FFB mega-post - Footscray pub goss, dumplings galore, and the FFB dish of the year!

To me, leftovers are like dominos.  Each skerrick, each tidbit does not get thrown out but joins the next meal in an endlessly delicious loop.  That bit of leftover rice is perfect mixed into a spinach and ricotta pie...and that last scoop of ricotta is perfect spread on a thick bit of toast, topped with frozen berries, and grilled till soft, warm, gooey and sweet.

The point when it gets a bit tricky, though, is when I'm going away for a while and need to clear out the fridge.  Sometimes it's kind of awesome - bacon, featuring in today's breakfast, lunch AND dinner! - but it's a real challenge making a dinner out of a manky end bit of cheese and a pile of cucumbers.

In the spirit of the fridge clean-out, then, I present to you a banquet of a blog amnesty post, bringing together all the treats and tidbits I've enjoyed over the last few months.  Join me in clearing out the virtual crisper drawer and making a gorgeous word salad out of it all.  Then we'll be ready to enjoy all the new and exciting treats that 2015 is set to deliver!

FYI, this post is going to be pretty epic.  Pretty much as epic as this oyster I ate!

It was from these guys and was amazing, going from minerally and sharp at first chew, to creamy and unctuous at the end.  'Twas et during a trip to Hobart which I just loved every minute of.

The food highlight (apart from the above oyster) was the degustation and matched sake at Three Japanese.  This place is proud to not do the usual sushi and teriyaki chicken thing, and to serve food that Japanese people would apparently go out to eat in Japan - not necessarily what westerners expect.  The sakes we tried were incredible and so varied.  If you thought like I did that clear sake was essentially metho, this is where to go to have your mind thoroughly blown.  Food highlights - chawanmushi savoury custard with sea urchin, and sesame-encrusted rice ball in sublime chicken stock.

I just have to show you where I stayed - a gorgeous Air BnB in West Hobart.  I love the architecture in Hobart.  The Tuscan toilet block units Melbourne is so enamoured with have not yet spread there, and long may they never.  Look at that roaring fire!  Not visible are the harbour views from every room in the house.  It was very hard to get on that bus to the airport.

But get on I did, back to the west.  Even giant oysters can't trump the yum cha at Gold Leaf Sunshine.  This continues to be my go-to, not just in the west, but anywhere in Melbourne.  (Recently tried elsewhere - Golden Dragon Palace, Templestowe [overpriced and yawningly average]; Me Wah, Hobart [strange, staid, expensive and unremarkable]; Tao Tao House, Hawthorn [exxy, boring].

Oh, Gold Leaf, I do heart you!

Speaking of dumplings, we recently decided to give Magic Momo in West Footscray another go.  The guys who own this place are so nice and are trying so hard.  In the last year or so they redid the whole menu to focus exclusively on Nepalese food.

A lot of the south Asian restaurants in West Footscray and surrounds have the atmospherics of a bus shelter.  Hats off to Magic Momo who have gone to some effort with colourful piccies and posters and nice tunes playing.

The momo here are really pretty good.  Here we have steamed, fried and in a spicy sauce.

We loved the lamb choila, with spicy, tasty chunks of lamb, spicy soybeans, and rice bubble-like "beaten rice".

Also had this vegetarian thali-style dish which we weren't mad about - everything on the plate needed more oomph.  Go, bring a BYO bottle and give Magic Momo a try.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Over December we also really got into the Plough.  Scott Thomas, who used to run the Courthouse in North Melbourne and the Montague in South Melbourne, recently took over as head chef and the food has done a complete 180.

LOOOOOOVED these oysters with creme fraiche and fish roe!!!  Such an inspired combination.

We have eaten a lot of things on the menu now and are always very happy.  There are a few small misfires, like kipflers in duck fat that weren't crispy enough, or a millet salad that needed a bit more zing.  But on the whole, I think the food here is fab.  Congrats on snaring Scott Thomas and long may his steady hand steer this plough.

The other big news in the Footscray pub scene is that Sean Donovan has sold the Station!  This news was met with much devastation.  I have never blogged about it, but the Station is one of my most regular haunts.  We went back with trepidation to see if it was still any good.

Well, a rump like this does not lie.  Still as gorgeous as ever.  People think the Station is too expensive, but their entry-level steak is $28 (including chips, salad and sauce) and is bloody amazing.  A steak at most other pubs in Melbourne would be around the same price, and most are nowhere near as good.  Try it before you knock it!

PS: Did you know the Station do possibly the best pub kids' meals in Melbourne?  They're not cheap - about $18 from memory, which includes drink and ice cream - but much better quality than the normal crappy offerings.  And the ice cream had real vanilla beans in it.

Speaking of ice cream, you must try the green tea ice cream at Sapa Hills.  You met Long in this post and Ha, his wife, makes this ice cream at home for the restaurant.  It's delicious, richly flavoured, refreshing and not too sweet.  Totally going back to try the black sesame and coconut flavours.

I know our banquet table is beginning to groan, but let me just wedge a few more delicious treats into those gaps.  Just a few weeks ago we got back from an amazing two-week trip to Chicago, where my children proceeded to claim their culinary birthright in the form of Lucky Charms (cereal with mini marshmallows), ranch dressing, mozzarella sticks and other nutritionally disastrous delights.

The adults didn't miss out either, merrily scarfing Italian beef sandwiches...

...Pequod's special caramelised cheese crust Chicago-style pizza...

...and Paradise Pup's drip-down-your-forearms juicy burgers and fries with sour cream, bacon, and Merkts spreadable cheddar!!!  Some of these things we ate while watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on Food Network, which is kind of like drinking Bollinger when you're already completely pissed.  It was the most deliciously debauched two weeks ever.

But much as I love Chicago food in all its colon-blocking glory, it was yet again time to come home to treats like those at Co Thu Quan.  I continue to be completely enamoured with this fast-paced, cute-as-a-button and uncompromisingly Vietnamese cafe, tucked away inside Little Saigon market.

And it is here that I am delighted to present their banh trang cuon as the Footscray Food Blog dish of 2014.  These are rice paper rolls, made with either a different rice paper or a different process so that the skins are slightly crackly and tantalisingly al dente.  They're filled with julienned sour green mango, tiny dried prawns and spicy, rich beef jerky.  They are completely amazing, and just five bucks a plate.  Run, don't walk!

And so that concludes this pot luck of a post!  I feel refreshed and ready for all the delicious things 2015 will bring.  My fervent hope for Footscray is that as gentrification continues at breakneck pace, while we may be having lots of fun with what's new, let us continue to appreciate what we already have.  Will you join me in a cheers to that?

Bean pies and Faidley's crab cakes

My sister once ate a Thai-style fried whole baby snapper that was so delicious, it literally made her cry.  Even if you live to eat as I do, it's not often that you have an experience so sublime, it makes you swoon.  Like love, these things come when you least expect them.

Lexington Market in inner-city Baltimore, Maryland is a proper fresh-food market, similar to Footscray or Preston markets.  It's so exciting to see that markets like these exist in the States, as before now I had thought that the only options available to Americans were the pallid, wizened vegetables at a regular grocery store, slimy with overenergetic misting, or the frou-frou of the organic farmer's market.

Tucked down the back of the market is Faidley's, a seafood purveyor that has been in the same family and in the same location since 1886.  They are famous for their crab cakes, a Maryland specialty.  Who tipped us off?  Everyone's favourite Baltimore cop, McNulty, of course!  Wire freaks only - scroll about a 1/4 of the way down for the quote.

It's standing room only at Faidley's, which is a dangerous thing when you take a bite of this crab cake and feel your legs give way.  Absolutely one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.  Fat chunks of crab meat - no shreds at all - just barely bound with cracker crumbs before being lightly fried.  The crab is so fresh, and there's no room for any extraneous binders or fillers, such is the quantity packed in.  As Bruce Goldfarb says, "A crab cake to tell your grandchildren about."

On our way out we picked up an "Ali Teenie Beanie - with The Come Back Taste!"  Oh, say it with me now - The Come Back Taste!  I love it!!

These pies, made with navy beans (small, white beans like the ones in canned baked beans) have an interesting history.  They have been associated with the Nation of Islam movement, whose founder promoted the pies as an attempt to get his followers to eat more healthily, and also as a fundraising method. 

Well, I should get my daughter's kindy onto these instead of the filthy Cadbury fundraising box.  The interior is sweet, custardy, and gooey, while the top is burnished brown sugar.  Eating a pie made with beans doesn't seem weird to me at all, especially when so many of my favourite sweets are made with red beans, mung beans, or glutinous rice.  The beans give the custard a more substantial texture than just eggs alone.  The Come Back Taste - amen to that!

This ends my chronicle of the best foods I ate in the States.  Thanks for coming on the journey with me, and I hope I managed to show you some of the diversity of this great country, which is so often unfairly written off as nothing but a fast food nation.  I had been worried to write about non-Footscray things here; the blog's focus is very specific and I do like it that way.  However, I was surprised and delighted that you all seemed to enjoy my virtual "slide night" and didn't switch off!  As you read this, I am back in Footscray, getting ready to share more western suburbs gems with you.  Stay tuned!

If you're planning a trip to B-more, I recommend Welcome to Baltimore, Hon! to get you off the beaten path.  You can find the self-guided Wire Tour here at Wikitravel.

Italian beefs and Bawlmer pit sandwiches

"How do you want it?" came the voice, crackly down the phone line.  "Hot and wet," I whispered, "and sweet and juicy for my friend."  It's not every day ordering couple of sandwiches makes you feel like you're a phone sex operator, but that's how you do it here in Chicago when you want an Italian beef.

This is absolutely my favourite Chicago food.  Seasoned beef that has been "wet-roasted" in a flavoursome, clear beef jus, then sliced wafer-thin and returned to the juice it was roasted in.  This is then piled on thick, coarse-crumbed, Italian-style bread.  The "sweet" or "hot" in the order comes from your choices of sweet peppers (sauteed capsicum) or hot giardiniera, a spicy mix of pickled vegetables and feisty green chillis.  Once constructed, your sandwich can be "dry" (the meat was allowed to drain before being piled on the bread), "wet" (the meat was slapped on with lots of juice), or "dipped"/"juicy" (the entire sandwich was dunked back into the juice).  Each beef shack has its own subtle permutations on the lingo, like "soaked" or "double-dipped."

Baltimore has a signature beef sandwich too - the "pit beef" or "pit sandwich."  Good enough to make you confess to murder, apparently!  (If you have not watched The Wire - SHAME, SHAME! - spoiler alert!!)

Chaps Pit Beef in Baltimore is just off the highway heading out of town.  You can pick it by the line out the door and the plume of smoke rising from the monstrous grill inside.

Great hunks of beef are blackened on the bars here, before being thinly sliced and served on your choice of bun, the classic being a kaiser roll.  The meat, which is best rare or medium-rare, is then traditionally topped with raw onion and doused liberally with fresh horseradish or "tiger sauce," based on horseradish.

Very tasty, although mine did need a lot of help in the form of salt and horseradish - and ordering it was a lot less fun than ordering a beef in Chicago.

For Italian beef in Chicago, you could start by exploring Beef with Hot.  I recommend Johnnie's Beef (Arlington Heights/Elmwood Park) and Tore & Luke's (Palatine).

Chaps Pit Beef
5801 Pulaski Hwy
Baltimore MD

Clam cakes and pizza slices

New England, the area of the US of which Rhode Island is a part, is probably best known for its seafood.  Thick, creamy clam chowder is enjoyed across the region, Maine is known for its lobster, while Maryland loves its crab cakes.  In Rhode Island, clam cakes and "stuffies" are the favourites.  As Quahog.org explains, the former is a fried ball of dough mixed with chopped clams, while "stuffies" are a bread stuffing mixed with chopped clams and baked in a clam shell. 

Of course, anything that is the "signature" food of an area is ripe for tourist ripoffs, particularly with something like seafood.  With just a few hours to go before our whirlwind trip of Rhode Island drew to a close, we were on a mission to find a "locals only" seafood shack.

Just past the airport is the village of Warwick, and after a picturesque walk along an inlet leading into Apponaug Cove, we found the Crow's Nest.  This restaurant has been in the same location since the mid-sixties, and has been serving many of the same seafood favourites ever since.  It was packed with the blue rinse set, which I thought was either a great sign or a really, really bad one.  Luckily it turned out to be the former.

Cup of chowder and 1/2 lobster roll

Chowder, a thick soup made from clams, bacon, potatoes, onion, and herbs & spices, normally comes New England-style (white and creamy) or Manhattan-style (tomato base).  Unfortunately the Crow's Nest didn't serve the clear, broth-like version indigenous to Rhode Island, but they more than made up for it with their classic New England style.  This is high on my list of things to learn to make - so smooth, comforting, yet the taste of the clams lightens it up.  Also served is a half lobster roll, which was insanely generous with lobster - concealed beneath the shredded lobster/mayo mix were huge chunks from the claws.

Three clam cakes with a bowl of chowder, $7

I was not so much a fan of this Manhattan-style one.  It was thin and I didn't think the chunks of potato worked as well with the bitey tomato flavour.  The clam cakes to the right were awesome though - I suspect the batter was made with cornmeal, and they were neither too light nor too dense.

So we had had our "hot weenies" and our seafood - Rhode Island was two for two.  At a small farmer's market in the city centre, I spied a man selling "pizza strips," the last local delicacy on my hit list of RI classics.  You could say these are pieces of pizza without the cheese, served at room temperature, but I think that would be doing them a disservice.  These particular pizza strips were so tasty, fragrant with olive oil, and the pizza sauce so rich and thick.  I will try this at home - when the sauce is this good, why ruin it with cheese?

I loved Rhode Island - the place I probably expected the least from on our trip turned out to be my favourite.  The pizza strips were 3 for $1, and when I opened up the paper bag at the airport, what we found inside sums up this delightful part of the USA - the man had given us 4 instead of 3.

The Crow's Nest (map)
288 Arnold's Neck Drive
Warwick RI

Baker at the Downtown Farmer's Market (map)
Fridays 11am - 2pm for limited months of the year

This is Footscray Food Blog's 100th post!  Blogging has become a creative outlet for me that I really treasure.  It has also been wonderful to meet and continue to meet so many fun, interesting people through the blogosphere.  Thank you so much for reading, subscribing, and all your comments.  I now have a Facebook page - you can "like" the blog officially now (see button to the right, if reading on the site).  I'm not sure how it will fit in, but it could become another space for readers and writer/s to interact.

My American food journey is almost at an end, and I will bring you more Footscray delights very soon.  Until then, thank you!

Hot wieners

The US has such fantastic regional cuisine variations, which are quite unmatched in Australia.  We really don't have foods specific to particular parts of the country, unless you count the pie floater in Adelaide.*  On the other hand, in the States, many cities have their own best-loved BBQ dishes, be it Texas brisket, North Carolina-style vinegar-soaked pulled pork, or Chicago's fall-off-the-bone baby-back ribs.  Green chile stew is popular in Colorado, while Texas chilli is a meaty stew which, in contrast to most other chilli con carne recipes, has no beans in it at all.  I love that even the smallest state in the US - Rhode Island - has a whole groaning buffet table of culinary specialties that are totally unique to it.

Rhode Island is actually one of the world's centres of vintage costume jewellery components, which is how K and I found ourselves cruising the dusty aisles of a rickety warehouse, exclaiming at the yellowed stickytape and fragile tissue paper cradling some specimens, and gasping with delight upon discovering some hidden gem (both literally and figuratively).  After a couple of hours of rummaging, our throats aching from decades-old dust, and we headed just down the road to the famous Olneyville New York System for a long, tall coffee milk and a couple of hot wieners.

Hot wieners, pronounced "hot weenies" and alternatively known as "gaggas," start with a special type of hot dog that, being made with pork, has a milder taste than Chicago's favourite Vienna Beef variety.  They have square ends as a result of being chopped when they come out of the hot dog machine (don't think too much about that!) rather than tied off.  They are placed in a plain white hot dog bun, squirted with mustard, and topped with a special, spiced, ground beef topping.  This is then layered with raw onion and celery salt. 

They are so beloved that the Rhode Island Magazine had to discontinue the hot wiener category in its "Best of Rhode Island" awards, such was the hate mail that resulted from their top choices and who was left out.

We perched at the counter at Olneyville N.Y. System, which has been serving hot wieners since the 1930s, and at the current location since 1953.  The "New York System" part of the name is apparently because hot dogs were originally associated with New York City.  Rhode Islanders, both now and during the rest of our stay, proved to be so friendly and curious, and they were delighted we had made it to semi-industrial Olneyville just to sample their favourite snack food. 

And let me tell you, the "hot weenies" were SO good.  The meat sauce is not fatty or wet, but a drier style (I am not a fan of "chilli dogs" a la Pink's in LA, which are topped with chilli con carne).  It's spiced with a secret mix that must include a little cumin, but I couldn't tell you what else.  The onions and the mustard cut through the richness, and the celery salt adds a zing to everything.  SO, SO yummy!

We washed this down with Rhode Island's favourite drink, "coffee milk", which is icy-cold milk, sweetened, and just stained with coffee.  While we were eating, some customers came in and asked for 5 spoons of sugar in their coffee milk.  I thought they were just mucking around, but the man faithfully made it up as ordered, and then one of the customers came back to the counter and said she actually wanted 10 spoons!  We left soon after, so we never got to see if it was all bluster back and forth, or horrifyingly, if it was not.

Olneyville N.Y. System (map)
20 Plainfield St
Providence, RI

If ever planning a trip to RI, you must explore Quahog.org, which is such an awesome site devoted to all things RI.

* I'm sure there are many indigenous food variations, but of these I am sadly unknowledgeable.

Margie's Candies

Margie's Candies is something of a Chicago legend.  Running at its original location in Bucktown since 1921, it has served up homemade candies and legendary icecream sundaes to (allegedly) Al Capone, the Beatles, and generations of Chicagoans.  Now run by the original proprietor's son, it has opened a second shop on the North Side, which was within walking distance of our pad during our recent "holiday from the holiday" in downtown Chicago.

The sundaes are served in a huge white clamshell and are loaded with ice cream (there is one with 25 scoops) and a cavalcade of whipped cream, nuts, caramel, bananas, cherries, and more.  Our choice came with wafer biscuits and a gravy boat of hot, homemade chocolate fudge sauce.  Look at those fat fingers, hovering in anticipation!

What, you want a critical review?  How could you not absolutely love it?  Even I, who tried to order a Diet Coke and got a quizzically-raised eyebrow, just had to dig in.

I think the fact that my oldest looks like she is about to puke is quite telling.

Margie's Candies (map)
1813 W Montrose
Chicago IL
Also in Bucktown