Further adventures at the top of the South Island

After Kaikoura, we ventured north to the top of New Zealand's South Island to the Abel Tasman National Park area where the sea continued to be turquoisey blue, and the scenery remained amazing. We opted to stay in a self-contained chalet with cooking facilities, so we were able to have some cooking adventures.

One of the big landmarks of New Zealand is the Split Apple Rock just off a little town called Kaiteriteri.

As we were playing about on the beach, we noticed multiple rocks with mussels growing on them (and this is the bit where New Zealand police might want to arrest me). We were actually a bit disappointed with the huge green lipped mussels which are most popular in NZ, so we were very excited to see that this variety, which were the smaller type similar to those eaten in Europe. Obviously we couldn't let it go to waste, so plucked a kilo or two, and cooked the following recipe:

Moules on the move (serves 2)
2-3kg of small mussels
1 tbsp of oil
1 finely chopped onion
1 glass of white wine

1. Thoroughly wash the mussels, scraping off any barnacles clinging onto the shells, and remove any beards. Discard any mussels which are not closed, and will not close even if you tap them gently
2. Fry onion gently in the oil over a medium heat in a deep pan which will comfortably accommodate all the mussels, until soft but not brown
3. Tip the mussels into the pan, and add in the wine
4. Put a lid tightly onto the pan, and shake.
5. Wait for 3-5 mins until all the mussels have opened up
6. Eat, mopping up the juices with good bread.

If you are doing this at home rather than in an ill-equipped holiday chalet, definitely add some parsley. Other variations I like are to do it with bacon and cider (replacing the wine), and also one with garlic, ginger and coconut milk.

I loved seeing all the beautiful lambs as we were driving all around NZ (there are 40 million sheep to 4 million people), so obviously we had to eat some (hee hee). The lamb was so beautiful that we ate it 4 nights in a row! We were blessed with a barbeque, so we did some very simple barbequed lamb racks which had been marinated in garlic and rosemary. The spring asparagus had also just bloomed, delicious!

Kaikoura

Before heading back home to London, I am taking a short visit to New Zealand (I am currently sitting in Wellington airport). Poor little New Zealand is very overshadowed by its giant Australian neighbour, and I'm not quite sure why! It is utterly beautiful, a pleasure to simply drive around, and the food has been very good.

First stop was Kiakoura on the east coast, famous for its whale watching and for its crayfish (Kia means food in Maori, and koura means crayfish). The crayfish are exported out of New Zealand under the name rock lobster, and they do look more like lobster than crayfish - very big, with bumpy heads, but with no claws.

We had initially tried what Lonely Planet claimed to be the best restaurant in town, but we found it had closed down (which also happened to Nelson later on in the trip - which made us wonder whether Lonely Planet actually destroys rather than builds restaurants in NZ). But the ex-owner pointed us to Green Dolphin on the seafront instead, which had crayfish as their special that night, so of course we had to try it.



It appeared to have been steamed in riesling (the local Marlborough riesling is lurvely), and then quickly roasted and finished with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We were munching every last morsel - the tail tastes pretty much like lobster, but I liked in particular the bit joining the head where you get more of a combination of white and brown meat. The brains, as I like to call it, was very moreish. We were a little piggy though, we really didn't need to eat a whole one, especially as they are not cheap!

Kaikoura in general had great seafood. A great little place is Kaikoura BBQ. Ideally situated right by the seal colony, it is a simple hut by the beach with a bbq, and some very fresh seafood, all for under NZ$10 (about £4 right now with the favourable exchange rates!). We had bbq'ed green lipped mussels, fish, and my favourite, some crayfish fritters (kind of like a crayfish omelette). As you can see, we ate it in a bit of a hurry:


Just before we left Kaikoura, we dropped into Hislops Cafe, which sounded a little bit too wholesome in the guidebook, but I was pleasantly surprised with. The lunch menu was a bit limited, but it did have a "designer" fish burger on it. Sounds terrible, but it was really pretty good, with their own homemade tartare sauce, and very nice homemade bread.

Overall, Kaikoura was probably our favourite place we visited in NZ - gorgeous coastline with snowy mountains in the background. Also a big shout to the folks at Fairways at Ocean Ridge, the apartments we stayed in - gorgeous place, will definitely try to be back!

Perfect Sydney brunch

I am very lucky to live right by Potts Point in Sydney, an area with tons of great restaurants, with Challis Avenue being probably one of my favourite streets. I have raved about Sardine Room on here before, and have recently returned for a last cuddle with Angie the owner at my favourite dinner place on Challis Ave, but wanted to rave also about my favourite brunch/lunch place.

Fratelli Paradiso is a teeny little place, with tables leaking onto the pavement on a sunny day. It is slightly imposing in that the entire menu is written in Italian on the big blackboards, and the waiters spend about 2 seconds explaining it to you, but everything here is so simple, so fresh, but with enough of a twist.

At a recent lunch here, I was completely wowed by a salad of prawns with mozzarella. You're probably thinking, "is that it??", but god was this good. Maybe it's because I've been deprived of decent mozzarella in Sydney, but it was a perfect example of not mucking about too much with great ingredients. Super yummy mopped up with a bit of bread.

We also tried their scallopini of veal that lunchtime - I really need to learn how Italians cook this dish, I am addicted to it. It tastes as if the veal is slightly steeped in lemon juice, but I'm sure it is more than just squeezing lemon over it. Again, this was just simple, with a bit of spinach on the side.
Ah, if only there was such a place 10 mins walk from home in London... maybe I can sneak in one more visit before I leave Sydney...

Sydney big guns – part 2

I was actually more excited about Quay than I was about Tetsuya’s. It has recently been awarded Restaurant of the Year by the Sydney Morning Herald (not that I’m an avid reader, media in Australia is terrible), but I was more excited by reading the menu. I liked the fact that it avoided slapping a degustation title on its food, and I liked even more the idea of doing 4 courses instead of the usual 3 to get the breadth of experience without having to sit through a million courses you didn’t decide on.

But as soon as we arrived, there was a boo-boo. The entrance is pretty imposing (it’s right at the end of the Sydney harbour pier, you have to go up a slightly scary lift, before entering some glitzy doors), and as we approached reception, it turned out they had no record of our booking. I get that mistakes happen, but they had actually rang the day before to confirm the booking, and I must say the maitre d’ was less than gracious - he did stare at us for a little while wondering whether we looked neat enough for his restaurant.

The room itself wasn’t quite what I had expected. A lot smaller than I had imagined, the entirety of the restaurant (walls, ceilings) is lined with mirrors to make the most of its location right opposite the Sydney Opera House – and the view is pretty spectacular. However, the way the room is designed, with a row of tables right by the windows, with another row right by the wall, means that there is a constant corridor of waiters floating in between – and as someone sitting against the wall, this got a bit irritating towards the end of the evening.

I struggled to choose, for the first two courses in particular, but started with the sea pearls – a sort of mini tasting plate of the sea, including abalone with dashi jelly, tuna tartare with wasabi flowers, tapioca wrapped fish with silver leaf, caviar wrapped scallop, and the last one I can’t remember (although I remember it was actually my favourite!). As always with these things, a bit hit and miss – the tapioca in particular a miss.



Dave helped himself to a first course of mud crab congee, which was absolutely delicious, but was 100% not congee (we found maybe 5 grains of rice in it) – it was more like crab in crab stock. The picture looks quite gross actually, particularly as the lighting meant I really couldn’t use flash:

Second course for me was the real disappointment, made worse by the $25 supplement attached to it: lobster with lobster and tapioca dumpling, with lobster and almond cream/foam on top. This for me was the perfect example of playing too much with the food, to the extent that although the ideas are interesting, the end result is not good to eat. The kitchen seems a little too obsessed with tapioca (my second course with it in!!), and the whole dish was like a lobster flavoured mess with no lobster texture actually in the dish.

It did not help that Dave’s second course was absolutely delicious, and had a very simple but successful combination of pork belly with shitake mushrooms, with tofu. Food envy!

Third course for me was much better: salt-water poached duck breast, served with duck confit, with a little slice of abalone (another ingredient the kitchen is a little obsessed with ). It apparently also had periwinkle flowers and other gubbins on top, which really were a bit unnecessary.

And to my absolute surprise, I thought the best dish of the night was the dessert: the famous 8-texture chocolate cake, which was really quite clever. There was biscuity crunch, then a bit of marshmallow, then some cold hard chocolate, then some hot chocolate ganache, and then a little bit of hazelnut (although I suspect that Nutella may be their secret ingredient :p)

So my little round up of the big guns – extremely pleased and surprised with Tetsuya’s, and ultimately a bit disappointed with Quay. Tetsuya’s manages to put complex and interesting ideas together, but somehow manages to execute them simply – the tian of ocean trout being the perfect example. Whereas at Quay, I felt the food was over fussy, with way too many things on one plate. Both are definitely once in a lifetime Sydney experiences though, I had a lot of fun anticipating both meals.

Sydney big guns – part 1

Now this is probably the post from Australia that most people are anticipating – and it is the weekend of food I have been anticipating for a long time. Our lunch at Tetsuya’s and dinner at Quay have been booked 3 months in advance, and I have been obsessively looking at both menus in that time.

Tetsuya’s on Kent Street probably needs little introduction – it was the restaurants that everyone said I needed to try in Australia, and regularly features in the top 10 lists of restaurants in the world. My expectations were actually not that high to be honest before I went: I was a little fatigued at all the huge degustation menus in Sydney, and I also remember the omakase in Nobu Hong Kong, which although it was good, definitely wasn’t mind blowing.

The entrance is actually a little frightening. The restaurant is tucked away in an anonymous part of Kent Street, and there is a huge gate for cars outside. But once instead, the place is beautifully designed: two dining rooms overlook a small Japanese garden, with all tables pointed to the view.

Overall, the food was outstanding – far exceeded my expectations, and Tetsuya is especially amazing at making sauces I found. Here is the run down of all 12 (!) courses – although we also sneaked in an extra oyster course.

1. Corn soup with a saffron ice cream – very nice, but did just remind me of my mum’s cream of corn soup she made me all those years ago (i was so excited about the whole thing I forgot to take photo)

2. Our extra course of oysters – these were pacific oysters with a rice vinegar and ginger dressing. I’m so glad we decided to add this course, I could have drank the dressing by itself (I was clearly still too excited at this stage, but here are the empty shells!):



3. Third dish was by for me was the highlight of the entire meal: a tian of smoked ocean trout with a frozen egg yolk, topped with Spanish caviar (it had a posh name but I don’t remember it). The combination was just amazing – it’s the same idea as smoked salmon and poached eggs, but the texture of the yolk is a little firmer, but still retained the stickiness of a soft-boiled egg. Plate-licking stuff.

4. Fourth dish was less successful: New Zealand shrimp 3 ways. The first (in the middle in the shot glass) was in seawater covered with olive oil and lemon, but as you pull the shrimp out, the olive oil just dominates the flavour. The second (on the left) was shrimp covered with pancetta – again, the pancetta just overpowered the delicate little shrimp. But the third remaining shrimp was lovely: covered with white miso and passion fruit, it actually had a small taste of mustard. However, on the whole, I wish they had just given me 3 bits of shrimp sashimi unadulterated.

5. Next up was a bit of a 70’s throwback: a baked scallop with a lemon dressing. But as I said, that Tetsuya man is a genius with sauces, again, I could have just drank the dressing by itself. Maybe he should open a little sauce café where we can go to just drink little shots of lemon dressings from him. Maybe I should pitch him the business idea :p

6. So half way through, and the biggest disappointment comes along. Tetsuya’s signature dish is a confit of ocean trout lined with kelp, served with apple, fennel, and roe, and it really isn’t very nice (I know, I’m so descriptive). For once in these degustation menus, I actually thought the portion was too big – the ocean trout isn’t really tasty enough to warrant a slice that is quite so thick – the texture is not particularly interesting, and you ultimately get quite bored of it. But it was the kelp that did it – to paraphrase Dave: “it tastes just like Bisto!” – and it does! So imagine a bit of too thick salmon sashimi, sprinkled with Bisto, with bits of apple underneath, and there you go.

7. But the next dish redeems the menu – a crab risotto with buckwheat “rice”. Huge chunks of crab, and I particularly liked the fact it had little bits of coriander on top, which really complemented the flavours. But then I’m a little obsessive about coriander, I added way too much into my green curry the other day and it did end up tasting of soap.

Just a little pause – by this stage, we were both pretty stuffed, and to be honest, a little bored. The courses really slow down after this point, and the meal really is a bit too dragged out, especially as it only takes you 5 minutes to eat each little morsel of food. Plus we were not having the matching wine menu, so not quite drunk enough to just giggle our way through. Just like I’m sure you’re already a little bored of this post already. But onwards…

8. Course 8 was pretty unmemorable: barramundi with braised baby fennel – nothing wrong with the dish, but nothing spectacular about it either. And as I said above, we were a little fatigued already at this stage, with about a 10-15 min pause between dishes.

9. The next 2 photos look very similar (sorry about my less than good Blackberry camera), but quite different. The first was duck with chicory (or endive as they call it in Australia) with some sort of reduction.

10. And the second was veal with wasabi butter served on spinach. Both were pretty good, the veal in particular was interesting with the wasabi butter, which complemented the meat very well. The meat was beautifully cooked, the sort where you don’t even need a knife. Both someone should tell the chef that little bits of chive as garnish is a little overused!

11. We knew we had 3 (!) desserts coming, and as a non-dessert fan, the thought of another 30-45 mins of dessert did just make me really tired. But the desserts were actually pretty interesting. Before the 3 main desserts was a pre-dessert of comte cheese with lentils. I forgot to take a picture at this point, but imagine a Chinese soup spoon of lentils covered in little curls of comte – the lentils were sweetened, and reminded me of red bean soup. It did kind of work with the saltiness of the cheese, but I’m also glad I only had 1 mouthful of it.

12. The prettiest of the desserts was also the most unsatisfactory: two shot glasses, one with a blood orange and beetroot sorbet, the other with Tetsuya’s take on bread and butter pudding. The sorbet was tasty enough, but the bread and butter pudding I couldn’t even finish. I dislike bread and butter pudding, mainly because of the soggy bread mixed with soggy egg, and this version just demonstrated why!!

13. The most boring dessert was also the tastiest though: just a plain apple tarte tatin with a calvados ice cream. So ok, the tarte tatin was cheating, more like bits of sweet pastry layered on top of stewed apple, but the pastry was so fine, the apple still tart, with gorgeous ice cream.

14. And finally, a chocolate terrine with a crunchy shortbread top, with crème anglais (which may have been flavoured with some sort of alcohol, I can’t remember). I was actually pretty impressed with this even though I am not a big choc eater, and the portion size was just right.

So phew! Are you as exhausted as I am? The ultimate verdict: fabulous fabulous food, but they could so remove about 4 or 5 courses to improve the experience. We went for lunch, I’m not sure whether it would feel equally as long and exhausting if we had gone for dinner instead.

Sydney small guns

One thing I shall miss about Sydney is the variety and quality of their hole in the wall establishments – unfortunately we are not quite so blessed in London, probably because we do Asian food all so badly. As usual, it has been Albert and Michelle who have been ferrying me around the city to eat, and special hugs for them for showing me the following 2 places.

The main reason Albert dragged me to Kingsford Chinese in Kingsford (affectionately known as KFC by A&M) was to experience what apparently is the best salt and pepper squid in Sydney - plus I was craving Cantonese and MSG in general anyway. It is located on a strip full of Chinese restaurants, so it was a good sign that there was an enormous queue outside.

First up was the most disappointing dish of all (and my fault it was ordered) – braised e-noodles. Done well, this might eek into my top 10 dishes of all time, but the version here was swimming in soup, with the noodles completely overcooked. Obviously there is a reason why every other table seems to order the same few dishes.


So the famous squid…on pure crispiness, this is probably the best squid I’ve eaten in Sydney, but I’m coming to realise that I’m more of a fan of the slightly soggy but meatier variety (something that Bodega in Surry Hills does excellently). The seasoning was also a bit off tonight, with Frank and I simultaneously complaining that it was too salty/not salty enough.

Another dish appearing on every table is the san tong chicken (山東雞), something I must say I don’t remember eating before. This was by far my highlight of the evening – and reinforces the fact that us Chinese just know how to cook chicken. The skin was super crisp to the point of being flakey, but the flesh soft and juicy. We were all being far too polite to avoid fighting over the bones to gnaw on. It comes with a vinegary sugary garlicky sauce, but I think it actually works better without.

Also ordered were beef tendon and brisket hot pot (Frank’s favourite – not bad at all, although it could’ve stayed on the hob another hour to soften the meat even more) and braised tofu. All this came to under $40 altogether for 4 very stuffed people – ridiculous prices! Would definitely go back for the chicken alone.

The second on my hole in the wall adventures with A&M was to Ryo’s in Crow’s Nest for Japanese ramen. We actually already had an aborted attempt the week before when we drove all the way to North Sydney only to discover it was closed, after which we ended up at On Ramen in Chinatown. The ramen wasn’t great here, but at least they served frankfurters – my first frankfurters in Sydney! Oh how I miss those little sausages.

But anyway, Michelle mentioned to me that she considered moving to North Sydney just to be near Ryo’s, and I get why - it’s one of those local neighbourhood places which are comforting, serving the most comforting food. I loved the presentation of the place – there is a big blackboard listing the “Top 5 Selling Ramen”, and the walls are studded origami paper. I had to try the top selling ramen of all – soy flavoured with roast pork, nori, egg, and spring onion:

This was deeply, deeply satisfying. The noodles were bouncy, the soup was thick (although a little salty for my taste), and I liked the fact that their toppings are quite sparing, making the noodles the real star of the dish. Unfortunately, Albert and Michelle both decided to be adventurous and go for unfamiliar things on the menu (a spicy ramen which was slightly swimming in oil, and a pork ramen in fish soup which developed an unappealing skin throughout the meal), so probably best to stick to the boring stuff here.

One thing we liked was their ramen eating competition! It is all in Japanese, and Michelle and I managed to piece it together with our bad Chinese. Taped to the walls are the ramen eating champions, who each won the $100 price for beating the last guy or girl at eating a record number of bowls of ramen. From what we figured out, the male record stood at 9 bowls, and the female at 6. Even with my greedy tummy though, I was stuffed after just the one.