The food pornographer

Last night, while Jac was at hockey, I dug around in the freezer and found this Lean Cuisine - Thai Green Chicken Curry with rice. Jac knows how terribly lazy I am when it comes to cooking for myself on week nights, so she likes to buy a few ready meals to stash in the freezer so I’ll have a few options at hand when I get home from work.

It was really tasty, but just not enough to satisfy my voracious appetite - I could’ve easily eaten two of these in one sitting. I found myself eating really slowly to make it last, because I could see how small a serving it was. The green curry sauce could’ve been a lot spicier, but it had a lovely flavour. The chicken breast slices were delicious, but there were only five of them. Five! I ate them in slow motion. I guess portion control won’t please the ravenous carnivores amongst us.

A chocolate mud cake, topped with sheets of chocolate and adorned with lightly roasted flaked almonds.

And of course, a selection of gorgeous mini cakes, pastries and tarts from Chez Jean-Claude Patisserie.

This time we were particularly interested to see two new mini cakes we hadn’t tried before.

This was the mini banana cake, which was perhaps a little more walnutty in flavour than banana, but still very nice. On top of the icing was a slice of strawberry, banana, a piece of mango (I think!) and some passionfruit pulp - that passionfruit smelled absolutely wonderful. It almost made me wish the cake was a passionfruit cake! Do people make those? I know you can get passionfruit cheese cakes, but I’ve never eaten a passionfruit cake-cake. Hmmm, looking carefully at the photo, is that a hair or a fine thread I see? (Not that it matters now - and I don’t think it mattered then, either!)

This was the mini carrot cake, topped with cream cheese icing and real carrot strands - proclaimed by J to be “awesome”. I’ve never been a fan of carrot cake. Do you guys like carrot cake? What’s your favourite (or least favourite) cake?

The chocolate mud cake was good and muddy. The sheets of chocolate on top just begged to be picked at and nibbled on.

The lemon curd tarts disappeared very quickly.

The berry tarts were just as they always are - appealingly shiny, with tangy berries and sweet vanilla custard in a pastry shell that was painted on the inside with chocolate.

But for me, the best part of the feasting was this plate of Italian moon biscuits (that’s what we call them; I’m not sure what their proper name is) which L and her mum made for the occasion. They have the most gorgeous smell of citrus. I have this ritual where I breathe in that beautiful smell before biting into a biscuit, always trying not to snort up some of the icing sugar in the process but failing miserably! I often end up with an icing sugar-tipped nose. The biscuits are sweet, nutty and melt-in-the-mouth and it’s always excruciatingly difficult to stop at just one or two. Knowing L and her mum have taken the trouble to make all of these biscuits makes them extra special.

I went through the city on the way to work last Friday and picked up a box of fried rice from the bakery near the bus station. I’d been wondering for some time when they’d raise their prices, and now they have - it’s now AU$3.50, up 50 cents. Inflation has taken its toll in another tangible way - the ham content is practically microscopic now. You may be able to see two tiny pink bits of ham in the photo below - all up, there were probably five bits of ham. That’s what they were - bits, specks, fragments - I wouldn’t even call them pieces. While the ham content has decreased, I think the MSG content has increased. It was extremely salty. Edible, but noticeably salty. I had an unpleasant, insatiable thirst afterwards. For hours. I don’t think I’ll be buying this again for a while.

I had another day off last Wednesday. Lunch was a fisherman’s basket from our local fish and chippie. Here’s part of the fisherman’s basket - chips, a piece of fish (you get two in a serve), a squid ring (four per serve), a prawn (two per serve) and a scallop (also two per serve). No, I didn’t eat the whole fisherman’s basket!

Monday last week - J and I grabbed a quick early lunch at Munch Terrace (Shop 6, 230 Hay St, Corner Bennett St East Perth). She had a craving for hokkien mee. I must say it looked absolutely delectable, all saucy and gleaming on the plate. She was a little disappointed however, that there was no “pork lad” in it this time.

I decided to try Munch’s chicken curry and steamed rice, which I’ve noticed is quite a popular dish. It’s my favourite kind of chicken curry - Malaysian-style.

In the bowl were two pieces of chicken, two chunky pieces of potato and lots of spicy gravy. If you look carefully you may be able to see little red specks of chilli in the gravy. It was really good poured over the rice. In fact, it was deliciously drinkable on its own (though perhaps just a little too spicy to succeed as a drink ). The splattered bowl serves as a warning - eat carefully or leave with a curry-stained shirt.

Tuesday - Chad and I went to 88 Royal (88a Royal St, East Perth), where she had a chicken, cheese and tomato panini, the same kind as what J had enjoyed the week before. This one was as cheesy as J’s had been, and Chad enjoyed it. She said she’d be happy to eat it again.

I had my old 88 Royal stand-by - a tuna patties and salad plate. What I really love about the tuna patties is although they’re served cold with the salad, they’re not at all soggy. You may notice the beetroot is still GLAD-wrapped - that’s how it stayed. I still don’t like it. That and the celery sticks. Everything else was demolished.

Thursday - another Munch day. J had the combination laksa again, and declared it as good as the first time had been. The big steaming bowl of vividly orange soup looked amazing and the curry aroma smelled fantastic from where I was sitting. J has a knack of ordering dishes that make me think I should’ve ordered what she did.

SRM tried the soya chicken rice. I thought the glossy soy-stained chicken skin looked really good, but SRM’s decided to stick with the crispy chicken rice from now on. He thought the soya chicken tasted kind of old. A little disappointing.

I ordered the crispy fried noodles in egg sauce. The noodles weren’t particularly crispy, and it wasn’t because they’d been softened by the egg sauce. I think they’d been fried quite some time ago and had gone soggy before actually being served up for my order. They still had the tasty flavour of deep fried anything, and tasted good in that thick egg sauce, which (thankfully!) had been made with a freshly coddled egg that was lusciously silky, soft and slippery. With the chunks of chicken, two bursty prawns, fish cake and fresh choy sum, it was quite an enjoyable dish.

Friday - my lunch was one of only a couple of dishes I actually really like from Sushi @ Royal (Shop 2, 131 Royal St) - a chicken karaage meal, with rice, salad and a blog of that delicious mayo. The chicken was tender and gingery, but maybe a little greasier than usual. It was still lip-smackingly good though. What can I say, I have a high tolerance for grease (that’s probably a bad thing)!

Tuesday 29/04/2008 - a comforting meal of rice, minchee and stir-fried green beans. The beans were cooked with onion, garlic and dark soy sauce and finished with a drizzle of sesame oil. The minchee was just good old minchee, cubed potatoes, pork mince, garlic and onion cooked in oyster sauce and a little chicken stock. Yum.

Friday 02/05/2008 - Jac cooked oven-fried chicken - she coated the chicken drumsticks in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, a little bouquet garni and chicken salt. She baked corn on the cob in the oven at the same time. I ate my corn without any butter - its natural corniness was sweet and delicious just on its own. The salad consisted of fresh cucumber, red capsicum, mushrooms and cos lettuce, with a little briefly blanched broccoli. I had a little dish of aioli for dipping - chicken and salad.

Jac placed the drumsticks on a rack over an oven tray, which ensured they wouldn’t get soggy as they cooked. She baked the chicken drumsticks until the skin was golden-brown and crispy. As soon as I looked at the chicken on the plate all I wanted to do was pick up a drumstick and start gnawing. And that’s exactly what I did. She’d really cooked the chicken perfectly - the meat was moist and succulent. I love that satisfying, pleasurable moment of biting through crispy chicken skin and then feeling the hot puff of delicious-smelling chickeny steam that is released as you sink your teeth into juicy, tender chicken. Oh yeah.

While I ate this bowl of noodle soup, I was thinking about eating a Filet O Fish and fries with a side order of Chicken McNuggets with tomato ketchup, followed by a fresh, hot McDonald’s apple pie. Actually, if I were really doing exactly what I wanted without thinking about extra fat and sugar and all those sorts of things, I’d do something I haven’t done since high school (OMG, that’s like, twenty years ago!) - eat my fries dipped in a hot chocolate fudge sundae. Well, to be accurate, I’d dip the fries in the soft serve part rather than the chocolate fudge part. But oh, I loooooved that hot chocolate fudge. I loved how the fudge was chewy rather than melty chocolate. I loved that chewy hot chocolate fudge.

Last Friday night’s dinner was an old favourite - bangers and mash. The sausages were low fat pork, yoghurt and mild German herb, according to the butcher, and they were really delicious. Jac served them with peas and corn kernels, fried onions, panfried mushrooms topped with seasoned fresh parsley, and of course, creamy mashed potato. The gravy was Gravox caramelised onion with apple. The mashed potato really was creamy - Jac mashed it with real cream. Yeah, yeah I know. So much for “low fat” sausages.

Jac ordered some fresh rice paper rolls (AU$7 for 4 pcs) from the Vietnamese stall that’s next to the drinks stall (I really need to take note of the stall names, don’t I?). She ate one while waiting the rest of the food to arrive, and the rest we wrapped up again and took home for later. In the rolls were soft rice vermicelli, lots of Vietnamese mint, lettuce, sliced roast pork and prawns. There wasn’t as much prawn in the rolls as appeared - they’d been sliced sliver thin, so each “prawn” was actually only about a quarter of a prawn.

We’d ordered two dishes to share. First, salt and chilli pork chop rice from Penang Cuisine. The fried rice was very simple, with carrot and egg and not much else, but it was deliciously garlicky. I couldn’t stop eating it.

The salt and chilli pork chop was fried to ultra crispiness, with chopped fresh chilli, lightly fried sliced onions and chopped garlic.

The nasi lemak was fantastic. The coconut rice was served with ikan bilis (little fried fishes) and peanuts, sambal, a hard-boiled egg and sliced fresh cucumber.

After lunch, we stopped by the cake shop next to the video shop outside the food hall, and Jac grabbed a trifle to go, for AU$3.80. We tucked into it when we got home. It was lovely! It had all the key elements of a trifle - the sponge cake at the bottom, tinned fruit, port wine jelly, custard and lashings of whipped cream on top.