Wild thing.

There’s an edge to the breeze coming off the Indian Ocean and the rain is still drizzling down as we step out into the street. We’ve had a lovely evening listening to classical music – thank you, Duncan Gardiner, I know you won’t mind me dropping your name – and now it’s time for something to eat. We get in our cars and drive through the main Fremantle café strip, out where it is quieter and less crowded to the corner of Wray Avenue where we find Wild Poppy.



I’ve been to Wild Poppy before on a coffee-and-cake visit but haven’t had the chance to try their dinner menu yet. Everyone who has been tells me that it is good, interesting, value-for-money and kid-friendly.  I rang the evening before to make a booking and the cheerful woman on the other end of the phone told me that they didn’t take bookings but if we turned up around 7.30pm there would definitely be room for our group of 6. She was right – only one other table is occupied as we enter.

Inside, there is an eclectic décor style – as if someone has cherry-picked art and china and sofas from a verge collection in one of Perth’s better suburbs. It’s warm, comfortable and unthreateningly boho. I want my own recycled-doily lampshade.

Can I buy one from somewhere or do I have to source and make my own?

Water is poured (and spilled and cleaned up and apologies made), menus are brought and we see that there are a range of ‘tasty plates’ which can be had as entrees or as tapas-style dining and a mains menu. There’s much to love – what we have here isn’t the usual ‘modern Australian’ fare (except, perhaps, the chilli mussels) and to fine a menu where the most expensive dish is $26 is something I thought I would never see again in Perth.





A couple of bottles of friendly Prosecco ($25 each, the mark-up is not huge) get us in good spirits for ordering. Who can go past anything that sounds as delicious as vine-wrapped brie with watermelon-rind jam? The children want squid wings and sausages.

For mains, I choose the mussels with chilli jam and coconut cream; my partner and my friend, Luke, go for the grilled goats cheese with rosti and mushrooms; my other friend, Duncan, has the butternut risotto cakes while my older son plumps for the quail and papaya salad. My small son is not a huge eater so he chooses a tasty plate of Thai pork and peanut sausage.

The grilled vine-wrapped brie turns out to be as good as it sounded. The vine leaves are crisp and scented as you bite through them to get to the oozy, melty brie in the centre. I decide there and then that I need to find out more about watermelon rind jam because it is the perfect fragrant accompaniment to the cheese – sweet but with a tang and astringency that sets of the creaminess of the brie but still sticky and gelatinous and coloured like milk-jade..

Vine-wrapped brie and watermelon-rind jam.

Small son is very happy with his sausage which comes on a banana leaf (on a plate) with a wedge of lime and slivers of chilli on top. I get a bite because I am the mother and I insist. It has substantial chunks of peanut and isn’t super-hot but doesn’t lack in ‘bite’.

A squeeze of lime just gives an extra kick to the chilli/peanut combo.

[Aside: perhaps I will blog about this separately another time, but I like that my kids can choose what they want from any menu in any restaurant and not be phased by new taste sensations and especially that they are not put off by the idea of chilli. Sure they have their likes and dislikes when it comes to food, but they are not picky and that means dining out is something we can do as a family and doesn’t necessarily involve fast-food restaurants.]

The squid wings are substantial and chunky with a decent dollop of fresh, piquant aioli on the side. My older son polishes them off because he is fourteen and over 6 foot tall and has an appetite to match.

Wings not rings.

The mains take a while to come but we are pleased with them when they do. I have to be in a very particular mood to order chilli mussels and these suit me down to the ground. One of the issues that I have with this dish normally is that the sauce is too thin, but tonight the liquid has substance. The coconut cream helps to thicken it up and there are good-sized morsels of fresh chilli clinging to the mussels and the bean-sprouts. There’s an extra dish for empty shells and bread to mop up the ‘juice’. Very nice.





The other dishes are generous. The goat’s cheese is a substantial serve and the butternut risotto cakes come in a cluster of three. The dish I envy most is my older son’s quail with papaya salad, the quail is crispy-skinned and smells glorious. They have even put a boiled quail’s egg on the side – can we say ‘Mother and Child Reunion? – and the papaya salad has burn and is vinegary.

Goat's cheese

A butternut take on arancini

Crispy-skinned quail

I love a quail egg - soft-boiled quail egg, even better!



We clean our plates and some of us still have room for dessert – the standout of which was the saffron crème brulee – not just because of its delicate texture and scent under the crackly toffee, but also because it goes so nicely with the retro table-cloth. It was Luke’s crème brulee but he was very generous about letting me have spoonfuls and when I go back, because I will go back, I intend to have one all to myself.

Saffron is for the dish and for the decor.

This is a great little eatery which won’t remain undiscovered for long. I’m glad we got the chance to visit before it becomes trendy. I hope it won’t become trendy but it is the eternal dilemma of hoping that a restaurant will stay quiet enough to remain under the radar but get above the radar enough to stay in business.

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Sunday Slow-Cooking recipe #1

Anyone who owns a slow-cooker will understand how I feel about mine. There's a love and a reverence I feel for anything that will work through the day (or overnight even) to come up with a tasty meal and all I have to do is sling stuff into the pot.

Massive respect.

My slow-cooker hibernates through the summer but in winter it appears, sloughs off its coating of under-the-cupboard dust and gets back into the cooking of soups, stews, ragouts or chowders that the colder weather and my family demand.

My preferred approach to slow-cooking is that there should be as little preparation as possible. The use of cans, cubes, packets and any other pre-prepared ingredients may be a no-no to some, but for me it is the quintessence of the slow-cooking philosophy. Working mothers will understand that on the weekend, you need family-time and down-time and not 'six hours in the kitchen time'. Pre-prepared is good and is your friend.

So, what's currently simmering in the kitchen (and I mean that literally, I can smell it wafting into the study where I am currently typing) is a roasted red-pepper and tomato soup.  I am not sure how recipe-oriented this blog will turn out to be, but let's give it a go. 

Ingredients:

A jar of roast red peppers, two tubs of tomato puree and two cans of tinned tomatoes.

I have no preference for my brand of puree or tinned toms. There just happened to be Ardmona on the shelves. I like to get the chopped tomatoes with added herbs, saves me having to dig around in the spice rack or spend $$$ on out-of-season herbs.

About 3 cups of chicken stock and half a bottle of white wine.

Sometimes I use vegetable stock (when I am cooking for vegetarian friends) but generally I think chicken is more flavoursome and it means that I don't have to add too much extra salt as the stock does it all for me. The wine is a cheapy from the local bottle-o. I went in and declared "I need white wine to cook with" and this is what the nice man gave me (it cost $10 and is perfectly okay for the cook to quaff while tossing ingredients into the slow-cooker). 

One onion, a lemon and three sticks of celery.

The onion will be chopped and fried, the lemon will be juiced and have the zest taken off and the celery simply chopped.

A handful of chopped coriander.

I am a recent convert to coriander. Previously, I felt it was too soapy and alkaline for my tastes but I am getting used to it slowly. If you are feeling more trad, you can use basil, fresh is best.

First up, you need to chop and fry the onion. This is the only pre-cooking that I do. I get the onion on the stove to sweat while I put the other ingredients into the pot, then when I am nearly done, I turn up the heat and let the onion get really dark and sweet. If I am feeling indulgent, I will put some sugar in to help the caramelisation process along.

I drain the peppers in the sink:

The chopped tomatoes and celery go in the pot with the drained peppers.

After that, the tomato puree and the coriander.

Then I get the juice out of and the zest off the lemon.

The onion is usually ready by now so it goes into the pan with the lemon zest. I add my 3 cups of chicken stock and my half-bottle of vino bianco.

Then I add the secret ingredient (not so secret as of now):

One of my favourite spices to cook with.

You can't go past the smokey, earthy aroma of powdered smoked paprika. For me, if a soup or casserole dish comes out a bit on the thin side, then this will save it every time. 

I like to put the slow-cooker on a low heat for 6 hours, but if you are pressed for time, high for 3 hours will also work out fine.

To whizz or not to whizz? A bit of a whizz in the blender - up to you whether you want yours very smooth, quite textured, or, as I did, somewhere in between. Once this is done, I decide how much sugar to add. You need the sugar to balance out the acidity from the tomatoes and the lemon (and this came out super lemony!).Some people like to add their sugar when they cook up the tomato paste, but I prefer to taste and add at the end.

Then into bowls with a dollop of creme fraiche and some more coriander.

And the end result!

A word on the bread. I am lucky enough to live within walking distance of one of Lawley's bakeries. Originally located in Mount Lawley, there are now enough branches around Perth to make it possible to get hold of nice bread very easily.

As it says on the bag, they also operate a pretty good cafe on their premises.

I chose a rosemary flat bread. There were sprigs of toasted rosemary scattered across the top of the loaf. It was nice and moist with lots of olive oil which soaked into the paper of the bag.

Can you see the paper glistening?

The best thing about this soup? Well, beyond being smokey, peppery, lemony and sweet, there was heaps of it left. It served 5 of us with generously-filled bowls on Sunday evening, plus I will be able to have some for work for three days this week. The only drawback about having it at work - I can't have a glass of wine on the side...

Love Shak

One place that I often find myself on a Saturday afternoon is Fremantle Arts Centre.  I drop Number 1 son at his art class and then Number 2 son and self walk the short distance to the Arts Centre. We like it because it is (usually) quiet, it is historical, there are gallerys, there is a gift shop and there is a great cafe.

Normally,  we sit in the leafy courtyard and have coffee and cake. However, the last time I went, something had changed. As I sat there with my mocha and muffin, I noticed a delicious spicy fragrance emanating from the kitchen and the waitstaff going past us with bread boards and little frying pans.  A quick glance at the menu revealed exactly what was going on:

Shak-shuka! 

I had only had shak-shuka once before and it had left an impression on my palate not easily forgotten. It's a North African dish of eggs poached in a spiced tomato sauce and, if you are tired of the standard breakfast fare offered in cafes on Saturday and Sunday mornings, shak-shuka is a wake-up for your weekend and your taste-buds. So it was with excitement yesterday, that I returned to the Arts Centre cafe to try it out.

My son is not into tomatoes or spice. He swears by the apple pie that they have there and declares that while they have it on the menu, he will never try anything else. I get this. When you are 10 and you have the opportunity for a large slice of warm apple pie, made with caramel and topped with cream, ice-cream or both, then you shouldn't pass it up.

It was one of those rare instances when he wanted his pie without anything on the side.

I ordered my shak-shuka, deciding that I would add a serve of chorizo into the mix. I also opted for a glass of local red. I've been a fan (and a mailing-list member) of Madfish Wines for many years now and when I see their shiraz on a menu I know that I can't go wrong. The shak-shuka took a little while to come but, hey, it is made fresh and when you see the little frying-pan come sizzling towards your table you get very excited!

I could have just sat and looked at it all day.

The tomato sauce was thick and still bubbling as the waiter set it down in front of me. I could smell onion, cumin and the generous handful of chopped coriander on the top. There were four slices of soft white baguette, a portion of garlic butter and  some kalamata olives on the side.

It's important to have enough bread for the mopping up stage.

The sauce was spicy without being hot - the last time I had shak-shuka, I'd been offered some home-made chilli sauce to go with it and I wish that I had had the same option this time around. That said, it was warm and studded with slices of quite delicate, fennel-y chorizo. I buttered my bread and got into it. The eggs were poached just the way I liked them, the yolk not too runny and not too firm.

 

Just-right yolk oozing onto the pan-base.

Such a good mingling of flavours in the mouth was made even better when chased with a slurp of decent WA shiraz. I tried to slow down, really I did, but before long my plate - sorry, my pan -  was clean.

The sign of a happy customer.

I sat, finishing my wine, feeling that I could easily eat the whole dish all over again if they had placed one in front of me. Luckily, things like that don't tend to happen. As it was, I was too full for dessert.

Fremantle Arts Centre Cafe opens for breakfast and for lunch. The staff are prompt, courteous and friendly - most importantly, kid-friendly. The menu is a short one, but a varied one and the wine-list is encouragingly local:

 All WA wines, bar one.

We like it so much there that we will forgive them their appalling typo at the end of the wine-list. In case you didn't notice, here's a close-up.

I don't know about you, but to me 'cockage' sounds rude.

The shak-shuka appears on both the lunch and breakfast menu, the main difference being that if you order breakfast shak-shuka, you can add chipolata as an extra rather than chorizo. Next time, I'm going back with my partner so that we can order a few more extras between us and see what they are like.

On a clear, crisp winter afternoon, sitting under the vines at the Freo Arts Centre is just lovely.

A Taste of Home

Let's start, in the words of the late. great Douglas Adams, with "a nice, hot, cup of tea". Here they are:

 Industrial strength tea to deal with industrial strength jet-lag.

What's not to like? It's strong, it's hot, it has full cream milk and it has sugar. Look at the pea-green mugs. Tea in a mug. On a wobbly table. In the village of Haworth. Luvverly.

Context: three hours before we had disembarked from a plane at Manchester airport, stumbled feeling jet-lagged and grubby to our hire car and headed north. We'd been on the plane for more hours than I care to mention, flying from Perth to Singapore, Singapore to Munich and then Munich to Manchester. The carrier was Singapore Airlines so the food and service were great but, let's be honest, airline tea and coffee, especially when you factor in those little containers of UHT milk, are not the best.

Determined to beat the jet-lag, we wound our way up through quaint towns such as Todmorden, Halifax and Hull, and then decided that, being fairly close, we would go and pay homage at the town-cum-shrine to the Bronte sisters, Haworth. By the time we got there, we were gasping for tea. Opposite the railway station was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall English tea shop. If I told you it was staffed by two hearty Yorkshire lasses with rosy cheeks and strong accents, you might not believe me, but it was. We sat outside on wobbly chairs by the wobbly table on a thin strip of pavement. It's fair to say that we gulped but, by heck! (or 'by 'eck!' as they say in Yorkshire), it was a grand cuppa. One of those memorable cups of tea that will live in legend. Nectar!

Fortified, we now had time for a bit of a look around. I won't dwell overly long on the village itself except to say that if you can go, as we did, on a glorious spring day with not too many tourists around, then it is well worth a visit.  It's very, very pretty as dour mill towns go.

Looking down Haworth High Street across to the moors.

We found a bakery in the high street with all kinds of interestingly named provender in the window. I had, of course, heard of parkin, which to me has always been a more substantial take on a flapjack or a more vigorous version of gingerbread. Parkin keeps well once made and apparently tastes better after a few days anyway, so I bet these ones stacked up in the window were approaching delicious.

I regret not buying some. They looked great and you could smell the ginger.

The jet-lag had robbed me of my appetite so I didn't buy any. Why I didn't think to buy some for later, I don't know, probably the jet-lag again. Neither did I purchase any of these:

It has to be good just because of the name.

I don't know how I managed to resist the fabulously named "Fat Rascals". I had never heard of them before but I will never forget the name. A quick search tells me that these are not only particularly local to the Cleveland and County Durham area but also that the recipe ( a rock cake with currants and fruit peel) dates back to Elizabethan times. Curiously, there is also an option to stuff them with the elements of a cooked breakfast - sausage, egg, tomato and bacon - to make a breakfast sandwich. Not something I feel I could stomach on a regular basis but  a combo that would surely make an excellent hangover cure.

We were staying in the little fishing village of Staithes where we had an 18th century fisherman's cottage (yes, I have been in Australia long enough now to be awed by anything architecturally older than 200 years) and where we also had a local pub.

On a cold night, it's great to be inside with a pint of ale and a roaring fire.

The Cod and Lobster has been on its site for many years but the building has been through a few changes. This is mainly because, sitting right on the harbour wall as it does, parts of it periodically get washed away by the huge storms that brew up in the North Sea.  Optimists that the locals are, they rebuild it and go on with the serving of beer and good pub food. It is a warm, welcoming place and has the added benefit of allowing children in until 9pm which our boys thought was 'cool'. The boys also liked the fish and chips:

I like it when you can tell there's a fish under the batter.

Now I live near to the port of Fremantle and have to say that the fish and chips there are great. However, too often the portions of fish that you get are amorphous lumps of shark covered in batter. You can't see that they were ever a fish - possibly because to do so, you would have toserve up a whole battered shark.  In Yorkshire we got used to fish that was fish shaped - wider at the head section tapering to the tail. It had a different texture to Aussie fish, firmer and chewier, very white and the sections falling cleanly apart. The chips were different too, thicker and very moist after they had soaked up the malt vinegar. And mushy peas are are main part of the dish...

 Shh! Don't tell - apparently most mushy 'peas' are really lentils.

Mushy peas with mint sauce or vinegar will come as a side serve if you order your fish and chips in a restaurant or, if you are in a chippy, close to the top of the extras' menu. A friend of mine who knows about such things, tells me that mushy peas aren't really peas but yellow lentils mushed and with green colouring added. This is because if you mush actual peas and then try to preserve them they will turn grey. Hmm.

We had a good many meals of this sort over the next couple of weeks.  Sometimes there were variations:

Deep fried garlic mushrooms at The Hatless Heron

Scampi and chips at The Hatless Heron

We discovered a great little cafe in Whitby called The Hatless Heron. I am ashamed to say that we only discovered it because of their big, obvious "Free Wifi" sign on the shop door and we were not just starved for food at that moment but also starved for Internet. We placed a biggish order (so we could eat slowly and garner as much time on-line as possible) and everything came out quickly and was very good. The scampi was juicy and there was lots of it, the garlic mushrooms were gorgeously buttery inside their crumbed coating. I got butter on my iPhone in the process of sampling one. The chips were big and fabulously textured because they had left the skins on the potatoes. I love it when they do that. Do you want a close up? Well, I do.

 Soft chips with just a hint of crunch on the skins.

As you can see from the pictures above, The Hatless Heron was also very good about serving up generous portions of simple fresh salad as part of each order. The staff seemed surprised that we actually cleaned our plates - it seems that often the salad is left behind. We could have had bread and butter for a little extra charge if we'd wanted it.

I have to put in an honourable mention for the drinks:

 I'm not a drinker of stout but I am married to one.

It smells of urine, but in a good way.

English liquor licensing laws are much more relaxed than in Australia, especially Western Australia. While there has been some recent change here about what alcohol you can buy and when, it is still something of a treat for us to go to the UK and have a drink with lunch in a cafe. My partner proclaimed his stout to be satisfactory and, not being a stout drinker myself, I will take his word for it. Me, I had a bottle of organic cider - you can tell it is organic when it is cloudy rather than clear. It was a real flavoursome mouthful, the fizz gentle and not overwhelming, the taste crisp and sour and the scent that strong fusty umami that is pleasantly reminiscent of an orchard in autumn and riskily close an un-mucked out horse stable. My partner took a sniff and declared that it 'smells of pee'. And it kind of does, but in a good appley way. Pee-smell aside, it went so well with the chips.

We did have a good day in Whitby. It was school holidays and quite crowded but we managed to buy some sticks of rock:

  All the colours of the rainbow - plus rainbow.

 And we found, but didn't buy, Vampire Relish.

Spooky.

I did try the Vampire Relish. It was your standard tomato and chilli jam which was being sold on the promise of being super-hot. I've been destroying my palate with chilli of increasing degrees on the Scoville scale for many years now so any claim to superlative chilli heat is like a red rag to a bull. I have to give it a go and see if it I can humiliate the vendor by responding to their concoction with a shrug and a 'meh'. The Vampre Relish to me it was mildly warm and not worthy of anyone's (or any vampire's) attention. It would have been nice in a ham sandwich or on a pork pie though.

If you are wondering "Why Vampire Relish?" this is because of Whitby's starring role in the book, "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. It is at Whitby that Count Dracula first steps ashore in England in the guise of a giant dog leaping off a ship where all the crew are dead, drained of their blood by the vampire.. Whitby Council, bless'em, have capitalised spectacularly on this and as a result, you can now go on "Dracula Tours", "Ghost Tours" and even experience Goth Weekends in the town. Certainly parts of it, such as the Abbey on the cliff top, are gothic enough:

 Spookier.

I don't know about a Gothic Weekend personally. Me, I'd rather go back for the scampi and chips.