The Centenary

Somehow amidst the business and rush that we modern society people know as life, I failed to appreciate that my previous post was my big one-hundredth. What should have been a major triumph and milestone got lost in my current lifestyle of settling into a new job in an entirely different industry to what I am familiar, a new living arrangement and the planning for my upcoming wedding.

As a result and without much fanfare, I share with you a recent in-home afternoon tea where we had the always pleasant company of Ms Sourdough and Weirdo as guests. They were not long back from a trip overseas to both the United States and New Zealand and had a bounty of photos to share with us – mostly of which were of food! We had a wonderfully relaxed afternoon of sharing food and conversation, and where Ms Sourdough had brought over beautiful friands made from a recipe in the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook.

The following ‘recipes’ are more a suggestion rather than instruction as you can obviously feature whatever finger food you wish. Even better is when you have a baking friend, like I do in Ms Sourdough, who is more than happy to bring along some goodies to help out. This is what I enjoy about life – the moments where there is friendship and love and calm, low-effort pottering about the kitchen. And the resultant food that you share together, of course, is a most welcome by-product!

Mini Sausage Rolls (makes 9)

Ingredients:

·         2 sheets of ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed

·         6 medium store-bought sausages (whatever variety you like), casings removed

·         1 egg yolk beaten with 2 tsp water

·         2 tsp nigella/poppy/sesame seeds (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Cut each sheet of puff pastry into 9 evenly-sized squares.
2. On each square, place approximately 2/3 of a sausage worth’s filling and roll up to enclose. Seal with a little eggwash if necessary.
3. Place sausage rolls seam-side down on a greased or lined tray and brush tops with eggwash. Sprinkle over seeds, if using, and bake for roughly 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit on tray for 5 minutes before serving. 

Finger Sandwiches (makes 12)

Ingredients:

·         8 slices of white sandwich loaf, crusts removed (TIP: I blitz the crusts and keep them frozen for when I need breadcrumbs)

·         …and whatever fillings you desire! (I had egg salad with chives and ham, cheese and tomato.)

Method:

Butter the bread if you like. Sandwich in the fillings. Season if required and slice each sandwich into thirds to produce neat fingers.

Thin Cabanossi & Haloumi Frittata

Ingredients:

·         1 cabanossi stick, sliced on an angle

·         handful of button mushrooms, sliced

·         4 eggs, lightly beaten

·         1cm thick slice of haloumi, sliced into matchsticks

Method:

1. Preheat grill to 200°C. Heat a non-stick, ovenproof pan over medium-high heat. Throw in cabanossi and cook until crisp.
2. Add mushrooms to the pan and cook until slightly wilted. Pour beaten egg over the top, reduce heat to medium and cook until egg begins to set at the edges.
3. Sprinkle haloumi evenly over the top and carefully transfer pan to the grill to finish cooking. Remove pan from grill and let sit a few minutes before slicing into wedges to serve. 

happy cooking!

Wagaya, 7 Dec 2009

We find ourselves gathered at Wagaya for a combined birthday for Ms Selective and Mr Awesome. We have had group gatherings here previously, sometimes with so many of us that it warrants one of the private rooms with its own TV. We’ve even discussed in the past whether it’s possible to cart in our own gaming console and hook it up to said TV.

But this evening we are only a group of six and Ms Selective manages to procure one of Wagaya’s free birthday mocktails even though it’s not the exact date of her birthday. The mocktail is simply known as ‘December’, doesn’t come with a menu description and is a deep shade of emerald green. She takes a sip and declares it’s not very nice before the rest of the girls do the taste test to decide for ourselves. I claim that it tastes a bit like toothpaste or mouthwash, before Ms Sourdough hits the nail on the head by announcing the flavour resembles that of Listerine strips. Before long, we decide to order various fruit-flavoured chuhai instead to combat our minty freshness.

And then the barrage of food begins! We start with a dish of shark fin and jelly fish with its sesame oil fragrance and flecks of occasional chilli sitting on a bed of wilted but still crunchy mung bean sprouts. There’s agedashi soft-shell crab featuring a beautiful marriage of tofu in the thinnest of stretchy batters and a crunchy whole soft-shell crab perched atop.

Weirdo’s favourite renkon chips arrive well drained and evenly seasoned. Then there’s Mr Awesome’s tako-wasa which has chopped baby octopus pieces in a wasabi dressing. This is soon followed by the assorted tempura which are coated in a light batter, although it’s not the fluffiest I’ve seen.

The grilled ox tongue skewers are charred, shiny and meaty with only a couple of chewier pieces to give us a jaw workout. The salmon skewers are coated in a teriyaki-type sauce and given a smattering of sesame seeds before they make their entrance.

The grilled scampi are actually sweeter than I expect and easy to peel. The sea urchin chawanmushi provides uni for my sea urchin-loving husband whilst leaving some silken steamed egg innards for the rest of us.

The housemade gyoza have thin skins, juicy fillings and are pan-fried to crisp-bottomed goldenness. The squid mentai pizza has a thin but slightly soggy base which is wanting to stick to the pan, and is topped with almost fluorescent pink mentai.

The Wagyu steak comes chopped in small pieces and taste of being tossed in butter. The deep-fried salmon skin is a little disappointing for me because they haven’t been seasoned. They are suitably crunchy but not oily though, and are served with a bowl of dipping sauce alongside. However what I would really prefer is a selection of salts like at Azuma Kushiyaki.

And then, because it is a double birthday we have brought along cake – a green tea gâteau from Breadtop with two layers of green tea sponge and green tea cream sandwiched in between and spread over the top and sides. Splodges of azuki bean purée are hidden amongst the layer of green tea cream and the whole lot is given a generous coverage of matcha powder over the top.

Hooray for friends, great food, birthdays and cake!

Wagaya

78 Harbour St, Haymarket NSW

Tel: (02) 9212 6068

Opening Hours:  7 days  5pm til late

happy eating!

Epicure Recipe Card #14: Roast Chicken and Chips

So after a one-week break from the recipes cards to discuss the piggy, we’re back into it with a simple roast chicken dish. I don’t tend to roast whole chickens as usually there’s only the husband and myself to feed, so I roast segments on-the-bone instead. I prefer not to have too many leftovers otherwise we keep eating the same things repeatedly during the week. Chicken drumsticks and Marylands are great to use because they have plenty of skin to hold in the meat juices and a nice proportion of fat for flavour as well as being forgiving to a bit of over-roasting.

The chicken specified below serves 2 but the quantity of vegetables serves 3. This was not done on purpose; rather it just happened to be what I had in the vegetable crisper at the time. So throw in another Maryland and you have dinner for 3 or some leftovers for one. I served crusty bread rolls alongside but there’s nothing to stop you making a gravy to go with it as well.

Roast Chicken with Vegetables (serves 2)

(adapted from The Age – Epicure 50 Best Recipe Cards, recipe by Jill Dupleix)

Ingredients:

·         200g chat potatoes

·         ¼ onion, finely sliced

·         1 tbs olive oil

·         2 tsp mixed dried herbs

·         salt and pepper

·         120mL water

·         2 chicken Marylands

·         1 carrot, cut into wedges

·         ¼ medium cauliflower, separated into florets

·         1 cup frozen peas

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 220°C. Peel potatoes and cut into wedges. Toss potato and onion with the oil and 1 teaspoon of the dried herbs. Season with salt and pepper and arrange in a roasting dish in a single layer. Pour over the water and roast for 10 minutes.
2. Turn wedges of potato over and loosen any bits of onion which may be catching to the bottom of the dish. Rub skin of chicken Marylands with a little extra olive oil and remaining dried herbs before placing cut-side down amongst the potato. Roast 20 minutes.
3. Add carrots and roast 15 minutes before adding cauliflower. Roast a further 10 minutes, add the peas then turn the oven off and allow the lot to sit in there for 5 minutes. Remove the roasting dish from the oven and let sit 5 minutes for the chicken to rest before serving. 

happy cooking!

Ozeki, 21 Nov & 7 Dec 2009

So with a sushi loving husband like mine, you know that when a new sushi bar opens in our vicinity we absolutely have to check it out. And the clean and modern Ozeki, which opened as part of Chatswood Chase’s revamp, seemed to hold promise. Although not terribly large, it has its own street frontage and entrance and is mainly decorated in dark brown and black. I particularly like the almost Christmassy ceiling feature.

My first taste of Ozeki is for lunch with Mistress while taking some food away to feed the husband who is working from home. As we both like grilled sushi, we start with a plate each of aburi hotate (scallop) and aburi salmon nigiri. The seafood are smokily charred and each piece is anointed with a squiggle of mayonnaise.

The scampi nigiri proves to be good value as there are two pieces per plate at about 20% more in price than most places which only feature the one piece on a plate. The seafood is fresh but the nigiri are a little heavy on the rice.

Next we have the eel and cheese maki which is a variation of the usual dragon roll. There’s no cucumber or egg omelette shreds decorating the tops but there is eel in the centre, eel on top and a very generous chunk of cream cheese in the middle! But this is where the experience starts to go downhill for me, as I find the rice in the rolls too compressed. We’re not sure what the grilled fish is atop our next plate of nigiri but suspect it is possibly kingfish. What we do notice though is that the rice fashioned into the nigiri is not packed as tightly as that of the rolls.

The tako (octopus) nigiri are brushed sparingly with a pleasantly sweet soy sauce but again feature a disproportionately greater mound of rice underneath. And the soft-shell crab rolls, although not oily nor stale, have the same tightly compacted rice issue as the eel and cheese variant.

Though there is the aspect of the rice which is less than desired, we attribute it to possible early teething troubles and I return for lunch with Monsieur Poisson a couple of weeks later to give Ozeki another go. We see soba going past on the conveyor and the funny part is that when a waitress spots me consuming the cold noodles by dipping them in the cold broth, she instructs me to tip the ‘dressing’ over the soba instead.

We also order a chicken katsu udon from the menu which arrives piping hot but is a bit too thickly coated in batter and panko for our liking. So we move onto the salmon tobiko rolls topped with their red mounds of flying fish roe, and half a deep-fried soft-shell crab without the offensive rice casing of the previous visit.

I give a maki roll one last try and choose one plentifully filled with plump salmon and soft avocado but, alas, the rice is packed in too tightly yet again! But we spot some tuna toro nigiri going round so we have this fatty belly cut to balance out the textures.

The tuna nigiri is not bad either and is a little lighter in colour than usually seen. Monsieur Poisson has to have his favourite uni ships and, although I am growing impartial to sea urchin, I’m not as enthusiastic as my husband is about it. I do try one of the oyster ships however, which are firm, plump and sweet with the added crunch of some thin cucumber and tobiko to the side.

Overall, Ozeki is not bad but it’s not exceptional nor exciting either. It definitely needs more of a wow factor. The latest news is that (someone correct me if I’m wrong) they offer all plates of sushi for $3 only all day everyday – check it out and decide for yourself.

Ozeki

Street level of Chatswood Chase, Victoria Ave, Chatswood NSW

Tel: (02) 9410 2777

Opening Hours:  Mon-Wed  9:30am-5:30pm

                        Thurs  9:30am-9pm

                        Fri  9:30am-5:30pm

                        Sat  9am-5pm

                        Sun  10am-5pm

happy eating!

Here piggy, piggy, piggy!

Of the many weddings I attended in the past two years, only two have been Chinese banquets. There are typically many small courses much like a degustation menu and usually starts with roast suckling pig. There is something rather special about this fine, tender, young meat which doesn’t taste as strongly of pork as its older cousins and has a thinner layer of skin which yields a smoother, crispier crackling. It tends to be reserved for special occasions in Chinese tradition and is not always readily available in Cantonese barbeque stores.

At one of these weddings where Mr Awesome was also a guest, we were discussing our love of the baby pig when I mentioned it was common practice for guests to ask for the roasted head and trotters to take home to be used in a soup base or congee much like you would a ham hock. We were most disappointed when we brought this up with our waiter and were met with the response that all uneaten parts had already been thrown out. What an absolute waste! Mr Awesome then had a most brilliant idea – for his next birthday he would eschew the usual birthday cake and cut open a roast piggy instead. Mmmm…

A couple of months later and we were met with the most amazing sight of Mr Awesome being wheeled in his birthday pig on a trolley and taking to it with a heavy meat cleaver from head to tail. The crunch of beautiful crackling was heard by all as he was doing so and, afterwards, I was duly offered the head and trotters to create something beautiful.

You may find the above picture disturbing and/or confronting but it is a reality that all meat-eaters should face. Meat comes from animals and these animals are raised and slaughtered to give us the meat; just because it comes neatly butchered or pre-packaged should not sanitise this fact. Nevertheless, I found myself face-to-face in my kitchen with said piggy and didn’t quite know how to tackle it – it’s not everyday that I have a roasted pig’s head sitting around!

So if you find yourself with leftover roasted suckling pig parts on your hands this Chinese New Year, here are a couple of ideas. I decided the trotters would be used for congee and trimmed away any large fatty chunks. From the head, I removed the cheeks and then the lobes of fat from those before finely slicing the remaining skin and meat to be used in a noodle stir-fry. Although the cheeks were not terribly large once the fatty bits had been trimmed away, they did produce a handsome tub of sliced meat.

The congee did require some seasoning as the marinade for the roast pig is rubbed in the cavity of the pig and not on the limbs, which mainly just taste of roasted smokiness. The noodle stir-fry was done in two batches due to its size but apologies as we hungrily dug into it before any photos were taken. You’ll just have to imagine and visualise how it tasted and looked!

Roasted Pig’s Trotters Congee (serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

·         1 cup of long grain rice (unrinsed or rinsed only once), soaked in 2 cups of cold water in a large pot overnight

·         4 roasted pig’s trotters from a suckling pig, fat trimmed

·         1 tsp finely shredded ginger

·         salt, to taste

Method:

1. Add a cup of cold water to the pot of soaked rice and bring to the boil over medium heat. Add ginger and stir a few times to prevent sticking at the bottom.
2. Add pig’s trotters and increase heat to high to bring back to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook, half covered, for about 45 minutes. Stir the bottom occasionally and skim any large charred bits which float to the top.
3. Remove pig’s trotters to a chopping board to cool a little but keep the congee simmering on a low heat, stirring occasionally. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from trotters and roughly chop before setting aside. Return pig’s trotter bones to the pot and simmer for another 30 minutes or so until the mixture is fluffy and there are no discernable grains of rice. You may need to add water if you prefer a thinner consistency.
4. Remove bones and return chopped trotter meat to the pot. Stir through and season with salt to taste. Serve in bowls with ground white pepper and finely chopped spring onions alongside for sprinkling on top, if desired. 

Roasted Pork Cheek Noodle Stir-Fry (serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

·         500g pack of Hokkien noodles

·         2 roasted pig’s cheeks from a suckling pig, fat trimmed, cut into strips

·         finely shredded ginger (optional)

·         1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)

·         2 tbs hoisin sauce

·         ⅓ medium Chinese cabbage (‘wom bok’/’wong nga bak’), shredded

·         4 tbs hoisin sauce

Method:

1. Bring a large pot or wok of water to the boil and briefly blanch the noodles to remove its excess coating of oil. Do this in batches if necessary. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat a wok over medium-high heat and briefly stir-fry the pork cheek strips until lightly browned and some of the fat is released. Toss ginger and chilli with this, if using. Add 2 tbs hoisin sauce and toss until evenly coated before setting aside.
3. Increase heat to high and add cabbage to the pan. Stir-fry until wilted and set aside.
4. Place half the noodles in the pan and toss briefly to evaporate any clinging moisture before adding half the pork cheek strips and half the shredded cabbage. Stir-fry until well mixed, adding a tablespoon of hoisin sauce if needed. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. 

happy chinese new year & happy cooking!

Winter Solstice Festival: Kam Fook (金福) Chatswood, 22 Dec 2009

The Chinese calendar is also known as the lunar calendar as it is calculated around phases of the moon (the 1^st of each month is always a new moon and the 15^th a full moon), as well as the agricultural calendar (農曆) as it contains information about seasonal changes which were important when the bulk of people farmed for a living.

From a very early age, I was taught to appreciate that there are a few major festivals on the Chinese calendar that require us as a family unit to sit down to dinner together. The most important, of course, is Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival (春節) as it heralds the spring season in the northern hemisphere and the related time of tending to crops which are starting to shoot. Chinese New Year is a very well publicised event around the world and even attracts a street parade to celebrate the occasion in our fair city of Sydney.

The next event of importance would be Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), also called Moon Festival where the moon is meant to be at its roundest and ‘fullest’ and is a time to celebrate togetherness as well as the end of the harvest season. The food of significance is the moon cake, often with a centre of a salted duck egg yolk or two or three…or four!

And then there’s Winter Solstice Festival (冬至) which the Chinese see as the end of winter as from this day onwards, the daylight hours become longer again in the northern hemisphere and means for more productivity in a farming environment. I have fond memories of celebrating it with family in Hong Kong as a child, with all of us crowding around a hotpot (火鍋) for food and warmth. It is a bit incongruous to celebrate it whilst living in Sydney as it is summer solstice with us being in the southern hemisphere, but it is an occasion for a family dinner nonetheless especially when it normally falls just a few days before Christmas.

So we find ourselves at Kam Fook Chatswood as, although we’ve had yum cha here a countless number of times over the years, we’ve never actually tried if for dinner. It’s quite a busy evening as everyone seems to be out for dinner, so the usual Chinese restaurant plate of complimentary pickled vegetables and complimentary soup are most welcome to keep us occupied whilst we peruse the menu. For those not familiar with Chinese soups, it is a broth-like affair that is often chicken or pork based and contains ingredients to give it health beneficial qualities.

When dining out we usually choose dishes which are either too fiddly to prepare at home or those which are too difficult to replicate in terms of flavour or ‘breath of wok’ (鑊氣). So we start our meal with ‘Lobster cooked with ginger and spring onions on a bed of e-fu noodles’ (薑蔥龍蝦伊麵底) where the noodles act as an excellent vessel to soak up the sweet shellfish juices. The cornstarch coating on the pieces of lobster is a tiny bit too thick but otherwise the dish tastes lovely.

My choice for the evening is the vegetarian dish of ‘Bamboo fungus with seasonal vegetables’ (竹笙扒時蔬) which is a bit light on the bamboo fungus but features plenty of broccoli, cloud ear fungus and mixed wild mushrooms in a light oyster sauce.

Nella chooses the ‘Three cups chicken’ (三杯雞) which arrives simmering with a clay pot full of chicken pieces on the bone and is fragrant of a sticky, sweet soy and spring onions. Upon tasting, there is a mild kick of chilli which makes the sauce perfect for pairing with a bowl of plain rice.

We often have ‘Grouper served two ways’ (星斑兩食) as it is quite good value. One dish standardly is fillets of the fish stir-fried with a seasonal vegetable (炒斑片) and, in this instance, is asparagus segments. The asparagus have mostly been peeled but are a tiny bit overcooked and too soft for my liking as a result.

The other dish is normally a choice between having the fin bits steamed alongside firm tofu but this evening we’ve gone for the head and belly parts to be braised in a hotpot (燜斑頭煵) with lettuce, deep-fried tofu and Chinese roast pork.

And, as always, we have food left over to be taken away which is desired for dinners to celebrate calendar festivals as it means there is plentiful feed for the family. But there is no escaping before further gorging ourselves on a complimentary fruit platter and Chinese dessert soup. Thank goodness it’s red bean (azuki) soup (紅豆沙) as my husband loathes the mung bean variant!

Kam Fook (金福) Chatswood

Level 6 of Westfield Chatswood, Anderson St, Chatswood NSW

Tel: (02) 9413 9388

Opening Hours:  7 days  10am-3pm (yum cha lunch)

5:30-10:30pm (dinner)

happy chinese new year & happy eating!

Brasserie Bread, 29 Nov 2009

It’s not every year that someone gives you a loaf of bread for your birthday, but when that someone is Ms Sourdough and the bread in question is from Brasserie Bakery then the resultant effect is more than just acceptable. Along with this bread also came a trio of tarts: lemon, pear and almond, and an apple frangipane.

Fast forward a few months and we find ourselves gracing Brasserie Bakery one sunny Sunday for brunch. Ms Sourdough is up from Canberra and where else would we go other than somewhere that is famed, amongst other things, for their bread. The front windows are decorated with adorable hanging gingerbread stars and men, heralding Christmas.

The place is absolutely bustling by the time we arrive mid-morning and we are lucky Weirdo and Ms Sourdough have secured four seats for us at the end of one of the long communal tables. The colour scheme is very much to my liking as I love geometric pieces of red to really highlight things.

To our left we see the retail half of the store with a display of cakes, bread, bags of pasta, bread, cookbooks, bread, bread and more bread! There are many bread samples on display for trying, as well as olive oil to accompany them.

Monsieur Poisson and Weirdo disappear up to the counter to take care of our orders and I start with my usual skim flat white whilst Monsieur Poisson has a rather orange and sizeable orange juice.

We end up with two serves of the ‘Soft omelette with gruyère cheese and prosciutto” at our table, and for good reason. The slightly pungent and stretchy cheese is always a winner for me when combined with eggs. There is some prosciutto draped across the omelette and, of course, some bread on the side.

And quite predictably I go for the eggs Benedict which features just the one poached egg sitting atop charred slivers of bacon and between two halves of a foccacia-like bread. It is filling though and the Hollandaise is a beautiful consistency as well as being not too tart.

Ms Sourdough has the ‘Roast chicken on baguette à l'ancienne’ with lovely, juicy grilled chicken breast, rocket and mayonnaise on a chewy, chewy baguette. Weirdo, apart from his omelette, has a very attractive and sugary almond croissant sitting on the side for later.

And then we seem to spend way too much time chatting and catching up but Sunday brunches are perfect for these things! Of course we have to pick up some bread before leaving and Monsieur Poisson and I settle on a rustic ciabatta loaf. It’s holey, doughy, slightly tart and features a chewy crust and crumb. It is also sliced for us which is a bonus.

In the sweet department, we take home a raspberry and pistachio friand as well as a chocolate brownie. They both get consumed later that afternoon and the texture of both are brilliant. I like my brownies dense but not gooey, and this really hit the spot.

Now, we don’t know whether it was because it was close to closing time or whether we spent too long unashamedly lingering around the bread displays, but we scored a free schiacciata loaf after we’d paid for our bread and cakes. The lovely guy chopped it in half so that both couples could have a sample. Upon consumption it’s not as soft as we expected but was great toasted, split in half and filled with such things as my favourite smoked salmon, capers, cream cheese and baby spinach. Mmmm!

Brasserie Bread

1737 Botany Rd, Banksmeadow NSW

Tel: 1300 966 845

Opening Hours:  Mon-Fri  7am-3pm

                        Sat & Sun  8am-2pm

happy eating!

Epicure Recipe Card #3: Wok-fried Chicken with Asparagus & Shiitake

I know, I know… I can already hear you saying, “Another stir-fry recipe?!” Well I can’t help that the recipe cards seem to feature heavily in this area but it also does suit the times when I’m not terribly motivated with planning. So please forgive me and I can assure you that there are many other things to come. But you can’t deny the ease of these for mid-week dinners, can you? Which is exactly the reason why I choose them.

For this week’s selected recipe card, I pared it down a little again and cut back on the variety of ingredients used. I served it alongside bowls of plain egg noodles in broth although, of course, you can serve it with rice.

Wok-fried Chicken with Asparagus & Shiitake (serves 2)

(adapted from The Age – Epicure 50 Best Recipe Cards, recipe by Jill Dupleix)

Ingredients:

·         1 skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced

·         1 quantity of My All-purpose Cantonese Marinade

·         6 dried shiitake, soaked in cold water overnight

·         ½ tsp sugar

·         1 bunch asparagus, woody stems removed and cut into lengths

·         1 tbs cooking oil

·         finely shredded ginger (optional)

·         1 tbs oyster sauce

Method:

1. Toss chicken with the marinade and set aside 20-30 minutes.
2. In the meantime, remove stalks from shiitake and slice the caps to about 5mm thick. Toss sliced caps with the sugar and set aside. (This helps to remove a ‘fishy/bitter’ flavour that the Chinese describe.)
3. When ready to cook, heat the oil in a wok or saucepan to almost smoking on high heat. Add ginger, if using, for around 10 seconds before adding the chicken. Stir-fry until most pieces are cooked to medium-well before removing chicken from pan and setting aside.
4. Add shiitake slices to the hot pan and toss until starting to brown before adding the asparagus. Stir-fry asparagus until bright green and cover with a lid for a minute before checking how cooked they are. If they’re too crunchy for your liking then cover for another minute before checking again.
5. Return chicken to pan along with oyster sauce and stir-fry the whole lot until cooked through.

happy cooking!

Excelsior (無國界), 28 Oct & 28 Nov 2009

There is a perception that fusion cuisine is something that has been conceived by the minds of chefs in high end restaurants in relatively recent times. But the truth for people like myself who have grown up in or grown up eating food of a colonised land, this is the only food that we know. Over years of rule by governments and people of a different racial background comes a marriage of foods from both cultures – you see it in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Macau and Hong Kong to name just a few.

The fusion influences are sometimes obvious and, at other times, subtle. Think Vietnamese pork rolls, kaya toast and Portugese egg tarts. An example of this type of food in an eatery is the ‘sai chaan teng’ (西餐廳) or ‘western restaurant’ that serves Cantonese-ified western food. You will often see spaghetti stir-fried with beef in black pepper sauce on the menu as well as mixed seafood in a white sauce baked atop rice gracing the menu.

A place that does this variety of food rather well is Excelsior at Kogarah. It’s been around for around ten years now and is family run, I understand, so it closes for extended periods around public holiday occasions. If parking cannot be found on nearby streets then there is a handy underground carpark around the back of the building, which also happens to be free on weekends.

I’ve eaten here countless times over the years and one of their standout items is the ‘Prawn Bisque’ which is creamy and very prawny and is served with a small crusty bread roll with butter on the side.

If you’re looking for a puff pastry fix then I would recommend the ‘Bouillabaisse with puff pastry’. Although it’s definitely not a French bouillabaisse by any description, it doesn’t skimp on the seafood and is fresh with its tomato-ey flavours.

I quite often have the ‘Baked linguine Bolognaise’ as the herb-less but slightly sweet tomato mince sauce is comforting after being baked on top of pasta and developing a crusty top. The serving is generous and I usually find that I can’t finish it.

On one occasion, Monsieur Poisson has the ‘Curry chicken with rice’ which is a very mild yet fragrant but not overly yellow Cantonese-style curry. The pieces of chicken served are on the bone and are usually a mixture of thigh and drumstick. There’s a piece of potato or two thrown in for good measure and the sauce is lovely mixed through some plain rice.

And on another of our visits, I opt to order items from a set menu while Monsieur Poisson orders just a main dish. His is the ‘Lamb cutlets with chips’ which comes not only with chips but also a side of vegetables and a thin gravy-type sauce.

My spread starts with the ‘Seafood ravioli in prawn sauce’ where the ravioli wrappers are definitely white gow-gee (dumpling) ones instead and the sauce tastes like a thinner version of the prawn bisque described above.

Next is a ‘Spicy vongole soup’ which has a moderate but not overwhelming amount of heat and features plenty of clam meat and no shells. Alongside is the usual bread roll with butter.

For the main meal I’ve chosen the ‘Minute steak with garlic mushroom sauce’ which is intensely garlicky and comes with vegetables as well as a small serve of potato gratin.

The included dessert is never the highlight for me as it’s usually a cold, gelatine-set panna cotta type of thing – not my favourite. On this occasion it is a ‘Papaya pudding with azuki’ which is smooth and served with a drizzle of evaporated milk on top. The best part of course is that the set menu costs only around $19 and includes a hot drink as well!

Excelsior (無國界)

Kogarah Town Square, AR16, 7-9 Belgrave St, Kogarah NSW

Tel: (02) 9553 1866

Opening Hours:  Mon  CLOSED

Tues-Sun  around 11:00am-10pm, I think…

happy eating!