Abstract Gourmet

Well Sharon and I just got back from visiting Duende. It’s located in a funky spot in Leederville, and boasts an extensive wine list and a bevy of tasty bite sized dishes on the predominantly tapas menu.

I’ve been to Duende a few times now, and this return trip was mainly to refresh my memory on how great the place is, in readiness for writing a stunning review. But after getting back, I’m left with a somewhat dissatisfied feeling in my mouth/stomach/wallet.

Duende’s style is trendy tapas. Not cheap $5 potato balls, or spicy meatballs that you might find in a cheap tapas bar… more along the lines of intricate dishes made with specialty ingredients often sourced from overseas (like jamon serrano and manchego cheese).

My memories of this place are sublime tasting dishes full of flavour and paired with a huge selection of local and international (Spanish and French mainly) wines. This trip however, i found myself looking at the menu and wondering how a dish of potato, chorizo, mint, and olive oil, served in a dish the size of a peanut bowl, can be worth $14… Sure it was tasty… but was it worth it ? I am far from one to skimp on prices, but when I feel like im not getting value for money it tends to grate pretty quickly.

Then looking at the wine list and seeing out of total of a hundred or more wines… there was only a handful available by the glass.

I was really trying to find things to like, but it seemed like it just wasn’t the right night. We had a selection of different wait staff, who varied between forgetful, cheeky, and patronisingly friendly. The wait staff there generally have a bit more character and spunk than your regular restaurant, but tonight instead of seeming refreshing or funny, it just came across as irritating. You can joke and muck around all you like if you remember my order and bring me decent food… if not… don’t even bother.

So what did we order:

Organic Bread
Jamon Serrano
Potato, Chorizo, and Mint salad
Sweet Corn and Manchego balls
Some kind of avacado salad
Skewered King Prawns in garlic butter (i think)

Having ordered the sweet corn and manchego balls before, i clearly remember them being light and airy and melting in your mouth as you bit into them. This time they would be more accurately described as salty cheese balls, dry and floury. Far from the experience I’ve had in the past.

So after finishing our dishes and waiting another 15 minutes for someone to come back and take our dessert order, we thought it best to end the night there and then.

I would really love to go back and describe the first experience I had dining at Duende. Being continually delighted as dish after dish of simple, elegant, and above all delicious food came out… but alas, this was not that night.

I still think it’s a great place, but perhaps not the golden child of my memories.

As always, do try it yourself… having too high of an expectation may well have been a factor in my overall level of satisfaction.

Duende
662 Newcastle St
Leederville 6007
(08) 9228 0123 (booking advised, no byo)

  fullylicenced, leederville, pricey, restaurant, Review

Filed by Matt at 10:31 pm under Eating Out, Review 5 Comments (126 views)

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
Lin Yutang

So i sat and watched the sky being blasted with arrays of vibrant colour, silently grimacing each time the hoarse drunken chant of “Aussie Aussie Aussie” went up around the crowd.

Australia Day, a very confusing time for me in some respects. I love Australia, i think it’s a great country, and it’s definitely got a lot going for it. The nature of Australia Day itself has always bothered me though. It basically seems like a celebration of all the things i like the least about Australia.

Public barbeques in every park are packed with fat laden sausages and charcoal encrusted steaks. Drunken yobbos roam the streets with painted faces and Australian flags adorning various parts of their anatomy, looking for someone “unAustralian” enough to pick a fight with. Thousands of people flock to see a massive fireworks show celebrating the replacement of one culture for another more “civilised” one.

Being a migrant to this country, but now also a citizen, i can see both good and bad things about our way of life, and how its “under threat”, in these times of world terror, by non western immigration. One the one hand i do think we need some kind of bridge between the various ethnic minorities that make up the population, or else we’re really just creating mini versions of Italy, Greece, China, Vietnam, and Lebanon on Australian soil. On the other hand i find it the height of hypocrisy to suddenly turn around and say we no longer want or need immigration, because that’s what this country was built on.

Without migrant labour half of our cities wouldn’t exist as they do today. Without migrant influences on food and culture we would be nothing more than a convict remnant of British society. Whereas today Australia as i know it is a culturally diverse environment where people of all ethnic backgrounds are able to celebrate their customs with the freedom they deserve.

My personal thoughts on the whole thing are possibly summed up by this quote:

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
George Santayana

The fireworks are pretty though.

This is Australia after all… apathy always prevails.

  australiaday, perth

Filed by Matt at 12:14 pm under Admin | Add a comment (71 views)

I was in a real hurry to go and play tennis with Steve (he’s been promising to thrash me for a while now). So this was basically the quickest thing i could think of to make that still required some creativeness (and didn’t involve opening any cans of processed food).

I had some chicken mince that i bought ages ago and can’t remember why, and half a pumpkin and half a bag of tomatoes that needed to be used.

So the recipe for the Koftas:

Ingredients:

* Chicken mince
* Garlic (crushed)
* Onion, chopped finely
* Red chilli, chopped finely
* Bread Crumbs
* Coriander, Basil (basically any soft herbs you like) roughly chopped
* Tumeric
* 1 Egg

For the Salad
Ingredients:

* Pumpkin (cut into bite sized pieces)
* Tomato (quartered)
* a few cloves of garlic
* Olive Oil
* Fresh Basil, roughly chopped
* Salt and Cracked Pepper

Directions:

Basically just mix all the ingredients for the koftas together with your hands, until its a nice sticky consistency that holds together well. Soak some kebab sticks in cold water for a while and shape the chicken into little cylinders. Push the sticks through the chicken and make sure they’re good and sealed. Then heat your grilling pan or bbq or whatever you like to cook on, and fry/grill the koftas until they’re nice and crispy on the outside, but still moist on the inside.

With the salad, i just roasted the pumpkin by putting it on a tray and nestling a few cloves of garlic in amongst it. Then liberally poured olive oil over the top and seasoned with salt and pepper. This roasted for probably 20 minutes or so (my pumpkin was quite soft already). Then when the chicken is basically done, you pull the pumpkin out of the oven, combine it with the tomato (which has not been cooked) and the basil, add a bit more olive oil for good luck, and some more cracked pepper, and you’re done.

To serve them i found a few more things in the fridge i needed to use, namely some sour cream, ginger paste, a lime, and some more basil. I just combined all of these in a bowl (i would normally have processed it, but i had literally 10 minutes to eat before i needed to leave), and dolloped it on top.

This meal took me literally half an hour to prepare and make… So i was pretty happy with how it turned out. Plus i won the game of tennis, better luck next time Steve :)

  chicken, kofta, pumpkin, recipe, salad, tomato

Filed by Matt at 10:47 am under Eating In, Recipes | Add a comment (191 views)

I stole this recipe from Nigella Lawson. I just happened to be flicking channels on TV one day and there she was, looking all nice and summery, out at the seaside (albeit a horribly English looking seaside), cooking up all sorts of tasty little treats.

This one appealed to me because i had previously made a chocolate mousse that went completely wrong… So i thought it about time to make amends for it.

Ingredients and Basic directions from Nigella:

Ingredients::

* 300g white chocolate
* 6 eggs, separated
* 10 passionfruit
* 300g - 500g raspberries

Instructions:

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in the microwave for about 3 minutes, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water then set the bowl aside, and let the chocolate cool a little.
Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix the egg yolks into the cooled chocolate, though be gentle to ensure it doesn�t seize. Cut the passionfruit in half and scoop them, juice, pulp, seeds, into the yolk and chocolate mixture, then fold into the egg whites until completely incorporated.

Then just pop them in the freezer or fridge for a while and serve with some more fresh berries on top.

I took this dish down to T’Anne’s place for dinner last night, and despite the fact that everyone was completely stuffed, they went down a treat.

It’s with much regret that i didnt take a photo, but trust me when i saw they looked great too :)

  berry, chocolate, dessert, mousse, passionfruit, recipe, white

Filed by Matt at 1:33 pm under Eating In, Recipes | Add a comment (145 views)

Just a quick note that i’ve been added to the Food Porn Watch list :) If you’ve come across me from there, then hi :)

Filed by Matt at 12:30 pm under Admin | Add a comment (69 views)

I love burgers. To me they are the epitome of the self contained meal.. You’ve got your carbs, your protein, and your vegetables… animal, vegetable, and mineral all together in one nice little bundle.

This recipe was inspired by a great book i’m reading at the moment aptly titled Burgers, by Paul Gayler (actually, the link is to the US version of the book, the Australian version is basically the same with a different name). This one is my own creation though… so blame me and not him if it all goes horribly wrong.

Ingredients (I’m not good with quantities, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks):

Pork mince (500 gms or so)
1 red chilli
small bunch of coriander
1/2 tsp ground cimmanon
1 egg
good olive oil
couple of onions
2 Tblsp sugar
a few knobs of butter (yes knob is the correct term for a piece of butter)
sea salt
cracked pepper

baby spinach
enoki mushrooms
couple of big sweet potato’s
vegetable or sunflower oil for deep frying
flat bread for toasting
japanese mayonaisse

Directions:

Chop the chilli finely and roughly chop the coriander. Mix well through the pork and add the other ingredients. Cinnamon for a sweet taste, salt and pepper to season, egg to bind the mixture, olive oil because everything needs olive oil.

Now chop the onions finely and saute them in a little butter and olive oil. Slowly add a tablespoon or so of sugar to the onions, and perhaps a little white wine, so they soften up and caramelize nicely. Give them a while to cook so they are really soft and golden brown. These onions are a great garnish to lots of different meals, but we’re going to stuff them inside the burgers just for the hell of it.

So now get a ball of the pork mixture, flatten it out, and place a small pile of the onion mixture inside. Add another ball of pork to the top and seal it up into a nice burger looking shape. Good to go.

Heat a pan with a little oil and sear the burgers on each side until they’re just cooked through. At this point i transferred them to a
flat grilling tray to try and get those nice grill marks on them… but it was only mildly worthwhile.

Meanwhile heat your vegetable oil in a heavy pan… I’m not the greatest deep frier in the world, in fact it scares me everytime i have to do it, so by no means am i an expert. The trick for me is finding the right temperature. You want it cool enough so you don’t burn the sweet potato to a crisp on the outside and leave them hard in the middle, but no so cool that they go all soggy without crisping up.

So now peel and cut up the sweet potato into big chunky fries and rinse them under water to wash the starch off. Them
my best advice would be to keep an eye on them closely and fry them in small batches until they’re nice and golden on the outside and soft inside.

Once you’re burgers are done and fries close to finished you can start to assemble the burger. Toast or grill your flat bread and arrange a bed of spinach, then pile on top the burger, enoki mushrooms (Sharon’s all time favourite mushroom), and a little of the caramelized onion.

Season the sweet potato fries with salt and cracked pepper, and perhaps a little paprika, and serve next to your burger with some japanese mayonaisse as a dipping sauce.

There you go… a nice complicated way to make a simple burger :)

  burger, enoki, mushroom, onion, pork, recipe, sweetpotato

Filed by Matt at 2:41 pm under Admin, Eating In, Recipes 2 Comments (115 views)

I’m adding tags to all my posts now using a sweet plugin. You should notice the cloud of tags on the right, sized by frequency of use… a new way of navigating… let me know if you like it.

  Admin, tag, wordpress

Filed by Matt at 1:02 pm under Admin 1 Comment (217 views)

Another pretty simple recipe. Sharon wanted to have a go at making pasta, so I did my best to impart the benefit of all my years of surfing the web and stealing other peoples recipes.

A simple set of directions would be:

Start with a mound of really fine flour ‘00′ rated is good, add an egg, mix it in… add a bit of salt, mix that in… then gradually add water until you’ve got a nice firm ball of dough. Then roll it out… knead it for a while so it’s nice a soft and consistent… then put it through the pasta roller or roll it really flat with a rolling pin. Now you’re ready to turn it into whatever else you like. We put it through the cutter that comes with the pasta roller, and it made us nice fettucini strips.

So after about half an hour of “instruction” we had some nice freshly made fettucini.

Then we had to work out what we wanted to do with it… So this recipe was basically determined by what i like to call the refridgerator gamble ™ (actually thats the first time i’ve used that term, but it sounds catchy).

I opened the fridge, looked to see what could be used, what needed to be used, and what i wanted to use.

So what we found was:

Ingredients:

* Cherry Tomatos
* Mushrooms
* Basil
* Garlic
* Red Wine (no this wasn’t in the fridge)
* Tomato Puree
* Tuna covered in Japanese Mayonaisse (left over from sushi).

The idea then was simple. Sautee all the ingredients together til there was a nice rich creamy sauce, boil the fettucini in a deep pan of water with oil and a little salt (fresh pasta cooks so quickly… probably only took about 3 - 5 minutes). Fold the fettucini into the sauce… Serve !

I can’t say it’s the prettiest thing we’ve ever made… but it was tasty and healthy… and economical, and no animals were harmed during the making of this meal… unless you count fish as animals of course…

  cherrytomato, fettucini, pasta, recipe, tuna

Filed by Matt at 3:22 pm under Admin, Eating In, Recipes | Add a comment (128 views)

No, im not referring to myself… (bom! bom!). The Prophet is a great little Lebanese restaurant in Victoria Park that i used to frequent when i lived in area.

The Prophet is a nice cosy restaurant near the Balmoral Hotel in Victoria Park, it’s run by a cool old guy called Jehad (?) who makes his own garlic dipping sauce from a secret recipe. You get a bowl of it along with some flat bread and pickled beetroot (i think, it could be anything?) free with every meal… it’s a really tasty way to start… the garlic dip is strangely moreish and tastes best when you dip the pickled beetroot into it and then wrap this little package with the flat bread.

In terms of the menu itself, there’s a whole range of traditional Lebanese foods, and some more western oriented ones. For the die hards there is a Lamb Kibbeh (raw minced meat in a ball with wheat and spices), and for the light weights, theres the Shish Tawook (garlic chicken shish kebabs). Most meals are served with chips and a tangy salad (kind of similar to a Greek salad, but without feta and olives). There is also a few other lamb dishes, and a ‘hot’ fish dish, basically a whole fish with scarily hot chillli sauce over it.

There is no wine list as it’s completely byo, but if i recall correctly they dont charge for corkage. The meals aren’t what you’d call fine dining…they’re simply presented but quite filling (especially when you’ve eaten a stack of flat bread to start with), and are really cheap. Most meals range from $14 - $20. I think last time i went the bill for two of us came to $28, very low in my book, and for what you get, amazing value.

As always, check it out for yourself :)

The Prophet
907 Albany Highway
East Victoria Park, 6101

Tel: (08) 9361 1101

  byo, casual, lebanese, perth, restaurant, vicpark

Filed by Matt at 9:07 am under Eating Out, Review 9 Comments (122 views)

Well i’d been getting kind of bored with trying to do latte art of late. My skills didn’t seem to be improving despite all my better efforts to get all the factors right. The image below is an example of the best i was capable of.

But things have all changed very rapidly. Sharon’s friend Serena was over and Sharon was showing her the website, and then some other shots of latte art… and then asked me to find the videos of people doing latte art. I hadn’t looked at them in a while and suddenly i realised what i’ve been doing wrong.

I’d been pouring from the middle to the edge and then trying to pour the rosetta back over the top… but what i saw them doing in the videos is pouring into the middle and then pouring back to the side whilst at the same time pushing the coffee outwards. So i gave it a try, and low and behold…it worked !

That was the first effort… followed very quickly by this one… Just to show it wasn’t a fluke.

Very happy by this point as it’s all so easy once you’ve got the technique right… Now i know all i need to do is work on my milk texturing and it will all come together. I managed to back it up this morning with another effort. The milk was too thick, but i’m getting close to it looking like some of the nice shots i’ve seen on other sites.

Yay ! All i needed was a little inspiration and there you have it. Look forward to some more inspired latte art efforts in the near future.

  Coffee, Espresso, latteart

Filed by Matt at 11:40 am under Espresso 5 Comments (82 views)