A lucky break

After a desultory and largely unsuccessful effort at being productive at work this morning, lunch time – and the perfect opportunity for a foodie diversion – intervened.

I decided to visit a restaurant I’d read about, which serves authentic Dalian style Chinese food but all I could remember was that it was at 700 and something Dominion Road.

I spotted a small restaurant at number 704 and wondered whether that was the Dalian place. There was no English on the signage and the only patrons were Chinese. You can’t get more authentic than that, so I decided to try my luck.

They had some menus in English and I quickly surmised that the food was fairly bog standard northern Chinese fare – with nothing from the Dailan cuisine, so far as I could see. My dilemma over whether to stay was quickly resolved when I spotted ‘Wang Wang Special Soup’.

In my experience, many Chinese dishes are pretty ‘special’ to Western tastes, so I was intrigued to find out what could be so unusual about this soup that even the Chinese would label it as special.

The waitress was obliging but not particularly fluent in English. She managed to convey that it had no pork, contained tofu and potato, had something else that she didn’t know the English for but whatever it was, she advised, it wasn’t rabbit.

She also told me that she thought I wouldn’t like it. So what else could I do, but order some?

As I waited for the soup to arrive, I started to worry. What say ‘wang wang’ was Chinese for ‘intestine’ or other really icky bit? Worse still, what say it referred to an appendage with a similar sounding English name?

The waitress had warned me and I’d ignored her. No matter what wang wang might be, I’d have to save face and – for the sake of all other Westerners who despair when given Westernised versions of ethnic food – I’d have to eat it.

Fate was kind to me today. Wang Wang Special Soup was what I’d imagine Chinese invalid food to be. It was based on a thickened, slightly oily, faintly sesame flavoured stock and contained very finely shredded: cucumber, carrot, black fungus and tofu skin. Delicate fronds of just set beaten egg waved gently amongst the other ingredients.

Deliciously, it was topped with a pile of deep fried very finely shredded potato sticks, which provided a crunchy counterpoint to soup’s soft, unctuous texture. How clever! I’m going to borrow that idea for use on a Western style thick winter soup.

As for the Dalian place? I almost got it right: for the record, it’s two doors down at number 708.

Closer to home

Having gastronomically roamed the globe this year, it was time to rest my weary taste buds on Saturday and reconnect with something closer to home; kai.

Maori cuisine is, for the most part, pretty plain although, to their credit, Maori have a few pungent delicacies such as rotten corn (kaanga wai) and shark liver (ate mango) that would challenge even the Chinese. You’ll hardly be surprised to learn that I’ve tried rotten corn a couple of times (it’s perfectly eatable in a stinky, foul cheese or fermented tofu kind of a way). I’ll confess to being a bit intimidated by the shark liver but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of giving it a go one day.

Hangi food is arguably the best known aspect of Maori cuisine and I’ve always loved it. I grew up in Palmerston North and the school I went to probably had only one or two Maori kids out of roll of 300 or so. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, every couple of years a corner of the rugby field would get dug up for a hangi.

I remember a great sense of excitement as the hangi was opened, and the evocative aroma of hot earth and steaming sacks, mingled with food. All these years later, that smell still takes me right back to Russell Street primary school circa 1970!

I also love the way hangi food is cooked using a technique that, apart from a few modern twists (using metal hangi baskets and hessian sacks), has been unchanged since time immemorial.

Unfortunately, I rarely get to eat hangi food but seek it out wherever I can. For years I’ve been muttering about making a hangi, and even have a book that gives step-by-step instructions, but – to pardon the pun - it’s gone into the ‘too hard’ basket.

 As is often the case, fate intervened to put things right by way of a hangi making workshop in Auckland Council’s Matariki festival’s programme of events. I enrolled like a shot!

As the workshop drew near, I wondered what the day would hold and wondered who else would be interested enough to dedicate an entire Saturday to the cause. Would there be lots of foodies? Or would there be just me, and a handful of balding, ponytailed whiteys intent on deep and meaningfully connecting with their inner Maui?

Arriving at Te Tahawai Marae, Pakuranga, I was pleased and surprised to note the paucity of ponytails amongst the 30-strong group. We were a diverse bunch, with participants ranging in age from fresh-faced university students, through to a lovely but very doddery old man whom I feared wouldn’t survive the day.

After being welcomed onto the marae, we were asked to say where we were born and what our heritage was. Talk about United Nations! Apart from a handful of kiwis, participants were born all over the globe, including China, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Nigeria, Iraq, Spain, France and Portugal.

We were split into three groups and took turns at different aspects of preparing the hangi: food preparation, fire preparation and weaving.

Me weaving a nikau thingy.

The food was standard hangi fare, albeit using far better quality ingredients than is often the case, thanks to the sponsor, New World’s generosity (thought I’d give them a plug).

Into the hangi baskets went: pork, whole chickens, spuds, kumera, pumpkin, bread stuffing and whole cabbages (cut out the core, put butter, salt and garlic in then put the core plug back in.).

The workshop was incredibly well run by three Maori men, who showed us everything from the mechanics of preparing a hangi pit and the food – through to how to weave table decorations and hangi pit covers from nikau fronds.

Intriguingly, we were also shown how to create fire by rubbing Mahoe sticks against koikomako wood. It looked like really hard work.

Unearthing the hangi.

We concluded the afternoon by learning a waiata (song), which we sang to guests who joined us for dinner.

As it happened, judging for a rewena competition was also held on the marae. Rewena paraoa, a Maori specialty, is bread made using a potato water starter. A kuia (female elder) told us about making rewena and showed us a sample from a friend’s starter that had been kept going for 53 years. It smelled delicate – very subtly yeasty.

Better still, we got to try the entries. They were both delicious, but the one made using the starter with the impressive lineage was streets ahead in its sophisticated taste and texture.

Hangied pork and cabbage
ready to come out of
the ground.

After a full and interesting day, it was at last time to eat the object of our attention. The hangied food was lovely; delicately flavoured, wholesome and hearty – and utterly unpretentious.

I knew I would enjoy the workshop because I love hangied food. Yet, in a funny way, the hangi dinner wasn’t necessarily the star of the show.

One way and another, every single aspect of the day combined to create a far richer and more fulfilling experience than I could have anticipated.

As is often the case, food was the unifying factor, but what made the experience so special was our hosts’ willingness to so openly share their culture with us – and our collective willingness to be open to and partake in that knowledge. Maybe I’d better go and grow a ponytail.

Yummy, yum!





After glow

Until yesterday my knowledge of the Philippines and its cuisine could have fitted on a small postcard. Besides Imelda and her shoes, Spanish and American colonisation, a lot of mail order activity, Catholicism, and the Tagalog language, I knew almost nothing. I could barely even find it on a map.

A Filipina friend recently told me about the festival and emailed me a flier, providing the perfect opportunity to put things right.

My friend (left) following
her dance performance
at the festival.

As expected, none of my family was keen although, to his credit, Kieran put in an order for some interesting food. I was too lazy to organise anyone else to join me, so poor Anna No Friends headed off alone.

Upon arriving I couldn't find the event so asked directions from the first Filippine looking person I spotted. As luck would have it, he was the president of Auckland’s Filippine Society - and he was wearing the national costume.

As we chatted, I discovered a few interesting things:

* the shirt in the men’s national costume is made from pineapple fibre (!) and silk

* Filipinos are Auckland’s third or fourth largest ethnic group

* the festival was only a small one – there’s a really big one held at the ASB Stadium every October.

The cultural performances hadn’t started yet and it was lunch time, no prizes for guessing where I headed first.

There were half a dozen food stalls, all of which looked interesting.  Some of the food looked familiar – a whole roast pig, spring rolls, and sweets that bore a strong resemblance to Thai ones. 

Other things looked quite foreign: large pots of mysterious stews, an assortment of dried whole fish, and many desserts that I’d never encountered. Passersby and food stall owners alike were really friendly and seemed keen to enlighten me on Filippine cuisine. Apparently it uses little in the way of herbs and spices but frequently features vinegar, soya sauce and coconut milk.

 Thinking of you, my readers, I whipped out the camera and started snapping away – until I spotted two of the very few other Europeans there being almost pushy in their photographic quests. So I put my camera away and focused on what I was really there to do: eat! (And, of course, discover more about the country and its people.)

It was difficult to know where to begin. I don’t like pork, so that eliminated many dishes. In the end I chose a selection comprising jackfruit and coconut stew, taro leaves cooked in coconut, mixed vegetable stew and beef stew on rice. I also bought three different desserts to take home and try later; and some charcoal grilled pork for Kieran. (I tried a bit and, for pork, it was very nice.)

The food was completely unspiced, yet very tasty thanks to generous seasoning to bring out the flavours. The taro dish was very much like the palusami eaten by Pacific Islanders, a dish I really like. The Filippine version differs by being saltier and having a coarser texture. The beef stew was lovely – soya sauce flavours coming through loud and clear, nicely complemented by a subtle vinegariness. I’m going to track down a recipe and cook that one for the family.



My lunch (clockwise from top left:
jackfruit and coconut stew; vege stew;
beef stew, taro and coconut stew.

  The jackfruit stew had a nice soft-yet-firm texture and had none of the cloying fruitiness that fresh jackfruit has. The pumpkin, bean and okra vege stew was plain, but pleasant.

As I was eating, a group of three Filipinos sitting next to me struck up a conversation so I was able to further add to my body of knowledge. Some more new facts: there are 7000 islands in the Philippines; the main ethnicities are Chinese, Malays and Negroes. Islam is the predominant religion in the southern islands, Catholicism everywhere else. Exports include bananas and other fruit, and electrical goods.


Me and my new friends.


Before long it was time to head into the auditorium to watch a few cultural performances, including my friend’s dance.

While driving home I mulled over what had been an enriching and enjoyable afternoon.

As you know, I’m drawn to spicy and boldly flavoured food so I wondered why my inaugural foray into the more subtle Filippine cuisine rated so highly.

I figured it was because food isn’t just about what’s on the plate; it’s about the total eating experience, therefore the warmth of the Filipino people I met more than compensated for the food’s lack of spicy heat.  Salamat!

A Filippine sweet: palm-sugar flavoured,
softly chewy, only slightly sweet. Yum.



 

Love the purple! 
Yam dessert.  Sweet but not much flavour.
Odd texture.  Okay but nothing amazing.



Mysterious vanilla (?) flavoured sweet
stuff cooked (steamed then lightly grilled?)  in a
banana leaf.  Nice.

Chopity, chop

I truly started to wonder about my eating habits when I found myself heading down to the garage for an axe so that I could finish lunch.

I’m afraid you’ve been suckered into this blog post by the promise of drama, action and violence. Truth be known, I’m going to spend most of the time talking about tofu (although I promise to come back to the axe later).

Go on, be honest: would you have bothered even opening the blog if I was more upfront and started writing about the T word in the first paragraph?

I was a vegetarian for many years, during which time I ate a fair amount of tofu. Most of it was nice enough, apart from one cruel concoction I experienced at 20,000 feet.

I travelled a lot during my vegetarian phase and, despite having flown on most of the world’s worst airlines, the only inedible vegetarian meal I ever encountered was the scrambled tofu and parsley horror on an Air New Zealand red-eye flight to Wellington. What were they thinking?! To this day I’m convinced it was a ploy to punish their vegetarian customers.

I now eat meat, but my love of Asian food leads to frequent tofu encounters.

Earlier this week, on the way back from skiving off work to check out Sabatini’s knitwear sale, I saw the Wesley market in action and decided to stop and take a look. Even though I’ve lived near the market for more than a decade, I keep forgetting about its existence and have never been until now.

It’s only a small market – probably a dozen fruit and vege stalls, a couple of food stalls, and a few other bits and pieces. The only out-of-the-ordinary offering was a tiny stall selling a selection of home-made tofu products. Like a moth to the flame, I was drawn to take a closer look.

Here’s what I ended up buying:   

Marinated bean skin

  

Plain bean skin

The stall owner suggested a few ways to prepare these, as did the ever-useful Internet. So, come lunch time, I got cooking - with delicious results. The marinated ‘bean skin’ was particularly nice. I think it’s flavoured with five-spice and soy sauce. It was tasty on its own, and even nicer when included the salad recipe at the end of this blog.

Deep-fried tofu

 As for the axe, I felt like rounding off lunch with something sweet and, tempted though I was to offset all that healthiness with a big slab of cake, for once I exercised some willpower and resisted.

I had a drinking coconut in the fridge, from which I’d extracted the juice for a Nonya dessert I made the other night. I’d only managed to cut a little hole in the top, which was large enough to let the juice out, but my kitchen knives weren’t up to the task of carving larger hole from which to extract the soft flesh.

So it was off to the woodpile to get a better tool for the job. Trouble was, the chopping block and axe were buried under a mountain kitchen renovation detritus and other general crap in our garage. Too lazy to move it all out of the way, I burrowed my way through stacks of polystyrene underfloor insulation, a bunch of bicycles and bicycle parts, and rolls of carpet and attempted to cleave the coconut.

There was barely any room to swing the axe so all I could manage do without putting my fingers at risk was cut a slightly larger hole, just wide enough to accommodate a dessert spoon.

And that, I’m afraid, is all I have to report. Not very exciting, really, but not your everyday lunch experience either.

Cucumber and tofu ‘noodle’ salad

No matter what your foodie preferences may be, this simple salad hits the mark: sweet, sour, salty, crisp, soft, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, low-cholesterol. Most importantly, it’s really tasty! I made some more to go with dinner the next night and, to my surprise, the kids liked it - even fussy Rory.


                                                                                     Salad dressing

Bean skin strips stir-fried with chilli, ginger and garlic (left),
cucumber and tofu noodle salad (right).

Mix to taste:

Vegetable (or other bland) cooking oil

Chinese black vinegar

Salt

Sugar

A few drops sesame oil

You could add some chilli flakes and garlic for extra zing

Salad

Cut marinated tofu skin into thin strips and mix with peeled, seeded cucumber that has been julienned. Pour over the dressing. You could substitute any crisp, crunchy vegetable: lettuce, julienned or grated carrot, finely shredded cabbage, etc.

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)...