Hello there!
May name is Kenny – I am a father, foodie, journalist and blogger.
Yesterday, during a visit to South Melbourne Market, I enjoyed a Padre café latte.
It was excellent; the highlight of my visit by far.
The staff were very professional and helpful.
However, I couldn’t help but notice they were all very young.
I really hope your company is not one that, in pursuit of a certain look and image, turns its back on mature age workers!
How totally unhip would that be?
Cheers, Kenny Weir
Flinders St pepper.
So out of the loop, so to speak, am I in regards to the public transport system, that I arise, breakfast, buy a hard-to-find daily Metcard from a bus outside Yarraville station and get to the CBD with more than an hour to spare.
So I take my time getting to my toothy destination.
My leisurely pace is right out of whack with the mass of humanity scrurrying around me.
Echoes of a previous life spent living and working here are profound – everything seems the same, everything has changed.
There’s a lot power walking, power coffee and power clothes.
There’s a lot more cyclists whizzing by than I recall.
This is like an 8.45am 2012 take on John Bracks’ iconic Collins St 5pm.
Look – no queues at Mamasita!
In that other life, I’d passed by Cafe Alcaston, on the corner of Collins and Spring streets, a thousand times without ever stepping inside. For some reason, I’d always believed it to be a basement cubby hole, with windows looking out on to pedestrian footwear.
Over an excellent cafe latte, I reflect on the fact it’s actually up a few stairs.
It’s also very much the intimate hideaway I’d always imagined.
Getting down to business, I say good morning to the tooth fishes.
Not only am I heaps early, I’ve also forgotten to bring some CDs, leaving me at the mercies of my dentist’s hodge-podge collection.
Gawd!
Flinging aside the likes of the Rod Stewart, the Bee Gees and new-age claptrap, we settle on an album grandly entitled Monty Python Sings.
As Jen prepare to examine my damaged filling, the strains of Always Look On Bright Side Of Life fill the surgery.
As it quickly transpires, there is indeed a very bright side to this visit.
All that is required is a partial rebuild of a filling on a tooth from which the root has long been removed.
No needles, zero pain and about as little of the financial variety as is possible these days.
In and out in under half an hour.
Sweet!
On the way back to Flinders St station, I pass trendy restaurants about which I have read but never expected to see – Cumulus, Papa Goose and more.
The odds of me ever eating at any of them remain very long.
Long before I thought possible and in much better nick than I’d expected, I’m happily on my way home.
Breakfast at Cumulus.
Rosati smiley face.
Beware of skateboarding rhinos?
I thought I was running a pretty tight ship these days when it comes to keeping the mice at bay …
Everything edible in tight-sealing plastic containers; or other wise stashed in mouse-proof cupboard, the door of which is always kept closed.
Remove paper from other cupboards, too.
Rubbish bin always closed when not in use.
Sweep floor after zealous cooking sessions.
But still, there have been telltale blurs of movement in the peripheral vision.
Gnawed packages when vigilance has momentarily lapsed.
And the telltale signs of poo.
While I’d previously thought the kitchen table was an unmousey haven where a more relaxed attitude could prevail, the critters have discovered the foodie potential there, as well.
So I line up the kitchen chairs against one of the walls – and well away from the table.
Surely that’d stop them from gaining access to the table?
That night, trying to get to sleep, I hear definite sounds of mousey voraciousness, ripping and attacking.
I get up to check the table’s contents. All seems OK, so it’s a mystery.
Back to bed and more fossicking sounds.
This time, I put on clothes and turn on the hall light so the kitchen is lit, but dimly so.
I grab a kitchen chair, sit and wait.
But not for long.
Within about five minutes, out they come.
Skittering across the floor.
And straight up the table legs.
Like tiny mountaineer monkeys.
I’m sitting a few feet away.
I feel like David Attenborough.
The unfolding spectacle is fascinating.
They’re kinda jittery, darting here and there on the table and the floor. The three of them seem preoccupied with their own missions, though they stop for a chat when crossing paths.
As a species, these common mice are obviously successful survivors.
But as individuals, the three at play before me seem dimwitted and myopic.
No wonder they’re such easy pickings for any feline with a semblance of patience!
One of them seems to have dibs on a particular plastic container.
It’s old and thin – I’ve had it for years, it being full of crackers at present.
His pals mosey over to see what he’s up to then go their own ways.
He hops on to it and heads straight for the hole he’s gnawed in the lid.
Ahhh!
But instead of trying to widen the hole so he can get right inside and have a full-on cracker party, he merely sticks head through and desperately tries to fang any cracker within reach.
Arse up and tail twitching, it’s a comical sight.
Into the rubbish bin go the container and its cracker contents.
And the cardboard box of drinking chocolate that has a corner missing.
And the kiwifruit with a big hole in it.
They don’t seem to like bananas, pears or mandarins.
I’ve always assumed that because our house is so old and creaky, the mousey access points so plentiful, that the key to keeping rodents at bay is leaving them nothing to eat.
But I’ve stoppered up what seems to be the main access hole and things have improved dramatically, so maybe the house is more secure, mice-wise, than I figured.
This week Bennie’s school teacher had her class consider meat – how animals become food, and some of the dynamics, processes and ethics involved.
I remain unsure of the full gist of the session, but it certainly had the lad thinking seriously about meat.
So that night, driving home, we stood back and looked at our own involvement with and consumption of meat.
I cooked Bennie and I steaks once, but it’s so long ago I can only dimly remember the event.
Lamb or pork chops happen in our home about once a year.
Overwhelmingly, our meat use is very much in the spirit of the places we eat out at and the shopping we do and the food traditions that inform them.
Whether it be a meaty ham bone for red beans ‘n’ rice or black-eyed peas; chorizo or Polish sausage for soups or stews; or chicken bones for stock, our meaty habits are all about flavour rather than hunky chunky slabs of flesh.
Not that we’re averse to such, but our homecooking habits have just naturally evolved.
We eat good-quality franks or classy Italian snags about once a week, roast chicken bits with rosemary, garlic and lemon about once a year … and I’ve never ever cooked a roast.
Indeed, our use of pulses, fresh fruit and vegetables and cereals and their byproducts so greatly outweighs that of meat that we actually adhere – albeit by accident – to the good food pyramid.
OK, we both have sweet tooths and we use pastrami and mortadella and so on for our school/work lunches.
Nevertheless, our routines are a long, long way from those of my own meat-heavy Kiwi childhood.
For that we are undoubtedly indebted to rainbow of food traditions that surround us.
I had a reminder last week that those traditions are far from set in stone.
I was buying some moong dal and beans and Indian snacks from one of the Indo groceries on Barkly St.
The man being served ahead of me was making sure he had the right kinds of flours to make injera.
When my turn came, I asked the woman serving me if they got a lot of customers seeking injera makings.
“Oh yes – quite a lot,” she said with a big smile.
Of course – broadening the customer base is good for business!
Just as Johns Nuts & Deli is also tapping into the African community.
I’m fascinated by how through sheer necessity the food traditions of new and newer Australians overlap and merge and evolve in an Australian context.
While rivalries and enmities between various home countries and ethnic groups no doubt continue to hold sway in some quarters, I’d like to believe that by and large most folks just get on with business of living – and eating.
Such a dynamic is nothing new, of course, as the by now familiar combo of pizza shop and kebab shack attests.
***
Among the many benefits of running Consider The Sauce is having a more hands-on and in-depth view of the workings of the fabulous internet.
A nonchalant “think piece” I posted about seafood extender and surimi, for instance, appears to have become one of a handful of default, “go to” posts for those seeking information about those subjects through Google and other search engines.
Visitors thus finding us, especially if they would not otherwise have done so, are most welcome, of course.
But it seems a little weird and scary that such an inexpert authority as myself should be accorded such status.
Especially as a somewhat better informed post detailing a follow-up visit to Austrimi in Geelong is not attracting the same amount of interest.
Also continuing to attract a lot of visitors, no doubt almost all of whom would never otherwise set foot in Consider The Sauce, is our post on Aldi.
I was bemused by the latest of quite a few comments, this one unintentionally seeming to be both illogical and contradictory on at least two counts:
just remember not everyone can afford woolies and coles, and not everyone likes interactions and has time to waste and walk about the supermarket smiling at people….some of us have more important things to do, like work, clean, cook, look after kids…plus who cares if you dont like it…i know i dont. go shop somewhere else!
This week, Consider The Sauce got a lot of referrals from alternative music community and online magazine Mess+Noise.
The reason?
Some of that site’s forum members re-activated a five-year-old thread on the ups and downs of living in Footscray, and in the process one of them posted a link to our, um, review of the new IGA.
The punter who posted the link, seemingly with a perspective of seeing that IGA as a sort of pop culture emporium, opined: “Though blog person is wrong to criticise the IGA … Yeah that blog was written by a parent it seems, which is why it’s no good.”
Fair enough – I can live with that.
Another punter quipped: “what a fulfilling life that person must lead…”
Well, I can live with that, too, and have a chuckle about it.
But it seems a bit rich coming from a conversation/thread that is so superficial and ill-informed!
Finally, this week I was surprised to discover our rather downbeat and negative post on Chadz Chickenhaus in Sunshine had been reblogged by another wordpress.com blogger.
It’s easy to forget, being so heavily Melbourne-focused, that being part of wordpress.com makes us part of a very large worldwide community, which sometimes leads to surprising visits and inter-reactions, and not all of them from foodies either.
Turns out that in this case it was a mistake – the blogger involved had reblogged rather than “liking” our post.
No matter, for in the process I discovered a most wonderful blog – Salt For Vanilla.
Packed with delicious recipes and photographs – many of them Filipino or otherwise Asian – it is fabulous work by someone who appears to be a seriously good cook.
First Saturday morning barbecue of the new rugby season.
Not every eating out outing is perfect, of course.
But thankfully, those that are so noteworthy they generate a reluctant review of mostly negativity are extremely rare.
In between, the vast majority of our adventures – and, we suspect, those of my most of our friends and visitors – mix and match some combination of the good and the great and the sensational with minor irritants of all kinds.
Such is the small price we pay for our natural inclination towards cheap eats, ethnic tucker and Melbourne’s western suburbs.
We roll with such punches, sometimes with a philosophical shrug, sometimes with a hearty half-full outlook that what some folks may conclude is naff or nasty can, too, be seen as heralding excellence on its way.
INSECTS
Actually, there’s no way we’re OK about creepy crawlies of any kind in or near our food … at all.
Thankfully, though, there hasn’t been a single such incident since Consider The Sauce hit the road and none before that. Well, none we can recall.
But we don’t want to ever see cockroaches in our soup. Nor do we want to observe them scampering across the floor or up our table legs.
And we’re almost as equally unhappy about seeing belly-up dead flies gathered in ghastly communion on a nearby window sill, as we did at a certain westie noshery not so long ago.
If we ever make landfall in one the Asian nations where insects and other creepy crawlies are deliberately and enjoyably consumed, we’ll re-assess.
Given that my understanding is that in such cultures insects are almost always deep-fried and end up being crunchy … well, I can think of plenty of things I’d contemplate with even less relish. Woof!
THE TIME FACTOR
Often, the staffing situations at our kind of eateries seem to be as haphazard as adherence to the advertised opening hours.
And, depending on what we order, wait times can vary wildly – even for the same food on successive visits.
We’re mostly prepared to patient.
And when we’re not – if we’re headed for a movie, say, or for some other commitment, or if it’s already late on a week night and we’re keen to eat and get home – we’re these days well practised at telling the staff that that is the situation.
Equally, we’re comfortable with inquiring which dishes can be delivered to our table the most speedily, and ordering accordingly.
THE BILL BEING GREATER THAN THE COMBINED PRICES AS LISTED ON THE MENU
Sadly, this has happened a couple of times recently.
In one case, it wasn’t until after we were way down the road that I realised.
In another, I was simply too happy basking in the glow of a fine meal – or perhaps too cowardly – to raise the issue.
In both cases, the surreptitious increase was about $1 a dish.
From what I’ve read, the standard line from restaurants who perpetrate this sneaky practice is: “The prices have gone up – these are the new prices.”
Not good enough, of course; not nearly good enough.
This leaves you, me and all the other customers with the invidious choice of spoiling a lovely meal by making an issue of it or leaving with a metaphorical sour tastes in our mouths.
But I suspect it’s a practice that will continue.
I plan on training myself to ask whether the menu prices are those that will appear on our bill.
MUSIC
Can be good, can be bad, can see us fleeing for the exit.
We’re flexible and can even appreciate a wide range of sounds, depending on the context.
But there are limits – in both taste and volume.
We have been known to seek an adjustment in the latter.
The former is usually beyond hope and a sign that’s it’s time to look elsewhere.
GETTING WHAT WE HAVEN’T ORDERED
Somewhat surprisingly, while this may seem like a disaster, it’s one we’re known to accept rather amiably.
There have been more than a few times when we’ve undoubtedly ended up with a better meal than we otherwise may’ve experienced through our order being misunderstood or otherwise screwed up.
SERVIETTES 1
It’s one of the great mysteries – why restaurant staff so overload those vertical stainless-steel serviette holders that it is impossible to get one out in a single piece. We end up with a table full of shredded paper and a distraction from an otherwise nice meal.
SERVIETTES 2
This one is a specialty of our beloved Vietnamese restaurants, many of which uses boxes of tissues instead of regular serviettes.
We have no issue with this practice at all – apart from the fact the tissues are very thin, so you can go through just about a whole boxful in the course of a really hands-on meal.
The problems arise when contents of the tissue box drops to lowly levels and the next one no longer sticks up through the plastic slit.
This means interrupting the good times of chowing down, waggling fingers through the hole and – finally, and in desperation – turning the box upside down and banging and cursing until a tissue appears.
UNFIZZY SOFT DRINKS
We try really, really hard to stick with water for budget reasons.
But when we to succumb to our lust for the sweet stuff, we like it to be a can – especially when they’re priced at $2 or, even better and still sometimes stumbled upon, $1.50.
The pits is being charge $2.50 and even more for a tumbler of that Coca Cola stuff that has obviously come from a bottle that’s been sitting in the fridge since half past last century, has zero bubbles and jostles with too much ice.
DOOR DRAFTS
We don’t do fine dining, so the heating and airconditioning situations we confront are erratic to say the least – or climate control is just plain absent.
We happily know and accept this.
It does become somewhat tiresome, though, when management has gone to the time, trouble and expense of installing heating and/or cooling, that its benefits are continually disrupted by other customers leaving the door open to hellish blasts of heat or bone-chilling storms.
Writing a negative review yesterday provided me no pleasure whatsoever.
There was a strong impulse to just forget about it.
Like, I presume, the majority of food bloggers, I overwhelmingly want to talk about the food we really love and the places we adore that make it for us.
As well, because we pay for our meals-out, getting a bad or even indifferent meal is a downer of the kind we’ll certainly go out of our way to avoid.
So why go ahead and write the review anyway?
Well, for starters, this was a planned outing with a review as the planned outcome.
It hardly seemed fitting with the Consider The Sauce ethos to just slink away because there were some notable rough spots in my experience.
As well, there is what I think of as the Pollyanna Factor.
I much prefer writing about food that turns me on.
And I am enormously proud of the our western suburbs food culture, am totally grateful to be part of it, want to see it bloom and for the rest of the world to learn how great we have it here.
But I remain convinced that making out everything is good, grand or fine – or only writing about those places that genuinely are – is foolish.
Earlier this year, I started following a newish Melbourne food blog.
The big-hearted person involved covers a lot of ground and is very prolific, not to mention sincere.
But they oh-so-obviously subscribe to the “if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything” school of thought.
I stopped reading that blog weeks ago.
There is no incentive to read the reviews and posts when you know beforehand almost exactly what is going to be said.
And how much credibility can one grant a media outlet for which there is only the big thumb’s up?
I’m almost sure it’s not the case, but you could be excused for thinking the blog consists of little more than what are referred to in the blogging business as “paid posts”.
To be reliably meaningful, high praise on a frequent basis seems to require the sort of context that can only be provided by the occasional bad rap.
This is a straight rendition – with a few tweaks, noted below – of the foundation bean recipe found in Michelle Sicolone’s fabulous book, 1,000 Italian Recipes.
It’s also something of a departure for me.
I am so used to finely dicing aromatic vegetables and making them an integral part of my pot dishes that leaving them unchopped, using them for, um, aromatic purposes and then discarding them feels a little weird.
But I’m prepared to give it a shot.
Truth is, despite cooking a variety of pulse dishes drawing on South Louisiana, Indian and Italian traditions, I often find the textures, look and flavours do end up with a certain degree of same-iness because of the way I habitually use the vegetables.
This will be something different.
And if the beans end up as creamy and smooth as advertised, they may be a hit with Bennie.
INGREDIENTS
500g cannellini beans
1 carrot, trimmed
1 celery rib with leaves
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt
METHOD
1. Soaks beans overnight
2 Drain beans, place in pot and cover by at least an inch with water.
3. Bring to boil.
4. Reduce heat to low and skim off foam.
5. Add vegetables and olive.
6. Cover pot and simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours, adding more water of needed, until beans are very tender and creamy.
7. Add salt.
8. Discard vegetables.
This is a batch of beans that is started before noon yet not destined for eating until our evening meal, so there is no rush and I can let things unfold naturally and observe with interest.
It seems to take a while for any great degree of assimilation to start taking place, but when it kicks in, it is comprehensive. What seems for a long time to be too watery by far ends up being just right.
When it comes time to discard the vegetables, I simply can’t go whole hog.
I finely dice the carrot and back in it goes, joining the obliterated celery leaves in providing some colour.
These are, indeed, by far the smoothest, creamiest beans I have EVER cooked – I only wish I could do so well with black eyed peas and, especially, red beans ‘n’ rice.
They are very plain, though, to the point of austerity – and that’s with the salt and a couple of non-recipe-mandated shakes of freshly ground black pepper.
As such, they’d be sensational as a side dish to, say, sausages or pork chops.
The second bean recipe in 1,000 Italian Recipes is Tuscan beans, in which the garlic is used but the other vegetables are replaced with rosemary or sage.
I like the idea of combining both recipes.
We have these beans with toasted Zeally Bay sourdough casalinga rubbed with garlic and brushed with virgin olive oil.
There’s an old joke regarding cajun cooking: “First you chop up the onion, green pepper and celery – then you decide what you gonna cook!”
This is the “trinity” at the heart of so much cajun and creole cooking from South Louisiana and New Orleans.
This differs quite significantly from the aromatic base of so much Italian cooking – the carrot (and sometimes leak) is replaced by the capsicum.
This is all quite odd, and I don’t really understand the science of it.
Some Italian recipes and cookbooks I’ve come across specifically warn against using capsicum in pot-on-stove recipes and stock spots lest it make the dish/stock bitter.
Yet in New Orleans and South Louisiana, the trinity is used incredibly widely – and not just in downhome food like red beans ‘n’ rice and these black eyed peas, but also in fancier fare and restaurant dishes.
This recipe is lifted, with a few tweaks here and there, from John Folse’s The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine.
Specifically, I use less meat than him – he calls for a pound of “heavy smoked sausage” and “half a pound of smoked ham”.
I use whatever is handy or easy to get hold of – in this case some smoked Polish sausage from Slavonija Continental Butchers.
Truth is, though, even a couple of bacon bones or a couple of crispy-fried rashers of bacon will do.
It’s not about the meat – it’s about the flavour.
And because the black eyed peas have a sort of built-in smokiness anyhow, you can go full-on vegetarian and still have a fine meal.
As with, I suspect, a lot of people, we don’t use a lot of dried basil in our cooking, but it gives this a nice sweetness and helps elevate the household cooking aromas to giddy heights!
Black eyed peas are eaten a whole less than ubiquitous red beans in South Louisiana, but for some reason I have much more success with the former than the latter in making an authentic gravy with the pulses available to me here in Melbourne.
These freeze really well – just thaw out and reheat nice and gentle.
INGREDIENTS
500g black eyed peas
olive oil
meat – smoked sausage, ham, bacon bones, bacon rashers or even bacon fat.
1 cup each approximately of onion, green capsicum and celery
3-4 finely chopped garlic cloves
1 tsp dried basil
bay leaves
salt
freshly ground black pepper
water
parsley
METHOD
1. Soak peas overnight or for the afternoon. Truth is though, black eyed peas cook pretty easily, so at a pinch you can get away without soaking them at all. It’ll just take a bit longer. These particular unsoaked pulses went on the boil at 4.30pm and were ready about an hour and a half later. But even though the peas were cooked through, generally things were still a bit runny and unintegrated, so I kept them going for another hour or so.
2. Put some primo cajun, zydeco or New Orleans R&B or gutbucket jazz on the sound system.
3. Turn up loud.
4. Heat oil and brown off meat or sausage, if you’re using any, at medium-high heat.
5. Finely chop – as finely as your knife skills will allow – the onion, capsicum and celery.
6. When meat is browned, turn down heat to medium and throw in the vegetables and garlic; cook and stir until wilted.
7. Add basil, salt, pepper.
8. Add black eyed peas.
9. Add water so the peas and vegetables are covered at least by an inch. As with dal, it’s important to keep this brew soup-like and watery in the pot so it doesn’t end up claggy and dry on the table.
10. Your black eyed peas are done when some of them start to break up and begin to form a gravy. You can hasten this process by crushing some against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon, but with these particular pulses it shouldn’t be necessary.
11. Cook a while longer to make a really fine and smooth gravy.
12. Just before serving, throw in and mix in a handful of reasonably well chopped parsley.
13. Serve over rice.
14. Add Tabasco or hot sauce of your choice to taste (optional).
There’s no doubt many blogs that have entered the Best Australian Blogs 2012 Competition get as many visitors in an hour as little ol’ Consider The Sauce gets in a week or even a month.
So our chances of getting anywhere in the People’s Choice section appear mighty slim.
Nevertheless, if our friends and visitors feel inclined to vote our way, click here or on the Vote For Me button on the right.
If you do so, we’ll send extra cyber hugs your way.
And vote for Footscray Food Blog while you’re about it!
Ingredients:
Spud, sweet spud, eggplant, largish onion, red capsicum, carrot, parsnip, zucchini, one long twig fresh rosemary, four garlic cloves, salt, pepper, olive oil, red wine vinegar.
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to high heat – 200C in convection oven for me.
2. Chop all vegetables into smallish bite-size pieces, put in large bowl.
I usually throw ’em all in at once, even if the eggplant and zucchini break down more than their compatriots. This time I held them back for about 15 minutes before letting them join their pals in the oven.
Chop onion into quarters – it all falls apart in cooking.
Slice red capsicum after de-seeding and removing the membrane bits.
3. Lightly crush garlic cloves, but don’t peel. Add to vegetables.
These can be eaten with the rest but it’s optional. I don’t mind roast garlic, but I’m no big fan either – so I mostly use these for seasoning/perfuming.
4. Throw in rosemary.
Some variants I’ve seen of this recipe say to strip the rosemary to individual leaves, but I find that too messy and actually rather unpleasant, as the rosemary covers each and every vegetable chunk. Sprigs about 5cm long is the go. It falls apart plenty under cooking anyway.
3. Liberally douse with salt to taste and freshly ground pepper.
4. Use a heavy hand with the olive oil.
5. THIS IS THE BEST BIT – well, apart from eating your work anyway! Mix vegies, olive oil and seasonings thoroughly BY HAND!
6. Place all on as many foil-lined trays as you need, distributing rosemary and garlic evenly and leaving as much space between the vegetable chunks as you can.
7. Place in oven. After 15 minutes, put zucchini and eggplant bits in with the rest.
8. Gleelfully inhale cooking aromas.
9. Cook for a total of about an hour or until well done.
Some of the thinner parts of the onion an capsicum should be fairly well charred.
10. Place back in same bowl from whence they came.
11. Splash with red wine vinegar. I like quite a lot, actually, and more is good if you’re planning to keep the leftovers in the fridge.
12. Serve.
13. Sprinkle with fetta cheese (optional). Ricotta or cottage cheese may work, too
14. Eat.
15. Stash leftovers in a plastic container in the fridge.
Can taste even better the next day!
Another sooper-dooper thing about this recipe is that it makes your house smell freaking amazing – even better than chicken stock and much, much better than incense of even the highest quality.
Any bloggers and/or cooks out there have any tips on how to pour olive oil AND take a photograph at the same time?
In recent months I have enjoyed rapping on food topics with my Geelong Advertiser colleague Cameron Best, especially since our newspaper instituted a new restaurant reviews page.
Of necessity, this has been, for me, largely a matter of enjoyably reflecting on contrasts.
Between the sort of restaurants the newspaper wants to see reviewed and the restaurants that are actually in place and able to be assessed in Geelong and on the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast on the one hand.
And the wide open spaces of how Consider The Sauce chooses to define Melbourne’s western suburbs; the limitless style, payment methods and opening hours of the places we choose to blog on; and the less tightly focussed approach all that allows us, on the other.
Sadly, Geelong – for the moment anyway – lacks the sort of critical mass factors that leads to such powerful enclaves of multicultural eating in our west.
But a line in one of Cam’s recent reviews – of an Afghan kebab joint in the main drag Ryrie St – stayed with me.
My colleague was obviously nonplussed mightily by the presence of wide-screen televisions in said eatery, opining such electronic pictures and sounds were no more than a distraction from a good meal.
By contrast …
The Consider The Sauce eating-out experience is frequently accompanied by television.
Frequently, it seems, plural TVs are the go – often one over the doorway or entrance and another behind the cash register.
Now, I’d not for a second suggest such media capacity is any way to be taken as indicative of good things to eat forthcoming.
But …
We are well used to watching – even if somewhat subliminally – TVs blaring everything from Bollywood spectaculars to non-English news services and obscure South American soccer games as we are waiting to be fed.
So, not necessarily a good thing – but far from a bad one, for us, either.
And that got me thinking about what, for us, are some of the key signals that great food is at hand.
Kids, for starters.
Often they’re playing or doing homework at one of the tables nearest the cash register.
Of course, if we’ve been a regular for years at a place, the kids grow up and start taking a more labour-intensive role in the running of their family business.
And there could hardly be a more a more promising indication of food of our kind of inclination than the business card of Maurya Indian restaurant in Sunshine, which promotes a discount available to taxi drivers and students.
Personally, I’d nominate extremely flexible or even non-existent published opening hours as another good look.
Likewise, a complete lack of credit card or EFTPOS facilities.
Mind you, even that is changing – as is the engagement of our kind of eating places in general with the cyber wold in general and social media in particular.
Happily, a large chunk of my daily Facebook news feed comes these days from western suburbs businesses posting their daily specials, latest news and even general good wishes to their customers.
Tiles, mis-matched tables and chairs, mis-matched cutlery and crockery, dog-eared plastic-laminated menus, table-top accoutrements and condiments – all are somehow reassuring portents of potentially good things to come.
Skin-on red-jacket potatoes really well cooked, then roughly, violently mashed – but not too much.
Salt.
Freshly ground black pepper.
Handful of medium-chopped flat-leaf parsley.
LOTS of virgin olive oil.
Franfkurts from Slavonija Continental Butchers.
Dijon mustard.
These franks, by the way, are very tasty and juicy, but rather loosely structured, making them more like a sausage than the usually tightly bound franks.
That may make them even better when pan-fried, rather than merely boiled.
Apart from the routine stories about food places of various kinds, some of the best fun we have doing Consider The Sauce is when a little lateral thinking or imagination kicks in.
Sometimes posts are generated by places or incidents we witness when out and about.
Sometimes they’re generated by conversations we’re having.
Sometimes, too, they bubble up and come to nothing or hunker down for some long-term hibernation.
Such has been the latter case with this idea until it was nudged from its slumber by a recent story by Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog.
My knowledge of the stories behind these intriguing glimpses of Footscray’s yesteryears is, in a very few cases, extremely sketchy.
For the rest, it’s non-existent!
A few months back, I became involved through mega-big advertising agency Ogilvy, in a Bank of Melbourne promotion/competition tie-in with Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, for which for the bank is the main sponsor.
Some of the harder heads in the Melbourne food blogger community advised all those thinking of responding to the invitation from Ogilvy to think again, the main gist of their opposition being that it was just another example of big-bucks outfits treating bloggers with contempt and their content as worthless.
I forged ahead anyhow, and after a few ups and downs the whole thing is operating pretty smoothly.
You can see the Consider The Sauce “food tips” up there with those of a handful of other bloggers, all being utilised as teasers to get customers to submit tips of their own.
True, no money changed hands.
But I’ve enjoyed the experience, even when things got a little hairy in the preparation stages.
It’s a networking thing, getting the Consider The Sauce name out and about. I’ve made a nice contact and had a lovely lunch with her.
The number of visitors the promotion has driven to Consider The Sauce has been mostly on the pitiful side, but I had no great expectations in that regard. Positively, some of those who found us through the promotion were previously unaware of Consider The Sauce and yet have become regular visitors.
That’ll do me!
As part of the promotion, I was provided with two complementary tickets to the World’s Longest Lunch.
Now, my original intention was to play fast and loose with the unwritten arrangements of my whole relationship with Ogilvy, the bank and the festival by using these tickets for myself and Bennie.
But, as luck would have it, I was down to work that day and Bennie was in school.
So, through no great generosity of spirit or ethical righteousness, I did the “right thing” and gave them away to a Consider The Sauce friend.
You can read Daniel May’s post about the event here.
One thing is for sure, though, there’s no way – No Way, NO WAY – I would ever have attended that lunch had I been required to fund the tickets myself.
Judging by Daniel’s photos, this looks like it was a matter of a quite nice three-course meal and wines to match.
But $135 per person?
Blimey!
Daniel, too, being a paid-up Westie these days, was happy to concede he would never have attended had he not scored a couple of freebies.
I have no doubt the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is not setting out to gouge people, nor charging as much as they think the market will bear.
I’m sure they have good reasons for doing what they do.
When concerns are raised about their pricing structure – and I’m pretty certain I’m not the first to do so – I’m sure they can and do point to festival events that are free or low cost.
Nevertheless, as it stands I am simply unable to engage with festival in any meaningful way, mainly for one simple reason – I can’t afford to do so.
I’m a passionate Melburnite and passionate about the city and its food.
Consequently, it feels damn strange to feel so estranged – financially, socially, culturally – from an event that seems like it should be such a perfect fit for me, my son and our blog.
And if that’s the case for myself – with all the positive motivation I have – for how many more Melbourne folks is it even more true?
It may be unfair, but there’s an abiding impression that the festival merely packages – at premium prices – goodies that are available all year round.
And in Footscray, that means every day of the week, including Mondays and Christmas Day.
I’ve also heard some grumbles about pricing at the Geelong leg of this year’s festival
It could be, mind you, that myself and other like-minded folks are simply out of the loop with the festival in a more fundamental way.
The big names seem to be a key part of the festival’s marketing and appeal.
Yet the celebrity chefs and the like seem far less heroic or notable to me than the ordinary chefs, food folk and business people I talk to and meet on a weekly basis.
Meanwhile, the Lara Food and Wine Festival will be held on Sunday, March 25, at Pirra Homestead.
There’ll be plenty of food you can pay for at this bash from an impressive and long list of exhibitors and stallholders.
I’m particularly interested in Smokin’ Barry’s Barbeque.
It’s been a long-time lament of mine that ‘Merican style barbecue goodies such Really Great Ribs and so on are such a rarity in Australia and Melbourne.
But based on the slide show at their site, it looks like a good bet these folks have it nailed.
And they have a killer slogan: “You don’t need teeth to eat our meat!”
But a colleague who is something of a veteran of this festival tells me there’ll also be no shortage of exhibitors offering samples of their wares.
If I don’t contract “festival fatigue” the previous day at the Brimbank/Sunshine celebrations, I’ll be there.
Admission to the Lara Food and Wine Festival is by gold coin donation.
Despite being fond of Casa Italica, it’s not been a frequent haunt for us – much like the rest of Williamstown.
I am surprised, then, when in the neighbourhood to discover the place has been gutted and a major building operation is underway.
However, the two young builder blokes I talk to assure me Casa Italica will still be present when the works are completed.
There’s apartments being built – and a carpark to service them.
And the Casa Italica space looks like it’ll be a whole lot more roomy and expansive.
This is pretty exciting, as the previous configuration was a little on the pokey side, and was perhaps even hampering the sort of service and products and eats they were of a mind to offer … in a neighbourhood in which such expansion will surely be a winner.
1. Cucumber, tomato, red onion, red capsicum, salt, freshly ground black pepper, oregano, olive oil, red wine vinegar, kalamata olives (stone in), feta cheese.
2. Finely chopped garlic, salt, finely chopped cucumber, yogurt.
3. Pita bread.
Sometime I make far more than enough so there’s plenty left for the next day’s work lunch or dinner.
I’m sure the nutritional value is shot by then and, of course, it’s not fresh.
But you know what?
Often it tastes better.
Same scenario works with a mixed Italian salad.
I’ve been told that white cheeses – feta, mozzarella, ricotta and so on – are less fatty than the yellow ones.
Nevertheless, I usually order low-fat feta.
Sourced usually from Sims or our local IGA, I notice no decrease in flavour.
Sad to say, this one – from Coles in Williamstown – was flavourless.
We firstly stepped into this shop with a view to grabbing a quick, quirky photo for our new play thing, Snap West. But what we found was so cool we figured it was worthy of its own more detailed post.
For those from the broader community who come here for the eats, we apologise.
For fellow westies, we hope you are tickled at least a little bit as much as we were …
******
It was only a few weeks into the new routine of school in Sunshine that Bennie and I altered our route.
Instead of heading up Ballarat Rd and confronting the sometimes white-knuckle stress of turning right against the incoming rush hour, we started going straight ahead at the Ashley St lights and on to Cranwell St, past car yards and factories and beyond to school.
This may not be faster, but it’s more fun and far more relaxing.
We pass parks, a huge Buddhist temple complex and even a couple of junkyard dogs for whom we feel sorry.
And it has brought riches – most notably some classic graffiti that cracks us up still on an almost daily basis and the tasty South American delights of La Morenita.
But it’s very unusual for us to be cruising this neighbourhood later than about 8.15am or on a Saturday.
But that’s certainly the case today as we’re on our way to pick up our mate Daniel.
Thus it is we pass a sandwich-board sign outside an older style industrial property that immediately has us parking and going or a look-see.
Given the premises, I envisage some sort of makeshift operation – maybe something like Dirt Cheap Books with wings.
Instead, what we discover is a well-established shop that has been in place for about 13 years.
The lovely room is crammed with aircraft models of many different sizes, shapes and configurations.
There’s even a couple of airports!
I figure this is some sort of blokey refuge along the lines of anoraks and train spotters, and that the average age of the customers is somewhere between 45 and beyond.
But proprietor Terry Mahoney tells me his customer base is a lot broader than that, and that business is pretty good.
As with a lot of niche operations these days, Terry finds a lot of his business comes from the online direction.
Consequently, he finds the lack of passing trade a small price to pay for the comfort and minimal overheads his unusual Braybrook location provides.
He tells me that the old-school factory set-up of which he is a tenant also houses an operation that produces gut tennis strings and surgical sutures.
Check out Terry’s website here.
We may never step foot into Terry’s shop again … but we dig the hell out of the fact it’s there!
I learned this style of dal cooking from Yamua Devi’s book, The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking.
Sub-titled Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, this book details spiritually inclined Indian cooking that eschews – marvellous word! – garlic and onions.
Instead, many of the dishes use chillis, ginger, lemon juice and coriander.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups pulses
1 tsp turmeric
salt (optional)
good-sized chunk fresh ginger/galangal
1 fresh green chilli
3 ripe or very ripe tomatoes
1 tsp cumin seeds
oil
1 lemon
1 small bunch fresh coriander
Method
Unless using red lentils or moong dal, soak pulses overnight or at least for the best part of a day. In this case I use channa dal and urad dal because that’s what I have most of on hand.
Drain pulses, place in big pot.
Add turmeric and salt.
I know, I know – salt is Bad.
But I find if I don’t add it to my Indian cooking, it just doesn’t have anything resembling the sort of authentic Indian flavour I seek. Moderation is the key – in this case I use a teaspoon of salt. I suspect an Indian restaurant or household may’ve used 3-4 teaspoons!
Give the salt a miss and you’ll end up with a tasty meal that is of vegetarian nature rather than Indian. And that’s fine, too!
Cover with plenty of water, bring to boil and cook on low heat until pulses collapse into a near-mush.
It’s important at all stages to keep the water content very high – in fact, higher than you may think wise.
When served, dal always coagulates on the plate or in the bowl.
It it’s too thick in the pot, it’ll become an unseemly stodge when served.
So keep it really runny!
Meanwhile, dice the spuds into smallish bite-sized chunks and add to the dal about halfway through its cooking process.
You can keep the dal as a pristine dish if you’re cooking a proper Indian meal with other dishes.
But often we find adding spuds or carrots makes for an easier, quick-cook all-in-one meal.
Don’t worry about the spuds being overcooked – if they collapse a bit, it just adds to the texture. A bit like the spuds in beef rendang and the like.
As the dal mix becomes thoroughly cooked, slice the chilli, grate or chop the ginger/galangal and chop the tomatoes.
Sometimes I finely grate the ginger, but more recently I’ve taken to taking the time to slice it into thin strands.
This delivers more of surprising flavour hit and is inspired by the profoundly gingery dal I had at Maurya in Sunshine.
About this time, it’s a good idea to lower the heat under the dal mix even further if possible or take off the heat entirely.
Especially if you’re using gas, it doesn’t take much of a flame to have the pulses sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Heat oil until medium hot.
Throw in 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds and fry until fragrant.
Lower the heat a little and throw in the sliced chilli and ginger.
Stir and fry for 3-4 minutes.
Throw in the chopped tomatoes.
Stir and cook until the tomato pieces are just starting to break down but still holding their shape.
Throw tomato/ginger/chilli/cumin mix into the pot of dal.
Stir and let cook for five minutes or so until the flavours are emancipated.
When ready to serve and eat, throw in the coriander and, finally, squeeze in juice of a lemon.
We try to get small bunches of coriander and use the whole lot in one bang – stalks and all. It doesn’t keep very well.
Serve with rice, raita and your choice of breads and side dishes.
A Taste Explosion!
With some variations along the way due to taste, immediate availability and cost, this is the basic mix I have been using for more than three years now.
I haven’t done the sums, but I simply assume it’s a helluva lot cheaper than buying even standard supermarket mixes – never mind the ultra-pricey lines that generally come packaged in cellophane!
Equally important as price is the fact that I get to have breakfast fare that is constructed precisely to my own tastes and is absent sugar and dodgy ingredients.
Ingredients
2 x 750 gram bags Black & Gold rolled oats
1 x 750 gram bag Black & Gold crushed oats
500 grams white sultanas
500 grams roasted almonds
(I almost always get my fruit and nuts from self-serve style Sunshine Fresh Food Market, as I can then suit myself as to the exact quantities.)
The bigger the container the easier the mixing!
Throw in the rolled oats and then the white sultanas.
Mix.
Chop almonds.
Add to container.
Finally, add the crushed oats and mix well – and carefully, especially if your container only just holds the amount of muesli being made!
This is obviously a very personal choice and quite a hardcore mix – those looking to ween their kids of sugary, packaged cereals can try any number of variations.
All and any kind of dried fruit, for instance, though cast around for options beyond sultanas, raisins and currants and you’ll be up for more chopping time.
Also, I can’t imagine eating this mix freshly added to a bowl with milk in the morning.
I soak it overnight in quite a lot milk so it doesn’t end up too claggy and too much like hard work.
And always with fresh fruit – lovely stone fruit at the moment – and yogurt.
I have a friend who doesn’t soak hers, but roasts it, so I guess it’s more like granola. But then, she doesn’t chop her almonds either so she is a little strange on it.
I have another pal who soaks his muesli mix in orange juice – another weirdo!
(Just kidding, Penny, Kurt!)
Soaked or unsoaked, the Kenny Mix makes really good porridge in the winter months!
I could save money by buying unroasted almonds, but I like the crunch.
Depending on taste and budget, you can go a lot further, of course.
Sunflower seeds? Figs? Dates?
When I worked at Neal’s Yard Wholefood Warehouse in Covent Garden in the late ’70s, we made up a huge batch of muesli every week.
Into it went not just oat flakes but also rye, wheat and barley.
Not just almonds, but also brazil and cashew nuts.
Not just sultanas, but also chopped dried pears, apples, apricots and peaches.
And probably a few things I’ve long forgotten!
It was truly the Rolls Royce of mueslis and flew off the shelves.
But I like my mix just the way it is – I especially dig the white sultanas.
So juicy and sweet!
But I’ve probably put Bennie off them for life by once describing them as being like “big, fat white maggots”!
(That’s quite possibly me pouring honey in the attached Neal Yard link!)
consider the sauce 