Author: Alex

The Stirling Hotel

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Stirling Hotel

date of visit: Wednesday 14 December 2011

Time off work as a family is a bit novel in our house but we have visitors from overseas so we’re trying to maximise our opportunities to do stuff. And of course, a fair bit of that ‘stuff’ involves eating. With my initial first choice of lunch venue kyboshed (not that I’m bitter) we headed up to Stirling to check out the Stirling Hotel.

Stirling is pretty small and you can’t really miss the pub – it’s on the main drag (technicall Mt Barker Road). It’s a semi rural setting and it’s a lovely old building so it’s all quite picturesque. One thing I think that spoils it is the decision to have some car parking in front of the outdoor eating area. It would be more pleasant to have that as garden, screening the area from the main road. However, people do drive and do need places to park – and no one forces you to sit outside.

Inside the Bistor it’s all very modern – white and neutral tones, clean lines. The menu is definitely a cut above the pub standard. Yes, it does feature schnitzels (well, goodness me, it wouldn’t be a pub if it didn’t!) but you can eat much more interesting food here than at many other places.

We decided to start by sharing wild mushroom arancini and the duck spring rolls. These are both from the “Shared” part of the mneu which is available all day. The arancini were excellent – mushroomy, not greasy and the rice was properly cooked. The duck spring rolls had a delicious filling but I felt were spoiled a little by having quite a thick (and hence a little doughy) wrapper. Andy disagreed with me and he felt that they were obviously made in house. To be fair, I did only have a tiny taste of the spring roll so we should probably take his word for it.

For main course I had salt and pepper squid which was very good. I particularly liked kipfler potato wedges (far superior to the pub’s standard chip which appeared with the schnitzel) and the garlic aioli was delicious. The squid was tender, not greasy and was tastier than the usual pub standard (and let’s face it, most pubs get their salt and pepper squid straight from the freezer, direct from a food processor – it’s ALWAYS the same).

Andy had the beef schnitzel with gravy which passed his schnitzel test. Also at our table we tried the chicken breast with brie and smoked ham and the char grilled pork cutlet with parsnip mash, broccolini and spiced rhubarb chutney.  These were polished off so they must have passed muster.

As it was lunch and I was driving, I stuck to water and everyone else just had drinks from the bar but we wrapped up with coffees. The only hiccup of our meal was that one coffee cup arrived with lipstick residue still in situ. Now I appreciate that lipstick is a proper pain to clean off glassware and crockery but I’d kind of expect whoever made the coffee to notice. I sent the coffee back and it was collected with appropriate apologies, a fresh coffee was made and the cost of the coffee was refunded. You know what? Sometimes I really like it when something goes a little wrong with a meal because when a complaint is handled well, like this, everyone ends up feeling warm and fuzzy.

Overall I was really impressed with everything about our lunch at the Stirling and I’d definitely go back. The pub also has a restaurant (The Grill) for a more formal dining experience and now I’d like to give that a go too!

Bistro, Stirling Hotel on Urbanspoon

Chocolate Brownies

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Chocolate Brownies (mealsavers)

I’m a keen user of delicious, which is a fantastic electronic way of keeping together all those things that in real life I’d have on bits of paper floating around the house (and driving Andy up the wall).

It turns out I have 27 brownie recipes tagged (let’s not even talk about the 100+ chocolate cake recipes) and I thought that there’s no point in having these recipes tagged and never looking at them, let alone cooking them. Normally I’m the type of cook who likes to try something out at home first before inflicting it on others, but with this ridiculous number of recipes I decided I needed to bit the bullet and start cooking. If other people don’t like it, then tough luck.

Being me, I am going to work backwards through the recipes (chronological order) so this is one I tagged on 7 April 2009. I still lived in England then! This is from the mealsavers website, about which I know nothing.

I was horrified by the idea of using ½ kilo of sugar in a recipe so I decided half measures were in order (yes, I know that doesn’t change the proportions). This recipe has the bonus that you don’t need to melt chocolate and butter together. If you use the microwave it’s not such a pain to do that but it does slow things down a bit so if you are after a super quick brownie recipe this may be for you!

Begin by creaming 175g of unsalted butter with 250g of caster sugar. When the mixture is light and fluffy add 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk. Add 65g of self raising flour and 65 g of cocoa powder (both sifted) and beat well. I also added 1 tsp of baking powder at this point. Finish by adding 50g of pecan nuts and 75g of chocolate drops. For this I used the flat beater and my KitchenAid – you don’t really want to use a food processor for this recipe as it will decimate your nuts and chocolate drops.

Pour into a baking paper lined dish and bake at 160°C fan for about 40 minutes (or until done). The original recipe says 20-25 minutes and I found this woefully inadequate. Perhaps my brownies were a lot thicker.

The finished product was well received (after the wails of “oh no, don’t change recipes, we like your OTHER brownies“). People who like nuts in their brownies will, obviously, like them. The brownies themselves are very rich and chewy – not only do they taste like they have a LOT of sugar in them, but the butter is very evident too.  In fact, if I were to make these again (after I’ve made the other 20 odd brownies) I’d try cutting back on the butter a tad.

Aside from the really scary amount of sugar in these, I’ll definitely keep them in mind when I need to make brownies in a hurry.

Tongue Thai’d

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date of visit: Friday 16 December 2011

There are some places I eat at where the service is so good it helps me gloss over inconsistencies in the food. And then there are some places where it’s all about the food. Tongue Thai’d would be one of the latter.

So do you want the good (the food) or the bad (the service) first? I’m going to start with the bad so I can end on a positive note.

A friend had booked a table for eight for a Friday night before Christmas. Now, I know December is party month and everywhere is booked out but once you do actually have that booking you rather expect that everyone will be able to sit at the table. I think we were very lucky that person number eight didn’t arrive, because she would have had to have been paper thin to fit between the table and the wall or she would have spent the entire meal having people (staff and customers) push past her. Yes, Tongue Thai’d is extremely popular, but I do feel that the management’s eagerness to serve as many people as possible rather outweighs the restaurant’s physical size. People might enjoy their meal just that bit more if they had a bit of wriggle room. I’ve seen some sites describe the restaurant as family friendly but having been there I certainly wouldn’t turn up with a child that needs a high chair!

Aside from a rather squeezy table, the service, at best, can be described as adequate. Some staff were a lot more on the ball than others and I think the issues we experienced (missing drinks, the bill taking a long time to arrive) could be rectified easily by employing one or two more people and perhaps having well defined sets of tables that are looked after by individual staff. Our friends who are regulars here did say that since the modest expansion of the restaurant the service has taken something of a battering.

So now the good. The food. Which did land on our table in a timely manner and the staff, and kitchen, did cope with our requests for additional dishes with no problems. Being in a group, we started with a selection of entrées including an excellent crispy rice ball salad which everyone liked so much we had to order another one. We also had spring rolls, Thai samosas (quite different from Indian ones) and fish cakes. Everyone was happy.

For main courses we ordered the signature dish, the Tongue Thai’d eggplant. This was crispy aubergine with a sweet and sour sauce and chicken mince. That description really doesn’t do it justice. It’s the dish everyone raves about and it really is worth trying. At my insistence, we ordered another aubergine dish from the specials menu – more crispy aubergine but this time with fish, chilli and garlic. I liked this dish even more. In fact, I would go back for this alone.

We also tried the prawn and mango curry – not something I would ever have ordered myself but also really good, as well as the whole flounder.

After rather a lot of food, we somehow found space for desserts. I ordered the hazelnut meringue with apricot and cream and the only other person I’ve discussed dessert with tried the sticky toffee pudding. I liked the fact that the dessert menu made a real effort at the non-Thai dishes, but we did both feel that we could have done better making our respective desserts at home. But let’s face it, how many of us go out to Thai for the desserts?

It was lovely to go to a Thai restaurant that features some different dishes on the menu (more aubergine in Thai restaurants please!). Apparently Tongue Thai’d focusses on northern Thai cuisine which, on the basis of my visit, I’d say is something we don’t see enough of in South Australia. Having said that, more conservative Thai eaters aren’t left behind and the menu does feature the staples of Thai restaurant food such as pad thai, and green, red and massaman curries.

There’s plenty of food and, once you do get the bill, it is reasonably priced. Just be aware that you will need to book, the restaurant can be a bit cramped and noisy and the service … well, it’s casual. But once you have some crispy aubergine you probably won’t care.

Unfortunately, Tongue Thai’d doesn’t have a website (grumble, grumble) but you can you see a menu online here and it does have a facebook page.

Tongue Thai'D on Urbanspoon