Nerk Restaurant - Siem Reap

After spending the morning exploring Angkor Wat, we asked Sophorn, our driver, to take us somewhere nice for lunch. He recommended Nerk Restaurant, an upscale restaurant in suburban Siem Reap. Lori and Mel both ordered Chicken Amok, a traditional Khmer dish that they had both been looking forward to trying while we were in Cambodia. Ken ordered a serve of frogs and I ordered eel, however I was informed that they were out of eel, so I ended up ordering the Beef Lok Lak instead, another traditional Khmer dish.

Outdoor bar at Nerk Restaurant.

We drank a lot of Pina Colada's this trip, this was Lori's here at Nerk.

I opted for a Margarita with lunch, and Nerk's version hit the mark just right.

Lori and Mel both ordered Chicken Amok, a traditional Khmer dish we had been really keen to try here in Cambodia.

Mels' Chicken Amok, removed from it's coconut casing. Chicken and fish amok are tradional Khmer dishes usually cooked in these little banana leaf cups.

Lori also had a serve of satay chicken and Jasmine rice.

The food, drinks and service here at Nerk Restaurant were all on point and we all left full and happy. This is a higher than average priced restaurant for Siem Reap, but the quality and the setting is on par with the pricing.

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Twilight Hawker Markets in Forrest Place

Perth's Forrest Place is home to the Twilight Hawker Markets, a weekly event for some of Perth's food vendors to gather together and showcase their menu's to a rather diverse audience, from city office workers on their way home, to dedicated food travellers looking for a fix before their next overseas journey.



Kate, Mikah and myself headed to Forrest Place on Friday night to see what all the fuss was about. Kate and I have tried a few different foods on our journeys in the past, including deep fried insects and catfish cooked on a stick on our recent journey to Thailand, so we thought we'd head in to see if we could find something a little out of the ordinary to get us through until our next adventure.



We ended up choosing 3 market stalls to visit, starting with a chicken and seafood paella, followed by a serve of satay sticks and then topped off with some asado (or beef ribs).



While in many countries, the appeal of the Hawker stalls is in the price and the variety of foods on offer, the usual Perth price and serving creep has hit here too, with slightly smaller than usual portions for slightly higher than usual prices. One of the things Kate was looking forward to at these markets were the spiral spuds she'd tried in Thailand, but at $6 for a serve, as opposed to $1 for the same serve in Thailand, they got skipped over.



I've included a few photos of the asado, as the were probably the food I was most looking forward to while waiting in the queues (and they were all that I took photos of). While overall I was very happy with the asado, I was a little disappointed with the toughness of the meat. I don't know if this is the standard for beef ribs, but with the delicious selection of spices and some very tasty and meat juice soaked fat, if the meat had been more tender it would have made it perfect. I don't feel I can lay all the blame at the chef though, as the space and time available at these markets must make these one of the hardest meals to get just right. I have a feeling that if they'd cooked these ribs low and slow enough to have the meat falling apart tender, there would have only been a handful of ribs actually available to sell, and even at the $10 a serve price, they wouldn't have been able to sell enough to make it worth while turning up.



If you want to see some photos of some of the food we ate and the markets we visited in Thailand, check out the album on flickr

Mission Sized Burrito

Ever since the first time we visited California, back in 2009, I've been fascinated by burritos, in particular, the meal sized burritos most commonly found in California. While there are a few places over here that sell Mexican food, and burritos in particular, most of them fall short in one way or another of the burritos we've eaten in California. Usually it's the size that lets these Australian burritos down, and I've yet to find anyone here that make a burrito that is big enough to be a meal in itself (as the burrito is usually eaten in the USA and Mexico).



This was an attempt to create a Mission style 'meal in a burrito' burrito. The ingredients were all off the shelf items, including the largest tortilla commonly found in Australia, beef, chicken, shredded cheese, mushrooms, onions, tomato and salsa. In addition, a pack of Uncle Ben's Mexican Rice (microwaveable) a sachet of Old El Paso Chicken Burrito seasoning were vital to the finished product.

I used half the seasoning for the chicken and half for the beef, which was all cut into small pieces before seasoning and then left to stand for about 5 minutes. Ideally I would leave the meat in the seasoning longer, but the decision to make burritos for dinner came pretty late in the day. The tortilla's were prepared for use by placing them on a small rack on top of an oven tray, which was partially filled with water, inside the oven at around 180 degrees Celsius. This worked well, but needs a little refinement to ensure even steaming of the tortillas, which makes them much easier to handle when wrapping a large burrito. While initially I had thought I could get away with only using 2 tortillas, it became apparent while wrapping the burrito that I would need a third to go around the centre of the burrito. Looking forward to the next attempt, I think I'll use the same 2 tortilla layout to start with, but keep the filling strictly to the length of a single tortilla in the centre of the first 2 tortillas, and then use a third to wrap the centre section, which should in turn give me a little more material to work with at each end.

Australia Day 2010

This year for Australia Day, k8 and I decided to do something a little different, for us anyway. As long as we've been together we've been spending the day at other people's houses. This year, we spent the day at home, and cooked up a bit of a feast. We actually cooked enough for several more people to eat, but that's ok, it's all good food, and we'll be eating leftovers for a while now.

I cooked the meat, and k8 cooked some garlic potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli cheese and some roasted vegetables including potato, pumpkin and carrots. The meat side of things consisted of a pork roast and a lamb roast, both smoked in a Weber BBQ.

Cooking the meat took about 4 hours, from lighting the coals in the Weber to getting the meat onto the plate, and involved smoking the meat with hickory wood. I have previously used hickory to smoke a turkey and pork combination for Christmas, so I had some idea of how things were going to pan out today. For instance, I knew to keep an eye on things until the meat turned to the desired shade and then to wrap the roasts in aluminium foil to stop the skin from burning while I waited for the rest of the meat to cook.

Of course, a good beer always goes well with a good meal, and today's choice was Beez Neez, a honey flavoured beer brewed by The Matilda Bay Brewery.