Australian Food

Today, I read an article on the SMH online that was basically a clarion call for anyone and everyone to come up with a dish to represent Australia, since the aptly named Australia Day is like 2 days away. Asking for various chefs to proffer submissions have produced ideas like kangaroo Wellington or variations on Pavlova, peach Melba, the humble meat pie and all kinds of Asian stuff like dumplings or marron with a Thai style mango salad.

This of course raises the question, just what is Australian food? I’ve asked myself this like several times ever since I first set foot here in my culinary quest. My answer was undoubtedly, you just can’t define it. Unlike the great cuisines of the world, French, Chinese, Italian, Japanese etc… You can actually tell what their food is. Put a plate of Som Tom and most people would think it Thai. See a ceviche and you think Peru, maybe South American. See a burrito, Mexico/Tex-Mex. See a meat pie and you go, well it could be English? Oh great, stuck to the motherland again.

If you talk about Australian Food or New Zealand food even. You can’t define it. Pie! Pavlova! They both claim. Ok, who gets dibs on which and also, whoever gets the pie, how does that differentiate from an English pie? If you stuff roo and macadamias and wattleseed and lemon myrtle in it, it doesn’t make it Australian. It makes it Aussie ingredients stuffed into an English pastry concept. One of the problems with defining Aus/NZ food is their colonial heritage, their ties to the mothership drinking her tea.

And when you talk about food, you can’t not talk about national identity. Food is what truly separates cultures and nationalities the most. It’s the flavor profiles you grow up with that define your taste and hence your expectations for existence. You basil/tomato or your wasabi/soy or your mustard/sauerkraut, that’s the flavors you yearn for because it’s kept you alive. Australia just can’t shrug off her heritage from the Brits, who have only just recently come out of the food doldrums. I mean, it used to be so bad in the UK, that it was worth Asterix parodying it. Still, shit as some things might be, Yorkshire pudding, beef Wellington and English Breakfast tea are just a few iconic English dishes so at least they’ve got something.

So what to do when your country, established for a long time by now and yet, still with ties to your colonial past, is yearning to establish its own identity in the world of food? You struggle. I mean, the suggestions I mentioned before are just stupid. Of course, all of them are simply answering the question what they’re going to cook this Australia Day rather than what should Australia’s national dish be. But still, in my mind, suggesting dumplings or a Thai salad completely ignore the fact that you’re referencing other countries. If it’s to be a national dish, there has to be national pride not national other country’s food appreciation time.

Going back to my search for “Australian” food, I had a two pronged attack, indigenous and colonial. I wanted to try Aboriginal food but there is none, not in any major city anyway. If you want to see how Aboriginals used to eat, yea you can do the campfire dreamtime thingamajig at Uluru with the insects devouring you first. I don’t see that as being Australian food because nobody eats that except wide eyed tourists. The other issue is of course, the state of the Aboriginal in Australia but that’s a massive can of worms not worth digging into right now. I’m interested in the food and looked into cooking methodology and stuff. They used these ground ovens called Kup-Murri and a whole host of local ingredients that are hardly ever seen on Australian restaurants. Actually, I think in the 90s there was this absurd trend of stuffing local menus with kangaroo and wattleseed and local ingredients but they always have this tacky touristy association to it all. Mostly because nobody eats that stuff with regularity just for kitsch.

That hints at the problem though. Why are Australians not eating kangaroo, their own indigenous meat? Is it because it’s gamey and extra lean? Yes in part but also because most (white) Australians with a British heritage can’t forget their roots and still see the jumping jack as an oversized rat. Nobody is farming them like say how the Japanese farm cows. Nobody is fattening them up to marble the flesh. Also, there are shitloads of local ingredients you can’t find anywhere else. Nobody is growing any of this stuff at all. It took a foreigner, Rene Redzepi to come in and bring in this idea of locality when it comes to cooking and again, I don’t mean the kitschy shit. The problem is that everything’s just dumped until the title “BUSH TUCKER”. Don’t make it kitsch. Make it good and make lots of it and more things, not just the usual suspects. Let’s see some indigenous ingredients for real like more finger limes not for $45 a kilo. Pepperberries, bush tomatoes, warrigal greens and quandongs are a few of the more well known ingredients that are usable but never turn up in grocers. There’s also a whole can of worms when you bring up the issue of Aboriginal status, which is a large reason why there isn’t a modern Aboriginal food culture that’s talked about at all if it even exists.

I also checked out colonial food. I asked around which restaurant I could go to check out Aussie food in Sydney and most of the answers came back as Harry Cafe de Wheels’ Tiger Pie. I still haven’t had it. I just thought pies just aren’t unique enough. Also mushy peas and mash on a pie… Nobody eats that except piss drunk and broke teenagers. Sydneysider would much rather have Thai or Japanese in this city or fluffed up “mod oz”. Incidentally, it’s actually really easy to define mod oz. It’s basically two or more things from cultures that have nothing to do with each other thrown together on a plate. Like sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. Real “Aussie” food? Maybe the backyard BBQ, which I have been able to enjoy but a really shit beer and bad sausages and bad sauces aren’t really all that great. I mean, the Yanks have turned BBQ into a sport. You can eat really good BBQ stuff like robatayaki in Japan for instance. The humble backyard BBQ produces a cooking method that also happens to be universal and no specific individual dishes. That’s another problem with defining Australia’s food, their colonial heritage weighing things down but also increasing influence from Asian especially bringing in another dimension to appreciate before they can actually make it their own.

So what am I suggesting? Warrigal Greens tossed with nahm jim? No. Kangaroos massaged with beer and fed specialized diets and then stuffed into a pie? Well, that might work actually but no. I’m suggesting that it will take time for Australia to really define a real Australian food and at the same time, her own identity as well. There have been other countries with a colonial heritage and cultural influences from mainly immigrant populations that have gone onto creating their own cuisines. The Americans go about it in a rather brutish fashion but hotdogs, burgers and BBQ have made it at last, even in France. Singapore (represent) has it’s own culinary tradition, ok shared with Malaysia but we’re pretty much the same and we’ve got chicken rice, chilli crab etc etc etc. People go to Singapore just for a gastrotour. There are countries not entirely unlike Australia in her culinary situation which have broken out of their colonial clasps. In the case of Singapore, it was easy since most of the population actually don’t happen to be the colonial overlords. In the States, it was the massive influx of migrants from both Europe and Africa that have also changed things. Australia is still mostly actually tied by lineage to Her Majesty but she can still break out of the chains!

A local cuisine comes about when there’s local ingredients available that are good and cheap and tasty as all hell. But it also needs a mindset, a mentality of individuality that’s unique to the rest of the world. Australia is no longer a dumping ground for the Brits. It’s come a long way from that by this time. If you ask the question of what race is the average Australian, it’s getting less and less white. The street food culture is slowly growing and turning into something resembling a possibility. Change is afoot and maybe finally, Australia will look under her nose and see the bounty at her doorstep rather than constantly pandering to all things European or all things Asian.

This is my call for Australia Day.

• Farmers of Australia. Show some real pride and grow things that grew on the same soil, not just things transplanted from other places. Make them tasty and make them good.
• Someone please please please make some marbled Kangaroo/Emu that can maybe come close to just grade 5 wagyu?
• More sustainable shellfish please. There’s so much that’s really only available here and no where else on Earth. Even David Chang thinks the same.
• Chefs, grow some balls. Don’t just imitate the masters. This goes for myself too.
• People of Australia. Eat local. Local food, local produce.
• Woolworths and Coles: Profit should be a sustainable ideal.

The Layover

I’m quite enjoying Bourdain’s latest series for the Travel Channel. The Layover is based around the idea that you’ve got a short stay like 2 days tops in one of the many metropolises around the world and what you can do in that short span of time. It’s a great idea to get a snapshot of a place and I suppose when you only have so little time, you probably gotta get the best bang for your buck. They skip the touristy travel guide type recommendations and try to give a pretty up to date picture of things.

So far, I’ve caught SG, SF, HK and NY. In NY, you get to see him in a bookshop fondling a set of El Bulli books and recommending Harold McGee’s On Food And Cooking. He reveals that Ludwig Bemelmans, the man behind the Madeline series of books wrote pretty much the same book as his own Kitchen Confidential way ahead of him whilst he’s having a drink at the Bemelmans bar. It’s easy to see that yea, he’s a travel show host and occasional book writer but at heart, he used to cook and love doing it and he hasn’t really lost any of that. David Chang also makes an appearance and they share hot dogs at Crif Dogs.

I like SF the best so far, it feels like the one American city that I would actually really want to visit. He hooks up with Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese, goes to a shitload of bars and a shitload of hipstery non profit type food startup/idea joints and shit. It’s so fucking hipster but the one place I really wanna check out is Swan Oyster Depot where you can have raw seafood for breakfast, like urchins and shit and it’s not fucking Japan. Bourdain is also totally obviously drunk off his head as he hits like 3 bars in one night before grabbing a greasy burger late on. Way too many enviro/eco/socio hipstocrats even in the single episode but I am super keen on the general Asian/Latin food abundance, pretentious hipster bullshit notwithstanding. Bowien also squirts mustard on Bourdain in the most homo-ero travel channel scene ever in the most appropriate city ever.

The Singapore one, I’m alright with, mostly because the joints rec’ed aren’t really my joints. KF Seetoh brings him out for brekkie at Tiong Bahru, which is quite a nice hawker center really. He traipses round the Thieves Market. He shits on the Singapore Sling, gets chicken rice at Chin Chin on Purvis, gets a drink at Ku De Ta, Geyland in the wee hours and Nasi Lemak at Changi Village before he flies off…

In HK, he gets some Canto Roasts at Joy Hing, where he says goose is the shiznit. Having actually had roast goose brought home from HK, I concur. It’s awesomesauce and I still haven’t been to HK yet. Had roast goose in SG but that HK stuff is sick. Also, he visits the cheapest ever one michelin star restaurant, Tim Ho Wan for dim sum, Hui Liu Shan for mango drinks and some of the worst macaroni in tomato soup plus spam/fried egg at some dai pai dong. The coolest thing is a visit to Chan Chi Kee where he picks up a duck slicer.

Looking forward to catching Rome, Amsterdam, Miami, London and Montreal.

Konosuke HD Wa Sujihiki

This is the Konosuke HD Wa Sujihiki, 270mm of 61HRC semi stainless made in Sakai City, Japan. My X’mas pressie hohoho. Well, a belated one but whatever. It cost about $280 after shipping. Actually, my first choice was the Konosuke White #2 suji, which is about ~$15 less but I mulled over the fact that it wasn’t stainless. The Stainless version of the same knife but it too was out of stock. I even considered opting for a Suisin, which is about $100 more.

Then I saw the HD version, which hitherto was unbeknownst to me somehow. I was shopping at CKTG and somehow when I sorted the knives by Sujihikis, these were hidden. I browsed through the Konosuke HD series and found it and it didn’t take long to make the decision. Combining the functionality of stainless steel with the edge holding and taking capability of white steel, this would’ve easily been my first choice, particularly at the price paid.

The first thing I notice about the knife is the box. The top is textured and feels really nice. It’s also really long. Inside the knife is sheathed in a hard but thin cardboard sheathe. I also opted to pay $20 for the optional saya, which is the wooden sheathe with a pin. You’re supposed to drill a hole on the end for the pin to go through but I haven’t done that yet. Probably won’t for a bit either since I haven’t got a drill. Anyway, even the stuff aside from the thing itself looks and feels impressive.

The next thing I notice is the lightness. It’s absurd. It feels nimble. Long but nimble. Incredibly lightweight but firm. I stare at the blade. The Konosuke HD branding is etched into the blade itself, which is smooth and uniform. It’s also super thin. The bevel is nearly nonexistent. You can’t see it with the naked eye. The spine is smoothed out, which is a really nice touch. The handle feels really nice too and the buffalo horn ferrule is well finished. The point where the blade joins the handle has been filled and smoothed out and you can smell the burnt wood. In short, the manufacturing quality is absolutely superb. I can say without a doubt, this knife looks and feels amazing compared to any of the stuff I’ve seen in stores, from Shuns to Globals and Wusthofs and other mid tier stuff. Price wise, it’s not much more either.

These type of handmade knives tend not to be finished sharp out the box but without touching any stones or whatever, it feels mad already. It’s easily the sharpest, cleanest knife I’ve felt/used thus far. I breezed through an apple on the first day playing with it and since then, I’ve filleted a few fish with another knife and then used it to slice some “sashimi”. Sick. Clean and beautifully smooth. I’ve then gone onto putting it under the stones and after I brush my fingers past the edge, I thought I saw what were microchips but they turned out to be bits of my skin instead. You can also see that there’s now a mini bevel from my uneven sharpening work but basically, the edge is scary sharp and because the blade is so thin, it’s feels even more cray cray.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Shapton

All I got for X’mas was some Shaptons, a DMT and a budget ass stone holder for about $240 shipped from Sharpening Supplies. They’ve got a good selection and I considered getting a combo Naniwa stone and a DMT for $100 less but decided not to settle for 2nd choice.

In detail,

1. DMT Diasharp 6″ Benchstone, with a 325 Grit rating to level my other stones and do the groundwork/fix chips etc.
2. Shapton Glass Stone 1000 Grit, as the core stone, the one I’ll use the most.
3. Shapton Glass Stone 4000 Grit, as my “finisher”. It’s not as fine as I’d like but I chose to stick within a budget and in any case, it’ll still be the bridging stone to higher grits.
4. Universal Stone Holder. Went for this rather than the $90 Shapton holder because I didn’t want to break the bank. I can see that if I used the stone often enough, this just won’t do but in the short term, it’s totally alright. The reason being the Shaptons are quite low, only 10mm high and there’s only a little clearance when I use this stone holder. Technically, I could still use it just fine if I prop up the stone with say, some card or a thinner plate below it.

I have to say, I am most impressed with Shapton‘s Glass Stones. First off, the packaging is really nice. It’s this black paper box that has a very nice texture and feel and it looks good. The freakin’ box for the sharpening stone. It works like a drawer or a sheathe and you pull out the stone from the cover. The stone itself is stunning. One side is white and that’s the sharpening side. The other side is frosted glass below which is printed the grits and branding and stuff. If you’re like me and you just wanna have good looking stuff, even fucking sharpening stones, Shapton is the only way to go. I’ve read on various online fora that a lot of people thought the attractive side was the sharpening side and tried to grind metal on glass to not much effect.

Of course, I didn’t buy them just because they looked good. Shapton’s got a really good rep. One big plus of the Glasstone is it’s supposed to be fast cutting and easy to use. I would say with my limited experience using some shitty Chinese stones and a combo King 1000/6000 stone, these are my favorites for sure. I definitely managed to get a sharper edge on my knives than before. Another great thing is how they’re just splash and go. You don’t have to soak, wait or whatever. Just get cranking. The swarf also builds fast and quickly plus you don’t really need to apply excessive pressure either, just let the stone do the business. Even though the useable size of the stone is about 5mm, it’s supposed to wear slowly and last pretty long unless you’re a pro sharpener. We’ll see in the future.

I think I’m sold on Shapton. I wasn’t sure because there’s really no way to tell unless you get to try it out but yea, I’m definitely gonna get a complete set this time next year, the holder, the pond, an 8000 grit and a 16000 grit plus the bloody diamond lapping plate. I like how it’s a complete, well designed system and how well it works plus how great they look. Seriously. You could put them on your coffee table. They look like Pantone color swatches.

The DMT works OK as a lapping plate but it sticks to the stone basically so it isn’t ideal in the slightest. It’s also really rough so it’s really for fix ups. Speaking of which, I just dropped my knife on the floor and it chipped in a few places plus the tip’s even slightly dented. That even happened the day after I took the knife to the new stones. I was swearing a lot.

Anyway, with the new Shaptons, I just refined my new Tojiro ITK and can say I got it almost scary sharp everywhere. Practice makes perfect!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pocky

I love Glico Pocky sticks. Partly because my surname is Pok so maybe I feel a certain natural affinity towards them. I also like the Korean version, Pepero, made by Lotte and less so with Meiji’s Fran but for all intents and purposes, my favourite version is Pocky Almond Crush. Biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate, rolled in nuts and allowed to set, simple but delicious.

Anyway, I just had this brainwave and decided that in future I’m gonna make these choc dipped sticks with grissini, mixed hand brunoised hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds and peanuts and also a little bit of flaky sea salt to bring out the choc more.

Pok’s Choc Dipped Stick. Mmm you can almost taste the homo-ero.

Bronson

Charles Bronson is the stagename for infamous career prisoner Michael Peterson, a name taken after Peterson starts out in the world of underground boxing. Bronson is the pseudo autobiographical film helmed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Tom Hardy is the man that stars in the lead role and does it really well. It’s a highly theatrical film, replete with the lead actor playing narrator in facepaint.

The show starts out with Bronson facing an audience and telling them his story sequentially, from his birth til he reaches adulthood and his unlikely fall into criminal behaviour. There’s really no reason for it. He just likes to fight. He robs a post office and gets himself 7 years in jail and from there, picks a fight with anyone he wants and moves from prison to prison and then a mental hospital before getting released because he’s too expensive to keep in jail. He gets involved in some boxing but falls for a girl, steals a ring and ends up back in jail. At one point he laments that he’s spent 30 or so years in the prison system and he hasn’t killed a single person. Back in jail, he keeps fighting the guards but eventually winds up in art class, gets his art teacher interested in his work, beats his art teacher up, ties him to a pole and paints his face. He’s naked but painted black and wearing gold framed sunglasses and a bowler hat whilst doing this. There’s a certain Clockwork Orange-ness mixed up with Magritte, who’s gets referenced just a moment earlier.

The film style is somewhat surrealist/absurdist. It plays on the hyper violence by having electro pop/classical tunes playing in the background. So you got the Pet Shop Boys and New Order or something from Madame Butterfly whilst he’s pummeling prison guards or screaming fuck you cunt or whatever. It works quite well stylistically. There’s also a heavy homo-eroticism in the film with a few very gay characters seeming to take a liking to the muscley and mustachioed Bronson which works to contrast with the macho man image of the main character.

However, the character just feels a little empty. He’s an excessively violent sociopath who doesn’t have much raison d’etre. I suppose that’s probably the main criticism for the film, that it lacks substance. Not that a film needs to have great meaning but just that Bronson seems a little uninteresting beyond the nice framing and music and the cinematography and Hardy’s twitching between hyperviolence and prim and proper. Despite the hardline outer masculinity of Bronson, you can still see the child within him, uninformed and naive and ultimately a little dull.

Still got some interesting scenes though.

The Chaser

I think there’s like a few archetypes for Korean movies.

• Silly Rom Coms (My Sassy Girl)
• Dramatic Military Movies (Silmido)
• Bloody Action Thrillers (Old Boy)

There’s a few outside those but these 3 archetypes are the bread and butter for the Korean movie industry and I have to say, I really like the last type. It kind of feels like old school action movies but updated with gory thriller plots. The Chaser is just another one of those rather good BATs. A directorial debut for Na Hong Jin in ’08, Chugyeogja is about a guy who’s an ex-cop that’s now a pimp. He sends women out to clients and gets annoyed when a few of his girls start to go missing. He thinks they’ve run away but then he notices a link between the missing girls. It’s the same guy! Oh noes! Plus, he just sent his best girl to him despite the fact that she’s sick and has to leave her daughter at home!

Lead actor Kim Yun Seok puts down a star turn, not unlike Choi Min Sik in Old Boy. He starts out indifferent to events, concerned about the loss of profits and thinks that the guy has been selling his girls but starts to think otherwise as the plot moves forward. The story itself is loosely based on a real serial killer and he happens to be portrayed by Ha Jung Woo, who convincingly puts on a Bae Yong Joon disposition with his boyish face and fake pretend smile. He’s a butcher. He ties up the sick prostitute who left her poor daughter at home and tries to chisel her head in. A coupla neighbors ring the bell and wonder why the owner of the house hasn’t been coming to church. After realising they could compromise his identity, he invites them in and butchers them too. It ain’t the first time he’s killed some peeps.

So from guy worried about losing his income to guy thinking there’s a killer at his best girl, we arrive at guy who feels guilt ridden as he tries to hide the truth from the daughter whilst driving/running around looking for the killer. They meet eventually, in a car crash and the chase begins.

At one point, the killer gives himself up to the police but the problem is he knows he’ll get away if they can’t find enough evidence. So between the police and The Chaser, they’ve got to find the bodies or something, anything to tie the killer down.

One part of the film feels like a massive criticism on the ineffectiveness of Korea’s policing as well as their relatively lax criminal laws. I often have friends telling me how rapists can get away with at most 3 years in jail or how there’s murderers given another go and shit. This movie reinforces that idea as it hinges on the killer’s ability to walk away from it all and finish what he started whilst The Chaser is just left running around in earnest.

The bad guy gets caught eventually but it’s one big bloodfest that didn’t really have to happen.

Hunter Valley 2011

3 days off. I had 3 days off. My girl had 2.5 days off. On the spur of the moment, we booked a shitty hostel in the Hunter, drove up and wasted a weekend away. Along the way, my boss decides to call and check if I can come in to do an extra despite the fact that I already did. I tell him I’m 2.5 hrs north at this point and my room’s waiting.

We didn’t really do all that much. It’s the getting out of Sydney that is great, a mini holiday when we never get the chance to. That’s why the Hunter is so popular, mainly because it’s just 2 hours away from the big city.

Actually, I read somewhere, I think Jancis Robinson’s Wine Atlas Of The World, that the Hunter sucks balls for winemaking. The only reason why it exists is because it’s near Sydney. Consider it’s absurd sub tropical climate for starters. Still, I suppose this is why it makes it quintessentially Australian, they’ve somehow managed to make the Hunter something. Through sheer luck and stubborn stupidity. Aussies would call this gumption or heart. I call it dumbness.

After an hour wasted with missed exits (I must be blind I swear!), we manage to find the shitty hostel, which isn’t so shitty except for the fact that days later my boss would tell me he paid less than double what I did for a family sized room. Anyway, ensuite bath is enough to accomodate the lady so it’ll make do.

Like I said before, we came to chill and do nothing but drive around bumpy roads under the influence. We only hit up a handful of wineries and basically I made a list of all the ones worth visiting. Visits to 3 of these I will recount.

Now when you say Hunter wine, you really either mean Semillon or Shiraz. There’s really nothing else with some exceptions but yeah, Semillon and Shiraz really. That’s it. Everywhere you go, you just wanna drink Semillon or Shiraz. The rest is filler as far as the Hunter goes, although a few wineries have other vineyards all over Australia.

I suppose there a few massively famous wines. For Semillon, there’s Tyrell’s Vat 1. Undisputedly, tt’s the best example of exactly what Hunter Semillon is; a strange concoction that somehow makes something palatable despite the conflicting climate and once in a while turns into something actually quite good. I didn’t get to try the Vat 1. They kept it away from me. But I was mostly impressed by how Tyrell’s run things. This must be my 3rd trip here and as always, they’re just professional. A wine glass for each wine, not shy about the portions and they even gave me some Vat 47 Chardonnay, normally not for tasting, to try. The Vat 47 for 2008 is super soft, which is kinda their trademark for a Chardy. There is scant acid in this but the other complaint I had was it lacked depth and flavour for what’s supposed to be one of their flagships. I also scoffed down some shitty Lost Block and Old winery whites which were bleargh. However, I bought a bottle, the ’06 HVD Semillon. I think you can call it a bang for buck cheaper version of the Vat 1. Young Hunter Semillons are like shitty versions of Sauv Blanc, all acid and not much else. Old Hunter Semillons like my now 5 year old HVD have an about face, lose much of the acidity and take on biscuit/toast flavors. Something unique to the Hunter Valley and unique in the wine world. If you have to go to one big winery in the Hunter, go to Tyrell’s and drink some semi. Keep them talking and ask them how stuff differs. Start at the bottom end (cheap) which is actually the top of the list and they’ll probably let you try some of their good stuff if you look like you’re keen.

Now for the ugly side. There’s another massively famous wine in the Hunter and it’s a red. I’d say Brokenwood’s Graveyard Shiraz would take that title. The cellar door itself is quaint and small but Brokenwood’s operations are pretty big. The Graveyard goes for anywhere from $80 to $120 depending on the vintage and when I went there, there was this Singaporean couple asking about shipping some stuff over or whatever. I can tell my own kind when I hear it speak. Anyway, I wasn’t really interested in the whites so I jumped to the reds. Their Shiraz and Pinot was alright but the stuff they let you try is just whatever. The guy that took us on at first was alright but he got distracted by my comrade and had to get this lady from the back office to help out. I suppose she was annoyed she had to work or something but her attitude was broken. Since we had none of the rapport I’d built up earlier with the dude, I thought we’d try some white instead so we could see the difference between Tyrell’s Semi and Brokenwood’s offerings. No new glass though, we were asked to chuck the wine out and wash the glass with water and then reminded that we should start with whites. So I don’t know much at all about their whites and wanted to try this and that but she was like “the list goes like this, bigger flavor as you go down blah blah blah or you’ll spoil the palate, wash the glass out again please”. Snooty as fuck and everything that’s bad about wine. Seriously, educate me please if I require it but you don’t have to be a prick. By the way, Tyrell’s Semi is better.

Now’s there’s plenty of wineries besides just these two. There’s Mount Pleasant which make an awesomely cheap bottle of Semi, the Elizabeth. De Bortoli makes Australia’s most famous dessert wine, the Noble One. There’s also Margan, Ballabourneen and De Iuliis and plenty more wineries that make good to decent stuff. The one I liked the most though was the smallest.

Lake’s Folly is actually pretty well known and rabidly popular. They regularly sell out based on a mailing list without people even tasting the stuff. A few bottles make it into shops for resale. They only make 2 wines, a white and a red and they’re not even Semillon and Shiraz. Instead, they make a Cabernet and a Chardonnay. They are one of the OG boutique wineries and even though they’re not under the same owners who started the place, they’re still run the exact same way. No quality compromises and overproduction. The building that houses the cellar door is really cool and when we arrive a white dog greets us warmly and we waste 5 minutes taking photo with it. We then go inside the building where much to his displeasure, the guy in charge informs us unfortunately that he’s only got about 20mls left of the ’10 Chardonnay for tasting. Like literally, it’s last drops until the next vintage. Now, I don’t know if he’s holding out or faking it but I doubt it and he keeps apologising profusely. I’m cool either way. 10mls is good for a taste. They have like zero single bottles of Chardonnay left. They don’t even have the 12 bottles for sale. They only had magnums. Anyway, the Chardonnay is lovely. It’s sweetish for me and easy on the palate, very delicious but I only had a mouthful to savour. Peachy too is all I remember. I would have bought a bottle right off. Instead, I’ll make do with the ’09 Cabernet and I take a bottle home with this little bag made out of the same stuff as reusable shopping bags but printed with my favourite wine logo in the world. I really like their logo, which is just a graphic of the building in which I stood. I think it just captures the smallness but goodness of the place. The Cabernet was soft in tannins and tasted like it held back a lot, which makes sense because this is the 3rd most sought after wine in Australia after Penfolds Grange and Penfolds Bin 389, according to wine ark anyway. Supposed to cellar for ages. Not bad for $60.

After blowing some money on wine, we blow some more on the coolest place for din dins, Maccas. Mostly because I didn’t want to go to a swanky hatted place for a $70-$100 3 course and most of the menus didn’t really appeal. However, if you do want to hit up a swanky hatted restaurant in the Hunter, you could try Muse or Bistro Molines. Muse if you want something modern and Molines if you want something classic. Actually I really wanted to eat at Molines but they were closed when we went so Maccas was the next best thing. Hahaha. I kid, it’s just that for dinnertime on a Tuesday, there’s not that many options but for me, Maccas was a short jaunt from where I stayed.

Post big mac, we tried to drive to this dessert place, Sabor, which looked ok but ended being terrible because they were closed despite their opening hours saying otherwise and we had to drive down the darkest road ever. After the scary drive, we chose to go the Hunter Valley Gardens, where they had this X’mas light display and it was like a carnivally festival thing with shitty hotdogs, gozleme, the world’s most expensive churros and stuff like that. My favourite thing was this stupid reindeer hat we bought for $10. I wore it for the next 2 days even after I got back to Sydney.

For breakfast though, we went to a nice little place, Cafe Enzo, which is somehow in every single Sydney food blog and in every single one, I see the same prawn pasta and shit. We end up asking for the scones we kept seeing which turned out really good, light, fluffy and tasty with homemade jam and fresh whipped cream. I got the Benedict which I think came with a Hollandaise made without butter but don’t let that detract from the review, it’s good and I liked the honey cured bacon they used, sliced really thin sitting atop some spinach and nice crusty ciabatta. Actually really good food, like the kind of stuff I had on holiday in my teens good. Their scones were about as good as the ones my family went bonkers over when I was 14 and had to milk a cow on a farm and whipped myself in the neck with the horsewhip and saw a horse poop in front of my eyes. Horrid horrid nightmares.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Fruit & Nut

Fruit & Nut!!! Cadbury FRUIT & NUT!!! FRUIT & NUT!!!

Whether you think Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut sounds a little frute swag or not, it is the awesome sauce. So typically, I always buy a couple bars a month or so. It’s part of my regular snack rotation. However, my head chef recently bought something I think is even better than the bars. It’s choc coated fruit and nut balls. Also from Cadbury but instead of a candy bar, it’s choc coated balls. The major benefit is that the contrasting flavor of choc/raisin or choc/nut is better. I personally feel that Cadbury’s milk choc sucks. The one major exception is if you couple it with raisins and almonds. Together. Eating the choc balls provides less milk choc, more fruit & nut. Or at least, my tongue seems to think that way, therefore I conclude that Cadbury Fruit & Nut choc coated balls are the best thing since Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars.

When I grow up, I’m making a Fruit & Nut Ice Cream by melting Cadbury milk choc bars into an anglaise and then adding muscatels, salted grapes and toasted almonds.

Tojiro ITK Shirogami Wa-Gyuto

A month and a half back, I saw that CKTG sent me an email stating that they were going to restock their super budget Tojiro ITK Shirogami wa-gyuto and I didn’t even bother to hesitate. $80+ shipped down under for a decent blade is hard to beat considering that a regular line German brand knife would cost more and an import Japanese mass market brand knife would be double or triple instore in Ozland. Btw, I highly recommend CKTG. Wide selection, low prices and plenty of fancy illustration.

So I had it sent to a parcel locker in St Leonards, which is less than a 5 minutet drive away from where I live. Mostly because I wanted to try out this new Auspost thing and because I figured I’d be able to pick it up anytime I wanted rather than pickup a card and have to go to the post office only when I’m free, which can be hard.

Overall, I’d say the service works. They sent me an email although I thought I recalled them saying the notification would be via sms as well. Anyway, once the item is lodged with the post office depot, they send it over to the parcel locker, send an email with the locker number and a code to unlock it. You’re given 2 days to collect though, so it’s possible to miss it if somehow you’re out of the country but you can pick it up again at the same post office during office hours.

So I pop open the locker and inside is a brown box direct from the States with my brand new knife inside. A quick test tells me that the edge isn’t sharpened. It’s polished up but it’s not sharp, at least it’s not sharp enough. That’s no biggie, I’ve got a sharpening solution on the way.

First impressions of the knife are that it looks pretty damn cool. It comes in a long blue box that belies the actual length and shape of the blade. Inside, there’s some bubble wrap, a Tojiro leaflet and some rust resistant paper that wraps up the knife with a plastic protector on the end. The blade is kurouchi finished so only the edge is polished silver but the top part of the knife is left black like tarnished steel and the Tojiro brand is etched in a rather rustic manner at the bottom of the spine. It’s also a high carbon 60-61 HRC steel so it’s reactive and not stainless. I know that generally speaking you choose one or the other, practicality vs performance. However, I’m pretty confident that there’s plenty of good stainless steels that are hard enough and can get sharp enough and aren’t difficult to maintain. I think in most pro kitchens, stainless is generally the better way to go. Except when performance is paramount like with high end sushi. I’m thinking my next knife/knives are probably all gonna be stainless.

I’m a fan of the D shaped handle insomuch as ergonomics goes but not so much in terms of aesthetics. Not a fan of the finish on the wood and would definitely like an octogonal one more I think. The handle just seems to stain and absorb water and stuff and it also feels pretty cheap. That said, it is a budget knife so I’m not so much complaining as I’m commenting. The way the blade is epoxied into the handle isn’t the best either, a little shoddy but again, teething issues.

The blade itself though feels rough and ready. Actually the black part of the blade feel really rough and that’s actually a bad thing, I fear food will stick to it rather than come off cleanly. The edge has been polished nicely and it’s very thin. The length isn’t all that short at a little over 210mm but I can see that a longer 240mm knife would be far more useful as far as chef knives go. Still this is all experimentation, trial and error and I’ve only just begun on my knife journey and I’m sure there’ll be plenty to go.

Update. Just got my sharpening set and put the Tojiro through a Shapton 1000 for 20 minutes taking my time and maybe 30 passes on each side on the 4000. Got a chilli dropped in half. Sweet. It’s scary sharp at some points and less so at others but practice makes perfect. I think it’s got the potential to be sharper than my old Wustie for sure.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.