Author: Alex

Smoked Salmon with Soba Noodles and Ponzu

- Alex Leave a comment

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We eat quite a lot of salmon in our household: the toddler enjoys tinned salmon (Tasmanian, of course) as a snack/lunch/easy dinner, we all love fresh salmon (especially the crispy skin!) and smoked salmon is popular too. One thing we miss, which we used to eat a lot of in England, is hot smoked fish. ‘Normal’ smoked salmon is cold smoked, so the fish is effectively not cooked (it is cured beforehand). Hot smoking uses hot smoke, so the fish is both cooked and preserved by the smoking process. While smoked salmon is normally sold finely sliced, hot smoked salmon is sold in steaks. If you don’t like smoked salmon, give hot smoked a go, because it’s very different.

Anyway, when I spotted this recipe, using both hot smoked salmon AND soba noodles, I had to give it a go. It has very few ingredients, but you might struggle to find the frozen edamame unless you go to a specialist Asian food store. Soba are pretty easy to find although the ones I bought from the supermarket were about 75% wheat and only 25% buckwheat. If you have the time and inclination, seek out a higher proportion of buckwheat.

Begin by making the ponzu sauce. To the juice of one lemon add 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, ½ tsp caster sugar and 1 tsp of sesame oil. Mix to dissolve the sugar and set aside.

Take your hot smoked salmon (I used one 185g packet between the two of us) and, if the skin is still on, remove it. Straight from the packet it will be extremely tough and really quite unpleasant. You can always have a go frying it up if you wish! Flake the fish (equally!) into two bowls. Into each bowl add a finely sliced spring onion, some julienned carrot and some julienned cucumber. I used these in lieu of the edamame; I suggest you use whatever is in the fridge!

You could easily do all this in advance. At this point, cover your bowl(s) with cling film and pop in the fridge until you are ready. If you prefer the salmon at room temperature (like me) don’t forget to take them out half an hour or so before you want to eat.

When you’re ready to serve, cook some soba noodles in boiling water. Be careful not to overcook because they will become a bit soggy and claggy if you do. The ponzu will help separate the noodles and perk them up, but you’re much better off opting for al dente.

Top the salmon and vegetables with the soba, pour over the ponzu and sprinkle on a few sesame seeds (toasted if you can be bothered).

Not only does this taste really good, but it’s easy, quick and insanely healthy.

This alone did us for dinner (though we did wrap up the evening with a sneaky chocolate!). It would also serve well as a salad to serve as part of a more extravagant meal, or a light entrée. Aside from the salmon and noodles, it’s flexible and the ponzu is easily made from store cupboard ingredients. Andy did comment that he thought next time some finely sliced fresh chillis would be a welcome addition. If you do want to spice it up, you could also use chilli oil in lieu or (or as a part substitute for) the sesame oil.

To Tip or Not To Tip

- Alex 2 Comments

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photo by Aaron Freedman

It’s not often I write an op-ed here on Eating Adelaide. If you want to read opinion, if you want to be told which spending decisions to make or not to make, there are plenty of blogs that will sate those cravings.

In fact, I think last time I bored you with my opinion over something more meaty than a restaurant was when I wrote about the Matt Skinner generic wine tasting note hoo-ha back in 2009. So please excuse me a Sunday evening diversion …

Recently, there’s been a fair amount of chat about tipping. Over at fatboo, based in Melbourne, he discussed what he perceives to be the ins and outs of tipping in Australia. There’s been questions raised about tips on credit card payments going to restaurateurs rather than waiting staff. And there’s even been a bit of discussion on twitter about adding service charges to bills automatically.

My personal position on tipping in Australia is pretty ad hoc. If the experience (and that’s not just service, it’s everything else too) blows me away, I’ll be generous; if I’ve had a good, but not awesome, time, I might round up to the nearest $5 or $10. And if everything has been OK, well, I pay what’s on the bill. The restaurateur needs to factor in the cost of service, along with the costs of food, rent, chefs and so on, when he or she sets the prices on the menu.

More controversially, a waitress* in America has been fired after posting a copy of a bill to reddit. A patron took exception to the 18% auto gratuity added to the bill on the ground that he/she pays 10% to God, so why should waiting staff get more. The redditor, one Chelsea Welch, was not actually the person who served the table, but had taken a photo of the receipt at the end of service, and subsequently posted it. It looks like she’s been a user of reddit for about a year and has posted on a variety of topics, including issues relating to service and restaurants. I suspect that, up until the offending post, she had not been disciplined by her employer for these postings. I’d also be interested to know how comprehensive Applebee’s social media policy is.

Ms Welch has also written a considered piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free section. She makes the valid point that waiting staff in the States not only rely on tips but are also taxed on them. Her piece focuses on imploring customers to ensure that they tip, at least, correctly. She acknowledges that legislation around waiting staff wages is, perhaps, less fair than in other countries, but she doesn’t note what would be considered in many places the gross illegality of her sacking. And she does not posit any solutions to an inequitable wage system.

Naturally, the comments on her Guardian piece, rather do address those points.

Redditors are quick to point out how un-Christian the patron’s action was.

Over the years I’ve read a lot of American blogs and food sites and I am surprised that this is a discussion that is still going on. It crops up repeatedly. Many argue that a tip based system encourages good service. Having visited America more than once (last time was in 2001, so my perception is a little out of date), I cannot say that I found the service exemplary. Generally, it was either frighteningly obsequious and intrusive or non existent. I’ve had superior service in other countries where staff genuinely engage with their customers, read the situation, and aren’t worrying about paying their bills.

I did a brief Google of Applebee’s and it turns out its parent company is headed by a CEO who used to be … a waitress. Applebee’s itself appears to have been embroiled in various industrial disputes over the years, including allegations of forced arbitration and allegations of underpaying staff when they are not waiting tables.

I appreciate that people need to work, need to earn money and that, in the US, they need punters to tip. Should I ever visit the US again, I’ll make sure to tip appropriately and in cash.

But I also hope that, somewhere, some day, a waiter or waitress in the US will become CEO of a restaurant chain and decide to pay staff fairly.

Better yet, one will be in a position to make broader, more positive change, for all waiting staff.

Stanley Bridge Tavern

- Alex Leave a comment

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date of visit: Sunday 27 January 2013

So there we were, in the Adelaide Hills, in the middle of Crush, deciding that we needed a proper sit down meal. As it was getting late, we decided that we should stop off at the first place we came across, providing it didn’t look ridiculously busy.

That ‘first place’ was the Stanley Bridge Tavern in Verdun. We’d been there once previously, in between a wedding (in the Hills) and a reception (in the city) but on that occasion we’d just dropped in for a drink. If I recall correctly, some people in our group may have ordered a sharing platter or some chips. They may not.

As the car park was quiet and an A-frame promised us an all day menu, we pulled in and soon found ourselves battling a high chair (why is there not a standard way of operating them?!). You enter the pub through the front bar, which has a lovely cosy feel, and head through to the dining room, which is a bit more utilitarian in flavour. It’s a large dining room, and there is also an outdoor dining area and a cider garden area. The staff were all very young but all very helpful and friendly. You don’t find slick, polished service but it’s definitely competent. We were asked at least twice how we were enjoying our food – better than not being asked at all!

I had only a very brief look over the wine list (being the designated driver and all) but it seemed reasonably interesting with a few departures from the South Australian standards. One of the first things I spotted was an Alsatian Riesling, which is always a good start as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t look too closely at the prices, but I have subsequently heard complaints that the by the glass selection is a little pricey. However, on the day we were there, on offer were two by the glass specials at $5 each.

The menu is trying hard to be more interesting than standard from-the-freezer-to-the-fryer pub fare. It features food which sounds familiar and comfortable, without limiting itself to schnitzel with four different toppings. I chose the lamb special: roast lamb rump, Moroccan style, with a chickpea salad. Andy opted for the à la carte Cajun chicken breast with coleslaw and chips.

We had a little wait for our food which didn’t bother me (and didn’t bother the toddler, as we had packed all manner of snacks for Crush!) but, given that the restaurant wasn’t busy (a massive table had arrived just after we did, but they hadn’t ordered) I do wonder how the Stanley Bridge would cope at full capacity.

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When our dishes did arrive, the first thing I noted was that my lamb could most generously be described as rare. Now that doesn’t bother me at all but it’s not the way I’d expect lamb to be served and I suspect that the majority of punters would, quite reasonably, send it back. Having a bit of a dig around my plate, Andy and I decided that what must have happened was that the lamb had come out, been carved, and been a lot rarer than expected. It looked like the slices had been put back in a pan, with just one side receiving a bit further cooking. Whether this because someone forgot, or ran out of time, or didn’t want to make it look like a mistake had been made … I don’t know. Speculation aside, I enjoyed the lamb. The chickpea salad was really only OK. It was drowned in a sickly, Balsamicky, overly sweet dressing, and showed little imagination.

Andy’s Cajun chicken breast made a much better impression. It was perfectly cooked, so it was still lovely and moist. The chips and coleslaw looked to have been made in house (no straight from the freezer chunky chips here – they were proper big fat wedges of potato, with skin still on!) and Andy said the topping (think Jalapeños, sour cream and so on) worked well.

So while the Stanley Bridge might have slightly missed the mark with my lamb, it does definitely get points for putting in the effort to be creative. At the moment it’s sitting, to my mind slightly uncomfortably, somewhere between gastro pub and standard pub. It needs to pick its niche and focus on that a bit more, with an eye to producing, consistently, the best possible food.

Where I really struggled with our lunch was that the bill hit $60. Two main courses and one beer. That’s quite a lot really.

I’ve subsequently talked to someone who was at the pub on the Monday of the long weekend. She had ordered the sharing platter and been really disappointed.

While I would go back to the Stanley Bridge Tavern, it probably wouldn’t be my first choice of Adelaide Hills pub dining. I suspect the menu needs paring down: fewer dishes, sent out at a higher quality more consistently, would at least justify the current prices.

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