food

Bánh hỏi chả giò seafood spring roll with steamed rice noodle $9.00 How can you not love a dish involving spring rolls? I'm a sucker for bánh hỏi chả giò at Vietnamese restaurants, the perfect excuse to crunch into spring rolls under the guise of eating a salad. We've stopped in at Pho Pasteur on George Street several times lately, always filled with a gaggle of office workers, uni students,

Rockdale is worth exploring on foot, a fascinating blend of cultures that sprawls across both sides of the Princes Highway. You'll find Halal butchers next to Asian grocery stores, and restaurants that specialise in Chinese, Thai, Bangladeshi, Greek and Himalayan cuisine. There's a giant used furniture shop on the corner, a supermarket selling Pakistani groceries in bulk, and Lebanese bakeries

"Noone ever died from good food," says Mark Best, as he adds another generous handful of salt to a pot of boiling water. The crowd laughs with relief. I'm at the Sydney Seafood School and tonight's class is being led by Mark, chef and owner of three-hatted restaurant Marque. The Sydney Seafood School underwent a major facelift in 2009, led by hospitality design specialist Michael McCann. The

Greenhouse by Joost is the latest pop-up restaurant to hit Sydney, an eco-friendly vision that doubles as a unique interactive art installation. The converted shipping container looks right at home in Campbell Cove, its facade painted with butterflies and children. The entrance on the side is covered with miniature strawberry pots. Melbourned-based Dutch artist Joost Bakker had always

My Estonian Nami-Nami site is currently hosting a Chinese food Cook-Off , and this crispy chicken in sweet and sour sauce has proved immensely popular. I won't give you a recipe here, but send you to my dear friend, the very passionate Johanna, who blogged about Crispy chicken balls with home-made sweet & sour sauce exactly three years ago. The only changes I made to Johanna's recipe was to use 2 large chicken breasts (about 500 g) instead of four to feed four people, and I doubled the amount of sauce. Excellent - K. had a whopping three helpings and our daughter loved the sauce-covered crispy chicken pieces a lot as well. Thank you, dear Johanna! Who knows, perhaps we can cook some Chinese food in your Singapore kitchen together one day ;) Eestikeelne retsept: Krõbe kana magushapus kastmes

The best part about a weekend lunch is being able to sleep-in, skip breakfast and scoot to your fabulous host, arriving ravenous and ready for maximum feasting. I say this because today's was a Stomachs Eleven meet-up, a group of food-loving friends who each take turns to host a dinner or lunch. Today we headed to the home of Silvrlily and Super Mario. Slicing the vegetable terrine Pig

It's time for another buckwheat recipe here on Nami-Nami. The inspiration for this recipe is from an Estonian author Aive Luigela (we share the publisher :)), but I've adapted it slightly. It's an excellent dish for those who are trying to shed some post-Christmas (or post-pregnancy) pounds - light in calories, yet surprisingly packed with flavour. Note that buckwheat is naturally gluten-free, so it's a suitable and tasty grain alternative to all those who need to avoid gluten. Buckwheat with Cabbage ( Kapsa-tatrahautis ) Serves 4 2 Tbsp oil or butter 150 g buckwheat groats 300 g white cabbage, shredded 750 ml (3 cups) boiling water 0.5-1 tsp salt 1 tsp caster sugar fresh lovage or dill, chopped First, you may need to toast the buckwheat. The buckwheat we usually use in Estonia is pre-roasted and dark brown, so this can be skip this stage. If you're using the "light" buckwheat groats, then roast them on a dry hot skillet for about 5-6 minutes, until it...

It's not always about lamb's tongue in Nami-Nami kitchen, you know. Most of the time I cook - and we eat - perfectly "normal" food. Here is one of my favourite weekday dishes. It's not exactly quick - that is to say, it won't be on your table within half an hour of walking in the door - but if you're at home anyway, just unable to stand in the kitchen watching keenly over your Sauce Bearnaise , then this is for you. It needs about 15 minutes of active involvement and then it simply cooks in your oven. Ideal for a mum like me :) I've made this both with hot smoked salmon and cold smoked salmon over the years. I slightly prefer the latter one, but it's lovely with both. Smoked salmon and potato gratin ( Kartulivorm suitsulõhega ) Serves 4 750 g potatoes 100 g smoked salmon, sliced handful of fresh dill, chopped 2 large eggs 200 ml fresh cream 100 ml milk freshly ground black pepper Wash the potatoes, peel and cut into thin slices or matchsticks (I u...

Satay String brightly coloured lanterns across a hidden laneway, add funky mirrored tables and plastic stools in colours of citrus and lime, and you have Sydney's newest food market, Malaysia Kitchen. For three days only, Sydneysiders will be able to enjoy a tasting plate of three or four Malaysian dishes for only $10, dining al fresco for a weekday lunch or dinner. Malaysia Kitchen is

Homemade Estonian rye bread, sliced lamb's tongue and horseradish, beetroot and cream cheese spread . There may have been a time when I was (at least occasionally) a kind of culinary trendsetter among Estonian foodbloggers, introducing exciting new flavours. Not any more - being stuck at home in a suburb without a car and two little kids means that I am the last one to visit newly opened cafés, I miss all the exciting restaurant review events and am the last one to hear about the best source for exciting ingredients. Take lamb's tongue . There were several local foodbloggers singing praise to this humble delicacy (first Piret , then Tuuli , followed by Zoozi ), and I spent days restlessly dreaming about those little tongues. Finally, on Saturday, I demanded a trip to a new (and currently the best) market in town and returned with a whole kilogram of lamb's tongue (it's _very_ cold here and our little son turned 1 month old only today, hence the reluctance to venture o...

 Salt and pepper duck tongue $20 So we all know about duck breast, legs and liver, but what about duck tongues? At Bau Truong, these usually discarded organs are dusted with seasoned flour, deep-fried and served up as the traditional Vietnamese dish, Luoi Vit Rang Muo, or salt and pepper duck tongue. The duck tongues aren't half as intimidating when they arrive - the magic of deep-frying tends

Welcome to this year's first Freebie Friday! We're giving away tickets to Taste of Sydney 2011 held again at Centennial Park. Taste of Sydney is one of twelve Taste Festivals hosted around the world, in cities that include London, Milan, Edinburgh, Dublin, Dubai, Cape Town and Amsterdam. This year's line-up of participating restaurants and chefs are: Etch and Charlie & Co - Justin North

Here's a delicious chickpea/grabanzo soup recipe adapted from this book by the lovely Irish chef, Rachel Allen . It's quick, flavoursome, vegan and gluten-free (unless you serve it with crispy bacon or some herb croutons) and easy to make. It's been a while since I made it - seeing one of the few Estonian male foodbloggers making this the other day (check out the video!) - brought it back to our table. Our daughter loved it, K. loved it, and I loved it - so it's definitely a keeper. Hope you enjoy it, too! I used canned chickpeas - dried ones are much harder to come by here in Estonia. If you prefer using dried chickpeas, then take 150 grams of pulses, soak them overnight in cold water and then boil in unsalted water for about half an hour. Moroccan chickpea and tomato soup ( Maroko kikerhernesupp ) Serves four 2 Tbsp olive oil 1 large onion, peeled and chopped 2 celery sticks, chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tsp cumin seeds, slightly crushed 400 g can...

The biggest problem with Cafe Giulia is deciding what to choose. The blackboard menu stretches across six columns of food and drink items, a bewildering bonanza of choices that renders newcomers helpless with indecision. Converted from a 100-year-old butcher shop, Cafe Giulia has been a long-running favourite with locals and uni students. Regular lunch-goers know to arrive early to avoid

You'll get two Japanese recipes in a row now - on Friday I blogged about tonkatsu  (breaded pork cutlets, Japanese style) today's blog post is dedicated to nasu dengaku or miso-glazed aubergine/eggplant. I first made this for the Japanese feast  at our place back in summer 2009 (pictured above), but I've made them on several occasions since (and it has become one of my favourite cousin Ingrid's favourite dishes ever). It's an easy and very flavoursome dish to make. All you need is some nice small aubergines (slim Japanese ones are best, but ordinary bulbous ones will do), some miso paste (I used hatcho and shiro miso pastes) and sesame seeds. I was lucky to use an additive-free dark hatcho miso that's typical to the Aichi Prefecture in Japan (thank you, Ryoko!!!): Here's the recipe, should you want to make this at home, using the non-Japanese eggplants: Nasu dengaku ( Eestikeelne retsept ) Serves four to six 1 large or 2 smaller eggplants/aubergines vegetab...

Peking Duck is my happy place. Part theatre, part luxury, eating a dish based purely on the crisp tiles of duck skin is like ordering a cake and having nothing but the icing for the first course - a deliriously decadent prospect. Peking duck (2 courses) $49.80 At Golden Moon, the ducks are wood-smoked in brick ovens, visible through the glass windows of the open kitchen. A waiter trundles a

Dinner on Wednesday - tonkatsu  aka fried pork cutlet with brown tonkatsu sauce and shredded cabbage. Tonkatsu is a popular Western-style dish in Japan, and it's basically thinly sliced pork that's been dredged in flour, dipped into egg, breaded in panko breadcrumbs and then fried until crispy and golden brown. You can read all about this particular dish either here or here . I'll be definitely making this again, as I loved the super-crispy and almost crunchy coating achieved by the use of panko breadcrumbs as opposed to ordinary breadcrumbs. Tonkatsu ( Tonkatsu ehk paneeritud sealiha Jaapani moodi ) Serves 4 ca 500 g pork fillet all-purpose flour salt and freshly ground black pepper 2-3 eggs panko breadcrumbs (I used shop-bought panko breadcrumbs*) For the tonkatsu sauce: ketchup soy sauce Worcestershire sauce freshly ground black pepper. Cut the pork filet into thin slices, about 5 mm thick. Take three bowls, filling one with flour (seasoned with salt and pepper), one wi...

Tehran, Granville WHAT IS IT? A suburban restaurant serving Iranian/Persian and Middle Eastern cuisine. WHAT’S IT LIKE? A row of colourful cushions on the front benches welcome homesick patrons or diners curious to try Persian cuisine. The menu is a double-sided A4 laminate with 18 dishes, each accompanied by a colour photograph. Zereshk Polo $10Saffron rice with dried wild berries and

There are 116 different dishes on the foldout menu at Silk Road - each dish illustrated with a helpful photo - but I only want one thing. The Chinese hamburger. "You really want the Chinese hamburger don't you," says Josh, as we work out which dishes to share. I do. And I'm not budging. Deciding on the rest of the dishes to order is no easy task, a kaleidoscope of dishes that cover the