Cooking Crusade

A fellow foodie friend of mine told me about this French restaurant that she had heard good things about. For $50 for three courses (well, $51.50 to be exact), I was sold. Of course I always have the pathetic excuse of “At least it’s good to blog about.”

I still remember the first French restaurant I ever went to. It was in high school, I think I must have been about 14 or so, in my year eight French class, when our class was taken on an excursion to taste French food in Darling Harbor. Actually I don’t remember the name of the place.. What I mostly remember was shuddering at the garlic snails on the entree menu. People keep telling me you don’t really taste them and its really “All about the garlic butter”, but… uh. No thanks. I think i’ll just stick to garlic bread – a far simpler way (in my opinion) to consume garlic butter.

We enter the restaurant and I instantly know that its going to result in dark photos. One of the worst things about dining in nice restaurants, I’ve found, is that they’re all dim and ‘romantically’ lit, which is nice when you’re dining with a significant other, but not when you’re a food blogger! It results in taking a bit longer to get that good photo, and I always feel guilty about making my friends wait for their food to be photographed. Although I am a little amused that whenever I eat out with anyone now, they always wait patiently (and automatically) for me to take my food pics – even pushing their dishes towards me so I can get a better angle. Aw, thanks you guys Anyway, some of these pics are a liittle bit dark. Soz!

I browse the menu and am excited by mentions of french onion soup, goats cheese, roast rack of lamb. The words “creamy mushroom sauce” is seductively inviting. The dessert menu is even better. Crêpes flambées au grand Marnier, crème brûlée, chocolate mousse and profiteroles.. heaven.

While we are making our choice, we are served pâté with toasts.

When I was a bit younger, I used to think of pâté as a ‘bit gross.’ But I have certainly changed my mind, all for the better. This pâté is rich and creamy and goes perfectly with the crisp toast. We wish for more toast, but don’t want to fill up, so we load up the last piece of toast with a decent smear of pâté and watch regretfully as it is taken away.

I choose the deep fried mushrooms with tartare sauce for my entree and my friend Ghilaine chooses the week special, deep fried camembert with raspberry sauce. I was very tempted by the French onion soup, but I’ve never had deep fried mushrooms and thought I’d go with the new experience. Ghilaine picks the camembert with a smile, saying “I can’t resist deep fried cheese.” Amen, sister.

The camembert is a lovely balance of creamy and crispy. The raspberry sauce adds a nice touch of sweetness, although it tastes exactly like raspberry jam.

The mushrooms are breaded and then deep fried – something I’ve never seen before at any restaurant. They are quite good, but extremely filling. The tartare sauce adds a nice dimension of lightness to the richness of the mushrooms, but I am struggling to finish them.

Ghilaine orders the braised duck in orange and Grand Marnier sauce. I taste a little and the duck imparts a strong orange flavour and the meat is well braised – it falls to pieces quite easily (this is a good thing). I have to say that I did prefer my main to the duck though.

I find it difficult to go past lamb of any kind as a main dish. I just can’t resist lamb with a pink centre – plus I find it difficult to recreate at home, so this usually makes an easy choice for me. The lamb is served with a cheese and garlic mashed potato and what tastes like a balsamic or red wine reduction. It is delicious and perfectly cooked, but after the mushrooms, I really struggle with this. I can only finish two of the cutlets – sad, but I’m practically dying by the end of it!

We are also served a side dish of vegetables, again, which we found difficult to get into. I’m afraid we barely finished it at all, but the green beans were garlicky and tender and amazing. The crispy potatoes are also a nice addition.

Finally, we get to the best part — Dessert.

Ghilaine is feeling pretty full by this point, so she opts for the (slightly) lighter option of the pavlova (Meringue, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and strawberries on a raspberry coulis). I can’t go to a French restaurant and not order crème brûlée, which was once one of my favorite desserts for many years. When my bf and I were first dating, I would go visit him at his work in St. Leonards and we would go to cafes to share a crème brûlée at a nearby restaurant.. Good times .  I love watching the scene in Amélie, where she describes the pleasure she gets from cracking the toffee on the crème brûlée with a spoon – I feel exactly the same way. I love that movie! Just listening to the sound track or playing the music on the piano gives me such a lovely feeling of calm

My crème brûlée cracks delightfully with a sharp crack with my spoon, revealing the creamy vanilla custard underneath. I savour every spoonful.

Ghilaine’s dessert comes, surprisingly, in the shape of pretty swan! I loved the presentation of her dish. It was a scoop of icecream, surrounded with piped, freshly whipped cream and then meringue shaped to look like wings a head/beak. I was very impressed.

Finally we are finished. With groaning tummies that are full of delicious French food, we drag ourselves back to our car/scooter and drive ourselves home. I sleep easily and dream of French food

Chez Maurice et Linda is at 292 Sydney Road Balgowlah 2093 and you can make reservations on (02) 9949 4155.

Wonderful value for delicious French food – two courses for $43.50 or three for $51.50. I think next time if I come back, I’ll opt for two courses with a partner and we can share entree and dessert – three courses each was quite large for two girls.

Enjoy!

xx

Christine

 

 

 

My gorgeous boyfriend surprised me by taking me out to Etch for dinner on Valentine’s Day. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Etch is a sister restaurant to Bécasse, since a good friend of mine and I have a booking to visit there next month.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into Etch was how beautiful this restaurant was. I pass a vase full of enormous silky-looking gorgeous black feathers on my way to our table. We are seated near an old fashioned fireplace in quite a spacious room with plenty of room for the waiters to move effusively between tables. I love the wallpaper near our table – flowery with a background of pale green, so delicately pretty.  Art covers all the walls. Everything is a mixture of old fashioned and modern – I love it!

For Valentine’s Day, Etch were serving a V-day tasting menu – 5 courses for $110 per head.

Before we begin, my boyfriend and I mention to our waiter that neither of us eat any shellfish (we don’t eat pork either, but saw no point in mentioning this as it didn’t make an appearance on the set menu.) The second course is seared yellow fin tuna with smoked Queensland scallop. The waiter said that we could either skip on the scallops or get an alternative vegetarian option or take one of each to share. We opted for the sharing option.

The first course was chilled sweet corn soup with iced basil and a spiced corn fritter.

The corn fritter comes skewered on a little bamboo skewer. M tastes it first. “This is sooo good,” he comments. Spurred on, I take a teensy bite… He is right. “Do we dunk it in the soup?” we wonder. It seems like the most logical step to do, so we do and it is wonderful. The crispy spiced fritter in the cool sweet corn soup is delightfully good and we are sad when it disappears in a few bites, but delight in drinking the rest of the soup which is wonderful as it is alone.

Our mocktails arrive. (Left) “Apple Beer” (Apples, lime and ginger beer) is my favorite of the evening. The crisp flavor of the ginger melds beautifully with the lime and apples. (Right) Grapes, cranberry, rosemary, lemonade. I could definitely taste the cranberry and lemonade in this, but not the rosemary. It is quite good, but the ginger mocktail is the real winner.

Second course arrives. I used to hate sashimi, but since Tetsuya’s, I have become a bit braver in trying raw fish. This was the seared yellow fin tuna with the smoked Queensland scallops, pickled radish, pea shoots with soy and mirin. You may remember that I requested no scallops, but unfortunately it seems as though there was a mixup in the kitchen and I ended up with scallops anyway (you can see them just above the radish). Not wanting to cause a fuss (and since I’m not allergic,) I just pushed it to the side of my plate and enjoyed the rest of the meal. This course was wonderful. The flavors of the soy and mirin really worked so amazingly beautifully with the fish and the radish and pea shoots were flavored with something incredible that I couldn’t put my finger on – but I did not want to stop eating it! Really loved this dish. The lamb of the night was spectacularly good, but this was probably  my favorite dish of the evening.

When our waiter came to take our plates and he realised that I had been given scallops, he looked well, shocked. I have never seen a more horrified waiter. He muttered something about it being unacceptable and a short apology and stormed back to the kitchen. In a couple of minutes, another waiter was at our table apologising about it and explaining how seriously they took allergies and promised to give us something extra special for dessert. Our original waiter also insisted on giving us more free mocktails on the house. Talk about excellent service! As I commented to my boyfriend later, accidentally getting scallops was one of the best things we have ever done at  restaurant, lol.

As I mentioned earlier, my bf got the vegetarian alternative for the scallop dish. This was a salad of marinated vegetables with goat’s cheese. I have to admit that I tried a little of the goats cheese and I’m still quite a cheese.. I guess.. beginner? Is the best word for it. I found it far too bitter for my tastes and the flavors that developed with it were not to my liking at all. I had to down a bit of the ginger mocktail to get rid of the aftertaste. I think that I must have eaten a large section of the outside skin section of the cheese? Either way, I guess that just means I’m not much of a cheese connoisseur. Give me a brie with crackers any day and I’m happy

Last savoury course for the night – this was the slow roasted lamb rump with olive oil potato puree, crushed peas and burnt pepper vinagrette. It also came with marinated/roasted capsicum on top. Normally, I despise capsicum, but this added a lovely sweetness to the lamb, which was cooked to absolute perfection. I was getting to be absolutely stuffed at this part of the meal, but I couldn’t stop eating this dish. I’m a total sucker for lamb and this was completely delicious. The crushed peas and the potato puree were also great – the potato puree was so creamy and lovely. Even my bf, who hates mashed potatoes enjoyed it.

Macerated summer berries with sorbet (I think it was strawberry or melon, can’t quite remember.) This dessert was refreshingly small (so stuffed at this point!) but was also a nice dish to segue between dishes and also acted like a palate cleanser. The berries were lovely and juicy and suited the sorbet quite well.

The final (official) dessert of the night. Vanilla creme brulee with passionfruit and strawberry sorbet. I loved this dessert. My creme brulee cracks under my spoon perfectly (even though just from looking at it, you imagine that it is quite fragile and will crack easily, but it does not disappoint;) and is creamy and wonderful, studded gorgeously with black vanilla beans. I personally would love to know how they managed to get the custard into that shape on the plate so neatly, I honestly would have no idea about how to do it myself… The strawberry sorbet was lovely and cool and the creme brulee tasted fantastic with a tiny dab of the passionfruit sauce on your spoon. I can’t help it… I’m a total sucker for a good creme brulee and this was one of them. Despite how full I was feeling, I managed to finish it all off! I know.. I’m such a fatty

These were the complimentary desserts I mentioned earlier.

(Left to right) ; Aerated dark chocolate infused with mint, nut honeycomb/praline/tasty noms, lemon sorbet in white chocolate, rhubarb crisp.

To be honest at this point we really could not eat any more, so fortunately the kind waiter wrapped up our remaining desserts and sent us home with them to munch on later (at work, in my case.)

While resting from the delicious meal at our table, I mentioned to the waiter that I had planned a visit to Becasse next month. He asked me when my reservation was for and my name and promptly disappeared. Who knows, maybe there will be something special there when I visit… or maybe he was calling to say something like “Under no circumstances can you give this girl shellfish.” Haha.

In summary;

I had a wonderful night out at Etch. Their Valentine’s Day menu was wonderful and all the dishes were excellent, which is sometimes a rare quality to find at some degustation restaurants. The service was impeccable and the decor was stunning, I would definitely recommend Etch as a nice romantic night out for you and a special friend.. or even a regular friend! I’d love to come and visit again in the future

For more info on their website click here for the Etch Dining website.

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day

xoxo

Christine

I went to Cherrybrook Verve Cafe with Mike and his parents for his birthday.

It’s a great cafe with lots of fresh, yummy food with very generous serving sizes.

Mike and his parents all ordered salads, and I got grilled fish with salad and chips.

Wild rocket, beetroot and goats cheese salad with sweet balsamic ($10.00) with an extra serving of grilled chicken breast (+$3.50)

Pumpkin salad with diced butternut pumpkin, roasted capsicum, kalamata olives and marinated fetta ($10.00) with an extra serving of grilled chicken breast (+$3.50)

Verve Caesar Salad ($10.00) with an extra serving of grilled chicken breast (+$3.50)

Grilled fish with chips and garden salad and house made tartare sauce ($18.00).
We also ordered smoothies ($6.50 each) and pesto bread ($6.00).

Strawberry.. Accidentally drank too much before taking a pic, lol.

Banana Both very delicious and creamy Out of either of them I think I prefer the strawberry.

Pesto bread ($6.00)
All in all, Verve was a great place for lunch full of tasty, fresh food with some yummy and healthy options. Would definitely love to come here in the future again! Check this one out

Christine