Westie bits and bobs - a blog amnesty post

I'm writing this from Chinatown, Singapore.  Drums thrum and horns wail from the Indian temple down the street, and the air is thick with the smell of fat raindrops.  The Year of the Snake will soon begin, and I believe it's going to be a dynamic and exciting year for me.

But first I need a clean slate.  I admit I've been late to start back on the blogging train as all my half-finished bits and pieces feel like they're dragging me down.  Claire of Melbourne Gastronome has long been an advocate of the "blog amnesty", which is a chance to "post those stories you haven't quite finished; just the images, list the important bits in point form, do whatever it takes, just get the bloody things up so you/we can all move on" (via Eating with Jack).  In other words, I need a blog colonic.  With such an unsavoury image in mind, please now enjoy all this tidbits from the last month or so!

First up, a big shout out to Gamon Street's Advieh - a spot of sultry Middle Eastern flavour in a sleepy part of Seddon.

This well-hidden cafe makes tip top coffee.  They use Five Senses' Dark Horse blend - a rather aptly-named choice for this little-known gem!

It's a family business with handsome son on the La Marzocco and funky mum in the back whipping up Middle Eastern-influenced plates.  I love the combos, which might feature crusty felafel, wickedly good chicken shish or a mixed grill along with delicious, daily-changing dips and salads ($13.50 to $18).

Breakfasts are excellent too, with plenty of daily specials.  Advieh reminds me a lot of Flavours of Lakhoum in Richmond (now closed), which used to be my happy place in the early 2000s.  It'd be considered somewhat naff now, but the barista there used to draw faces on the top of your latte.  One friend took it back to the counter to check it was intentional - he thought he might have a contender for the Virgin Mary grilled cheese! 

Another cafe that's been there for a while but is new to me is the much-loved Jellybread in Barkly Village.  They were the first cafe on the strip and have a "secret" backyard oasis that is just heaven for parents and kids, including a vintage caravan the kids can set up house in, loads of ride-on toys, a sprawling lawn and more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this BRAT with Istra bacon and homemade aioli on Turkish bread made locally in Footscray ($13).  For kids there are creamed rice cups, organic yoghurt with poached fruit and two sizes of babycino.

Speaking of Turkish bread, get it fresh daily from Wally and family at Metro West Turkish Kebab House in Albert Street, Footscray (opposite the Coles plaza, on the same side as Savers).  It's $3 for a large or a mere $1 for a small and worth every cent.

Just around the corner is Sen, who really deserve more love.  They serve reliably tasty Vietnamese with a northern twist.

They're famous for their bun thit nuong or rice vermicelli with grilled pork.  For the ridiculous price of about $9, you get wickedly good charcoal-scented, marinated belly pork that's sliced thin so it's crispy like bacon.  I love their Vietnamese pickled vegies here, with big chunks of cabbage - so unusual and so delicious!

Sen are never all that busy but Hao Phong in Hopkins Street are perpetually so.

That evening we had muc rang muoi (salt n' pepper squid) and fried rice noodles, which were fine rather than spectacular, but this salted fish and chicken fried rice was fantastic.  Try the rice vermicelli version here too.

I've been thoroughly enjoying my avocado subscription with Barham Avocados.  For $36 a month, I get 12 glossy green emu eggs home delivered.  As the season has progressed, I've enjoyed Fuerte, Hass and just now received a box of gorgeous, grapefruit-sized Reed.  The season will be wrapping up in March, so get in quick if you want to try this beautiful fruit (just keep them in the fridge and take out progressively to enjoy perfect avos the whole month).

Sad news - the fantastic team at Rockfish are selling the business!  Apparently they need a break from their frenetic pace - they're a victim of their own professionalism and quality.  The hunt for great local fish and chips will therefore continue.  Meanwhile, we thoroughly enjoyed flake and chips from Top of the Bay in Williamstown.  I don't normally eat flake but this was tip top (the other option, flathead, looked somewhat dry and unappealing).

Grab your fush and chups and settle in at the park opposite to watch the boats and have girlie chats.  (PS:  They do have chicken salt - under the counter, like it's some sort of contraband!)

Whoa - I feel SO much better having gotten all that out there!  Hope you found something that tickled your fancy.  Next up - I dive into the Lion City, stomach first.  I hope you will join me for the ride!

Samak Masqoof at Babylon

I feel a certain connection with Babylon Restaurant in Footscray.  I was behind the owner in a queue at the Council when he was putting in his last bits of paperwork to get the go-ahead to open.  His enthusiasm was infectious and still is, and I'm so glad to see they are still going strong in their expansive Nicholson Street restaurant.

Babylon's menu roams from a simple kebab sandwich and Coke for $6.50 to a whole spit-roasted lamb with side dishes, home-delivered, for $220.  It's popular with everyone, from office workers grabbing a quick bite to men lounging with endless cups of tea.

See the trident on the main sail of the ship?  That says Allah, the Arabic word for God.  The cursive nature of Arabic writing means that it can be plied into various shapes to literally make pictures out of words.

Many Middle Eastern homes and restaurants have these kind of images decorating the walls.  They are various Quranic verses - I like the chilli one!  People throughout the Muslim world have folk traditions relating to different verses, such as special ones to read during labour or to read in each room of a new house.

After our intense sheep's head experience last time we visited Babylon, we were keen to try something a little more pedestrian.  The lovely owner offered us another very traditional Iraqi dish, samak masqouf.  Normally this is by special order only here at Babylon but there was one already prepared for a large booking who came later that evening, so the owner let us have their fish while whipping them up another.

Back in Iraq this is a much-beloved dish served along the banks of the Tigris, butterflied and grilled, most traditionally over a charcoal or wood-fired BBQ.  It is rubbed with a special marinade which must include tomato, capsicum and perhaps tamarind as it was sweet, spicy and tangy.  The fish was very tender, separating in soft white threads, quite like blue grenadier.

The way it had been butterflied, however, meant that the bones were hard to avoid.  Ah, bones, that which divides East and West, it would seem!  Most Anglos I know just have a hard time with them, no matter what the animal.  I know in Vietnamese culture much pleasure is derived from navigating around bones, hiding as they do delicate little slivers of meat which are often the sweetest.  If you look at the goat carcasses in Footscray market for Vietnamese goat curry, they do indeed seem all skin and bone but it's that textural interplay (as well as the amazing flavours they lend to the curry's broth) that is the point.

Contrast this with my beautiful friend who lives near Cairo, whose Egyptian in-laws are absolutely horrified at the "waste" from the shreds of meat she leaves on her chicken drumsticks and wings.  I have also tried to convince friends that Chinese chicken that is red on the bone is absolutely fine to eat.  I don't mind bones that much but sometimes they become tedious after a while.

So we did enjoy our samak masgouf despite its boniness.  When I asked what kind of fish it was, though, I discovered it was qattan, a freshwater fish somewhat like carp that had been shipped frozen all the way from Iraq!  Holy food miles!  Add to that the fact that it is apparently an at-risk fish and it was a decidedly eco-sinful meal.  Nevertheless the exclamations of delight from the big Iraqi family dining nearby when the samak was ceremoniously presented made me remember my swoons of delight eating air-freighted Kingston biscuits in DC and London.  The taste of home is something you cannot quantify and is as important for mental health as vitamins and minerals are for physical.

Anyway, I would have been happy to eat this fabulous rice on its own, each grain so separate and tender, mixed as it traditional with small ma'akarona or vermicelli fried in butter, spiced with cardamom and studded with sultanas and green peas.

A simple and delicious salad was another worthy accompaniment, dressed lightly with lemon and sumac, a dried, fruity red berry.

Babylon have great bread, quite like Turkish bread - soft as a pillow inside, full of bubbles and with a tender crust.  The black seeds on top are nigella or love-in-the-mist seeds, also often seen on Turkish bread.  They have a very subtle aroma and are used across the geographic crescent stretching from Indonesia to the Middle East to India.  They are imbued with much mystical power in the Middle East and I have a lovingly-written homage to them composed by a friend in Arabic, which one day I will translate and share with you.  For he, a Kurd from Syria, they are as much the taste of home as Babylon's samak masgouf, its sheep's head barche and lamb shank tashreb are to Melbourne's Iraqi community, and I am so grateful to have a portal here in Footscray allowing me to step even just momentarily into their world.

Babylon (map)
Address:  152 Nicholson Street, Footscray
Phone: 9689 3323
Hours: Open 7 days

Wheelchair
Entry:  Ground level.

Babylon Restaurant 2

Dear reader, I like to imagine you reading this blog just as I write it, with a plate of something at your side.  Is it a delicate cup of tea with a shortbread balanced across the rim, or perhaps a bowl of spaghetti, dressed with a zesty tomato sugo?  If this is the case, please navigate away now, perhaps to one of the other wonderful food blogs to the right, and return when you are suitably food-less, otherwise you may be food-less in another way less pleasant.  Vegetarians, you may want to sit this one out.

Is your snack over?  Plate in the sink?  Let's begin.

Babylon Restaurant is a little piece of Iraq in the heart of Footscray.  It is family-run with very friendly service and an enchanting, if somewhat bemusing, undersea theme.  Last time, I was entranced by the Iraqi delights on the menu, nestled between broader Middle Eastern dishes such as felafel and kebabs, as well as pizzas and lasagne.  In a previous incarnation, your host, Ms Baklover, majored in Arabic at university.  Since descending into the purgatory of small children, the furthest this has gotten me is an extra piece of baqlawa at Victoria Sweets.  So I relished this chance to use some of my hard-gotten gains to sort the pita from the pizza, as it were.

We were drawn to Tashreb and Barche which appeared on the menu with no further explanation.  As we chatted in Arabic, the very friendly server sketched out the dishes and confirmed happily that these were the Iraqi real deal.  Now I didn't go in blind, I knew Barche involved offal, but my kokoreç-loving father was by my side and ready to step up.

We started with a type of dolma or stuffed vine leaf to share.  It was fatter than usual, filled with a tangy mixture of rice, meat and tomato.  Very good.

Then came our Barche.  Now when the server said "feet, head and stomach", I imagined a relatively innocuous Iraqi version of Pho Dac Biet.  This is what we got:

Now some people can't eat a whole fish because the whole staring-eye thing creeps them out.  You try that with a sheep's head!

There was also a trotter and some flaps, identified later as stomach.  The smell was a hundred Sunday roasts in unison.  I mean, I can't believe I whinged about that little pot of goat-on-the-bone at Indi Hots the other day.  The table of lanyarded lunching ladies stared at us woefully.  Then we got this:

Yes, it is a proto-sausage, innards filled with a fatty rice and mince mixture.  I did warn you!!

Dad tucked in, slurping and groaning with pleasure.  Just another day at the office for a man who goes to yum cha just for the chicken feet and special order of duck tongues with extra jellyfish.  My daughter loved the "sausages".  Children are amazing - before a certain age they have none of the cultural hang-ups of adults and will eat purely guided by flavour.  At two years old, my elder daughter once ate all the offal off the top of a congee I mis-ordered, while I shuddered in horror.

Me - I was reduced to a pre-teen shadow of myself.  Remember when, faced with some horrifying meal prospect like broccoli soup, your parents insisted you "try it"?  You would then dip the tip of spoon in one millimetre, touch it to the tip of your tongue before insisting, "see, I did, and I don't like it!"  Well, that was me.  I couldn't even touch the proto-sausage, I had to extract a little of the filling with just the tip of my fork.  Footscray Food Blog - not faddish, but far from fearless!

Our Tashreb arrived, and if you want to geek out on Arabic grammar with me, the root of this word is shariba, to drink, and tashreb translates as "soaked".  The dish is a luscious, meltingly soft lamb shank which has been lovingly cooked for hours with bay leaves and other spices, atop pillowy, torn Iraqi bread that has soaked up all its salty, fatty juices.

This came with plenty of delicious Iraqi bread, which has the fluffiness of Turkish bread with a chewier crust.  The salad was undressed and a bit tired, a little disappointing.

The Tashreb was delicious but unfortunately, I was done.  Now before you cross Babylon Restaurant off your list and go back to eating at Souvlaki Hut, stop!  This is a fantastic restaurant.  They are unflinchingly authentic and I respect them for not trying to tone it down or steer us away from their delicacies.  We waited for a while for our delicacies and during that time, the food I saw coming out of the homely, family-run kitchen looked fabulous.  Fat, crispy felafels, chicken Maryland in a golden herb rub, rice studded with jewel-like vegetables and dusted with toasty-brown spices.

Babylon, I will return!  Maybe for a vegie platter next time though.

Babylon Restaurant, 152 Nicholson St, Footscray Map
Phone: 9689 3323
Hours: 9am until late, 7 days
No alcohol, no BYO