Archive for February 2015

Home Archive for February 2015

So I’ve been in Sydney for just over two weeks, couch surfing with a couple of mates from back home near Chinatown / Darling Harbour. Having handed out CVs with not so much as a whisper in response, I’d decided it was time to move on and look for work elsewhere. Tomorrow I leave for Melbourne.

On Sunday 15^th Iain and I drove across the Harbour Bridge and to Manly beach, located just north of the harbour entrance, to watch a surf competition. In fantastically useless form, we arrived 45 seconds before it ended, glimpsing only one surfer on only one small wave. I’m glad we showed up far-too-fashionably late, however, as I didn’t give a monkeys about the competition and certainly didn’t want to be sat on a packed beach for hours on end.

We both vetoed the beach, instead, walking down to the Sydney Harbour National Park at the southern end of Manly. After a cliff top stroll we wandered down to a beach located on the eastern side, at Spring Cove. To my amazement, the whole seabed round the side of the beach was carpeted in large urchins. To my dismay, neither of us had anything that we could use to prise them from their holdings, let alone get in to them. We went home, to do some research in to the legality of taking urchins from a national park beach and promising to come back a few days later armed with the necessary tools should the law not prevent us from doing so.

A quick Google search was all that was necessary to find a host of articles by marine conservationists outlining the destructive nature of the urchins, with one of them even encouraging the public to get out there and start eating them. So eating urchins will satisfy my belly as well as going someway to rebalance Sydney’s aquatic ecosystems. Done.

We drove back to the same beach on the 17^th Feb, armed with knives, spoons and a colander, we couldn’t find any scissors, which would have made getting the urchins open somewhat easier. Dislodging the urchins was surprisingly easy; a wiggle with a long knife aimed at where they attach themselves to the rocks did the trick in seconds.

Although easy to harvest, getting the roe from the shell, clean and in tact is somewhat more laborious, so how, then, does one get to the delicious roe inside?

Usually I’d take a good pair of scissors, trim the spines down and then cut a circle out the bottom side of the urchin (around where it attaches itself to rocks), after doing so I’d use a teaspoon to gently coax out the roe. As well as the roe there’s a lot of ‘gunk’ and other innards inside an urchin, so the roe needs to be cleaned in salty water. As I didn’t have any scissors, just a few knives that Iain had at his flat, I rather brutishly just chopped the urchins in half, scooped out the roe and washed them by placing them in a colander and gently skimming off the crud in the sea.

In the space of ten minutes I’d cleaned four or five urchins, with an equivalent amount of roe as is sold in Sydney fish market for $18 a tray.

delicious golden roe

I realise most people won’t have tried urchin roe, so what does it taste like? It’s everything a seafood should be, sweet and soft, yet with that addictively distinctive salinity - like sharing an intimate kiss with the ocean. Although I bought knives and a colander, I didn’t quite have the foresight to bring any accompaniments - a bit of sourdough toast and a squeeze of lemon juice would have been delightful, but hey, the urchin roe was salty, sweet and delicious as it was. I’m coming back to Sydney later in the year, urchins will certainly be on the menu.

a pasta colander is an effective way to clean the roe

I'm not a big breakfast fan, that is unless it's a proper breakfast, none of this cereal rubbish. I wouldn't have cereal for dinner, so why settle for it at breakfast?!

But what to have instead when in Sydney? Gorge on oysters and sashimi at the world’s third largest fish market, obviously.

The market is in Pyrmont, I’m staying in Ultimo near Darling Harbour, so only a 10 minute stroll down the road. I got there nice and early so as to not miss out on the freshest catch.

As well as being a wholesalers for the majority of Sydney’s restaurants, the market, located on the waterside in Blackwattle Bay, incorporates a working fishing port as well as numerous retail outlets, delis, and a seafood cookery school.

As soon as you enter the market the smell of fish smothers you, not in a bad way mind you, just a pleasant, fishy reminder of your locality. The smell of the coast.

After a wonder round the car park, past the polystyrene mountains and outdoor fish shops, I headed inside – I’d been told to not eat outside as the seagulls have gotten wise and had a penchant for dive-bombing people’s food right out their hands, like taking candy from a baby.

Inside you find more fishmongers, a couple of delis, a veg shop and a few dodgy restaurants; the food looked pretty dire – since when has it been acceptable to cook fresh fish and chuck it in a bain marie for hours to dry out before serving it?! A great waste.

Dry, pre-cooked fish was not on the agenda, and with such an array of weird and wonderful fish, crabs and crustacea that I’d never seen before, there was only ever going to be one place where I’d get my grub from; the wholesalers.

I toyed with the idea of abalone sashimi, a native Australian mollusc, but ended up going for a mixed sashimi box, consisting of salmon, tuna and a white-fleshed fish, of which I cannot remember the name. As if one tray of fresh fish wasn’t enough I went on to treat myself, buying a tray of 6 Coffin Bay oysters with 3 different toppings and a lone Pacific jumbo oyster. Breakfast is served.

Surprisingly, the fatty salmon was the tastiest fish in the mixed sashimi box, the tuna coming a close second, though all quite delicious with a dash of soy and a touch of pickled ginger. The larger, expensive Pacific oyster was tasteless and too salty – big is certainly not best! The six assorted oysters were just sublime, however. I’m not usually a fan of sauce and toppings on oysters – if they’re of good quality, they’re perfect au naturel. Saying this, the Kabayakki sauce was very tasty indeed; like a watered down, less salty soy, with a pleasant richness. The black caviar and Tabasco was the only dud for me, the caviar was great, but I could hardly taste it or the oyster due the excessive spice from the Tabasco. By far the stand out topping was the Tobikko and Ponzu sauce, which was fantastic. The umami laden Ponzu, the popping sensation and fishy undertones from the Tobikko (fish eggs) and the sweet oyster is a great combination. I could forget about the sashimi and the other oyster toppings and just have a tray (or two) of those!

Although not a cheap breakfast, and not one I could afford even once a week, it was a mighty fine treat and a great start to the day. I left intrigued what abalone tastes like; I guess I’ll just have to come back when I return to Sydney in a few months. Hard life.

Tobikko and Ponzu oysters

Buying food from the supermarket in Australia is expensive. So much so that I've hardly cooked since being here - buying a loaf of bread and tin of baked beans costs nearly as much as eating out, I know which I'd rather.

In Chinatown you can expect to pay between $9 and $13 for a meal, that’s between £5 and £7, which is crazily cheap considering the quality of most of the food. But even £5, twice a day, soon adds up, and as acceptable as the Asian-style pot noodles are, they’re hardly the most sustaining.

Thank God then for Vietnamese pork roll, or Banh Mi. I’d been told about these by a good friend who I staged at Noma with - he’d lived in Australia and Vietnam, working in Banh Mi shops in both countries, and fell so in love with them that he’s in the process of starting up his own Banh Mi shop in Quito, Ecuador. Looking forward to my stay there come November time!

From afar they sound somewhat mundane; a baguette with meat and veg filling, but when everything is combined they transform into something that’s just delicious – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and all that.

The traditional Banh Mi is comprised of a crunchy white baguette, a layer of chicken liver pate and mayo, fresh and pickled veg – cucumber, carrot and spring onion being the staple, occasionally daikon too, sliced or grilled pork, a handful of fresh coriander, some fresh chilli and a healthy spoonful of a sweet soy glaze. This is not to say you can’t get variations upon this, you’ll usually see a selection of different styles of pork, chicken, tofu, or just veg.

As well as being mightily tasty, these pork rolls are incredibly cheap – you’re looking at $4 or $5 a pop, that’s around £2.50! Needless to say, I’ve lived off them for the last week or so, and I’m certainly not bored of them yet.

I mentioned in my last post about queue size being a good indicator for quality food at lunchtime in Chinatown, Phuong is no exception. Going between 1 and 2 o’clock is a no-no unless you’re prepared to stand in a snaking queue out the door and round the corner for 20 minutes.

Each Banh Mi is made fresh to order, so you can pick and choose your fillings, though opting for everything is of course sensible. The chillies deserve a special mention, they make it for me – with an almost pickled taste, they have a very quick ‘half-life;’ after a short initial hit of pungent heat, the sting resides within 10 seconds or so.

There’s not too much more to say about these, they’re just baguettes, very good ones at that. Mi like Banh Mi.

After an early train to Heathrow and a goodbye peck on the cheek from the old dear, I made my way through passport control and bag check at Heathrow’s newly revamped T2 – my year of eating and travelling was finally upon me, but not before I could get my final fix of Great British grub, and what better place than Heston Blumenthal’s The Perfectionists’ Cafe. Well I wasn’t going to go to Wetherspoons, was I? As much of a British institution as it may be, I was after a finer farewell.

The Perfectionists’ Café is the latest addition to Heston’s gastro empire, with a new Dinner opening at the Crown Hotel, Melbourne in August after the 6 month Fat Duck pop-up packs up and heads back to Bray. Like Heston’s Hampshire pubs, this latest venture is not about tasting menus, petit fours and other fine dining frills, but just doing proper food properly.

The menu is simple, consisting of your standard fodder of pizzas, steaks, fish and chips, burgers etc. The pizzas aren’t your thick crust, soggy-bottomed English takeaway muck, they’re thin crust and crispy, cooked very quickly at high temperatures in a proper wood-fired oven – the Italian way. Although I didn’t try one, the chap sat next to me did and gave it a big thumbs up. The fish and chips are created with similar care; the batter is charged through a whipped cream canister, resulting in a bubblier and therefore crunchier batter.

I love nothing more than fish and chips, as tempting as it was, the clock hadn’t even struck 8am, and dinner for breakfast just didn’t feel right, Eggs Benedict it was.

Service was efficient and my brekkie was with me within 5 minutes – just what you you need if you’re in a hurry to catch a plane, not that I was mind you.

Well what can I say about the Eggs Benedict? It was indeed very tasty. Fantastic? No. An above average breakfast? Of course. The crumpets tasted like crumpets, nothing of note there, the thick-cut maple-cured ham was very good, as you’d expect from a proper piece of ham, the eggs were cooked perfectly with a runny middle and a soft outer white and the hollandaise was well balanced – nobody likes an overly acidic hollandaise.

It somehow lacked the wow factor that I was expecting from a Heston joint, but by no means does this mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy my meal. You get what you pay for, and for under a tenner it was the perfect start to my year of eating and travelling!

Bye Bye, Blighty!