Category Archives: The Dining Room

iSnack 2.0 and then Golden deceit

04 Sunday Oct 2009

Posted by in The Dining Room, The Public Bar

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When all the grand kids are over on the farm with traditional pancake eating as part of school  holiday, we discovered  Golden Syrup is not what it used to be. It started with the brutalisation of vegemite. I am no fan of vegemite. Anyone who can look deep inside a jar of vegemite and then still able to spread it on bread has my respect, even admiration. My mother opened up a jar back on a sunny Saturday afternoon in 1958 on the advice of a Polish refugee. She of course immediately recognized endless possibilities of savings to be made when she read ‘spread sparingly’.

Vegemite is under attack and I will, as a good and proud Australian always defend to the death the right for anyone to eat it with staunch impartiality no matter what the colour of anyone’s political persuasion or for their preferred food.

According to the vegemite lovers, it is now marketed mixed with cheese and called ‘vege-mate’ and another mixture named a phoney patriotic ‘Our Mate’ and another iSnack 2.0 the latest named by popular vote.  Of course, any product now has to have both numbers and letters in higher and lower case in order to confuse and make for easier selling to the harassed and comatose consumer.  Sausages will soon be sold as SAus 69 Griz.

The Golden syrup has always been the world’s favourite pan-cake spread.  Ok, at least in the world of Brayton on the Wollondilly, (with the hordes of defending wombabats manning the ramparts against the evil weed inspectors).  Anyway, the grandkids arrived and during pandemonium and general chaos put in the order for the morning pancakes before collapsing in a random and haphazard way to their matrasses. Helvi often tells me to let the mothers do the pancakes but that is also always, as a matter of tradition now, met by protesting grandkids, as  ‘Opa can only make the pancakes just right’.  ‘He makes them with the golden crusty edges and thin as well ‘, Jak says smoothly. With grandkids’ growing appetites the heap of pancakes are in tandem and this now calls for 2 cast iron fry pans. One is a surviving wedding present, made in Finland and superb for pancakes. The other is a Taiwanese cast iron alloy job with black colouring, as proof of its dodgy quality, appearing on the dish cloth.

The milk and water is added to the plain flour with a couple of eggs and pinch of salt. The mixture is thin and pure salted butter is added to the very hot pans. The whole procedure for perhaps 30 pancakes takes no more than 30 minutes with the eating perhaps no more than 7 minutes.

The Golden Syrup is not anymore what is used to be. Does anyone remember the yellow metal tins with black lettering and with a lid that used to be prised open with a knife?  The colour was dark and the bouquet brooding with a mystery and hint of an almost Oriental nature.  I think Raffles used to serve it up to Somerset Maugham in Singapore for breakfast, while I believe, he was writing ‘Razor’s Edge’.

Perhaps it contained treacle or molasses but it was just right for the crispy, golden edged pancakes. Now all that glory and joy has changed and gone. It was decided that it had to become’ committed’ more wasteful and turned over faster, make more and better money, and what better than to make it thinner and sell in  squeeze plastic bottles that would malfunction after a couple of tries.  It is a shadow and fake Golden Syrup now but makes a fortune for the Emporiums of the money merchants. It will soon be called GLod Mr3 S and Golden Syrup ‘flavoured’ in small lettering to hide deception and join Maple syrup ‘flavoured’ and Vanilla ‘flavoured’ ,but nothing real anymore.. A bummer.

Boeuf Tartare avec un oeuf.

03 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in The Dining Room

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The Geoffrey Russell Nightmare Special

The Geoffrey Russell Nightmare Special

The walk around Montpellier resulted in needing to have lunch so we dove into one of those intimate little lunch and dinner places that seem to appear as soon as one gets hungry, especially in France and even more so in the south of France.

We were shown our seat and left to ponder the menu including a wine list. The atmosphere was intimate with lighting subdued and with all sound reduced to a sotto voce. The garcon in white jacket and with the right un-pretentious manner, putting even the most belligerent customer at ease, came around our table to take the lunch order. The choice by Helvi was a sound one, a piece of top side beef with vegetables and ‘Pomme de Frites’. She was asked for her preferred choice of the ‘boeuf’ to be rare, medium or well-done.  Medium was her choice.

I had chosen the ‘Beef Tartar’, and told the garcon to have it ‘medium’ cooked as well. He laughed heartily but I did not really understand the finer points of his laughter until after the dish arrived. A plate of raw minced steak with a raw egg in the middle of it was what finally turned up on our dimly lit table. There was nothing cooked about it, never mind the ‘medium’ part of it.

I bravely finished the plate but Helvi sensed my lack of enthusiasm and asked if everything was alright. I confessed my total ignorance of beef tartar and thought that the dish was a kind of steak done rare. A bit Russian perhaps, with images of horse riding Tartars doing the cooking of the meat on a fire after a fierce battle deep inside the Crimea.  This embarrassing dereliction of culinary knowledge has been a source of endless mirth and enlightenment to our friends when the tale of medium cooked ‘beef tartar’ at Montpellier gets re-told by my beloved wife. It has been an ice breaker at many a social evening.

In the case of readers being surprised by this embarrassment, please consider that so many of my friends probably think nothing of eating vegemite, a food so horrendous to look at, so terrible to contemplate inside its brown jar, that I feel justified in making slight of this minor slip up.

Fine Dining at the Pig’s Arms

19 Friday Jun 2009

Posted by in Mark, The Dining Room

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Attentive Wedge Carriers at the Pig's Arms

Attentive Wedge Carriers at the Pig’s Arms

Here is an extract from the Mearld-Hail dated 31st June 2008 after food and wine critic Earl Sandwich and partner Jules Carrot went on a search for the best inner west pub meal. That night, they dined at the Pigs Arms.

Arriving at the hotel is indeed an experience in itself. Tucked away, just off Porcine Ave, the Window Dressers Arms Pig & Whistle, the Pigs Arms to the locals, boasts the most interesting welcome. A sign greets you at the door saying “What lies in front us and what lies behind us are huge irrelevancies to what lies out there…..”, well, what can you say to that Odlaw?

You shuffle via the Ladies Lounge through the bar into the Bistro or as the pink neon light reminds you “The Pigs Arms Bar & Grill” just in case you would forget or in fact if you are ever able to forget.

In the bar a man stares blankly at a wall, humming a tune to himself, so softly in fact that no one else could hear it. We find out later on that it was Hung One On, a 70’s rock star who had a one hit wonder with an album that nearly everyone alive brought. “One trip too many” they say.

The waitress introduces herself as Belinda, “Glenda’s little sister”. It would seem Glenda is important. I comment that my sister also has that name but often complains that she is never allowed to sit near a window. How odd?

We are seated a table that has a picturesque view over the railway yard. Belinda gives us the menus. We order some drinks, Trotters Ale, as it’s a local brew. Served cold, it emitted a strange misty vapor and an aroma that burns imprints on your brain that are difficult to erase. Drinking this ale became a two way process. As I sipped it, it sipped me. Stranger than strange.

The menu was small however eclectic. It contained all the usual villains, prawn cocktail, grapefruits onto pasta, steak, cake and ice cream. The words “Granny’s wedges are a must for all beer drinkers” emblazoned on the front cover however the curious thing was the way the menu was written.

Prawn cocktail was described as “…innocent little Dendrobrachiata, boiled alive , stripped to the nut, served in a sauce made of the unborn children of Gallus gallus domesticus for some fat git with high cholesterol”, get the picture!

We asked for the wine list. A man approached calling himself “Merv”. A list is produced, listing 34 varieties of Shiraz. “Gez’s” favorite we are told, whoever Gez is. I ask for a merlot, “Mate, this pub is for locals, you know, the unleashed”, absolutely no idea what he means so we pick a bottle and I order another Trotter’s and wait. Jules and I read the menu, Mains. Wow, after the entrées, geeps, I’m afraid to look. Let’s see, Lamb Rack – “The rib of a defenseless young Ovis aries brutally murdered and marinated in the oil of Olea europaea, ascorbic acid, Allium sativum and rubbed in sodium chloride baked in a <>187.7 degree oven. Served with pan fried Solanum tuberosum and steamed piccoli bracci”, Crusted Flathead – “a portion of sample from an ill-fated platycephaliade, obtained by slicing parallel to the spine producing a fillet, pan fried in the oil of Olea europae in a coating of sodium chloride, Piper nigrum and the dried crumbed remains of baked Triticum spp. . Served with deep fried elongated pieces of Solanum tuberosum and a salad of Lactuca sativa, Solanum lycopersicum and Cucumis sativus”, whoa.

Dessert well lets not go there. By this time the Trotters Ale was staring to have an effect. Someone came past, counting everything, “37: John Howard, 38: The GST….”, I see a Dutch couple in the corner playing euchre and drinking Shiraz and arguing in Flemish about Wagner and his Ring Cycle.

Belinda arrives, we order but to her shock and dismay, we didn’t want any of granny’s wedges. The wine comes and a handsome Greek couple enters and sits in the corner reciting poetry and encouraging the DJ to play Stella Konitopoulou. From my days of researching restaurants if the local’s visit then you know it’s going to be good.

A giant orange arrived at the door shouting, “ Is anyone going to squeeze me?” , the paint on the walls start to peel turning into butterflies, SAS soldiers break through the doors shooting randomly and yelling at everyone to get on the floor, Jules hand mergers with the shiraz bottle and she has snakes coming out of her eyes, a man enters wearing a dinner jacket with monogrammed hankerchief’s, “MJ”, his name is Mike Jones, how I know that I have no idea, Glenda approaches, I hear her say to Belinda “Didn’t order granny’s wedges, what have I told you, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousands times the antidote to Trotters is in granny’s wedges, sheez”, a lion with a black eye walks up and puts his paw on my shoulder and says ”Here mate have some of this”, I look down and see a bowl of wedges, the lion says “The’ wezzes are goo, weawy goo, eat”. I shove wedges in my mouth and chew, I’m sweating, the lion is looking annoyed, a man approaches, its Jayell, “Quick”, he cries, “Get Hung to reprogram him”, I need my nappy changed and where’s mum I’m hungry, some one is shaking me “Sir! Sir! Sir!”

I wake up. I’m in hospital, St Boars. A doctor and nurse are in the cubicle with the curtains around, they tell me this happens all the time to people not used to the mild hallucinogenic effects of Trotters Ale “You need to order some of granny’s wedges, didn’t Belinda tell you” he says, they smile at me in a peculiar way, they call Jules. As we leave St Boars a giant orange is sitting on the side on the road, crying, “Won’t someone squeeze me?”……..

Hung One On ……