Sponsored Link
Food News from December 2008
Harry’s Café de Sydney
If you live in Sydney and you haven’t been to Harry’s Café de Wheels, you haven’t really lived in Sydney. There’s even a seafood pie now (but nothing for vegans, see below).
The original, operated by Harry Evans, has been parked since 1938 on Cowper’s Wharf Road in Woolloomooloo. Evans closed for the duration of the war and reopened in 1945, then sold to Alex Koonya, who sold to current owner, Michael Hannah. Hannah has kept to the original formula but expanded the business.
One thing Mr Hannah has done is cleaned up the pie act: trans fatty acids have gone from the crusts, the meat is grass-fed topside mince and the whole operation is carefully monitored.
I once took Professor Bruce Craig, America’s hotdog historian, to Harry’s. He dismissed the hotdogs but loved the pies.
Harry’s latest cart is at Sydney’s international airport and the word is next stop is Los Angeles.
Here’s an interesting sidelight for food historians: Harry’s famous pie with peas plonks the mushy peas on top of the pie, the way they’re served in the north of England. Anyone familiar with the Adelaide pie floater (now available mainly at a pie cart outside the Casino on North Terrace) will know that in this version the pie sits on top of the mushy peas.
Some time ago, when researching Australian regional dishes, I concluded that this was the only example I could find, but then I learnt about Barossa Deutsch cooking.
Still, Harry’s and the wonderful New York Restaurant in the Cross (18 Kellett St, Ph 9357 2772) are there to remind us where we came from.
Vegan Heaven
One night recently, my wife and I were enjoying seared then roasted saltwater barramundi fillets with lentils and a crunchy green salad and she said, out of the blue, “What would a vegan eat on a mountain top in Switzerland?” This probably related to a previous conversation about the origins of that weird dish, fondue.
We’d surmised that a bunch of Swiss were stuck on said mountain top in a snow storm with nothing but bread, cheese and wine — and invented it. But if one of them was a vegan, they could only eat the bread, and even then only if it contained no animal fats: vegans eat nothing connected the exploitation of animals; no cheese, no eggs, no butter.
So a vegan cooking contest presents … challenges. Indeed, that’s what it was called: the Vegan Society Cooking Challenge, held this year on World Vegan Day (November 1) in Wolverhampton, UK, as part of the West Midlands Vegan Festival, no doubt a wild and riotous affair.
The overall winner was Paul Russell, a lecturer in Hospitality and Culinary Arts at University College Birmingham for his winning menu, which included Soupe au Pistou with a Potato Raviolo; Crisp Fried Baby Artichokes in a Poppy Seed Coating on a Pea & Roasted Pepper Risotto; and a Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake with Cherries.
All of which sounds wonderful — and wonderfully inventive considering the limitations placed on ingredients. All the vegan restaurants in Sydney are Asian and two out of three are in Newtown.
There’s Green Gourmet (115-117 King St, Ph 9519 5330) which is Chinese/Malaysian vegan, Green Palace (182 King St, Ph 9550 5234), a Thai vegan and there’s Bodhi in the Park, Cook & Phillip Park, College St, Ph 9360 2523. All the others are vegetarian/vegan. Let me know if I’m wrong — it’d be good to discover Sydney’s Paul Russell.
Genetic heads-up
If you want to avoid genetically engineered food (GE), our labelling laws won’t really help you. The best way to go is the Greenpeace True Food Guide, launched late November by Margaret Fulton, Jared Ingersoll and Alex Herbert at a very pleasant (GE-free) brunch at Bird Cow Fish (500 Crown St, Surry Hills, Ph 9380 4090).
It couldn’t be easier. There’s a Red list of brands to avoid — they won’t fess up to using or not using GE ingredients — and a Green list of those who’ve decided to avoid GE. You can get yours by going to www.truefood.org.au and either downloading the list or sending off for the handy little wallet/purse-sized guide so you can take it shopping.
The line of the day went to Margaret Fulton who, when wondering why people would listen to her on the subject of GE, said, “Well, people seem to trust my scone recipes…”
Stay at home
It’s not just the economy that’s telling us to stay in Australia this coming holiday season. A recent edition of the Travel Mole email newsletter was packed with the kind of stuff that made you want to avoid leaving on a jetplane or a slow boat. How about “Chaos reigns at Thailand’s Tourist Airlift” or “Attacks in Mumbai, India” or “Oceania Ship Fends off Piracy Attempt” South Coast anyone?
And still they come
More openings to report — you gotta love an optimist. First up, and probably a surefire thing, there’s another in the chain of Belgian Beer Cafés, the Balmain Beer Cafe (82 Darling St, Ph 9810 1663) to join its brothers in The Rocks and Cammeray. The usual ingredients are present: bits and pieces from raids on real old Belgian beer cafes, mussels, chips (with mayo), terrific beer and hearty tucker, all overseen by chef and Belgian Oliver Massart. Dear old Balmain has gone northern European, what with La Boheme (332 Darling St, Ph 9818 0829) offering a Prague/Berlin experience down the road.
Then there’s Satsuma (1 Dixon St, Sydney, Ph 8024 3588) in the new Mandarin Club, which I mentioned last column and later visited, only to find nothing open but the downstairs bar where I had a beer and a plate of terrific Thai fishcakes, which augurs well for the rest of the food. Now it’s all systems go and head chef Atsushi Nishibutshi is turning out izakaya dishes — small plates of flavoursome food … no, wait, not … Japanese tapas? And sake cocktails on the balcony.
And, finally, although it’s been open for a while, Cream Tangerine on the first floor of the truly bizarre (even after all these years) Swiss Grand Hotel (corner Campbell Pde & Beach Rd, Ph 9300 8471) by a group who seem to have a knack with nifty names — their other venture is The Rum Diaries Bar & Restaurant (288 Bondi Rd, Ph 9300 0440). Cream boasts a collection of sixties antiques, two open-air cocktail bars (they’re big on tequila) and menus from Mark Lloyd (who did the munger at Rum Diaries) Expect Tiki parties all summer and the cool Bondi Boogie crowd, which will either put you off or turn you on. Gorgeous views over Bondi Beach. They even have a breakfast martini on the menu.
Speaking of sensational new drinks
Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? I invented it. I call it the Gin & ThaiTonic (those Thais do love a good pun). It’s dead easy to make and takes the old G&T to a new level of loveliness. Put four cubes of ice in a highball glass. Take one makrut lime — those incredibly fragrant and flavoursome knobbly limes we used to call kaffir limes until we learnt “kaffir” was a nasty word. Roll the lime around between your palms to loosen up the cells within, then slice it in half, then half again. Squeeze the juice from one of the quarters over the ice cubes, pour in a jigger of gin, then fill with tonic. Throw the squeezed quarter in after scraping the skin a little to release even more oils and flavour. Enjoy, maybe with a pack of Aussie-made bhuja from Majans. Chin chin.
Christmas with the Dragon
Although we always eat at home — someone’s home — on Christmas Day, you might like to know that our favourite Taiwanese restaurant Blue Eye Dragon (42 Harris S, Pyrmont, Ph 9518 9955) will be open and will have an “orphan’s table” for anyone finding themselves in town alone. They’re also open Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, but then closed most of January (ring for details) while Jade and Muriel go back to Taiwan to stock up on essentials for next year.
Hamming on
One of the delights of Christmas for this pork lover is the chance to gorge on ham — and now jamón — until you never want to see a slice again … until next Christmas. I’ve assembled what I reckon are the pick of the piggie treats for your table.
First, new kid on the block, Cinco Jotas, has jamón from Spanish pork heaven (especially for the little piggies), Jabugo. CJ has been around since 1879 when one Don Rafael Sánchez Romero opened his first drying room in the little mountain village that had long been used for this pursuit because of its mountain air: cold and dry by day, humid by night, just the ticket for air curing.
It’s a jamón Ibérico de bellota, which means it’s made from the legs of the Iberian race of pigs, which are long of ear and black of feet and which graze all day on acorns in oak forests. Bliss. And expensive bliss, but worth it (you don’t need a lot, 50g a head is a good plan) from any Simon Johnson store.
Then there’s the Joselito, also jamón Ibérico de bellota, which bills itself as “more than a brand — a legend” and is the favourite jamón of Ferran Adrià (see archived November column), another sensational product. That’s at Terry Wright’s Gourmet Butcher in Clovelly.
Both are made the same way. After 7–10 days packed in salt (in the case of both Joselito and CJ, that’s sea salt with no added nitrates), the legs are washed, dried and hung to cure in curing sheds for up to three years, losing up to 50 per cent of their weight in the process, but gaining extraordinary flavour.
If you want a good old Aussie cooked ham, I’d go for the Pasture Perfect Pork from Miriam and Jack Neilson in Tenterfield, the largest certified organic pork producer in NSW. Their hams are made using Berkshire pigs (AKA kurobuta, Japanese for “black pig”). This is also a gorgeous ham and you can find it at David Jones Food Halls, Macro and Wholefoods House.
Finally, a Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays — your choice: eat well, drink wisely and well, and see you in the New Year.
