The food pornographer

Here’s my burger, assembled into halves and ready to be combined into one. On the bun base: beef pattie, fried onions, fried egg, black pepper, tomato sauce. On the bun crown: mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, black pepper.

Here’s Jac’s burger. On the bun base: American mustard, beef pattie, melted cheddar cheese, fried onions, barbecue sauce, fried onions, diced pickles. On the bun crown: mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, black pepper.

Jac is very good at putting the two halves of the burger together without spilling the fillings in the process. After she assembled her burger she kindly helped me assemble mine. So here’s her burger, fully assembled. She’s quite fond of oak leaf lettuce, and liked the height it gave to our burgers.

And here’s my burger! I was worried my perfect egg yolk would burst before I got to do the bursting myself (with my teeth). So I was very careful how much pressure I put on it with the tomato, lettuce and bun until that much anticipated moment of biting.

A beautiful sight.

Here’s my burger from the other side, so you can see the beef pattie and some of the fried onions. I’m not sure where Jac got the burger patties from, but they were 100% beef and tasted very very beefy. Eating my burger was so messy, with egg yolk oozing and tomato sauce dripping… but it was so goooood.

Monday - Jac made some salmon patties with sweet potato, potato, chilli and lemongrass on Sunday night. She baked them in the oven without any oil. I did think they looked a little dry, but was pleasantly surprised, and the chilli and lemongrass gave them a fresh Thai-style flavour. I placed them on a bed of rocket and spinach dressed with a little Nandos three bell pepper dressing (I didn’t use my packet of dressing on the weekend, but we took it home for use later!) and garnished with fresh tomato wedges with cracked black pepper. I ate the patties cold, and they were really quite yummy!

J bought herself a frozen meal for lunch, which she zapped in the microwave - it was McCain Fettucine Carbonara. It smelled really good! It was cheesy and loaded with ham (it looked more like ham than bacon) and mushrooms. It even had a sprinkling of green herbs through it. A nice touch. She ate her pasta while I munched away on my salmon patties and salad. I must say that pasta looked and smelled really good.

Tuesday - more rocket and spinach, this time eaten with oven-roasted sweet potato slices, flavoured with olive oil and oregano. Jac cooked the sweet potato in the oven while she was cooking the salmon patties. She also made a batch of coleslaw using red cabbage as well as regular green cabbage. Along with my salads and sweet potato, I had a Vita-Wheat cracker with a slice of Jarlsberg Light cheese and sliced fresh tomato. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention - Jac also roasted a couple of whole garlic cloves with the sweet potato, and I had one of these sweet roasted garlic cloves with my lunch. I wanted to show you my little salt and pepper grinders, which is why they are featured in the photo. They are very cute and functional. They’re real grinders - I have rock crystals and black pepper corns in them. I saw them for sale at the counter at Howard’s Storage World (currently Jac’s favourite shop - she loves storage!) and fell in love with them, and Jac bought them for me. They live in my desk drawer at work and get brought out at lunch time to do their thing.

Wednesday - J and I decided to grab noodles from Noodlebox. J has been eager to try Noodlebox’s custom order system. In the corner of the store is a thing that looks like an ATM machine. It’s a touch screen that allows you to design your own custom noodle order. It’s very easy to use, and when you’ve made all your choices it prints out the order for you to take to the the front counter so they can cook it for you. J made up a stir-fry consisting of thick egg noodles, prawns, chicken, broccoli and snowpeas with oyster sauce. She was impressed when she found the first prawn, which was simply enormous. She was less impressed as she got through the noodles and it became apparent that there were no other prawns.

I chose from the standard menu - teriyaki chicken noodles, very simple: thick egg noodles, chicken and vegies in teriyaki sauce.

Before we went back to the office, J bought a tray of melon from IGA supermarket. Left to right: rockmelon, honeydew melon, watermelon. The watermelon was not seedless (boooo!), the rockmelon was sweet and juicy (though I have never been fond of it), and I remembered once again why I don’t like honeydew melon. It’s just so weird and crunchy.

Thursday - I had a small teriyaki chicken and a salad from Jaws Mint. I’ve placed my chopsticks in the photo for a size comparison.

The teriyaki sauce was so moreish. I licked it off the lid of the takeaway container, and I relished every grain of teriyaki sauce-soaked rice.

Friday - I had a meeting scheduled at the hideous time of noon (I didn’t schedule the meeting, by the way!), and told J and SRM to feel free to grab lunch without me. They trudged off to Munch Terrace for the Friday special nasi lemak.

When I got out of my meeting I made myself a quick salad with the last of the rocket and spinach leaves, red capsicum, mushrooms and corn kernels, with tuna slices in chilli oil. I poured a little of the chilli oil from the can over the salad, as a dressing.

And to go with my colourful salad, a Vita-Wheat cracker with Jarlsberg Light, tomato, mushrooms and more tuna.

Jac’s mum friend E cooked up more delicious food for us - yellow rice, dhal and kofta curry. Please excuse the appearance of the plate, I microwaved the food to piping hot before quickly taking this photo and then plunging in.

Dinner last Sunday night - Jac used the last of a jar of korma curry paste we had in the fridge. With a little light cream, onions and chicken thigh pieces she cooked up a very tasty chicken curry. For a vegie dish, she stir-fried cabbage, green beans, carrot, onion and garlic in the wok, flavoured with a little generic curry powder (the packet just says “curry powder”!) - it was really simple, but it smelled amazing and tasted great.

Jac also made a side dish of tomatoes, cucumber and fresh mint from our garden. I really enjoyed dipping the cool cucumber slices in my curry gravy. It really was a fantastic feed.

Jac got herself a bacon pretzel from Pretzos. The doughy pretzel is baked, topped with slices of bacon and lots and lots of cheese (check out the cheesy perimeter!). When you order it, they offer to sprinkle it with powdered parmesan cheese and brush it with melted butter or garlic butter. Jac always says yes to parmesan and garlic butter.

Jac loves these - definitely not something anyone should eat often! The smell of parmesan and garlic butter is amazing. She only had a bite or two of the pretzel; she took it home for later.

We had brunch at Nandos: chicken mediterranean salads (AU$12.45) - mixed lettuce, tomatoes, feta, red onion and chargrilled chicken breast. We both chose “mild” peri peri basting. I reckon the cook may have gotten mixed up, because no way was that mild! But I enjoyed it anyway - the chicken was tender and moist, and the tasty juices that dripped into the salad were all I needed for a dressing. Jac however, dressed her salad with the Nandos three pepper dressing.

Wednesday - J and I grabbed an early lunch from Munch Terrace (Shop 6, 230 Hay St, Corner Bennett St East Perth). She chose the combination ho fun in egg sauce (AU$8.00). The noodles had been fried in brown sauce (oyster? soy? not hiding my ignorance here!) before being buried in fresh egg sauce, chicken, fish cake and prawns. Some of the noodles were stuck together - unfortunately, this is something we’ve noticed with all of Munch’s dishes that use the flat rice noodles. Other than that though, J thought the dish was delicious. I must say, it smelled really good.

I ordered the stewed chicken noodles, soup style (AU$7.50). Unlike the stewed chicken noodles dry style I had recently, the soup style noodles came with kway teow (and again, some of the rice noodles were stuck together. Careless prep by the cook, tut tut!). The broth was tasty, and chicken and bean sprouts were great. Another just-dig-in-and-steam-up-your-glasses dish.

Thursday - I enjoyed red curry chicken with rice (AU$7.90) from 88 Royal (88a Royal St, East Perth). The serving was generous. The chicken thigh pieces were succulent. The carrots and potatoes had obviously been cooking in the curry sauce for a while and were beautifully, perfectly tender though not mushy, the carrot lovely and sweet.

Friday - tuna and crackers! J had smoke flavoured John West tuna slices on crackers spread with hummus, topped with cream cheese and a light cracking of black pepper. I kept looking at the hummus and thinking it looked like peanut butter. Now that would’ve been an interesting combination…

I had John West tuna slices in olive oil blend on lettuce, tomato and Jarlsberg Light cheese on crackers, with black pepper on top. I also had a salad of mixed lettuce, red capsicum and tomato on the side (not pictured).

We celebrated B’s birthday at work with a morning tea last Wednesday. She supplied the eats - a box of cannoli from Corica Pastries (106 Aberdeen St, Perth) - enough for each person to have a whole one to him/herself!

Where to start? To give you an idea of size, the cannoli is on a saucer, not a dinner plate (but imagine if it were a giant cannoli on a dinner plate! That’s like my mum and I fantasising about the giant KFC bucket that is on top of the roof or a pole at a KFC store being full of chicken! See this photo of a KFC bucket as an example.)

The chocolate custard was so smooth, and its level of chocolatey-ness was perfect. Not so strong it was overpowering, not so weak it was more about sugar than chocolate. Just distinctly, recognisably, deliciously chocolate.

The vanilla custard was luscious. I was tempted to just suck it straight out of the shell!

The fries were a little floppy (sad to say, typical of McDonald’s fries these days!) but tasted pretty good.

Jac was quite happy with her Chicken Bacon Deluxe. The chicken breast was meaty and the batter was good and crunchy. I liked the look of that big bit of bacon hanging out of the bun, all curly.

But I loved my Big Mac. I’m pretty sure I glowed with pleasure with every bite. I licked up every bit of that tasty mustardy special sauce off my fingers, I picked up and ate every last shred of stray lettuce (the lettuce always ends up dropping everywhere!) and I peeled off and ate every last bit of gooey orange cheese that was stuck to the side of the cardboard box the burger came in.

Jac chose the Tabriz (AU$14.90 entree, $18.90 main). The two French crepes were filled with beef mince that had been cooked in red wine, herbs and spices, with onion, mushrooms, tomatoes and capsicum, served a homemade tomato sauce.

I chose the Chicken Mexicana (AU$15.90 entree, $19.90 main). Funnily enough, I remember all the way back to that previous visit when I was sixteen, I’d ordered crepes with Mexican filling too. But back then it may have been the non-chicken Mexicana, with beef chilli mix - that detail I don’t remember. My two crepes were filled a surprisingly spicy Mexican-style chicken chilli and bean mix, topped with tomato sauce, chopped spring onions, grated cheese and a generous dollop of sour cream. Fantastic. As I ate, the heat from within the crepes melted most of the cheese to a lovely gooeyness. The sour cream was definitely needed to cut down the richness and cool down the spiciness of the chicken and bean filling. The salad was also a welcome inclusion and balanced an otherwise very rich dish. It was a good idea ordering the main sized serves - it meant we each had plenty to eat, and plenty to share.

As our plates were cleared away, we asked for the menu again so that we could order dessert. Jac decided to order a cappucino as well. She said her coffee was nice and creamy and just what she felt like after that all the rich crepe(s).

Jac’s dessert choice was Raspberry Cheese ‘n’ Cream (AU$13.90) - two French crepes filled with a mixture of cream cheese, sultanas and vanilla, topped with fresh cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, served in a pool of sweet raspberry puree. I’m not a big cream cheese or raspberry-anything fan, but even I had to admit the combination was delicious. The cream cheese mixture was rich and sweet and utterly luscious. There weren’t many sultanas in the cream cheese, but enough to add to the pleasure of the dish; they were sweet and juicy and added an interesting texture contrast to the smooth cream cheese.

I love pancakes with banana, and just as I did when we went to Pancakes on The Rocks on our Christmas holidays, I ordered a dish of pancakes with banana called Bananarama (AU$12.90) - this Bananarama consisted of two fluffy buttermilk pancakes and two sweet lightly caramelised grilled sliced bananas, topped with fresh cream and a scoop of chocolate ice cream, all dusted with cinnamon. The pancakes were buttery rather than sugary, which was very good, as almost everything else on the plate was so very sweet. The buttery flavour of the pancakes went perfectly with the cream, ice cream and oodles of sticky maple syrup - oh yes, one detail I particularly love about Pancakes at Carillon is that on every table there is a big bottle of maple syrup with a pouring nozzle, so you don’t have to ask for maple syrup; you can simply drown your pancakes with lashings of syrup your heart’s/sweet tooth’s content. There was no way I would left Pancakes at Carillon without consuming maple syrup! I poured myself a dark golden pool’s worth and dipped each mouthful of pancake and banana into it before eating. My only complaint was that the banana could’ve been more caramelised, but other than that, this was fan-bloody-tastic.

Here’s the box of nasi lemak which Mum and Dad bought on Saturday morning. I always get hungry at the sight of these brown paper packets.

Mum hard-boiled some eggs to go with the nasi lemak.

She’d also sliced fresh cucumber for everyone to eat with their nasi lemak and chicken rice. Each nasi lemak includes only one slice of cucumber, which is nowhere enough for us. We like our cucumber!

The nasi lemak, unwrapped. On top of the coconut rice is sambal, ikan bilis (tiny fried fishes) and peanuts, fried egg and the single slice of cucumber.

Jac waited patiently while I transferred her nasi lemak from the brown paper to a plate, added some of Mum’s sliced cucumber, a hard-boiled egg (sliced in half for visual appeal) and Mum’s homemade beef rendang, and then photographed it all.

As Jac attacked her nasi lemak, I got to work photographing my chicken rice. The chicken leg and thigh meat had been deboned. The rice was deliciously chickeny. The chilli sauce was the gingery, garlicky kind that I love.

The chicken was tender, the chicken skin so very fatty and gelatinous. I left the fattier bits of skin on the side of my plate, and Mum happily ate them. I know the chicken rice was from Ang’s at Dog Swamp Shopping Centre, but I’m not sure where the nasi lemak is from. Maybe my sister Juji can tell us, if she’s reading this?