Yeah, yeah for the Rotary!

A few months ago I saw a sign: farmers markets, every third Saturday, Blacktown RSL carpark. Sweet! I was so excited. I missed the first market, and made it to the second one, in between a 160km radius dinner (aka 100 mile dinner, but we talk metric here), and moving house.
It was pretty small: a few trinket/craft shops, some fruit and veg, one guy selling only field mushrooms, blue mountains honey, and even a mob selling pot plants and herbs.

I forgot to take pictures then since it was so stinking hot, but they're on again this weekend, so piccies will come.

Thank goodness for the Rotary, bringing civilisation out to the 'burbs.

Blacktown Farmers Markets
8am-1pm
Third Saturday of every month (except January)
Blacktown RSL car park, 2nd Avenue Blacktown

Zumbo's Macaron party

I was alerted to the existence of Adriano Zumbo's Macaron party the night before, just before I hung up my workboots to go on a well-deserved holiday.

Luckily, I had that day off, so just around lunchtime, I zoomed off to Balmain to inspect the wares. The queue was not bad (about 10 people), and there was heaps of flavours left.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my list of the flavours with me, so I seemed to have picked all the sweet ones.

I tried:
1. Peanut Butter
2. Burnt toast and Butter
3. Maple Syrup, Bacon and Pancake
4. Popcorn
5. Vegemite Sourdough
6. Carrot Cake

I wished I had the money (and the time), to get one of all the flavours to try.

My favourite was the carrot cake, with a bit of cream cheese icing and walnut pieces in the filling. I was quite partial also, to the slightly oversweet vegemite. Unforntunately, the others tasted rather samey - and I had to consult my list to work out what the vaguely caramel flavoured one was (it turned out to be Burnt toast and Butter). The Maple Syrup, Bacon and Pancake one was also disappointing - there were chewy papery bits, which I think were like "bacon pieces"

I ended up polishing off the last of my bounty on an international flight with some aeroplane coffee to temper the sweetness. I definitely got a giant sugar overload though!

Pictures once I get my net connection working.
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So this is what the aftermath of Zumbo's Macaron party looked like:

SIFF Review: Burlington Dining Room does lunch

I went to Burlington dining room on Friday 30 Ocotber, last gasp at the Sydney International food Festival “Let’s do lunch”.

Burlington Dining Room is owned by Matthew Kemp, who started up Restaurant Balzac and Two Rooms in Randwick, two favourite haunts of mine, which I am unfortunately unable to visit as often as I would like.

The “Let’s do lunch” special was King salmon fish cakes with prawns, creme fraiche & baby fennel salad, $35 per person inclusive of a glass of wine, beer or mineral water.

They also had a deal for $45: three course including a rare beef salad, and strawberry sundae The table next to me had that, and the sundaes looked delicious!! You could also order a matching glass of wine with the beef slad for $8 extra.

Anyway, I grabbed the Let's do Lunch special, which worked very well. The slight bitterness of the fennel worked wonders with the rich fish cake and creme fraiche.

Afterwards, I couldn't resist and had a look at the dessert menu: Eton Mess was on the specials board for $12. This item appears to have had a big rennaisance in Sydney recently, I am sure that I have heard of it popping up all over the place.

This one had bits of meringue, cream (double??), berry coulis. Also a toffee ‘sheet’ on top. Very tasty, but too rich for me!! I love cream, but I don't think it loves me back.

Photos to come, once I get this net thingy working.

Burlington Bar & Dining

6 Burlington St,
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Tel: 02 9439 7888

Monday to Friday for lunch from 12.00pm
Monday to Saturday for dinner from 6.00pm
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I mucked up the focus taking the picture of the crabcake, so I have a clear one of the Eton Mess. What a beauty!

Review: SeaBay Restaurant

I made it to Seabay at 4pm. The staff were busy eating their own dinner in preparation for the dinner rush, but were happy to serve.

Based on a recommendation, I got a half portion of the Spring Rolls. Not the deep fried little things you normally associate with the term; it came with a wheat based wrapping pastry the size of a plate. The spring rolls are HUGE. Vermicilli noodles, wood ear fungus, egg, bean curd pastry sheets (foo jook). Delicious and warm.

I had greedy eyes, so I got "handmade noodle soup with dumplings" as well, which came in a light broth (probably chicken) with a bit of herb stuff and some shredded wombok or Chinese Cabbage. The noodles were nice - al dente, but with a slight raw wheat/flour taste. The dumplings were DELICIOUS, and were a highlight. I think I got five or six of them: a tasty pork and vegie and other flavouring dumpling in a thickish wheat pastry (not as fine as the din tai fung dumpling place in world square). I got a bit sick of the herby and plain broth taste. The chilli was ferociously hot, but also very enjoyable.

On a later date I gave the stirfried handmade noodles with lamb a shot, stir fried green vegetables (shang hai buk choy) and revisited a half serving of the Spring Pancakes.

The stirfried noodles were a little oversalty, and both it and the vegetables had were too oily for my taste. Curses - I think it is the Chinese compunction to try and make foodstuffs look "shiny", glossy, and pretty on the plate. The action of cooking the noodles in the wok seems to have removed the slight raw wheat taste that I had noted before. I wonder what would happen if you cooked the noodles with water as the moistening ingredient, rather than the oil? I suspect everything would end up sticking together.

The vegies had a nice mix of garlic and ginger, and I did enjoy the noodles which came with some more wombok, capsicum, and little bits of lamb, like it was sliced thin for sandwiches or steamboot, and then thrown in.

Whilst I enjoyed the second serving of the Spring Pancakes, it didn't seem as novel or as delicious as the first time that I had sampled them.

I've been twice so far, and have yet to sample their panfried dumplings. Pictures to come!

SeaBay Restaurant

Open till 1030pm, everynight

372 Pitt St SydneyNSW Phone (02) 9267 4855

Bacco Pasticceria

Bacco Pasticceria got a lovely review in smh's good living. S0 far, I have managed to visit three times. Already the prices have gone up since my first visit, from $5 per cake to $6 per cake.
So first up, I tried the lemon meringue and the strawberry tart, just because they looked so pretty. The lemon meringue was tastebud shrinkly both sweet and sour at the same time. I tried eating one quarter only, but it was hard going. First time round I nibbled only on a strawberry, but I forgot to eat the rest of it before I went away for work.

A fortnight or so later, I tried the baked ricotta tart with carmelised chestnuts, again for the prettiness. The poor slumped thing in the corner of the box is what happens to a lemongrass and wild strawberry concorde when you leave it at office temperature for more than six hours. It has a light graduated pink rose petal on top for decorative garnish, which I ate.
I didn't realise when picking these desserts, how similar they would be.
My favourite here was definitely the concorde, the lemongrass flavour was quite subtle, and the richness of the cream was cut through with the lemongrass and strawberry flavours. The ricotta tart - meh, take it or leave it. The baked ricotta was nice, the chestnuts seemed a bit ordinary, and the whole thing seemed a bit plain.
So for my most recent foray, I got the hazelnut truffle, surrounded by meringue sticks, and the strawberry tart once again. The hazelnut truffle was too sweet! It took me three days to eat one third, and after that I couldn't bear the smell anymore. The hazelnut chocolate mousse contained within was nice, but there was a heart of more meringue sticks.
The strawberry tart has been my favourite so far. Such a simple thing! The strawberries are so moreish and very strawberry flavoured (yet still firm), and the light almost-set custard underneath has the little black specks of vanilla pod seeds. Yummo!

Bacco Pasticceria is on the ground floor of Chifley Plaza, Sydney. M-F 9-5. (02) 9223 9552.

Pancakes!

I am sure that I have blogged about my pancake shennanigans before...

My tried and true recipie for pancakes has been "the jaime oliver one, ripped out of the spam email a few years ago that purported to be the proofs for his new book".

Essentially, it was: separate the egg, beat the egg white till fluffy, fold it back into the mix.

I have tried, several times to get the non-egg separation version working (ala Stephanie Alexander), but it never worked for me. I suspect it may be because, not being an egg person, the eggs I have on hand probably were never very fresh, and the result was rock hard and inedible.

Recently, I tried the Joy of Cooking Version. This book, to Americans, is like The Cook's Companion is for Australia. This book is bizarre: it tells you how to prepare wild game such as opossum, raccoon, beaver and muskrat, to name a few.

Onwards! No need to separate the egg, and the ingredient here was: double acting baking powder. I have no idea what that is, but I put in the same quantity of bicarbinate of soda, left it overnight to prove, and cooked it up the next morning.

Here is the result:

There are a lot more bubbles appearing in the mixture than I am used to, but the result indeed was delicious!

Bun bo Hue - Hot & Spicy soup

At 2pm on Monday afternoon, 5 of the 7 customers in the naughty chef ordered "no.7, hot and spicy soup".

Having read the "three of the best" review in good living, I've been ordering this quite a bit recently. I've tried it at Pho Ben in Parramatta, and the new Orange coloured Vietnamese next door to Pasteur in Haymarket. Here, the broth is fish-based, but not overpowering. It's quite tasty. The best salad selection came from the Orange-coloured place, whose name escapes me.

Post-post note: The Orange coloured place next door to Pasteur is called Gia Hoi. I have also just tried the Bun bo Hue at Xic Lo around the corner. I have to say I was a bit disappointed at Xic Loc, because it didn't come with the plate of brightly coloured salad and cabbage, and there was barely any hint of the fish based stock.