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Andrew Christie

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Malaysian

Malacca Straits via Hilux merger and Naz ignoring

January 16, 2016 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

hailu3

Hello and welcome to the blog. Today we are venturing once again into the Sydney Festival and later we’ll be trying a bit of authentic Malay hawker food…

Sorry, I’m writing this using dictation software which makes me feel as if I want to talk like a 1960s radio presenter. I’ll try to resist the urge to be a prat.

*pauses to scratch ear*

The headset I am using is very old and the original earpiece covers have long since rotted away so I’ve fashioned some new ones using leftover felt from Strop’s many felting experiments. The covers are wool though, and they are making my ears a bit itchy. The Stropolina reckons that this kind of making-do behaviour is the technological age’s equivalent to repairing your glasses with Band-Aids. Something my father is famous for, and something I’m pretty sure he would still be doing if the nursing staff didn’t control his access to Band-Aids. But that’s another story.

As many of you will know this summer has been very strange. With a big fat El Niño lolloping around in the middle of the Pacific, our weather has taken on a schizophrenic character. In fact it’s not really our weather at all. We seemed to be borrowing weather from our neighbours on short term loans. One day a large chunk of Darwin weather will slide down the weather map and sit on top of us for a few days, then it’ll get pushed out of the way by a violent slab of Antarctic weather. It makes the whole concept of seasons rather redundant.

Thursday was one of those days. First, we had the humidity of Darwin, then the baking dry heat of Alice Springs, closely followed by the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding a line of thunderstorms ahead of a blast straight from Davis Station. Obviously a perfect evening to listen to some music in a tent.

Spiegeltents don’t have allocated seating so you have to queue to get in, and we had arranged to meet Wendy and her friend Marina, in the queue. (Wendy and Marina were standing in for Bruce and Laila, who are stuck in London – although from what I hear it is probably warmer there.)

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The heavens opened just after we had found Marina, who we hadn’t met before. With umbrellas deployed, we huddled close and started to introduce ourselves. Wendy texted to reassure us that she was nice and dry in a large marquee somewhere. That was a huge relief, we had been worried that she might have had cold water dripping down the back of her neck. After the worst of the rain had passed the Spiegeltent opened its flaps and let us in. Wendy timed her arrival to perfection, meeting us at the door, and looking very dry.

The show we were there to see was an Ethiopian jazz musician called Hailu Mergia (not Hilux merger, thank you dictation software). He had a three piece band: drums, bass and keyboards. It seemed like Hailu would have a go at anything with a keyboard – as well as electronic organs, he had a piano accordion, and even a melodica.

It was unusual music, a tight driving rhythm section, with slippery and almost pause-less keyboard riffs sliding around over the top. It was quite repetitive and sometimes hypnotic, drifting between African rhythms and what I think of as 1970s jazz.

Towards the end of the show another storm came through, drumming ominously on the fluttering canvas. When we emerged from the shelter of the Spiegeltent, it was blowing a gale and pissing down. The patrons waiting for the next show were gathered in the bar, watching one of those fountains that uses computer controlled water drops to write words. The fountain was trying to compete with the wind and the rain and it was losing big time. While we couldn’t make out the fountain’s messages, it was quite clear what the weather was telling us. We took the hint and scurried across College Street, pausing only to put our umbrellas back the way God had intended, and climbed into Wendy’s car.

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Our destination was a Malaysian restaurant called Malacca Straits. It is in the courtyard of that big apartment complex on the north side of Broadway. There were excellent smells as we were blown through the laneway and into the relative calm of the courtyard.

Malacca Straits promotes itself as an authentic Malaysian dining experience, and the menu had a lot of dishes that featured duck eggs and banana leaf wrappings.

We started with two of the banana-leaf-wrapped-parcel dishes. One was a spiced fish mousse, and the other, a tasty lump of glutinous rice and shrimp paste. Yum. The Nasi Goreng (not Naz ignoring,), was full of large chunks of chicken, prawn and vegetables. Another yum. Kapitan Chicken was a rich, smooth curry, mild but full of flavour and with loads of coconut. The Assam Udang was a bowl full of prawns, tomato and okra swimming in a tangy tamarind sauce. Much flavour, so yum. Our last dish was very late arriving, and there was some discussion about whether we still actually wanted it. Luckily we took the path of least resistance, because The Salted Egg Eggplant turned out to be Oh So Yum. Eggplant chips, in a light duck egg batter with curry leaves. Light and crisp outside, creamy on the inside.

Malacca Straits made me want to go back to Malaysia and Indonesia. And I will one of these days, in the meantime though I will definitely be going back to Broadway.

hailu5

Filed Under: Off the Map Tagged With: Davis Station, duck egg, Ethiopian, Jazz, Malaysian, weather

171 Kammadhenu – apparently it is pronounced kammadhenu

August 4, 2013 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

171 kammadhenu

We are going to Kammadhenu tonight (two proper restaurants in a row, things are looking up), and we are catching up with John and Pauline, who were last observed at Than Binh. A flurry of emails has led to an arrangement to meet John at the Marly, for a Dogblotter or two before the main event. There is a lot to talk about. John and I both went to Epping Boys High School in the dim dark past, although not in the same year, he is definitely older than me. The talk eventually turned to school japes, and I was recalling the time some wag had arranged for a truckload of soil to be delivered to the front lawn of a teacher who had displeased him in some manner. I thought that this had been done by someone in my year, to one of my teachers, but then I also thought that it may just have been a playground myth, trotted out by some boastful and spotty twerp each year. John went a bit quiet while I was describing these supposed events, taking a sudden and keen interest in his schooner of Dougbelter. As my story petered out, he looked up with that shy grin thing he does, and said, “It wasn’t topsoil, it was blue-metal gravel. That was me.” Strop and I nearly fell off our stools – we were in the presence of a legend – well a playground legend anyway. We’ve known John for forty odd years and this has never come up before. We were busily pumping him for all the details when Pauline and Kirsten arrived. We got as far as – it was the librarian’s front lawn – in reprisal for an unfair caning (aren’t they all) – and involved a girl with family connections to a gravel and sand business. A love interest too! I’m pretty sure there is movie deal in this.

With the party now at full strength we threw back the last of our Dogbaskets and decamped to the restaurant. Kirsten is a quest newbie (or is that noob these days? I will have to check with Keir and Tessa, my consultants for all things teenager). She is Pauline’s grand niece thrice removed or something. She is also a Kiwi but she can’t help that. John and Pauline inform us that they have been undertaking a quest of their own, and it is longer than King Street! They are doing the Coastal Walk from Barrenjoey to Kurnell in weekend installments, complete with appropriately timed whale glimpses and coffee-shop stops. I am immediately envious, as this sounds like far more fun than King Street. And it has actual wildlife, not just drunken revellers in animal themed onesies. Kirsten is joining them on the walk, bright and early the next morning to act as chaperone for all the oldies, which is why she is available to join us tonight.

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Kammadhenu is basically a curry joint with dhosas on the side. Their newish looking menus proclaim this loudly in yellow and purple. 1300 CURRYS is the headline, so I imagine they do takeaways too. The menu colours match the colour of the walls and go surprisingly well with strip of GI-cordial-green LED lights running around the walls. The culinary roots of Kammadhenu are in India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, which presumably explains the colour scheme.

There is no wine list but there is a drinks fridge up the back, from which we are invited to help ourselves. There are quite a few beers on offer, but not many wines so I quickly dispatch myself back up the road to fetch a Pinot Grigio/Gris. “Get the one Rebecca bought at New Taste,” says Strop. Umm ok. “Any idea what it was called?” My question is met with her dont-be-stupid look, so I go freelance and come back with a NZ wine that elicits a lot of comments along the lines of, “My…, that’s fruity isn’t it… and quite sweet.”

Having contributed on the wine-infliction front I leave the food selection to the others. We go for a range of dhosas, some curries and some snow peas. I wasn’t paying very close attention to the details of the order as I was intrigued that the waiter was entering our choices onto an iPad. How very C21.

The food does not really distract from the conversation. It is all very edible but none of it is particularly memorable. Not by me anyway. Dhosas are always fun but the size of the plates proves a bit of a challenge to the whole food sharing ethic. Still there wasn’t any left over by the time we spilled out of the restaurant, and started shuffling along King Street in search of a gelato for dessert.

Your correspondent suffering the effects of the pre-dinner Dogblotto
Your correspondent suffering the effects of the pre-dinner Dogblotto

On the way we walked past a new shop that seems to specialise in the supply of onesies to the Newtown stylemeisters. It was at this point that I learned that Kirsten is a bit of a onesie aficionado (“but I wouldn’t wear it in public,”). Apparently they are unparalleled as after work, house-lounging wear. Seeing as my current choice of house-lounging clobber consists of nastily stained tracky-daks and a twenty year old shag-pile polar-fleece, I am seriously considering a change to a pink and white zebra-striped onesie. It could only be an improvement, although I do worry about the whole toilet thing.

Next up is Burger Fuel. Strop and I will probably keep this one all to ourselves. Unless anyone is really keen?

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Kammadhenu on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Coastal Walk, Curry, dhosa, Dogbolter, Epping Boys High School, Food, Indian, Kammadhenu, King Street, Malaysian, Marly, Newtown, restaurants, Sri Lankan

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