why you got to be such a friggin spicebag.

Coupla recipes in progress, finally had a go at it, the curry sauce recipe is perfect but you got to buy McDonnell's to make it happen, which isn't ideal even though it's excellent. Anyway, this is Mark I. 

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irish spice bag.

INGREDIENTS
the spice mix
1 tbsp five spice seasoning
1/4 tsp cardamom powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp gochugaru flakes or other mild chile powder
1/2 tsp zwarte peper
1/2 tsp fine white sugar
1 tsp fine salt

the curry sauce
2 tbsp butter or vegetable oil
1 small onion, finely minced
1 cloves garlic, minced
2.5 tbsp mild curry powder
1/2 tsp chinese five-spice powder
2.5 tbsp all-purpose flour
400ml (approx. 1.7 cups) vegetable stock
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp fine white sugar

METHOD
Whisk all spice mix ingredients together in a small bowl until completely combined. 

Set a saucepan on medium heat and melt the butter over medium heat. Cook the minced onion for 3 minutes until soft but not browned, then add the garlic for 1 minute. 

Build the roux: stir in the curry powder, five-spice, and flour. Cook for 1-3 minutes while stirring constantly to toast the spices and cook out the raw flour taste.

Slowly whisk in the stock a little at a time to prevent lumps, this can take 5 minutes or so. Add the soy sauce and sugar. Bring the mixture to a very gentle boil, then turn the heat down a bit and simmer for 10–12 minutes until thick and glossy. Optionally blend with a hand blender if you prefer a completely smooth texture.

A 1-person spicebag should have about 2 tsp of spice mix added, assume that the fries and chicken are already salted. 

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food roundup.

Faithful readers of this blog may have noticed that I've barely mentioned Australian food. I'm not sure exactly what my thinking was, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I might just cram it all into one post. Maybe this is that post. Let's see, shall we.

I should probably say the food was great, really good, in a kind of "new comfort food" kind of way. Not heavy, but just like "stuff you liked". I'll try and explain better. We probably fucked up by not eating any Indian or Malaysian, or Chinese for that matter. But there were so many interesting "Australian" menus that we just didn't get there. Also our eating schedule kind of dictated a certain input: the first week or so we were getting up at 4am every day and asleep by 9pm, so most days we'd have two breakfasts, which worked out just fine because Australia has a bit of a serious breakfast obsession.

OK so here are some Australian things:

1) Sourdough bread. Possibly my single favorite thing about "Australian cuisine". It's real sourdough, tangy with a wide open crumb, and if you toast it properly you can hear the eventual crunch in the other room. Just great, great bread that I forgot I liked so much. So everywhere we went for breakfast had "slice of sourdough" as a menu option. They also almost always had some variation jams and jellies, and one with eggs, and some variation with avocado, which is so ubiquitous that they semi-annoyingly call it avo b/c they just don't have time for those other two syllables. Noooooo I think they just like making up fun names for things that end with O, probably because the Australian O is such an endearing feature of their spoken language. Yes I know avocado already ended with O before they shortened it, thanks.

Anyway, yes, sourdough every day. Possibly the best of these was at The General in Kangaroo Valley (above), homemade by a shadowy figure called Mrs Bread (no dot after the Mrs), served with unusually delicious hand-churned butter. This was a great omelette, too, Parmesan, kale and pine nut? Pecan? Some nut (EDITOR'S NOTE: hazelnut). Actually Nelson's breakfast was great too, sourdough rye with, yes, avocado, fresh cheese, tomato, and dukkah, which is going to be talked about again in a minute.

We tried to buy some of Mrs Bread's sourdough after breakfast but she hadn't baked that morning, we'd have to come back tomorrow, which...yeah we just weren't gonna do. We had a schedule. It was perfectly quaint that, had there been bread, it would've been on an unmanned cart with a box for you to put your money in, yes, using the honor system.

Anyway, we loved The General, and would've been back the next day if we could've.

2) Dukkah. At least one menu per day had some kind of dukkah on it. My own personal jury's still out on it. I'm not totally sure it improved anything it was served on, it might have just become a habit down there to throw it on things. Here's a kind of vapid HuffPost article about it, and here's a breakfast I had at the Hungry Monkey in Kiama called Purple Toast: "beetroot relish. Persian feta, free range poached eggs & monkey dukkah on soy & linseed sourdough."

3) Poached eggs. They really love their poached eggs. Which is great, because it means they're really good at poaching them. Again, every menu had them at least once. Below, The Serrano at Illi Hill: jàmon serrano, pecorino, watercress, walnuts, poached egg on white sourdough drizzled with truffle oil.

A wee bit overkilt, that one, the sourdough pretty much got lost, which is too bad b/c it sounded like a great sandwich. Wasn't bad at all, but better was this: Two Chaps' corn sourdough crumpets w/semi-dried tomato, rocket, cultured goat’s milk yoghurt and fermented tomato salsa. Plus a poached egg. Yes these are all still breakfasts.

4) Coffee. Man. It reminded me of Seattle circa 1995. Walking down the main drag in Kiama looking for a good front terrace to have a beer on and peoplewatch, you quickly realize a) there aren't any, you later find out it's because Australians do "beer gardens" instead, which are located in the back and serve a slightly different purpose, protecting you from the sun instead of helping you soak it up, and b) every other storefront is a coffee roaster.

You get kind of used to it pretty quickly, although the terminology was a bit confusing. But somehow it didn't have the sneery/snooty feel of hipstery bandwagon-jumping that 1990s/2000s America had, but who knows, maybe it was exactly the same. Anyway, at least baristas were very pleasant about us not knowing what anything was. Nelson finally figured out what her drink was a couple of days before we left: soy or almond latte with an extra shot. I drank long blacks. Yes I said that.

5) Vietnamese food. This was the only immigrant cuisine we successfully interacted with. Marrickville had more Vietnamese restaurants than almost any other kind of business. We had plans to go to Hello Auntie, but like so many other promising targets on this trip (Bloodwood, Hartsyard, Love Tilly Devine, Dehli O Dehli, Pete's Music Exchange), they were closed for "the holidays". At least we had a banh xeo and an interesting curry in Kiama, and I had a super banh mi from Marrickville Pork roll.

6) Corn. It kept showing up in surprising places. Especially baby corn. OK not that surprising I guess. Like we never saw it driving a car or delivering a TED talk. It was always on a plate in a dining setting.

Anyway. We went to Yellow because they have a fancy-ass all-vegetarian menu. Fancy-ass meaning expennnnnsive. The water was expensive, that kind of expensive. If I'm moaning a bit, it's not about the expense itself. People should get paid. And I guess baby vegetables are more expensive than their parents. I'm just saying you know how this kind of thing affects expectations. Like if you charge me 6 bucks for water then damn, your baby vegetable game and miso crumbles better be on point.

Everything we had was at least "good", cooked with care and designed with craft, it just wasn't very comforting or homey or I guess welcoming in any way. Like I'm not sure this is helping sell a plant-based diet, this kind of semi-ascetic, clinical cooking. I know, what's the other end of the spectrum, every hippie vegetarian cafe ever since the 60s with overcooked and underseasoned everything. I guess I'm saying "close but", one fraction more warmth or lusciousness or decadence wouldn't have hurt.

But back to corn. The best thing I ate that night was "baby fennel + chickpea miso + buckwheat streusel", very close to delicious. I'm pretty sure it was in fact. And the most interesting thing was "baby corn in the husk + miso milk crumb", because you ate the whole charred husk and everything (below, and below that the baby fennel), which felt weird but tasted pretty good.

7) Simplicity. In pretty stark contrast to Yellow, this describes everything we ate at Stanbuli and Continental. Two places run/owned by the same people that were so good in every way they made you want to have a restaurant too, because this is the way it should be done and they made it seem totally possible. The food was either simple and perfectly executed or slightly less simple and also perfectly executed. And just done by somebody who loved to eat. The service was awesome, super-attentive yet extremely casual, really trying not to be part of your night. And the look and feel of both places was almost painfully ggggghghhhhhhh I hate to say it, but it was.....cool, OK? But you didn't mind at all because everything was done so well. I'm gushing, I know, sorry. It was kind of inspirational though. Even the fonts and graphic design were ok, YOU FEEL ME?

At Continental, two outstanding things, maybe the most outstanding things I ate on this trip. 1) "fennel, charred green beans, peanut pesto & chilli", and 2) "risotto with zucchini, roasted tomato & béarnaise sauce." The fennel was mandolined and dressed with great olive oil, lemon juice and chili flakes as far as I could tell. No idea what was in the peanut pesto. And the risotto. Boom. Half because it didn't taste anything like a risotto, really, it was just a warm and gooey tongue-hug of goodness.

Stanbuli was totally different, but just as good. There was a line outside the door at 5:50pm for their 6:00 opening. Somehow we got a seat, just like the night before at Continental. Here's the outside of Stanbulli, which someone just fell in lllllllove with:

And here's what we had, according to the menu:

Ekmek
Village style Bread, Humus and Cypriot style marinated Olives

Pancar Salata
Roasted Beetroots in Vinegar, Garlic, Mint and Coriander

Karnibahar Kizartma
Fried Cauliflower, Tahini Sauce, Yoghurt and Chilli-Herb dressing

None of it sounds amazing on paper, but it was how you say "in the mouth": you could tell they cooked every bit of it from scratch. Someone roasted the beets, they didn't have that "everybeet" thing that all the pre-roasted grocery store ones have. Someone skinned the chickpeas. Someone baked that super duper bread.

And someone made the goddamned chocolate baklava. With cinnamon ice cream. Ohhhhhh shhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. Someone at my table "orgasmed*" like four times during this.

8) Cocktails. Earl's. Kittyhawk. Corridor. Mary's. Ms. G's.

9) Service. What a pleasant surprise this was. I think from our very first meal we were raising eyebrows and being all "what's this, then" about how fucking professional everyone was. As if they'd been trained and were taking their job seriously. With the exception of anywhere near a beach in or around Sydney. That was kind of like 50% as good. But in general, great, and, they weren't doing it for tips, so no over-friendly desperation weirdness.

* not a valid sexual verb

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australia, day 13: loose ends.

After the second Chatham show, we had one complete truly free day to chill and cross off things we’d yet to cross off. We would fly back late the next evening, but had to be at the airport by dinnertime or so to return the car and begin our descent into abysmal depression. I joke of course. Anyway: above and below, Marrickville Market, 2 minutes away from the bnb. The only fucking thing two minutes away from the bnb, fucking Marrickville etc etc etc.

I digress. Corn fritters and assorted dals and chutneys, a plate called The Vegan, from Fritter House, all tasty and reasonably priced (EDITOR'S NOTE: technically, according to their FB page, that plate contains "A perfect balance of complex carbohydrates and good fats, with a great taste. Fritter House salad, bbq sweet potato, chickpea curry, spinach dal, tomato kasundi, mango & mint vegan aioli, a tamarind and miso glaze and (finally) toasted coconut flakes.") We were a bit jealous of their cooking setup, three massive griddles and six people, totally making a food stand look easy.

Did we go pick up a rental car here? If so it was pretty painless. Then, some plane-watching. We'd been plane-watching all week, because I've never been anywhere where so many giant planes passed so freakishly closely overhead, constantly. During our breaks where I was rehearsing at the studio, while it was storming the planes were flying so low I swear you could see faces in windows. Screaming. Silently.

Nelson, as you may or may not know, loves plane-watching. That may be an understatement. Like, her YouTube home page consists of three things: Stephen Colbert, sourdough tips, and planes landing. Or crashing. So we took a casual trip back to the studio to see just how low these planes  were, and that made us think welllll they've got to be even lower somewhere else, I mean they're landing, right? So I downloaded some kind of planewatching app that told you what was coming and when and where, which led us to the Ikea parking lot and then to Botany Bay, where it was so goddamn windy we wondered what an actual ocean would look like today (vs. you know, a bay), so we kind of randomly picked the nearest beach and drove to Maroubra, which damn was yet another piece of totally dumb luck on this trip.

It was gorgeously scary. We met a swimmer coming out of the water and for some reason talked to him, though I don't remember what was said, something about "You're fucking crazy" I imagine. Then we hung out for an hour or so and watched the waves try to destroy everything. Then we went back to Newtown and ate at Bloodwood, after a week of patiently waiting for them to reopen. Expectations continue to be the proverbial bitch: the general consensus was that it was "just ok" compared to the things we'd really loved from the week. A pleasant dinner, but just a bit too home-cooking for the prices. Although there was a really good potato and radish dish I'd like to steal. Then we drove to Parramatta to see a colony of 15,000 way-too-big fruitbats.

inspirrring?

In an effort to increase my dopamine levels, I'm looking at burger porn. Well that's not the whole story, I plan to be eating more protein and yeah just wandered off into the dangerous part of the internet where they have pictures of protein between two pieces of bread.

Well OK, it's just that after so much goddamn experimenting with trying to make a truly delicious veggie burger that felt decadent, I look at this list and I see one thing that compels me to make a note. Well two things. OK three: 1) cheese, 2) sauce, 3) onions.

Here's the list, good luck. And remind me to steal some ideas from Block 16. And Mott Street. After looking at this i just grabbed whatever and made a curry-rubbed steak burger with hoisin-aoili, pickled jalapeno, galangal creamed spinach.....just go mess with your forgotten Asian condiments.

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sabih + amba.

VDuck has a bit of a tradition of loving multi-component street-foodie kinds of things, kind of almost more than anything else when they're really good. Chipotle corn cakes. Fish tacos. Bao. Bhel puri. Maoz Falafel.

I think the above is about ready to join those storied ranks. Indeed, it's essentially a Maoz Falafel salad box without the messy hassle of making falafel. Or a sabih without the bread and eggplant. Anyway the main delivery vehicle here is a cheela made with a handful each of chopped and sauteed spinach and iceberg lettuce, yes iceberg, I think this helps keep it moist and a little crunchy. And then there's only cumin and curry powder as the spices, basically a big falafel pancake.

The other components are zhoug; tahina and/or hummus (storebought); a tomato cucumber onion salad that's basically Momofuku's cucumber pickle plus tomatoes and a red onion; a drizzle of pomegranate molasses, a small pile of pecans, why this works so well I have no idea, you could probably combine the pecans and pomegranate molasses into an interesting spicy sticky nut thing come to think of it; and finally amba, an Israeli mango ketchup that kind of almost stole the show. There should also be fried eggplant in here but I was kind of cooked out when it came right down to it.

Anyway, it's unsurprising I guess that all of this works together so well, but with the addition of amba and its combination with zhoug and hummus it kind of becomes something I'd serve to "guests". In Israel they add a hard-boiled egg, which sounds fucking great. You could probably add a drizzle of yogurt and/or sriracha and that would also be great. Fuck, just keep drizzling things until there's nothing left to drizzle. Drizzle.

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amba. 

250g frozen mango pieces
2 or 3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
juice of a lemon
2 tbsp honey or agave syrup
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp toasted cumin seed
salt to taste
1/2 cup to 1 cup water

Mmm, yeah, just blitz everything except the water in a food processor, adding enough of the water to make it blitzable, and then cook it for 10-15 minutes on the stove, adding the rest of the water to get to a ketchup-like consistency. Adjust to get to ketchup-like levels of salt and sweetness and sourness. Use liberally.

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ghost town to tarifa.

Zahara de los Atunes was no more populated the next morning. The same dudes who yesterday had been outside hammering and sawing and sanding and otherwise preparing hotels and restaurants for being open for the season were still hammering and sawing and etc. The same one hotel that had been open for beer and potato salad before dinner yesterday was also apparently open for coffee and cigarettes this morning. I made an executive decision and decided executively that we would forego that shit and instead I walked to the Dia for a little bread and butter and blueberry jam.

Which was kind of like breakfast but on the way out of town we decided that coffee really would be a good idea after all and stopped back at the place we'd had dinner at last night, which wasn't open but they let us in and made us coffee anyway. This is how you run a restaurant btw.

Then a brief look at the beach, after which the idea was to drive to a mall near Estepona on the way to the airport in Málaga, Our flight wasn't til 9pm, Nelson desperately needed clo-thes, and I myself desperately needed a new pair of jeans that didn't look retarded (which, amazingly, I found, and bought), but around Tarifa we started getting dangerously hungry so it seemed wise to stop and do something about it. Plus it seemed like we might find something vegetarian since Tarifa is known as one of the windsurfing capitals of the world, and as we all know, surfers love vegetables (?).

That was the thinking anyway, and it proved to be totally correct. Not only that, but Tarifa was totally charming and exotic, a bit like a safe-feeling Tangier. Well, being in Tarifa put Tangier on our minds anyway, since that's where we took the boat to Tangier from last year, but the two were somehow very similar in layout and feel. Very difficult to have any idea where you were going, but here you didn't feel like being lost was a total liability. Anyway, very cute and we were all "why have we not considered coming here before."

TripAdvisor steered us toward Chilimosa, a name which sounds like a crappy suburban Mexican place in Wisconsin, but turned out to be the right kind of hippie vegetarian joint, with really solid falafel and a curry that reminded me of my beloved Himalaya in Atlanta. Plus the right kind of no Wifi, a sign saying "no we don't have Wifi, please talk to to each other."

Then back in the car, to the mall, we split up to do shopping, I knocked mine out in like 15 minujos and then stopped at Beher for one last chorizo sandwich and a cup of coffee. Then the airport. Then a very turbulent flight and the bumpiest landing I've had in years (people screaming "I'm going to die", etc). Then a cab ride. Then a chat with Johnny D. Then a brief sleep. Then a long train ride. Then attempted recovery and reintegration.