BITTER FAREWELL

‘Bitter’ is not a flavour many of us favour. Or think we do. When you get down to it, bitterness is essential in many dishes and often our favourite foods – think dark, dark chocolate, tonic water, marmalade, beer, some olive oils. Get my drift? The stomach welcomes it too. Bitters and herbal tonics such as Swedish bitters are said to help the digestion, getting everything get back to normal after a meal.

But a bitter dessert?

Come with me to a restaurant tucked away down a side street in East Sydney.

La Mint has been here four years, owner Leanne Lai told me. Sydney has a large Vietnamese population, but mostly situated in other suburbs to the south and west. Leanne and her husband wanted to reflect Vietnam’s French history – and little wonder when at least that colonisation brought fresh yeast breads and sauces and a style of cooking which worked well with fresh herbal local dishes.

In the dead-end of Riley Street they have created a little piece of Hanoi with candles, rattan backed chairs and elegant banquettes. On one wall a disconcerting gaze of a golden Buddha follows you wherever you go and we watched, amused, as diners walked back and forth in front of it to test it out.

The crowd here was not the pho-slurping youngsters, the students you might find in Bankstown. These diners were Anglo, affluent, and executive. They were picking the golden pavé de pork, pork belly with chilli sauce, and enjoying it’s melting tenderness as much as we were, I am sure. We passed on the escargot, though, and went for the more trad ‘shaking beef’.

Relax, vegetarians! The name refers to the cooking technique of tossing the eye fillet rapidly in a pan – not its mental state at execution. Despite not being marinated it was remarkably tender too, and served with an addictive lemon and green pepper sauce. But enough of our meal – read the menus on the website www.lamint.com.au

I am here to tell you about the dessert.

Bitter melon looks like a squash or a marrow or even a light-skinned cucumber with a particularly bad skin condition. Its wrinkled, pitted, warty exterior gives little hint of its flavour or what is inside.

In Vietnam, raw bitter melon slices are often eaten with dried meat floss. But that’s another story. The melon may be stuffed with ground pork and used to make bitter melon soup. Or it can simple be stewed. That dish is usually cooked for the local Tết holiday because of its name – a reminder of the bitterly desperate conditions experienced by Vietnamese people in the past.

And so we order La Mint Pudding – as the name suggests the restaurant’s signature dessert, and cast on the menu as ‘exotic bitter melon jelly pudding and coconut milk’. Chef-owner George Lai, Leanne’s husband devised this dish using the juice of the bitter melon which turns the jelly a rich bottle green. It is mixed with cooked sago, set into a mould, and then at serving time drizzled with coconut milk.

It looks luscious, with the shine and colour of a satin evening dress. My tongue hunts for bitterness. There is just a little, a subtle tickle at the back of my tongue as each spoonful slips down. Yet it has not been laced with sugar either to mask the flavour. It is refreshing, elegant and sensuous. Most importantly it tastes nothing like the bitter melon looks.

And I imagine it has done wonders for my digestion.

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La Mint Restaurant & Bar, 62-64 Riley Street, East Sydney, 02 9331 1818, (www.lamint.com.au) has a cooking class on the last Sunday of each month. Maybe, they will teach you how to make this dessert!

ONION SOUP IN THE MARRIAGE BED

It is generally agreed that the French have long held monopoly in the romance department. With Cupid in their corner it seems, while they somehow understand exactly how to maximise the moment of seduction, they still also take sensual delight in many everyday situations. Throw in a celebration and they are never happier.

So picture this. The wedding is over. You have finally shaken off the last of the friends and relations, kissed your family goodbye (or so you thought) and, with a sigh of relief, you stagger upstairs to the honeymoon suite. Just moments later, as you are about to relax, there is a gentle tap at the door, and from the other side, muffled chuckles, excited noises and an unmistakable odour. That smell! Is that, can that actually be – onions?

On investigation, you beaming well-wishers proudly presenting you with two bowls of onion soup.

"Eat it all," they tell you, then warn, "We will be back!"

And they are – quite soon, to make sure those bowls are good and empty, signifying that you have been properly, finally, launched safely onto the turbulent sea of matrimony.

While urbane French couples will possibly never be faced with this post-nuptial activity, that would have been the scenario if you had married in parts of rural France some time ago. No one knows the reasons behind the custom, but people still living today remember their mothers and grandmothers recounting tales of those bowls of steaming onion soup, their own strange wedding night fare.

There is certainly no doubt that onions are basic to French cuisine. Even the language supports this. 'Occupe-toi de tes oignons' you will be told swiftly – literally, watch your own onions – if a French person thinks you need to mind your own business. Make a scene, and they say you have created 'un spectacle des petits oignons', but take extra care when you do something and they will praise you for making it 'aux petits oignons.' And those same family members who toasted the bride and groom with soup at midnight, when lined up to kiss them after the ceremony in a queue, would be described in French as 'en rang d'oignon'.

It is hard to know how that onion soup custom came about. Onions, as indeed all members of the lily family, asparagus included, have long been dubbed aphrodisiacs, so perhaps that may be the link. Certainly onion soup has also long been considered a great restorative – although surely yiu would think that should better qualify it for a place on the morning-after menu, rather than the night before!

Tears and weddings traditionally go together, and onions and tears have a natural affinity too. Although they have been cultivated for 6000 years, still no one has yet developed a varietu which doesn't make us cry. It is believed that when the slaves assigned to building the pyramids were not consuming garlic, they ate onions, a tribute to that vegetable's strengthening properties.

Hippocrates thought onions were good for the sight, but while love is blind, could this be taking the supposed romantic powers of onions just a bit too far? One 16th-century food writer assured his readers that onions promote sleep. Fine advice, but not necessarily on the wedding-night and, when you think about it, how romantic is onion-breath, anyway? Perhaps that is why both the bride and groom were asked to drain the bowls.

Folk-sayings are thick with claims for onions. They make peasants work harder, cure bee stings, frighten away snakes, allow roses to smell sweeter if planted between the bushes, clean out the bowels and reduce blood pressure. If a man sleeps with an onion under his pillow, people were once told, he will dream of his future wife.

Modern health experts now accept that onions contain a natural antibiotic, but still steer clear of the old claim that onion juice squeezed on a bald head will cause hair to regrow. Even more archaically it was once suggested that onions increase 'lust and lecherye'.

While it is easy to sneer at simple wisdom, perhaps the French knew something we don't, for onion soup is a great dish at any time of the day or night. Maybe the custom is worth reviving. With a bit of luck it might just arouse the passions, restore your strength, or, at its worst, merely lull you both into a sound night's sleep.

In case you want to try it for yourself, here is a simple recipe.

FRENCH ONION SOUP FOR TWO

30g butter

1 large onion, thinly sliced

l clove garlic, crushed

l teaspoon flour

pinch sugar

1 1/4 cups beef stock

1 cup water

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 tablespoon dry sherry or red wine

Heat the butter in a large heavy pan and add onions and garlic. Saute gently, stirring constantly until the onions are golden. Add flour and stir well, then add sugar, stock and water. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add sherry or wine, and simmer a few more minutes. Meanwhile cut 4 thin slices of french bread and sprinkle with grated cheese. Ladle the soup into two heatproof bowls and top each with 2 slices of bread and cheese. Place under a preheated grill and cook until cheese is melted.

CHEESEY PEASY

I’ll get the grumble out of the way first.

One night this year I visited Formaggi Ocello for the first time. I am ashamed to admit this. I should have been there much earlier as this amazing cheese providore in the inner east of Sydney has been open now for many months and is an absolute must for cheese-lovers. Cheese freaks. Food aficionados. Anyone with a tastebud or two.

It has perhaps the longest display cabinet of cheeses in this city, and the shop’s shelves and refrigerators are packed with anything to partner your formaggi that you could ever want or think of – we’re talking syrupy balsamico, relishes and olives and Italian-style conserves, bottled figs – the works.

All this, and a huge and tempting cheese room. And herein lies the grouch.

Just at the entrance big glass windows allowed us to gaze in on a large room stacked with giant wheels of Grana Padano, balls of ash covered cheeses and wedges of other things. I say ‘other things’ because the sign on the door firmly said: ‘Staff Only’, so we could explore no further. There was to be none of that rapturous gasping-in of cheese fumes as the door opens; no involuntary cries of ‘I want to live in here!’ (that’s me); no judicious fingertip pressure on a rind here and there; no voyeuristic reading of labels and trying out the pronunciation; no……. well, no interaction with the stars of the show.

No lingering, to-be-relived-later, whiff of washed rind clinging to our clothes or hair, either.

I was disappointed, although I could understand the reason. Hot and unhygienic customers could disturb the room’s carefully maintained balance. These cheeses, their maturation and their prime condition is what the shop is about, after all, and absolute cleanliness is required where cheese-handling is concerned.

A few times in the past couple of years I have caught up with the shop’s owner, Carmelo Ocello, at various farmers’ markets around town where he and his heady products have become ubiquitous. One time I bought an amazing cow’s milk cheese, testun al Barolo, that is matured on the residue of nebbiolo grapes which add quite another dimension to the flavour. Another time he persuaded me to buy a ‘real’ stracchino and I knew then he meant that this soft silky one had been made far in the north of in Italy. Each time, my purchases were carefully wrapped in heavy white paper, just like the true gifts they are.

The thing I like most is that Ocello not only imports the cheeses, he brings their stories along for the trip as well. He knows those makers by name. He has visited their dairies – some of them very small – in distant corners of Europe. But before you huff and say, why not Australian cheeses too, I have to say he does also stock the best from this country as well, including Victoria’s multi-award-winning Holy Goat and a handful of others.

We’d all end up with mental indigestion if I even attempted to list the cheeses in this place. Ocello keeps about 200-250 on show at any one time, but in the spirit of this blog – highlighting the unexpected – here’s just one for starters.

Formaggi Ocello is perhaps the only place where you can order a ‘cheese wedding cake’! Yup! Wheels of premium cheese stacked and lightly decorated with fruit and flowers. I’ve seen a brochure about it. So it must be true.

You know, I reckon many wedding guests might be happier with a wedge of this to take home than fruitcake.

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Formaggi Ocello, Shop 16, 425 Bourke St, Surry Hills (St Margaret’s), NSW. Parking available under the building – one hour free. Phone 02 9357 7878, www.ocello.com.au

Open weekdays 9am to 8pm, Saturday 9am to 6pm, Sunday 10am to 6pm. Order an alcoholic drink during ‘Aperitivo’ at the shop every weekday from 5pm to 8pm and enjoy the Milanese-style custom of receiving a complimentary appetiser.

Also market stalls at: EQ Markets, Moore Park, Wednesday and Saturday; SMH Good Living Market, Pyrmont, 1st Saturday of the month; Northside Produce Markets, North Sydney, 3rd Saturday of the month.

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This is the first of what will be a growing collection of ‘Sydney Food Finds’.

This city, to me means much more than the CBD and inner suburbs. It’s the whole urban sprawl, and it never ceases to amaze me with its variety and scope of food places – whether it is producing the stuff which others use, or preparing and serving it skilfully.

OK, Melburnians, I hear you! Your city rocks too, and could certainly quite often show Sydney a thing or two, but this is my town and I love it……and its food and dining.

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ACHACHA – A FRUIT YOU COULD DANCE TO

I just love new foods. The thrill of finding something I have never tasted before. Especially one I have never even heard about!

It was a night of firsts, actually, this week – first taste of an achacha (pronounced ah cha-cha, as in the dance), and also in visiting Baroque Bistro & Patisserie. The latter, newly-opened upmarket premises on the pointy-end corner of George Street and Hickson Road in The Rocks, was the venue for the launch of achacha fruit in Sydney.

So, of course, we were greeted on arrival with a sparkling achacha cocktail, and invited to sample the yellow egg-shaped fruit from baskets around the room. They look like large loquats, but Bruce Hill, a member of the four-member group responsible for growing them in far North Queensland, shakes his head when I ask him if this is right.

After he teaches us the trick to opening them – fingernail to pierce the skin at the midline then a twist to release the firm, soft skin – we gingerly taste the tangy, pearly white flesh surrounding one or two large seeds.

A relative of mangosteen, maybe, I venture? But no, wrong again.

It seems these are stand-alone fruits, from the heart of the rainforest in the lowlands of Bolivia where they grow wild and are called achchairú. Never grown in Australia until Helen and Bruce Hill’s group got permission from our vigilant quarantine services to plant them, this is perhaps the most exciting new fruit in this country in decades. In fact it is the world’s first commercial achacha (Garcinia Humilis) plantation. The Achacha Fruit Group plantation overseen by plantation manager and grower Ross Oliveri, has 17,500 trees, which means NQ now has more achacha trees than anywhere else in the world.

Bruce Hill

While most of us in the room were content enough mastering the pierce-twist-open technique, and devouring the fruit, it seems there is more to this fruit than just its use as a snack food.

The skins can be used to make a refreshing drink which has been called an natural appetite suppressant (yes - now they are talking!) and the low-sugar flesh is high in Vitamin C, potassium, folate and riboflavin. Achacha works well in cocktails, as we’d already discovered, and also in sorbet, ice cream and jellies, even in salads.

This unusual fruit grows on an equally strange-looking tree. The shaggy foliage conceals the flowers, and bees love them. When hives were placed in the plantation this year, the result was a rosy honey said to be full of medicinal virtues! In Bolivia it achacha honey is an expensive delicacy.

Achacha is the traditional New Year fruit of Bolivia. Here the harvest season is expected to run from November until the end of March. Right now you should find it in distinctive and colourful paper carry bags in Harris Farm stores, Thomas Dux the Grocer, Norton Street Grocers and other fine fruit and vegetable purveyors.

So what do I say to these people, the Hills, who have spent the past seven years of their lives and untold $$$$s when I congratulate them on this landmark event?

Sure, I tell them it is an amazing achievement, but – greedy and hard-hearted soul that I am – I can’t help but ask them can they please grow me makesas as well.

Don’t know these, the world’s best passionfruit – Bali’s answer to Panama? Hmm, let’s wait for more on that another day – or maybe until Bruce and Helen begin to grow them as well.

Want to know more about achacha? www.achacha.com.au

STOP PRESS: Australia's devastating 2011 cyclone Yasi fortunately spared this years achacha crop. Read more.

Or why not share what is your favourite fruit – and why?

HAVE A HEART

The other night I attended a media evening to celebrate the discovery of an amazing ‘mummy’, Senora de Cao (the lady of Cao), who has been uncovered in coastal Peru complete with her favourite keepsakes and ornate carved jewellery. Very impressive.

I have to admit I was a bit hazy about Peru. I knew a few things, most of them sticking in my mind from primary school – you know, Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest lake, for example, and that the local people travel on it in reed boats. I’ve always wanted to see that.

But my knowledge base falls into a complete abyss when it comes to Peruvian food. I guess I imagined it was like Argentina’s cuisine – meat, meat and more meat – which is silly as it is across the continent, and far north with a totally different climate and terrain.

One thing I learned is that Peru has three thousand varieties of potatoes. Not really surprising as, after all, these were one of the New World finds made by Columbus – but three thousand types? Later I discovered there are 200 varieties around Lake Titicaca alone.

After the presentation we were taken to the hotel’s rooftop terrace overlooking a part of Sydney where some of the city’s older buildings make a gracious foreground for the glittering highrise of the CBD.

A small group of Peruvian dancers in hot pink, black and lime green, blue and yellow national dress entertained us. If it was a courtship dance, as it seemed to be, then the guys were certainly being persuasive, and the girls provocative. The fast-tempo panflute music was evocative of the era in the seventies when it became a hit here too.

Finally – by now we were starving – when the canapés arrived, prepared by the Mercure Hotel’s chefs but to Peruvian recipes, of course, we fell on them. Some were recognisable enough. There were tiny empanada-type pastries, a chicken ‘curry’ sitting on a deadly-hot Tabasco base, but one I puzzled over.

On one platter, bamboo skewers held small cubes of meat, and of course potatoes. However it was the meat that had me guessing. It was dark brown and tasted decidedly beefy but the texture didn’t show muscle fibres. It was tender, but dense, and raised a long-lost taste memory that I just couldn’t immediately unearth. It wasn’t liver…….

“Chicken,” said one friend who had gobbled it so fast he plainly hadn’t looked.

“Pork,” said another, adding, “it looks like pork.”

It didn’t at all, so I waylaid the next server and asked him.

“Beef heart,” he said confidently, and then it all made sense. The density of the texture, that subtle long-ago flavour.

My mother used to stuff and bake heart – maybe it was a sheep’s heart, I was too young to take much interest – but it was delicious, and I loved it. Although you may shudder.

A little exploring on the internet taught me that I had eaten anticuchos, a popular snack in Peru. They are simply marinated and grilled cubes of beef heart served on skewers and often sold by street vendors or in Creole restaurants.

The downside is that, like lots of offal, heart is not actually so good for our own hearts because it is quite high in cholesterol. But you’d have to agree that it is still truly heart-y eating.

(Further reading: Everything but the Squeal, Wakefield Press, 2009, is a fabulous book which I enjoyed immensely.

It concerns John Barlow’s quest to eat every part of the pig as it is used in various local dishes throughout the pig-raising, pork-loving region of Galicia in Spain’s north-west corner. It is beautifully written account of his ‘year of pigging out’ – sometimes nausea-inducing, especially for his wife who did not participate and banned some recipes being tested in her kitchen. She is a vegetarian!)

So tell me, please, dear food-lovers and fellow eating adventurers…..what is the most unusual thing you have ever eaten?

Makan at the Airport

I am hankering for Malaysia. The sights, the sounds, the smells – and OK, the food. Yes, yes, let’s be honest here, especially the food.

Trouble is, I don’t have time to go – not even to make a reservation – but I did have an evening to spend at The Grove Restaurant at the Stamford Plaza Airport Hotel the other night, because the great thing was – Malaysia (and its food) was coming to me!

Makan, is the Malaysian word for eating, and I joined a few other food bloggers and writers at a long table and for a couple of hours we did just that – enjoy makan.

The Stamford’s Malaysian-born Chef Jacky Poon and Chef Daniel, from Singapore, are well-qualified to lead us through the spicy workings of a true Malaysian meal. They show us rojak, and gado gado vegetables with a wondrous peanut sauce, curried hardboiled eggs, chicken curry, stuffed squid, and of course a colourful range of desserts – mango pudding, creamy fruit sago, black rice, balanced by fresh fruit – and then they turn us loose.

Of course the other buffet offerings are not off-limits either and some of the group return to the table with plates heaped high with Balmain bugs and prawns, then later lush slices of tortes and cakes.

I’m happy enough though with mee goreng noodles and tender grilled fish fillets served on squares of banana leaf. I fall for an interesting vegetable called sweet turnip – and it tastes like a cross between radish and apple, crisp, ever so slightly peppery – that is part of the collection of rojak vegetables that we drizzle with a dark caramel-ly sauce.

Chef Poon spells the name of my new veggie-love for me but I get it wrong, and back home I don’t rest until I find it in my good friend and Asian expert, Carol Selvarajah’s definitive book The Essential Guide to Buying and Using Authentic Asian Ingredients. There she tells us my ‘find’ is a yam bean, bangkwang. It comes from South America where they call it jicama (hick-a-mah). It is the nashi pear of vegetables.

This Malaysian Food and Cultural Feast will be on until November 1st. The Stamford Plaza Airport Hotel is on the corner of O’Riordan and Robey Streets in Mascot, near Sydney Airport. And as if the food is not enough incentive, diners will also have a chance to win a holiday for two people to Malaysia.

Now that is makan sense!

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Here is Stamford Hotel’s Chef Poon’s recipe for: GRILLED FISH IN BANANA LEAVES
Serving for 6-8 person
Ingredients
White Fish Fillet			Portion cut in 50 grams slices
Banana Leaves			Square shapes to cover
Sambal Paste			See recipe below
salt and pepper to taste 6 wedges of lemon
Sambal Paste:
Sliced Onion			200 grams
Peeled garlic			80grams
Fresh Turmeric			10 grams
Galangal, puree			100 grams
Hot chilli, puree			40 grams
Lemon grass, puree			40 grams
Lemongrass ,whole but bashed			40 grams
Shrimp block(Belacan)			40 grams
Lime leaves			3 pcs
Vegetables Oil			200ml
To cook the sambal paste
1) Place all ingredients into blender and process till smooth paste
2) Add in oil in pan and fry the toasted the shrimp block and add in onion and whole lemongrass
3) Added puree ingredients to the pan and bring to boil
4) Reduce to a gentle simmer and allow to cook for around one hour ensuring the sauce does not stick, or burn, and is periodically stirred
until most of the liquid has reduced and become jam like in consistency.
Place the fish fillet seasoned with salt and pepper on a piece of banana leaf on a hot pan, top with the sambal paste and cover it with another piece of banana leaf.
Cook it for half a minute and then turn the fillet over. When serving, squeeze some lemon juice on top of the fish.

©Chef Jacky Poon, 2009 (used with permission)