Eating with a twist!

Eating with a twist

Sometimes I wonder why I love Italian food so much. It’s not like I’m Italian or grew up with many Italian friends or families, but if there is a meal I always go to, it’s a nice bowl of pasta. I guess the wonder of living in a place like Melbourne, affords you the ability to experience multi-culturalism in food! We all grow up eating so many different cuisines and we really are spoilt for choice. So you can imagine my delight to be able to attend a pasta making class at Bottega! The restaurant is celebrating its 10-year anniversary and is holding various events, such as this pasta making class, as part of its celebration. 

Gabriele Oliveri is Bottega’s head chef and is true blue…..Italian! Who better to teach us how to make pasta? We made three types of pasta: gnocchi, ravioli and stroprazetti, the latter being a twisty pasta!

One of the key things Gabriele taught us, was that we needn’t be afraid to use flour or semolina to dust the pasta or dust the surface! He suggested that you could always reuse the flour to make the next batch of pasta so as not to waste it! For the amount of flour that was thrown about, it was a very good effort by Gabriele not to get it all over the floor! He taught us how to make the pasta and knead it, and pass it through the pasta-making machine. To be honest it looked very easy, but I somehow doubt it was….

The class is interactive and you have the opportunity to help make some of the pastas, but given my known uncoordination, I didn’t participate! The stroprazetti was extremely interesting to make as it involved twisting the pasta between the hands and making the pasta like twisty worms!

He also provided very useful tips on how to store the pasta once you make it! For example, you can actually freeze fresh pasta after you make it (store it flat and then freeze it). Who knew?!

The end result was trays of gnocchi, lentil filled ravioli and stroprazetti. 

Gabriele was kind enough to pose with his trays of pasta for me to take this picture!

Now here comes my favourite part of the day…..eating!

The first dish that came out was the stroprazetti, which was teamed with a pork and beef ragu. I think one of the great things of this dish is the shape of the pasta , as it captures the sauce in the twists! It was absolutely delicious and the texture of the pasta was quite soft, especially given that the pasta doesn’t contain egg.

The second that followed was the gnocchi. Now I must admit, I generally don’t order gnocchi because I’ve had some not so great gnocchi experiences. However, I have to say that this gnocchi was absolutely perfect. Not too chewy or grainy. Accompanied by a Gorgonzola dolce, radicchio, and walnut sauce,  it was really a great dish. I think given the creaminess of the Gorgonzola it was set perfectly against the soft gnocchi texture. 

The final dish was the lentil ravioli, with char grilled cotechino (a type of sausage) and caramelized onions. The sauce was very light and I think this helped to draw the flavour from the ravioli. 

To top it off, we had tiramisu. This one came very cutely in a cup and I was surprised to get a bit of crunch in my spoonful from the crunchy biscuits that were at the bottom of the cup. Truly a delicious tiramisu with subtle coffee and liqueur flavours.

It was definitely an eye opening and a stomach opening experience! Definitely worth attending if you love pasta and want to learn how to make it!

This article first appeared on www.couturing.com 

Tonic that's good for the soul

When I think of eating Asian food, I think of Asian restaurants that are decorated in various shades of red or gold, food that is served by chefs who don't bother with the concept of "plating" and the soft notes of Kenny G or pan pipes playing the greatest hits of the 80s in the background.

So you can imagine my thoughts when I walked into the new Asian inspired restaurant,Claremont Tonic, to be greeted with the sounds of Nirvana's Come as You Are playing on the speakers and greeted by the front of house, an amazing looking rock chick with a blond Mohawk (her name is Sophia btw). Definitely not something I’ve seen before!

The restaurant is definitely not decorated in shades of red but shades of grey with exposed black beams crossing the ceilings. It has the feel and look of a hip New York city bar, crossed with a hip Asian influenced bar, crossed with a bit of rock and roll. It wasn't what I had expected given I had visited the Claremont Tonic's website earlier in the day to discover a life like drawing of a young Asian girl with long hair cracking a whip (sound effects are on so perhaps don't look at this website at work unless you want people to think you're secretly visiting 50 Shades of Grey fan websites......). Definitely no young half dressed Asian girls with whips in sight at Claremont Tonic, which is a good thing in my books, although some of you readers may disagree! It is definitely very hip and very cool, and really has the ambiance of a place that doesn't quite exist in this city.

The restaurant is the brainchild of Davis Yu, who currently has two other restaurants in Melbourne - Touche Hombre and The Millswyn. He has entered this venture in Claremont Street, South Yarra, with the help of chef Dylan Roberts, who was head chef at Ezard. You can kind of tell that some of the items on the menu do have that Ezard feel to it as the menu leans towards the Asian inspired/fusion type of dishes as opposed to Asian dishes on the menu at places like Chin Chin or Coda. The inspiration for the dishes stem from Davis and Dylan’s trip around Asia, and the menu is a true testament for their exploration across the continent. Some menu items are inspired by Japanese flavours, others by Chinese, Thai and even Vietnamese influences. Definitely some interesting combinations of food on the menu that are complemented by an array of teas from across the region (if cocktails or juices are not your thing!).

We started the night with a cocktail called Nakatomi Towers. We were told that this cocktail was Davis’ favourite, and after the first sip, I understood why. The Shochu, Japanese apricots, lemonade and Yuzu juice was the perfect combination of sweet and sour with a touch of tartness that is served in a bulbous glass. If you're going to have any cocktail, you have to try this one!

The menu has an eclectic mix of Asian flavours, divided into small dishes, land and sea dishes, larger dishes, sides of salads and vegetables, and desserts. We were lucky enough to sample a couple of dishes from each section of the menu, and by the end of the night, I literally rolled out the door into my car out front! 

First course from the Small dishes section were fresh oysters topped with rice nectar jelly, tobiko and wakame. It was a nice combination of flavours as the toppings complemented the flavour of the oyster rather than overpower it given the jelly flavour was quite subtle. Accompanying the oysters was a lime and oyster cracker. Reminiscent of a prawn cracker in texture, it was black and way better tasting than a prawn cracker. If they had that as something on the menu to order by itself, I would so order a whole basket full. Definitely worth trying.

My favourite dish of the evening was the "King of the Chimichangas", which was essentially a Japanese inspired taco! Nori seaweed lightly fried in what I assume was Tempura batter and folded in the shape of a taco. A small wooden box accompanies the nori tacos that is filled with raw salmon, rice, Kewpie mayonnaise, avocado, onion and small leaves. The idea is to build your own taco using the nori and items in the box. The result is a delicious sea inspired taco! It was simply gold. Definitely the best item on the menu and if I had been more greedy, I would have had another one! 

Other golden dishes of the evening included:

"CTs Pork Chipolatas" which was another DIY dish of slices of pork sausage, which you topped with XO sauce and soused cabbage. 

"Double Duck Blinis" were a patriotic nod to the Chef's Welsh heritage. Instead of Peking duck sitting on a traditional thin pancake, it sits upon a blini that works really well with the richness of the duck. The duck is roasted on the premise daily as emphasised by Davis. It was very good and definitely one dish to try if you go.

"Slow-cooked pork jowl" was also another standout dish. I'm not sure whether it's because I have a huge fascination (read: greedy tendency) with slow cooked pork, but this dish at Claremont Tonic was mighty tasty and really was quite distinct in its flavour of spices. The accompanying pear worked well the pork as it kind of made it feel less fattening....sliced fresh fruit always makes me feel that way! 

"Infinite Spiral Fries" were totes awesome. Yes I did just write that, but looking at them, they look like something you'd get at a theme park when you were young (that applies if you're as old as me!). The texture wasn't as crispy as I thought it would be, but the flavour of the curry salt was delish!

To help me make way for my "Happy Ending", I ordered the "Fck you Eddie" cocktail. Yes I just wrote "Happy Ending"....and yes, I thought it was hilarious too! The term refers to the dessert section of the menu which I'll get to next. But before I do, I have to mention this second cocktail I had. Given it's name, you'd kind of think it would be a cocktail to top them all, and to be honest, it probably is. It's served in what looks like a giant jar and is made up for 5 different types of rum, raspberry ice cubes, Thai lime sour and ginger beer. It was both refreshing and toxic at the same time. A genuine delight! 

 

Anyway back to my happy ending....

I really did get more than one Happy Ending...I got four of them! But out of all of them, my favourites were the Eliana Truffle which I basically hoovered off the plate, and the Yakusa Yuzu Sorbet which brought me full circle to the start of the evening when I was enjoying the tart taste of my first cocktail. 

The Eliana Truffle is a milk chocolate mousse creation, accompanied by crystallised shards of pineapple and small blocks of pineapple. It was divine. I swear if my skirt would have allowed, I would have asked for another!

And finally, the Yakusa Yuzu Sorbet was a delightful combination of sorbet, cold sake, yuzu and lemon jelly cubes. It was a refreshing dessert, and if you like sorbets this is the one to order!

Now most people at this stage of the meal would like a coffee, however the establishment doesn't serve coffee. Instead, it encourages diners to opt for one of the 10 teas on the menu, which are inspired by various regions in Asia, or a juice made from different combinations of fruits and vegetables, depending on your mood at the time! Or, if you were like me, you'd be going with a different cocktail on the menu....

All in all, I had a fantastic time at Claremont Tonic and can't wait to go back and try the other cocktails (many of them with names in honour of rock and roll legends), and try the rest of the menu!

I really liked the fit out and the ambiance of the place. And despite, half way through eating a dish, noticing that they were playing Prodigy, it really suited the atmosphere of the restaurant.

I did ask what inspired the name of the restaurant. I was told that obviously it was on Claremont Street, however, the concept of Tonic could be interpreted as a type of juice for life. I think it's the perfect explanation given the types of tonics on offer in a place where Asian food meets rock.

You can visit Claremont Tonic at the corner of Claremont Street and Yarra Lane, South Yarra

This article first appeared on www.couturing.com 

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.....Part 1 of many....

Jay Z's epic classic "Empire State of Mind" is always the song that pops into my head whenever I think of New York City...and he's almost right. It's the concrete jungle where food dreams are made of, there's nothing you can't eat! I had the most awesome time in New York City earlier this year because I think I found food heaven. The variety of cultures and abundance of restaurants in New York help to culminate in a food culture that I don't think you can find anywhere else in the world. Now I know a lot of people would argue with that statement and tell me I'm being unfaithful to my home city of Melbourne but NYC is just on a different level.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Melbourne food scene and maintain that is rates higher than in Sydney (and yes I can say this given the amount of time I've spent in Sydney the last 12 years) and also that of Canberra (I have yet to actually find the scene), but I think the capacity of the city to maintain the number of restaurants and people allows it to have something unique that you rarely find in other big cities. I will even go insofar that it beats HK as my favourite food destination!


To be honest though this is my fifth trip to NYC and probably my eighth trip to the States. I'd always gone to the States and left with fond memories of burgers, hot dogs, cheese fries, gigantic meals at Cheesecake factory and on my last trip to Hawaii, the Loco Moco. However on this trip I think I wanted to free myself of every stereotypical food that I'd had in the States and New York (I did not have one of those giant sandwiches from Carnegie Deli). That's not to say that I didn't have burgers (first meal in NYC), hot dogs or cheese fries, but I just wanted to try something different. With the Aussie dollar so strong, I could afford to eat at nice places AND have enough for shopping (well that last part is probably untrue - you can never have enough for shopping NYC)! Plus given the number of times I'd been there, I could afford to spend my time enjoying meals rather than just snacking between seeing the sites.


Much of my research started before we even booked our tickets to NYC. I think we started off by watching "Man versus Food" which kind of got us (my sis and my bro in law) thinking that a holiday to the US was warranted because we, too, wanted to eat 50 buffalo wings in one sitting or try to eat 100 oysters in 5 minutes. If you haven't watched an episode it's quite an amusing show. After watching a good 50 episodes of that, I think we decided that we didn't want to gain 20kgs and have to buy that extra seat or ask for the extendable seatbelt on the way home. Food research started again.


I then stumbled on a wonderful book by Vue de Monde's Shannon Bennet. Now, controversially, I'm not a great fan of VdM. Shocking I know given all the accolades, but I was so underwhelmed the first time I went there and when I also visited the Bistro, that I just haven't been back. So I was a tad sceptical that the book might have been a bit like the food - a tad pretentious and slightly overrated. But surprisingly it wasn't. It's a foodie's version of the bible for New York. Ok, yet another outrageous comment, but I must have spent days reading the book in detail because it has restaurant recommendations ranging from the Michelin star "Per Se" to the Burger Joint at Le Meridien (which btw was pretty tasty). It's also very easy to use given the book is divided into the various areas of NYC and also lists bars in these areas too which was quite helpful given it's sometimes hard to find good bars in foreign cities. If you're my friend and heading there soon, yes you can borrow it!


So a few weeks before we left, I began my research of how to book from Australia. It just so happened that my lovely cousin Alice had flagged that NYC had a fantastic event called "Restaurant Week" which is quite similar to the one we have as part of the Food and Wine festival...but only better! It ran for more than a week so I was able to book online for several of the restaurants that I had tape flagged in the book and also for a few that my travelling companions wanted to try!!


Morimoto


Iron Chef Morimoto has a restaurant just around the corner from Chelsea market. We were lucky enough to go there for lunch so I could sample food theoretically cooked by Iron Chef Japanese (I looked in the open kitchen and he was no where to be seen). I had wanted to go to the restaurant because I have a strange fascination with Iron Chef. Who doesn't love the Iron Chefs?! I was lucky enough to go to an event in Melbourne about a year ago where Iron Chef French and Iron Chef Chinese cooked the dinners. It was delish! So I was intrigued whether this would live up to my expectations of what an Iron Chef restaurant would be.


I'm not really generally into restaurant decor but the middle section of glass was intriguing. The open kitchen is at the rear of the restaurant, but allows you to see the flurry of chefs making beautiful dishes. For a restaurant that is quite enclosed, the use of the glass helped the light carry through the restaurant.

We ordered the bento box sets for lunch and an additional soft shell crab roll (I have a thing for trying soft shell crab rolls). 


I had the gyu beef bento box that had sushi, tempura, miso soup and seared beef in a sweet soy sauce. The sushi was fresh and the tempura was perfectly battered and fried. It was a good bento box for set lunch price. 

The soft shell crab roll was also pretty good, but I think it just didn't measure up to the ones I've had at Nobu. I think that that the crab was a tad soggy and perhaps doesn't have that crispness that I expected. None the less, it was pretty tasty and I'm pretty sure I ate most of that plate!

I was full and happy. The thing that set it off for me was the Virgin White Lily cocktail I had - Calpico, Yuzu juice and Lemon juice. It was a magical drink. I so have to find the recipe...and Yuzu juice whatever that is.....!!!

We left Morimoto quite content, and almost felt like he had welcomed and farewelled us to his restaurant....

Seasonal changes

Bonjour to all my GK friends and family,


It's been two months since I got back from my trip to the US and I was horrified to realise today that:

(a) I haven't uploaded any photos onto Facebook and

(b) I haven't done a blog post for over a month.

Tut tut. In the time since my last post, summer has ended and it did so with a big bang at a Brown Brothers Prosecco party! Non-stop bubbly for a couple of hours. It was magical! 
I think I have mentioned before Summer is my favourite season and now that I see the Magnolia tree outside my bedroom window barren of all leaves and flowers, feel the coldness of a double brick building (only useful during the first three days of a heatwave in summer) and realise that I've changed my drink preference from Champagne to Red Wine, I feel a sense of sadness that winter is once again upon us.
Now I know that sounds a bit melancholy, but given I suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) I think I'm allowed to wallow in what I know will be about 6 months of sub 18 degree weather.....and no sunshine (I blame almost three winters in London for my SAD).


The only light that shines is the light that leads to warm winter comfort foods. I revel in the fact that this is the time for a good roast, slow cooked stews, homemade soup and other hearty delights! All accompanied by a good red wine with friends and family.


Now many of these are meals are too much for a person like me to cook as I've never made them before. I had hoped that I could just wait for people to invite me to their house for these types of meals, but sadly my inbox remains sans invites! Oh wait, I take that back. I went to a friend's house last week for a slow roasted lamb shoulder. Absolutely delectable after 7 glorious hours in the oven! Thanks R&T!


Anyway, I figured rather than wait for people to invite me over (this is not to say that I don't invite people over to my place - I do, but they generally eat lasagna or stir fry), I'd attempt to make at least some of the meals I've never made before! 


I'm sure many of you are reeling in horror that I've never made a roast but there is something quite frightening about cooking a big chunk of meat for an unknown period of time and it may or may not turn out right. It's not like a stew where you know that the longer you cook it, the better it tastes! I have recently perfected an italian osso bucco and I know that the longer you cook that, the better it tastes!


So my goal at the end of this winter is to make a number of meals that I haven't made before (I'll list them out below - no judging plse) and also to have my parents come over to my house and eat the food that I have made.

Now I know that sounds odd, but I've been living in my house now for almost 5 years and since then, I think my parents have come over maybe three times for a meal. Each time, I'm pretty sure they've BYOd their food. It's not like I'm a terrible cook, but I think there is an inherent angst at the thought of eating my food! I think the only time they've eaten anything I've prepared myself has been when I've taken muffins/cake to their house and one time where I made a curry beef rendang and it was too hot for me to eat so I made my dad eat it!

My repertoire isn't very extensive and I think I have a bad reputation, stemming mainly from my lovely cousins Ben and Da, who came over for a lunch I prepared when I first moved in. It was meant to be a chicken carbonara with the sauce made from scratch, per Jamie Oliver's recipe. The fact that I tweaked the recipe to include chicken, and then, I took Jamie's advice of leaving a bit of the pasta water a little too far meant that the result was a big sloppy mess. Despite it actually tasting alright (coz I reckon that's the benchmark of if a meal passes or fails), I copped a lot of flack from everyone I had invited that day. I had slaved over that meal for a good period of time before anyone arrived and I was so disappointed that they all decided to do what family does best - tell you how awful it really is! So much for giving face!


In the end the dish was renamed as my Chicken surprise and the story of my bad cooking has perpetuated throughout the years....even over the Easter weekend, I made a home cooked lasagna for my cousins and this was the comment I got from dear Ben...."wow you're lasagna tastes nice...much better than the chicken surprise". I have promised to make the chicken surprise again but this time I'll make it so it's perfect!


I'd really like to be one of those bloggers that posts all the meals they've made, but I'm not sure I'm one of those people that is going to post my photos on this blog. I have two friends whose blogs are awesome. They write about their cooking achievements and they are awesome cooking achievements like macaroons, red velvet cupcakes and other stuff that just looks very professional. My stuff looks like they'd serve it at a prison! So perhaps i'll just keep you updated with my random rants.


Just so you all know, my recipe list is made up of a few different dishes that are essentially all the same. They vary based on perhaps a sauce I use, an ingredient in the main dish, or the fact that its accompanied by rice instead of noodles.


I mean, I make a mean bolognaise sauce from scratch using tin tomatoes, herbs, vegies, meat and cook it slowly for a couple of hours. Now I could use the sauce to make a pasta or use lasagna sheets to make a lasgana. Presto! Two dishes. I even discovered last night that if I made mash potato and put it on top and baked it, it's an Italian sheppards pie. I do the same with Asian stir fries. There is a solid range of awesome sauces made by my friend Mr Lee Kum Kee (also now stocked at Coles which surprised me) and all I do is interchange the sauces from oyster to black bean to chilli and once again there are three different dishes!
I think theoretically it's cheating and it also does become a little bit boring for myself and also to those I cook for!

So in setting myself a goal to get out of my meal rut and become more innovative with my meal choices, I've started a list below of all the things I'm going to cook this Winter. 
On the list at the moment are:

- A roast. Preferably roast pork so I can have crackling. Mmmmm crackling.

- My chicken surprise aka carbonara with chicken.

- Dumplings. If Nita can make them, so can I.

- Scalloped potatoes - just coz they're tasty.

- A savoury pie of some sort

- A beef ragu (If any of you saw Two Greedy Italians last week - I'm going to try to make that!)

- Lamb Shank stew

If there are any suggestions on what else I should try, please comment and let me know! 


Over the next week (now that I've written that, I actually have to follow through), I'll do my special report about the US where I spent a good 3 weeks doing all the things I love: eating, shopping and sitting on the beach!


Until then, happy eating to one and all!
Meow
The Greedy Kat

Up in the clouds...

Ok so finally I have gotten my act together and actually written something that relates to food at a restaurant that I have visited! Yay! A small step for man kind.....


Now I know that the title is a little bit sad given the title of the restaurant that I am reporting on, but honestly I was on my flight to Los Angeles and given my nostalgia about tasty food after watching Rick Stein, I thought I would start writing a food review.....once again not the smartest thing to do on a long flight with no food options. Anyway....yes it's a bad pun and for those of you that know me, you know that I like to make bad puns and quote song titles - so don't be surprised if they pop up in future blogs! 
So as I was flying high above the clouds, I thought what better restaurant to blog about than Cumulus Inc. on Flinders lane.


Cumulus has been opened a few years now and not surprisingly there is still a wait required to get a table. I hadn't been there for over 12 months (too busy trying new restaurants about town) so it was nice to go back and see that  my favourite dishes were still on the menu. It has not lost its mojo!


We chose Cumulus because it happens to be a favourite of the Greedy Cat himself who chose it as his Christmas present from my sister and I. We have had some fantastic meals here and we've never left dissatisfied or hungry (although to be honest, the latter never happens because we always over order!).


The 'no reservations' policy is still in tact so we arrived just after 12pm and had to wait!! We thought we'd be smart and get there early but we forgot it was holiday season and many people were just out and about hanging around after their brunch. Fortunately the wait wasn't long and the service staff were very friendly and kept us informed of where we were in the line!


When we finally sat down and looked at the menu, the fried school prawns that we literally inhaled the last time we were here, were no longer on the menu. So disappointed, my dad just asked anyway whether he could order off menu if they had them, but our waiter said no, and suggested the fried softshell crab with school prawns seasoned with chilli spicy salt. I have a penchant for softshell crab so I was super happy to order this dish! It was accompanied by a chilli/mayo combo (more of the former than the latter)......A little too spicy for me so I had it sans condiment. It was beautifully prepared and not overcooked which can be a danger with softshell crab. 

My favourite dish at Cumulus has to be the Fois gras parfait which I think is the best I've had in recent times. The texture is just so smooth and it really has a good Fois gras taste. The accompanying brioche is light and not very sweet. Personally I prefer to have it with the complimentary sourdough they provide as it has a crispy, slightly salty crust and its heaviness compliments the richness of the Fois gras. It is a very rich dish so I wouldn't advise anyone to have one to themselves.....no matter how greedy you are! You may not feel well after....trust me!

Because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we ordered an additional two small dishes because my dad wanted to try them. 


The first was marinated ox tongue which came out in cubes. I think I was expecting something a bit flatter,  possibly thinking of my own tongue for unknown reason! Unfortunately this dish was too salty. The texture was soft and bouncy, kind of like a marshmallow only less fluffy. I'm surprisingly more game to try things like this in recent times so it was a bit disappointing that this wasn't done very well. 



The other small dish we got was a Boudin Noir with a smoked tomato and parsley salad. To be honest, Boudin Noir is a bit of a strange notion to me, I mean it's cooked blood. I've never understood eating it especially having seen my dad look so pleased when he ordered ox blood as part of the 'special' pho at Vietnamese restaurants. But I thought I'd give it a go. The texture is a bit grainy but the flavour was rich. I think i was deterred by the texture and so only had a little bit. The greedy cat finished it off with much delight. 



By this stage we were all getting pretty full which didn't bode well for the next dish. I had the same dish a little while ago when I was there last so I knew what was coming. A 1.4kg shoulder of lamb, seasoned with salt and a few unidentifiable herbs (my palate isn't as developed as it should be!). The waitress last time said to us that the weight was mostly bone but I'm pretty sure that's not entirely true! It is massive! So with all the dishes we ordered this time I would unequivocally say that we over ordered by a lot. However,  it was honestly cooked to perfection - the meat was tender, moist and came off the bone easily. It was way too much for the three of us but we did a pretty good job. It's quite good value as well so if you go and want to have have this, I would recommend going with only two smaller dishes and the lamb, otherwise you'll be rolling out of the restaurant! (the photo below doesn't even begin to show how big it was!)

We did enjoy the lamb with a wonderful tomato salad. I'm not sure I remember the last time where I ate such sweet tasting tomatoes but this salad was the perfect accompaniment to the lamb.


We didn't have dessert on this visit, but on previous visits I have had more than of the Madelines and also they did make their own salted caramel petit four which was heavenly!


So all in all, I pretty tasty meal. I'd definitely recommend going but perhaps not ordering as much as we did!


I should give this place a rating of some sort, it seemed like it was something I should do but I did canvas this with a few people who suggested that perhaps I could give it Meow ratings or something like that. But to be honest I'm no food connoisseur and my blog was meant to just give a brief summary of what I ate and whether it was any good, so I think I'll just leave it at that!


Until next time, happy eating!

Slowly but surely...

So I launched my long awaited blog in early January to much fanfare (ok it was in my head and there were the sounds of those long trumpets that only Royal families have) to a few select people who I thought would provide me with honest feedback and critique my writing style.

Honestly, I wanted to have my first blog vetted in case it was (a) written poorly (I still contend that despite being born here, English is not my first language because I had migrant parents....ok yes they speak perfect English but I still think they spoke to me in Chinese in those very important developmental years) and (b) it was overly narcissistic as all I did was talk about myself.

Fortunately, there were a few grammatical errors that were picked up and very few comments about narcissism (only after I asked if blogging was slightly narcissistic)! I thank everyone for their positive and supportive feedback bar one contentious issue which everyone had a word about (I'll explain later). It did give me the encouragement to write again and I was hoping to put up a food review given this is largely what this blog is for (although perhaps I do see it as a forum for random topics that might come into my head)!!!

Anyway, this blog still does not contain any restaurant or food reviews, partly because I wanted to explain to those people who have repeatedly asked me where my next blog is (you know who you are AW)  why it's taken so long to write blog 2.
Well here is my explanation......

I got lazy.....well this blog is called the Greedy Kat and what do you expect greedy kat's to do when they eat a lot.....laze about and watch TV and eat more food! Well I did eat a lot over the month of January, so much so, that there were several occassions where fat pants would have been useful. When you get very full it does make you incredibly sleepy! The second thing is that the sun was out and with so many wonderful bars and outdoor establishments in Melbourne, who's to blame me for spending time having fun sampling the delights on offer?? Besides, I was led astray by many so technically it's not my fault!!! Lastly, I went on holidays to the States and Mexico where I was too busy sampling local delights in order to capture all the necessary details for future blogs. I'm doing you all a favour the next time you go to New York, Washington and Chicago in the US and Cabo San Lucas in Mexico as I will have meticulously detailed which restaurants to do to and which signature dishes you should have!!!

I did say to a few people that on my holiday I would have plenty of time to blog but to be honest, I did most of my blogging on the plane. I had borrowed my dad's Samsung Galaxy tab for the holidays thinking that it would be a much better option than dragging around my MacBook. I really wanted to like the Samsung galaxy but it's really hard to use and type....I had really wanted to like it because I don't want to be one of "those people" who have everything Apple...but unfortunately I have to say that my friend's iPad was way better to use and navigate!

Anyway, the flight to LA was 14 hours and I did manage to get out half a blog. However, I wanted to provide you with a little advice for long haul flights...and it's not about the airplane food (I've been to where they make the food and I'm even happier to eat it - that's a story for another day)
My advice to you is that you should never, ever, watch any TV show where the subject matter is Food. Because on a long haul flight your food options are very limited and always a little bit unsatisfactory. You are essentially trapped from a food perspective because you cannot go anywhere and get what you want or even make it!

I made the mistake of watching Rick Stein's Tour of Spain on that flight. Rick Stein is awesome and I love to watch all his cooking shows (the recent one he did in Asia is particularly good) but when you're on a flight watching him cook and eat tasty Spanish food, you end up getting very hungry and also very sad. I think I only realised this after the first episode and by then I was hooked. I had to watch the next two!  Let this be a lesson to you that if you do watching anything like that on a long haul flight that you have packed some Spanish Iberico Jamon, some tapas and some paella. Or something a little more substantial than what they serve you for dinner as it's tiny!

I finished the first blog (minus the photos) on the beach in Cabo and was going to do another but  between inhaling nachos and beef tacos (they were so good I had one serve every day), lying on the beach seemed way more appealing!!

Never fear, the blog that took me a whole trip to do, is actually a blog about food and at a restaurant in this lovely city that I call home! I'll put it up next, followed by several reviews of the restaurants that I went to on my travels. I was lucky enough to be in New York during Restaurant Week. The restaurants participating in Restaurant week have fixed price menus for lunch ($24.07) and dinner ($35). Many of the restaurants were top rated ones in Manhattan and normally you'd be spending about $70-80 for a three course meal but instead it's only $35! I was smart/greedy enough to book a whole bunch of restaurants before I landed on US soil! So I had many wonderful meals in many wonderful restaurants. I look forward to reliving them via this blog!

Before I sign off, I said earlier that my selected initial reviewers all gave really positive reviews. The only thing that people were divided about was my choice of picture for this page. The Waving Cat. Who doesn't love a cat that waves? Well, some people really liked it and some people really hated it. Comments included "it's not fat enough", "not the waving cat again" and "it looks scary".
Although helpful, reviewers found potential replacement pictures of giant fat cats, cats dressed up in weird outfits, Hello Kitty, Garfield, Asian good luck cats and even a scary looking black cat that looked evil. But this waving cat looks so cheery and I'd like to think if I were really a cat that ate a lot, I'd like to look like that!

So do you like the waving cat or hate it?? Feel free to comment. But if I can't find a better alternative I'm keeping it!

I'll bid you all adieu now until my next blog where I promise it will be about a meal I had recently with the actual Greedy Cat (see my first blog) and I promise to do something with the formatting because apparently it's very plain......!!

Until then...Happy Eating!
The Greedy Kat
meow