Return to Red Turban/Brother Sister*
Well, we’re off to the Dixie Chicks concert at the Burswood Dome tomorrow evening. We’ll be spending the night at the Holiday Inn Burswood. There should be some yummy food to write about too, but I won’t tell you where we’ll be dining – I’ll let that be a surprise for you guys. I’m planning to bring my camera to the concert, but I’m not promising photos as I might just be too excited and/or overwhelmed to take any! Besides feeling excited about the concert, I’m a feeling a little distracted right now because a book I pre-ordered from Amazon way waaaaaaay back in June finally arrived this arvo (What’s the book? Have a look!).
On Saturday night (yes, I know this is rather belated, almost a week ago!) , Jac and I went to the Red Turban Indian Restaurant for dinner (see my previous posts: An unexpected benefit of being the food pornographer and Early Valentine’s dinner). We invited my brother and his wife to join us as an extremely belated thank you for house sitting for us literally years ago – our shout, of course.
We all had the Red Turban’s Grand Buffet, and to minimise annoyance to my dinner companions and other restaurant patrons, I took photos only of my loaded plates to begin with.
Here’s plate shot #1: starting from the rice, moving clockwise: basmati rice, potato bhaji, madras potatoes, garlic naan, butter chicken and garlic fish. I loved the madras potatoes. The butter chicken was just as good as the last time, and the garlic fish was lovely – perfectly cooked fish in a tasty sauce, mmmmm.
You can click on these photos to see larger versions, if you do want to see the dishes up-close.
As I was contemplating round two at the buffet, Russell, the owner of Red Turban, and Jason the marketing manager came by to say hello to The Food Pornographer – it was very cool but also a little weird (weird-funny, not weird-disturbing!). My sister-in-law Ange teased me a little, saying she felt like she was having dinner with a celebrity!
My plate, round two: starting from that chicken thigh and moving clockwise: tandoori chicken, chilli mushrooms, a tofu curry, dhal, beef rogan josh, rice and a cauliflower curry. Sorry, I didn’t get the names of the tofu and cauliflower dishes. I selected a chicken thigh, of course – my favourite part of the chook. It was succulent and juicy and I really enjoyed it, especially the sprinkling of what appeared to be white pepper on one side of it. My brother must’ve had three or so pieces of the chicken alone (but then he is known in our family as Chicken Boy). The chilli mushrooms had a bit of a chilli kick to them – not blow your head off, but a nice bite. The beef in the rogan josh was tender but with a pleasant amount of meaty chew. The dhal and tofu and cauliflower curries were delicious too, the cauliflower dish had a particularly creamy texture – it was easily Jac’s favourite dish of the whole night. She was still talking about it the next day.
I didn’t actually have any of the salads (Come on! How could I waste precious tummy space on salads when all those gorgeous curries and meat dishes were there?!), but when the buffet was free of people I took a couple of photos. Jac’s favourite one was a potato salad that had tandoori chicken in it. She actually began her dinner with a course of pappadams and chutneys, while my brother and I went gangbusters on the hot dishes, heading straight for chicken – he, tandoori, me butter.
After my two savoury rounds I had a nice chat with Russell, the owner of Red Turban, Jason, the marketing manager, and Roshan, the head chef. I’m sure you can work out which of those gentlemen is pictured in this photo!
I returned to my table to have dessert. I had some fruit salad, jelly and gulab jamun (that round ball). There was also a big homemade like creme caramel-like pudding on offer, but I was pretty full – I didn’t even finish my gulab jamun – we were all very full!
Well, this was Jac’s and my second time at the Red Turban Indian Restaurant, and we enjoyed it immensely. My brother and his wife enjoyed it too. It’s a BYO restaurant – Jac brought along some Indian beers for herself and my brother (Kingfisher beers, they were – Ange and I aren’t beer drinkers – well, I’m not an alcohol drinker, that’s another story!). We meant to grab a takeaway menu but forgot – while we were there, we observed quite a few people coming in to pick up takeaway orders. We’ll definitely return another time, maybe for the Grand Buffet again or perhaps the regular a la carte menu. Russell recommended we try the Chindian lamb (named after the chef who first created the dish, who was Chinese-Indian), which has a delicious sauce similar to the garlic fish we had. The Grand Buffet would be very good for vegetarians actually, as there were many meatless dishes – salads, pickles and chutneys, pappadam, naan, chilli mushrooms, the tofu curry, cauliflower curry, another vegetable curry (which again, I didn’t get the name for – naughty naughty distracted tfp!), potato and 0nion bhajia, madras potatoes… and if you’re a vegetarian who eats seafood as well (How is it that you call yourself a vegetarian? please explain that to me, as I don’t get it -I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m genuinely interested), the garlic fish was beautiful! I’m sure I’ve missed out other vegetarian-friendly dishes, but you get the idea. There were more dishes too, than are pictured/I actually ate – I think next time I should fast beforehand so I can fit more in!
It was a lovely evening – not just because of the delicious food (I went home with tandoori red-stained fingers!), but because I don’t get to spend enough time with my brother and his wife. My brother is four years younger than me, and we used to play and hang out together when we were younger. We played Lego – our favourite scenario was a house of horrors – we’d pull off most of the Lego people’s heads and mount them on a long piece of Lego. We built a house with a spiral staircase that led down into a dungeon (where the mounted heads were displayed). The staircase was hidden by a secret panel (of course!). Our standard storyline for the house was very Rocky Horror – though I didn’t actually know it – a young Lego couple are lost on a dark stormy night, and come knocking at the door of this strange old house, where they are enthusiastically welcomed by the kindly old Lego couple who live there… (you can guess what happened from there). We used to pretend to go fishing in the lounge using an old fishing rod – that was good fun – we ate imaginary sandwiches and drank imaginary coffee from an imaginary thermos (though sometimes I managed to wangle some real biscuits (cookies) from our grandma to snack on).
When I was in high school and he was in primary school, we used to walk to the pawnbrokers after school to look for Atari 2600 game cartridges for $4 each, stop by Chicken Treat and sit at the football oval nearby and share a carton of small hot chips with extra chicken salt, and then go home and play video games until dinner time. I taught my brother basic guitar chords and how to play chess. When he was still in primary school he worked out how to hack into our computer’s DOS-based blackjack game and make it say rude things – when you went bust the computer would say things like “GEEZ, YOU’RE STUPID, AREN’T YOU?” or “BAD LUCK, SUCKER!” and if you kept losing it would say “YOU ARE EVEN DUMBER THAN I THOUGHT” (And one day my dad decided he’d play the game – he was extremely surprised by the game’s rudeness!). Anyway (end of random memories, before I start getting mushy and sentimental) … my brother became a computer systems engineer and married his high school sweetheart (everybody – awwwwwwwww!). We’re all so busy these days it’s hard to find time to hang out, and we don’t live particularly near to each other. And so this was a good excuse to get together. I suppose I don’t find the time to hang out with any of my four siblings enough :-(.
I may not get a chance to post on the weekend, but with luck there will be plenty of goodies to post about when I do get the chance.
*This post is about my brother too, and the title Brother Sister also refers to a fantastic old album (well, 1994!) from The Brand New Heavies, which incidentally makes me think of my second sister, jl and my days working in hospitality (yes, yet another story!)