Clueless Diva

Hello, como e voce?

Good Easter Friday everyone. To all Singaporean who are hard at work now, I am pleased to inform you that I am blogging from the comfort of my home due to this blessed public holiday. And because Australia is a Christian country of sorts, we do get Easter Friday and Easter Monday off, thus making this an extra long weekend for all of us.

After sleeping in, Ernest and I decided to revisit Sydney's very own Portuguese suburb of Petersham. We watched a cooking show 2 nights before which showcases alot of traditional Portuguese recipies and food. The show also taught us how to make our own peri-peri sauce at home and how we can actually make our own Portuguese roast chicken in Peri-Peri sauce in our own kitchen.

When we arrived at Petersham, it was a bit disappointing that the whole street was really quiet. I guess Portuguese celebrate Easter as well in this country. Nevertheless, Gloria's Cafe is open for business and the sign boasts of 'traditional Portuguese cuisine', so we went in.

The decor of this cafe is quintessentially Portuguese, with its wooden tables and chairs and warm terracotta walls and pictures and maps of Portugal. The TV mounted on the ceiling at the corner is showing Portuguese news live.

There were already a table full of Portuguese elderlys eagerly jabbering loudly in Portuguese and smoking their strongly flavoured cigarettes and sipping their espressos or Portuguese beer. I really felt I am in Portugal already. No one in the restaurant speaks English to each other.

We tried to remember what we saw on TV the other night, looked at the menu and talked to the waitress. I ordered the Rojoes, which was pork cooked in red wine and served with their fragrant rice and salami. Ernest tried the Bacalhau, which is their famous salted cod fish, which I learnt that all Portuguese would bring with them on their sea voyages as it has been preserved the Portuguese way. I have never heard of anyone persevering cod fish in salt. That is an expensive fish to salt. If I were a Japanese, I would flip. I mean, cod fish is a good fish and a valued one by the Japanese. So we had to try how a salted cod fish taste like.

Apresentar-se Rojoes

The lean pork was cooked so perfectly that it came apart with a soft press of my fork. It was flavourful and so strong of wine, but when accompanied by the fragrant rice, the combination was a harmonious medley which made me proclaim a very loud 'YUM!' to Ernest. The salami was a tad weird but ok. I am not used to having olives with rice but we both learnt that salt, olives and peri-peri plays a very important role in Portuguese cuisine.

Ernest's Bacalhau

This cafe cooks the Bacalhau in this special way: deep fried and smothered in onion sauce and accompanied by chips.
You can't really see the fish underneath all that onion and olives, but it is underneath all that onion sauce and olives.

I would like to draw your attention to the chips. When the waitress said chips, we thought ok, chips, you know, longish kind served in Maccas. These chips are made by slicing the potatoes sideways instead of lengthways. Now that's interesting. And the chips taste as good. Crispy and salty.

The Bacalhau was actually very nice. The deep fried flesh was actually softened by the sauce but still retains its crispy side. You will never imagine this fish was preserved a year ago. It tastes so fresh, albeit the salty flesh. OK lah, if I were the same Japanese again, I would agree that cooking cod this way is oiishii.

To add to the Portuguese flavour, we ordered Sumol, the Portuguese soft drink. The waitress recommended her favourite type: pineapple, or ananais, as French call of this tropical fruit.

And what is the best way to round up a Portuguese meal but to have Portuguese dessert.
Chun recommended to us Sweet Belem, Petersham a long time ago and even brought us there to share his passion, but I have never thought this shop serve the best Portuguese dessert in the whole of Sydney. It came highly recommended.

This shop boasts of their Portuguese egg tarts and their creme caramel.
I was at the counter waiting to be served and I can see that trays and trays Portuguese tarts just fly off the shelves within minutes.
We ordered a creme caramel, 2 Portuguese egg tarts and a Sumol but an orange flavour this time.

The original Portuguese egg tart is far sweeter than the Singapore Portuguese egg tart. The puff pastry is very crispy and the slightly burnt custard was lightly dusted with cinnamon powder. Overall, it is very sweet and Ernest and I both agree why this little dessert is so popular. After finishing one each, we were surprised that we both wanted another one. (But no, we didn't get any more. Too full)

Creme caramel.
I can still remember when we were still staying with Chun. He will try to replicate this dessert at home after dinner. The whole house will be filled with the sweet, tandalising smell of sugar and vanilla cooking together. Then followed by saliva-inducing caramel smell steaming on the stovetop to create this miracle of a dessert. And for days afterwards, we will see little tubs of this dessert disappear one by one from the fridge until all the tubs were emptied of the dessert.

Now, Sweet Belem's creme caramel is in a class of its own.