G'day. If you're new here, and you are interested in the Melbourne food and drink scene you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or the email newsletter below. Thanks for visiting and enjoy eating and drinking in Melbourne. Cheers.

Blackberries
Not ripe yet but reminding me of the labyrinths we used to tread as a child picking them. Inspired by Jamie Oliver on Foxtel I chop up a single apple and add a punnet of bought blackberries. Spinkle with sugar. Then using passion rather than measuring instruments I rub butter into sugar and plain flour to make a crumble topping and bake. Served with thich organic cream. I love blackberry and apple crumble.

Honey
Bumble bees are everywhere, collecting pollen, transferring it between pouches, bullying native bees. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other bees busily making honey in Tasmania.
A pot of mielerie unheated honey is just what the doctor ordered: organic, cold extracted, unheated and unprocessed. This is what the best of Tasmanian ingredients is about. My only regret? Not buying a larger pot.

Cherries
Big ripe and sexy cherries are everywhere. I’ve seen top quality ones in melbourne for $30 a kilo. These were $9 and each one a perfect virgin voluptuous Nigella Lawson. Bite into one releasing the squishy, oohing orgasmic Nigella sound effects.

Apples
Importantly they are this years, some flawed but crisp and juicy. Fresh.

Peppermint Bay
Six lousy dollars. That’s $6 for a beer and a burger of Friday nights. No wonder the place is packed but still the view of Bruny Island is stunning and relaxing. Of course, chips follow.
And half a dozen Bruny oysters with their fresh smell of ozone and iodine and a naughty reputation.
I fail to join the orderly queue. After a long wait a bureaucratic type arrives at the bar and can’t decide what to order.
”Bloody hell. Why couldn’t you decide in the queue,” quips a sozzled man. “You’ve had enough wine,” interjects the sozzled man’s wife. “I’ll have another bloody bottle of red if I want to,” he replies.
I was drinking responsibly and returned home.
We didn’t make it to Peppermint Bay’s fine restaurant this time around - a wedding got in the way.

Cheese
As I’ve already written about the stinky stuff with a whiff of goat. tasty.

Dolphins
Dolphins are not to eat of touch but to watch diving through the wake. Seals that are even riper than the cheese.

Roadkill
If this is your scene then southern Tasmania is for you. In a one hour drive dozens of Bilbies, possums, wombats and Tasmanian Devils were splattered across the road or bloating on the verges waiting for enthusiastic barbecuers.
Of course, if you want to BBQ Dolphin you will have to return to Melbourne where the dredging (if we believe the environmentalists) will have dead ones washing up on Port Phillip Bay’s beaches for the taking. Otherwise travel to western Tasmania to Strahan where the beaches are fairly often strewn with dead wales for the taking. Perhaps the Japanese should start collecting.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Photography: Christina Simons

p>Do I need say anymore about Bourdain’s blog apart from I found this via Slashfood?

Perhaps I should also milk the archives:

Part 1: A beer and a fag with Anthony Bourdain

Part 2: On Ladro

Part 3: Eating in Melbourne

Part 4: No hippy shit

Part 5: casual eating

Part 6: Putting the boot in

Part 7: A year in nam

Popularity: 15% [?]

It’s not something people talk about a lot but whenever I bring up phố there is enormous interest about where to eat it. People are always interested in the best places to eat in Victoria Street Richmond. When they hear I have a list of the best local phố restaurants from a phố expert in Sydney their notebooks and PDAs come out as they copy out the list.

I discovered the “I Love Phố” exhibition that was held in Liverpool in NSW through Noodlepie, a blog with a distinctly Vietnamese slant. Cuong Phu Le, curator of “I Love Phố” was hoping to take his exhibition that covered poetry, art, installations, recipes and the food itself national and international (If Matt Preston is reading you should bring it down for the food festival). A 64 page booklet was produced which really is an amazing homage to the noodle soup.
The only thing missing is a podcast (I may just put one together) on how to pronounce phố.
About a year ago I was about to fly out to Hanoi and I was filled-in on the minute detail of hoe to pronounce what I was told is “feu”. My language was hi-jacked by f**dies who thought they knew how to pronounce it but didn’t.
I successfully ordered my first phố in Vietnam, in a small hotel in the old town, only acheived by simply ticking a box on a slip. I sat with my back to the window and didn’t see the kitchen hand negotiate the early morning traffic of thousands of mopeds and bicycles with a tray of the soup. I was eating street food and a love affaird with it started. I dumped my guidebook realising that the best food was on the street.All I had to do was follow the crowds of locals and the best food in Hanoi would be mine. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Try ordering “pho” or “feu” and you aren’t going to come away with much as I discovered phố isn’t pronounced that way.

Anyway, it is a little easier to order the soup in Melbourne and for the record these are the places I was recomended. Is there any restaurant missing from the list?

Pho Dzung Tan Dinh
208 Victoria St
Richmond 3121 VIC
Phone: (03) 9427 0292
Pho Dzung City Noodle Shop
234 Russell Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone (03) 9663 8885
Pho Bang Restaurant
71 Alfrieda St
St Albans VIC 3021
Phone (03) 9356 0930
Pho Bo Ga Mekong Vietnam
241 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone (03) 9663 3288
The Pho Chu
69 Main Rd West
St Albans VIC 3021
Phone (03) 9356 0188

The Pho Chu
92 Hopkins St Footscray 3011
(03) 9687 8265

Popularity: 21% [?]

I’m not sure whether or not I’m meant to feel reassured or frightened in a country where hotels feel the need to remind me than guns and grenades are not wecome. At Hotel La Noria in Siem Reap I think I was safe. With its leafy garden and swimming pool it is a comfortable escape from the bustle on the street at a cost of $40 plus a night.
It is also reassuring that being a Childsafe hotel – one that does not allow the sexual exploitation of children –  the whining and screaming I could hear from behind closed doors had more to do with scrape knees and tummy aches than burglary.

To say that weapons are tolerated at the Chayva hotel in Battambang is an understatement. All you have to do is declare them, along with your personal details, at check-in to this $5 a night joint. To save my blushes I smuggled a penknife in. The sheets were grubby and insects fell out of the ceiling onto the grubby sheets of our bed and to be quite honest it wasn’t worth it.
Apart from a string of charming French terraces along the river, a couple of Wats and a cooking school there isn’t too much to Battambang. It’s more of a chill out zone, stopover after the river journey from Siem Reap and a gateway to intrepid travelers who want to discover the real Cambodia.

Worth a visit is the Riverside Balcony Bar, a traditional style two storey wooden house overlooking the Stung Sangker (river). Apparently Angelina Jolie (I’d imagine without her brace of Dessert Eagles) visited here. It overlooks local allotments. We hogged a daybed and enjoyed a couple of drinks and copped-out by ordering omelette and chips.
Travel Tip: Outside our hotel we were offered $4 trips to the bus station, which seemed a little pricy considering it’s less than 1km away. Instead we bought tickets from the booth in the market (marked 34 in the Lonely Planet guide). At 6.30am we rocked up there as arranged, and free of charge two motorcycles ferried us to the bus station. Jak left behind the bottled water she bought. The stallholder brought the water to the bus station and also gave us a bag of sweets. I was quite taken with the stinky, slightly vomity durian chews.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Deep fried and served out by the recycled condensed milk tin on the road-side, who can resist these tasy crickets and beetles? Well, about 30 people judging by our bus load of mainly locals. There was one chap though who tucked into a big bag of beetles, the secret being that you flick off the hard unedible wings before popping the bodies into your mouth.

I’m afraid I was a wimp having poisoned myself two days earlier and was drawn again to the delicious rice-stuffed bamboo below.

At another stop I picked-up excellent and cheap – about 50 cents each – steamed dumplings stuffed with onions, egg and herbs.

I bought a barbequed banana leaf that was tied like a christmas cracker. As I opened it I was excited by the the crispy caramalised rice but then was worried about the flesh inside.

It looked like it was also filled with pink and uncooked flesh at first. Looking closer it seemed like it was offal. But no, it was a single pink banana. I guess the banana and the sticky rice had been steamed first then barbequed for the caraalised effect. I savoured the taste all afternoon and evening.

At the meal stops I was struck how elegant the local woman are at weeing in public. Simultaneously, a woman would crouch while lifting her sarong as elegantly as a stork lifts its wings (really I was trying not to watch too closely but there were a lot of them). The sarong provided the perfect privé (assuming you are not wearing knickers) as long as you don’t mind being seen by everybody passing on the road.

Men, to avoid the smelly loos, do it the expected way (as I did) near or against a smelly tree.

Popularity: 8% [?]

You’ll want food for the eight hour trip to Battambang, the most beautiful boat trip in Cambodia. Plenty of locals will hassle you to buy French sticks bananas and water.

The tiny bananas are delicious.

But whatever you don’t don’t sit on the roof unless you want a very pink sore evening.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jak prepares green papaya salad 

Usually my blog posts are from the opposite season from most other people. That’s because most of the time I live in the southern hemisphere.
For this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Scott at Real Epicurean, Jak and I in the northern hemisphere at the Three Elephants Cooking School in Luang Prabang Laos. Unusually, we are cooperating with each other in the kitchen in what is the only food we have prepared for the past month.
It’s as near as it gets to winter here being the cool dry season. Cool means about 30 degree centigrade days. Nights get down to about 10C.
It’s the perfect weather for a green papaya salad. The Three Elephant cooking school subscribes to the view that Lao food isn’t as hot as Thai.
I’ve found plenty of hot food here though. I’ve also noticed that the locals like to add plenty of a thermonuclear chilli paste, called Tamnak Lao Jeowbong, to their dishes. Just to make the chilli powder 50 dried red chillis are needed. Bang!
This green papaya salad uses only one chilli, bottled fish sauce and a tub of shrimp paste. I’m told it is tuned-down from what the locals might eat at street stall in the capital, Vientiane. There up to ten chillis may be used in a salad plus either a raw or cooked version of home made fish sauce.
The way he fish sauce is made is by adding fish to a jar and letting them rot outside the back of the house. You can see the grey stuff with chunks of fermented fish floating in it in the market. It really does look and smell pretty rough – worse than the stuff in bottles.

Brown soup-like stuff at the back with silver floating bits? That’s fish sauce. 

Ingredients
Grated papaya (or 8 Asian snake nbeans/16 European green beans or cucumber)
6 cherry tomatoes
1 red chilli (or ten for the strong)
1 garlic clove
2 teaspoons sugar (I prefer palm sugar)
Half a teaspoon shrimp paste (wimps!)
Quarter a teaspoon fish sauce (Yes, wimps!)
pinch of salt
Juice of one lime (or a lemon)
Method
There’s a special device than can strip green papaya but you can also probably use a zester. Soak in water to soften (If using beans slice. this recipe doesn’t cook them but I suspect blanching them would improve results).
In a pestle, pound the chilli(s), garlic, sugar, shrimp paste and salt until the mixture becomes liquid.
Add tomatoes and pond gently.
Add the fish sauce and the lime or lemon juice.
Finally drain the papaya and add it (or the beans) to the mortar and pound.
It’s time to taste and add more of the stinky fish sauce or chillis to taste.

Serve with an ice cold beer.

NB: I’ll be hosting the next Weekend Herb Blogging with a deadline mid afternoon Sunday 28th January for entries. Email me at edcharlesATmacDOT.com. You can check out the rules and regulations over at Kalyn’s Kitchen.

Popularity: 14% [?]

It’s happy hour. Instead of one tumbler of rice whisky I am served two.
At least a snack of deep fried Meekong seaweed helps line my stomach.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I think it may be water rat season in Phonsvanh in Laos. There are also voles, flying squirrels and deer in the market. In five minutes though the whole lot is sold.
Only a single haunch and head of deer is left.

What really catch my eye are the beuatiful game birds. It’s a shame you just can’t get this stuff to eat in restaurants or at street BBQs.

Popularity: 12% [?]

As most of us know, curry is an English invention, Indian food being spicy but very different and regional in its styles. Chicken Tikka Massala, the national dish of England now, is apparently a Scottish invention.

If you are lucky the chicken tikka element is made in a tandoor oven and the sauce is defrosted as the dish tastes okay.

At Nisha on the main drag at Phgonsavanh, the sauce also seems to be prepared freshly. Cream doesn’t drown out what spicy flavours are in the sauce. In fact this chicken tikka is very spicy which is why I like it; it has body and flavour.

This isn’t your run off the mill cop out for people who don’t really like spicy food (as Baileys is the cop out for people who don’t realy like alcohol).

The only problem is that on this cold windswept night the restaurant is open to the elements. Beer is too cold for somebody who is wearing every item of clothing brought on holiday. Instead I drink the Massala Tea, which warms me for at least the walk back to our icy hotel room.

There are also branches of Nisha at VangVieng and Luang Prabang. It’s very much a back packer restaurant. But it serves great curry and is worth a try.

Popularity: 11% [?]