yum cha cha

Well folks, your intrepid correspondent has done the hard work for you. Yes, on Sunday I trekked out to Box Hill to investigate reports of Vegetarian Yum Cha. Luckily Sammy, Nell, Sarah and John came along to assist with the eating.

The venue - a place known only as Asian Vegetarian Restaurant (606 Station St). The menu is a short but delicious list of dumplings, buns, dim sum and other delicacies. You have to tick which ones you would like and they're delivered to your table.

The groups' favourites were the crystal spinach dumplings (great spinach flavour) and the fake BBQ Pork Buns (an intensely confusing mix of salty and sweet). I also loved the Radish Cake, Taro dumplings (fried lacy taro wrapped around a mix of vegies) and a strange spongy cake known as Steamed Egg Cake.

Oh how we feasted. It's not quite as fine an affair as the Purple Lotus (15 Goulburn St, Haymarket, Sydney), I missed the rice noodle rolls and the crispy tofu rolls. But definitely worth the trip to Box Hill - which is afterall, closer than Sydney.

ps - I have a new web stats tracker and it says that a lot of you folks are visiting this here humble blog. so please, leave a comment and make me as happy as if i was stuffing my face with Sammy's chestnut cake.

parcels of joy

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to be taken for dinner at Madam Fang. Yum. I would definitely recommend this if you have someone else who's paying (mains $20 - $25). From the folks behind Isthmus of Kra and Shakahari, this was a restaurant in the old style (they had carpet! not noisy concrete) but with good modern food.

We had a great taster entree - gyoza, croquettes, tempura (eggplant wrapped around avocado) and some yummy little parcels that got me thinking. I'm fairly sure the wrapping was bean curd skin. The filling was very finely shredded but I think it had beans, ginger and jicama. We had a conversation with the waitress about jicama - not something you see much of in Australia. I've had it in the US in Mexican, and I like it's crunch. She said she grew up on the stuff in S-E Asia. Anyway, the parcels were great - crunchy on the outside where the skin was grilled and nicely packed full.

Mains were also good - the standout being a dish of many different types of mushroom in a soy based sauce that was served over something strangely described as "polenta rice". I think it was mashed up rice... it had the texture of polenta I guess.

Anyway, feeling all inspired I decided to try my hand at the parcels. I headed to Victoria St and had a great time shopping at a big Vietnamese grocery. (Don't think I left without buying 3 types of fake meat!) And at Sammy's on Friday night we gave it our best shot. I soaked the bean curd skins and some dried chinese mushrooms. We used zucchini, spring onions, coriander and the mushrooms for our filling. Although the skin tore a little we managed to wrap them up and pan fried them while basting with a mixture of soy, chilli and rice wine. They went all nice and crunchy and were pretty damn good, even if they didn't quite hit Madam Fang's mark. Next time I think I will use bean sprouts or something with more bulk for the filling so the parcels are easier to roll up. And something with a bit more crunch too - the zucchini didn't quite hit the mark.

In other big shopping news - I found Kimchi dumplings in the frozen section of my local supermarket (the IGA under College Square for locals). Yee haa.. two of my favourite things combined in one small parcel. $5 for 50!

Cake!

Well I decided the best way to solve the image problem is not to buy a digital camera, but to use my housemates scanner a bit more - thanks Tom. So from now on strange old pictures will be the order of the day - mostly thanks to food mania.

And so, a neurotic baking story.
On Saturday I invited Bindy around for a late afternoon tea. Feeling like a bit of baking, I dragged out a couple of recipe books and decided on a chocolate sherry cake. Only problem was - I realised my favourite one requires chestnut paste and I've had trouble finding that in my hood before.

So I thought, maybe an upside down apple tart (tart tatin?). But I wasn't in my usual organised frame of mind, so it wasn't until I had measured out the flour, butter and sugar into a bowl that I realised I didn't have the pyrex pie tin the recipe called for. And caramelising sugar on the stove in my pie tin didn't appeal. By this stage I was feeling a bit frantic - none of my ideas were working and it was pissing down outside so I didn't feel like going out for ingredients. I rifled through recipe files and started to think maybe I should just go for pikelets.

Finally I found a recipe that used the stuff I'd already measured out - a streusel kuchenor crumble cake with a banana topping. Again I leapt into it and started measuring stuff out. Then of course Bindy arrived - an hour early - and just as I'd realised I didn't have the yoghurt the recipe called for. She helpfully offered to go out and get it and so the day was saved. I swapped bananas, which didn't sound that traditional, for apples, replaced the brown sugar I couldn't find for white and all was saved. Bloody yum actually. But why did I feel like the stupid kid who didn't learn to read your recipe through before starting?

Streusel Kuchen - Light cake with apple and crunchy topping.

This is a really easy cake to make. The yoghurt makes it very light and I love the crunchy topping. You can use any fruit you have handy.

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 6 tbsps butter
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup plain yoghurt or sour cream
• 1/2 cup soy milk

for the topping

• 3 - 4 apples
• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup soft butter, in pieces
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 375F and oil a 9 or 10 inch springform pan.
2. Put all the cake ingredients in a bowl and mix by hand or machine until you have a thick and smooth batter.
3. Spoon the batter into the pan and smooth level.
4. Grate the apples and spread on top of the cake batter.
5. Rub the flour, cinnamon, butter and sugar together until they form a crumble. Sprinkle this over the apple.
6. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes or until the top goes nice and brown.
7. Serve warm, possibly with yoghurt or ice cream

i'm back

okay, that's the only image of Korean rice cake I could find quickly. It's a book called 2005 Ewha Photo Diary: Tteok - Korean Rice Cake. How beautiful and crazy does it look?

Sorry folks. If anyone did miss me i kinda abandoned this blog because there are so many better food writers out there and i also think it's weird having a blog without pictures. That said, i'm back. I’ve decided to focus a bit more on hunting down fun places to eat and good foods but there should still be plenty of recipes.

This week’s big discovery is Box Hill. Okay, this eastern suburb of melbourne wasn't sitting around waiting to be discovered but it was a bit off my radar. Sarah decided we had to go on a date out there – a mystery date which had me on the Eastern freeway going “where are we going?” over and over like a kid.

Box Hill is like what I wish chinatown was - lots of cheap asian joints ranging from your traditional shanghai dumpling house to asian vegetarian places. And lots of Korean!

We decided to check out a place on Bank St, opposite the railway line. It was called Korean Deli and was oddly scattered with all sorts of schmonces. Weird stuff like little dolls made out corn husks and ceramic clowns. The menu has great photos of the food – macro close ups of omelettes and stuff. We settled on mung bean pancakes, rice cake in spicy sauce (dukboki) and the stone bowl rice.

The pancakes were little pikelet sized morsels and had good crunchy stuff inside. I had the feeling they weren't fried fresh though, which could have helped. The rice cake was just how I like it - big long tubes of rice dumpling, good and chewy and with a sauce that was, as our waiter said “just a little bit hot”. As usual “with vegetables” meant a bit of sliced onion and carrot, but somehow that didn’t matter. The stone bowl was also great – a big hot bowl of rice (so hot the rice is still crackling when it comes out) covered with little mounds of delicately grated vegies, seaweed and pickles. Topped with a fried egg of course. Our waiter was not impressed with my skills at stirring it so he asked if he could do it. Adding lots of sauce he then proceeded to chop up the egg with a spoon and thoroughly mix everything together. "You're heaps better at that" I said. "Yes, I'm Korean" he replied.

A great meal all in all – the only funny thing being that we didn’t automatically get served all my beloved side dishes. I don't think they were used to having honkeys in, and they seemed to think we wouldn't cope with all their weird food. It was only when I asked for some kimchi that they were brought out. The peppery fungus was particularly awesome as were the little potatoes. I don’t know how they make them so soft but still together but I love ‘em.

The whole meal, with roast corn tea came to $25.30. For dessert we went around the corner to the stupidly named crepelato. Of course I had to go for the crepes with peanut butter and condensed milk. Sarah insisted on chocolate gelato on top. Of course they were fantastic – choc-peanut butter is always such a winner of a combination.

And the best thing about the trip? We found a place that does vegetarian yum cha. So you know where I’m heading on my next free morning…