Apandim Ulghur

Level 1, 8 Dixon St, Sydney 2000 NSW

Of the three Ulghur places I know in Sydney - which are all conveniently located side by side - this is the newest, largest and seems to be one of the most lively. The food is very reasonable price and what you expect - quite heavy, lots of spices and flavour and some dishes are oily. 

Below are shots from our most recent visit 30 May 2009. We had some of the staple dishes.

Above, black fungus and vegie.

Chicken kebabs - good but oilier than the other store.

Stir fried prawns - and in the background is the lamb kebabs. Both good. But the lamb was very oily. To be fair that is fairly standard. The prawns we great though.

The star dish - chicken and potato with hand made noodles. It is a huge dish and great value - but compared to the other store they do not include noodles and I think the mix of spices isn't as rich.
Bean starch noodles in a spicy soy sauce mix.

This store has a belly dancer come in each evening, who likes to get people up to dance. This was a different dancer to my last visit.

I dobbed in a friend to dance with her - but they refuse to be shown online... you can hardly even tell that ghost used to be a person huh? :)

Overall, if you haven't been to one of these Ulghur places yet, get a group together, BYO some booze and have a great night. You will be stuffed and satisfied for under $20pp, and they generally let you BYO any drinks you like.

Zen

Home-made sushi

For the last two Sundays, we have picked up some fresh fish at Paddy's Market when doing our vegetable shopping, and made sushi for dinner. Today I also got some tiny scallops on the half shell - only $2 for 6! So Kate steamed these, I made sushi, and we had a little feast at home for less than $15!

Not bad!

El Phoenician

328 Church Street Parramatta - Lebanese/Mediterranean

What a fun night. Four of us went here last night for a catch up dinner. The food was great, the service was friendly, efficient and not pushy. It is not a bargain, but the food was good quality and good sized portions.  Oh, and they have belly dancers - including a male dancer!

Three kinds of dips... chickpea, yoghurt and eggplant based.


Tabbouleh and salad

A combination platter for two including seafood, lamb, chicken and fruits. The salt and pepper squid looked heavy, but was divine - thick and tender, and the batter (which looks too thick) was fabulous.
Lamb shish - the stand out dish.
Some prawns hiding on the combo platter
The chicken shish.

Our friend was also dragged up to dance with a belly dancer - but I thought I should preserve his dignity and not show the pics... oh what the hell.

Is she staring at his belly shake? Whatever it was it captured her attention!

Silk Road - Uygur food

Last Friday Kate and I met with my coworker and her husband for dinner. They are from Uzbekistan, so we tried an Uygur place in the city.


Our main dish was a chicken and potato stew, with broad hand made noodles, see two photos below. It was really delicious - a little spicy but no overpowering. The seasoning was great. The dish was enormous! This large size was $25 - and would probably feed 4 people without anything else.

We had two kinds of meat kebab - lamb and chicken. I think the group preferred the lamb (which was great) but I preferred the chicken as it was much leaner. Apparently the lamb should have been even more oily if traditional, with two pieces of meat to one piece of lamb fat.


The pilaf (fried rice) was just too oily for me. Again, apparently this is even oilier back home, but it was too much for me. And I think the rice was overcooked to start with.

The dumplings were good - nice and light, good flavouring. Some boiled dumplings are too heavy and no discernible herbs - not these.

That 4 person chicken dish didn't last long...


And to finish off, we went for a traditional Uygur desert (kind of) at Passionflower. All very nice.

Delicious variety

Last weekend we had some fantastic meals.

Saturday lunch we headed to a new Korean BBQ joint in Ryde. We had the BBQ beef rib and the marinated pork fillet. The pork was too fatty for me, but the beef was awesome, and the side dishes were outstanding - see pics.



This one above was great - lettuce and other green leafs, with a sweet apple vinegar.





This was shredded spring onion with a spicy sauce - another of the side dishes.


The beef rib.



That night we met a friend in Parramatta and headed to a casual restaurant on Church street. I think it was called elevate - and it was really really nice.
This BBQ octopus salad was main size - and enormous! So huge.


Kate had a 1/2 and 1/2 seafood pizza, which was really good, and (below) I had steak and prawns on garlic mash. The steak was cooked more than I asked for, but it was really good. The red wine jus was maybe too rich though, considering it is served with prawns.




The following lunch Kate and I went for yum cha at Zilver - loads of nice dishes.
Beef tripe was very good here. (see saga below)





This was a vege only dumpling - oh with a little egg yoke. Very nice.




Back to reality.

For some reason I felt like being adventurous with cooking tonight.

Motivated by wanting to empty the cupboards before my move, and to try something new, I made what maybe the weirdest dish I have ever cooked - or eaten.

It started with some beef tripe (below) - which I couldn't help but buy after trying the great dish at Zilver on Sunday.
Then some tofu - which I browned in the oven.

I boiled the tripe in beef stock as I re-hydrated the mushrooms, slowly over a couple of hours....

I also marinated kangaroo. Actually I had to wash of the marinade it came with, and re did it in black bean sauce.
Stir fried it all up...and served with noodles.


Believe it or not, this was all planned from when I saw the tripe. I thought the black bean sauce would help with the flavour, and I also added water chestnut to give some nice texture to it. Looks ok, considering, don't you think? It tasted disgusting. So salty (from the beef stock i guess) and too much sauce. It made me want to vomit. Seriously.

So if you are ever in a restaurant, and see stir fried tripe, kangaroo, tofu and vege - go into the kitchen and punch the chef in the head for thinking of something so stupid.