Susi Rajah

Let Them Eat Pie (Aussie Meat Pie)

It's not so much that I miss Australian meat pies. I miss the idea of Australian meat pies. I live in New York City, which has everything, so there are actually a few places here where I can go and eat an Australian meat pie, but I still miss meat pies.

You see, when I lived in Australia, meat pies were not the kind of thing you went to a restaurant or bar to eat. They weren't the kind of thing you ate off a plate. True, gourmet meat pies are on the bar and pub menus in Australia now, but I was abroad for the great meat pie renaissance down under that put them there. So, to my mind, meat pies are to be eaten at the football (not that you would ever catch me at the football), or grabbed from the 7-11 when you're feeling a bit peckish (not that you'd catch me eating a 7-11 meat pie), or scarfed down late at night after a nightclub session (not that you would catch me at a nightclub, not these days).

I guess that what I've really missed is the ready availability of meat pies. Meat pies that don't require a commitment to a venue, to a plate, to a knife and fork, but are just there when you want them. Meat pies that taste as they did in my childhood, or rather, that taste as they did in my childhood, filtered by my spoilt tastebuds and a romanticized sense of nostalgia, which, of course means they have to taste a hell of lot better than they ever did to taste the "same".

Now, at last, I have found what I've been missing. At a proper Aussie pie shop, Dub Pies, in Brooklyn. And I am happy. Okay, that's kind of a lie. I am happy but I'd already found a proper Aussie pie shop, Tuck Shop, in the East Village. But I like the traditional, basic, meat pie at the Brooklyn joint better. Of course, meat pies cost a lot more now than I remember ($4.75 for a steak mince pie, $3 for a sausage roll), but that's cheaper than most New York sandwiches.

Both these pie shops are capable of making a flat white, which is something Starbucks will never be able to do.

DUB Pies NYC
(Down Under Bakery)
198 Columbia Street (Btw Sackett and Degraw)
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Phone: 646.202.9412

Click here to go to website.

NB They also serve lamingtons, an Aussie jam-filled sponge coated in chocolate and coconut--another thing that I ate as a child in Australia and didn't much like but now has nostalgic value. Oh and they serve a spirulina smoothie--for some reason I could never understand spirulina is big in New Zealand--and it's gross.

TUCK SHOP
250 W 49th Street (btw Broadway & 8th Ave)
New York, NY 10019
(212) 757-8481

Click here to go to website.

NB Both these places serve a pie floater. If you don't know what that is you will have to find out for yourself. The Tuck Shop has pie specials and more special pies than DUB pies. You can also get lamingtons and vanilla slices at the Tuck Shop, and a vegemite sandwich, if you really must.

Napoleon I

By Napoleon I, I do not mean Bonaparte, the little emperor with the hand up his own shirt. I'm referring to the number one Napoleon pastry I've had. It was the lightest, and the freshest--I don't think I had to chew at all. And come to think of it, it was pretty much the cheapest. When the girl serving me told me the price, I thought it was only for the Napoleon, but it turned out to be the total bill, and even that would've been cheaper than a Napoleon at some pastry stores I've frequented. Where did I find this wondrous French pastry? At an Italian bakery in Brooklyn. (By the way, for the Aussies among you, a Napoleon is a vanilla slice with tarted-up icing on top.)

Caputo Bakery
329 Court St
Brooklyn NY



Venezuelan Moving Bread

When we moved house, a very kind Venezuelan friend gave us a pan de jamón. It's Venezuelan Christmas bread, filled with ham, olives and raisins, and it saw us through a day of moving. From now on we will always think of it as Venezuelan Moving Bread. It's delicious and very portable.

Watch the making of Venezuelan Moving Bread.

Go to recipe for Venezuelan Moving Bread.

Or order it around Christmas from:

El Cocotero

228 W. 18th St., New York, NY 10011  
nr. Seventh Ave.

Call them: 212-206-8930

       

Wafels & Dinges

You heard it here first. There is now a truck in New York City that serves real, freshly made Belgian waffles. Look out for the yellow Wafels & Dinges truck and score yourself a WMD. That's a Wafel of Massive Deliciousness, a Brussels waffle with all the toppings you could want. Don't worry, they make waffles much better than they write English. And if you find the truck soon, you might find it manned by Mr Wafel & Dinges himself. Say hi from me. Actually, I think that's "hoi" to a Belgian, but I'll have to check with Mr Dinges.

On most weekends you can find the truck around 64th and Broadway. On weekdays, it could magically appear anywhere.

To order Liege waffles (the other Belgian waffle) or visit Wafels & Dinges, click here.

Gino's Italian Ices

It's hot. And I'm sorry I left the Garment District. I'm wearing the wrong shoes, looking for non-existent fabric stores on the Lower East Side. The stores exist on weekdays, but vanish on weekends.

We look for just one more fabric store on East Broadway, and at a point where East Broadway kind of disappears (Broadway is in the habit of appearing and disappearing on me), I see a dodgy little sign in a window, advertising Gino's Italian Ices.

What they are exactly, I'm unsure, but one of Gino's Italian ices, I decide, is just what will counter heat, sore feet, and disappointed dress-fabric hopes. One of Gino's Italian ices is what I want more than anything in this world.   

In the little store, which seems to exist for the purpose of deep-frying everything, I order two small, orange Italian ices. The man behind the counter stares at me in a blank way. I repeat the order. They don't have it, he says. I want to cry. I want to make the man walk in my shoes until he finds a fabric store on East Broadway. I want to speak to Gino and have this man fired.

I look around. I see only tubs of normal ice cream. I point at the sign in the window. But it says you have them there on the sign, I say. We don't have orange, the man says, we have these flavors here. I consider this turn of events. I order a lemon ice for me and a coconut ice for Corey. The man extracts them from a machine. How, I cannot see. They come out with rounded tops in little paper cups. I pay the man. A dollar fifty.

I take my little cup outside on the sidewalk, escaping the deep-fried air. It's not ice cream. It's not gelato. It's not sorbet. It's very probably not Italian. It tastes like mushed-up ice mixed with a sweet lemon cordial. It is mushed-up ice mixed with a sweet lemon cordial. My feet don't hurt anymore. It's the best seventy-five cents I can remember spending.

(Somewhere on Grand Street, near the corner of East Broadway.)

How to Make Dinner in Ten Minutes or Less

Jamie Oliver can make this parmesan-crusted fish dinner in well under five minutes. But then he's a professional and a boy, and boys like to show you how fast they can do things. I took about ten minutes to make it (pictured above), because I like having ten fingers and because I didn't hurry. That's ten minutes from starting to being ready to eat. That's fast food.

Jamie, good lad that he is, has this recipe on his website. The only thing I did differently was to use watercress (because that's what I had on hand) and a mustardy, garlicky, French salad dressing we'd made too much of the day before, instead of the lemon and oil Jamie suggests.

Go to Jamie's Recipe.

An Excellent Sandwich

While colonialism was not a very good thing, at least not for those being colonized, it did, in the case of the French and the Vietnamese, produce an excellent sandwich. The Banh Mi. Spicy, Vietnamese fillings in a crunchy French baguette. What's not to like? Pickled carrot, cucumber, fresh cilantro (that's the same as fresh coriander to Aussies and others), teamed with Vietnamese pate, luncheon meat, grilled pork, meatballs, or some other things I haven't been brave enough to try yet. (Pictured here is a No. 1, extra spicy, from Viet-Nam Banh Mi So 1. I had it with French-pressed Illy coffee for breakfast.)

I first heard of these Banh Mi back when I lived in Melbourne. There were, apparently, some to be had on Victoria Street. But the problem was, whenever I got to Victoria Street, there was just so much other great Vietnamese food to eat that I never got around to it.

Similarly, when I lived in South East Asia for a couple of years, there was just too much other food to be eaten, and too much frolicking in the South China Sea to be done. I never ate one of these sandwiches there either. When Pepper Crab, crunchy baby squid, and the like are readily available, sandwiches aren't top of mind. I don't think I ate one for two years.

I had my first Vietnamese sandwich in New York. And it was one of those "where have you been all my life" moments, and has spoiled me for all other sandwiches, with the notable exception of the po'boys you get in New Orleans.

There are several places you can get Banh Mi in Manhattan. Some are so elusive that I've never found them. I go to the one below. It's in plain view in Chinatown, on the edge of Little Italy. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall with standing room only, and then only for about four, slim people. It costs around $3.50 a sandwich. I almost always grab a sandwich-to-go here whenever I'm in the area. Washed down with a light red wine for dinner, it makes you feel like a well-fed, happy, transcultural, post-colonial peasant.

Viet-Nam Ban Mi So 1
369 Broome Street (between Mott & Elizabeth)

If you live somewhere where no one makes and sells Banh Mi and you think I'm cruel for telling you about them when you can't get them, well, I'm not as cruel as you think. Here is a recipe to make your own. It comes from the sandwich shop I frequent. Click here for recipe. I've never tried it. Why would I? I can buy them whenever I want to. Okay, so, maybe I am a bit cruel.

The Last Real Bargain in Manhattan (Or A Dumpling Day Out)

It is easy to eat well if you just go where Zagat or Michelin has been before you and hand over your wallet. And it’s fun, if expensive, but after a while, dining out with all the other gourmet sheep gets a little boring. You’ve got to mix it up a little. And discovering good food where you least expect to find it, and where you don’t have to pay thirty-dollars-a-plate for it, is often much more fun.

Dumplings are quite possibly the last bargain left in New York City. One dollar for five pork and chive dumplings is a bargain anywhere — for me, five dumplings maketh a meal. But here, in Manhattan, where a million dollars will buy you a one-bedroom apartment if you’re lucky, one-dollar dumplings are such amazing value for money that you even feel slightly better about your rent. The logic goes something like this: Sure, I pay enough in rent each month to support the economy of a small third world nation, and I pay it for an apartment that would fit into the master bedroom of the houses of my friends who live in normal places, on a street where there is traffic and construction noise all day and drunken shouting all night, but, gee whiz, would you look at what I’m saving on these dumplings!

Where do you get these amazingly cheap dumplings? Quite a few places in Chinatown, really, but I like to make the trek to Eldridge Street — it’s in the part of Chinatown where most of the shops look like they’ve gone out of business without anybody noticing, where no one will offer to sell you a (surprisingly sophisticated) fake designer handbag, and where any tourist you encounter is lost, trying to find their way to Canal Street to buy a (surprisingly sophisticated) fake designer handbag.

The Dumpling House, on Eldridge Street, is not a new discovery. The queues out the door prove that just about everyone in Manhattan knows where it is and what it’s for. The gourmet sheep have made it down here, too, and are once again, standing in line for food. I’m not knocking the Dumpling House. It’s great. I go there when there’s no queue, and I buy their take home dumplings whenever I can.

But why would you wait in a line on a sweltering day (or any other day for that matter) when there are other places where, for the same price, you can get the same, or better, food? Prosperity Dumpling, a little way down Eldridge Street, is just such a place. The place does a brisk trade, but there is never a line of gourmet sheep out the door, even though they serve slightly larger, and in my opinion, slightly better pork and chive dumplings than The Dumpling House (though the quality of both can vary). At this place, you do, sometimes, have to order by pointing at the menu, but if you have reading and pointing skills, it’s no great hardship.

The pork and chive dumplings at both these places are great. And, if you’re still hungry, the sesame pancake roast beef sandwich is pretty good too. The sesame pancake is a big round pan-fried bread that looks like focaccia with sesame seeds on top. The first time we went to Prosperity Dumpling, they made the sesame pancake from scratch in front of us, cutting hot slices from it to make our sandwiches. The sandwich cost a dollar-fifty.

All of that is very good but, for me, the beauty of both these dumpling shops is that they will, for very little money, let you take frozen dumplings home with you. A kind lady at Prosperity Dumpling showed us how to cook them while we were there — they are pan-fried, then steamed (after you brown their bottoms, you add water and pop a lid on the pan). I replicate the dumpling sauce at home by adding a little sweet vinegar (an apple cider or sherry vinegar works but my favorite for the task is actually a white balsamic) to soya sauce. I also add chilli oil, which you can get at a Chinese supermarket while you’re in the area. It looks like dried chilli flakes, in oil. Actually, these days, I think even Wholefoods stocks some.

Unlike most people in New York, I don’t use my kitchen for storage. I use it for, well, cooking. My apartment, unusual for this city, is mostly kitchen — due to a not-to-scale sketch my landlord drew for the contractor who renovated the place. Even so, thanks to the proliferation of gourmet markets in downtown Manhattan that make buying fresh food daily easy and desirable, I have nothing in my freezer. And by nothing I mean ice, vanilla ice cream, two kinds of vodka, frozen fresh curry leaves, and either an eight-dollar bag of fifty pork and chive dumplings, or a five-dollar bag of thirty pork and chive dumplings, or both.

Prosperity Dumpling
46 Eldridge Street (between Canal & Hester)

The Dumpling House
118A Eldridge Street (between Broome & Grand)