Gin Long Canteen

- Alex Prichard 2 Comments

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amazing sambal noodles

date of visit: Wednesday 12 February 2014

Last week, Tara, of Sydney-based food blog VegeTARAian, was in Adelaide so a few blogging types headed out to Gin Long Canteen in North Adelaide for dinner and a catch up (and, in my case, to actually meet Tara for the first time).

Wednesday was a stupidly hot 40-something degree day and by the time I arrived at Gin Long all I was really interested in was a cold beer (or two). Hot weather tends of destroy my appetite, so food-wise I wasn’t feeling picky (not that I ever am). There were six of us at dinner (the minimum number Gin Long will allow you to book for) and our table was reserved for 6pm (again, Gin Long will only allow you to book for either 6 or 8pm). Even at that early time, Gin Long was busy although not at capacity – by the time we left at 8pm the restaurant was well and truly packed. And on a Wednesday night – not a bad effort at all. I would say – don’t go without booking, but …

Gin Long has been a hot venue since opening and, in recent weeks, with the arrival of Nu Suandokmai, straight from the CBD’s Golden Boy, it has become even hotter. The fact that Suandokmai isn’t planning on being in the kitchen long term (the media is suggesting he’ll be opening his own venue at some point) I think adds to the general excitement.

Seated at our table (having been informed we’d be leaving by 8!) and beers in hand, we turned our attention to the menu. With one vegetarian and one vegan at the table we ordered the banquet ($39 per head, minimum of four people) but also ensured that they would be well catered for.

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‘very exciting’: beautiful flavours

Food started arriving quickly. First up the “very exciting” beef salad. This was a light, Thai style beef salad laced with fresh mint. Flavour wise it was excellent but I managed to get a piece of beef that was laden with gristle (and which I had to extract from my mouth most inelegantly!) so that suggests that there’s some room for improvement in the attention to detail department. We also had sugar cane prawns, netted spring rolls (which I didn’t try) and the Malay curry puffs. These curry puffs easily, at this point, the best thing on the table. Crisp pastry, not greasy, a light filling which packed in plenty of curry leaf flavour – I would have been happy to sit down with a huge plate of just these.

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Malay curry puffs: amazing!

Entrées over, our main courses started coming out. I didn’t try some of the vegetarian dishes, such as the chargrilled tofu or the Vietnamese coleslaw, but I did put in a solid effort sampling the rest of the spread. The tamarind prawns didn’t really work for me (and be warned, as they are served with their shells on): there just wasn’t enough complexity of flavour. The braised pork belly was delicious but the star dish was the sambal thin egg noodle. This was a hearty dish with a good whack of chilli spice and topped with an egg. Noodles are one those dishes which can be so one dimensional and almost bland (yes, throwing chilli at something doesn’t necessarily give it flavour) but not these noodles. Plenty of flavour, plenty of heat and plenty of moreishness.

I suspect that some of the dishes may have been a little on the salty side – it wasn’t something I noticed at the time but later on I did have the tell tale slightly dry mouth, slightly thirsty sensation I always experience after eating salty food. But maybe I also just ate too many noodles …

By this time, it was almost 8pm and we were getting a bit nervous about what would happen with dessert. So we asked. “Oh”, said our waitress, “I always feel really bad about this, because people always ask and there is no dessert included”. You would imagine that at this point, we might have been offered the dessert menu … but no. Perhaps it was just too close to 8pm.

I enjoyed the food and thought that it was reasonable value for money. However, I really dislike restaurants with overly complicated booking policies. Part of me understands why restaurateurs make these decisions but, for the punter, they are really too often an inconvenience. The service at Gin Long was erratic: while our orders were taken quickly and food was served quickly, neglecting to tell us the banquet didn’t include dessert (especially when it seems to be a very common query) was an unfortunate oversight. After our food was all served, we were then forgotten about so getting the bill proved to be a lengthy exercise (one of our party has been a few times and says this has happened every single time).

Although Gin Long Canteen has a very funky interior, it suffers from an excess of hard surfaces and, at times during our meal, the music seemed particularly intrusive. And while I’m prepared to concede that I am particularly old-fogey-ish in this respect other people also felt the same way.

My final gripe? The staff need to be identifiable as staff. There was a real mish-mash of attire: Converse trainers mixed with VERY LOUD wedges, outfits dominated by fluorescent colours, and rather too many hot-pants edged with lace (I realise that for some people this may be a plus …).

If you can’t tell, I left Gin Long with very mixed feelings. I’m not sure I’ll be back in a hurry. The food makes it definitely worth a visit, but unless you’re a bona fide hipster you might leave feeling a little less than cool …

Gin Long Canteen
42 O’Connell Street
North Adelaide SA 5006
phone: 08 7120 2897

Zucchini and Feta Fritters

- Alex Prichard 2 Comments

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Ages and ages ago (probably, almost literally, years ago) a friend told me that her son was an enthusiastic eater of zucchini and haloumi fritters. At the time I thought “oh, that sounds nice, I must make those” and then never got around to it.

We typically don’t eat a huge number of zucchini (I tend to call them courgettes): I love them but Andy is somewhat ho-hum about them. So when it comes to shopping, they always run a very poor second to broccoli (universally loved in our household).

However, recently we’ve had something of a glut of zucchini forced upon us. Mum grew them (in the right conditions they grow like weeds) and there were also a few in my Keane’s vege box.

So the time was well and truly nigh for breaking into zucchini fritter territory.

I had a quick google and cobbled together my own recipe based on what seemed to be very standard kind of territory. These were very quick to make – although you do need to allow a little time for grating and salting the zucchini. Herb-wise you can mess around – I used mint, but dill would definitely work just as well, and some recipes use just parsley. My advice would definitely be to use FRESH herbs rather than dried. And if you happen to have a lemon hanging around, grate the rind of half of it into your mixture.

As always, be generous with your seasoning. It is best to fry one off and adjust the seasoning before committing yourself to the whole batch!

Serve the fritters hot, with salads.

Andy and I loved these. And while these are perfect toddler food, our toddler was not bothered either way.

And if you don’t want to print, download a pdf of the recipe!

Print
Zucchini and Feta Fritters

Ingredients

  • 3 zucchini, coarsley grated
  • 4 spring onions, finely sliced
  • 100g Australian feta, finely chopped
  • ~ 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tbsp verjuice (or lemon juice)
  • ~ 4 tbsp plain flour

Instructions

  1. Coarsely grate the zucchini and, in a large bowl, mix through a generous pinch of salt. Set aside at room temperature for approximately half an hour.
  2. Squeeze the moisture out of the zucchini - by hand is fine - and place it in a clean,dry bowl.
  3. Stir through the spring onions, feta and mint and then add the eggs one at a time. Mix through the verjuice and then stir in the flour, one tablespoon at a time.
  4. You may not need all the flour - you want to bring the mixture together but you don't want the mixture to become dry. The more flour you use the greater the risk you'll taste raw flour in the finished product. You're much better off to have a slightly too loose mixture - you can always add more flour once you've fried your test fritter!
  5. Season.
  6. Heat some olive oil in a non stick pan. Add the fritter mix to the hot pan by the tablespoon, taking a moment to spread each fritter out a little. In my 20cm pan, I was able to cook about 4 fritters at a time.
  7. Flip the fritters when the base in browned. They're easy to flip when they're ready. If the fritters have been spread out, they'll be ready when brown on both sides.
  8. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.
https://eatingadelaide.com/zucchini-fetafritters/

2014 Cellar Door Festival – Bigger and Better

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Late last year I was asked to be a social media ambassador for the 2014 Cellar Door Festival. There have been a few events for the ambassadors, including a session at OzHarvest and a cheese and wine matching class (I missed that one as I was ham and wine matching in Spain at the time).

As the festival itself is almost upon us (it kicks off next Friday, 14 February) the final ambassador event was held last week at the Adelaide Convention Centre. We were treated to an ‘amazing race’ style evening – charging around the centre, learning more about both the festival and local produce. After we’d built up a head of steam, several of the ‘new producers’ who are being showcased by PIRSA were on hand to chat to us about their foods and participation in the festival.

My partner, Rubina, and I didn’t quite manage to win the race part of the evening (though if there had been a prize for making the most noise, taking it seriously and getting into the spirit of things in an over the top manner, we would DEFINITELY have won that!) we did come in a creditable third (out of five).

For me, probably the most interesting part of the race was trying the alpaca carpaccio. Alpaca is probably not a meat you’ll have come across before. While it’s been eaten in South America for centuries its appearance on Australian menus is still very novel. I had a lovely chat to Perry from Fleurieu Prime Alpaca, and I recommend checking out the meat at the festival. It’s extremely lean, tender and very gently flavoured. You might also find some alpaca on the menu at Pranzo in the CBD.

While the festival is, of course, about wine (and a bit of beer, too!), this year it has a much greater focus on food. Of the producers I met last week, many have a strong emphasis on native ingredients so festival goers will have the opportunity to try plenty of new foods – both at the Farmers’ Market and from individual producers.

This year, the festival’s masterclasses also have a strong food theme. On the opening evening (Friday 14 February) Marion Grasby will be hosting a Valentine’s Day Extravaganza (you can win tickets to this over at McFuzzlebutt’s Manchen – NOTE, you will need to purchase your own Cellar Door Festival tickets separately). Over the course of the weekend she is also hosting two further classes (Summer Entertaining and Asian Favourites) and there are seafood, cheese and, of course, wine focussed classes.

Classes do need to be booked in advance: full details are on the Cellar Door Festival website.