Tannic Teeth

Now I’m not a fan of commercial TV.

Adverts on the box always treat you like you’re some cash-fisted supreme moron.
In fact we don’t even have a TV. Not that we’re book-loving, net-surfing troglodytes anymore than we are sun-loving, real surfing,  socialites.

Like promise of dusting the bike off and riding a lung-bursting 100km, or getting oil paint so forced into your dermal layers you may as well be embalmed for the afterlife, life is an amazing place — to explore. With all that said, I have a confession to make.

I am a Master Chef fetishist.

No, not in that way.

I don’t ogle at the contestants nor any of the judges. Believe me, the sight of an overweight cravat-strangled crusty englishman, expressive as an anaesthetised bloodhound, is not my idea of romantic delirium. However, the dishes are.

I blame it on dinner at my old folks. They have the telly on Sunday night, eating dinner that was inspired from the week before. We’re there and we tune in. Food is central to any family. To see my mother’s cooking style change over time to something that is more experimental and edgy, is humbling. Every kitchen utensil has been replaced with tender detail to the functional and effective. The influence of good food has penetrated thanks to MasterChef.

Along with MasterChef comes events that expose people to good food. For a while now the Good Food and Wine Show have been running annual show-stage for everyone in the state.

So it’s no surprise this event will bring together en masse . The Good Food and Wine Show at Perth Convention Exhibition Centre will showcase gourmet creations like a shiny cabinet of curiosities.

From 2nd–4th July 2010 show up to wallow your way though the flavours of your dreams. And you won’t need to skip the adds.

Prices

Adults $30

Child (6-16) $22

Concession/Groups (10+) $24

Wine Lovers Ticket $75

Skirting around the faux pas food–wine matching, Shiraz and Asian is an unlikely combination. But it’s a folly well played.

I know food and wine matching goose-steppers would resound crisp Riesling or Sem Savvy Blancs with Asian food, so it was with stubborn denial that I ventured with a friend to Hawker’s Cuisine with a McLaren Vale Shiraz in tow. The aim was to see what dishes this rickety bee-hive of a restaurant had to offer.

Upon first impressions, this restaurant looks like any grime encrusted eatery in China Town. If the jittery queue of people trying to get in is anything to go by, they would sure be blind to this fact. We were assured our table would be ready in 10–15 minutes. No biggie. I wouldn’t have expected a place bursting at the seams to accommodate anyone as a table walk-in.

After having a stroll around Northbridge to kill some time, we entered Hawker’s Cuisine again, bumbled around inside for a few more minutes, then sat at a table. I would imagine everyone goes through this triage in order to dine. Our waitperson scurries off with an order. Wine time.

While at Steves earlier on that day, I had bumped into a young winemaker, Tom Stransky. A graduate from UWA’s Viticulture and Oenology, his curious intensity lead him around the world in 13 vintages to almost every wine producing region bar Spain.
He has delicately made small-batch wines from McLaren Vale fruit, and had them emblematically labelled. The Mo’ Shiraz it’s called. Profoundly, it has a Mo’ on it.

Tom was to save the only spare bottle he had that day (the gold mo’s are apparently for family) to give to his uncle, but he graciously gave it for tasting. [Tasting note at the end]

We ordered Spicy Squid Tentacles (they apologised and brought out sliced squid tubes instead), Beef Rendang and Tofu Veggie Claypot. Aside from the squid being a little too oily with a thin batter, the flavour of intensity were commanding. The Rendang espically married the wine, a soft sweet fruit immixed with the star ainse based beef. The tofu came out on a little tea-light burner to keep it hot, was as expected in quality and mass.

This is a place for a no frills midweek meal. The service is edgy but effective.

Like most people dining outside, we disregarded the cockroach crawling up the wall in favour of a steaming bowl of Asian love. Really hits the spot.

Thumbs up for Hawker’s.

The Mo’ Shiraz 2008 (Mt Compass, McLaren Vale, Clarendon)
If supple could be used as a descriptor in wine, this red is a Russian contortionist. It has a chunky fruit-jube character on the nose, it’s a ripe temptress. Slurped with gusto over the tongue, The Mo’ is lighter than expected in tannin profile. This gives two impressions. One a bendy, flexible nature to it — a fleshy skinned plum cheek. The other, it’s not as tapering or elongatedly thread-like. It ends solidly with ample fruit weight. 17.1

Mexican cuisine to the USA is Vietnamese to Australia.

We can go to pretty much any city and get decent true-to-form Viet fare. I can’t really say that for Mexican.

It’s not suprising (given our proximity to Mexico) we have a reached a glass ceiling on the stretch to fine mexican cuisine. Stodgy, canonical and banal would round up a usual “Tex-Mex” offering.

I’m not a pro when it comes to Mexican food — I don’t get the chance to eat enough of it. But when I do, it’s gormandised so quickly I’m usually left with a crusty adherence around my mouth — possibly resembling refried beans or tortilla crisp that people poke fun at long after I’ve left the table. This is what happened at The Flying Taco. It was a piece of lettuce that covered my tooth however, so I resembled  someone who had a misadventure in pub brawl. The food was spectral. A rainbow of flavours. My eyes had finally opened to Meh-hi-co.

The Flying Taco is an honest, approachable entry into Mexican food. It has a modular menu which consists of a subway-esque ordering method. First choose your (carb) style, then your filling, then a salsa. It’s a chicane of possible flavour matches spurring a flexible choice for people that would tire of same old same old.

You can pick up a feed for less than $15 making it a port-of-call for frequenters of the Rosemount Hotel up the road.

I got a Burrito + Mole Poblano + Salsa Chipotle. It came nestled in a basket, resembling a soft glittering infant, warm from maternal care with smokey chilli-garlic sauce at its side.

And the taste? Round and fruit-inspired, the beans and rice gave an interesting texture to the soft flour tortilla. The salsa is where the joy was at. Piquant and agreeably hot (could have been hotter!).

I guess what stood out for me was the freshness and interplay of flavours. Not everything tasted like Old el paso taco seasoning. It’s the mantra that is written conspicuously on the back of the flyer.

“Genuine, healthy, homemade, fresh food — made to order, with love, quickly.”

Flying Taco doesn’t stray from that point.

The Flying Taco

40 Angove Street, North Perth, 6006

Wed — Sun

Noon– Late

BYO Cash & EFT

P: 08 9227 6393

If there ever was a country’s dessert that could be classified as “comatose” for the level of sweetness, Turkish would be number one. (Indian a narrow second)

The fleshy cubes of rose-pink sugar-frolic, Turkish delight, is possibly the best known export. I speak from experience; I remember in my childhood years, hyper-speed afternoons spent in the yellowing sun, bouncing off branches and trees, in the throes of a sugary orgy. Perhaps it’s the body’s own self preservation mechanism — to burn the energy off before type two diabetes sets it. Back then, to have coffee with it would have been instant-death.

Now it’s mid-afternoon salvation. (Though the module has slightly changed, and I can assure you there are no more orgiastic exertions.)

Baklava is what the grown-ups have. With a coffee (my preference for long black) and a quarter-plate of sweetmeats, it’s something to ward off winter by delicately layering down belly fat.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are various incarnations of Baklava. Formed into filo rolls there are Ladies Fingers. Fashioned into a circle and filled with pistachio it’s a Bird’s Nest. Or was the Bird’s nest the one with the pokey tips? The man spoke loudly but mumbled. I didn’t quite get the last one.

These are some of the best Turkish Sweets you can find North side of the River (albeit in the ghetto). He sells it by the kilo ($16 last time I was there) and they are baked in an endless procession, as people winnow away his store. To be honest, I don’t even think the shop has a name.

You can find him inside Farmer Jack’s (review coming soon) in Girrawheen.

It’s further away than I would normally drive for food, but it’s well worth it.

Winter in Perth is punitive.

It’s not particularly so as a result of the weather — often the powder-blue lens of the sky curves around us most of the day — but more so for artistic diurnal options.

We struggle when it comes to arts and museums. Perth is culturally anaemic.

If only we could be more like our quirky and experimental sister, Melbourne. I guess however one could argue, we would be, er, Melbourne and lose our Perthian identity. Screw that — I ain’t wearing brown and grey tones.

Picking up on the flailing threads of a struggling arts and culture, the new elected Lord Mayor trumpeted to action, reviving Perth’s Arts and Culture scene.

So now we have more interesting nibbles when it comes to exhibitions. The Art Gallery WA is exhibiting ‘Relativity’, the grotesquely endearing works of Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. It unashamedly details the visual affect of converging biotechnology and the human body — we CAN return to apes. The WA Museum is also dealing out it’s own fire and brimstone. A Day in Pompeii it’s called. When Mt Vesuvius spat the dummy.

Due to contractual agreements, no photography is allowed in the exhibition . However what I can tell you is it’s worth checking out.

There is something mortally binding about staring at a body cast of a Roman knowing they were incinerated in 1000C pyroclastic flow. They carbonised.
Their jaggedly poised bodies, speak volumes of our own precarious existence of our life on top a sea of lava. How quickly life is abandoned and forgotten.

It’s an exhibition that doesn’t make the rounds a lot.

The last time it came I was inutero. All I can say is, that it was much better the second time.

A Day in Pompeii — Wester Australian Museum Perth (Cultural Centre)

Erupting 21st May — 5th September 2010

Prices

$20 Adults

$14 Concession

$12 Child

$54 Family