mark’s assam laksa, KL

my dad comes from a tiny village called balik pulau in penang, malaysia. i mean village. toilets outside the huts and all that jazz. a purebred city girl, i used to hate going back because there wasn’t any internet, dad didn’t buy a tv for the house that we stayed at when we used to go back, the list goes on. but the one thing i did love about balik pulau was a small coffeeshop an aunt owned with the best bloody assam laksa i had ever and have ever eaten.

assam laksa is a spicy and sour fish-based soup served with shredded fish, laksa noodles, shredded cucumber, pineapple, onions, lettuce, mint, lemongrass and cut red chillis. it’s accompanied by a black shrimp paste that you add as little or as much of into the soup. i, the queen of accompaniments, add as much as they allow me to, and more if i can get away with it!

i haven’t been back to penang in a long while now and had no plans to head there in my most recent trip so i had to find a substitute assam laksa in KL. mark’s assam laksa in the 1 Utama shopping complex in petaling jaya is the best option in my area, although it’s no match for my aunty’s offering.

we normally also order a dessert to combat the spiciness, this time it was cendol (shaved ice with coconut milk, green flour noodles and palm sugar).

bak kut teh in KL

i mentioned in a previous post that i was heading back to KL for a gastro-fest. each time i head back, there’s a list of things that i HAVE to eat in order to consider my time there well spent. one of the main dishes is bak kut teh.

my friendly pal wikipedia describes bak kut teh as ‘meat bone tea’, and is best described as various pieces of meat simmered in a broth of herbs and spices. the broth has a very distinct flavour and the dish probably stands at the more adventurous end of the local food scale for those who are trying malaysian cuisine for the first time.

i normally head to cheow sang, a restaurant in ss2 (a suburb in petaling jaya, selangor). apparently this restaurant now also has a branch in aman suria (another PJ suburb), a stone’s throw from where dad stays at, but this time we decided to head to another bak kut teh restaurant in subang jaya (yet another PJ suburb).

bak kut teh is never complete without a serve of yeow char kuay (fried dough) that you dip into the broth before eating.

my mouth is watering. crap.

you also need to soak freshly chopped garlic and cili padi (birds eye chillis) in soy which you use to dip the meat in later. another key ingredient to the bak kut teh experience

the main cut of meat would be pork ribs. but depending on how adventurous you are you can also opt for tripe, tendons, intestines and stomachs. i’m a rib and stomach girl myself!

this is served with rice, and i personally soak my rice in the broth, soak my meat in the spicy, garlicky soy and then eat that all together (with a soggy yeow char kuay piece if that fits in too!). but, you know, whatever floats your boat.

we normally order a serve of veggies on the side as well, normally lettuce with oyster sauce and garlic.

depending on how monstrous our appetites are dad and i also normally get a small serve of cold tofu (also with oyster sauce and garlic) that is normally served in bak kut teh restaurants.

because of the crazy variety of brunch options in KL i only had this dish once. but man i wish i had more now!

fun in the kitchen – salmon and asparagus

panfried salmon and blanched asparagus with masterfood’s hollandaise finishing sauce. can’t get much easier.

alev alev, elsternwick

wow, this post is totally overdue. it’s ridiculous how far behind i’ve gotten in posting.

i first visited alev alev (450 glen huntly road, elsternwick 3185) MONTHS ago. we felt like trying something new and turkish seemed like a good way to go. we ended up deciding on a platter of mixed grills – mixed kebab, lamb, chicken, lamb cutlet and kofte shish – with hummus and ispanak (spinach) dip.

the mixed grill platter included a basket of turkish bread which was great with the dips…

the spinach dip was so much better than it sounds! and was not only a great accompaniment for the bread but for the meats too.

the hummus was a bit disappointing though, the texture was quite rough – although i guess that’s what you get if it’s home-made – and both of us were probably more used to a smoother dip.

the mixed grill was more than enough for the both of us, and although the mixed kebab was a tad salty everything else was yummy. the rice had been cooked in some sort of stock/broth and was really tasty too!

fast forward a couple of months and i decided i couldn’t be bothered cooking so i got takeout. we shared the mixed grill again… which despite being taken away tasted pretty much exactly as we remembered it…

the salad was crisp and pretty. apart from that, it was… a salad. a necessary evil

we went for the patlican (eggplant) this time along with the ispanak…

which was much better than the hummus. i still think the spinach was the best though!

felt the need to round dinner off with some sweets and when i spied a pack of 4 turkish delights for $3 i had to give it a shot.

there was the original pink delight, which wasn’t bad. the other three though – vanilla, chocolate and nougat – were so sickeningly sweet i couldn’t have more than a nibble. texture-wise they were good, however i have a sweet tongue but it’s not THAT sweet!

would definitely recommend alev alev if you’re feeling like turkish cuisine, they also do a good selection of turkish pastries and kebabs. i’m heading back soon for sure!

fun in the kitchen – baked chicken with barbecue and garlic marinade

just came back from the most amazing gastrofest in KL and Koh Samui, hopefully i’ll be able to post pictures soon! in the meantime here’s a quick dinner i prepared knowing that i would be flat out with work and not having had the time to do a proper trip to the supermarket.

i had some chicken wings and drumsticks in the freezer that i defrosted. i threw some garlic, olive oil and dried herbs together…

before adding some barbecue sauce to finish it off…

and once that was done i popped it on the chicken before leaving it to marinate overnight.

popped it in the oven the next day – 35 minutes at 180 degrees – and served it with some blanched asparagus, cherry tomatoes, rocket and parmesan. done-ski.

shoya, melbourne

hellbent on visiting at least one new restaurant before i leave for KL and thailand, i made a reservation for four at shoya (25 market lane, melbourne 03 9650 0848). when i called the waitstaff informed me that there were three types of dining. the bottom is a smokeless japanese barbecue, the middle is a traditional horigotatsu style area where you have to take off your shoes and sit at a sunken dining table, and the top is a fine dining area. i opted for the horigotatsu area.

we opted to share a bunch of dishes and spent a bit of time navigating through the fairly extensive menu. the waitress we were allocated certainly had her upselling techniques down pat, although while i’m sure it wasn’t her intention i felt just a little bit uneasy with her. we started off with a sashimi platter.

which arrived with a bloody huge lump of wasabi which completely distracted me from the seafood! the waitress assured us that we just HAD to have a selection of chef-selected sashimi. as you can see, some pretty fantastic cuts of fish including salmon and tuna belly, scallop and salmon roe, snapper, clams, swordfish and so on. while i really enjoyed the whole dish, this might be more my fault for not double checking than that of the waitress but she was very good about wording her recommendation in such a way that we had no idea we had actually been sold a sashimi platter that was double the price of what we had originally asked for. again, i suppose that that’s their job but being fully aware that it was our first time at shoya, i personally would have appreciated a heads up.

we opted for a dish that was touted as shoya’s ’signature and must try dish’ of mashed scallops wrapped around a quail’s egg and shiitake mushroom.

visually, like all the rest of shoya’s dishes, this was stunning. taste wise though, i really didn’t feel that this stood out at all. i could not taste the scallops, instead it felt like i was eating a bog-standard piece of yong tau foo.

we opted to try one of the daily specials, a lobster tail with a soft japanese omelette topped with the chef’s special thickened sauce.

our waitress had told us that we should get 4 pieces (as she did quite frequently throughout the ordering process) but wanting to be able to have a bit more variety we just went for 2 serves. I’m sorry, but this was just NOT worth $15 a piece. the sauce was overly starchy, the flavour was bland and while the lobster was fresh, it just wasn’t interesting.

i took a really bad photo of a duck dish marinated in miso so i haven’t included it here. while the duck was cooked really well, the bed of noodles the meat sat on was overly sweet.

we also decided on two serves of a wagyu tar tar (take on tartare, i’m guessing) with a marinade of miso paste.

again, visually stunning but taste wise – blah. the beef tartare at horoki was miles better (not to mention cheaper!).

we rounded off with steamed rice and two hot dishes. the first of which was the nasu dengaku – fried and grilled eggplant with prawns topped with fresh sea urchin miso paste.

this was my favourite dish of the night. the eggplant was lovely and firm, the sauce was wonderfully tasty and went really well with our steamed rice and the prawns added a lovely crunch.

we also ordered the saikyo moyomi-yaki – a marinated grilled white fish.

this was average, i immediately compared this to nobu’s black cod with miso and this came out second best. probably an unfair comparison, but the similarities to strong to ignore.

feeling a bit underwhelmed with the meal, we decided to leave without having dessert. i may go back one day to try the barbecue on the ground floor, but for the price we paid i would much rather have gone to nobu, or even horoki or yoshi for half the price. the experience and food quality would have certainly been on par.

The Age Good Food Guide 2010

this is a year of achievement for me (big and small!) and in line with this i have set a new target. as xm said, a much more achievable target than any exercising goals i may have set.

By the time The Age Good Food Guide 2011, I must have tried at least a third of the restaurants in The Age Good Food Guide 2010.

Simple.

I’ve gone back into my past posts and popped blog entries about current GFG10 visits… hopefully i’ll be able to add to this regularly!

the court house, north melbourne

the age melbourne magazine recently featured a write-up about pub food venues in melbourne. while i’ve had some great dining experiences at pub food places – the first one that springs to mind is a yummy garlic prawn dish at the lorne hotel – pub food normally conjures up mental images of a pie and chips, or an overdone steak. so when k decided that he wanted to try the court house (86-90 errol street, north melbourne 03 9329 5394) i must admit i wasn’t THAT excited about the meal. however, the confit pork belly and saganaki that the writer mentioned sounded pretty good, and when i realised that the place had actually been featured in the age’s good food guide my curiosity was piqued further.

we were allocated a table upstairs which was nice and roomy, and started off sharing a really nice bottle of wine (for my inexperienced wine palate, anyway!) chestnut hill pinot noir i think it was. went down wayyy too easily.

i was disappointed when we realised that neither the pork belly or saganaki was on the night’s menu and with the limited number of mains available i was sorely tempted to get two entrees for the night. but we ended up sharing the two entrees i was leaning towards instead. the first was a confit pork cheek, spiced apple salad and black pudding.

as soon as the dish arrived k and i were both instantly reminded of our dinner at circa. (documented here, here and here). while i was still pining for the pork belly a little the pork cheek was lovely, as was the spiced apple salad and yes, even the black pudding!

we also shared a serve of tamarind cured kingfish accompanied by pickled shallots, orange and crisp garlic. i’m sorry for the bad photo!

oh, this was good too! the only thing i wish they’d done was distribute the ingredients evenly across each slice so there would be a mixture of flavours and textures in each bite, but that’s just me.

i decided on the lamb rump with panfried sweetbreads, eggplant puree and something else i couldn’t remember. our dining area was filled up and i didn’t want my flash to distract/irritate other diners, so i have to apologise for the night-vision style photo.

my lamb was done perfectly, and went really well with the eggplant puree. even the sweetbreads – which i was a bit hesitant about – were lovely! the sauce was incredible, i wish i had a piece of bread to mop it all up.

xm ordered a medium rare wagyu cut which was one of the night’s specials. i believe it was served with crushed peas but i’m not sure what the puree was, the menu on the website is different to what we had on the night so i can’t be more specific!

the wagyu was incredibly tender, but apart from that i still can’t really see what the fuss is about. maybe because i’m used to a decent non-wagyu steak melting in my mouth, i don’t know.

trent had a pan-roasted hapuka with lobster, what i think was carrot puree. my snapshot turned out to be abysmal so i haven’t included it. and finally k had a wild hare dish with braised red cabbage.

i found a number of maraschino cherries in the dish which i suppose would have gone well with the meat, but i was expecting a fresh cherry flavour when i bit into it so i was unpleasantly surprised by the taste. but again, that was just me!

on to desserts. unfortunately i can’t tell you what this was either, all i know was that it was accompanied by vanilla ice cream, was tangy (so either passionfruit or citrus based) and it was yummy! yes, i know i should be a little bit more accurate in my description. sorry!

we also had a milk chocolate ‘delice’ (which we wrongly assumed to be a macaroon but was in fact a type of chocolate parfait!) that came with the best chocolate sorbet and a jelly thing. (i’m really doing well here, aren’t i???)

we rounded the meal off with a selection of cheese served with quince paste, muscatels, pear slices and a variety of crackers and bread.

i definitely need to start factoring cheese platters into my meals! i actually found this cheese platter to be better than both the desserts. there was a normal-ish hard cheddar, a much stronger sheep’s cheese and a goats cheese which took a while to get used to but once i did, i couldn’t get enough.

all this and a second bottle of pinot noir set us back about $80 each, which i thought was decent value although certainly not what you’d expect to spend at a pub restaurant. then again, this was no ordinary pub restaurant.

phad thai food elsternwick, again

after my yummy takeout experience with phad thai food, i decided to try the delivery option, which is free within 2km for orders above $25. k was game, so we ordered a couple of dishes to share. the lady on the phone told us it would be 30-40 minutes so we were pleasantly surprised when the doorbell rang 25 minutes after we called.

we ordered a single serve of tom yum goong with chicken which came in a fancy container…

and looked pretty good when we removed the lid.

unfortunately, it was a major letdown. way too sweet and nowhere near spicy enough. we barely finished half of it.

next up was a prawn pad thai…

which was much better than the tom yum. the noodles tasted great and there were generous amounts of prawns, peanuts and beansprouts.

we also shared an eggnet salad with minced chicken, which longrain is famous for.

i was expecting this to be similar to the longrain version (obviously i would be quite surprised if it was better because longrain’s version is spectacular) but the dressing is not as tangy due to the addition of coconut cream. this is a personal thing but i would have preferred a dressing with a little more zing.

i’m still impressed with the overall standard of the food here and will continue to take advantage of the free delivery system especially during freezing melbourne nights. in fact, i might just call them now!

crabapple cupcakes v2, prahran

so i blogged about my obsession with crabapple last year, and then it went into liquidation so we had to look for other options. recently we headed back there after hearing it had reopened to see whether it was still up to scratch.

i had lemon and k went for the caramel…

one word… blergh. that’s it. blergh. instead of the light fluffy cupcakes we were used to from crabapple, these were dense and dry. the lemon icing was sugar with barely a tinge of citrus, boo. boo, i tell you. and we got it at about 11am so it’s not as if it would have been sitting there for the whole day, unless they weren’t fresh.

safe to say we won’t head back there again, now i need to see if the qv shop do decent ones otherwise i’ll have to rely on let them eat cake.