Archive for June, 2007
V Rating:VVV When I first moved to Sydney there were two Chinese restaurants that our friends consistently recommended: BBQ King and Golden Century. Part of their cult status came from their late night hours (the mercy of not having to eat McDonald’s after a night out!), but the food was also rated highly. BBQ King became a regular haunt of mine, but until last weekend I’d never been to Golden Century. Even though we were eating on a Sunday night, I’d taken the precaution of booking a table for our group of six. This meant we could glide elegantly up the escalators to the first floor restaurant and away from ground floor room with tanks of seafood hovering in the water, moments before death. The large upstairs room was packed. Big round tables of people were eating noisily. Battalions of staff patrolled the floor. Catching their eye was a challenge, but our table saw it as part of the experience and didn’t mind. Despite being a seafood restaurant, Golden Century still has 12 vegetarian mains (excluding dishes that come with oyster sauce or meat). We started with a vegetarian san choi bow, which wasn’t on the menu but the restaurant was happy to prepare it. The waiter who served this dish was impressive - he doled out six helpings of the filling in three seconds flat, and perfectly estimated the amount for each person.
For mains, we tried the salt and pepper tofu, which had more than a touch of chili.
I was fascinated by the king mushrooms with braised vegetables. These huge mushrooms were like flanks of meat served over the vegetables, and had a soft yet chewy texture. They didn’t have a strong flavour and absorbed the salty sauce well.
The heavenly braised 4 vegetables was the last dish to arrive, but worth the wait.
At the end of the meal we were served two complementary plates of sweet biscuits, nicely rounding off our eating experience. So did Golden Century live up to its hype? It’s a different experience to BBQ King - the surrounds are more plush for starters. I thought it had an interesting selection of vegetarian dishes that went beyond ‘mixed vegetables in x sauce’, ad infinitum, but it is a seafood and BBQ restaurant at heart (for example, our waiter questioned whether we meant to order two vegetable mains, assuming he’d misheard). You will find plenty of cheaper Chinese restaurants in this area, and probably won’t notice a great difference if you stick to vegetarian food rather than the signature seafood and BBQ dishes. That said, Golden Century was a fun experience and I would go back again.
V Rating: VVV BBQ King is not a obvious choice for vegetarians. First, there’s the name. Second, there’s the string of burnished red roast ducks hanging in the takeaway section of the restaurant. Third, there’s the automated 3D wall decoration where chefs with giant cleavers rhythmically pound the necks of poultry. But vegetarians shouldn’t be put off by this carnivorous exterior. Secure a seat in the meandering, two-storey restaurant, and you’ll see a healthy 13 vegetarian options on the menu (excluding vegetarian dishes with oyster sauce). The salt and pepper tofu rates amongst some of the best in Sydney - the salt and pepper coating is not too heavy, but still well-seasoned, and the tofu is soft enough to melt soon as it hits your mouth. The garlic baby spinach is not for the faint-hearted, but who’d have it any other way. When I went last week I tried the round, brown Chinese mushrooms and braised green vegetables for the first time, which I enjoyed Is BBQ King over-priced? Sure. Is the service bad? Laughably so. Is the decor old and faded? Of course. But this doesn’t mean you won’t have a good time. BBQ King is a Sydney institution. The food comes out fast, it’s open late at night, the location is ultra convenient and the meals taste good. The last two times I’ve been there I’ve seen this guy and then these guys looking right at home as they chowed down on a meal. It’s just that kind of place. After a family dinner at Assiette, I had a small Sunday brunch with friends to celebrate my 30th birthday. Everyone who came had to answer five questions:
The answers made me laugh, cheer, and go ‘oh yeah, I remember that!’ You can see them in their full glory here. Feel free to leave your own answers in the comments section. The brunch turned into a showcase for the best of the Bondi Road specialty stores. We had caraway seed, blueberry and sundried tomato bagels from Glick’s Cakes and Bagels (the best in Bondi and the same as the one on Carlisle Street in Melbourne). The spreads were cream cheese, and sweet paska cheese with sultanas from the Russkis Deli .
No Bondi brunch would be complete without the sinfully good cherry strudel from the Wellington Cake Shop. The whole cherries are slightly tart, and wrapped in thick, flaky pastry.
I toyed with baking a birthday cake (it’s something of a tradition, you understand) but with time running out I settled for a tiramisu from the Wellingto Cake Shop. This photo doesn’t do it justice. It was as long as my arm. Maybe longer.
My Mum was a real trooper and helped bake quite a lot of savoury pasties (this time with curried vegetables), spinach and ricotta filo triangles, and apricot puff pastry tarts.
With so much sugar running through our veins, a fresh fruit salad made a welcome change.
Thanks to everyone for coming, sharing your answers, and spreading the birthday cheer! Special thanks to Jackie, the hostess with the mostest, Mum, Dad and Andy for helping out.
V Rating: VVV (for degustation) A couple of weeks ago I slipped out of my youthful twenties and into the sophisticated thirties. After waking up on my 21st birthday in the 12 bed basement of a grimy London youth hostel, I decided that I wanted to augur in the dawn of a new age in style. But there presents a problem for vegetarians. You have money to spend, an anniversary to celebrate, and a lot of fancy, meat ridden Modern Australian restaurants to choose from. After much umming and ahhing (I’m a food blogger. Turning thirty. On a Friday. The pressure is intense) I settled on the degustation meal at Assiette . Assiette is a modern French restaurant tucked away in the alleys of Surry Hills. As a matter of course, when I made the reservation I specified that Andy and I were vegetarians who ate no meat or seafood, my Dad is a vegetarian who does not eat meat, and my Mum has no special dietary needs. Anticipating it would be too hard to make individual degustation (tasting menu) meals, I offered to each have the vegetarian version. To my surprise and delight, they assured me that we would each get degustation meal matched to our dietary needs. This was an impressive effort, because it meant three different ten course menus and preparations (although some dishes did overlap). What follows is a photo essay on the strict vegetarian degustation. I didn’t ask if they would do a vegan version (which would stretch French cooking to its limits) but may be worth a try. First up was an espresso sized creamy sweetcorn soup with basil oil. Next was pickled beetroot with goats cheese and pine nut vinaigrette. Tart goats cheese and beetroot are a classic combination, and didn’t disappoint us in this incarnation.
Assiette hit its straps by third course, a ratatouille with Bearnaise sauce.
The freshly steamed asparagus spears made a nice contrast to the runny crumbed poached egg, although this was one of the less exciting dishes of the night.
The saffron and carrot risotto with carrot chips was a highlight. The saffron gave a beautiful yellow hue to the dish, and the fried carrot chips complemented the creamy risotto base.
Again showing an Italian influence, the next dish was cardamon puree with roasted pumpkin and gnocchi.
The open ravioli with field mushrooms, parsley foam and avocado mousse was my favourite dish of the night. The large field mushrooms were perfectly sauteed and full of flavour, while the parsley foam added lightness and colour to the meal.
We’d reached the end of the main dishes, and moved on to crisp lavosh bread with blue cheese and sweet honey and walnut. This was a great combination and something I’d like to try at home.
Our palates were cleansed with grapes, pretty cabernet sorbet and basil leaf.
The meal ended on a high note with a spiced pear brulee with lime and pear coulis. Assiette is a very small restaurant with white walls and dark furnishings. The look is austere compared to the bling of most Sydney restaurants, but the small open kitchen where you can watch chef Warren Turbull work his magic adds warmth and familiarity. The service was reasonable. The different degustation meals were stressful for the waiting staff so there was a slightly strained air to our interactions. But on the other hand, the sommelier was knowledgeable and wisely talked us out of a matched wine degustation in favour of ordering off the wine menu. I thought Assiette was good value and did an admirable job of catering for our different dietary needs so I’ve given them a VVV. Their standard menu is less veggie friendly - so perhaps save this for special occasions where you will call and book in advance. Andy I chose to spend half our honeymoon in Jamaica because we’d heard that the Rastafarian movement had bequeathed the island a strong vegetarian heritage. Of all the vegetarian food we stumbled on, I was most taken by a fruit called ackee. Ackee is cooked before being eaten. It has canary yellow flesh about the colour of
Ackee is legendary in Jamaica. The traditional (and still popular) Jamaican breakfast is ackee with saltfish. However, when we were there we were given a vegetarian version of scrambled ackee with capsicum and onion, served with small, savoury dumplings (called Johnny cakes) and fried plantain banana. Cooked Ackee is often compared to egg, partly for its colour, partly for its texture, but also for the taste which is creamy and readily absorbs other flavours. As a vegetarian I think it makes a great substitute for egg - certainly better than tofu. Best of all, you don’t end up with that oily, heavy feeling that comes from eating scrambled egg or an omelette. Ackee trees were a common sight in Negril (the place we stayed in Jamaica) and small shops and roadside market stalls often sold fresh ackee. I was interested to read Sarina from TriniGourmet’s comments that ackees could be bought in cans in Trinidad but they were very expensive. I had the same experience in Jamaica. When we went to the local supermarket to get some ackee to take home we were shocked to see that a can cost over $6.
I thought Weekend Herb Blogging would be a great opportunity to try my hand at ackee scramble, so I cracked open the can today. I was pretty pleased with the result. This recipe for ackee scramble is a mix of advice I was given in Jamaica, this recipe from the BBC, and some ideas of my own. Ingredients 1 can of ackee, drained Method Sautee the onion and garlic in oil, then add the chilli, pepper and thyme. Add the capsicum and tomato and cook on a medium heat for another five minutes. Add the ackee and capers. Cook for another couple of minutes until the ackee is cooked through. Serve immediately.
Notes on the recipe I think the basic version of this dish uses onion, thyme, black pepper, tomato and / or scotch bonnet peppers and ackee. Adding both tomatoes and capsicum beefs it up. I added chilli because I couldn’t find hot peppers, and the capers to add a salty vegetarian touch. When we were in Jamaica this dish was always served on a plate like scrambled eggs. Because we were eating it for lunch I served it on top of brown rice (another thing I loved about Jamaican cooking). Ackee
For more information, see wikipedia, This week’s weekend herb blogging is kindly hosted by Ulrike at Kuchenlaten. Visit her site to see the full round-up. When I first started Veggie Friendly in January last year I was feeling my way gently into the blogging world. I wanted my site to be user friendly, but other than that I didn’t spend a lot of time on the overall look. As time went by I always meant to create a new header, and update the colour scheme, but only once I’d bought a camera and learned to edit photos, entered some blogging events, and tried that new restaurant that everyone says has good vegetarian food…. Fast forward a year and a half, and with Andy’s For the techies out there, I’ve changed to the SouthRiver wordpress theme by AskGraphics, updated to Wordpress 2.2 (without making a late night panicked phone call to Scott) and installed a different google map plug-in (geo-mashup) because Plug and Play Google Map didn’t cope too well with the change. I almost went with geo-mashup when I first set up my google map but the original plug-in didn’t play well with my blog. This version has been a dream to install, and has the neat feature of adding a geo code locator to each post rather than relying on the separate geo-code plug-in for which you have to source your own geo code information. I noticed that the geo-mashup plug-in also comes with images for different coloured balloons. If I can figure out how I’ll try to differentiate vegetarian, vegan and non-veg restaurants on the map. I’ve also tidied up a few features, like ditching the annoying snap preview plug-in, and will add a profile and contact details. There are still a couple of things I need to work out - like a way to automatically make text display above or below images instead of wrapping around them. Tips are welcome! Let me know what you think and if there are any other features that you’d like to see. I’m finding a few bugs as a result of changing themes, so please let me know if you find anything amiss.
V Rating:VVV Last Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting up with the food-loving bloggers behind Grab Your Fork, Pickles Perks, Cucina Rebecca, Limes and Lycopenes, and Morsels and Musings, the last two for the first time. We’d heard tell that the breakfast banquet at Kazbah on Darling was worth blogging about, so made the trek to Balmain. Obviously we weren’t the only ones in the know - there were people waiting outside by 11am and inside the tables were full. Perhaps the reason for Kazbah’s popularity is its unique offering amongst the crowded Sydney brunch scene. Rather that the standard eggs on toast or big breakfast, Kazbah has a large spread of dishes hailing from Northern Africa, Morocco and the Middle East. There is a good selection of savoury and sweet dishes, which we dutifully explored.
I was excited to try the fuul medammas, because I’ve heard vegetarians live on this dish in Egypt. I’ll be there for three weeks in September so wanted to know what I was in for. I really liked the mix of chickpeas and fava beans, which are roughly blended to create a thick paste that has a smooth, subtle flavour. You eat it on bread with feta and shallots. Yum!
Kazbah bills itself as the “home of the tagine” and true to form offers vegetarian and meat versions for breakfast. The vegetarian tagine consisted of pumpkin, baby spinach, capsicum, carmelised onion and tomato with two poached eggs on top. I was expecting the tagine to be stew-like, but actually it was a baked dish that somehow preserved the freshness of the vegetables, particularly the spinach. The warm rice pudding with saffron poached pears and hazelnuts was my pick of the sweet dishes. The rice was firm and large, and was lovely in the creamy sauce. Also, it was topped with saffron poached pear.
I was in two minds about the sweet cous cous. On the one hand, it was topped with a generous serving of stewed magenta rhubarb. On the other hand, the cous cous looked and tasted like it had been soaked in a super sweet golden syrup which was a bit much for my system at that time of the morning. A pretty glass of cardamon milk came with it, and was meant to be tipped over the cous cous. It helpfully softened the taste and texture.
Last but not least was the strawberry pancake. Emily from Pickles Perks had warned us not to choose the chocolate version because it was too rich. This was a wise call. The strawberry pancake was huge, and had a thick fluffy texture that bore more resemblance to a cake than than a pancake. The strawberries were baked into the top, and the whole dish was smothered in double cream and syrup. Somehow I managed to have two slices, for which I deserve a place in the brunch hall of fame. Naturally food, restaurants and food and restaurant scandals were hot topics of conversation amongst the assembled bloggers. But it was also nice to discover that we had other things in common, like a love of travel, weddings, and the Meaning of Life. There’s already talk of another meet up later in the year, and I can’t wait to see everyone again when we’re back from overseas. |
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