Cookbookmaniac
  • Menya – The best ramen in Sydney
    Asian Restaurant Reviews

    Whilst in Japan, pizzaboy and I were lost in the streets of Shibuya, Tokyo. We were hungry and couldn't read Japanese. I was craving noodles and I randomly chose a noodle bar that had a picture of ramen at the front. We pointed at something that looked appetising on the menu with no idea what we were ordering. This was our first introduction to Tonkotsu Ramen. Tonkotsu ramen is usually a cloudy white coloured broth and is a thick broth made by boiling pork bones, fat, and collagen over high heat for hours on end, suffusing the broth with a hearty pork flavor and a creamy consistency that rivals milk or melted butter or gravy (depending on the shop). Most shops, but not all, blend this pork broth with a small amount of chicken and vegetable stock and/or soy sauce. When I got home to Sydney, I googled - tonkotsu…

  • Tan Viet Noodle House – Cabramatta
    Asian Restaurant Reviews

    Tan Viet is one of our favourite places to eat. They serve traditional vietnamese cuisine but they are famous for their "Criskin Chicken". Yes - Criskin. It's an appropriate play on the words crispy and skin. And if you are familiar with the vietnamese accent, this is how the vietnamese say crispyskin in english. Or possibly a spelling mistake made many years ago, and now is the norm. They are so reliable that we order the same thing on every visit. This is one of few places that I rarely stray from my usual order because my favourite thing on the menu is so good I want to eat it every time that I visit. The chicken is wonderfully crispy and amazingly flavourful. They somehow manage to get the skin super-crispy and the flesh really moist. My mother tells me they cook it twice. They boil it first to cook the…

  • Bill’s Sydney Foods by Bill Granger
    Australian Recipes

    What's in a cover? How much does a cover cause you to buy the book? Well... Bill's Sydney Food was released previously with a -blah- cover. I don't recall ever leafing through it. Hmmm, nup, never. But when i was looking at the New Release section in the bookstore i saw a sleek black book with Bill's Sydney Food scrawled on it like a chalkboard menu. Oooooh! I picked it up and it was only the slip case to the actual cookbook. Oooooh! I let the book slide out from the case and the cover was very chic photos of Sydney and Bill's Cafe. The smell of a newly printed book sends shivers down my spine. The photos (throughout the book) are wonderful depictions of a lazy sunday breakfast near the beach. The book is divided into Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Each chapter is introduced with a chalkboard-like menu. All…