A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Tom Rutledge, who you might remember from season 3 of MasterChef AU – he was eliminated early on so you’ll be forgiven for not remembering his name from the show, but this is more proof that a good show can lead to other things even if you don’t win.

Tom has opened the Sydney branch of HelloFresh, a company that supplies a virtually complete solution that saves you time and allows you to discover new foods.  They want to make cooking a healthy meal at home as fuss-free and as easy as possible for busy people that don’t necessarily have time to shop.  You pay a subscription (that you can cancel at any time – no contracts), and each week they send you a goodie bag filled with ingredients, and recipes that show you in clear easy steps how to recreate the meals with the ingredients supplied.  There are a few options that you can select, either three meals a week, or five meals a week, for however many people you want.  On their site you can select to receive meals for two, four or six people, but if you needed more you should just select the same option multiple times, or I’m sure you can just call them and arrange it over the phone.  The meals work out to between $9.30 & $9.94 per meal per person depending on the options selected.

We received a bag with enough for a single meal for two people, and the meal for us was Grilled Moroccan Beef with Zucchini & Coriander Salad.

The contents of the bag: recipe, zucchini, mint, coriander, onion (that was actually not required), garlic, chillies, capsicum, and rump steak.  All the ingredients are supplied fresh from the suppliers, which means that there may be some substitutions depending on what’s available at the time.  The steak we noted came from Establishment 218.

The produce was all of good quality, and there were many leftover items to make something new with the following day.

The recipe for the day gives measurements for the amount of people that you have been supplied for, and a simple six step method for cooking the meal.  We found the method to be straight forward.  HelloFresh assumes that you have certain items already in your pantry, which they state on their website, although the recipe called for red wine vinegar, which is not on their list, and we did not have any.  We did however have balsamic vinegar (which is on the list) and so just used that, and it worked pretty well.

To be honest I was wondering if I would like the salad, since I dislike coriander, but we made it as per the recipe, with the exception of the crushed garlic as I refuse to eat raw garlic, and it was actually very nice.  I also wasn’t sure about eating raw zucchini, but it was surprisingly good in a salad, especially sliced into ribbons with the potato peeler.  Excellent tip!

The final meal, single portion, rump steak (cooked medium-well) with capsicum, zucchini and coriander salad.  It was very nice, the steak was particularly good – I much prefer fillet, but was pleasantly surprised with the quality and taste of the rump steak, and the salad was lovely.  The meal took approximately 30-45 minutes from start to finish.

At the time that we received the bag they didn’t currently deliver to our area, but I’ve just checked on their site and they now do deliver to Sydney’s North Shore, and if they don’t deliver to your area we’ve been told that they are expanding delivery to other Sydney suburbs.  We could have them deliver to our office in Bondi Junction, but I didn’t fancy the idea of carting a couple of bags with six or ten meals worth of food all the way home on the train.  Their delivery hours are outside of typical work hours (5-9pm) which makes it easy to be home when they deliver, however if you’re not at home, with prior arrangement they can leave your bags in a cool dry place, or with a neighbour.  As I said earlier, there are no contracts, so you can stop whenever you want, with a 10 day notice period, and you can also put deliveries on hold when you are away.

We were very happy with the service, although Tom personally delivered ours during the day, and we were very happy with the quality of the meat, produce and recipe.  We are keen to make use of HelloFresh ourselves.

We also have a special offer for you!  Place an order with HelloFresh via their website, and enter the code “damnfinefood”, and you’ll receive a 30% discount on your first delivery!

(in the interests of full disclosure, this review is a true representation of how we feel about the quality of food and service provided by HelloFresh, in our option.  We are not affiliated with HelloFresh in any way, however we were offered a “kickback” of 20% per subscription (first delivery only) for all orders received using the discount code.  We decided to accept that offer – hey, it’s free money after all, and will make use of any credit to receive our own bags of food from HelloFresh!  If you feel that that may have tainted our review, you’re welcome to that opinion, but I can assure you that we would have reviewed accordingly if things had gone differently, and this was agreed beforehand with Tom.)

A little while back we went out to Bondi Beach for some good burgers at Moo Gourmet Burgers.

We’d seen the restaurant a few times passing on the bus but had never gone in, until today.

Moo is cow themed, not surprisingly.  Items around the restaurant have cow patterns, and cute pictures from kids adorn the walls.

Some of the pictures were very good.  Others were a bit strange – ah to have the imagination of a child again!

Of course we’re here for the food, and before long we’ve ordered some milkshakes.

This one is the TammyMOO.  A chocolate milkshake made from Tim Tam biscuits ($6.50).  Very nice.

And the other was a MOOteaser, which was a chocolate milkshake made from Maltesers and malt ($6.50).

For the burgers Caroline had the Classic Cheese Burger, and added beetroot ($13.50), and onion rings on the side ($4.50).

While I had the Big Moo ($16.50) with chips on the side ($3.50).  The Big Moo consists of a beef patty, cheddar cheese, free range bacon, free range egg, pineapple, beetroot, tomato, lettuce, mayo and relish.

We were happy to see so many free range items on the menu, and the beef is 100% Angus beef.

We loved the burgers and will certainly be back in the future for more!

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First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope 2012 becomes everything you want it to be!

Our first restaurant visit for the year is Mexican, and after reading about Mad Mex at The Food Pornographer, we just had to come and give it a try.  The shop in Harbourside at Darling Harbour is brand new.  We saw it a few weeks ago, but it was still boarded up and we said we’d come past again soon once it had opened.  It has now opened and is looking good.

The ordering process is similar to Subway.  Plenty of options and combinations to choose from.  Not as many as Subway, but still too many in my opinion.  What I reckon they should do is have a few pre-selected options so you can just ask for “Option A” and not have to go though the hassle of choosing each item individually.  The process is simple as long as you can decide what you want!  Step one is to choose your style.  Crispy or soft tacos, nachos, burrito, naked burrito (served in a bowl without a wrap), quesadilla or tortilla.  Next step two, choose your filling.  Chicken, shredded beef, steak, pork or veggie.  Then step three, add salsas.  Tomato, corn, tomatillo, roasted tomato, chilli and you can add guacamole for an extra $2.

We opted to share our meals and chose quesadilla, with chicken, corn & tomatillo salsas, and guacamole ($11.90).  Very nice taste.  I would have preferred it if I could pick up a slice and eat it with my hands but it was a bit too floppy for that and required the use of a knife and fork.  The corn was nice too, it comes with pineapple, onion and jalapeño, but it isn’t hot.  The tomatillo was nice, but I didn’t really get to appreciate it much as I didn’t really have anything to dip into it, or pour it over.  The star of this meal in my opinion was actually the guacamole, which I could have polished off myself given the chance.  (Which in itself is odd considering that a couple of years ago I hated avocado, considering it far too bland for my attention.)

Next we had the nachos ($10.90).  You can hardly see the meat for all the salad and salsa, but there was more than just the one piece you can see here.  This was very nice, particularly the cheese sauce, but I would have liked to have seen an option to have cheese grilled onto the top.  The salad and salsa was lovely and the nacho chips were fresh and crispy.  More guacamole was of course welcome!  The meat was wonderfully tender.

For drinks we chose the Mexican soda, Jarritos.  There are more flavours but I chose the mandarin, and Caro chose the Lime.  We each had half of each others, and both of them were highly enjoyable, and wonderfully vividly coloured!

For dessert we had a portion of churros with chocolate sauce ($5.90).  Very hot, very nice.  The sauce had a strange consistency, almost like gooey play dough than a sauce.  When you scooped a bit out of the tub with the end of the churros the whole thing would want to come out leaving the container clean.  Very strange, but very tasty.  For those not in the know, churros are a Mexican doughnut.

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We’d been wanting to go to the Schnitzelhaus after riding past on the bus a few weeks or a month ago while doing our Project Spiral expedition.

Today we got to go there.  This week’s restaurant visit was supposed to be pub food.  The Schnitzelhaus isn’t a pub, but their food is close enough to pub food as far as I am concerned.

I haven’t had good German food for a good while now, and it soon becomes evident how the other, more touristy, beer and German food restaurants in Sydney are lacking compared to this place.

The restaurant is in a beautiful old sandstone building that would be almost invisible from the road if it wasn’t for the large sign.

They even have a cute postbox!

It seems like a really homely restaurant, and I imagine in winter they have a roaring fire going in a fireplace, although I do admit I didn’t see a fireplace.

Old style Christmas deccos are up, and the place reminds me of the mountain hotels that we have visited in South Africa in the past.

We place our drinks order while we mull over the menu.  Caro has a lemon, lime & bitters ($3.90), while I have an Almdudler ($4.10), a wildly popular (in Austria) Austrian lemonade.  It’s nice.  Very subtle and not too sweet.

For starters Caroline has a pretzel ($3.50).  Lovely and warm from the oven, and nice and salty.

I decide to have the camembert ($9.90).  It’s a cheese that I have not had in a very long time. The semi-circles of crumbed cheese are not at all oily and offer no hint of the ooziness of the cheese within.  They were perhaps a little thinner than I’m used to, but they tasted very good, especially with the traditional cranberry sauce.  I called them cheese schnitzels.

We shared two main courses.  The first was the ‘Haus schnitzel’ ($27.90), a schnitzel so large that you can’t fit it and the chips on the plate without piling them on top of each other.  I know someone who would complain that this causes a heat trap and makes the chips all soggy, but they actually were not soggy.  I was impressed.  The schnitzel was lovely and tender, tasty and the crumbing was lovely and again no excess oil.  We also had it with a mushroom sauce that was very nice, although perhaps a little on the garlicky side for me personally.

The other main we had was the chicken Cordon Bleu ($23.00).  Perhaps not specifically Austrian, but it was crumbed.  It could be considered a schnitzel.  I was very happy with it as you see from the next photo.

Yum yum, look at all that lovely Swiss cheese.  I’ve loved Cordon Bleu for as long as I can remember, even from the days of visiting Caroline’s first workplace where they had a subsidised canteen and restaurant, where on the menu you could find an item called “Gordon Bleu”  I might even go as far as saying that Cordon Bleu ranks as one of my all time favourite dishes.

The obligatory, but token vegetables ($5.50) were also ordered.  Not bad, but nothing amazing either.

For dessert we had the strudel platter for two ($16.90).  There were three type of strudel, apple, cherry & cheese and apricot & cheese, and they were served with cream and ice-cream.  Nice.

They also have a schnitzel challenge where for $55 you can get a 1kg schnitzel with chips and a 1 litre beer.  If you finish within an hour, you get a t-shirt, your name and photo on the wall of “Champions” and on their website.  However there’s a $50 charge if you can’t hold that all down and, let’s say, dispose of it somewhere and they have to clean up! If you want to beat the record, you’ll have to down all that in under 14 minutes!

We had a really good time there.  My only criticism is that it got very loud later in the evening, and service did slow down considerably once they were busier, but that said, at the beginning of our meal service was unbelievably fast.

Curiously, in Australia people seem to almost uniformly pronounce schnitzel as ‘snitsle’.  It’s strange because I would have thought the pronunciation would be obvious.  Maybe it’s just too difficult to get the ‘shn’ sound right?  That said, I do like the term ‘snitty’ when referring to a schnitzel.

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NOTE: A reader has noticed that Ratu Sari appears to have closed down.  I can’t confirm this yet, but be aware of this if you wish to dine here.  I will confirm this as soon as I can. 

Sometimes the real gems can be found out in the suburbs.  Forget about queues, this restaurant is virtually empty when we arrive, and only half full when we leave.  Why, I have no idea, because the food was certainly excellent.  Not trendy enough for the crowds I guess.  Fine by me!

This week we were determined to find a restaurant dedicated to Indonesian food, and we had a few in mind, but ultimately settled on Anzac Parade in Kingsford because of the density of Indonesian restaurants.  Caroline had Ayam Goreng 99 in mind, but when we got there we found that they were closed for the festive season.  We walked back about 10 metres and stepped into Ratu Sari as we had looked at their menu briefly before going to have a look at AG99′s menu.

The menu is large.  Five pages of a la carte food, and two of banquets.

We started off with sweet iced tea ($3.50).  Very nice and refreshing, just make sure that you stir before you sip and there’s a syrup that has a tendency to sink to the bottom.

First up for the starters is Ngo Hiong ($8.90).  Highly recommended!

Pork mince, seafood and vegetable roll wrapped in fried tofu skin.  I could eat a hundred of these I think!  Beware though, the sauce is quite chilli hot.  Nice, but hot.

Lumpia ($8.90 for 4).  Indonesian style spring roll.  To be honest I couldn’t tell these apart from regular Chinese spring rolls, but regardless they were excellent.  Perhaps a tiny bit oily on the outside, but absolutely perfect inside, and nice and neat too.  Served with a much milder chilli sauce.

For main course we chose Kapitan Chicken ($15.90).  Chicken fillets, capsicum and onion in a mild green chilli and coconut sauce.  It was indeed a mild chilli sauce, and the coconut shone through.  The chicken was lovely and still tender.  I could have drunk all the remaining juice straight from the plate (but didn’t!).  Instead I poured it over the remains of the next main.

Nasi goreng ($12.90).  Indonesian fried rice, with sliced chicken, beef ball, fish cake and shrimp.  I’m not sure what nasi goreng is supposed to be like as I’ve had it so many different ways, but this was very nice.  I was expecting beef balls, but actually the description is correct – a single meat ball, sliced into many thin strips.  Nice and light and not at all clumpy.

For dessert we decided to have es cendol ($6.50).  We’ve had cendol all over the place, but what makes this one a bit different is the addition of jackfruit.  I’ve never had jackfruit before and found that I quite like it.  Topped with coconut milk and palm sugar.

We also had ketan hitam ($6.50).  Served warm or cold, we went for warm.  Black sticky rice topped with coconut milk.  It was saltier than we expected, but it was very nice.  Another thing I can eat forever!

The restaurant.

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Last week D&L, friends of ours from Canberra came up to Sydney and we met to have dinner.  After wanting to visit Spiedo, and having dessert here a week ago, we made a booking for the four of us.

Other friends of ours, TFP, Juji and Jay came here a few weeks ago when they were in Sydney, and loved it.  TFP’s report is here and Juji’s is here.

We’d enjoyed our desserts the last time, and eagerly anticipated the chance to have some of their main courses.

We were seated, handed the menus and a drinks order was taken.  Of course when friends from afar are visiting you tend to start talking instead of looking at the menu, and in no time the waiter was back to take our order.  We had to send him away for a few more minutes while we decided.

In the mean time we were served some bread.  A sourdough, and a tomato and olive foccacia.  I unfortunately forgot to take photos of these but you can see them on TFP’s site.

We ordered polenta sticks ($12) as a starter, which came with a gorgonzola sauce.  I’m not mad on blue cheeses, but this was actually quite nice.  The polenta sticks that reminded me of fish fingers were lovely and crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy inside.

Caroline ordered the bigoli gamberi di flume e piselli ($31).  Bigoli pasta with yabbies.  (Yabbies are a type of Australian crustacean).  Very nice from the taste that I had, although I prefer sweeter prawns to yabbies.

I had the tenderloin ($38), which was excellent despite the fact that I ordered it medium-well, and what I got was well-done.

In my past I had a severe aversion to bloody meat, and so I used to order my steak well-done.  In South Africa I would find that if I ordered my steak medium-well I would get medium, and if I ordered well-done I would either get medium-well or charcoal.  Steaks are cooked more consistently in Australia, and I generally order medium-well so that I get pink meat with no red juices.  This one was a little more done than that, but since I used to have well-done steak I don’t mind.  I’d rather have overcooked meat than bloody juices running all over the plate.

D had the Agnello ($35).  Slow cooked lamb rump on a bed of cavalo nero (kale, Tuscan cabbage) and served with a few thin purple potato chips.

L had the Gnocchi ($22 – entree portion), with asparagus, pine nuts and buffalo ricotta.

I also ordered a side order of polenta ($9), which was shared with the table.  It was nice, but I was expecting a much smoother texture which I would have preferred.  It’s a huge portion for one person so it’s good that the others were willing to take some!

Looking right.  Caroline said that she thought the mosaic reminded her of a cow!

Looking back.  D wondered how far back the restaurant goes.  Alas we forgot to look on the way out!

Looking up!  The Sydney tower.

For dessert, Caroline and L ordered the deconstructed pannacotta ($14).  Very nice.

I ordered the zuppa inglese ($14) which is what Caroline had last time and I’ve been waiting patiently to have for a week.  I loved it.  

The Zuppa Inglese is a meringue/Pavlova/trifle type dish that also contains a custard and small pieces of chocolate with a spongy syrupy/liquery base.  Hard to describe, wonderful to eat!

D had what I had last week, the Spiedo dessert plate ($18).  On the left is Amedei chocolate barbajada which was a dark chocolate with a milk gelato on top.  In the middle a deconstructed tiramisu, and a strawberry gelato which was a top slithers of real strawberry.

I think we’ll certainly be back to Spiedo in the future.  We had a great meal and a lovely chat.

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Yesterday it was time to go and get some Indonesian food.  We had planned to go to Randwick and find an Indonesian restaurant, but in the end we decided that since we had a voucher (which we forgot to use, D’oh!) to use at Aseana that we would rather go there.  Aseana is not really specific about the origins of their food – they label themselves as being south-east Asian.  Unfortunately that didn’t really include Indonesia for some reason, so we will do more research and go for Indonesian next week instead.

We first heard of Aseana at Malaysia Fest, enjoyed their cendol and said that we should go and try them.  Maybe it’s the quality of restaurants in Sydney, maybe we’re able to pick good restaurants, but we seem to have had very few (like less than 1%) bad restaurant experiences here.  Today was no exception, although I was disappointed with the cendol on this visit.

We decided to share meals, which is a great way to order and taste lots of different food, especially when there are many in a group.  Today it was just the two of us, but sharing is still a great way to go.

Roti canai ($2.50), which looked a little flat (well it is a flatbread, but normally they’re a bit more ruffled), but tasted good.  Roti in any form is always appreciated by us.

Next up was the regular Malaysian beef rendang ($8.90 regular; $15.90 large).  Very nice.  Although I have had better, I did enjoy this, and find that rendang does seem to differ (sometimes considerably) between restaurants.

Lee’s Stewed Duck on noodles ($10.80).  Very nice, a bit messy!  I’m not the biggest duck fan, but this was nice.  Not too fatty and one tiny little piece of bone.  I did enjoy the noodles in the sauce more than the duck though.

Caroline had the Milo Godzilla ($5.50).  Cold, milky Milo topped with a scoop of ice-cream and a heap of undissolved Milo on top. YUM!

I had the Bandung ($3.00).  Rose syrup with milk on ice.  It reminded me of Indian Bombay crush (which is apparently also known as ‘Falooda/Faluda’ which is kind of funny since that’s was one of our desserts).  Very nice.

Thick toast with butter & kaya ($3.00).  Simple and awesome.  That is all.

Time to put up the Christmas decorations.  Is that a snowman or an alien?  I’m thinking snowman, but it could also be an alien.  Or perhaps a well fed customer who is about to roll out of the restaurant and down the road.

Ah, Burmese Faluda ($4.50).  Similar to the Bandung, but with ice-cream, sago and jelly cubes).  Double yum!

Ice Cendol ($5.00).  The one item that I was disappointed with.  It’s true that what I was really wanting was the cendol drink, not the dessert, but it wasn’t just that.  There was a nice flavour from the syrup poured over the ice, but the pandan noodles were completely tasteless, and there was no pandan taste in the dish at all.

To end off we both had kopi tarik ($3.80).  Traditionally poured from height from one container to another you end up with the frothy top.  Although I didn’t get a photo, they actually do this in the restaurant (normally you don’t see it in restaurants) which provided a bit of interest and entertainment.  It was of course very good too.

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Hokkien Mee

Serves: 2 – 4 (depending on how greedy you are! 2 for us)

Ingredients and Method

Please take a look at TFP’s site for the original recipe and method.

Result

We didn’t have the right type of soy sauces and I was going to just use what I had, but I checked with TFP and she reckoned that it would be better, more authentic, to try and find the proper sauces.  You don’t have to find the exact brands, but you should at least try to get Chinese soy sauces.  All I had was Japanese soy sauce and ketjap manis (an Indonesian sweet soy sauce).  I think in future I might actually try it with those to taste what the difference would be, but I was glad that we decided to do it with more authentic sauces.  We managed to get the exact brands that TFP’s Mum used for the soy sauces (these were from China and Malaysia), but we could not find the exact brand of noodles.  Most of the noodles we found on the shelves were produced locally (i.e. within the state), so I’m assuming that the brand she used can only be found in Perth (or Western Australia).  I don’t really think it matters that much, as long as you use decent quality noodles.  The ones we used were ‘Double Merino’ brand, and worked very well.

I think that this is going to go down as one of my favourite dishes.  Right up there with Minchee (which we will do a recipe for next I think), and Char Kway Teow (amongst many others of course).  The flavours are so rich and deep, and are wonderfully umami.  For the meat we decided on chicken and prawns.  I separately cooked up the vegetables first, then the chicken, then the prawns.  I didn’t want all the flavours to mingle, and because of the sauce the wok had to be cleaned* between the meats to avoid it burning.  If you weren’t so specific you could quite easily do all your chosen meats at the same time, and then the “stuck” sauce would be dissolved in the next step – adding the stock.

Really, there’s nothing to dislike about this dish.  I love noodles so this was right up my street.  The chicken was lovely and tender (we used breast), and the prawns were bursty and plump with a lovely taste and a very satisfying mouth feel – nice and firm and meaty.

I’m thinking that perhaps I made the sauce a little too dark.  I didn’t go by the exact quantities, but the only downside that the sauce looked dark and was perhaps a little thick.  It did not in the slightest taste salty.

If you love Chinese food, I’d highly recommend giving this dish a try.

* When I say that my wok has been cleaned, what I am referring to is that the excess cooking sauces have been wiped out/removed.  If you have a properly seasoned carbon steel wok it should be fairly non-stick, but in some cases the thick sauces may stick, burn and become carbonised, which will alter the taste of the meal, and if this happens the wok should be wiped down as best as possible.  Your wok should never be cleaned shiny with strong detergents after use as you will lose the wok-hei flavour.  Instead, simply wipe down and clean with water.  Use a little mild soap if necessary (proper soap, not chemical detergent).  Scratching the coating down the the bare metal will not be too bad, but if you completely strip off the seasoning/coating not only will you lose the wok-hei flavour, but your wok will no longer be non-stick and will have to be re-seasoned (a tedious job).  If you’re using a wok with a synthetic non-stick coating (Teflon* or ceramic), this will not apply, but you will never get the wok-hei flavour if you use these types of wok.

* Teflon is baaaaad m’kay.  Rather use ceramic, titanium (if you can afford it) or a human and eco-friendly non-stick coating.

Yesterday we went to a Korean restaurant, Sydney Madang.  As is common with Korean restaurants, Sydney Madang is a BBQ restaurant where they provide a stove in your table and you do your own cooking!

Once it’s confirmed that you’ll be ordering BBQ dishes they bring the fire.  While the actual unit runs off gas, they provide some charcoal to speed things up, and to give your food that BBQ taste.

It’s quite a big contraption, and while the table has four seats, I think you’d find it hard to seat that many people, especially once the table is full of cooked and uncooked food.

There is an indoor section and an outdoor section.  BBQ can be done in either, but smoking is only permitted outside (where technically it should not be allowed as it is under cover).  We were seated in the smoking section because there were no tables available inside and we didn’t feel like queueing, although the queue did seem to move relatively quickly.

The first batch of food arrived.  Ansim Gui (fillet steak) ($23).  Also here is a bowl of sauces that I have no idea what they are!  (BAD BLOGGER!)

Here is the Dweji Bul Go Gi (Marinated Pork) ($15), and the other condiments which included kim chi (picked cabbage), marrows, lettuce, potato salad, and something I can’t identify but I think it was bean curd skin.

The cooking process!

We also ordered a starter of Twigim Mandoo (fried dumplings – seafood and vegetable) ($16 for the large portion)

After a while the food is done.  It looks a little over done, but it wasn’t, it’s just the marinade that has caught.

Nice food, but something that I think you could quite easily do at home on the BBQ.  I’d go again for sure.  Next time in the non-smoking section though.

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Afterwards we were looking for dessert.  We traipsed Haymarket, World Square and most of the CBD it seems.  Eventually we remembered that Spiedo are known for great desserts.  We’re actually going there next week for a full meal but couldn’t resist the urge to drop in and sample something sweet!

Zuppa Inglese ($14).

The Zuppa Inglese is a meringue/Pavlova/trifle type dish that also contains a custard and small pieces of chocolate with a spongy syrupy/liquery base.  Hard to describe, wonderful to eat!

Dessert plate ($18).  On the left is Amedei chocolate barbajada which was a lovely dark chocolate with a milk gelato on top.  In the middle a deconstructed tiramisu that was very nice, and a strawberry gelato (although I think it was perhaps closer to a sorbet) which was a top slithers of real strawberry and was very tasty and refreshing.

We’ll report more on these as I think it’s very likely we’ll have them again when we return to Spiedo.

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Pork with Plum Sauce

Serves: 2 – 4

Ingredients

450g pork fillet
1 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)
4 tsp brown sugar
a pinch of ground cinnamon
vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic
2 spring onions
4 tbsp plum sauce
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
150ml water
1 tsp chilli sauce (or to preference)
plum quarters and spring onions to garnish

Method

Combine the cornflour, soy sauce, rice wine, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and add the pork to the mixture.  Coat well with the combination and set aside for up to 30 minutes.
Remove the meat from the sauce and keep the sauce for later.
Heat oil in a wok and stir fry the pork for a few minutes until it has browned.
Add the garlic, onions, plum sauce, hoisin sauce, water and chilli sauce, and stir fry for a minute, then let simmer for a few more minutes.
Add the reserved sauce and cook for another minute.
Transfer to a bowl or plate, and garnish with plum quarters and spring onions.
Serve with rice or noodles.

Result

A lovely deep flavoured dish.  We didn’t marinate very long, perhaps only 10 minutes, but the flavour was still good.
We also didn’t have access to fresh plums, so I used plums from a tub, the kind that’s in a fruit juice.  It was a bit messy to cut them up but they worked quite well.

Credit

The original recipe was sourced from “Chinese” by Woolworths South Africa.  Published by Parragon.  ISBN: 0752566600.