Monthly Archives: July 2012

Yarraville sushi boat update

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Read our first official review HERE.

So Team CTS dropped into the new Yarraville Japanese restaurant today (Saturday, July 6) to get the latest lowdown.

We had another enjoyable chat with Lucy as we admired the fit-out, which is now complete.

No photos, as we don’t want to spoil the surprise – suffice to say it looks absolutely lovely!

Here’s what we learned:

Opening night for the restaurant (at 3 Anderson St) is scheduled to be Monday, July 16.

The phone number is 9787 8690.

The uninspired Little Tokyo name has been ditched for the much more distinctive and evocative Kawa-Sake Sushi Boat & Grill Bar. Kawa means “river”.

The restaurant will seat 46, including outdoor seating. The sushi boat bar will accommodate 16.

Lucy and her colleagues are in the midst of testing all dishes and nailing down every process and routine.

There’s a website – here – but not a lot of action going on there yet.

Cafe Global

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Cafe Global, 373 Sydney Rd, Brunswick.

Having satisfied our desire for new, fresh reading material, the Consider The Sauce lads find ourselves kicking around a part of Sydney Rd we didn’t expect to be anywhere near come lunchtime.

We’ve tried Mediterranean Wholesalers, open to the idea of cheapo pizza slices and cannoli, but we find all the tables taken.

So we wander on.

There’s no hurry, I tell Bennie, and this is Melbourne – let’s let the Food Spirits guide us.

And so it is that we contemplate what looks to be – from the outside – just another drab inner-city bakery.

We get a delightful surprise when we step through the door – here’s a grand room done out in rococo style with an emphasis on red and gold, a pizza oven at the far end providing a clue to the premises’ previous incarnation.

He looks at me. I grin. We nod to each other – this is it, this is lunch.

These days this is Turkish territory.

Cafe Global, we are told, has been open about four months and has family connections to another, famous Sydney Rd Turkish establishment.

As such, Cafe Global has the dips ‘n’ kebab landscape covered, but we like the look of the place for home-style food potential.

That’s all a moot point for us, as we’re immediately captivated by the gozleme production process being undertaken just inside the front door.

The pastry is being rolled out using the traditional wooden pole and stuffed with goodies on the one side, the completed parcels being cooked on the other.

There’s four fillings available.

We leave the four-cheese-and-mint and capsicum-eggplant-mushroom-onion-parsley for another day, going with the lamb-parsley and cheese-spinach for $6 a throw.

Our lunch is insanely good.

The pastry is rich and buttery and light. The fillings are flavoursome, their spare lightness and delicacy providing plenty of impact without heaviness.

The service is a bit muddled – we get no bread to go with the avocado dip we ordered. But it tastes like a regulation, if very smooth, guacamole anyway.

And we don’t receive the two stuffed vine leaves we requested.

But this is all to the good, so well fed and well pleased are we with our gozleme – so slim, so cheap, so delicious.

Gogo Sushi

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Gogo Sushi, 212 Swanston St, Melbourne. Phone: 9876 2130

Memory is a fickle, changeable thing, but I seem to recall there used to be more sushi train outfits scattered around Melbourne a decade and more ago.

These days, as far as I know, Gogo Sushi is the only one of its kind in or near the CBD.

Our immediate neighbourhood is about to undergo a significant change in that regard, with a Japanese outfit with “sushi boat” soon to open.

In the meantime, a visit to ACMI for a holiday movie presents us with an opportunity to visit what was once quite a regular for us.

Gogo Sushi is a popular place and high turnover means the food is invariably fresh.

In addition to the ever-moving feast before us, they make up rice bowls and the like if specifically ordered.

It’s good, honest fare, even if lacking some of the exquisite refinement and flavours found in more formal Japanese restaurants.

In its earlier days, Gogo Sushi used to price the sushi train items according to plate colour, with basics about $2 and more for flashier servings with more expensive seafood.

These days, all plates are $3.50 – which can make for an expensive meal if you let things get out of hand.

As it is, for this lunch we spend a touch over $30 in about 15 minutes flat. And we’re still hungry.

In that way, sushi boat meals are a bit like tapas – easy to spend big – except worse, as it’s all there all the time right in front of you.

There’s a couple of other things that really annoy me about Gogo Sushi and mean I’ll never have much love for the place – even if it’s a pleasure to take Bennie somewhere he so obviously delights in.

They don’t provide water.

And the non-Japanese soft drink options are restricted to those tiny bottles of Coke, lemonade and Fanta – for the same price, $3.50, as the sushi.

Ouch!

Still, we have a nice time during our over-too-soon lunch.

Bennie gets to practise his chopstick skills.

And he even opts for some sushi involving raw fish, instead of the more usual line-up of fried items.

That’s progress!

Gogo Sushi on Urbanspoon

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

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We’re not really bakers in our home.

Which is probably why this recipe has become a staple – although it’s been quite a while since we’ve knocked it together.

It’s a robust, idiot-proof recipe. There’s nothing too delicate, fussy or technical going on here – just throw some stuff in a bowl and bake.

The result, using our floppy non-stick cake “tin”, is maybe not so deep but is certainly dark. Rich, too.

I love its rather austere chocolatey-ness.

I think the added sweetness of icing would spoil a perfectly fine cake.

The high moisture content means a very runny batter – and presumably ensures a really moist product despite the unrefined nature of the recipe.

This recipe comes from a dandy and slim community cookbook from Canvastown, an area in the northern South Island province of Marlborough.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake was contributed by Shontell Green, to whom we are very thankful. I suspect this Shontell Green is the one and the same.

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups unsifted flour

3/4 cup cocoa

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup boiling water

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

METHOD

1. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2. Add all remaining ingredients, except boiling water, and beat together.

3. Add boiling water, stirring gently until a thin, consistent batter is formed.

4. Pour into greased cake tin.

5. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

6. Eat, enjoy.

Pier 35 Bar & Grill

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Pier 35 Bar & Grill, 263-329 Lorimer St, Port Melbourne. Phone: 9646 0606

It’s a bleak, bitterly cold Melbourne winter’s day, so undoubtedly there are better times for visiting Pier 35 Bar & Grill.

But as it turns out, for a school holiday treat that is affordable and tasty, our visit could hardly be bettered.

For starters, the place is nice and warm!

And it’s classy, with very good service, in a way that we don’t come across too often in our trawling of the western suburbs.

Even better, a big ship cruises past just as our meals arrive.

The waterfront vistas are unremittingly grim and industrial, but even that strikes us as a change of scenery worth savouring.

Pier 35’s menu gravitates towards Italian food and steaks, with an assortment of other influences.

Main courses generally hover between the mid-$20s and mid-$30s and up to the mixed grill for $48.

We, of course, hone right in on the lunch menu, which has a longish list of meals for $14 and is available seven days a week.

The line-up includes fish and chips, calamari salad with red capsicum pesto, and grilled lamb skewers with cabbage salad, pita bread and tzatziki.

The BLT is described as “classic” yet comes with chicken – which strikes me as something of a contradiction.

I’m unsurprised Bennie orders it anyway – it’s a winner, too.

The chips – there’s just enough of them – are crunchy and good.

The chicken looks like it should have that nifty charcoal flavour. Not so, says he, who describes it as “just chicken”.

The bacon, though, is of high quality, there’s lots of it and it’s well cooked.

Good, thick bread, mayo, lettuce, tomato – I put it to Bennie that this is probably the best BLT he’s ever had.

He doesn’t disagree.

Ordering seafood pasta from a $14 menu may seem like pure folly, so I’m very happy to announce that my seafood spaghetti “with market fresh seafood, garlic, white wine and basil” is fantastic.

As you’d expect, there’s only a modest amount of seafood – a couple of fat prawns, two smallish mussels, some salmon, a chunk of calamari, some other fish of a broken-up and indeterminate nature.

But it is indeed very fresh, as well as beautifully cooked and delicious.

But the best part is the pasta itself – it’s immersed in a sauce that is decadently, almost obscenely, oily; there’s garlic overkill that is nevertheless just right; fresh tomato bits add texture; and, best of all, all is imbued with a delightful wine flavour.

No basil to speak of, but I’m a long way from complaining – I love my lunch.

Pier 35 presents as a really cool option for western suburbanites looking for a change from injera, pho or curries.

And, based on our lovely budget meals, could be that the more formal side of the restaurant is worth a look, too.

Check out the full Pier 35 menu here.

Pier 35 Bar & Grill on Urbanspoon

Tandoori chicken

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One of the many pleasures of eating out for us is taking the opportunity to peruse copies of the immigrant community street press that may otherwise not come our way.

Far more often than not this means reading one or more of the many of the variety of rags that issue forth from the Indian community.

What an idiosyncratic treat they are … charmingly quirky use of English, heaps of Bollywood news and interviews, sport, politics, astrology, adverts seeking marriage partners and, of course, food stuff, recipes, ads for restaurants and producers that may be the next pot of gold.

It was while reading a copy of Indian Times – I forget exactly which Indian estebalishment was involved – that I came across this recipe for tandoori chicken.

I’d never thought of attempting this dish at home before, though we do eat it sometimes.

Bennie and I enjoy the affordable tandoori chook available from Classic Curry in Sunshine, for instance.

Though much like a lot of other people, I’m guessing, we wonder about the health aspects of that lurid colouring.

But why not give it a crack at home?

For starters, the skin-off chicken used has to be at least a little bit more righteous than the deep-fried and barbecue chicken of Filipino, Malaysian and Japanese derivation we often enjoy.

As well, I was beyond doubt that cooking this would fill our home with the most amazing aromas.

Instead of a whole chook, I used three marylands cut into leg and thigh pieces.

I pan-toasted the appropriate spices, though I didn’t get so gung ho as to do them separately.

I omitted the chilli powder, which no doubt accounts for the mild tan colouring.

Indeed, this ended up looking unlike any restaurant tandoori chook I’ve ever seen.

But I didn’t let that worry me – I was far more interested in the taste.

To that end, it tasted very fine – and Bennie dug it, too.

I used a single teaspoon of salt instead of the two stipulated in the Indian Times recipe.

Finally, I chose to not brush the pieces with oil before putting them in the oven, figuring the marinade and chicken fat combined would ensure a moist and juicy result.

INGREDIENTS

1 chicken cut into bits, or equivalent in chicken pieces, skin off.

1/2 cup plain yogurt

juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh garlic

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1/2 teaspoon green cardamom pods

1/4 teaspoon whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

1 teaspoon salt

METHOD

1. Heat fry pan over low medium-heat. When hot, throw in cumin and coriander seeds and cardamom pods. Stir/shake frequently until the spices are tanned – but be careful not to burn them.

2. Throw roasted spices in mortar and pestle.

3. Crack open cardamom pods, return seeds to vessel and discard the pods.

4. Add peppercorns and cloves.

5. Hand grind spices until a fine powder is formed.

6. Throw in grated ginger and chopped garlic, and pound/grind with spices until a dryish paste is formed.

7. Add paste to a large bowl, add yogurt, lemon juice and salt, and mix until well blended.

8. Add chicken pieces to yogurt blend and ensure all the chook is well coated.

9. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least eight hours or overnight.

10. Pre-heat oven to 220-230C.

11. Shake off excess marinade from chicken pieces and place on a rack placed over a baking tray with a tin foil lining.

12. Cook, turning once, for about half an hour or until cooked.

13. Eat, enjoy.

We had our tandoori chicken in the simple style in which it is most often served in restaurants – with tomato and cucumber slices.

McKebab

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McKebab, 49 Gordon St, Footscray. Phone: 9317 9132

It’s not precisely, literally a hole in the wall, but McKebab has that sort of vibe about it.

This tiny kebab shop is situated next door to a convenience store, with both of them sitting on the ground floor of what is otherwise as a spectacularly ugly building.

Across the street is the pokies pub known as the Powell. Across Ballarat Rd, but still on Gordon St, is a foodie strip – a fish and chip shop, pizza place, Korean noodle hang, a couple of Indian eateries – that seems forever to be waiting for that magic spark.

It seems that often in the west, and no doubt elsewhere, businesses and their operators must make do with situations, locations and premises that are presented to them, that are affordable.

In this case, we suspect that what presents as a simple kebab joint has the capacity and knowledge to present more home-style cooking of the Turkish/Iraqi family that runs it.

We wish them well if that is the case.

Certainly we enjoy our brief visit and the friendly service we receive.

As we take one of the two tiny interior tables, we strike up a conversation with two blokes at the other who turn out to be senior players for the same rugby club for which Bennie plays. Like him, they too have enjoyed success earlier in the day.

It is the home-style dish that draws our eyes and impresses the most.

Well, impresses me the most anyway.

As we’re returning from a friend’s birthday party in Hoppers Crossing, Bennie is already quite full of party pies, sausage rolls, saveloys and chips, and would prefer to be at the burger place up the road anyway.

Later in the week, buddy!

We order “green beans, rice and salad” ($9.90), with the main protagonist turning out to be fasolea.

This is a fantastic, tangy dish of green beans tomato, capsicum, what is described to me as an “Arabic herb”, onion, garlic, salt and pepper.

The beans are, of course, very tender, but I find the whole thing delicious.

The tabouli is a tad too dry and onion-y for us, but the rice is fine.

The house-made turshi – pickled turnip – is fantastic, salty, bitter and crunchy.

We order as well four felafel balls, which are freshly made and good, with an inwardly greenish hue and a smooth, ungranulated texture.

The hummus that accompanies is smooth and mild of flavour and the bread – housemade, too – is like a cross between Lebanese pita and Turkish bread.

No doubt because of their location – students above, boozer across the road – the McKebab folks face heavy demand for your typical kebab options.

But we hope they hang in there with some more home-style fare.