Annam Supermarket

I shouldn't say this about Footscray, but the parking situation really gives me the irrits.  It's so hard to just duck down for something when you spend half the time circling looking for a spot and then having duels over parking spaces.  A great alternative for Asian groceries is Annam on the West Footscray/Braybrook border.

I remember when Minh Phat opened in Richmond.  It was bright inside, had long aisles and it was so easy to find things.  Sometimes it's fun to rummage but other times you just want to grab and go without playing Where's Wally with the kecap manis.

Annam is spotlessly clean and very well organised.  There are a few gaps in the range (NO CRISPY PRAWN CHILLI) but it's got most of the bases covered...

....like giant packets of my favourite (MSG-coated) crackers.  I don't know if they still are, but they used to be called "Want Want" brand crackers.  You have one and then you just waaaant waaaant moarrrrr.

A small but respectable Japanese section.  Did you know Ebi are now doing a range of Japanese groceries including Japanese (ie, not the expensive Spiral Foods one I buy) dashi stock with no MSG?

These Mae Ploy pastes are quite decent, last for ages and here are $4.20 for a 1 kg tub!!!  The photo doesn't really give the scale.

Among many, many others, turmeric noodles for Mi Quang, a half soup/half noodle dish.  Footscray's Sen have an unreal version, the photo of which I cannot find, which is odd because I file all my photos so meticulously.*

*Lie.

Oh happy day - a small but neat and tidy noodle and tofu selection.  I am so over buying chow mein-style yellow noodles (good for Grandpa's special noodles) and having them go mouldy long before the use-by date, which happens far more often than it should.

Fresh herbs and leafy veg, covered this day with wet newspaper to keep them fresh.  See here hard-to-find rice paddy herb and sawtooth coriander!  See these in action at a Saigon pho shop, thanks to Bryan (@fatbooo).

All of this for under $16.  Don't bother with this rice wine - they didn't have any shao hsing wine and it isn't a substitute.  I will try using it for cooking sake in Japanese recipes.  I like this Yenson's ready-fried tofu for stir-fries, salads, rice paper rolls - anything really.  Wontons are for wontons and tamarind for tamarind paste for proper pad thai.

These are banana crack.  They are tiny Thai bananas, dried yet still so moist.  I am addicted!

There's a freezer section to cruise too and Annam also sell a small range of chicken cuts, so you really can get everything there.  Just...  Hands off the bananas.  They're all mine.

Annam Supermarket
1/75a Ashley Street, Braybrook
Phone:  9687 3330
Hours:  TBC



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Tean's Gourmet Crispy Prawn Chilli

I blame Celeste.  I was noodling along, quite happy with my cock sauce (aka Sriracha), when I read her delicious recipe for her mum's Mamak-style noodles.  At the end she had a picture of an interesting jar, under which she mentioned, quite glibly - "Serve with a side of sambal if wanted."  I filed the name on the jar - Tean's Gourmet Crispy Prawn Chilli - somewhere in my brain and told myself I should buy it next time I saw it.  I promptly forgot and months went past.  One day I happened upon it in D&K in Footscray, remembered, and bought it.

Crispy Prawn Chilli, where have you been my whole life?  Tiny, crunchy nuggets of fried garlic, chilli pieces, and pleasantly, just ever-so-slightly pongy prawns, bound together by radioactive red oil.  Oh, garlicky, spicy, crunchy seafood heaven!

I want to share my recipe (if you can even call it that) for fried noodles that is quick, easy, kid-friendly, but also delicious for adults, on its own or with a big turbo-charged spoonful of Crispy Prawn Chilli love on the side.

You need some noodles, either fresh or dried.  If using dried, they should be egg noodles.  Cook til al dente and drain.  If fresh, soak in boiling water for a minute before rinsing very well to get rid of the soapy taste from the alkaline water used to make them (see here).

 
Finely chop garlic and chop up whatever vegetables you have.  If you do not have children snapping at your heels, I recommend finely julienning the vegies.  Soak some Chinese mushrooms in boiling water for 20-30 minutes, cut off the stems, and slice them up too.  I recently learned the best are the ones with pale tops, crisscrossed with darker brown (i.e. not the ones I have in this photo!)

Heat a wok or frying pan to very hot before adding a generous amount of oil.  Allow to heat and throw in chopped garlic.  Add vegies.  Fry for 3-4 minutes.  Add noodles.

Add a couple of shakes each of light soy sauce and fish sauce as well as about 1/2 a tablespoon of white sugar.  Toss, toss, and toss for a few more minutes until noodles are nicely coated with sauce, vegies are cooked, and everything tastes yummy.

Anoint with a big dollop of crispy prawn crack before inhaling.  Oh, so good.

Now, having tasted this forbidden fruit, innocent dishes such as potato & leek soup or cauliflower cheese seem pale and benign in comparison.  While the rest of the family is content with cracked pepper, I find myself hunched over the kitchen bench, surreptitiously stirring spoonfuls of Crispy Prawn Chilli into my dinner.  Baked beans, spaghetti bolognese, pumpkin soup - this superb sambal complements them all!

Incidentally, the laksa paste which comes in a pouch and is also made by Tean's Gourmet is divine (though you must use chicken stock to make it up, not water as the back indicates).  I have not tried adding the sambal to Tean's laksa yet, as I fear my head will explode.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to indulge in my latest guilty snack - cheese and Crispy Prawn Chilli on toast.

Shelf Gleaning - Thai sausage from Nathan's Thai Grocery

I really dislike terms like "Asian grocer" and "Indian shop," although I do use them.  My family think I am oversensitive, but I don't like referring to the supermarket as the supermarket, the fish shop as the fish shop, while the place we buy our fish sauce and noodles from, and the other place we buy our lentils and spices from have ethnic tags, like they are somehow separate to us.  I also grate at lazy, catch-all terms like "Asian" and "Indian," but the fact is, I can't detect the difference between a Chinese grocer and a Vietnamese one like I can an Eastern European-run deli and an Italian-run deli.  *Sigh*...  As my husband often says to me, I'm probably overthinking it.

Nathan Thai Video & Grocery has made it easy for me - it's very clear that it's a specialty Thai grocer.  All your favourite spice pastes are there, plus interesting pickled ingredients like tiny pea eggplants.

It's a fun shop to poke around in, and reminds me of expat Aussie shops overseas, with lots of beauty products and junk food from the homeland.  There are interesting teas:

The freezer is full of interesting goodies, like Thai sausages.  They don't always have the brand below in stock, but do often have a homemade one in a ziplock bag, which is more of a sour style.  On Saturdays, they may have the sour sausages on the counter, ready for you to take home and leave to mature on the bench.  My sister has tried these and said they were just great, very garlicky, and that they could have easily stood in for continental sausages.

This Thai sausage is just delicious, "Thai-hot" and so flavoursome with big bursts of lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf.  It's nice to have as an accompaniment to other Thai dishes with plenty of white rice, as it's very rich.

Quiz for the day: What is this?  Look closely - it's a sort of rope encased in a hard, fragrant coating, somewhat like clay or very stale biscuit perhaps.  Is it A. a chew toy for the police dog on the tea canister; B. part of some sort of brutal colonic cleansing regime; or C. something else?  Leave a guess in the comments section!

Nathan Thai Video & Grocery
9 Paisley St, Footscray (map)
Phone: 9687 8588

Bharat Traders

Four years ago, as the moving truck swayed over the Bolte Bridge and we began our life in the West, we were already salivating at the thought of mountains of cheap, fresh herbs and bottomless bowls of pho, all within walking distance.  However, we were totally unaware of the spicy delights nestled in nearby Barkly Street's Little India, like fairies at the bottom of the garden.  Bharat Traders, the largest Indian store in the strip, is a place I am now enchanted with and regularly get lost in.  Claudia, a reader and fellow devotee of all things Bharat, has kindly shared some of its secrets with us...

The Footscray Food Blog has fast become one of my favourite cyber haunts.  My own private Footscray food odyssey has been reinspired by Ms. Baklover’s own adventures, and it certainly is a lot cheaper than physically visiting the countries themselves.  We are so lucky to have it all in our own backyard.  Recently, after 12 years in Footscray, I decamped to Spotswood but I return at least once or twice a fortnight for regular epicurean pilgrimages – grey boring day in Melbourne, go to Saigon Market for hustle, bustle and super soup.  There’s just so much life in the joint.

One of my and my daughter’s favourite post-school treats on a Friday afternoon is a visit to the West Footscray Library, where two bookworms nestle in a pile of books for about 45 minutes.  Then, laden with new ones, we both feel the pull of over the road – Bharat’s supermarket, a gorgeous multi-function repository of all things Indian.

Usually we have a peek in the window at the religious furnishings, silvery Shivas and golden Ganeshes, lustrous devotional mini-temples and bowls. Great stuff. But they are just visual entrées.

We head in the door and there is an instant waft of spice that my daughter particularly enjoys. A quick but lingering glance at the trays of sweets and samosas near the front door (we’ll be back) and then straight to the fridges down at the back for kid-friendly mango lassis and delicious instant naan bread, paneer cheese and huge containers of yoghurt.  Who's watching their weight on Friday anyway!

The naan is great over the weekend with curry, soups... Its butteriness is irresistible to one and all and it also freezes well. If I shop alone I also love to grab some eggplant or mango pickles, spicy bhujia and the masala cashews should be sold with a warning – you WILL eat all of these before you even get home!

Finally it’s time to leave this treasure trove and we head to the counter for bright pink barfi (Indian sweet) for Ella and an ambrosial gulab jamon for me. We usually scoff this booty a few doors down in front of one of the amazing Bollywood stores as we decide which is the best outfit, and which bejewelled sandals would suit – a seven year old girl's heaven really! And then it’s over... the colour and scents, the sparkle... Until next time...

Thank you so much, Claudia!  Like you, for us, no trip to the library is complete with a trip across the road for whatever obscure spice or lentil Mum needs, followed by a long, passionate "discussion" of who would get which dress in the sari shop window.  As you mentioned, the yoghurt is so good at Bharat's and so much cheaper than the supermarket.  I also buy huge bags of stoneground wholemeal flour (known as chakki atta) for really low prices.  The kids love the barfi (Indian fudge) – flavours include cashew (pink), chick pea (yellow), and almond (white).  Just ask the staff, as they are always happy to run through the different varieties.  Oh, and those cashews!  A spice fiend's fairytale ending.

Bharat Traders
580 Barkly St, West Footscray (map)
Phone: (03) 9687 6071
Hours: 9.00 a.m. - 9.00 p.m., 7 days

Do you have a foodie secret in the western or northwestern suburbs you'd like to share?  I've been guilty in the past of "keeping things for myself," but go on - do the owners you like so much a favour and spread the word about their business!  Guest contributions are always welcome and much appreciated.  Email footscrayfoodblog at gmail dot com.

Shelf Gleaning - Niter Kibbeh

I saw an ad in a parenting publication a while ago that still irritates me to this day.  It was an ad for a prepackaged cake mix, cookie dough, or something of the sort.  The image was of a mother beatifically gazing upon her child drawing a picture, and the tag line was something like "Saves you time so you can do more important things in life".  When I saw it, mother-guilt - that old companion - flared up.  Am I a bad mother, I thought, because I make my own stock, bake my own bread and (shock) make my own biscuits?  Am I depriving my children of my time, by spending time doing these things?

I don't believe so at all.  Being born close together, my kids are used to me being busy with their siblings, housework, or cooking.  That's not to say I don't spend time with them, but in my mind, the lines between "quality time" and domestic duties are fairly blurred.  They like to "hang out" with me while I do various jobs around the house.  Sometimes they chop mushrooms with butter knives for pasta, while I chop the onions.  They watch what goes into the stockpot and we talk about chickens, bones, and where our food comes from.  They draw at the kitchen table while I whip up a quick batch of Anzacs.

Before you strangle me with my starched, frilly apron, let me tell you, I am far from perfect.  The house is often a mess.  When we walk to kinder, often only the oldest child is dressed properly, and I am more often that not literally still in my pyjamas.  The kids get bored (and so do I!) and they get "under my feet" when I'm trying to return some sense of order to the house.  Seedlings shrivel up unwatered, bread overproves and goes flat, and we are no stranger to the good old can of baked beans for dinner.

Tammi - a fellow mother of three and also a passionate fellow student, gardener, baker, and cook - recently wrote a wonderful post in reply to the question, "How do you do it?"  She makes an important connection between skills and good use of time.  Cooking skills are by and large not inherent in our nature.  They are developed with practice, as many a trilling smoke alarm and full-bellied dog can attest.

I love adding recipes to our family's weeknight meals from cuisines that are new to me.  This is partly because cooking is one of my hobbies and in this way, I can make my leisure time and domestic duties intersect.  Also, and at the risk of sounding pat, I believe that food, like music, can "cross the cultural divide".  Through my cooking, I hope my kids will grow up to be open-minded and culturally aware, and that they will think of "sausages" as anything from kolbasi, to lap cheong, to $2 snags from Bunnings.

Arsenic hour is not conducive to grappling with a cookbook, however.  I tend to cook new things on a weekend for pleasure, and then modify them so they are easy to whip up.  Multiple ingredients in a curry sauce - meant for careful, sequential adding to a pan whilst being lovingly stirred - are whizzed in a blender, with surprisingly good results.  Practice also means I can make a great salad dressing in a jar, and a great sauce for noodles with no recipe.

I recently posted my recipe for misir wat (Ethiopian red lentil dal), made with berbere, a spice paste that can be bought from various Ethiopian grocers in Footscray.  Along with tikil gomen and fresh injera, this is a healthy, quick, and above all delicious weeknight meal.  I cook my tikil gomen in niter kibbeh, which is spiced ghee.  It's used as a base for various dishes, such as doro wat, a kind of chicken curry.  Mesnoy in Irving St sell it for $10/kg and have 500g tubs in their fridge.  I don't believe using niter kibbeh for tikil gomen is traditional, as most Ethiopian vegetarian dishes are cooked in vegetable oil so that they are totally vegan.  But I say, the more butter, the better!

Tikil gomen

Adapted from "The Berbere Diaries"- note all quantities are rough


1/3 cup niter kibbeh
1/4 cabbage, shredded
2-3 carrots, cut on the diagonal
1 tsp turmeric
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup finely chopped garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped ginger
4-5 large green chillies, cut on the diagonal

Melt niter kibbeh in pan.  Add cabbage and carrots.  When well-mixed, add turmeric and salt to taste, and mix until evenly coated.  Cook to desired doneness.  Five minutes before the end of cooking time, add garlic, ginger and green chillies (I prefer the chillies crunchy).  Serve on injera.

I look forward to broadening our food horizons further.  I cannot say, however, that I will ever give up my Achilles heel - the taco kit.  You can take the girl out of El Paso... but you can't take El Paso out of the girl.

Shelf Gleaning - Berbere

Ethiopian cuisine - bright splots of spicy wats on round, tangy injera bread.  As pretty as a painter's palette.  For a while, though, it was a "restaurant-only" thing for me.  I had it in the "do not attempt" pile, along with making filo pastry from scratch or deboning a chicken.  There was no particular reason, only ignorance.  The lovely Bianca changed all that by surprising me one day with my first tubs of berbere and niter kibbeh, from Mama Rosina's in Footscray.  Now, Ethiopian is as easy as whipping out my trusty Old El Paso taco kit!

Berbere is a brick-red spice combination that is arguably the foundation of Ethiopian cuisine.  Blends are individual, but feature chillies or paprika, fenugreek, and warming spices such as cloves and black pepper.  The spice mix may be dry or made in to a smooth paste with the addition of onions and garlic.  Mesnoy sell the paste for $40/kg and have 500g tubs in their fridge.  Their blend is not particularly hot, which means you can add a lot, without scaring the children.

I regularly cook Misir Wat (red lentil dal) with berbere, and an accompanying Tikil Gomen (fried cabbage, carrot, and green chilli).  I based my recipes on those from Rachel's lovely blog, The Berbere Diaries.

Misir Wat

1 cup red lentils
1.5 onions, chopped
1/4 cup vegetable oil (or up to 1/2 a cup to be more authentic)
1/3 cup berbere (if you like it spicy, like me!)
3 tomatoes, chopped (I use from a can; you could use fresh, but remove the skins)
2 cups water
1/4 cup finely chopped garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped ginger

Wash the lentils very well in several changes of water.

Fry the onions over medium heat for around 10-15 minutes without any oil. (This is the traditional method - they won't burn as long as you keep the heat to medium, rather they will cook in their own juices.)

Add the oil and cook for a few minutes.  Add the berbere and cook well for 5-7 minutes.  Add the tomatoes and lentils, and mix well.  Add the water, bring to the boil, and simmer for around 20 minutes until the lentils are cooked and the wat is thick.

Add ginger and garlic and cook for 5 minutes more.  Serve on top of injera.

Coming up, wat's wat on niter kibbeh - a spiced clarified butter that is used to make many other traditional Ethiopian recipes.

Little Saigon Market

Little Saigon Market is somewhat hidden behind Hopkins St, and conceals a treasure trove of colourful, fragrant, tasty delights.  The first time I went to this market, I felt as if I had been magically transported to Vietnam itself.  Strange vegetables were piled high, glistening with water droplets.  Curious cakes were for sale, straight out of the Mad Hatter's tea party.  The chickens in the butcher still had their feet on them.  Patrick, a reader of this blog, writes:

When visitors arrive from interstate and overseas I hustle them off to the unlikely tourist attraction of Little Saigon market and the surrounding shops to pull together the ingredients for a meal. Luckily most seem to like it if only because it does not correspond with their idea of Australia.

And that is what I love most - Little Saigon might feel like Vietnam (at least to me, who has never been there), but it is still so much a part of the Australia I know and love.  Who wants to live in a place where there is only Coles to shop at, only toasted sandwiches and milky tea to sup on, and only Slim Dusty to listen to?  Certainly not I - unless the milky tea were bubble tea, perhaps!

Here's Ms Baklover's guide to the Little Saigon Market.  Please write in with anything I've missed!

First, stop by the sugarcane juice shop to get you in the subtropical mood.  They are just on Byron St, near the Leeds St corner.

Long poles of sugarcane are passed through a simple yet powerful "wringer" to extract all the sweet juice.  You will see a garbage bin full of the twisted, juice-less remains.

Sugarcane juice, $3.00

They will give you "one they made earlier" so that it's really nice and cold.  Aaah!  The sweetness is really complex, unlike a regular cordial or soft drink.  A small mandarin bobs amidst the ice cubes, complementing the faint lemon flavour of the sugarcane.

Next, some sustenance.  Step into the market - there's a entrance just down from the sugarcane stall.  On your right is this shop, Sun Wong Kee.  Pick up a bag of delicious, salty, tender fried squid legs and proceed to munch, à la hot chips - but so much better!

Bag of fried squid, $4.00

The best thing about Little Saigon is the plates of fruit you are encouraged to try before you buy.  This is also a sneaky pit stop if you have hungry, whining children (as is Baker's Delight - they always have some sort of new product on the counter to ply the kids with, I mean, sample).
 

I always do my main shop at Footscray Market, as I know and am fiercely loyal to Masters' Fruit and Buttacavoli's Fish.  I do like perusing the fruit at Little Saigon, though, as they often have fabulous, exotic finds, like mangosteens, rambutans, dragonfruit, and cheap mangoes.

If you haven't tried mangosteens, you simply must.  Inside are lobes of soft white flesh, which taste like a cross between banana, lemon, and mango.

When you've picked up all your goodies, stop off at To's 2 Bread & Cake and pick up something sweet to have at home.

I love these little pillowy sweets, called Banh Bao Chi.  They are made from glutinous rice and rolled in coconut, and these particular ones are filled with a sweet/salty peanut mixture.

Banh Bao Chi, $3.00

Now, put your feet up, pop your banh bao chi on a saucer, and have that cup of milky tea - bubble or not.

Little Saigon Market (map)

Byron St, Footscray (between Nicholson & Leeds)

Hours: Sun - Thurs 9.00am - 6.00pm, Fri 9.00am - 9.00pm, Saturday 9.00am - 7.00pm