Ribs are not my thing. Everyone has a type of meat they love the most, for which they’re known. Are you the guy who loves steak? Or the one who always gets the chicken on a plane? Do people come up to you asking where to get the best lamb? Well for some, ribs it is, and that’s just not my thing.

I suppose ribs as a food fad have come and gone, Tony Romas no longer that date night place where it was fancy to show off a sticky, dripping slab to share. When we came to Darling Harbour’s Hurricane’s Grill for ribs on my partner’s recommendation, I was less than enthused. And then there’s nothing like really good (I want to say honkin!) ribs to rub your partner’s smug grin in your face when you take that first bite. Ok, so I’m still not a ribs person in the end. But this is damn good grill. Bibs, cutlery optional, hunkin’ slabs of meat-style family type place. I approve.

Hurricane’s Grill
Harbourside Shopping Centre
Shops 433-436, Level 2
Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia
Open 7 days
For more outlets check out Hurricane’s Website

 Savoury charred lamb ribs, cucumber and tomato salsa (sublime with a squeeze of lemon)

Chilli, tomato and fennel mussels, served with tender-centre, crunchy-side grilled bread

Part of early love note post I’d written about Brunswick, this here is about the Little Creatures Dining Hall, brewery and restaurant. Recently their brews have been popping up all over the island in bars and pubs and it’s a pity we don’t get their ridiculously awesome food as well here. This is the kind of place and space I aspire to one day – a great wide dining hall, warehouse-like, with a brewery and gobsmacking, comforting food. Maybe one day.

Little Creatures Dining Hall (Melbourne)
222 Brunswick St Fitzroy VIC 3065
Phone: (03) 9417 5500

What we’re all here for: Sarawak Laksa, which is a jaw-dropping RM5.00, approxmiately SGD2.03 now.

There’s quite a few stores in this eating house, and this lady here sells fried mee goreng. It’s like the third Hemsworth brother; just not that hot.   Kolo Mee, a little like glorified instant noodles with wantons tossed in shallots oil with minced meat and char siew. Which makes it freakin’ awesome stuff. This one at Chong Choon is also quite famous.

Call it the underdog if you must, and I will, because I really really want you to root for it. But that also means giving attention to something that one day might become commercialised, over-sought for, and that could be a bad or a good thing. As the saying goes, you know it’s truly lost its soul once you find a store selling it in Singapore. Maybe that’s just me.

Sarawak Laksa is and isn’t like the Penang version, in that it’s both sour and spicy. Where the Penang version is simply vivacious, spiciness sharply pegged by sourness, the Sarawak version is more balanced, a match made in heaven or hell depending on your tolerance for spice. Let’s not even discuss the Singapore version in comparison here, one so rich that downing a full bowl makes one feel rather ill. Again, maybe that’s just me – I really do try and drink down the whole damn bowl. So between that and that, the Sarawak version is quite the sweet spot.

If you’re ever in Kuching, hike on down to Jalan Abell for this “arguably one of Kuching’s best Sarawak laksa” – paraphrasing many recommendations we’ve read that led us to Chong Choon café in the first place. It’s good. It’s really good – not just for the fact that I can easily have two bowls of this in one sitting without feeling ill. If you’ve never tried it, then search around in Singapore for a taste, there are a few stores here and there selling it and some folks who are already on the Sarawak laksa bandwagon. Or do one better and cart yourself and a partner off to Kuching for a weekend quickie and get yourself educated about this fine dish that’s due its time in the sun; what’s a little effort shortening the distance between you and good food?

Poh Lam Laksa at Chong Choon Cafe
Abell Road
Kuching, Sarawak

This is really a recipe for one but I’ll let you in on a secret – chorizo and tomato sauce for pasta really tastes absurdly delicious when you add rocket (arugula) to it. Not even kidding. The colour clash is amazing but flavour, too? Discovered quite by accident when rocket was an extra ingredient left over when we made pasta by hand. Not convinced? The Italians put it on their pizza. So there, go ahead, dunk a little in your tomato pasta and stir it around and have a blast. 

Follow the three cardinal rules when you make seafood pasta and you won’t go wrong: use fresh, use white wine, use garlic. FWWG. There, easy to remember, too, for your grocery list. Think the sound of FWWWIIIGGG.  And oh, don’t forget the pasta.

Fresh Tiger Prawns and Clams with pasta
serves 3

Your choice of pasta for 3
6 large Tiger prawns
1 packet fresh clams
1 cup stock (chicken, fish or vegetable work well)
Tbsp water from boiling the clams, or clam juice
1 whole head of garlic, finely chopped
1 yellow onion, finely chopped (optional, but I prefer without)
fresh parsley or coriander, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
For serving: chilli flakes

In a pot of boiling water, cook the pasta till al dente. Drain and set aside.

Wash the clams, get rid of any sediment, and trim the prawns’ legs or remove the shell casing around the body while keeping the heads intact.

To cook the clams, boil water and when it’s bubbling, toss the clams in for about ten minutes, till you see the shells open. Drain out the clams, and toss whichever hasn’t opened. Save a bit of the fishy clammy water for later.

Heat some olive oil in a wok or pan. Lightly stir fry the chopped garlic till fragrant. Add stock, white wine, a tbsp or two of clam water, half cup of stock for about 5 minutes for the alcohol to burn off a little. Add prawns and cook a further 8 – 10 minutes. Finally, add clams and al dente pasta. Turn off the heat, toss, and add chopped parsley or coriander before serving. Goes great with chilli flakes too.

Thank you.

Winter travelling around late February was perfect; outside seating was the kind of cold that would settle in your bones, which was great if you smoked (I don’t) and wanted your beer to go a long way (I do). If not, the bar inside was warm and inviting, as much as it could anyway, when it was five degrees outside. Four layers of clothing and Cruzcampo, the lager of choice around Andalusia, helped otherwise. Spain’s cafés are small spaces, but Tersesas’ was cosy by any standard.

Thank you for keeping us quite warm, Teresas’.

Printed A4 sheets with food names lined the walls invitingly. Buey Kobe (Kobe beef), the paper read. It was as good as it sounded. Teresas’ menu was written in Spanish, so one guy hopped over from the counter, something I felt they didn’t do in Spain too often, and explained to us in halting English, “This, veal. This, calamares; you know?” Yes, my partner orders it all the time. And his nieces too; I’m starting to suspect it runs in the family.

Thank you, guy at Teresas’, for making sure we didn’t eat weird stuff, though I wouldn’t have mind.

Being on holiday meant that we found ourselves at Teresas’ at 4pm in the afternoon, grabbing vantage points from where we could see all the beautiful people trickle in and drape their beautiful frames against the bar whilst they drank and talked throughout the evening. Amounts owed for food and drinks were scribbled on the bar’s counter top in chalk.

Thank you, beautiful Spanish people, for not realising we ogled you in a non-creepy way while you rattled on in a language we didn’t understand.

One bar man was young and friendly, the other in his forties and gruff, but with kindness, making them an odd but charming pair. They made small talk. We played the tourist part. Stools were pulled out as tables when food arrived. It was simple, but out of such simplicity I felt… can’t seem to put my finger on the feeling. I guess you can call it bliss, contentment, a really emo scene from (insert TV drama of choice), whatever.

Some things I write to remember, quickly, in case I forget and that moment can only be felt in the energy and speed with which I get it out into the world. But Teresa’s is one of those places I kept close to my heart and which over time sweetened in my memory, so forgive me, I felt too selfish to share. Now that it’s here, I guess I’m ready to leave my heart some place else in the world and let this live on here in its own way.

Cafe-Bar las Teresas
Calle Santa Teresa, 2, 41004 Seville, Spain
+34 954213069

If you gag at the sight of grease, then I’m afraid we’re not going to be fast foodie friends. Well. Not on days when I’m at Pinotxo Bar anyway. And if you gag at the sight of stewed offal, then we’re going to be fabulous because that just means more for me.

Things the Spanish do very well: produce beautiful people, speak the most expressive language ever spoken (everything! sounds! so! fierce! and! exciting!), make the most delicious Catalan cuisine that often offers up the surprising. One of that is a beautiful stewed offal dish: Callos, or tripe stewed with jamon. I’ve never had tripe this way before, as previous experience have always been in Asian cuisine from Hong Kong, which is good in a different way. Although not as intense as any Asian offal dish I’ve ever tried, the dish was still too…meaty, shall we say, for my non-offal-favouring partner.

Pinotxo Bar is just one of a few very, very popular tapas joints at the famed La Boqueria market in Barcelona. Their butifarra, or sausage, was handmade. Juicy, delicious, and charred beautifully like a Sunday grill. And anyone who can dress up chickpeas the way they did, wow. If there’s one region’s recipe book I’m dying to get my hands on, it’s Spanish cuisine.

Pinotxo Bar
Rambla de Sant Josep, 91 08002 Barcelona, Spain
+34 933 17 17 31
http://pinotxobar.com/

When my partner’s niece turned thirteen, we thought to introduce the girl to what we as adults loved – chic cafés with cool interiors and all day breakfast brunches. I mean, who doesn’t love all day breakfast? Turns out, thirteen year olds don’t fancy those things as much as adults did. She didn’t even liked eggs. If I think back to when I was thirteen, I guess scrambled eggs and toast served at the novel hour of noon just wasn’t all that spectacular.

So when my partner’s other niece turned ten, we decided to bring her to try Roadhouse at Dempsey. It’s all American, it’s great dining, it’s not chicken rice (inside joke, the kids all love chicken rice). Roadhouse serves all day breakfasts too, but we made sure they had plenty of other things that kids love, you know, namely, burgers.

And then it turns out his ten year old niece wasn’t really into burgers. Roadhouse’s menu included roasted pork belly (sorely wished I had that), burritos, brunch and more, though nothing seemed to pique her interest. Here, apply a faux Mexican accent in your head while you read how we tried to turn her on to Mexican: ”Do you know what booooRRIIitoe is? It’s meat or esseafood wrapped in a yummy tortilla. Do you know what a TAHHco is? It’s meat or esseafood wrapped in a soft taco.” Ten points to us for not being great at explaining that concept to a ten year old without being a little dramatic. And mildly racist.

Well so it goes, my partner and I settled for fish taco and seafood burrito respectively, while his niece went paws and jaws first onto a nice, large steak. Watching kids trying to stab and tear steak apart with cutlery was just hilarious. At least we had better luck explaining the concept of cutting meat.

On a high note, if you’re ever at Roadhouse, don’t skip out on their chocolate milkshake. Makes you think twice about chocolate bars (of which I’m not  a fan. Gasp. Yes). I like my chocolate wet.

RoadHouse @ Dempsey
13 Dempsey Road
#01-07
Tel: 64762922

See the cookbook above? Great. Now you know what was used as a reference, at least on page 9, which was then promptly chucked because it was just easier to “figure it out” from where we were and then see what happened. Chugging jug after jug of homemade mojitos (my new favourite thing, btw) greatly helped, too.

In the same vein of my series of “How Not To” guides (see my post here on pitfalls of the kitchentard’s first roasting experience), this here are some general guidelines to follow when you make your own pasta by hand.

It’s All In the Touch
Roll your dough between your palms. Not pinch at it while simultaneously cringing, “OMG it’s gooey! I can’t do this!” True story, and won’t get you any pasta.

Patience Is A Virtue
In this case, yes, it is extremely important. No amount of pounding or rolling or whatever abuse you give your dough is going to make it flatten any easier when you roll it through your pasta maker. The final product, a rolled dough ball, should ideally sit for an hour or two before being pressed through the machine. If you try to roll it immediately through your pasta maker, it’ll just stick all over like a spoilt brat and make cleaning up after it all that more annoying. Just like brats.

Drink A lot But Not A lot 
If you’ve ever watched cooking shows where some hot chef or preppy, matronly Italian woman is making pasta and it looks easy as pie, it probably is and it’s also because they’ve made it forever. One is a chef and the other is Italian for crying out loud. It’s food TV, people, they also fast forward all the waiting in between. Chances are, everybody’s also drinking backstage. So when you’re on your own making your own pasta for the first time, be sure to stock up and load up. But don’t overdo it, this is not a drinking game (……or could it?). Well, you’ll still need some wits about you.

Roll Like A Sailor
It’s never thin enough. The dough went through the pasta maker at least 5 times. After you’ve flattened your dough, roll it through on the pasta maker’s highest setting. Then notch it down one and roll again. And then again till the flattened dough looks like something you can eat without choking on. Thick pasta is never friendly. If you’ve not let your dough rest, or if the flour wasn’t evenly distributed when you mixed egg and flour, the dough will fall apart when you press it through the pasta maker, forming holes everywhere. At which point, you pinch it together, press it back into shape and force it through the machine again like you’ve sent your brat to the army. But when you roll and everything looks good, roll with love.

Make Food
All work in the kitchen is rewarded. So make food, and enjoy. By now it’s already four hours past; you were ready to break out the instant noodles or just continue the liquid diet till your senses ate themselves. But remember, you’ve practiced patience is a virtue, and once you’re past here you’ll be hungry no more and enlightened. Still doesn’t mean you can make great pasta by hand.

Recipes coming soon.

To say that I am enamored with Nantsuttei would be a slight exaggeration, could it? To say that I am in love with their black ramen, pan fried gyozas and dumplings would be woefully distressful, would it? I mean, you can’t love something perishable right. You can’t adore something that won’t wrap its arms around you and hug you to sleep at night right.

Well you’re goddamn wrong. I believe everyone who has eaten at Nantsuttei would have felt unrequited love. Any one like me, for example, would bear the weight of the carbohydrates on my hips for months to come. Love is fleeting, they say. But it is worth it, they say too – and I can corroborate because every bite of this bowl of noodles is like a slurp of love, and then it’s gone, and ordering a second bowl is just ridiculous, the difference between Gone with the Wind and Mad Love.

By far, Ippudo has been that one ramen place that I benchmark against every one else. Even Ramen Keisuke Tori King, which I like, maybe even like a lot, but would never profess my undying love for. Even knowing that Keisuke Takada, the owner, won the Tokyo Ramen Championships in 2011. Love is in the eye of the beholder. Staring into a large ramen bowl. Use the picture above as reference.

Natsuttei serves ramen in creamy tonkotsu soup with black roasted garlic. What got my attention was the giant, intoxicating bowl of Maru-toku Negi Chashu-men, with generous toppings of white, freshly shredded negi (green onions) and bannou negi (chopped thin green onions). They don’t do chashu as well as Ippudo, though, I’ll say that. Their Yude won-ton and Fuufu Enman Gyoza (Happy Couple Gyoza), are also to die for. Sharing portions is necessary if you don’t want to walk out feeling like a bloated whale, but I don’t believe in that since love requires sacrifice.

Ippudo makes me happy. But boy, I would date Natsuettei over and over again.

Nantsuttei
#03-02 Millenia Walk, Parco Marina Bay, 9 Raffles Blvd
6337 7166
Check out their full menu on their website here

Writing is practice. When I stopped writing for a few weeks and then had to come out of it to try and talk to you about umai, I felt my brain going batshit crazy and wanting to communicate Flintstones-style. This. Fish. Raw. Good. You get it?

By evening from when I started trying, I’d drunk fairly impossible amounts of caffeine, and still this white sheet of digital paper wasn’t any closer to explaining in any modern, acceptable, amiable terms, how very, very nice but fairly dull but Iwouldtotallyeatitagain Kelabit Highland cuisine is. To be fair, we didn’t sample anything close to what the entire cuisine consists of, only some signature dishes from the restaurant’s dinner menu. What we enjoyed at Tribal Stove in Kuching was truly appreciated as a sum of its parts, where the dish umai really elevated the meal.

Umai, probably erroneously nicknamed Sarawak sushi, is very much similar to Peruvian ceviche. Raw fish is stewed in acidic citrus juices and prepared with supporting, pungent ingredients such as chillies and ginger. As the story goes, the dish is made by fishermen right on their boats after netting the day’s catch and is a traditional working lunch of the Melanaus ethnic group.

Tribal Stove specialises in East Malaysia cuisine higher above ground. The Kelabit folk are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Sarawak, living in the highlands where they take their ingredients from. Thus many of their dishes make use of livestock, ferns and vegetables like tapioca leaves, which was one of the items we tried (Udung Ubih – stir fried leaves with lemongrass). We also tried lamb cutlets and Manuk Pansuh – chicken cooked in bamboo, ginger and lemongrass.

It all felt comparatively PG, seeing as how stunningly fiery Malaysian cuisine can be. However, the subtlety found in East Malaysian cuisine is not to be mistaken for lack of strength in flavour. The food is delicious and also known to be quite healthy. Tribal Stove turned out to be quite the accidental gem of a find, just a stone’s throw from the Hilton hotel where you can discover an authentic taste of  the Highlands.

Tribal Stove
No.10, 1st Floor, Block H, Jalan Borneo, Kuching
Directly opposite the Hilton Hotel
http://tribalstove.com/

Iced milk tea sweetened with black gula melaka syrup