Tag Archives: fish

Melbourne edition: Ezard

Posted in Chinese/Asian, Food, Modern Australian by

There is a reason why some restaurants are highly regarded than others; awarded hats while other are not. Ezard has easily become one of those fine dining restaurants that blew me away (also partly because I went in with zero expectations).

What can I say? The whole dining experience was fantastic:

Great service. From the initial point of contact through to the second we left the restaurant, the staff had been nothing but polite. They paid close attention to us without being intrusive but what made me feel very relaxed while dining was the staff’s sense of humour.

Great food. I would not normally go to a fine dining restaurant to eat Asian-inpsired food. But Ezard takes it to a whole new level which was great because the food was better than I imagined from reading the menu. It’s almost like east meets west but it was certainly geered towards east.

More importantly, both were enjoyed while on holidays.

Entrees

Seared canadian scallops, spiced pumpkin puree, cumin caramel, pomegranate, chorizo and crispy chinese broccoli

Ezard: scallop entree

Slow cooked bangalow pork belly, apple pudding, fennel, white peach and calvados jus

Ezard: pork belly

Mains

Crispy skin baby barramundi with caramelised eggplant, tomato and lime salad, yellow curry dressing

Ezard: Barramundi curry

Master stock fried pork hock, chilli caramel, spicy thai beanshoot salad and fragrant jasmine rice

Ezard: pork hock

Dessert

Tasting plate for 2

Salted caramel parfait, chocolate peanut butter crunch, pressed paw paw and blackberry syrup & pistachio frangipane, crystallised raspberry and tonka bean ice cream

Ezard: dessert tasting plate

Fromage frais and strawberry cheesecake, basil pearls, lime syrup & mango bavarois, slow cooked peach, sesame seed wafer

Ezard: dessert tasting plate 2

Espresso chocolate marquise, soft meringue, raspberry gel

Ezard: dessert tasting plate 3

Too much good food! I think every single item on the menu is worth a try, except for that salted caramel parfait.

Even I was surprised we polished off every single plate.

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Sydney edition: L’Etoile Restaurant & Bar

Posted in Food, French by

Mum’s birthday fell on one of the days we were in Sydney so I planned to take her out to somewhere a little bit more special. First choice was Guillaume at Bennelong at the Opera House but they were already fully booked on the days we wanted. So next choice was L’Etoile Restaurant and Bar in Paddington. Mum doesn’t really care where we eat but if it were up to me we’d eat French food all day long. L’Etoile was just a coincidence though; reasonable prices and located in one of my favourite suburbs in Sydney.

After a morning of arriving in Sydney and shopping in the Paddington district, we headed off to mum’s birthday lunch. It was surprisingly quiet inside the restaurant on a Saturday. I thought we were just early but there were only 2 other occupied tables the whole time we were there. I won’t be complaining on this though because the waitress gave us an almost full attention. Mum’s incessant requests for hot water with lemon was accommodated with a smiling face and after about the 3rd time of topping up her water the waitress just automatically checked on us to see if we needed more lemon slices.

We got an entree to share among 3 people – Boudin de St Jacques, Bisque de Crustace (Silky Sausage of Scallops with Crustacean Bisque). What I loved were the flavours of the individual elements on the plate. The scallops were tender and came in big chunks; the sausage was made with egg, sort of like a savoury custard, that was silky smooth; and the bisque had a strong crustacean taste.

For mains, mum and mum’s friend both opted for something lighter since we had breakfast not too long ago. Both got different fish mains. One had a Truite de Mer Confite, Beurre Blanc a L’Oseille, Puree de Petit Pois et Coupeaux de Fenouil (Ocean Trout Confit, Sorrel Butter Sauce, Peas Puree and Shaved Fennel). Fish was fresh and fennel added a nice texture to the dish.

The other had a Kingfish Roti, Mousseline de Panais, Poelee de Champignons, Chataigne et Noisette (Pan-roasted Kingfish, Parsnips Puree, Seasonal Mushrooms sauteed with Crushed Chestnuts and Hazelnuts). Mum says the kingfish is cooked just right – fish was just flaking and moist.

And me, well, I had something a little bit heavier – Cote de Veau de Lait Poelee, Gratin Dauphinois (Pan-roasted Milk-fed Veal Cutlet, Potatoes Gratin, Thyme Jus). Whilst I did not find anything too special with this dish, I did like the fact that thyme was obviously present in the dish. It added that extra kick to an otherwise simple dish.

The highlight of the lunch, for me, was the Creme Brûlée a la Vanille et Tuile d’Amande (Classic Vanilla Creme Brûlée with Almond Tuile). The serving was big for it was good for sharing. The custard was very smooth and the sugar on top was perfectly torched. The slightest hint of bitterness from the burnt sugar complemented the sweetness of the custard really, really well. If I wasn’t that full I probably would have devoured the whole thing myself. It was the perfect way to finish the meal.

L'étoile Restaurant & Bar on Urbanspoon

www.letoilerestaurant.com.au

Milk poached fish fillets with broccolini

Posted in Food, Recipes by

If you have fish fillets in the fridge and more than enough cans of evaporated milk in the pantry, what do you get? Milk poached fish fillets. My family seem to love buying freshwater bass fillets and I am starting to get tired of the usual panfry way we cook it. So without the fussy eaters at home I made a new dish. Poaching the fish fillets turned out really well and I am very happy with it.

I had this with rice for one meal and with fresh pasta for lunch at work.

The only thing I would change is my pan. It would’ve been better to use a heavy bottom pan or a casserole pan like this because the milk burned too quickly in the pan I used. Lots of scrubbing was done after eating the dish.

 

Ingredients

1 can evaporated milk (or 1/2 can evaporated milk plus 1/2 can normal milk)
4 cloves garlic, pounded and peeled
1/4 thumb ginger, sliced
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons salt
a few grinds of freshly ground black pepper
2 pieces freshwater basa fillets, sliced into 3-inch wide pieces
2-3 bunches broccolini, stalks cut off and flowers cleaned well

Method

1. In a large heavy bottom pan, pour in evaporated milk and bring to a simmer. Add in garlic, ginger, paprika salt and pepper and continue simmering for about 3-5 minutes until the garlic and ginger have infused their flavours into the milk.

2. Sprinkle a little bit of salt on both sides of the fish fillet. Then add them in the pan and arrange them so that all pieces are covered with milk. They need not be submerged but has to be in contact with the milk. Cover the pan and keep the milk at a simmer.

3. When the fish fillets are half cooked, flip them over so the other side is in contact with the milk and add in broccolini. Simmer until the fish is fully cooked and the broccolini is to your desired crunchiness.

4. Season with more salt and pepper, if needed.

5. Serve hot with rice or pasta and enjoy!

Cafe 58 Espresso Bar @ Palmyra

Posted in Breakfast/Brunch, Coffee & Desserts, Food, Modern Australian by

Right smack in the heart of Palmyra sits Cafe 58 Espresso Bar, truly a local cafe that seems to busy all the time. Palmyra is not included in the territorial lines where I’d consider myself a local but I will happily travel the 15 minute driving time to get to this cafe.

Most nights we come here for coffee and desserts. But, after much raving about the dinner menu, Auntie J took us there one night for a big family affair. We had reservations at 6:30pm; the cafe was dimly lit and the staff was just getting ready for the dinner rush. This I found strange, to be honest. I would have expected a cafe/restaurant to be fully ready and prepared if they take reservations for as early as 6:30. A few of us arrived first and were showed to our table but it took forever to be handed the menus. They seemed understaffed and everyone looked like they were on to something else other than minding the customers. There is a $25 2-course special on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and given it was a Wednesday night we were interested in knowing what the blackboard specials were. The blackboard was empty and we had to wait a good 15 minutes for the specials to be written on the board.

Three of us had the specials that came with an entree of a tasting plate of olives, chorizo and beetroot dip with 3 thinly sliced bread and a main of barramundi with mashed potatoes.

I am not a big fan of this kind of entree and this really just reinforced that. Nothing special except that it was a good start to fill the hunger and enough to keep us from going insane waiting for the mains.

An hour after we were seated, the mains finally appeared. This was really a ridiculous waiting for a cafe specially since we were among the first few tables to have ordered. Anyhow, the food did come and they were all devoured in 10 minutes because we were that hungry.

Here is the grilled barramundi with lemon butter and creamy mashed potatoes.

The fish was good, not too heavily seasoned and cooked perfectly. And that mashed potatoes were divine. Really one of the best mashed potatoes I have tasted. It was creamy, almost puree like, and seasoned just right.

Then we have the aglio olio pepperincino – al dente spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and parsley with a hint of anchovies and optional fresh cut chilli. This is a very tasty pasta dish. The only problem was that it was drenched in olive oil and I mean literally drenched. Given that K had this dish, she had to scoop out the pasta onto a plate. Otherwise she would’ve been drinking olive oil on the side too. A little cousin had the same pasta without the chilli but he was oblivious to the amount of olive oil. He probably thought it was sauce.

Uncle J, then, had the chicken parmigiana. This is the lowest ranking dish of the night. It’s not that it wasn’t good. It just there wasn’t really anything special about it. Crumbed chicken breast topped with Napolitana sauce and an oozing amount of mozzarella cheese. The layer of cheese was too much for him so he scooped off some. Other than that, the chicken was juicy and the side of Napolitana pasta was good too.

To save the best for last, out of all the dishes we ordered, I thought that I had the best dish for the night – marinated chorizo chicken. It was a grilled whole chicken breast with spinach, baby potatoes, sliced chorizo and grilled prawns. The chicken was succulent and the prawns were smokey. The jus made the dish even better. I loved and savoured every bite.

Onto dessert. The staple that we always have here at Cafe 58 is the sticky date pudding. It was love at first bite so we have been getting this pudding every time we drop by for coffee. It is sweet, sticky, date-y and just the right size for sharing. Served warm with ice cream. The best part is that you can hardly taste the sodium bicarbonate (that is usually evident in other cafes’ sticky date products).

I was feeling adventurous that night too so I got myself a choc avalanche tart. Oh my. This tart is very sinful. It looked harmless at first but a very rich chocolate filling was waiting for me when I dived into it. I am a big fan of the filling but not the pastry. There is something about it that did not go well with the chocolate. I think it was that eggy taste. It was so rich I only ate half an took home the other half.

Overall, Cafe 58 gives a good dining experience with the occasional mishaps that cafes experience from time to time. Staff are very friendly but some needs to be more attentive. Looks like we’ve found another place we can pig out at.

My rating: 7/10

Cafe 58 Espresso Bar on Urbanspoon

Ha-Lu @ Mt Hawthorn

Posted in Food, Japanese by

Finally, a Japanese restaurant in Perth that I actually enjoyed and liked because it is different. Ha-Lu is a tapas-style Japanese restaurant tucked away along Oxford Street in Mt Hawthorn which looks small on the outside but is actually more spacious inside than it seems.

I’ve been going on and on about how much I loved Sake Bar Hagi in New York and, if you ask me, I think Ha-Lu is as close to Hagi as we can get in Perth. Ha-Lu has a sister restaurant called Satsuki in Subiaco. The menus are a bit different so come and try Ha-Lu. If you have been and enjoyed Satsuki I think you would enjoy Ha-Lu even more.

But let’s talk about the food. The menu is different from the standard Japanese restaurant menu that we have all around Perth like bento boxes, teriyaki stuff, california rolls, yaki soba, etc. Their’s consists of  what I think is contemporary food with a Japanese twist (or Japanese food with a contemporary twist). Indeed the serving size is smaller so for a group of 4 we ordered 8 dishes altogether plus steamed rice and also miso soup for the 2 of us. According to the website, their dining style encourages “social interaction around the table”. They’re not wrong about that. As soon as you’re seated social interaction about food begins. Everyone was tasked to choose 2 dishes each to be shared amongst the group and we could’ve ordered the entire menu. Almost everything looks so interesting that I really wanted to try them all!

It was mostly L and I who chose what to order and convinced the 2 others, D and A, to agree with us. Just for the record, everything we had was exceptionally good except for the teriyaki chicken because it was a normal dish but someone just had to insist that we order it and the deep fried soft shell crab because there was not enough taste to the dish.

Here’s what we ate that night -

Homemade tofu & Mizuna salad with wonton crisps. L insisted that we have this because she’s had it before and loved it so much. She’s not kidding hey. The tofu was soft as (but not as smooth as I expected) and the salad dressing – soy mustard - was very good too. A refreshing dish that is made better by the wonton crisps.

Sashimi boat. 4 people and only 3 pieces each of the salmon, tuna and kingfish sashimi. Good thing D is not a big fan of raw fish so L, A and I had a piece each. Nothing special here but the sashimis were fresh on this occasion.

Soft shell crab tempura. I’m not entirely sure why this dish came with 2 pieces of deep fried soft shell crab and 2 pieces of fish. It wasn’t mentioned on the menu that it would have fish. So as a result we had to halve everything; except for one of the fish that D mistakenly thought was crab.

Duck and aubergine Madeira sauce. Is there really anything more succulent than duck? The duck in this dish was very flavourful and cooked until just pink inside and the duck slices sit atop a cube of marinated aubergine.

Grilled miso Patagonian toothfish. A rather different way of preparing toothfish because I usually eat this fish in Chinese restaurants where they serve it panfried with soy sauce. This one here is lighter in seasoning so you can taste the fish itself.

Wagyu beef “Ishi Yaki” grill with fried onion. Rarebeef slices in a very hot stone bowl. The waitress advised us that if we to have a well cooked beef instead we should place the slices on the edges of the bowl to cook them. Works perfectly and the beef was tender.

Unknown dish. Here’s a dish which I cant remember what it is. I’m not even entirely sure what it was when it was served. All I know is that it was something soft like egg whites with some seafood in it..perhaps scallops?

Two girls and two guys – the dishes seemed little at first but we left feeling really full and everyone had a great night.

My rating: 8/10
Ha-Lu on Urbanspoon
www.halu.net.au

Recipe: Fish fillet with white sauce

Posted in Modern Australian, Recipes by

From my kitchen: Fish fillet with white sauce

This is an alternative way of cooking basa fillets that we usually cook Asian-style (with soy sauce and ginger or teriyaki sauce). I used milk instead of cream for the sauce so it’s not a heavy kind of white sauce. My auntie has specifically requested for this recipe so I’m inclined to think that this was a hit at the dinner table.

Ingredients

6 – 8 fish fillets (I used freshwater basa fillets for the photo above)

salt and pepper

dill

1 tablespoon butter

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon flour

5 pieces button mushrooms, sliced

5 tablespoons white wine

1/4 cup milk

chicken stock or water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

salt and pepper

Method

1. Season the fish fillets with a little salt, pepper and dill. Steam cook them or panfry then set aside.

2. In a pan, melt the butter and add in the garlic. Cook for about 1 minute. Add in mushrooms and cook for a another minute. Then add in the flour and stir until the mixture forms a paste.

3. Add in white wine and stir until the paste becomes a thick liquid. Then add milk and chicken stock or water and stir to your desired sauce consistency. Just keep adding chicken stock or water to thin out the sauce – the sauce will thicken as it boils.

4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

5. Place the fish fillets into the pan with the sauce to reheat the fish, about 3 minutes.

6. Serve and enjoy.

Recipe: Potato cake with smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce

Posted in Breakfast/Brunch, Modern Australian, Recipes by

potato cake with smoked salmon

My take on Van’s (in Cottesloe) breakfast item called potato cake.

Ingredients

Potato cake

5 medium sized potatoes, peeled and grated

1/2 onion, sliced

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 leaf spring onion, sliced

handful of tasty cheese or parmesan

2 eggs

salt and pepper

flour

oil for pan frying

150 grams smoked salmon

Hollandaise sauce

3 egg yolks

1/2 lemon, squeezed

1/2 cup butter, melted

pinch of cayenne pepper

salt and pepper

mixed salad (rockets and spinach), optional

Method

1. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add in the grated potatoes for about 1-2 minutes just to cook and rid the potatoes of starch. Pour the potatoes into a strainer and run with cold tap water until potatoes have cooled down. Squeeze the potatoes to get rid of excess water and transfer them to a medium or large bowl.

2. Heat up a small frying pan, add in oil and sautee the onions. Add the vinegar and 2 pinches of salt. Cook the onions until they are caramelised. If the onions begin to burn, add little amounts of water.

caramelise onions

3. Transfer the onions onto a plate and let it cool.

4. In the bowl of potatoes, add in the rest of the ingredients for the potato cake – spring onion, cheese, eggs, caramelised onions, flour and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. The mixture should not be too runny. Gradually add more flour if needed.

potato cake mixture

5. Heat oil in a pan for shallow frying. If you have a ring mould – use it. If not, simply shape the potato mixture using your hands. The mixture should be about 1 inch thick.

6. Fry the potato cake until golden brown and flip to fry the other side until golden brown as well. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate to get rid of excess oil.

7. Transfer the potato cake to a serving plate. Top with slices of smoked salmon. Then top with a handful of mixed salad if desired.

8. Prepare the hollandaise sauce by preparing a double broiler – a medium sized mixing bowl sitting atop a saucepan of boiling water.

9. In the mixing bowl, whisk in the egg yolks, lemon juice and cayenne pepper until the mixture is light yellow and creamy.

10. Then slowly add in the melted butter in thin streaks while still whisking the egg yolk mixture until the sauce is well mixed.

11. Add salt and pepper to taste.

12. Drizzle the hollandaise sauce over the potato cake, smoked salmon and mixed salad.

13. Serve.