October 9, 2009: Roti Man

The Roti Man has been on Cindy's list of places to try since Stickyfingers gave it the thumbs up 18 months ago. We've not really had a reason to trek across the river to try it out, and have been well occupied sampling local Indian fare. With a night out in St Kilda on the cards and a general enthusiasm for Indian, we did a quick check of the tram maps, happily discovering that the 96 runs straight past Middle Park on its way to Fitzroy Street, making The Roti Man an easy stop off. We didn't have any trouble scoring a table without a booking at around 8 on a Friday night, but things were reasonably busy (and noisy) the whole time we were there. And you can immediately see why: The Roti Man has a colourful attractive vibe, friendly staff and an impressive-looking menu.

Cindy ordered her customary mango lassi, which was one of the most visually striking that I'd seen, but probably not the wisest choice given the rich curries that we ended up ordering.

Cindy ordered probably the least lassi-appropriate meal on the menu: Dum Aloo Kashmir ($14.50), potatoes and onions stir-fried in a wok with a delicate dry roasted spice mix of cardamom, fennel and cinnamon and other selected spices and simmered in a cashew nut creamy yoghurt sauce. This was an incredibly rich and mild curry, with just enough spice to stop it from being overwhelming. Cindy loved it - a nutty, creamy potato-based curry is a recipe for Cindy's approval, and the sprinkling of dried fruit was a nice touch (although the cherries were a bit weird). I had a few spoonfuls and agreed with Cindy's appraisal - this is an excellent dish, but I think it would be too much for me to get through on my own.

I went for something a bit sharper, the Kadai Paneer ($14.50), home made cottage cheese with onions, tomatoes and capsicum in a tomato based sauce. This had a bigger kick than Cindy's curry, and it was a nice change to order a paneer that wasn't in a saag sauce. If anything, it could have used a bit less capsicum - the flavour started to dominate by the time I'd worked my way through the dish, but I was still pretty satisfied.

We couldn't visit the Roti Man without sampling some breads, so we ordered a serve of coriander paratha and a serve of garlic naan.

Cindy was pretty impressed by the coriander paratha, and I enjoyed the flavour combination, but realised that I'm not really a fan of paratha - I much prefer the softer naan and roti breads. The garlic naan hit the spot, but didn't scale the heights of our previous southside Indian experience. Perhaps I should have ordered the eponymous roti.

Still, this was a fine Indian experience - a kind of middle ground between the cheap local curry shops and the slightly more upmarket Indya Bistro. It's not exactly convenient, so it may be a while between trips, but The Roti Man has shot towards the top of our options for eating out the next time we're heading off to the Prince or the Palace.

Address: 10-12 Armstrong Street, Middle Park
Ph: 9699 4244
Prices: Vegie curries $13.50 - $16.50, breads $4-$5.50
Licensed
Website: http://www.therotiman.com/

October 5, 2009: Annual lab culinary competition

Anticipation and rivalry has been steadily building in my workplace for a solid month or two, in the lead-up to the biggest social event on our calendar - the annual lab culinary competition. This is thought to be the sixth such event, held in honour of lab member Jane, as close to her birthday as is feasible. The competition seems to get bigger and better every year; new people arrive in the lab and contribute new styles and flavours, while departed lab members frequently come back especially for the occasion.

With my past blogged reports and even a cookbook compiling the 2008 entries, new lab members were duly alerted to what was expected of them. This year theirs were among the most exciting entries, with some entrants presenting novel and delicious dishes from their home countries, and one newbie even snagging the grand prize.

Our trio of judges comprise one vegetarian, one gluten-free girl and one raging omnivore. This provides an excellent incentive to prepare foods that meet the range of dietary requirements amongst the lab. In this spirit of inclusiveness, this is the one time each year that you'll spy pictures of meat on this blog.

The only unfortunate aspect of this competition's growth is that it gets harder and harder to taste, photograph and jot down the name of every entry, so my commentary below will be brief. However a 2009 edition of the competition cookbook is in the works, so if you see anything that you absolutely, positively must know how to make, I can probably help you out in a month or so.

These tomatoes rest on haloumi pieces, are stuffed with risotto and came with a mustard dressing. They were prepared by our horrendously competitive leader, who won a Lifetime Achievement Award on the day. They were probably my favourite dish of the competition, but I'm not letting him know that!

These won a prize for the best meatifying of a vegetable.

Tamales! Stuffed with spicy black beans as well as steamed cornmeal.

This salad won the Taste of Spring Award.

You might recognise my tropical 'slaw, this time with red cabbage. It was the Best Twist On A Classic prize winner.

This amazing Thai rose petal salad won the "We Really Like This Salad" prize.

The White Fungus Salad won an award for the Best Use of Last Year's Prize.

The Pickle Award winner.

Winner of the "You Don't Win Friends With Salad" Award.

Winner of the award category "We Don't Know What This Is, But We're Impressed".

A Spanish tortilla.

My Mapo Tofu, prize winner for the Best Vegetarianising of Meat.

Moroccan eggplant salad.

A Persian-style mushroom soup.

Winner of the "There's something in the water" prize. Funnily enough, this name of this alcoholic punch translates as Water of Valencia.

These gorgeous strawberries won a prize for Best Presentation.

Rocky road containing, among other things, raspberry liquorice! I fully endorse this innovation.

Vanilla-honeycomb ice-cream. It won the "No you can't have mine, get your own" prize and also the GRAND PRIZE.

A coconut pie topped with fresh pineapple and mint won a prize for the Use of the Most Coconut.

I'm proud to tell you that my raw lime pie won the Jane's Choice Award.

The delcious cakes above and below jointly won the Imitation Award.

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You can also check out reports on the 2006 and 2008 culinary competitions.

October 4, 2009: Beet cheera pachadi

When we were in London a few years ago Cindy and I enjoyed a fine vego Indian meal at Rasa, the highlight of which was a weird pink beetroot curry, Beet Cheera Pachadi. In the blog post, we promised to hunt down a recipe once we were back in Australia and, three years later, we've finally done it.

I whipped it up on Sunday for a byo curry lunch, and it clearly won the pinkest dish of the day. Colour aside, it's an interesting combination of flavours, with the earthy, sweet beetroot offset by the spices and the slight tang of the yoghurt. Looking back, it seems that Rasa blended their ingredients up into a smoother mush, while our recipe left little cubes of beetroot to enjoy - I think the textural variety was a plus.

It's a fair bit of work and your hands end up looking like you've been involved in a particularly gruesome crime, so it might be a while before I pull this recipe out again. But if you're looking for something a bit different to take along to a curry night, this is well worth a shot.


Beet Cheera Pachadi
(from Cooking Index)

4 medium beetroots
100g dessicated coconut
2 green chillies, chopped
1 tablespoon minced ginger
3 teaspoons mustard seeds
2 tablespoons vegie oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon chilli powder
250g fresh spinach leaves, washed and coarsely chopped
1 cup yoghurt
Salt and pepper

Trim and peel the beets, and cut into 1cm cubes. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and add the beet cubes, cooking for about 20 minutes, until tender.

In the meantime, put the coconut, chillies, ginger and 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds in a food processor and grind to a paste.

When the beetroot is cooked, drain and transfer to a bowl. Heat the oil in your saucepan and add the rest of the mustard seeds. Once they start popping, put the beetroot back in, along with the turmeric, chilli powder, salt and pepper and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly.

Add in the paste from the food processor along with the spinach and cook until the spinach leaves have wilted. Cover and cook for 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat, stir the yoghurt through and serve.

Note: the original recipe has fresh curry leaves in it - these would be a great addition, but we couldn't find any locally and were too lazy to cast our net more widely.

September 29-October 3, 2009: The couscous experiment - phase II

The second stage of the couscous experiment involved soup. I decided that the ideal candidate recipe already in our repertoire was savoury harira soup - there's lots of spicy liquid for the couscous to soak up, and the recipe is already dotted with onion, celery and lentils to trigger the teeth into action. I reckoned on 1/2 cup of couscous to 2 cups of soup, though this brought us slightly soupy grains rather than the slightly grainy soup I was aiming for. With the different soup styles being eaten over a few days, this isn't the fairest or best controlled experiment. Nevertheless, the results were interesting and not entirely what I expected.

Product #1, the standard supermarket couscous, took very little time to cook through. Not soaking up all the liquid, this version was Michael's favourite of the set.

Product #2, the pearl couscous, also had a lovely moistness to it. I liked it most fresh from the pot but I found that the leftovers the next day had lost their bite and were almost mushy.

Product #3. After more than 20 minutes simmering in soup the moghrabieh was still too much to chew. However its texture was toned down as a leftover lunch, and by then it was my favourite of the bunch.

Product #4. The couscous-alternative quinoa soaked up a lot of the liquid and was ultimately a bit dry. Clearly it needs to be used in small doses when soup is on the menu.

Although these dishes were less liquidy than I intended, a flavour-packed base recipe guaranteed some tasty meals. Texture-wise there's no clear winner - Michael preferred the standard version, while I'd use pearl for a short simmer and moghrabieh for the long haul. And I can't help thinking that the quinoa didn't quite get a fair go from my failed design.

I think we've got at least one more couscous recipe in us. Stay tuned for the final phase and wrap-up.

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You can read the first instalment of the couscous experiment here.