A double-entendre dinner

I love puns and word play almost as much as I love hot food. So what better place to bring the two together than the Spicy Joint restaurant?

The Sichuan style Chinese restaurant offers an attractive menu, in every sense. There are lots of really interesting sounding dishes, large attractive descriptive photos and – best of all – oodles of fabulous mistranslations.

Things get off to a great start right inside the front cover with “hand exhausted bamboo”. The unintended pun gets a visual boost with an accompanying photo depicting a purple, phallical bamboo shoot rearing out of a pool of chilli sauce, its assumedly hand exhausted brethren lying wan and peeled in neat stacks alongside.

I first ate at the Spicy Joint a couple of weeks ago with Lindsay and Freeman. We decided to go for peculiar rather than punny dishes, so ended up eating things like spicy chicken gizzards. Everyone I’ve told about this dish has replied “Eeew!” For the record, chicken gizzards are not even remotely hideous. They have a firmish texture and taste like chicken. Funny, that.

The nearest we got to word playing with our food was “doll cabbage” - vertically sliced Chinese cabbage hearts in a tasty sauce we suspected may have had more than a passing acquaintance with Cambell’s chicken soup. I’m not sure how they came up with the “doll” bit; I guess it could’ve looked a bit like cooked doll torsos if you squinted at it with your eyes out of focus.

But then again, maybe not.

I came away from the lunch with my usual buzz of pleasure at having just eaten an interesting and delicious meal. But this time the buzz had a certain edge. I just HAD to return for some more enigmatic eating.

As luck would have it, my friend Janelle phoned for a catch up the next day and I had no trouble persuading her to be my dinner partner in crime.

Bacterial dish Dinghu style

We decided to order four dishes and I got the ball rolling by choosing “bacterial dish Dinghu style”, a delicious medley of reconstituted dried mushrooms cloaked in a very savoury sauce.

Tempted though we were to order “sheet iron black pepper cow” and “sheet iron sleeve fish”, we could guess what they were and had eaten them before, so we passed them by.

“Chicken knee soft bone” sounded a bit cartilaginous for our tastes, so we bypassed that one too. In the end, two unusual sounding but competently translated dishes got the better of us.



Hot and sour fern root noodles

 “Hot and sour fern root noodles” were grayish spaghetti-like noodles (made, according to the waitress, with some kind of vegetable root powder) and served cold in a hot and sour sauce. It was spectacular!

“Cordyceps flowers” are, I think, actually dried shredded tiger lily buds. They were tossed in a light sesame flavoured sauce and served cold on a bed of julienned cucumber. Tasty!




Cordyceps flowers

 Our final dish was something a little more mainstream (sorry to disappoint you): "Sauteed duck, Sichuan style". Nice enough.

But my quest isn’t over yet. I’ll be back, and top of my list will be “Braised gusteau in stockpot”.

Gusteau? I had to Google that one, to rediscover that the recently deceased Chef Auguste Gusteau was Remy the rat’s idol in the movie Ratatouille.

I can’t wait to find out what the Spicy Joint has done with him.

Spicy Joint Restaurant
533 Dominion Road
Balmoral
Ph: 623 4938

Open for lunch and dinner.

Extreme dining

I don’t know about you, but I find most dining out experiences to be fairly average – not overly memorable, but not too bad either. The middle ground may be safe, but it’s also dull.

In recent weeks I’ve had the pleasure of eating at four places that fall at the dining spectrum’s extremes; three great and one ghastly. Now that’s more like it.

Where to begin? Shall I get off to a glass half-full start, or shall I empty it a bit first?

For some reason I’m really hungry today and just can’t fill up. I finally managed to quench my appetite by rounding off a large lunch with five crisp breads plastered with Nutella. Post-chocolate bliss has ensued, so I’ll get off to a positive start by regaling you with the good dining experiences.

Latin Larder (170 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna): Simple cafe food done really, really well. I love the way they advised that our pies would take 5 or 10 minutes because they wanted to heat them in the oven rather than the microwave. Both pies had lots of tasty filling and home-made buttery pastry. The chicken pide was chock-full of flavour – one of the best I’ve tasted. The gingerbread (also a wait while they heated it properly) was also fabulous. That lunch left me on foodie warm and fuzzy high all afternoon.

Try It Out Restaurant (79 Aitkinson Avenue, Otahuhu): Probably the best Vietnamese food I’ve eaten in Auckland. The pho was absolutely delicious, as was the Vietnamese prawn casserole. The spicy chicken with lemongrass wasn’t spicy, but it was very tasty. I can’t wait to return.

Two-fifteen (215 Dominion Road, Eden Quarter): Yum, yum, yum. These people can really cook and the service is friendly and very professional. If you go, try the air-dried beef with truffled potato and poached egg – it’s one of the nicest things I’ve eaten in ages. The duck confit with green apple compote was also five-star, as was the buttermilk panacotta with poached raspberries and lavender biscuit.

Despite the diverse nature of these dining experiences, they are united by a common bond: a clear passion for the food they cook, quality ingredients and attention to detail. 

Unfortunately not every restaurateur feels this way and now it’s time to go from the great, to the ghastly.

One of my brothers has just returned from a month in Vietnam and has been hanging out for some Vietnamese food. Tempted though I was to head back to Try It Out, curiosity got the better of me and I suggested that we check out a Vietnamese place I’d spotted nearby – Vietnam Cafe (38 Aitkinson Road, Otahuhu).

Wrong move.

Our group ordered seven different dishes – all of them bland, stodgy, ham-fisted travesties of Vietnamese food. It’s one of the worst meals I’ve eaten in a long while and I can’t believe that Vietnamese people cooked that slop. 

Vietnam Cafe's chef and owner appear to take little pride in what they produce. What a sad way to spend one’s working life.

A rummage in my drawers

I've given you an insight into my psyche lately and now it’s time for a different kind of intimacy; a rummage in my drawers and a peep in my pantries.

Our new kitchen has lots of drawers – 40 to be precise - and two pantries. Although they mostly contain everyday items like sugar, flour (well, 10 different types!) and cornflakes, there are also quite a few "interesting" things.  I could tell you all about the normal things, but that's not why you read this blog, is it?

So, true to form, here are the Top 10 weird foodstuffs in my kitchen:

10. “God knows”
Chinese salted, preserved shredded turnip (it comes in cabbage too). When I was a kid my father used to buy this.  I have no idea how on earth he managed to find "tong choi" in Palmerston North during the 1970s, given that there were probably only about four Chinese people living there at the time.  But he did, and a little clay jar of it used to sit in the corner of a bookshelf in our lounge. 

It’s nice added in small quantities to give a salty counterpoint to otherwise fairly bland noodle dishes (e.g. pad Thai). Kieran opened the jar when he was a toddler and asked Don what it was. The reply “God knows” stuck and it’s now fondly regarded by the whole family (although only Kieran and I actually eat it).

9. Lotus leaves
These monsters are soaked to soften them, then wrapped around glutinous rice that's flavoured with whatever, before being steamed. The leaves, which aren’t eaten, impart a pleasant vegetal flavour to the filling.

8. Cocoa nibs
Cocoa beans' bottoms. I add them to spiced fruit cakes to provide a complementary subtle chocolatey crunch.

7. Sugar crystal sticks
Lovely looking sugar and saffron confections all the way from Tehran via a Middle Eastern supplies store in Mt Eden Rd. They’re meant to be stirred into coffee as a sweetener. Trouble is, I don’t like sugar in my coffee. I keep hoping I’ll come up with a creative inspiration for using them…

6. Smoked kelp
Buying it seemed like a good idea at the time, and it smells really nice. Now what?

5. Drumsticks
I bought this pack of frozen ‘drumsticks’ at an Indian store about a year ago, where they sat until a few nights ago because I had no idea what they were or what to do with them. I decided to treat them like okra and used them in a side dish to accompany a curry that I made when our friends Lindsay and Freeman, and their kids came over for an impromptu dinner.  Lucky old them.

It transpires that drumsticks are really, really, really tough and stringy. The trick to eating them involves slitting them in half lengthwise and scraping out the insides. A lot of effort for little return.

4. Soybean powder
I have no idea why a steaming bowl is depicted on this packet, or what Chinese people would ususally use this stuff for.  I bought it because a gluten-free chocolate cake recipe specified soy flour and I assumed soybean powder is the same thing.  Then again, maybe not. 

I had a go at baking the gluten free cake yesterday.  It tastes wonderful but, for some reason, the cake has done a great impersonation of Mt Eden - crater and all.  Must've been the soy powder.

3. Ajwain

I have no recollection of where or why I bought this. And I’m certain I’ve never cooked with it. Googling reveals it to be a member of the parsley family that tastes strongly of thyme.  Sounds skitzo to me. Ajwain is used sparingly in Indian cooking.  Farty pants readers may be interested to know that it helps reduce beans' flatulence-causing effect and also aids digestion.

2. Mystery things

I vaguely recall buying (and using) these about 15 years ago. I think they’re a Thai pickled plum.

1. 18-month-old yoghurt

Readers of my Intellectually Curious posting may recall being introduced to this yoghurt when it was a spring chicken at 6 months past its ‘use by’ date. Another year on and it is time for my yoghurt friend to go.

Lindsay and Freeman bravely stayed on after dinner to witness the Beast From The Fridge being unleashed.  Here's what happened (Lindsay lived to tell the tale)...