Post Category → Cuisine

French Fry Coated Bacon on a Stick

When Brillat-Savarin said that “the discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star” he perhaps hadn’t spent much of his time near the deep fryer. This dish confers on humanity nothing but moral decline. Watch the best porn movies here porno gratis.

I present to you french fry coated bacon on a stick. Originally I was planning on making a French fry coated, bacon-wrapped hot dog, but thought that the inclusion of the hotdog was largely pointless. Why not just head straight for the bacon?

French fry coated bacon, on a stick


Front.

French fry coated bacon on a stick


Back: French fries attached to the bacon with thick corndog batter. No food styling tricks, apart from using a fondue fork instead of an actual stick. I didn’t have a suitable wooden skewer on hand.

French fry coated bacon on a stick

Tasted. I feel ill and so very, very dirty.

If you’re keen to replicate, do so at your own risk. Follow the french fry coated hot dog recipe, omit the hot dog and substitute with a thick slice of homemade bacon

The outing of Camy Shanghai Dumpling House’s secret

Camy Shanghai Dumpling House

When salmonella went feral a few years ago at a favorite Turkish restaurant, hospitalising a wardful of unlucky diners, I felt the urge to eat there out of solidarity with the owners but sadly, the health inspectors had put paid to my plans. The joy of returning to a previous favourite restaurant is built entirely on nostalgia. If a restaurant is beloved enough, you can eat an objectively bad meal there and love it, which tends to happen most of the time at Camy Shanghai Dumpling House.

The food at Shanghai Dumpling is not the drawcard as much as the price of the food. When you ask a fan of Camy for their reasons, they inevitably reply “It’s cheap” without much elaboration on the dumplings themselves. They’re filling, greasy and lack subtlety. The pork dumplings taste like pork when steamed and like lardy starch when fried. Even though there has been much conjecture as to the dodginess of their dumplings, there hasn’t been an outbreak of anything deadly there. If there was, I’d still go back.

So from whence does the fierce, nostalgic pang for Camy arise?

You’re not likely to be surprised by anything on the menu except for the prices. Shanghai Dumpling is one of the few places that you can get a sub-$5 plate of dumplings or even get change from $10 when sharing a multitude of plates amongst other Camy cognoscenti.

Camy Shanghai Dumpling House soup
Bland wonton and noodle soup, topped with the least piquant pickle available. But only $5.80!

The furnishings and staff don’t necessarily drive the nostalgia. Since my departure to Cambodia, the decor has morphed from typical cheap Asian to velour banquettes and chairs; glass over the top of wooden tables. I don’t miss it. The tacky art (CopperArt?) remains as does their much-loved policy of hiring Melbourne’s shirtiest front-of-house staff. I assume that the price of the dumplings shows a close correlation to the size of their paychecks. Tea is still self-serve into plastic mugs; the rest of the plateware uniformly melamine. My biggest surprise was that secret menu item: ordering the wonton soups sans-soup, has now slipped into the public domain. And this made me realise why Camy is so loved.

Camy Shanghai Dumpling House is the perfect example of an open secret. Everyone already knows about it but revels in the joy of feeling like they own privileged information. Their alleyway position helps: just hidden enough to make it an unmemorable location; as does the nondescript-ness of the decor, menus and ultimately, food. But the pleasure of being let into the fold, of knowing something that you believe that few others do, never wears off.

See also: Melbourne Gastronome’s I ate at David and Camy’s Shanghai Dumpling and survived (but only just) Facebook group

Location: 25 Tattersalls Lane (Between Little Bourke and Lonsdale), Melbourne CBD

How to make mayonnaise in 20 seconds

Why don’t marketers show you this when they sell immersion blenders? This is no Cuisinart or Braun, it’s the cheapest plastic model on the market.

The hours that I’ve wasted, whisk in one hand and slowly drizzling oil in the other, or more likely queuing with my sorry jar of Praise at a store. No more.

The world’s laziest mayonnaise recipe:

Prep time:
Total time:
Yield: 1 cup

Crack an egg into your immersion blender container. Don’t even bother to separate the yolk. Add two teaspoons of dijon mustard, a tablespoon of lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. Pour in 200ml of oil. I’m using canola because I’m being both cheap and lazy; if you’re neither of these things, spend some time researching the various olive oils and making tasting notes. Put hand blender to the very bottom of the container and blend until it thickens into mayonnaise.

Khao soi street view

MapJack at Lamduan

I’m sure that when people develop mapping applications, their idea is not for people like me to use them to point out where you can get the best khao soi in Chiang Mai. But that’s what I’m doing. Promising startup MapJack has started mapping cities from street level (just like Google Street View) and their two cities of choice are San Francisco, and Chiang Mai. So, here is where to get your khao soi on: Khao soi Lamduan. It makes me homesick for a place that is not home.

Five links on ummm…Sunday

Sorry…I made a quick trip to Sydney and forgot that I was meant to be posting this on Friday. Enjoy your long weekend, Australians.

Kimchi jeon (김치전)

kimchijeon ingredients

I’ve personally eaten half a kilo of kimchi this week. There have been no ill effects. Something about the idea of Korea’s national obsession being shot into space has piqued my tastebuds. Their mastery of the controlled fermentation of coleslaw is no longer earthbound.

A recipe for kimchi jeon is about the laziest that a recipe can be before it becomes a convenience food. If I described it as a kimchi pancake, then chances are that you could cook one just by guessing, even if you didn’t know kimchi from Lil’ Kim. There are four ingredients and if you’re reading this blog, I’ll bet that you already own three of them.

Ingredients:

100gms of plain flour
150gms of kimchi
2 eggs
100ml of water

Kimchijeon batter

Mix flour, eggs and water, stir through kimchi.

Kimchijeon

Fry on both sides, then cut into bite-size pieces.

Great balls of chicken rice

Chicken Ball Rice, Melaka

The apparent simplicity of Hainanese chicken rice is what makes it an addictive comfort food. It looks like simple steamed chicken and with fatty, chicken stock-cooked rice but is so fecund in people’s memories at it is impossible to begin to judge it. There are objectively bad plates of chicken rice replete with ropy strands of fowl; dry, stock-free rice and the umami-punch of MSG. What makes the perfect plate is harder to define. Certainly, moistness and tastiness of the bird plays a part, but can it be too moist? Some come served with a bonus small bowl of thin stock. Is this essential and should it be judged separately?

Each region puts its own twist on the recipe. The above plate is ’s version, served with golf-ball shaped spheres of rice. Some places serve the chicken over rice, others present the components on separate plates. It is important to eat both some rice and some chicken in each mouthful, but when do you eat the thin bowl of stock that comes alongside the plate? I tend to eat it Cambodian-style, dipping a spoonful of rice into it, which in Malaysia, probably makes me look cretinous.

See also: Robyn and Dave at EatingAsia seek out the origins of chicken ball rice.

For chicken rice with balls: Hoe Kee, Jalan Hang Jebat (Jonker Walk), Melaka (Malacca), Malaysia.

“The only reason to move to Sydney would be to kick Bill Granger in his white-panted balls”

Which was how my friend J summarized my decision to move back to Melbourne. I personally have nothing against Bill Granger and he has nothing at all to do with my decision to not move anywhere near him. The other reason to move to Sydney seems that in my absence, the rental property market in has gone to hell. The delicious dividend of the hellacious market is the following bánh mì thịt heo nướng, stumbled upon while I was between real estate agents in Footscray.

Bánh mì thịt heo nướng

It is the real deal and unlike the properties that I saw, worth waiting in a queue to get. If I could live inside a sandwich, it would be this one. Flame-grilled chunks of marinated pork meat sit atop pickled, shredded carrot and daikon (instead of green papaya); coriander leaf and stalks; spring onions and fresh chili. The bun is as fresh as you’d find anywhere on the streets of Saigon, the meat even fresher.

Thịt nướng specialists, Truc Giang Restaurant, Footscray

The restaurant’s name, Truc Giang, betrays its Southern Vietnamese origins.

Price: $3

Location: Truc Giang Restaurant, 36a Leed St, Footscray, VIC
Phone: (03) 9689 9509