us was the view of other diners - giving one a preview of the dishes to come.

We attended a lunch service. While food allergies can be accommodated, there is no choice to the meals other than an optional addition of a cheese course. While admiring the cheese trolley with lust, we were aware that we did not have the gastrointestinal fortitude to include it in our repast.

Around us there were gatherings of a corporate nature, a family with adult children, a woman and her nine year old daughter, sixty-somethings gastronauts, a young Asian couple, and in the centre of the room, Mr Sticky and I. At most tables there was at least one camera recording the event.

Yes cameras. Why? Because it’s a milestone - who wouldn’t want to capture for posterity their meal at The Fat Duck?

Five hours after the commencement of our meal, on our way back to Maidenhead train station, our cab driver told us that recently, some of his passengers came away disappointed that some of the most famous dishes were no longer on the menu. For example, the famed egg and bacon ice cream is no longer there – the dish of liquid nitrogen frozen scrambled eggs.

The Fat Duck could probably get away with serving the same menu for the next five years, but why would you? To the enquiring and creative mind, repetition is soul destroying. If there is an opportunity to spread the wings, then take me there. I’m all for it.

Famous dishes not-withstanding, the hallmark techniques sighted in Heston’s TV shows are there. Between the layers of textures, flavours and ingredients are influences that have come from the best of many cultures. Being half Asian I was reminded of many concepts I grew up with, fused with those of other cultures. That the ingredients are superior however is to be taken for granted, with the exception of unpasteurised butter there was no mention of the source of the ingredients. Provenance is not the selling point here, ideas are.

For those with expectations of trickery, the procession of dishes served are accompanied by the anticipated Heston peculiar add-ons such as liquid nitrogen treats produced at the table, atomizers of evocative aromas, sounds to be listened to on headphones and breath freshener style gelatin flavor strips to open the palate, all found a place in the experience.

Yes, it was truly a unique experience.

While it involved food and I felt full upon eating it, I shall not remember it as a meal. For me, it was something akin to the concept of the film ‘Being John Malkovich’ where climbing into a cavity in a space between the floors of a building, you enter John Malkovich’s mind. You see the world through his eyes.

Through Heston’s eyes you visit moments in his memory, transmitted into your mind through edible art. Sometimes you may even add your own recollections to the memory and find yourself transported to a further level. The foie gras course took me back to my own particular childhood woodlands memory, the beach course stirred unique memories in both Mr and I, and all the while we were being toyed with in a delightful way.

My deduction is that The Fat Duck restaurant is an art installation. The back of house team that spans cooks, chefs and scientists, and also the floor staff, ensure that you and 40 others are seamlessly bound in a deeply sensory experience for four hours. The food is the vehicle that lends itself to an experience that Heston wishes to share with you. It tells a story, paints a picture and stimulates new thoughts from within you.

I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to take in this adventure. It may be the first and last time I dine at such a prestigious establishment. But the realization that I truly have a fortunate life is not taken lightly, and my time at The Fat Duck will not easily be forgotten.

I had considered a second blog post that discussed the content of the meal blow by blow. But if you thought this post was long, that would have been ten times longer. So I will upload images of each course to my Tumblr gastroporn site, Stickifingers instead. I will tag them fatduck50. Each image will include a description and my thoughts. It will be far more digestible as bite sized degustation portions.

The Fat Duck

High Street, Bray, MAIDENHEAD, Berkshire SL6 2AQ| United Kingdom | +44 1628 580333 ‎|

Stanley deserves a laurel

2011-05-15T01:40:00.015+10:00

Ollie: "Every cloud has a silver lining."
Stan: "That's right. Any bird can build a nest but it isn't everyone that can lay an egg."

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy console a devious Lola.

I love a road trip. They usually turn up something random or a spontaneous revelation. And then there are the locals who eye you with suspicion as they park a heaving plate of God-knows-what in front of you. Love it.

Some years ago I found that Mr Sticki's country raised nephews grew up refusing to eat vegetables. I was shocked. They grew up in a part of country Victoria known for fruit and vegetable production, so there were plenty of opportunities to get into good food.

Then, in their teens, they were employed by the local supermarket. In order to work on the coveted check outs they found themselves in need of being able to identify all manner of vegetables. But they were bereft of such knowledge.

And the reality is that this is not uncommon in Australian regional towns today. In our most bucolic settings, most kids are not rosy cheeked from the benefits of magnificent fresh local produce. They prefer the tinned, commercially packaged nastiness that appears in many regional pub bistros.

There's a pervading attitude in the country that any packaged or convenience food offering from the city is preferential to rural produce. And yet when we city folk spend a few hours in the car destined for a holiday or day trip, we conversely expect to be rolling in luscious local food wonders, fresh from the producers.

So when I think of casual eating in the countryside, I hope for local regional produce, artisan goods, friendly service and simple convivial surrounds.

But that's my own particular fantasy bush escape.

We found it exists in France, but rarely does a regional Australian venue deliver such things. I'm not talking about über fine dining and experimental dishes that borrow from molecular cuisine. I know those experiences exist at the far end of a four hour drive.

What I hope for seems to crop up more often in the city. In places like South Melbourne's The Rising Sun Hotel where Ron O'Bryan is working his magic with farmer direct produce. There are country exceptions of course. The Stanley Pub, just outside Beechworth, is one of them.

My interest in this little pub was piqued by Brewer's Wife's post on her dining experience there. She mentioned lunch at The Stanley Pub showing an image of a pie on a fashionably long plate alongside a stretched limousine smear of mashed potato. The pie humorously appeared to have pretentions to fine dining. But rather than laugh, her verdict was that it was delicious and the venue pleasing.

So on a visit to Beechworth we made a detour to the tiny, historic hotel and found it to be cutely crouching under pretty wisteria vines beside a generous beer garden, function space and accommodation. As we pulled up, two scruffy middle aged men were muttering darkly, smoking cigarettes on the doorstep. Not knowing what to make of that, I hoped for the best.

We entered a brightly lit front bar featuring some wonderful artisan joinery and a well used dart board. To the right, the softly lit bistro emerged as a converted outdoor space, equipped with a JetMaster fireplace and in one corner, a wood fired oven.

Traditional French bistro style bare tables and starched linen napkins were set for about thirty seats. We were the last to arrive of eleven diners there that night. Service was smoothly taken care of by the owner and pedigreed Sommelier, Shane Harris.

It later emerged that Shane, his wife Annemarie and chef Shauna Stockwell were veterans of Sydney high-end dining venues, with notches in their various hospitable belts that include Testsuya's, MG Garage and Pier, then later in this region north east Victorian area with Michael Ryan, pre Provenance, at Range.

As we settled in I breathed a deep sigh of relief. The menu selection was admirably small, concise and dotted with local produce; likewise, the wine list. Respect.

The dishes had classical leanings. I found it tough to make a decision on which to choose. An entree of rabbit and duck rillettes with peach chutney, beckoned. Oysters shucked to order with a Japanese dressing or zucchini flowers wistfully called to me.

Main courses featured the safe option of steak frites, but also skate, gnocchi and poussin. A side salad of figs, rocket, local walnuts and blue cheese sounded like an ideal lunch dish, the potatoes sounded heavenly too, but we chose the comforting seasonal vegetable dish of wilted spinach with kaiserfleisch.

Four mains arrived at the table beside us. Two languished unattended, a large portion of poussin and the steak - two pieces topped with butter and a mound of green beans - classically served with obvious care.

A diner scuttled to the public bar beckoning to the two men who had been standing on the doorstep when we arrived. "You know your meals are here?" She said. Affirmative was the dismissive response. She returned to their table to eat.

After a time the men ambled into the bistro carrying the bowl of nuts they had been eating at the bar. "That looks a bit fancy", said one of the men with a heavy European accent.

"What gives?" Said Mr Sticki with a bemused smirk, "Looks as though those men have been dragged here against their will." They did indeed. And as soon as the mains were consumed, they returned to the bar with their bowl of nuts and fresh beers. The women continued on, shared a dessert and left without the men.

It was the sight of those main courses that made me realize three courses would be impossible for me to ingest. And I wanted the Tarte Tatin for dessert. So taking a mouthful of the delicious local Beechworth cider, I resolved to have two entrees and a glass of local Sangiovese

On the oval plate dotted with saucy whorls sat a snowy bavarois of local chevre that was earthy in flavour and silky in the mouth. The small mound of citrus and baby beets sat atop a disc of red jelly. The piquancy of that mound challenged the goaty creaminess and at times rendered it into a sheepish complement.

Mr Sticki's choice was a special of seared scallops. Cooked as they should be, still slightly translucent inside, four discs of roe-less scallop dressed in micro-herbs, squatted atop a bed of hoummus like four pretty girls on a picnic rug. A mirepoix of tomato with vaguely Middle Eastern flavours transformed the clean, sweetness of the scallops and rug of hummous into a flying carpet ride to another part of the world.

Next, my carpaccio of peppered venison was a floral textile. Like the circle skirt of a rockabilly sweetheart it was a sweep of burgundy checked with blue cheese cream and scattered with a web of petals. The skirt had a seared edge and a sticky mouth feel that launched a rich combination of tastes. Deeply satisfying and a good follow up to the bavarois the blue cheese brought an unexpectedly positive dimension to a flavor profile accented with sharp, hot pepper.

Three young women - local friends of Tim Witherow the Sous Chef - were being gently and capably guided through dining and wine choices by Shane. A big night out for a birthday, choices were made with careful consideration that they were about to embark on something truly special. I felt inspired by their anticipation and enthusiasm. Not a scrap of pretension entered their dialogue, such refreshing behaviour in the face of their city counterparts.

I gazed across the table at my beloved. Delicately chewing bones, Mr Sticki contemplated his serve of poussin with intensity. He seemed carried away by the moment. Golden pieces of bird lolled in the shallows of a thickened, clear braising liquor. A flotsam of herbs drifted from the sauce to embrace baby leeks, potatoes and shallots. It all looked so simple, but once I tried some for myself I too was plunged headlong into a pool of richness. This was a dish that stroked your hair and tucked you into bed with its nurturing gentleness.

After a rest, we moved on to dessert. Shane introduced us to a taste of the wonderful local biodynamic Pennyweight Gold. A lush sticky fortified of ripe white grapes, fortified with brandy spirit, and aged for several years in old oak hogs head barrels. It was created by one of the famous Rutherglen Morris clan, who have been producing excellent fortified wines for 150 years. Stephen Morris started Pennyweight Winery in 1982, producing biodynamic, lower alcohol wines in Beechworth and we stopped by the cellar door the following day.

Shauna's tarte tatin was everything I had hoped for. Made with apples grown mere kilometers from the front door of the pub and plumbing the depth of buttery caramelisation I found it difficult to part with when the time came to swap with Mr Sticki. None the less, the pain perdu (French Toast) was also a marvel. Again featuring a local product – figs poached in muscat with fig ice cream.

The night had me buzzing with the excitement of finding a country venue that lived up to my dream. As we drove down the pitch dark road to our Beechworth accommodation, I was gushing with admiration. I'm all for tree-changers following their passion in a rural setting. And I always hope that their efforts might trickle into the mind-set of the locals and the education of the palates of future generations. Here's to more of that in the future and to less frozen chicken parmigianas shipped from factories in the city to country pubs.

The Stanley Pub

Myrtleford-Stanley Road, Stanley, Victoria, Australia

| 03 5728 6502 | F: 03 5728 6602 |
info@thestanley.com.au | Facebook

By Dani Valent in The Sunday Age M magazine, 15 May 2011

Hungry for food porn

2011-02-13T17:42:00.004+11:00

A Preview of one of my Stickifingers Tumblr pages

It's been a while between posts. And that's because I now have a foot in Social Media as a career which includes also writing blogs professionally. I'm very active with multiple accounts on Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, Wordpress, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and other social platforms. It's all in a day's work now.

At The Fat Duck

Recently some of my online followers asked to see more of my food porn. So I've set up a Tumblr micro blog to facilitate this. You see, I take a lot of food photos. If you go out to eat with my family, increasingly everyone is taking snaps of the food. So it makes sense to share some of them. As this blog is a place where I think out loud, think of the Stickifingers Tumblr as seeing food through my eyes. And naturally my Stickifingers Twitter feed is all food banter.

The Tumblr posts also are posted through to Twitter so if you don't want to use RSS to keep track of new posts, they'll show up there too. And my personal friends get to see them through my private facebook account.

A Brussels Friterie featuring fried cheese & frites

The shots over at the Stickifingers Tumblr are quite random. There are a mix of homecooked efforts and general food photos. One moment you'll be seeing what we ate for breakfast, then snaps taken on day two of the opening of St.Ali's Mo Pho, next there is the Food Bloggers dinner at Steer, chicken rice in Singapore and there are also food photos taken in Brussels, Vietnam, London, Luang Prabang, plus food photo's from Paris' Bastille outdoor market.

It's a visual diary. It's a place where you can see some of my sustainable food efforts, meals dining out and adventures in search of more food knowledge.

The layout is like a pinboard. Each post looks like a card and can be flipped over for more details by clicking on the information icons. You can also view them individually by clicking on the arrow button in the top right hand corner of each post, and from there share them or 'like' them. They can be viewed randomly, in sequential order or by their tags.

Anyway, if you pay me a visit there, I really hope you enjoy what you see. I think of it as revealing another layer of my food persona.

Rude food in Bruges

Check out Stickifingers here

Bake a difference at Christmas

2010-12-13T00:22:00.017+11:00

'Our vision is to see a fairer Australia
by enabling people in need to find pathways to a better life'

MISSION AUSTRALIA

You squirm and say, 'It's the thought that counts' when confronted with an odd, unwanted present - don't you? Yes. It's the gracious retort.

The best way to avoid hearing that yourself is to give delicious homemade gifts. They never get that uncomfortable response. You see, while it is nice to make a gesture, I've seen that the thought is not in the giving, but in the thoughtful choice or in the preparation of the gift. A delectable present you've made yourself will usually be received with a "Oh yum! Thanks!"

So every year I cook and bake Christmas gifts. I do it because it comes from the heart. It's more personal, a piece of me going to those that I cherish. The gifts are unique a very special Christmas gift. Homemade gifts can also save money, so the difference of what I might save by not buying my gifts, goes to charity so that I share my good fortune beyond my loved ones.

This post coincides with my hope to raise awareness for Mission Australia, a charity who is very active in Australian communities. They help disadvantaged families, grandparents who have primary care of their grandchildren, the homeless. They also do great work to assist young people to stay at school or deal with drug and alcohol dependency. Basically they give a caring hand and untiring support to those less fortunate than ourselves.

I have written this post as part of 'Bake a Difference' - a promotion sponsored by CSR Sugar to raise awareness for Mission Australia. It's their aim to encourage all of us to spare some money for the cause. In return for a donation to the Bake a Difference fundraiser, CSR will match our donations doubling the money raised.

Bloggers can join in to raise awareness by posting a recipe and registering via Penny's Jeroxie blog. CSR will send each participant who registers, a special thank you pack.

I strongly urge everyone to share their good fortune by pledging some money to Bake a Difference. Even a small amount will make a difference to someone, especially as it will be doubled by CSR. While naturally I support their idea that we should give homemade gifts and save money in order to donate, you needn't bake. The important thing is to share the joy by donating. And CSR have popped a gift tag generator on their donation site, which could save you even more money this year, whilst letting others know that you are supporting Mission Australia.

If you're looking for ideas, some of the homemade gifts I have made in the past have included little jars of creamy free range egg mayonnaise, dijonnaise, vinaigrette, ginger and macadamia brownies, tomato relish, lemon oil, orange shortbread, window biscuit decorations, mini Christmas cakes, choc-nut clusters and mini buckets of mixed cookies. Just choose something that you can make in bulk that's simple to do. You'll find that there are a bunch of suggestions on the CSR website and Facebook page.

When it's homemade, your gifts needn't be large and the packaging of it generally doesn't require much wrapping. I reuse old jars, pack sweet things in glasses bought at the $2 shop or find quirky containers - that I then wrap simply in plain cellophane.

I use baskets found in op shops or buy coloured paper takeaway containers at Spotlight. All they need is to be tied with a ribbon and a gift tag. They look cute and I love that by avoiding wrapping paper, I save a few trees in the process.

While homemade will save you money, it is also better for the planet. These days items that are handcrafted have become the new status symbols, as each piece is unique. My gifts are always enjoyed and usually gobbled down quickly. The one's I've to given colleagues have rarely made it home, as they are munched over the course of the working day.

So this year, instead of wearing yourself out, frustratingly shopping for gifts by traipsing around malls, spend half a day in the kitchen making something with love. Have a heart and spread the word about Mission Australia. Please spare them some money and treat your loved ones to a personally made gift.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

This year's gift from me:

Salted butter caramel chocolate slice

You'll need a 18x28 cm rigid sided Silicon baking tray or a traditional slab pan

BASE
100g dark chocolate couverture - I use Lindt, but regular cooking chocolate is fine
100g unsalted butter brought to room temperature
110g caster sugar - I used CSR raw Caster sugar
1 gently whisked free range egg
225g plain flour
30g cocoa or drinking chocolate

TOPPING
300g flaked almonds
125ml honey - I used Walkabout Apiaries honey
Juice of half a small lemon
100g salted butter
100g brown sugar or Demerara sugar for richer caramel
1tsp vanilla essence or Heilala vanilla syrup
2tbs cream - I use locally produced Schulz organic cream
Roughly ground rock salt for garnishing

Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade. If you're using a traditional pan, grease and line with silicon baking paper.

Melt chocolate until smooth in a bowl suspended over a simmering saucepan of water. If the melted chocolate is a bit stiff - and not runny - stir in a teaspoon of warm water to loosen it.

Cream butter and sugar then add the chocolate and the egg to make a rich batter. Then sift in the flour and the cocoa and stir them in well.

Press the chocolate mix into your baking tray. I use a broad plastic scraper to help level it out. Bake for 15minute, or until it feels firm when you press the surface. Take it out of oven and if the top is uneven, press down the surface with a metal serving spoon. Leave it in the tray, cooling it on a rack for 10minutes.

For the topping, melt all the ingredients except the almonds and cream in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Then remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cream until it is combined. Spread the almonds generously and evenly over the surface of the base.

Pour the caramel evenly over the top. Sprinkle the surface lightly with a little salt and place the tray back into the oven for 20 minutes. By this stake your home will smell divine. Allow the slice to cool before removing it from the tray, slicing into squares or fingers. It's quite a rich treat, so please go easy on the eating!

Livingroom for more

2010-11-20T00:24:00.199+11:00

Image from the restaurant's website

"…A Hendricks and ice for me"

"Would you like that with cucumber?"

"Yes please!" My heart skipped a happy beat.

Dining in a suburban restaurant I did not expect to find Hendricks Gin available, but that short discourse told me that I had been placed in good hands.

In my experience the further you go from the Melbourne CBD, the better the Asian food. The converse applies to European food, especially in the South Eastern suburbs.

Go beyond Attica in Ripponlea and the imaginative, conceptual cooking seems to disappear until you reach the countryside, where The Royall Mail and Loam are edging into creative modern territory. The same can be said for what I recently heard described as 'Honest Food' – good ingredients delivered simply, using traditional techniques and served up with a whole bunch of integrity.

While the expensive, modern and adventurous is something I looked forward to about twice a year, it is the honest stuff that would entice me to leave my own kitchen more often. My two favourite exponents of this kind of thing unfortunately are far from my home: George Biron's Sunnybrae in Birregurra and Steve Cumper's Red Velvet Lounge in Cygnet, Tasmania. The tyranny of distance means that I don't dine at either often enough. But now I think I've found another to add to the list, and it's amazingly in the burbs.

By the suburbs I don't mean way out in the heartland of McMansions where Asian cooking reaches amazing highs at low price points. No, this venue is in Malvern, where the leafy streets are filled with meticulously restored and extended period homes, well serviced by public transport and a mere stone's throw from our Jewish heartland. My new happy place venue is Livingrooom.

Hugging a corner in Claremont Street, Livingroom stretches its verandahs wide over the pavement. Close to Malvern station and away from the din of bustling Glenferrie Road it squats low on the landscape surrounded by genteel shops and a doll hospital.

This is a locale that keeps a respectable distance from the youthful outlook of St.Kilda, Windsor and the tourist aspect of the CBD; an interesting spot to do business. And somehow Livingroom manages to face the challenge of entertaining the professional families and Empty Nesters residing in Armadale through to Caulfield with integrity from breakfast through to dinner service.

They do it by making their guests feel like they're visiting neighbours for a dinner party, or by day that they've dropped in at a girlfriend's for a gossip and a cuppa. On Saturday afternoon it's a place where a man of a certain age can just be alone with the newspapers or a group of middle aged men can grab an espresso before catching a train to the football.

Walking the tightrope between various functions, Livingroom manages to be smart, bright, spacious and kid friendly from breakfast through to dinner and at night is as intimate as the dining room of a picket fenced, restored five bedroom Federation house, with parent's retreat and outdoor living area.

Inside, an eclectic arrangement of old domestic dining tables and chairs are delineated into two spaces by chandeliers in the lower, more formal area and red shaded pendant lights in an upper room that feels more café in style. This second space is dominated by the coffee machine, wine fridges and a toy box. On entry the Kitchen is visible and in it you will spy Head Chef Darren Daley.

In 1999 Darren was recruited from London's Bibendum restaurant at the height of its popularity and prowess. He was one of a number of British Chefs lured to Melbourne to work at the Sofitel. At the time TV Masterchef judges, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris were also employed there.

Darren however, is a quiet achiever. You won't find young Restaurant Critics fawning over Darren. He has not sought out their favour nor courted the limelight. He is not one of The Australian Food Twitterati. He does not have a big PR machine behind him, though I do suspect the PR hawks will be circling, hoping to get a piece of the action soon.

I've watched Darren's progression over the years. He has worked confidently and quietly since leaving The Sofitel by working at reputable venues. From being the lynch pin in revered gastropubs such as The Kingston in Richmond, to a stint at Guy Grossi's Mirka at Tolarno and then over to head up Sud's two venues, he has consistently produced a quality product, built on a passion for what he does best.

I respect the honesty of his cooking. He takes an artisanal approach. I have watched him make his own sausages, his eyes mist over at the thought of slow cooked dishes and heard him talk with excitement of cha sui bao – Cantonese roast pork buns. In his kitchen, a passion for showcasing good produce is at the fore. And to add to that there is also an honesty in the service, where Darren's sister - a Sommelier in training – works alongside staff recruited from Maha and other reputable venues, who strike a chord between knowledgeable and unpretentious.

So from breakfast to dinner you will find polite subtlety, attention to detail and quality both in service and cooking. A brand new wine list is extensive, chosen by Alan Markham, the owner of Livingroom. This list, I would suggest is to some guests, a little intimidating. But in a thoughtful manner, tasting notes for the European and Australian selection prevents potential blushes.

To me, on a number of levels they have a difficult clientele to woo. If the menu were to sound too molecular or fanciful it would turn the conservative core off, but if it doesn't sound that little bit special, it won't entice those looking for the night out with a brag factor either. So faced with the tightrope of a dinner menu I honestly found it tough to make a decision what to eat. I was tempted by much, but initially thought perhaps it wasn't pushing my boundaries. I later realised that the written menu did not do the delicious creations justice. So I wondered if a certain amount of dumbing-down had been called for, so as not to scare the locals?

I would describe Darren's offering as Contemporary European, at times rustic. In fact on a recent trip to Paris, we found that Livingroom was in step with the regular hang-outs of city living Parisians, because here, it's all about flavor. The dishes are not excessively tricked up with gadgetry or gimicry, just strong traditional techniques. I feel Darren does his suppliers proud. From early evening, starting with diners of families and older folk, to couples having a night away from the kids, it is clear that the customers are well taken care of.

Amongst the entrees on the night we visited there were some excellent locally made charcuterie options from Siketa Meats, a wagyu bresoala dish and crowd pleasers such as fried zucchini flowers stuffed with lemon, ricotta and mint and a roasted pepper dressing. But this clientele also love the chicken livers with capers, parsley, witlof and Roquefort dressing.

While polenta crusted sardines stirred Mr Sticki, he is a goats cheese buff, so went for the cheese in fritters with lemon thyme that was a roll call of his favourite ingrdients. The creamy texture and salt factor in the cheese was pleasantly offset by a piquant julienne of apple, radicchio, candied walnuts and truffled honey.

A five spice quail was reminiscent of dish I grew up with. Satisfyingly crisp fried, fleshy and subtly flavoured it works well with pickled chilli, mint and coriander. While comforting to me, I wondered whether the local clientele considered this Asian inspired offering exotic? But then I noticed in each course there was at least one dish that might appear challenging to the regulars and a number of items that some had not heard of such as, guanciale and scamorza.

Scanning the mains, I toyed with the idea of Parsley and gorgonzola risotto with apple and rocket salad. I flirted with pan fried Mirror Dory with sautéed cavala nero, confit duck and red wine puy lentils. Mr Stickyfingers chose a Black Angus sirloin with soft buckwheat polenta and braised shallots - over the skirt steak with pommes frites, truffle salt and veal jus. Finally, after much deliberation I selected a rabbit wellington with spinach, mushroom, sage and gorgonzola farce. I'm a sucker for meat in pastry and I love rabbit.

My main was very generous. Had not the beloved been on hand, I suspect I would barely have managed half. But that's just me. The contents had sufficient moisture while not making the pastry soggy. The gorgonzola gave the meat a hint of truffle like flavor, adding an unexpected depth to the dish. We could find no fault in the beautifully aged steak either. The shallots braised in wine were a delicious compliment to the deeply flavoured meltingly good meat.

At this point I must apologise for the crappy food photography. The dining scenario after the 8pm peak is moody and candlelit. It is the dinner party scenario of viewing your companions in beautiful, soft, candlelight that is unforgiving on food bloggers wielding a discrete camera that avoids flash.

As the night trickled on into the hour that gen Y usually start their evening, greed kicked in and we opted to share a dessert. While Mr coveted the Munster, Roquefort papillon and the Blairlaith Cheddar, despite hoping to leave room for more, there was no way that our bellies would allow us to man an assault on a cheese course.

Our waitress nominated the chocolate and peanut fondant with vanilla bean icecream and salted caramel sauce, which totally hit the spot in a gooey, crunchy, sweet-but-not-sweet way. It was perfect in all respects. Like a couple of shuffleboard players we found ourselves dueling to scrape the last remnants from the plate.

Later, rolling outside into the quiet night I knew that I would be back. Being in good hands found us sated on more than one level and happy to have found 'my kind of place' south of the Yarra …. and not so far from Chez Sticky. It's really no wonder that the locals love Livingroom.

Livingroom Restaurant and Cafe

12-18 Claremont Avenue,

Malvern Victoria, 3144

(03) 9576 0356 | book via website | map & email

Food is Art

2010-11-11T01:40:00.010+11:00


Sighted from the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, Netherlands

The delicate ballet of blossoms falling off a tree
Had long gone unnoticed by me
I'm stunned by what now I finally see
It's amazing the wonders you can find
Just by stepping outside
There's a skip in my step a divine state of joy
In everything I do
Cause I am feeling new again

OF MONTREAL: 'Old Familiar Way'

We embarked on a month's journey to mark Mr Sticky's half century of life and I found myself on the path to further self discovery. We went to Europe: to London, Paris, Normandy, Brugge, Brussels and to visit family in Rotterdam. We ended the trip in Malaysia.

I wore out my feet but awakened the inner me. I reacquainted myself with what makes me tick. At heart I am an Artist and a Designer, I used to make fashion too. But the need to earn a living from scratch without the benefit of loans or family hand outs, and later the need to support Mr Sticky, made me forget all that.

More than twenty years ago I trained as an Artist and during this recent Grand Tour, found that I was newly inspired beyond compare to draw and write and build a visual diary of ideas. My youthful ideas floated up and broke the surface of my now commercially oriented mind. It left me full of idealistic wonder and an enormous amount of pent up creative energy.

Now on our return to Chez Sticky I try to link the new me, carving a more sustainable ethos with a desire to create again. How will I fit this into my life now back in Australia? I wonder? While cooking was once my creative outlet, I'm afraid that now it will not suffice. My job has a Creative title but it is the last thing that I am currently encouraged to be.

Binding so much of what we experienced while we were away was the artistry of food. From a Chef cooking in the dining room of his small restaurant in Rotterdam - serving a fixed course set menu of food sourced from a local farm, to rustic seasonal French produce steeped in a heritage of tradition, to a suburban London pub serving honest grub, a High Tea at London's oldest running hotel, to an old brewery cafe in Brussels and a tiny Salon de The serving traditional buckwheat galettes, we dined well. And of course there was the ultimate celebration at The Fat Duck.

Naturally I will post my thoughts on The Fat Duck, but it will take a few varied posts to discuss it. For that in itself was a journey, not just one of sustenance, it made the grey cells jiggle too. It was an exploration of the mind of a creative genius, Heston Blumenthal who appears to have also found himself riding that fine line between passion, art and commerce.

Cheesy, I know

2010-09-15T17:17:00.007+10:00

I couldn't resist posting this fake cheese ad by John Nolan. It's cheeky. Don't worry - no animals were harmed in the making of it - John Nolan Films are specialists at working with animatronics. Their work has featured in films such as Where The Wild Things Are, Skellig and HellboyII.

Light at the end of the tunnel

2010-09-14T08:51:00.067+10:00

Life, life is a pigsty. Life is a pigsty
And I’d been shifting gears all along my life
But I’m still the same underneath
This you surely knew
MORISSEY

It's been a peculiar year. I've been ill for nearly half of it. And working like a demon on hot coals for the remainder of the time, in an awkward and uncomfortable business culture.

This is the year my Aunts were diagnosed with bowel cancer and their brothers had polyps discovered in their colons. I underwent testing for a variety of things as a consequence.

Our dear friend Ben died suddenly in Bali. Then recently, I lost one of my oldest friends, my familiar and companion of 16years, a dear sweet cat named Pepper.

I don't like to dwell on the bad, but I spent months barely able to draw breath this year, and was without a voice from the start of April until early August. There were weeks where my lung capacity was so reduced, that I was warned I might have a heart attack.

My body shut down. I was weak. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. I was in no man's land. But my saving grace was Twitter.

Reading my Twitter stream of food loving tweeps' comments jollied me along and possibly prevented me from feeling depressed by my situation. The kindness of those who extended their commiserations touched my heart.

The Mental Oriental Parentals were otherwise occupied with their Grey Nomad lifestyle and Mr Sticki had compressed himself into a pirate music torrent and morphed into the laptop. From bed, I had to send him an email downstairs to attract his attention. So Twitter became my cultural and emotional umbilical chord.

From living vicariously through the planning of tweetups and the eat-n-tweet of Duckfest and Suckling Pigapalooza, to simply listening-in to the day to day of people's lives and the tweets accompanying food shows, it kept me hanging in there. From my sickbed, wearing an oxygen mask, I was still happily able to engage with the outside world.

Twitter worked for me when I couldn't concentrate on DVDs. Lacking focus, 140 character tweets were the maximum length I was capable of digesting at any given moment; perfect.

I thought of food often. Mr Sticki, the Trophy Husband - more accustomed to pleasing himself - was not initially programmed to take care of me, and at times forgot to feed me until late at night. But it didn't matter, I lacked an appetite.

I did manage to teach him some new dishes using Speak It an iPhone app that speaks aloud on behalf of the vocally dysfunctional. After six weeks working with a Speech Pathologist my vocal chords switched back on. And eventually Mr remembered that we were in possession of cookbooks. Things looked up from that point and he even ventured out to farmers' markets without me.

I'm back at work now. But I'm counting down the sleeps as in just a few weeks we will finally be on holiday. The beacon that is beckoning me towards the finish line is a lunch reservation in October at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant in England. Sigh. I'm referring to it as the #FatDuck50 trip, as it is The Trophy Husband's 50^th birthday present.

The dilemma it has thrown up is how will I cope with the 12 course degustation? Eating small portions for months has shrunk my appetite considerably. Over the weekend I dined out on a two course meal plus a shared dessert, with aperitif and matched wine, only to leave feeling turgid and bilious. It was a feeling that intensified the following day. Mr Sticki felt full, yet fine. Only I felt that my gut was organizing a mutiny and enlisting various other organs in its quest to digest.

Should I train up and endeavour to increase my capacity? I don't think I want to. My father has elderly onset diabetes and I am very mindful of what's in my diet as a consequence.

The website of the Fat Duck recommends allowing four hours to eat the meal. Perhaps that will be sufficient to aid the digestion?

Image via Wikipedia

Roadblock: Perfection is unattainable

2010-09-12T23:38:00.062+10:00

When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.

George Fisher

Seven years old and dressed in seersucker flares, sporting a London accent and the latest bowl cut hair fashion, I waited quietly as the adults chatted. I knew the mantra "children should be seen and not heard" so busied my mind by observing all around me. '

Planting my hands under my chin, I rested my elbows on the linen clad table in a restaurant nearby my little Chinese Grandfather's favourite Macau casino, The Lisboa. I observed the porcelain teapot and cups were trimmed in pink and the walls, a gaudy lemon. I smelt the heady combination of spices in the Portuguese influenced Chinese food.

Waiters in white jackets with brass buttons flew by us with plates of Meccanese food. The din of Cantonese chatter seemed to fade into the background as mesmerised, I watched their balletic movements as they burst in from the kitchen doorway into service, ricocheting haphazardly between the tables around me. It was human pinball without the benefit of levers.

The night ahead would see me witness Pelota (Jai Alai) for the first time in that casino – a fast, adrenaline filled sport where balls were hurled at a wall via a cane cage attached to the arms of the players. While I didn't see the point of the machismo and the danger, luckily I had the wherewithal to realize that this spectacle was part of the slowly eroding Portuguese heritage that infuses Macao.

The players in their white garb and long sashes certainly captivated my mother as she hastily went to bet on the outcome of the game. After a relatively short time I tired of the testosterone fueled display and was returned to our hotel room.

Was it boredom or biliousness that drove me to ask to go to bed? I do not recall. What is etched into my mind was the fried rice that grandfather had ordered at the restaurant. It wasn't usual for him to order fried rice, but he made an exception for this one. And I had astounded everyone at the table by eating eight small rice bowls of it. So as a result, everything else paled into insignificance.

I recall my parents' embarassment of my gluttony. My grandfather: proud. And I've yet to live it down. Even now, as a middle aged woman, my father likes to recount the story of his greedy little girl.

My retort has become that it was the best I'd eaten. And from that point I pestered Mum to teach me how to cook it. But while our Chinese friends raved about her fried rice, I felt it never matched that particular one.

Many years later, I watched my grandmother make it and discovered that she added fish sauce, which was the key secret to make it extra fragrant. Finally I had unlocked the unwritten code to recreating the dish.

Recently I was pondering on the subject of why Asian food often tastes better in restaurants and is especially delectable in Asia. In fact I wondered why there was no perfect Char Kwei Teow in Melbourne or why some of my Twitter friends were on a quest to find the best Peking Duck?

When I thought about the dishes I had faithfully recreated from my old and worn Asian cookbooks or from watching my family cook, I was confounded. While they all tasted delicious, to my mind they lacked a certain something. What was the 'je ne sais quoi?'

While I've found that using farmer direct sourced produce lifts many European dishes to restaurant quality, it didn't give my Asian cooking the same edge. As in the fish sauce in the fried rice, there had to be something more to unlock the unwritten code.

That same week, I happily discovered a 1980's edition of my Mum's Chinese cooking Bible – The Hong Kong & China Gas Chinese Cookbook. I glued myself to it one Saturday and through its pages, relived some childhood memories.

In the following days, I began to introduce some of my old favourites back into my cooking repertoire. And then I began to began to unravel my dilemma, discovering there are a series of keys to Asian cooking, unwritten rules, that affect the flavour.

Timing
In Asia, before the days of refrigeration, ingredients were bought immediately prior to cooking the meal and were skillfully transformed in an uncomplicated manner. In households generally there was extended family in the kitchen, making the production of items such as dumplings swift. So timing is a key. Although not the case here in Australia, in some parts of Asia this tradition continues.

MSG
Every recipe in my old Asian Cookbooks and in my newer Vietnamese cookbooks includes monosodium glutamate. It certainly does enhance the flavor, but given the negative health connotations, I don't use it myself and increasingly restaurants are reducing or removing it from their dishes. There is a marked difference in taste as a consequence.

Charcoal
Traditionally everything in Asia was cooked over charcoal burners. The flavor imparted to dishes either through ferocious heat or infused with smokiness is impossible to recreate on your standard contemporary European style stove. In Asia, many hawkers and some restaurants continue to use charcoal. Here, most Asian restaurants use gas. The volume of gas at my place is weak. It's just not acceptable for Asian cooking. So rather than put up with the mediocre, I find better results cooking on a butane camp stove turned up to full ferociousness than on my gas range.

Lard
What a delectable substance. It's the hidden fat in many Asian dishes, the fat that must not be named; an ingredient unwritten in most recipes although frequently used. Sometimes you'll find a recipe stipulates peanut oil, another essential flavor in Asian cooking. Both fats withstand the ferocious heat required for most dishes and also impart lashings of flavor. Again, for health reasons I have cut both from most of my cooking, using canola instead.

Masterstock
Any professional practitioner of Asian cooking will have a pot of masterstock on the go constantly. Deep in richness and flavor, this will generally have a base stock that was started years ago. Chefs will also have other broths made from scratch to use in soups. The older a masterstock, the more it brings to a dish, so if you're using stock cubes or commercial tetra packs of stock in your dishes, they will never achieve the same result. The only exception I have observed has been Malaysian Hawkers, who not only use powdered commercial chicken stock but also flavor enhancers and even commercial Ketchup.

Equipment
Let's face it, modern equipment is not necessary in Asian cooking. Non-stick woks in particular are pointless as they can't deal with the heat required. Big heavy cast Iron woks heat up too slowly and hold the heat too long. A series of different sized lightweight woks, claypots and a steamer will do the trick.

Modern ovens don't do any favours to Asian recipes either, as we are forced to lie meat or bread down. Traditional Asian ovens are vertical so that bread can cling to the walls and the meat hangs vertically over a flame allowing for self basting as the fat renders downwards off the meat. It's one of the reasons Heston Blumenthal could not recreate the super crisp skin on his Peking Duck, without removing it and sewing it to a rack.

There was a time where Chinese restaurant food in Hong Kong didn't hold a candle to the food served in my Paternal household. With a few exceptions, Grandmother's Vietnamese influenced Cantonese fare was always far superior. The exceptions being yum cha and specialty roasted meats that were customarily left to 'the experts' or were ordered in.

In my father's childhood, my family enjoyed a large household with a generous retinue of staff. Restaurants were less popular and the best Chefs were quite possibly located heading up the kitchens of families like mine. In some instances, those Chefs had been raised in the household and had been taught recipes passed down within the family.

But those days have long since gone. I have resigned myself to the fact that my home cooking will not match that of the dishes of my Grandmother and that occasionally I will indulge the MSG, the lard and the peanut oil when I dine out.

I now have the keys. I can't unlock their magic without certain compromises. And instead, as in a successful marriage, will accept the best outcome that I can manage .... within reason.

Excuse me while I vomit

2010-04-04T19:46:00.014+10:00

People with eating disorders make dreadful dining companions.

'Well that's stating the obvious', you're thinking.
But have you actually done it, and done it regularly? I have.

There's a strong vein of Bulimia that runs through my maternal bloodline so you can take it from me that it's awful to sit across a table from someone afflicted with this kind of mental disorder, and the torment that they suffer. They love food but their distorted self image means they torture themselves as a result of it.

I do think people with eating disorders truly love food. Yes, I do. But their need for control is greater and that is often manifested by purging and denial. It breaks my heart to see it.

I myself, push back on Bulimia every day. I know that genetically I have it within me to succumb to Body Dysmorphic Disorder, but I resist the nasty urge. Sometimes I catch myself looking at others and seeing a distorted image of them, then slap myself mentally and step back from my thoughts. But it's when I see myself that I most often feel revulsion. I then remind myself that I have a hormonal dysfunction that unless I go back on a course of synthetic hormones, will continue to keep me larger than average.

Of course there was a time when I let Body Dysmorphic Syndrome get the better of me. When instead of purging, I hit the extreme exercise trail. I exercised eighteen hours a week, existing on commercial 'diet meals' - about a third of the average meal. I said to people that I exercised a lot because I love to eat. But when I dined out on normal food, my gut reacted by having diahorrea. I thought at the time that I must have had IBS. But I was abusing my body and it was simply showing signs of the stress I was inflicting on it.

For me, the dysfunctional feelings well up from never ever having felt attractive, of always finding my image hideous in photos or reflected in a mirror. I have always felt overweight, even when I have been slim, even as a child of normal weight.

But now, I refuse to collect my legacy of starving or purging. In stablising myself, I referred to a childhood weighted with Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist values. I asserted that as an intelligent person I did have the power to overcome this compulsion. Now my repugnance for food wastage has far greater emphasis than my potential for self abuse.

I've watched bone thin Bulimics at mealtimes scrutinize their dining companions with a critical eye while they eat, and that their need for control sees them order the biggest, fattiest meals, to then eat only a tablespoon of it. Being of normal appetite, I've been called a fat, lazy pig by the Bulimics in my family. I've watched their mood swings and the crankiness caused by a body that's physically stressed and felt the knife edge of their vicious taunts.

When you starve yourself, the body craves sugar. The Bulimic's overwhelming instinctive desire to eat sugary foods is caused by the body trying to find a way to survive when starved of proper sustenance. In my family it turned the Bulimics into sugar pushers. Thankfully I don't have a sweet tooth and couldn't be tempted in order to allay their guilt.

After many years of observation, my skin crawls when I see the tell-tale signs as they dart off to the toilet to purge between courses and after the meal. But because I really hate wasting decent food, most of all I despise their ploy of mashing their meal on the plate, not eating it, while others are actually chewing and swallowing.

The wheezing and coughing that bulimics blame on asthma now rings hollow to me. I know that in fact they have puked so much that the hydrochloric acid has risen out of their gastrointestinal tract, causing reflux that burns their oesophagus and makes them cough. With that is the tell tale halitosis. I liken it to the smell of death on someone's breath.

Osteoporosis and stress fractures aren't uncommon too. Frequent viral infections come from a weakened immune system that may be contributed to by their obsessive need to exercise, and just another part of the syndrome. In the Chinese culture it is common for women to abuse laxative based herbal teas.

I've known Body Dysmorphics who have turned to alcohol in lieu of food too. Naturally that comes with yet another set of problems. My Nana smoked a cigarette whenever she wanted to eat. Now in my middle age, having survived so many, when I look in the eyes of a Bulimic I see a heart attack or total organ failure waiting to happen, because in some ways, to punish yourself and to inflict this severe form of self control is to have a death wish.

I've also witnessed bulimic men and women starve their families and keep them exercising at a clipping pace, sending out spiteful barbs that damage their kids' self image. I've seen middle class Australian families with access to good food, diagnosed as being malnourished and have felt overwrought for them. I've seen children terrified of enjoying food in case their Body Dysmorphic parent puts them down for being fat.

And now thanks to reality TV in the USA, Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is now also widely recognised. I have no doubt that the roots of BED are the same as Bulimia, it just comes without the purging. Sufferers need help to heal psychologically in order to move past the disorder. While I feel that there is a genetic predisposition to Body Dysmorphic Syndrome, it is circumstance, role models and potentially the media that contribute to the psychological influences that unleash the behaviour in a person.

As society becomes increasingly sophisticated in terms of technology, science is moving forwards towards the creation of a super race, where thanks to DNA testing and stem cell technology, people of wealth may well live into eternity.

However, whilst science concentrates on bio mechanics, the science of the mind is considered less worthy of funding and research. Meanwhile cases of mental illness and depression are rising significantly. Will it be that natural selection in the future will evolve out of a class of people considered the most financially disadvantaged, coupled with a predisposition to mental illness?

It is a common assumption that many creative people have been raised in significantly dysfunctional families, that their urge to escape childhood distress drives the imagination, even as adults. In my observation of food bloggers, a number of us have emerged from these situations to vent and assert ourselves through food and through writing.

When the question of 'Why we blog?' was raised as a topic recently at the Australian Food Bloggers Conference - EatDrinkBlog - passion was cited liberally as the driving force. We did not delve deeper however, for example, where does this passion for food come from?

My passion came from a childhood where solace from my bizarre life was sought in kitchens, whether in my own home or in those of the family friends who fostered me. The other source of this passion was via the observation of the theatre played out in restaurants. I'm aware that the need to nurture and feed others is strong in me because this, as a child, is where I claimed love by proxy.

My ability to write came from immersing myself in books, by fleeing the darkest corners of my life via my imagination. Fantasy worlds were a great escape, especially as a teenager in the lonely time after discovering the attempted suicide of one of my parents. The craft of wielding evocative words was spellbinding to me and held me close in a moment where I could not publicly breathe my sorrow.

Food and words flow easily into blogging. Recipes surface in my mind to console and reward. I fight the urge to purge and to instead share and enjoy the bounty that we in Australia are fortunate to take for granted.

If you suffer Body Dysmorphic Syndrome, please don't be afraid to talk to a Psychologist about it. There are numerous resources from forums to groups run by former sufferers to help you to turn it around. It's better to move on than to damage yourself further and hurt others around you. My wish is that we break the cycle in order to avoid spreading this painful legacy.

My shameful gluttony

2009-11-24T01:06:00.010+11:00

"Another story exists about "stone soup", that in the United States of America, during the Great Depression, families were unable to put food on the table every day. It became a practice to place a large and porous rock in the bottom of the stock pot.

On days when there was food, the stone would absorb some of the flavor. On days when there was no food, the stone was boiled up, and the flavor would come out of the stone into the water, producing a weak soup, which was better than not eating.

This in theory is similar to China and Japan cooking using ceramic pots which adds flavour to the food after long term usage when the pot absorbed different flavours every time being used."

Wikipedia

It started with a comment on Twitter:

"Mr Sticki says I cook European/Asian/Fusion cooking is better than some restos,
but I'm sick of the taste of my own cooking. How did THAT happen?"

It's true, I had begun to loathe the thought of eating my own food. It's embarrassing. It's shameful. Just to clarify, I wasn't sick of eating. I wasn't even sick of cooking. But I wanted my meal to be a surprise to the palate. The kind of good surprise you get when someone cooks a lovely meal for you.

I had become afflicted with the malaise of the spoilt. I harbored the ugly conceit of the wealthy - or of those who need not worry about where the next meal is coming from. I longed for something beyond what was available - forgetting that what I already had was exemplary. In the void of abject consumerism, I had developed a sickening greed, an avaricious obsession with the next great thing to eat. And I had forgotten the lessons of my youth.

Regrettably despairing of yet another home cooked meal for two, I set myself a challenge to cook a meal without tasting it during the cooking process. I would also avoid adding seasoning beyond what was in the garden. Worst case scenario, if it worked out crap I could fix it anyway. This is a game of the bored. I aimed to trick myself; to trick my palate.

As is the case often in our home, everything in that meal was either locally sourced produce, home-made or home grown. I would not be sourcing the finest European smallgoods made from pigs that had been hand fed Vietnamese lychees by nuns in a copse in Northern Spain and cured by a 104 year old Brazilian Bishop in a thousand year old smokehouse, built by gnomes.

There would be no truffles, nor expensive condiments. In short, there would be no gourmet exotica in the meal that would make online foodies rapturous. Despite of the lack of pretentiously labeled ingredients, I was blind to the fact that my kitchen contained a wealth of magnificent produce.

By my standards it was a simple meal: Hartdale Park venison fillets seared in a hot cast iron pan then rested for ten minutes, warmed through with beetroot and a reduction of juices made with a touch of sage, quince jelly and beetroot juice. Salad leaves and wild rocket were gathered from the garden along with more herbs. I tossed them with tomato and Meredith marinated chevre, a vinaigrette made with King Valley honey, mustard, oil and vinegar. Home grown potatoes were sliced, layered with thyme from the garden and baked in mornay of whole wheat flour, unpasteurised butter, Blue Bay Gruyere and raw milk.

I resisted the urge to taste anything while cooking. I was adamant that the flavours would be a surprise to me. No salt, pepper, dried spices or Asian condiments were used. Mr Sticki remarked at how fabulous the cheese sauce smelt. He had no doubts that this would taste good. And he was right. Call it a leap of faith on my behalf, but I won myself over.

The exercise came down to proving to myself that I had the technique nailed and that my olfactory senses were primed enough to judge without tasting. It also proved to me that while we expect great meals made from world renowned ingredients, it is also possible to make an exemplary tasting meal using a combination of the humble home sourced and the less fashionable, local produce, sourced farmer direct.

While I've always acknowledged this about meals in some of my favourite restaurants, I had a double standard for myself. I had presumed otherwise when it came to my home cooking. I shouldn't have, because it was one of the first lessons I learnt about cooking, watching my parents in the kitchen.

When I was a child, my parents shopped at wet markets overseas and at big fresh markets like the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. They rose early and we'd be there, armed with wheelie bags at 6:30am, listening to stall holders shouting out the day's specials. It was exciting and fascinating. Subconsciously I absorbed a great deal of knowledge about produce in that time. Sometimes - while living with other families - the food I ate came from supermarkets, and when I eventually left home, so did mine.

My passion for eating was cultivated from the time I began eating solids, I wasn't fed packaged baby foods. At the time we lived in Hong Kong and I spent a great deal of time in the care of my paternal grandmother and Loong Por, the elderly Chinese Nanny who continued to live with my Grandparents long after she had raised my father.

My Chinese granny introduced me flavor. At yum cha she would peel the skin from dumplings and tell me to taste the filling on its own. She did this so that I could appreciate the sheer simplicity of the ingredient's flavor, without the added complication of understanding the various textures of the whole. I suspect that she also felt the slimy rice skin on some dim sum as not sufficiently nutritious for infants.

In Hong Kong during the Second World War, my family suffered along with the rest of the territory, when food was in short supply and many survived on the famous 'stone soup'. This dish constituted a soup made with a handful of weeds or herbs and sometimes thickened with arrowroot. A stone was placed in the bowl so as to cheat the mind into thinking some solids had been taken, by licking the solution from the stone. It was also considered that the stone would absorb some of the flavor and would continue to add to the soup on a daily basis. Although my family fared a little better than some at the time, being raised under these circumstances influenced my father's attitude to food as an adult.

As a child I ate whatever Mum and dad ate. My mother never made me separate meals. We always sat at the dining table and ate together. They also took me out to dine with them in restaurants - in Hong Kong - where it was the norm for children to be present - and later, when we moved to London - where it was not the case. From sitting in a high chair, or sometimes upon their coats piled so that I could reach the table, I grew accustomed to the etiquette and privilege of dining out.

Food was a ritual, a celebration, an exploration. Food was something that was constantly asserted as a wonderful gift that I was lucky to be partaking of. When I lived with my foster families I was a peculiarity, I sat quietly at the dining table and immersed myself in the meal. Their children on the other hand, watched TV while eating or fought amongst themselves, some scowling at their food and needing to be bribed by dessert to empty their plate.

When I lived with my Hungarian foster family, the lesson of the privilege of having food on the table was re-iterated. Whilst the children were indulged and not indoctrinated, I observed the reverence to food that the holocaust survivors in our midst paid to every meal, every snack.

I learnt that my new 'aunts and uncles' had suffered the loss of their children, spouses, siblings and parents in concentration camps, and that their own bodies had wasted from severe lack of food. They had gone without for the longest time and scavenged whatever they could. The psychological and physical scars had impacted to the point that now, living in 'The Lucky Country', their bodies continued to struggle to cope once again with eating wholesome food.

In hindsight I truly regret forgetting this lesson.

I personally did not begin cooking in earnest until I was sixteen. I was immature and naive, and desperate to be free of the dysfunctional home. But I did have the capacity to realise that I had been spoilt when it came to matters of the table. I had eaten game and offal cooked beautifully, I had experienced both haute cuisine and provincial dishes. Asian food and fusion I took for granted. So whilst I yearned to escape the madness of my family home, I was held back by my tastebuds.

In my parent's kitchen there were over one hundred cookbooks and even more cooking magazines. The room itself was designed so that a number of people could share the cooking. My Mum had at one stage held Chinese cooking classes in our kitchen, so it was a spacious room. My father had learnt the art of making Chinese roast meats from a master of the craft in Hong Kong and had qualified as a professional Baker and Patissier, all just for fun. He had also devoted a number of months learning the art of the Masala and regional Indian cooking.

With the realisation that culinary skills would be vital if I were to leave home, I began to read everything in the house that contained a recipe, discourses on world cuisine and culinary text books. I read the Time life world cookery collection that included magnificent photos and cultural anecdotes and histories from Europe, Africa and Asia. I read the entire series of magazines published by Fannie & John Craddock and some culinary classics from the sixties.

I immersed myself in the Larousse Gastronomique. Someone asked Mum "Why would she read Larousse at her age?" Mum, blithely, "She read the dictionary, the encyclopedia and the Bible because she was bored, so why not The Larousse?" I was precociously nerdy.

I watched cooking shows with my folks, stood at Mum's elbow watching her work her alchemy and observed my 'aunties', the women who fostered me when Mum was too ill to cope. When the Asian aunties got together to make dumplings I was in the thick of it. Whenever we ate out, I quizzed mum on the techniques.

When I first started cooking, Mum remarked that I would add about half of the seasonings in the pantry to my meals. My dishes were complicated and fanciful. The exuberance for heavily flavoured dishes gradually dissipated. My folks had always bought good quality produce and many things were made from scratch when I was small. Good cooking in their fabulous kitchen was easy and I discovered there was no need to overcomplicate the flavours.

When I moved out of home it was to a significantly more modest abode. My kitchen didn't even have a workspace. But I loved cooking. The nature of the tiny cooking space meant that I had to buy fresh practically daily. But when I moved to a slightly larger kitchen, with a pantry almost as big as the kitchen I began a love affair with the supermarket.

My friends would pile over to my place to eat my food and watch my TV. I loved it. There would be bodies slumped all over the lounge room floor, waiting expectantly to be fed. I hated the trash telly shows they watched, but I loved catering for others.

When I look back at that time I realize that I once again became heavy handed with seasonings. My pantry was filled with cans, packets and jars from all over the world. Rubs, oils, pastes and seasonings, cans of exotic ingredients and gourmet items purchased with the sole intention of punching flavor back into the tasteless 'fresh' produce I purchased at the local supermarket. At the time, cooking for me was all about putting flavor into meat and vegetables

Then one day I stopped in at the local greengrocer. The gentleman who ran the business turned out to, like me, be Eurasian, only he was half West Indian. His Chinese Aunt Rosie worked in the shop with him. As we swapped anecdotes, Auntie Rosie sidled up to me with a piece of orange. "Eat this now." She demanded. "It's local. You won't have eaten anything like it; so sweet" she clattered with a strong Hong Kong accent. As a respectful Oriental, I did as I was told.

She was right. The orange was intense. I shut my eyes. It felt like my eyeballs had ricocheted off the top of my cranium and then bounced back into place. It became apparent that my taste buds had been dormant since I left home and that fruit and vegetables always tasted this intense in top class restaurants, but never in my own kitchen.

I imagined that this must be what it was like to eat something after being long deprived of food. Immediately, I stopped buying fresh fruit and vegetable from the supermarket and went back to the greengrocer or to the local fresh market instead.

It wasn't until I began shopping at farmers markets that I experienced the same wonderment with meat, cheese, milk and eggs. Yes, eggs. I really didn't care for eggs before then. Fresh, non-supermarket bought eggs taste so different and are a breeze to poach. The flavour of rare breed meats and heritage vegetables, freshly harvested, leave supermarket produce in their wake and as I proved to myself, require hardly any seasoning. They keep for weeks and make everyone look like a star in the kitchen.

My cooking is no longer about dialing up flavours, but rather showcasing what is already there. Now it feels like an insult to the integrity of the produce to go overboard with the preparation. Shamefully in my recent conceit I had forgotten the great privilege it is to dine on this wonderful food.

The provenance of fresh produce sourced farmer direct is the result of passion, care and hard work. It has integrity. It is not palm oil and chemical loaded convenience food. The fruit and vegetables are not tasteless and genetically modified to withstand long freight trips, where they are jolted and knocked about. And they have not been bred to be picked green and warehoused for months before hitting the shelves after artificial ripening. The meat has been slow raised in happy conditions for flavor and butchered with respect. In order for the supermarket produce to turn over quickly and at the cheap prices demanded for their large profit margins, the meat has been raised to grow fast, have volume, but not density which affects the taste.

Looking at back at the recent boom era of consumerism, I see how I became greedy. How blasé I had become when others in the world were suffering from a global food crisis, while others faced war in their backyards. I lost sight of what is important and fell into the trap of expecting the next culinary thrill with the ability to show off here on the blog and on Twitter. What a pretentious twat!

To think that I was sick of eating my own cooking was pathetic. No, it was disgusting. With an embarrassment of riches at my fingertips I ought to have been joyous. But no, I behaved like a gluttonous brat. I had become the culinary embodiment of the consumer durable obsessed Paris Hilton. And I am thoroughly, cringingly, ashamed of myself.

Eating With Relish

2009-11-03T19:45:00.052+11:00

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hated school. At my right wing, white, Anglo Saxon, protestant school I found that there wasn't a lot to look forward to. One of the reasons was because I was the 'noticably ethnic' - being Eurasian.

I arrived two thirds of the way through the course of primary school with an English accent and barely a clue about Australia, even though I was born here. But I may as well have come from the other side of the galaxy. It was the seventies and Australia felt small minded and isolated compared to London, at least to a small, precocious and well traveled child, used to the company of adults, not other children.

I was a square peg who didn't fit the prerequisite hole - in any shape or form - and the daughters of the prominent politicians and matriarchal social mavens of philanthropy, eyed me with suspicion. In particular, my lunches were deemed "too bizarre" to them: cha sui sandwiches one day, chicken liver pâté with lettuce the next, and Liptauer on rye bread when I was living with my Hungarian foster family. It was odd that opinions could be so quickly formed based on the examination of the contents of one's lunch box. No cordial, no white bread with Vegemite, no Twisties and no lunch orders from the tuckshop - no good.

At lunch time I was relegated to the corner of the courtyard outside my classroom with the girl whose mum gave her hard boiled eggs. Although I did not enjoy the odour of the eggs, they were exquisitely wrapped in rainbow coloured wax paper and came packed with miniature salt and pepper shakers. Her Mum kept venison in the freezer and I had eaten some of it with their family. That was the first foodie secret we shared: weird food tastes good. Years later I heard that her Mum had spitefully been tricked into eating Snappy Tom 'Seafood in Aspic' cat food by one of the other mums, who found her more refined taste in food "just too eccentric".

Three times a year at school we had a mid term holiday. Half term was actually a half day. This was the one thing about school I looked forward to. If my mum was well enough she would swing by school in the yellow sports car and collect me. We would ride home in the low slung beast, singing along to the radio.

On the way home, we would make a stop at a Milk Bar. I quietly watched as she paced a lap of the small general store, then went to the pie warmer to get me a pastie. Back in the car, I would cradle the pastry in my lap, its warmth spreading through the white paper bag onto my thighs. The curious smell of parsnip, turnip and carrot wafted into the dark, leathery interior of the car.

At home in the kitchen, the pastie felt heavy in my hands. Carefully removing the treat from its bag, I would pick at the twisted seam of pastry that bound the parcel of mixed vegetable and minced meat. But as much as I loved eating the pastry, it was the accompanying tomato relish that I really longed for.

The relish was made by my nasty, bulimic, Nana. She bottled it in skinny old Nescafe jars with yellow plastic lids. It was dark brown, chunky, and contained both tomatoes and sultanas, heavily spiced and sweet. I loved it. The smell made me purr. I could have eaten it on everything, but for some peculiar reason, it was reserved only for pastie eating. Mum however also got to eat it with cheese and crackers. Starved of decent meals by my mean spirited, image obsessed Nana, Grandpa lived on the stuff.

The last time I tried to make relish, I had a mediocre result. I unsuccessfully tried to recreate Nana's and I blogged the result. Silly to try to cook up something when you have a cold and have lost your palate really. This time I turned to Mr Sticki's Nana's recipe - he figures it must be at least one hundred years old - and it worked a treat. Hailing from Shepparton she was apparently the antithesis of my Wimmera raised Nana and Mr S has warm memories of her.

This recipe was transmitted down the phone line from Mr Sticki's Mum, Bunny, and transcribed by my beloved. I have written it here for you verbatim. It's so simple.

Following the recipe, I chose to drain the tomatoes overnight in a muslin bag suspended over a mixing bowl. Instead of discarding the juices, I made absolutely the best tomato soup with them. It was pretty much the same as Shannon Bennett's tomato consomme, a fresh, light and pretty, ideal for an entree or amuse bouche.

I did find myself adding more sugar to the relish than specified, as the requisite 'covering the tomato mix with vinegar', did make it face wrinkling in its sourness. My choice was a combination of Demerara and low GI sugar - for health and flavour - plus cooking the mix for longer than the recipe specified, which darkened the finish. Use white sugar if you want it to stay bright red and in that case ensure you stick to the specified cooking time. Other changes I made were to add less flour and a bit more curry powder.

And the result? Although Bunny's mother's relish doesn't have as much spice as my Nana's and lacked sultanas, I would happily slather it on anything. I haven't had it with a pastie yet, but it stood impressively alongside my frittata (pictured) made with freshly laid eggs, Boks bacon, home grown herbs and vegetables. And tomorrow it will travel to work in my lunch box, which my colleagues will examine as usual with enthusiasm and excitement. How times have changed!

Nana Burgess's Tomato Relish

6lbs Tomatoes
2lbs Onions
1 1/2 lbs Sugar
1 1/2 tbs Curry powder
2tbs Mustard
4tbs Flour

Cut up onions and tomatoes, sprinkle with a handful of salt. Stand them overnight.

In the morning drain the tomatoes and onions and place them in a pot. Cover the mix with vinegar. Boil for five minutes.

Add the other ingredients mixed with a little vinegar. Boil for one hour. Bottle in sterilised jars.

Asian Pastry: Sweet Yet Savoury

2009-10-20T07:29:00.077+11:00

Sexbomb sex bomb, you're my sex bomb
You can give it to me when I need to come along
Sexbomb sex bomb you're my sex bomb
And baby you can turn me on

Tom Jones, Sex Bomb

People who know me appreciate that I'm not a sweet tooth. They also know that I'm an intuitive cook, not a baker - not a person who is systematic in checking weights and balances, following recipes to the nth detail. Curiously often - I won't say annoyingly, as I don't mind being challenged - I find myself being requested to make dessert when invited to dinner.

Neither Mr Sticki or I eat dessert at home, though he does claim that he has a separate stomach just for ice cream - making it possible to eat it even when he's stuffed to the gills. I on the other hand, am rarely tempted and will often choose cheese instead. If George Biron had not had Hungarian pancakes on the dessert menu last week, when we visited Sunnybrae, I would have chosen the savoury dessert option of black and white pudding.

I have, however acquired a taste for Asian desserts. I'm Eurasian so I guess this is fair enough, given the kooky nature of Asian sweets. Sugar came to the world from China but it is hardly a world of sweets. In fact most Chinese snacks are savoury, not sweet, and many of the desserts are soups, with a touch of sugar. In fact, with the exception of Indian sweets, the majority of Asian desserts are not excessively sugary.

Of the Asian sweets I love, topping my list recently was the Mamak Roti Tissu (image by Chocolate Suze); a cone of gossamer thin pastry laced with sweetened condensed milk and margarine, that fuses on a blistering hotplate to become a crisp caramelised cone of decadence, up to two feet in height.

And then it was joined by Roti Bom.

Roti Bom (pictured at the top of this post) consists of a two inch thick disc of roti bread, again drenched in condensed milk and margarine. The sticky emulsion is poured onto the bread as it cooks, soaking into the body of the pastry and providing a glossy caramel finish. It's cake-like, it's sweet tempered with a little salt. It's slightly burnt, with crisp edges and it is a sensational finish to a meal. In short it's sexy, voluptuous and marvelous, especially when taken with a nice polystyrene cup of Teh Tarik - spiced sweet tea with more condensed milk, poured from a great height to produce foam on top.

Recently while in Singapore my dear friend Bin took us to a Traditional Chinese Dessert venue in Temple Street, Chinatown. The bustling business was on the ground floor of an old Chinese shop house, furnished with camphor wood stools and tables. Outside the street was lined with cars, crowds and the clamour of day to day life in hot and humid surrounds. The laminated menu consisted of many sweet Asian delights such as Chendol, sweet almond soup, mango pudding with sago, fresh tofu and lurid displays of Ice Kachang, furnished with beans, corn, grass jelly and rose syrup poured over shaved ice.

We had just had the fish head curry you read about in the last post, and so feeling pretty full, we ordered just a few things. For the man who always has room for ice cream, a tall mound of shaved ice drenched in chocolate syrup hit the spot. It looked to all intents like a massive icy turd, but it made him happy given the heat of the day, compounded by a boiling, chilli laden fish head curry.

I ordered coconut jelly - a childhood favourite - and a single pineapple pastry. These pastries are famous in Singapore and the waitress was aghast when I said I only wanted one. I had to blame it on the fish head curry and from food fatigue. Just days before, we had been eating eight times a day whilst visiting Mr Chew in Penang.

The coconut jelly is often seen on yum cha carts. It is simply coconut milk, set with agar-agar, made in trays and served chilled. Each portion is a one inch square opaque white cube. On a hot day it's refreshing and not the slightest bit filling. It slips cool, smooth and delicious over your tongue. In particular it soothes the burning hell that your oral cavity may have become during the lethal onslaught of a cavalcade of chilli and spices. I'm also a fan of the lurid green striped lime jellies that alternate layers of coconut and lime jelly.

So, on to the popular Singaporean pineapple pastry, it's made with a very short pastry common to China. The Chinese mainland not being a country particularly endowed with dairy products, traditional Chinese pastries are made with lard and hot water - unlike the Vietnamese delights, influenced by the French method of shortening pastry with butter. So the pastry around the famous Singaporean pineapple sweet is very flaky with a flavour distinctly different to butter pastry. The pineapple filling is more like an intense jam, and at two bites, it was just enough of a sweet hit for me. The same pastry is used on Chinese custard tarts and dim sum items such as cha sui soh - BBQ pork pies.

This same pastry was wrapped around a morsel we ate in Penang recently. Though sweet, it was a savoury dish, and not something I had eaten since I was a child, when dining with my grandfather at his usual reserved table at Luk Yu Tea House in Hong Kong.

This time, we ate this delicacy at a Chieu Chao (aka Teochew) dim sum restaurant in Georgetown, Penang, around the corner from Campbell street. The nostalgia it brought back was immense. I instantly pictured my wrinkled, bald, little Oriental grandfather in one of his many dapper three pieced, pin striped suits, laughing with his cronies at lunch.

The delicious item in question is something that I've never seen in Melbourne on dim sum carts. You take a rod of pork fat and wrap it with a slice of rich duck liver cooked in Cha Sui marinade and barbecued. Then add a piece of Cha Sui - lean shoulder pork cooked in the same marinade and wrap the lot in Chinese flaky pastry; eggwash, then bake until golden.

The whole effect is rich, sweet, savoury and fatty. The sweetness is formed by the BBQ marinade that is a mix of maltose and fermented sweetened bean paste. As much as I adore these beautiful little parcels of excess, I felt as though I ought to order a stent for the arteries that begin to close over while digesting items such as this. Copious amounts of Chinese tea neutralised the fatty residue in my mouth and allayed my guilt temporarily. But it's really no wonder that my Grandfather had angina related problems.

At the heart of this dim sum delight is the seed of why I don't revere sweets. The Chinese dining philosophy is to mix savoury with sweet and with sour, with hot and cold in the selection of dishes served at meal time. Along with that is a fundamental need for all meals to have a mixture of textures. Hence desserts like sweet syrupy soups containing crunchy savoury snow fungus and lotus root or lotus seeds. Or Chinese doughnuts (above) that are only vaguely sweet, designed to be dipped in congee, herbal soups or braises. And then there are my favourite snacks - Asian pork jerky made from bacon that is savoury from Nam Yu - fermented red bean paste - smoky & charred from the drying process and finished with sticky, sweet maltose.

The other reason that I'm not fussed by sweets is that on a few occasions I have been tested positively as a 'Supertaster' by researchers at a couple of Universities. A Supertaster is one who has more taste buds than average. So I perceive flavours more intensely than most. Some chemicals in food 'burn' my tongue. Broad beans and certain bitter foods make my tongue ache and hurt. Sweet things can seem too cloying and make my eyes water.

So, why do I favour Asian sweets over European style sweets? The secret is that they often contain a savoury element, or do not embellish a naturally sweet ingredient. So while I can cope with the occasional vanilla slice or Sacher Torte, I'd rather bring on the Roti Bom.

Roti Bom, Roti Bom - you're my sex bomb....oooh and baby you can turn me on!

Singapore: Ocean Curry Fish Head

2009-09-27T20:53:00.010+10:00

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

They can't play baseball, they don't wear sweaters
They're not good dancers, they don't play drums

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Rolly Polly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in
Italian restaurants with Oriental women.
Yeeaahh

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

The Fish Head Song

When in Singapore there are a few things that I insist on eating, without exception: Hainan Chicken Rice, Satay, either Pepper or Chilli Crab, and lastly, Fish Head Curry. Of these favourites, I have yet to find a venue in Melbourne that produces them to the high standards of Singapore.

The recipes for these Straits Chinese dishes have evolved in the kitchens of generations of Nonya's - female Peranakan's - descendants of the Fukienese from China who married local Malays. From as far back as the fifteenth century, The Peranakan made their homes in the former British colonies of Malacca, Penang and Singapore, as well as parts of Indonesia and the Isthmus of Kra.

Some Peranakan came via Phuket and brought with them a love of sour tamarind flavoured dishes, chilli and fresh Asian herbs. All seemed inspired by the local confluence of trade, where markets were filled with an abundance of spices from India.

The Malay influence in the cooking can be found in pounded spice pastes made from candlenuts, rhizomes and belanchan. The Chinese love of pork, duck and seafood is also evident. Chinese pickles and sauces are widely used; tropical coconut and pandan leaves drift into many dishes too.

Along with practicing Chinese Ancestor Worship and upholding Confucian values, educated Peranakans very much embraced Western ways. In terms of food, they took on Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, breads and pastries. From this melting pot of cultures evolved a unique fusion food that I often crave.

On our latest trip to Singapore, we spent time with my dearest Bin, who I love as my sister. In my childhood, it was Bin's mother who cared for me in many times of family stress. And through her I was first introduced to Strait's Chinese cooking. The pull of this cooking is as strong as my link with the Hungarian food that comforted me at other times of my dysfunctional childhood.

Bin checked with her colleagues as to where to find 'The Best' Fish Head Curry in Singapore and as I expected, it was not a glamorous venue but a simple shop in Chinatown with many tables on the pavement. She cautioned us to meet her at her office by noon as the restaurants with the best reputation are full to capacity within minutes of opening for lunch.

We strode quickly to Ocean Curry Fish Head on Telok Ayer Street and grabbed an al fresco table. I gazed at the colourful old Chinese shop houses around us, while Bin went inside to the counter and ordered. Very quickly our fresh lime soda's arrived in large glass mugs and by that stage the venue was full.

Situated on a corner, the venue was open on two sides to the street, with large striped awnings sheltering customers below. We sat on red plastic stools at a round Formica topped table. A very basic set up, there were no frills when it came to accoutrements at Ocean Curry Fish Head, its reputation alone seemed to be all that was necessary to draw crowds. Furnished with cutlery and a moist towelette in an Ocean Curry Fish Head branded pack, we were equipped and anticipating a good meal ahead.

Inside, the counter, a bain marie and a TV dominated the room. A queue snaked its way to the counter as the hungry lunch time horde descended. Off to the sides, those who missed out on a table, waited like hungry seagulls, keeping eyes alert and making ready to swoop on any table where diners looked as though they might leave.

Bin ordered us stuffed squid, beans with XO sauce and a dish of Chilli clams - a dish many avoid in Singapore in fear of contracting amoebic dysentery, but we took our lives into our hands and indulged anyway, finding no side effects felt later. The dishes were simply prepared but delicious, a good foil texturally to the centrepiece to come. And then the curry arrived. Resplendent in a well used claypot, it wafted its steamy aromas seductively across the table to me.

On a hot humid day in Singapore, the heat put out by this heavy clay dish made the sweat flow freely. Beside us, local workers were mopping their brows and looking a little dishevelled by the exertions of plowing through both the heat and chilli of the dish in steamy conditions.

As I added the slurry of coconut based sauce to a mound of rice before me, the scent of fresh turmeric greeted my nostrils. A second later I felt the tickle of chilli making my nostrils flare like an impatient racehorse.

Burying my tongue in the rice and sauce mix, I picked up ground coriander, cumin, fenugreek, mustard seeds, wafts of ginger, garlic and tamarind, sweetened and thickened with coconut cream. I was in raptures of ecstasy - this was a dish fit for the Gods.

I felt sweat beading on my nose as I ate. In the mix were large chunks of white fleshed fish head, and we dove in for cheeks, and I for eyes and the tongue. There were whole ladies fingers - also known as okra - slices of long slim brinjal - slender purple eggplant - onion and chunks of tomato. The concoction was odd texturally; soft and vaguely slimy elements offset by an intense, rich and spicy sauce.

I don't tend to eat a lot of rice, but in this instance it was the best way to enjoy the sauce. I would have been as happy with a big loaf of stale bread to soak up every last drop, but I doubt that I would have made it through, as the dish is deceptively filling. Like that expanding gap filler available in hardware stores, it seems to swell up from within.

The hovering, late-coming, hungry hordes, desperate to snare a table had moved just feet from our seats as we launched into the dish. And as our plates began to empty, they made their presence clearly felt standing just inches from us. So mopping ourselves down with our complimentary moist wipes, we paid up. And to the relief of the human seagulls, beat a hasty retreat around the corner to wander through hospitality-ware stores and to go to a traditional Chinese shop to eat some uniquely Singaporean Chinese desserts.

Within seconds back at Ocean Curry Fish Head, our seats had been taken and the process of enjoyment had began again, and again.

Tasmania: The Red Velvet Lounge

2009-09-19T22:50:00.031+10:00

The King will walk on Tupelo!
Tupelo-o-o! O Tupelo!
He carried the burden outa Tupelo!
Tupelo-o-o! Hey Tupelo!
You will reap just what you sow.
You will reap just what you sow.

Tupelo Written by: Cave, Harvey, Adamson 1984

Slowly raising my sleep encrusted eyelids, I peered out across the doona. A smoky eyed youth dressed casually in torn stone washed jeans and a bared six pack stared back. His blonde frosted, spiky hair was nuzzled by a barefooted woman with a huge cork screw perm and they were draped decorously over an old Buick in a field: the ultimate ‘80s pin up couple in a black metal frame. Was I dreaming? Had I gone back in time?

No. It wasn’t 1984. It was 2009 and we were in a Southern Tasmanian B&B in The Huon’s beautiful Cygnet, fifty minutes drive south of Hobart. This is the town where my friend and chef, Steve Cumper has settled. Back in ‘84, Steve and I were probably rocking around the same Punk scene in St.Kilda, Pogo-ing on sticky carpet and watching a baby faced Nick Cav e tear up the stage.

It was in this momentary time-warp however and later - standing in the ensuite’s marble patterned Formica time capsule of a shower cubicle – that I began to understand the mindset of the local customer who criticized Steve for daring to break from the formulaic pub approach to meals with his wonderful evening menu at The Red Velvet Lounge.

You see Cygnet is vaguely reminiscent of Victoria’s Daylesford in 1984. Early invaders - crusty folk singing, tea cozy wearing types - are gradually making way for a trickle of self funded retirees from the mainland settling into a tree-change, alongside a small gay community who’ve also recognized the town’s potential. But forming the core of the community are those born and raised in The Huon Valley, some perhaps frozen in another era - possibly also locked in a culinary limbo - and who I suspect may still be coming to grips with Steve’s efforts to create a contemporary menu supporting local and artisanal produce.

On the periphery of the community, former Chef and Sydney Morning Herald Restaurant Reviewer, Matthew Evans can be found acting out a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall scenario whilst being trailed by a film crew around his twee sounding property, Puggle Farm. In October, they will bring their footage of Cygnet to Australian TV viewers via SBS broadcasting.

In this picture, I imagine Steve Cumper to be Tasmania’s Alla Wolf Tasker - of Daylesford’s The Lake House - or an early version of Gourmet Traveller ‘National Treasure’ George Biron of Sunnybrae, tending his own farmlet and pushing the barrow of Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical (SOLE) food.

Back in '84 there was no way that I could afford to eat at a venue such as Alla’s or George’s. I couldn’t even afford the standard issue Punk studded leather motorcycle jacket. Steve couldn’t afford a car stereo so apparently had a cassette player taped to the dash of his old car.

In the eighties people my age who chose the ‘Alternative Lifestyle’ of local, biodynamic and artisanal food were presumed to be an unwashed hippie akin to Neil in The Young Ones, and not fit to dine in a fashionable restaurant. Now it’s all changed. Today SOLE food is becoming ‘de rigeur’ and Mr Sticky and I happily tucked into Steve’s special Friday evening meal at Red Velvet Lounge (RVL).

We came to RVL on what became our ‘Tasmania: Closed for the Weekend’ tour of the Apple Isle. Nearly everywhere we wanted to go was shut, in spite of advertising that they’d be open. Seems that those who could, had left Tassie for a break on the mainland. They must have flown out on one of those ridiculously cheap flights that had brought us there in the first place.

Consequently it was an unusually quiet night at RVL, with the subtle sounds of bossa nova from the stereo mingling with a few tables of polite chatter, until an aging folk music duo quietly settled on a couch in the corner of the room for guitar strumming, humming and harmonizing. There was a time where the folk music was the focus of this venue, not the food. But the balance has now changed. The diners we saw were indifferent to the music played at the front of the restaurant.

We found the service to be good at RVL. So often it is hard to manage this in regional venues, but I suspect that Steve’s nurturing nature knits this loyal group like a family. We began service with a couple of local beers, a Moo Brew from Moorilla and a ‘Cleansing Ale’ sighted on a chalkboard while considering the menu.

Although by day the Red Velvet Lounge is a small town café selling delicious wholesome daytime meals, suitable to vegan, vegetarian and omnivore alike, Friday and Saturday nights’ menu allows Steve to show off his prowess. Simple rustic sounding dishes - that won’t scare the natives - abound. But when you taste the food you realize that under the surface is a complex and imaginative array of meals that other chefs might be tempted to describe in four flowery lines of text. I love the restraint of description here. It allows you to discover the depths of Steve’s creativity orally with no major preconceptions to hinder the process.

Surveying the menu I wanted all the entrees on offer; we sampled three between us. I could not fault any of them. All wore a simple mantle that disguised the technical degree of difficulty combined with imagination that an experienced, meticulous chef can seemingly effortlessly pull off.

Between us we shared a rabbit pie floater with mushy peas and roasted parsnip which could have passed as a meal in-itself, as Steve doesn’t like to skimp on portions. There was no corner cutting here, a properly formed pie with lid sat picture perfect in the centre of the dish. Steve’s sour cream pastry was the perfect foil to the unctuous filling, offset beautifully by fluffy mushy peas and the sweetness of a roasted parsnip.

When it came time to swap plates, my nose was greeted by the wonderful aromas of the grilled Rannoch Farm quail. I lingered, inhaling it and then the saliva swarmed my palate until I just had to taste it. This was not a dish I anticipated in a regional restaurant but it was everything you would wish for – a fine mélange of fresh local flavours: delicate moist flesh with artichokes, punctuated with the tang and firmness of olives, then vine leaves and finally the verjuice, which made me think of Steve’s days with Maggie Beer in the Barossa.

Thirdly, we shared the duck neck sausage which was a thick, coarse, almost terrine like item, sliced and served with a wee jar of smooth, rich pâté, celeriac remoulade and some cornichons. The lot sat on a thin, long wooden board which was also graced by thick char-grilled slices of Steve’s famous bread, baked in the Restaurant’s original Scotch oven.

The pâté had Mr Sticky hooked, so silky and flavorsome was it. Perfectly rustic & slightly gamey, the total combination of textures and deep flavours in this entrée made it subtly sophisticated, and yet had me imagining that it would have been the ideal picnic dish for sitting by the water, watching the pod of whales that had recently graced the locals with a sighting.

When the main courses arrived, I was feeling nearly full already. But we forged on. Before me sat an impressive thick cut, crumbed pork Cotoletta upon a mound of velvety parmesan enriched mashed potato. Greed took over. Slicing in, it was perfectly moist and satisfied my wicked desire for crunchy, crumbed and fried meat. Baby rocket rounded out the vegetable content and a wicked dish of aioli flecked with local truffles sat alongside, enriching the palate further.

It crossed my tongue with a sigh of satisfaction. Whilst the execution was technically perfect, what made this special was that the integrity of the high quality produce was not compromised or gussied up as to become pretentious. It was a homely Mittle European style dish and for those who might be wary of modern ways, did not make a song-and-dance about the skill required to produce and prepare it.

The slow roasted leg of lamb rendered Mr Sticky speechless with admiration. Slow cooked for five hours, then pressed and finished again in the oven, it was a melt in the mouth, rib-sticking piece of deliciousness. The seasoning added richness. The lamb lost none of the honesty of its flavor in the process and did not have the cloying fattiness that some lamb dishes suffer. With the Cassoulet like braise of Cannelini beans, spinach and another side - this time of anchovy mayonnaise - it was a hearty dish that I could see my beloved was almost loathe to part with as we swapped plates. In my opinion it was an exemplary dish, the likes of which one might have presumed ought to have earned RVL a place in the 09 Gourmet Traveller Food Guide had they tried it.

I was thankful that the restaurant was quiet that night, as it allowed Steve the chance to come out and chat. At this point, chatting excitedly - albeit with food still left on our plates - I was already in a food coma. Mr Sticki however was tempted to order dessert. His choice was the chocolate mousse with peppermint praline. He may have felt full, but this slipped down quickly, lubricated with cream.

I took one mouthful and it was a trip to chocolate heaven, smooth and rich, offset by the crunch of the crumbled sugary mint candy. It was elegant and unbound by gimicry. My coffee sufficed to end my meal. Enlivened by good conversation and a fine repast, I was thoroughly sated.

One of the things I admire and respect in Steve is his optimistic and humble nature. He keeps his head down and charts his own course without hype or braggadocio. Early in his career he worked at Melbourne’s famous Tsindos Bistrot, under Ray Tsindos, son of iconic Chef George Tsindos, the man who for 40 years brought Florentino’s high repute.

Later Steve joined Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm Restaurant in The Barossa Valley, at that time regarded as Australia’s equivalent to Alice Waters. Other highlights include launching Soul Mama with Paul Mathis, raising the reputations of the Zampelis Restaurant Group and later winning Vogue Entertaining’s Award for use of local produce at Tasmania’s Peppermint Bay Restaurant. Not that he’ll wave any of that in your face. Steve is a thinker, an artisan, a talented chef and family man with his feet planted firmly in the ground while he dreams up beautiful recipes.

Similarly the venue is humble. Like a big warm hug from Nana, the venue allows you to rest in the comfort of its vaguely retro bosom. A former double fronted General store, the café-cum-restaurant features a counter and display cases showcasing Steve’s breads, jams and preserves. An open kitchen is disguised at night by an enormous floor to ceiling red curtain. There is a wood combustion stove, leather couches and heavy tables and chairs. It walks a dignified line between a busy casual breakfast and lunch café for most of the week, and an approachable rustic restaurant on Friday and Saturday evenings that doesn’t intimidate the old school locals.

Evidently Steve’s taken the softly-softly approach here, evolving the venue’s approach gradually from Crusty-Wholefood café to City style dining. So it was no surprise when Cygnet locals told us “they went spare” when RVL closed for renovations, feeling bereft without Steve’s handmade bread, asking if he could continue to service them in spite of the closure. Also the Tree-changers declaring that RVL had “The best coffee for miles” who suffered in silence before they could again enjoy their ritual caffeine hit.

After enjoying both, I can totally understand their loyalty and why the people of Hobart and beyond will drive out of their way to eat Steve’s food. For at the heart of this place is a quiet, determined passion within a spirited thinker who cares not a jot for fashion, but for what is intrinsically good in the world. If you’re visiting Hobart, I highly recommend that you book a table there one night and see for yourself....and tell him Sticky sent you.

The Red Velvet Lounge
24 Mary Street, Cygnet, Tasmania, Australia
03 6295 0466

The Rose Hotel

2009-09-03T15:04:00.024+10:00

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Dale Carnegie

Once in a while I hook up with old friends - and a couple of new ones - from the advertising industry to chew the fat over a lunchtime cheap eat. I love the comfort of the outing, exchanging news, experiences and ideas. I get excited and chat my head off. The Banff in St.Kilda has been a popular venue for this gathering, but it is always heaving and not a particularly comfortable venue for a medium sized group, so we adjourned today to The Rose in Port Melbourne, which is now run by the previous owners of Banff.

The Rose has been through many incarnations in the twenty odd years that I have been an irregular patron. In the eighties it was a trendy, yuppie pub, popular with the Marketing crowd, then it became a party pub, eventually a retro party pub - playing music from the yuppie era when eighties parties came into vogue - and then for a time a serious wine pub. For the last few years it has been a Gourmet Traveller and Good Food Guide vaunted Greek restaurant and bar, surviving two different ownerships. And then Port Melbourne changed.

The restaurant got increasingly quiet and even enticements to the Greek community such as live basouki music failed to draw them in. A nearby Greek Restaurant that had also once drawn big crowds at a sister venue in Swan Street, Richmond also felt the pinch and moved their focus to a generic European offering, serving cheese degustations, breakfast, coffees and a deli selling pre-made take-home meals.

The elderly Greek community began to die out and their children took advantage of sky-rocketing property prices to sell the down at the heel Port Melbourne family homes that had nurtured them since geting off the boat at Station Pier. I suppose many built Mc Mansions in Oakleigh, and with the move, the local demand for Greek Food was ably sated by Old Man Stavros' plate smashing institution in Albert Park. The Rose was regularly empty and eventually sold. The owners moved to South Melbourne to sell pizzas.

The first I heard of the new regime at the venue came in the form of a flyer - from Rose Bar Pizza - also touting Gourmet pizza albeit with a cleanskin bottle shop. "Not another pizza venue?" I said to Mr Sticky, "We already have eleven pizza joints within walking distance of home. How will they survive?"

But we were sufficiently enticed to try it, being at the end of our street, and because I wanted try Italian Sausage pizza with caramelised onions; Roast pumpkin, Gorgonzola, rocket & pine nut pizza, along with Prawn, chilli, saganaki, lemon & rocket pizza. We did not regret it.

Essentially the menu here is the same as Banff's because the former Chef is now at the Port Melbourne venue. Since her departure, I've noticed that the food in St.Kilda is less reliable and so our moving our group's lunch to Port Melbourne was a sound one. As one of my locals, their offer of a selection of 10 excellent gourmet pizzas at $5.50 for lunch Monday to Friday, and on Monday & Tuesday nights is hard to go past. And I love that this is further proof that you can get gourmet grub that beats Maccas for value.

At Rose Bar Pizza, as it is now known, the pizzas are midsized and thin based with a generous serve of quality toppings. There's no bulk bags of commercially grated cheese or ham of dubious origins here. Each pizza is flavoursome, with the right amount of crunch and chewiness. I can also recommend their salads, the potato, saganaki and rosemary pizza; Chorizo, artichokes, cherry tomato and olive pizza; Moroccan Lamb with mint yoghurt and za'atar pizza and the velvety Macaroni Cheese which arrives in a miniature paella pan.

As a chick, I never seem to be able to finish the pizza on my own so although tempted, I have yet to try the chocolate, cherry & ice cream pizza or the apple crumble & custard version. Given that they have happy hour from 3-6pm every day, I may just have to slide down there for 'afternoon tea'.

Like Banff, they also serve the delicious frothies made by Bearings Brewery in Geelong at $2.50 a pot. So today, at lunch the boys enjoyed a meal for $10.50 including a couple of beers. A couple of them tried the tasting tray at the bar to sample which cleanskin they fancied quaffing, and a good time was had by all in this large, modern yet comfortable room, with it's long marble topped communal space and walls festooned with art and customised pizza boxes decorated by regulars.

Time slipped away quickly in such convivial surrounds. I left clutching a box of my leftover pizza and a takeaway so that my beloved did not miss out. As I walked home to work again overlooking my garden, I counted my blessings: a beautiful Spring day, great friends and simply prepared quality food that didn't break the bank. Life is truly good.

Rose Bar Pizza
309 Bay Street, Port Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia ph. 9646 3580
Mon-Fri Noon until late, Saturday 5pm until late

Toh Soon Café: Roti Bakar

2009-08-28T13:20:00.002+10:00

An old twisted wire egg basket swung from an awning above; chatter, clutter, clatter and blurs of colour dominated the scene. Then an explosion of flavor and texture had me transfixed. Every movement in my vicinity seemed to slow to snail’s pace and then as though underwater, I was suddenly locked into my own void of silent discovery.

We were sitting upon low plastic stools at a folding tin topped table, its surface scarred by regular usage. We were in Malaysia. The venue was a narrow laneway, off Campbell Street in Georgetown, Penang. A tarpaulin was stretched overhead, spanning the lane and at the back a makeshift kitchen leant against one wall. The fast paced operation was manned by five people, each allocated their own tasks, two of them servicing two rows of tables.

This is Toh Soon Café. Open from early morning until late afternoon this quaint cobbled together venue is significant in that it’s the last remaining charcoal toasted Roti Bakar venue in Penang.

Roti Bakar is simple: two lightly toasted pieces of extra thick, sweet white bread, sandwiching lashings of butter and Kaya – coconut and egg jam. It comes with two barely boiled eggs which are broken into a cup. A little soy sauce is swirled into the runny eggs and the sweet toasted sandwich is then dipped into the slurry before being raised to your mouth.

In the face of modernisation and electric toasters, this particular stall still toasts the bread over hot coals through a window in a converted ten gallon drum. On our visit a young Indian man hunkered low beside the rustic contraption, toasting two sandwiches at a time, while above the coals the drum contained a chamber for heating the water, blanching the eggs and above that a providing a hotplate for the coffee pot. Simply ingenious - if a little uncomfortable for the staff member on toast duty.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and in this case, it’s also the reason why locals flock here in large numbers when many others also serve Roti Bakar. Because, let’s face it, the turnover is high, the ingredients fresh and tasty, and of course there is the added advantage of eating smoky wood charred toast from a quirky contraption. And given the choice why wouldn’t you?

This, my first experience of Roti Bakar went off like a bomb in my mouth. I was struck dumb as I mentally probed the contents that provided this sensory overload: Crisp then spongy; sweet, salty, slippery; rich, really fresh egg yolk, silky egg white, soy sauce; palm sugar, coconut and more egg enriched unctuousness in the jam.

Crushing the smoky toasted exterior with my teeth, the soft centre of the sliced bread disintegrated on my tongue and the gooey egg, butter, coconut paste combination spread across the palate, soy sauce tipping the balance back from the sweet, rich Kaya.

I don’t think I heard another word spoken until it was finished, and then another round of toast appeared to mop up the rest of the egg.

I could not help myself. In spite of this being my second breakfast - following a nearby Hakka style Yum Cha - I dived into the intensely flavoured mixture of textures, washed down with a rich velvet stream of strong coffee mixed with condensed milk and a hit of chocolate, that left a caramel after taste creeping across my palate. I was temporarily rendered deaf, mute and blind to all around me. I had surely landed in breakfast heaven.

You can also read about Toh Soon Café
at My Wise Wife and Penang Food Galore

TV Casting calls: foodies as cheap fodder

2009-08-25T17:46:00.046+10:00

In the Early Period of television broadcasting, the landscape was rapidly populated with locally produced homemaking shows hosted by prim home economists and righteous nutritionists.
These shows exhibited traits inherited practically wholesale from their radio progenitors. In the Modern Period, however, reproduction has become a central concept of television programming.
TV Cooking Shows: The Evolution of a Genre, by Kathleen Collins

Marketers see Food Bloggers as the gate keepers to the food world online and therefore target people like myself. Such is the nature of food blogging. Marketing and PR folk don't really understand blogging and think we operate like journalists, willing to paste their press releases into our templates and hitting publish at the whim of their lascivious approach.

Most recently I find I am becoming the target of casting agencies struggling to locate the required people for their cattle call of TV auditions. And what do I get out of it in return for publicising their auditions? Nada. They get paid, but I don't. Hello, isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Having worked in Marketing and Advertising for over twenty years, I keep abreast of media trends and am fortunate to have insight into the industry. As a consequence I have not regurgitated any of these casting calls here. But for the average food blogger it's different, a casting call may - in the backs of their minds - be construed to be the opportunity to the career in the food media they've always dreamt of. In the main it will not be. More likely it will be a humiliating experience, because cooking shows that use amateurs are all about a free ride for the TV station and production company at the expense of the passionate amateur gastronome.

Think of a traditional, well produced TV show as a banquet. In order to elaborately feed the hunger of many with enticing morsels, thousands of dollars are required, along with a brigade of highly strung creative professionals who take a great deal of time to prepare an offering which is downed in mere moments. After it is served, there is no guarantee of a good review or repeat custom.

The fortunes of any free to air network TV show is determined by Advertising. Production companies dream up TV shows in the hope that they will be purchased by a TV network who - hoping to draw big marketing dollars - in turn shop the idea to media companies and advertising agencies. The idea is to use these gatekeepers to lure multi national company marketing people to spend millions advertising during the airing of the show. Ad dollars then cover cost of producing and purchasing the show with the aim of everyone making a profit.

Advertisers hope that the viewers will be enticed in turn to buy the items advertised. The more popular the show, the higher the ratings, and the better the exposure for the advertisers, who aim for a sales spike and to build brand loyalty - preferably the 'cradle to grave' variety, which influences children and in turn their parents to buy those particular brands for life.

Compared to sit-coms, soap operas, tele-movies, mini-series, comedy and dramas, reality shows are cheap TV shows to make. They are the snack food of TV: highly processed, full of undesirable ingredients and are unhealthy in the grand scheme of not being a source of income for professional actors and media personalities in our small film and television market.

The sets used in reality shows are cheap, the lighting rigs simple and the cast is generally made up mostly of non professionals who, provide their own wardrobe and cost considerably less than actors and performers to hire. And because people leave the room or channel surf during ad breaks, advertisers will also pay for product placement of their goods during the filming of the show, again reducing the cost of the production for the makers. Instead of offering you an adventurously creative meal to dwell on and ruminate over, reality shows are equivalent to the cheap thrill of junk food when a Stoner gets 'the munchies'.

Last year, when it was clear that Big Brother had out stayed its welcome globally on prime time TV, Australia's Channel 10 was hungry to continue reaping the rewards of cheap reality shows filled with free products supplied by advertisers. They followed up with a syndicated version of the USA's Biggest Loser. But although it rated well, this show did not meet the heights of Big Brother in the ratings. It also had a limited scope in terms of which companies would advertise alongside a dieting show.

Then late last year I received an email from a production company asking if I would consider auditioning for a new food show, or at the very least, could I spread the word amongst cooking enthusiasts that auditions were being held?

I declined on both accounts. The show was Australia's syndicated version of Masterchef. It was a concept ripe for heavy product placement of kitchen equipment and packaged food goods, using non actors for entertainment.

When I made background enquiries about Australian MasterChef I discovered that this was not going to take the form of the UK MasterChef, as aired on the Lifestyle Channel, where talented cooks who were looking for a career as a chef were discovered. Instead it was to be a sensationalised reality show hybrid, taking elements of the original and mixing in all the tricks of previous reality shows that played people's natures against each other, distorted personalities with clever editing and generally reduced the contestants to awkward and cliched caricatures. If you will, it was to be a combo cooking show meets Survivor, Big Brother, Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

Being a talented non professional cook was not going to be the primary thrust of the casting of contestants. Typically in this medium, it was key in auditions to locate personalities that could be moulded to create popular entertainment and potentially be marketable in the broader sense of advertising and merchandise opportunities. There would be the scope to guage popular sentiment from the viewership via Social Marketing in order to adjust the show in order to engage the viewers as the series stretched out.

Being in the business of spin myself, I struggle to watch reality shows. For me it's like knowing the ending of a book before I read it. I know exactly what will happen. But worse is the notion that naive individuals will be manipulated and humiliated for an audience braying for blood in the most base form of human nature, for the purposes of entertainment and primarily so that the TV network and production company turn big fat profit.

Reality shows are reliant on drama. If there is no naturally occurring dramatics, they must generate it. They do this by magnifying small things that appear irrelevant in the day to day of the contestants performance, they do it by inserting expressions and sound bites out of context to create 'issues on set'. They do it by repeating these scenes after each ad break. To my chagrin, this is undertaken at the cost of the dignity of contestants aiming for a chance to change their fortunes.

Aussie MasterChef's final episode recorded an average national audience of 3.745 million, making it the most watched non-sport TV show, beating out Australian Idol in 2004 which held the previous record of 3.3million viewers. Capitalising on this success in the near future will be the celebrity version of the show and a childrens version is up for discussion.

The advertisers involved are ecstatic to say the least, and naturally the other networks are scrambling for their piece of the action. Before the MasterChef series had finished airing, I was sent a casting call for Channel 9's The Coles Great Aussie Cook Off, a show that "aims to find Australia's greatest family of cooks". The idea would appear to be a spin off of a Coles instore promotion which was a “real-time shop & cook competition”. Not a supporter of the big two supermarkets, I again declined to promote the show.

Channel 7 is not to be left out, a couple of weeks later they too contacted me for their show My Kitchen Rules which is not a follow up to My Restaurant Rules but a challenge between teams of two home cooks, filmed cooking in their own kitchens. They are required to transform their homes into a restaurant "for one pressure filled night" - heaven help us! How cheap is that? And thus far no indication of a prize for any contestants.

And finally, the last horse to bolt over my line is the LifeStyle Food Channels' Come Dine With Me. This is syndicated from the UK's Granada production and is also produced in Germany, France, Hungary, Spain, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, The Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Twenty half hour episodes are planned to air early next year, with hopes that it will be as big a success as its tedious UK counterpart, which has run to nine series.

If you haven't seen it, this one takes five average folk who feel that they are good dinner party cooks and hosts. Again they cook in their home kitchens, taking it in turns to host a dinner party for the other contestants, who then grade them on their performance. Expect to hear petty comments, general nastiness, personality clashes, whilst witnessing teary melt-downs and amateur dramatics along with tasteless decor and general humiliations, in this even cheaper production. In England contestants vie for a thousand pound prize, but as this show has not announced any sponsors, a prize is yet to be determined.

Watching the networks scramble into this genre is fascinating to watch. The success of their productions will be weighted heavily on their timing and execution. My advice is if you plan to dip your toe into the action, be wary and go in with a sense of humour. Expect nothing and you may be pleasantly surprised. But most of all be prepared to be manipulated cheaply for entertainment purposes.

From Ratatouille to Meatballs

2009-08-21T15:00:00.006+10:00

The tiny town of Chewandswallow was very much like any other tiny town except for its weather which came three times a day, at breakfast lunch and dinner.

But it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers.

Life for the townspeople was delicious until the weather took a turn for the worse. The food got larger and larger and so did the portions. Chewandswallow was plagued by damaging floods and storms of huge food. the town was a mess and the people feared for their lives.

Something had to be done, and in a hurry.

Get ready for the hype machine! Soon to be released in the USA is the animated movie 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'. Based on a children's book written by author Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett it's about a town where it rains food at meal times and features James Caan and Mr T along with the stars Bill Hader and Anna Faris.

In the making since August 2006, Aussies will have to wait until November 26 before they can see it. Meanwhile it will debut in US cinemas on September 18, and Sony has slated it's release to video games for XBox 360, PSP, Playstation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS on September 9.

Co-directors Philip Lord and Chris Miller say that it will be an homage to and parody of disaster movies such as Twister, Armageddon, but I wonder, will the foodie theme be enough to make it as popular with audiences as Ratatouille was?

WTF? Spotted in Asia

2009-07-29T02:17:00.005+10:00

New Zealand Cheddar and White Chocolate Doughnut
sounds odd but a good tasting combo on a light, fluffy doughnut

Happy toast and doughnut keyrings

Firecracker lobster crisps: A curious flavour but great with a beer

Another food journey has just ended, we called this one the Hawker Nose Bag Holiday. My cholesterol must be through the roof and I've got fat in spite of wandering until foot sore in hot and extremely humid conditions.

We sampled so many hawker morsels that by the end of the trip I felt nauseous from all the lard, ghee, coconut cream, condensed milk, sugar and refined flours, we consumed. But it was a trip of a lifetime as the business of hawker food in South East Asia lessens in popularity and younger generations go to university in order to move beyond family food stalls into professional lives. Stay tuned for some delicious tales from the Hawker Nose Bag Holiday.

My Restaurant. It’s All Yours

2009-06-30T15:10:00.007+10:00

Photo reproduced from The Age Online

"...it has my South Yarra friend wanting to claim it as her local
even though it's 10 minutes' drive away"
Matt Preston, The Age

Imagine if you will, a creamy sweetness that make your taste buds shriek, fused like a fine lacquer to a shattering shard of crispness. For most people this is heaven, and even though - due to a surfeit of taste buds -I am not a sweet tooth, I too was transported.

They say our predilection for foods that are both sweet and fat is a consequence of primal instinct. Apparently food occurring in nature that is not poisonous is generally both fatty in texture and sweet, which makes it desirable to all mankind. We are all also drawn to things that are thin and crisp, hence the popularity of deep fried snacks like crisps.

But I digress; you might assume - given the description of this particular confection - I was in a fine patisserie, eating a concoction originally served upon gilded platters to people of royal extraction. You'd be wrong.

I was at My Restaurant. No, not my own restaurant, that's the name of the venue. The setting itself is a scruffy low rent building, but bucking the trend for cafes and bars filled with grubby thrift-shop style furniture, it has clean modern dining tables and chairs. Common to modern dining venues there is also the ubiquitous open kitchen, but this one is fronted by a bain-marie filled with curries. Ok so, it doesn't sound flash, but it is honest and clean, your cutlery sits in baskets on the table with paper napkins and you can clearly see the selection of beverages in the drinks fridge, which you may happen to sit next to.

I don't tend to frequent venues based on décor, hype or fashion. My favourites are all about the food. So this place is one of my little secrets, a place where I don't have to fight for a table with people who want to be seen, and although I am loath to give it up, that amazing sweet has finally loosened my tongue. Location-wise, My Restaurant is off most people's radars, being away from Chapel Street in the least sexy part of High Street, Windsor, not far from Edwards Tavern.

In the last couple of years I've probably eaten more meals at My Restaurant than anywhere else, because not only is the food delicious, it is cheap and unpretentious. The service is friendly and eager, and I like that sometimes the staff's kids are doing homework at the next table. I also like that I can get a meal at My Restaurant, after 9pm after going to the theatre on a Monday night. And I don't think we've ever spent more than $14 for two courses, inclusive of drinks.

My Restaurant is a Mamak (Tamil Muslim) restaurant. It is halal, serving food from Singapore, Malaysia and South India. Although open for lunch seven days a week, you won't be able to dine here on Friday or Saturday night. The clientele is mostly South East Asian along with students of all nations and those who have travelled and developed a taste for such food. And the food, including the excellent roti, is cooked to order. The turnover is fast, with regulars also picking up takeaways.

The menu lists sixty two items - of which there are about thirty vegetarian options - however you will see even more items adorning the walls on a vinyl banner. Some of these items, such as idlis are only available on Sunday. There are Murtabak, stuffed roti with a side of curry sauce; long delicate Dosai, fermented rice crepes rolled with a variety of fillings and served with sambol and chutneys; fried noodles and Biryani rice's. I prefer Nonya style noodles, so am not a fan of the three Mee Goreng listed.

There are two curries however, that I might even crawl over hot coals for: the goat curry -which I can never resist - and the Chilli prawn. The goat is complex, unctuous, slightly oily and tender. The prawns seem a simple dish but strike a perfect balance in flavor. Both can be ordered to have with rice, roti or vadai; either may be ordered in medium or large portions.

Often I'm drawn to the Roti meal – a thali featuring a generous serve of roti, raita and three curries from the bain marie. Unlike many venues in Melbourne, the roti is made to order. Various curries, many of them vegetable, that don't appear on the menu can be tasted in this package, though invariably I cannot resist making the goat curry one of them. Like a small child at a sweet counter, I take my time choosing my three curries, frequently succumbing to trying something new at the suggestion of the staff.

Recently the treasure trove of a bain-marie gave up a minced lamb curry, subtly spiced, containing chunks of potato in a thin, non dairy based sauce that fabulously lacked the cloying fattiness of many lamb dishes. It also boasted a chicken curry had the silky texture of poached chicken in a delicious creamy orange sauce seasoned with a garam that tasted vaguely of nigella seeds.

The raita changes too, my favourite is the bright green mint raita which is a perfect palate cleanser and bridge between the various curries and takes the edge of any searing chilli hits. I tried to get the recipe, but it's a closely held family secret.

Roti is a specialty at My Restaurant. I love watching it being stretched, tossed and folded on the large griddle. There are twelve varieties listed, you can have it with an assortment of embellishments: onion, eggs, cheese, chilli, banana and other sweet toppings. And then there's the wonderful Kottu roti – where it is finely shredded with a manic two handed chopping action on the griddle plate, then tossed with seasonings, green chilli, egg and your choice of meat or vegetables.

And now to the piece de resistance, that wonder of wonders I described in the beginning, Tissu Roti. A large circle of paper thin roti cooked with ghee is folded into a cone. Unctuous condensed milk made rich with the melted ghee or margarine, or both, is poured over the hot cone of pastry and fuses like caramel to form layer upon layer of toasted sweetness.

Its arrival strikes awe as it sits likes Harry Potter's sorting hat upon the table; a perfectly crisp roti and so fine as to be like caramel lacquered pastry. It's irresistible as you gradually eat your way around the cone, pulling off more crisp, sticky shards that melt in your mouth. A small pool of the caramel - like a vaguely salted, thin, Dulce de Leche - sits at the base of the plate and can be used to dip into for those who prefer their desserts extra sweet.

Wiping the unctuous sweet ooze from my face, I washed down the Tissu Roti with delicious, strong, Tea Tarik, containing yet more condensed milk. It's probably the most sugar I've consumed in the last month, but boy, was it worth it. Now, imagining the sweet crunch between my teeth has me wanting it and goat curry all over again.

Now my secret's out, please share it sparingly. I'd still like to get a seat.

My Restaurant and Takeaway

186 High Street, Windsor, Victoria

ph: 9521 4100

The flavor of grass

2009-06-21T14:16:00.012+10:00

"Ponder well on this point:
the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a
more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table."
Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-1888)

I always think best whilst lying on my back.

In Ben's Balinese villa, Dewi sunk her lithe, oily fingers into the knots in my limbs, massaging away the humdrum of city life. A sense of relief swept over me. In tranquil surrounds, with my eyes closed, I was comfortably numb. A moment of pure stillness held my focus, before a childhood memory bubbled to the surface.

I was of course lying on my back. Around my neck was a daisy chain, and around me bees droned their way across the lawn. In the quiet, I had been transported back to when I was six years old, lying cushioned on the turf of the common that lay behind our house in England.

I recall I was chewing a young shoot of grass. The sweetness of the white of the shoot filled my mouth and as I made my way towards the dark tip, I was totally mesmerized by the complexity of its flavours: sweet, sharp, mellow and then finishing bitter.

Clouds rolled over the sun. Feeling a sudden chill I rolled over and sat up. There she was, waving me over; Auntie Renee or rather Ree-nie as she liked to be called.

Renee was our neighbor. A stout, childless woman with brassy hair and a penchant for bright, floral aprons, who had in her middle age, finally married her childhood sweetheart. When they were young, her beau Bert had gone to war. Renee had married another - one unable to be sent away - an older man. But Bert was constant and would have no other; she his only beloved. He waited for her. And when her husband died, he again patiently courted her.

Standing by the gate at the rear of her house Renee had been watching me amuse myself. We were silently bonded by our shared a secret: we hid Mum's crippling depression, even from Dad.

We said nothing. Taking me inside, my co-conspirator handed me a glass of milk and a Marmite sandwich; thick, sweet white bread, spread thickly with butter and the cloying, tangy-savoury, yeasty, black spread. Just as with the grass, I paused over each bite and dissected the experience - taking in the textures and the complexity of the Marmite, neutralised by the richness of a mouthful of unpasteurised milk. A simple yet reassuring meal for a precocious palate, watched over by a bemused sympathiser.

Next door, mum was fast asleep. On my summer holidays, she spent most of the day unable to rouse herself from her bed. Rising only a couple of hours before Dad came home, she'd fly into a frenzy of activity, tidying the house and preparing dinner.

On school days I would go into her wardrobe and pick out clothes for her, dragging them off hangers and placing them on the bed before climbing up to kiss and hold her until she was roused.

On the worst days I would pull on her outstretched hands to drag her out of bed. Then, she would - as if on auto pilot - boil me an egg and make me a slice of toast, served with a glass of milk, while I put on my school uniform. She held my hand and trudged the short distance to the school gates, expressionless and lost in the quagmire of her confused thoughts.

For many years I detested the thought of boiled eggs and glasses of milk. I couldn't bring myself to have them and by then my nutty professor father had concluded that milk contained too many sugars and would potentially rot my teeth. By the time I was old enough to make my own breakfast, to my relief, the school was given instructions that I was neither to have milk at recess, nor with my typically nasty British school dinners.

The demon that held Mum clenched between its jaws was not to have a name or treatment until she was almost sixty. In its grip she was frail and vulnerable. I rode her illness with resolve. Like being on the front of the most torturous roller coaster, I stoically withheld my anguish for nearly 40 years. But in the face of her personality disorder, Mum triumphed every night with amazing Cantonese, pan-Asian and Fusion food. She gave this skill to me - it is also how I show that I love my closest friends and my own beloved.

The night before Dewi's massage opened the door that led me back to my childhood, I had cooked a meal in our friend's Balinese villa. Guided unconsciously by my inner muse, it was a pan-Asian, it was fusion and I was sharing it with people I loved.

On three long, modern rectangular silver platters sat mahi-mahi barbecued with Sumatran rempah on rice noodles; a cucumber, coriander, shallot, green mango salad with smoked chicken and a light Vietnamese dressing, garnished with crushed peanuts; a salad of the slimmest young green beans, blanched and rolled in sesame oil, tossed with roasted red capsicum and fresh young watercress, and then drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

I owe that skill and the enjoyment of cooking to my mother, who somehow, through the blur of her mental illness was always able to show me her love and appreciation via her creative cookery.

My life has been in many respects like the young grass shoot; sweet and sharp - at times mellow - with a bitter finish. While I would not wish it on others, it has certainly been a character building journey.

And in that magic moment, while being soothed with small expert Asian hands kneading away my pain - lying on my back thinking - I finally understood my 'cooking mojo' and where to locate it.

Makan Pagi Canggu: Masakan Padang

2009-06-13T01:30:00.009+10:00

Call me a masochist but there is definitely pleasure
in certain kinds of pain.

It was mid morning and the sun was intense. Mango trees - boughs heavy with green fruit - cast magnificent shadows on the ground, and dappled the light on the faces of children in orange plaid school uniforms making their way up and down the main street of the village. Uncomfortably damp, I tried to find a breeze but the humid air hung like a wet blanket, dashing any hopes of my emerging into a cool oasis. Just moments before, I had been in a delicious kind of hell.

Inside, the moisture had beaded heavily on my skin. Rivulets of sweat ran down my face and swam in a pool on my chest that was feeding a stream between my breasts to my belly. My hair clung to my neck like a wet rag, my shirt gradually becoming sheer with moisture. I counted my blessings that Balinese women traditionally wore semi sheer Kebaya s, and that I wouldn't be offending anyone with the emerging outline of my bra through my thin linen shirt.

A comment was made that I looked like I had been crying, but looking around the weathered old timber table and rattan chairs; I found that I wasn't the only one suffering this condition. In the heat of the shady outdoor room, with our feet planted on a cool tiled floor, we were all red faced, blotchy and wet. Three foreigners suffering in the airless climes of a Canggu village eatery in Bali - earnestly pressed into our pursuit. All of us exploring our preference for native cuisine, over Cuisine Touristic, while pointlessly trying to mop the resulting perspiration from our heads.

Gasping for air, a tidal wave of chilli and spice induced sweat prickled my pores and welled up behind my knees as I made my way through a meal that few foreign visitors deign to eat, and to that end a plate was pushed away, barely touched by the fourth person in our party. For me, the pleasure of eating was intense - despite the feeling that I was sitting atop an erupting volcano, turning me into a leaking human spigot.

I wondered what the cook and host must think of us – was she proud or were we to become a hilarious anecdote to be told to others in the village? I know we're crazy, that's a given. And it was certainly worth it to take this journey into her culinary inferno. Her dishes were so tasty, with melt in the mouth meat, intentionally chewy fish, and fresh vegetables. These Indonesian dishes were prepared in ways that offered a range of textures and flavours that celebrated the spices native to the region.

Now people keep telling me that the Balinese don't like chilli, but every time I have eaten like the locals in village 'restorans' and hawker stalls I have found myself in the grip of a heavily spiced meal with the full side effects of capsaicin. This particular meal was Masakan Nasi Padang, an Indonesian spread of various curries, deep fried items, sambol (chilli chutneys) and blanched vegetables eaten with rice. The recipes originated in West Sumatra, the cuisine of the Minangkabau and usually halal, but the Hindu Balinese also love it and they include pork in the selection.

For this style of eating, a generous serve of steamed rice is added to your plate and a selection of toppings chosen from either the window display of the venue or from a glass cabinet in an open air venue or hawker stall. In larger, city restaurants, all the items displayed are dished up on separate plates - often covering your entire table - and you pay only for those you have sampled. Uneaten dishes are transferred to the next table for their perusal. None of this food is refrigerated. It is believed that the spices actually preserve the food to a certain degree.

In this particular instance the venue was at the front of a family home, with cooking and preparation occurring in the family kitchen, the drinks station and the behind the the street facing display. In a glass cabinet fronting the main road of the village there were three stainless steel bain-marie inserts sitting on a tiled bench with heavily sauced curries. Next along the bench were four more, with deep fried then sauced dishes, another with soy braised eggs, and three of blanched vegetables. Balancing on top were a stainless bowl of peanut sauce used on Gado Gado or sate, and a dish of fresh green chilli sambol. On the glass shelf above towered plates of deep fried meats & patties arranged in columns and something that had been grilled in banana leaves.

From a large rice cooker a mound of fluffy steamed rice was dispensed to our plates. I chose Rendang immediately. This particular beef Rendang was the real deal – a dry curry made with an intense, dark rempah that is is designed to soften the sinews in beef. An excellent example of one of our home staples, this one was complex in its range of spices and ramped things up again from the generic, thickly sauced version - employing coconut milk - that I had eaten the night before in a restaurant catering to the local expat community.

I passed over the coconut curry with slow braised pork and green vegetables and went for small dice of tempeh marinated in tamarind, onion, chilli and sweet Kecap Manis, that had been fried crisp. From the next platter came grated, deep fried potato stir-fried with chilli, tamarind, galangal and tomato, which was chewy and tangy – a great foil for the dry curry. From the top shelf I chose a couple of plain fritters, as it turned out, the only items I picked that did not contain chilli, but went very well with the explosive green chilli sambol. Finally I chose blanched Kangkung – water spinach – with bean shots and semi sweet palm sugar infused peanut sauce flecked with minced lemongrass, galangal and tiny ballistic strength chillis.

I passed a tablespoon of the green chilli sambol to Mr Sticky to eat with his meal but unfortunately his breakfast brain was engaged, driving him to mistakenly put the whole lot in his mouth at once. He sat very still and realizing his anguish, I surrendered one of my corn fritters to him to rescue his mouth. In return I found myself with a mouthful of deep fried mackerel encrusted with pulverised red chilli – seeds and oil; deliciously excruciating.

When I felt that I could not go on, I reached for a few sheets from the green plastic table top toilet paper dispenser and mopped my entire head. Then taking a mouth of Kopi Susu - finely ground local coffee taken like Turkish coffee and stirred through with condensed milk - I found the sweet, gritty beverage took the edge off my pain for five seconds. The heaviness of the condensed milk carried most of the coffee grounds to the bottom of the glass and the result was strong, creamy coffee, forming the perfect counterfoil to a palate whimpering for mercy from the after burn of local style Nasi Padang. The respite was enough to allow me to forge once more into Hades.

The pain made it difficult to speak. We concentrated mostly silently on our own personal Everest's, climbing painfully to the peak of intensity and navigating our way carefully down the other side, while our abstaining friend drank coffee and spoke of other things, of what I'm not sure. I found it took my full morning concentration to compose each mouthful upon my spoon, in such a way that I would not repeat Mr Sticky's mistake with the sambol.

When my plate was clean – bar a wedge of rice that I was too full to eat – I felt as though I had run ten kilometers in the desert wearing a plastic suit. I was exhausted, invigorated and burning inside and out. I felt the hot slurry engorging my gastrointestinal tract. We concluded that this must be the way to stay slim in a climate that makes exercise outdoors difficult. With cries of 'Enak sagali' (delicious) we surrendered two dollars each for our meal and walked out to the street in search of a cool breeze.

I felt the heat in my body for a long time, sustaining me and robbing me of hunger for many more hours than usual after a meal. Lunch passed with no inclination to eat. The abstainer amongst us ate chocolate brownies purchased at the local market over the course of the afternoon, but I felt that nothing more could pass my lips save, iced lime tea.

When we made it back to our villa, I plunged into the pool and felt steam rising from my head as I endeavoured to shake off the residue of the delicious gut burning heat. I bobbed there with the flavours still lingering in my mind and on my tongue. All thoughts of the pain superseded by the exhilaration of the adventure and endorphin rush, the madness of the moment and the sheer love of life.

Momo under the knife

2009-04-22T00:46:00.052+10:00

“God, grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Reinhold Niebuhr

Greg Malouf is a brave man. A few years back, after a couple of heart bypass operations and a heart transplant saw him taking it easy in the dessert section of his Melbourne restaurant Momo - and his anointed Kurt Sampson at the pass - he would cheerfully cut himself a portion of cheese along with each one ordered by a customer, keeping a spoon in his back pocket so as to avail himself of a mouthful of crème fraîche whenever he went into the cool room.

He knew it would have a serious impact on his already fragile health. But I wonder, is this perhaps the passion for the delicious, along with sheer determination, that has seen him rise again and again like the mythical phoenix?

In the spirit of disclosure, I’ve long been a fan of Greg's. In fact since years ago in Hong Kong when he and Michelle Garnaut brought a taste of what Aussie foodiephiles were taking for granted at their venue 97 in Lang Kwai Fong. I recall my uncle proudly taking us to latest hot spot in Honkers only to see his face fall when my father said – “Yeah this is the kind of trendy Yuppie stuff we get at home. I bet this guy’s an Aussie”.

Dad was right. It was Greg’s cooking. After a stint in Melbourne with Dennis Hagger and stages in France and in Austria, followed by employment under local gastronomical luminaries Mietta O’Donnell, Gloria Staley and Hermann Schneider, his talent began to emerge in earnest.

So I have followed his career, visited Malouf family restaurants, gone to Stones to await the return of Momo, read the cookbooks, attended the master-classes and got the autograph. I am not ashamed of my fascination, following his progress has been very fulfilling on the palate and always left me groaning with excessive abundance. Thankfully my career has grown along with his, allowing me an occasional extravagant meal made by his own hands.

Greg is the first to admit that he used to over complicate his dishes with an exuberant amassing of ingredients, but with experience it is evident that he has gradually pared things back. He himself has said that he has learned restraint. I have never tired of the evolution of his cooking and in the latest incarnation of Momo we see a very mature offering which I would deign to say makes other local ‘hot’ ethnically focused chefs seem way less sophisticated in their conceptualisation.

The dining room at the new Momo is a swish adddition to Collins Street's Grand Hyatt. It reminds me of the fashionable luxe dining rooms that my parents took me to in Europe in the 1970’s. There is abundant space between both the large, comfortable seats and the tables, unlike so many fashionable Melbourne venues where a private conversation is out of the question.

The lighting is soft – if a little dark for photography where I was seated at the head of a table of eight diners - and the feel is golden. Gone, are the ethnic dark wood screens and faux Levantine panoply. In its place, highlighted by Swarovski pendants of twinkling light, is the ideal vehicle for fine dining; smooth and luxurious without being ostentatious or intimidating. Greg’s Kitchen is no longer in view, leaving a hushed space jingling with the chorus of excited revellers and excellent, discreet waitstaff.

Perfectly in keeping with this is the food. My friends were looking forward to more of the same from the old Momo, but as we ate, I realised that the food of the old Momo is now being served at Mama Ganoush, and that it would feel a little out of place in the current environment. Clearly Greg has moved on and with it has come a delicious, grown up space to match the new direction in cooking. While I curled my toes with happiness, a friend was disappointed at the loss of rusticity.

Our choice was slightly curtailed by one of our group not liking any form of aquatic comestible, something that we were all forced to avoid due to the restaurant not serving a la carte. Two polite phone calls preceeding the evening covered this and any allergies to be considered, along with my credit card details. The shared meal concept and prices were discussed, and you will see them on the menu above. There would appear to be two sittings and we chose 8.30pm.

The wine list covers a lot of ground and I was grateful to the Sommelier as I had to find a happy medium between the type of wine I knew my friends favoured, and what would be most complementary to Greg's cooking.

From the menu our group chose the $100pp Arabesque Sharing Menu of two entrees, two mains, two sides and all the desserts. We knew that we did not have the fortitude to eat any more than that, as tempting as it may have been. At one masterclass, Greg had said that it was against the values that his mother had instilled in him to serve tiny portions.

Unlike Greg’s shared degustations at Stone’s this was not a slew of self service dishes to hand from person to person at the table. Adding to the sense of refinement, two waiters attended us, plating up and reviving the seldom seen art of silver service in Melbourne. After detailed descriptions and happy banter from Stuart we set upon the items on our plates.

First came the mini pita breads that A1 Bakery used to bake for Greg, though I believe they are now made on premise. Small puffed discs of heaven arrived on a bread board with olive oil mixed with pomegranate molasses. At the other end sat a burnished Turkish coffee pot filled with crudites. They were gloriously young and crisp while the bread formed a fluffy foil dipped in unctuous oil with sweet, tart molasses. A bottle of 96 Marc Bredif Vouvray, scented with stone fruit set us up for the first two courses.

The first plate we had chosen was Musakhan. Mountain bread shrouds wrapped daintily around subtly spiced quail meat, a paste of chickpeas and shallots. Where once Greg might have used this dish to smack you in the face with cinnamon and baharat - and he would have served it in a pouch - we had a morsel more akin to a lighter, eastern European dumpling in its pared back refinement.

Crunchy golden kataifi wrapped zucchini flowers with almond and barberry rice stuffing served with hot yoghurt sauce were a delicate and crisp three mouthfuls of earthy flavour. The textures were the focus in a way that is missed in the almost too common battered favourite of the Melbourne bistro scene.

His fattouché is something I have eaten on a number of occasions and although not ordered, was curious about its new refinement - along with that of the pigeon bistayeea. I would have loved to have also tried the Ras el Hanout King Prawns with crab and preserved lime. The Weekend Australian described it as ‘halved and bulging with crab, tomato and angel hair noodles is like a spaghetti marinara, refined and revisited’.

The milk fed veal was melt in the mouth and sat with a slim dolmade. Sinking into an intense velvety parsnip skordalia it had a sensual quality. I lingered over each mouthful discerning the subtle notes of ginger with pepper and a vague hint of cinnamon that reminded me of a gentle version of a Vietnamese braise. Alongside, Nicola potatoes, beets and courgettes with melted cumin gruyere formed a rich melange of comforting flavours. Thankfully the 06 Poderi Colla Barbera had enough clout for those at the table who are accustomed to big Aussie reds, but not as to overpower the dish.

The Honey cardamom duck was so luscious as to make me wish that it was a dish that would never end. I have always held the impression that Greg’s handling of duck stems from working with a team of Chinese chefs in the 97 days and no doubt impresses Hong Kong diners at Restaurant Olive, where he consults. The spicy Sujuk sausage made with ground lamb shoulder, a puddle of lentils and creamy labneh layered the sensations on the palate, sitting well with the vaguely salty side order of creamed feta spinach.

True to Greg’s palate the sweets were a little overwhelming for me. I am not a sweet tooth but I thought they were marvellous - even if I had to shunt my fairy chimney meringue across to my beloved in defeat. They are the same little delicacies that feature on the cover of his book Tourquoise, but in this instance filled with a rich white chocolate mousse.

Three of the desserts arrived together arranged on the one plate. I began with the pear baklava with candied walnuts. The pastry formed a thin, crisp maple leaf shaped sandwich to the sticky pear and was lubricated by a blob of crème fraîche. I wondered how Greg’s health is.

I took a sweet, crisp mouthful of the meringue next, then moved onto the small gilt glass filled with Mejdool date Brûlée ice cream. Removing the wafer I sunk my spoon in. My head spun with the sweet, creamy intensity of the contents and then I snapped into the wafer. Oh my! This glassy disc of colourless mastic toffee encircled by a crescent of honey cardamon tuille truly took my breath away.

In this sweet I had the memory of George Calombaris’ spoon of mastic toffee that is served at the end of his Press Club Symposium degustation - as a much needed digestif. But Greg’s was the sophisticated version, tricky, but not made in a theatrical way, just serving exactly the same purpose in an adult manner and providing a textural foil to the feast.

I set the wafer and toffee aside for last and waded into the final dessert of poached stone fruit, fresh and dried figs which had become lacquered by the melting prickly pear sorbet. Three pale orange quenelles of sorbet crowned the fruit, a soft pastel palette of autumn that complemented the maple leaf shaped baklava I had just devoured. The plush feel of the fruit yeilding in my mouth sat in semi erotic contrast to the other desserts.

A glass of Heggies Sticky served alongside dessert made me feel light headed with sweetness, and ready for a cup of peppermint tea. A number of tea blends are offered, along with Turkish coffee. The Sahara mint blend was perfectly fragrant without being overly pungent and arrived with six petit fours. Perhaps overkill, but joyous to the sweet tooth's at the table who chose neither tea, nor coffee but were quick to savour the rest of these morsels after I chose a dark chocolate oozing with profoundly piquant raspberry filling.

For the first time ever I did not feel overstuffed and exhausted like a teary toddler after one of Greg’s meals. I felt elated as always and still sated. The meal was as much food for thought and rumination, as for the obvious. Straggling, our party were the last to leave the restaurant, seen off to the lift by a procession of weary staff, glad no doubt to see the end of their working day. I applaud their efforts.

If there was one thing that marred my experience of Momo, it was the thudding doof-doof of a sub woofer coming from the adjoining Spice Market Bar - Mezze & cocktail lounge. I felt it vibrate our table like a passing hoon on Sydney Road and the rhythmic thud felt at odds with the mood of the restaurant. The contorted faces of Spice Market patrons pressed up against the windows looking into Momo evoked the feeling that I was a Shrink looking on to an asylum. Perhaps, by the time I have saved enough shekels to pay another visit, this will have changed?

MOMO

Grand Hyatt Melbourne
Lower Plaza - entry via lift opposite bar Ru Co

123 Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia

ph. +61(3) 9650 0660

WTF? Fast Food Frenzy

2009-03-05T17:12:00.004+11:00

An American woman who paid for a 10-piece meal of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets became irate after she was told the store was out of them.

So she called 911. Three times.

"This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one," Latreasa Goodman told police.

"This is an emergency."

The McNugget meltdown happened last week and ended with Goodman, 27, getting a notice to appear in court on a charge of misusing 911, according to a recently released police report.

Goodman told investigators she tried to get a refund for the 10-piece McNuggets but the cashier told her all sales are final.

"I called 911 because I couldn't get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets," Goodman told police.

The cashier told police she offered Goodman a larger portion of food for the same price to make up for it, but said Goodman got "irate", the report states.

Goodman reportedly yelled, "I don't want a McDouble and small fry," the cashier told investigators.

Dispatchers for 911 told police Goodman called the emergency number three times and on each occasion was told an officer was en route.

"Goodman maintained the attitude 'This is an emergency, my McNuggets are an emergency'," the report states.

McNuggets, introduced to the McDonald's menu in 1983, are sold in more than 100 countries.

By Will Greenlee of SNS

Bangkok Floating Market Food

2009-02-18T10:23:00.002+11:00

The influx of Chinese migrants brought a range of new dishes to the Thai market stalls; and most snacks and street food are still of Chinese origin - only a few, like green papaya salad are truely Thai. Hawkers soon left the market place and sought their customers elsewhere: on the canals, in the streets, in boats; with bamboo poles slung over their shoulders, and later wheeling their wares on carts.
David Thompson, Thai Food

The resourcefulness of food hawkers never ceases to amaze me, and this time it's the ingenuity of these mobile kitchens. Here Thai vendors manage to braise, brew, grill and deep fry in shallow longtail boats - the likes of which the average tourist has struggles to clamber into for their organised tours of the floating market. And the food? Delicious.

As always, some of the best food we have eaten on our travels has cost us a couple of bucks from a hawker. This time it was morning and we hunkered by the edge of a klong (canal) just outside Bangkok, slurping slurries of simple, yet heavenly Thai food, as people bartered and shopped around us, the heat of elements rising steadily into a hazy, polluted Bangkok day.

Slow Food Trivia Night, Mon 16 February

2009-02-14T12:40:00.010+11:00

Back by popular demand is the Slow Food Melbourne Gastronomic Trivia Night with MC Amanda Finnis.

Gastronomica is a quiz with a difference. Form a team and pit your wits against your Gastronomica host. How's your knowledge of Australian wine regions? What do you know about the beers of Europe? Do you know your Stilton from your Brie? Your loin from your chump chops? Your béchamel from your bearnaise? How good are your tasting skills - can you identify separate ingredients from one taste of a dish?

Come along and have a go at overthrowing Table Matteo, the reigning gastro-champs (or is that chumps?). Great fun and fantastic prizes - as usual!

Quiz begins at 8pm
Collins Quarter, 86a Collins Street
(between Exhibition and Russell street)
See the Collins Quarter website for location details.

Gastronomica is a quiz night like no other involving:

Appetiser - a special written question
Entrée - 10 general questions
Main Course - 10 multiple choice questions
Palate Cleansers - take on the MC, one-on-one, for a chance of a prize
Dessert - 10 questions on a specialist topic

For each Gastronomica quiz night there will be interactive questions involving a taste or smell ... and a variety of spot quizzes for instant prizes.

The unique quiz that is Gastronomica also features:

The Wheel of Cheese

The Wheel of Cheese is a truly marvellous construction. This specially designed wheel is used to decide the degree of difficulty of certain "spot quizzes" that occur during the night. Will the question be soft, medium or hard?

The Mystery Box

A mystery consumable item is placed inside a box. A clue as to the contents is placed on the top. To guess the contents a gold coin donation is required. At the end of the night the first correct entry to be drawn from a hat wins the box and its contents. All proceeds from The Mystery Box go to a charity of the organiser's choice.

The Instant Review

Teams get the chance to try a wine, spirit, beer, food ... and then write a 25-word review. The review deemed the best by your Gastronomica host, wins a prize.

Collins Quarter would like to invite you to Ra (upstairs) for Champagne and cigars after the trivia or come early for a bite to eat first.

I have seven people in my team and would welcome others...

...Let me know if you'd like to come.

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