The Food Pornographer

After our dinner at Cinnamon on the Park, we all went back to our place and Juji and Jay stayed the night. The next morning, we remembered the red velvet cupcakes Juji had made the day before - she’d brought half a dozen cupcakes with her!

They were red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing.

I’d never eaten red velvet cake before. I liked it! It doesn’t just taste good, I love the red colour!

After a cupcake to start the day, Juji and I made breakfast. She fried the sausages and put on the toast while I made scrambled eggs, poured the juice and set the table. Jac may have crawled out of bed at this point.

There were two kinds of sausage - pork sausages and the last of a mystery continental sausage we found in the freezer. Juji just sliced it up and fried it in the same pan with the pork sausages. We had leftover pancakes in the fridge, but I was the only one who wanted pancakes. So I had sausages, scrambled eggs, pancakes and maple syrup. A few people have commented or emailed and said the pancakes look like crepes. Well, crepes, hotcakes, flapjacks, pikelets, blintzes (there are many more!), they’re all varieties of pancakes. And yes, the pancake Jac makes are a thinner crepe-style pancake.

As we sat eating on the patio I thought I heard a little noise near the fence. It was that naughty Pixel playing in the garden bed. See her?

As we studied the menu, a waiter placed a basket of complimentary warm pappadum and a little dish of mango chutney on our table. It was fun trying to decide what to order while munching on the crispy pappadum dipped in the sweet chutney.

Jac and Jay enjoyed their Kingfisher beers. Jac said it’s quite light and easy to drink.

We decided to share a starter and chose the assorted platter (AU$22.50) which featured vegetable pakora, onion bhaji, samosa, chicken tikka and seekh kebab. We very carefully cut everything into four so we could all try a bit of everything. The pakora and bhaji fell apart but were both really tasty! The seekh kebab was heavily meaty and well flavoured, but my favourite was the chicken - boneless skinless thigh pieces, bursting with succulence. The samosa had a surprising bite to it, thank goodness for the cooling yoghurt dip!

We ordered a few main dishes to share, along with steamed basmati rice and a couple of different breads. We found the Cinnamon on the Parkmenu online before making our booking and Jac was immediately keen to try the house specialty of Cinnamon baby goat curry (AU$21.50, named after the restaurant). This was our favourite dish of the night - the goat was unbelievably tender and the gravy was rich with the flavour of the meat - you could tell it had been cooking for a long, long time.

We ordered the prawn malabari (AU$23.50), which the menu told us is a specialty of Malabar in South India. This curry was made with bursty plump prawns with freshly ground coconut and blended spices. It had a surprising bite to it but wasn’t overly spicy-hot, perfect with a dollop of raita (see below).

Juji and I are big butter chicken fans, so we had to order the butter chicken (AU$18.95). The boneless chicken pieces were tandoori roasted, served in the tomato-based creamy butter chicken sauce. The chicken was very tender but in terms of flavour we thought this wasn’t as tasty as butter chicken can be. And just like the butter chicken I’ve eaten in at Chutney Mary’s in Subiaco, the dish appeared to be mostly gravy - there never seems to be enough chicken in butter chicken.

We all wanted a dhal dish and chose the dhal panchrangi (AU$13.95), which consists of lentils, spinach and peas. It was served in a little bucket and was delicious - it was nice to have spinach and peas with lentils.

Juji is a big fan of keema naan, which I had never tried. It’s Indian flatbread stuffed with ground lamb (AU$6.50). It was yummy, but Juji reckons she’s eaten better keema naan in Sydney.

Jac and I were keen on trying the garlic naan too - flatbread topped with fresh garlic and coriander (AU$5.00). The bread was nice and buttery (well, presumably ghee rather than butter), but it wouldn’t been even better if the garlic was freshly minced rather than (it appeared) garlic granules.

With all the rich flavours and gravy we were glad we’d ordered the steamed basmati rice (AU$5.00) to soak it all up.

We also ordered one of Jay’s favourite things when eating Indian food, raita (AU$4.50). I especially loved to dip a piece of garlic naan into the goat or prawn gravy and then top that with a blob of raita.

My plate, round one, with a little bit of everything. I just wished I had enough room to finish up every drop of that goat curry gravy! I haven’t stopped thinking about the baby goat curry since this meal, which is quite remarkable!

I was quite happy to sit back with my full tummy and watch the others eat dessert. They ordered a couple of desserts and shared them. This was naram garam, a gulab jamun served with ice cream and cream.

Jac loves rice pudding, so she ordered the kheer, which is an Indian-style rice pudding with fruit and nuts in it. She loved it!

I set the table out on the patio - as you can see, we’re still using a trestle table. Haven’t had the time or energy to go shopping for an outdoor setting in the last couple of weeks. Both of us have been really busy with work and house things. And blogging things for me, of course. I poured us each a tumbler of 100% orange juice. I wrapped our cutlery in these crazy fluoro Halloween napkins my late grandma Mama gave us years ago. Mama thought the colours were pretty and bought them for us - she didn’t “see” the skulls and crossbones! The maple syrup is Canadian, but not the usual brand we buy. We usually get Camp maple syrup, which is pretty expensive over here. The last time we ran out and went to buy some, there was no Camp, only this other much cheaper brand, which we bought. I thought better to have cheap maple syrup than no maple syrup, or worse - maple-FLAVOURED syrup (fail!). Next time though, I will aim to get Camp maple syrup. Edit: this post was written a few weeks ago - we’ve since bought Camp maple syrup!

You may have noticed in the very first photo that Jac and I eat our pancakes a little differently from one another. Jac likes to roll up her pancakes. She pours herself a little pool of syrup on her plate and dips pancake and bacon into the syrup.

Me, I like to pile the pancakes one on top of the other. But I make sure each pancake gets a share of syrup - I pour a little syrup on the first pancake before laying the next one on top and adding a little more syrup before adding the next pancake, and so on. I then place my bacon on top of the pancakes and top with a little more syrup. What I’d really like to do is drench the whole lot with half a bottle of syrup, but that remains a fantasy. I show great restraint (I think so, anyway!) when pouring maple syrup over my pancakes and bacon. On this occasion, I had three pancakes. Well, three initially. I ate a fourth one after I finished the first three.

Jac actually made the pancake batter the night before and left it covered in the fridge overnight. She rang me to tell me she was on her way home from the office with instructions: “Please get the pancake batter and bacon out of the fridge!”

This has to be my favourite breakfast combo ever. For me, the only thing that can make pancakes with bacon and maple syrup better (apart from free pouring of syrup, as mentioned before) is caramelised banana, like the awesome mountain of brioche french toast I ate at the Gun Shop Cafe in Brisbane earlier this year. I still dream about that breakfast. It’s probably a good thing I live far, far away from there.

Dinner
Jac sliced up chicken thigh fillets and marinated them with salt and pepper. She then coated the chicken in “Kentucky” seasoning - we buy this in a box from the asian supermarket (see this photo of “Kentucky” seasoning). She fried the chicken until it was crispy on the outside and poppingly juicy on the inside. She served it with a simple vegetable stir-fry (sugar snap peas, green beans, carrots and bean sprouts), rice and tomato sauce for dipping the chicken pieces into.

The vegies were flavoured with ginger and garlic. Jac cooked the vegetable dish with plenty of sauce to soak into the rice.

The fried chicken was delicious. It reminded me of KFC’s popcorn chicken, though our chicken pieces were bigger (and so more chickeny!). I ate about half the chicken dipped in tomato sauce and the other half plain. That “Kentucky” seasoning doesn’t really taste like KFC (that’s what the name “Kentucky” refers to), but it’s very tasty.

Bento
I packed us the leftovers for bento lunch the next day. There wasn’t that much chicken left - we did eat most of it while it was at its freshest and crispiest. I packed us each a sachet of tomato sauce - these were leftover sachets from McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets. I always order my McNuggets with tomato sauce but I often eat them without the sauce. I save the sachets because I know I’ll definitely use them later. Jac’s lunch box has a little dog food pick stuck into a piece of chicken; my lunch has the little cat food pick.

I made us some mini strawberry jam sandwiches and mini kaya sandwiches. I ate mine as dessert but Jac ate hers for morning tea. She told me she often can’t wait until lunch time to open her lunch box and see what I’ve packed for her.

She also can’t wait to read the little note I’ve left in the lunch box. On this day, it was one of my standard complaints.

Pixel: Holy crap, there’s a cat out there!
Billy Lee: Holy crap, there’s a cat in there!

Pixel: I want to go outside but Billy Lee’s in the way.

Pixel: Time to think of Plan B.

Pixel: I’ll just go out another way and find a pot plant to sit in. There, nice and comfy.

Puffs
With my sister and her hubby in town from Sydney, Mum invited all of us “kids” and our partners to a curry puff making (and eating!) session. Jac usually joins in the curry puff making, but I must admit my curry puff shaping skills are hopeless. I was there more for the eating than the making.

The curry puffs were fried in batches in the wok on the wok burner. Someone asked me why my parents seem to always cook on the wok on the barbecue. Well, their wok doesn’t fit on their stove! There is a wok burner attachment on the stove but it’s right near the wall and will only fit a very small wok - so Mum cooks with her wok on the barbie. It’s good in summer - keeps the heat out of the house.

Not all the puffs were filled with curry. There were also puffs filled with corned beef - the kind that comes out of the tin you open with the supplied metal key (Fray Bentos corned beef, any one? ). These were especially for Ruby, but to be honest, the rest of us loved them as much as she did. The edges of the corned beef puffs were marked with extra patterning made with a fork.

Some of the curry puffs were eaten, piping hot and fresh. Some of them were allowed to cool, then packed away in containers for us to take home for later.

Pies
In addition to the fresh curry puffs and corned beef puffs, there were pies, hot out of the oven! Out came the chopping board and a knife, and one by one, the pies were carved, shared and eagerly sampled. I had a bite (literally, a bite!) of most of the pies, sharing pieces of pie with Jac.

First, the choice steak pie.

It was a good, tasty meat pie.

Next, the pepper steak pie was sliced up.

Jac is normally not a big fan of pepper steak (she never orders pepper steak - she’d rather have steak with diane sauce, bearnaise sauce or mushroom sauce any day). She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the pepper steak pie. As it turned out, the pepper steak pie was Jac’s favourite of the lot.

This strange looking pie was the Tex Mex pie. Before we cut into it I thought it looked more like a sweet custard tart than a meat pie! (It smelled like a meat pie, though!)

This was my favourite pie of the lot. The meaty gravy had a hint of chilli and Mexican spice, with beans and corn in it. There was a layer of thick gooey melted cheese on top of the gravy that oozed with every bite. According to the Mrs Mac’s website, this is a limited edition pie, only available while stocks last.

The next pie to be sampled was the country pie. I had my piece with tomato sauce.

I also quite liked the curry pie. I’ve always enjoyed curry pies. When I was in high school I used to go into the art room on Saturdays, along with the Year 11 and 12 art students, to work on my paintings. For lunch, I would walk down to the closest deli and buy myself a curry meat pie, a bag of peanut M & Ms and a glass buddy bottle of Coke.

In curry meat gravy were cubes of potato and carrot. Mum tried a piece of the curry pie and said it didn’t taste like real curry, but then Mum has extremely high curry standards and isn’t so keen on “western” curries.

Next, my sisters and Jac were keen to try the beef and cheese pie.

It was a similar style to the Tex Mex pie, with a gooey layer of creamy melted cheese, but without the Tex Mex flavour. It got the thumbs up from the all the cheese lovers.

The last pie we tried was the chicken, cheese and bacon Cruizer. The Cruizer is a long rather than round pie, specially designed for eating on the go. The longer shape means a smaller surface area and a narrower pie cavity, meaning less gravy leakage as you eat the pie, making it less messy to eat. I was pretty full by the time I tried this last piece of pie, but it was very good, my kind of pie - in the white sauce with the chunks of chicken and pieces of bacon, there were also mushrooms. Yum!