The culinary balancing act – tis a tightrope that any man who does his share of the cooking at home must walk. On the one hand you need to balance the needs of your wife or girlfriend (never invite both to the same meal – it can only lead to disaster) has in regards to dietary requirements against your need to not eat a meal that tastes like a rabbit took a fart in a meadow. This is not an easy task.
However it is doable. Today I’m going to give you an example using a very simple dish which you can then apply the principles of to other meals. Today we will look at Big Angry Trev’s His & Hers’ Bangers and Mash!
You will need:
*Four sausages
*2 rashers of bacon
*1 egg – duck for preference
*Onion Gravy mix
*Frozen Veggies – peas, corn & carrot
*4 potatoes
*Milk, grated cheddar cheese, butter
*A handful of parsley
*Salt & Pepper
*Cooking oil
Step 1: Boil the water, peel the potatoes and pop them in. Put the sausages on to fry in first frypan on a very low heat. Boil the kettle.
Step 2: Put the frozen veggies in a microwave safe container. Slice bacon rashers in half. Shred all parsley bar one sprig. Pop gravy mix in mixing jug.
Step 3: Flip sausages. Put oil in second frypan and put bacon on lowest possible heat.
Step 4: Drain potatoes. Add milk, butter, shredded parsley, salt, pepper and a handful of grated cheddar cheese. Mash the hell outta it! Flip bacon
Step 5: Remove sausages, add in duck egg. Remove bacon. Take one dollop of mashed spud and separate from the rest. Put rest of mashed potato in frypan and crank that sucker up!
Place small dollop of mashed potato on plate with one sliver of bacon artfully placed in a semi-circle against it. Place sausage apart from bacon, add the merest hint of onion gravy to the top. Take frozen vegetables and create an artful semi-circle on far side of plate. Finish off with a delightful sprig of fresh parsley for effect. Perhaps even provide a napkin and some subtle instrumental dining music as she partakes of your offering.
Your Dish
HIS!
Fry the f*ck out of the mashed spud and dump it on ya plate. Stick the three snags beside it. Chuck the bacon on the spud and the fried egg on the snags. Dump all the gravy on. Stick the veggies in a clump on the side to be eaten so the roughage means you can actually manage to take a shit the next day. Make sure the TV has the subtitles on so you can read the footy scores from the table while you shovel down ya tucker.
And there you go, a new take on a simple dish that will satisfy both you and your good lady. Yes, you will die a lot sooner than her of a heart attack, but you will have enjoyed your life a lot more.
Bon appé-f*ckin-tit!
Got a different take on this classic recipe? Would love to read it in the comments section below!
Spoons. Not just a catch cry for the superhero ‘The Tick’ but also a riverside restaurant to be found in sunny Swan Hill.
My wife and I have been eating at Spoons a few times a year since we moved to the area back in 2011. What I’ve always liked about the restaurant is the majority of what is on the menu are meals that you would never cook yourself or have little idea how to. I remember years ago when there eating slow-cooked pork belly on a bed of popped barley and warm grapes! While not the cheapest restaurant in town, you usually get value for money and rarely walk out of the place disappointed.
Today for my meat review I will be looking at their latest offering: Pulled BBQ Wagyu on soft pretzel bun with slaw and fries.
Tastier than I look!
Yep, it’s just a fancy beef burger. But a damn fine fancy beef burger! The meat was indeed very tender and unlike some restaurants (I’m looking at you Cactus Jam) they did not rely on the meats succulence alone to sell the meal. This had a mild BBQ flavoring which was very pleasant; it may surprise many that I’m not a big fan of BBQ sauce on the whole – I find it too strong and it overpowers the flavor of the meat. This BBQ flavoring served to enhance the meat rather than overpower it, something you don’t find too often. Whilst the slaw seemed more like something you would find at a backyard barby, in this burger it served as a crisp counterpoint to the pulled Wagyu.
I gots to get me one of those little baskets!
The meal came with a little cage of fries, designed to look like a deep fryer basket which was cool. What was disappointing was that they came out stone cold. However when I brought this to the attention of a waitress she whisked it away and in quite literally under a minute I had a new cage of fries before me, lovely and warm and overflowing. This is impressive from Spoons, their speed has really picked up over the past 12 months; my main gripe about them used to be you would on average wait over an hour for your food but that seems to thankfully be a thing of the past.
My wife had the Spoons prawn and avocado salad with mustard and dill dressing.
The detail is in the de-tailing
It was quite nice and what I liked was that the prawns had been de-tailed. I find it really annoying when a restaurant leaves the tails on when there is sauce everywhere, making you get your hands sticky and filthy just to eat your meal (something I have known another Swan Hill restaurant – Quo Vadis – to do more than once). Washed down with a couple of glasses of sparkling wine and both meals were delightful to have for a Valentine’s Day lunch.
So overall I heartily recommend the Pulled BBQ Wagyu burger and indeed Spoons in general. It may be the most pricey place to eat in town but it is not ruinously expensive and you always feel like you get value for money. Try the Mallee Tasting Platter while you are there – Manangatang rabbit terrine, kangaroo chipolatas, Spoons picked pear and Chillingollah pheasant farm paté. I’ve known the guy that owns the pheasant farm for years and he is a gun at grinding up a bird! This combined with the rabbit and kangaroo equates to an entrée you are unlikely to get anywhere else.
Have you eaten at Spoons yourself? Will you eat there after reading this review? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!
When it comes to cooking, various cultures seem to have the patents on different styles. The French have their light-on-the-stomach-yet-sinfully-rich cusine. The Germans are masters of wrapping up huge hunks of quadruped in cabbage and roasting the hell out of it. The Mexicans… well…. what you can usually say about Mexican food is that it’s fun to eat!
I like Mexican food, having an almost Deadpool’esque love of the food. I’ve never actually been to Mexico so I’ve always had to deal with other countries interpretations of their food. All the Mexican restaurants I tried in Melbourne were distinctly average. In fact the only really good Mexican restaurant I’ve been to was in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since that was over a decade ago I’ve been really hankering to have good Mexican again, so was eager to try the food at Cactus Jam in Warrnambool.
What’s the best way to sum up the food at Cactus Jam? Oh yeah – you could cook it better at home! I’m a decent cook so I expect when I go to a restaurant that, since they are professionals, they should cook better than I. I’m always disappointed when I walk away from a meal thinking ‘I could have cooked that’ or even worse ‘I could have cooked that much better!’.
In Australia we get a glut of American television and it seems to be a recurring joke on sitcoms that most restaurants, be they Italian, French or whatever that they actually have a bunch of Mexicans working in the kitchen. Well, Cactus Jam could have used a few actual Mexicans in their kitchencooking the actual Mexican food. Like the German Hofbrauhaus in Melbourne, I don’t think anyone of that nationality has ever stepped foot in the place (for my review of that restaurant – see HERE).
I tried the Carne Con Chile Colarado. I love Chili Con Carne but never get to cook it at home anymore as the rest of the family isn’t keen on it, so was looking forward to bowl of restaurant quality tucker. What I got tasted exactly like those Stagg Chili cans you buy for 3 bucks at Coles. And I mean exactly! Which means either you are getting brilliant value at Coles or else Cactus Jam did a shit job. Because it was Colarado-style (which meant essentially a US-bastardized version of Mexican food) there were no beans in it at all, and though the beef was supposed to be slow-cooked, it didn’t taste anything special. I’ve made better, and I’m sure with minimal effort you could too.
Believe it or not – this is the meal, not the diarrhea of the previous customer though the taste equates to the same.
My wife got the Chicken and Beef Fajitas. At least these came with two types of meat and lots of different side foods and sauces to apply so they were fun to make. That’s about it for all the positives you can say about it. Much like the their Chili tasting like a can of Stagg, these tasted like the chefs just grabbed a bunch of Old El Paso packs from the supermarket and took their cues from there. You could make these at home no sweat and probably better than Cactus Jam did.
Mexican Flag equals authentic Mexican Food… apparently.
Mexican Beers
At least the restaurant seemed to have a few authentic Mexican beers on the drinks list, even if they seemed to pick the shittiest ones. Mexican beer is like Mexican food, it doesn’t have a stellar reputation but it is possible to get good stuff. I tried the Cave Creek Chili Beer. I’ve had Chili Beer before (to see me drinking it along with 15 different Hot Sauces see my video HERE) and know it’s not the tastiest but decided to give this a go as it had an actual chili floating in it which I thought was very cool!
Worst. Beer. Ever! I mean it – it was quite literally worst beer I have ever drunk in my life! It was filthy! It made the Dos Equis Larger I had next (a decidedly average beer) taste like manna from heaven in comparison.
So worth going to Cactus Jam?
No. No its not. The food is crap, you could cook better at home or at the very least make food its equal out of a can or pack. They have Mexican beers but seemed to stock up on all the shittiest ones. The only thing you could say about the place is that you don’t have to do the dishes – but I don’t think that warrants the expensive price tag. Mexican? More like Mexican’t! Heh – I wonder if I’m the first person to think of that pun? Probably not but I’m proud of it!
Eaten there and have a different opinion? Tell us in the comments below.
One could reasonably expect that a place that names themselves ‘Cheeseworld’ would be capable of a decent Cheeseburger. Otherwise they have no business naming themselves as such – rather they should name themselves ‘Mediocreworld’ or ‘Processeddairyworld’ or something.
Luckily for them, Cheeseworld won’t have to rename itself any time soon.
This was a pretty damn tasty cheeseburger! In fact perhaps the best cheeseburger I have ever eaten! It was quite simplistic but then I believe part of its flavor came from its simplicity, much the way a pizza you eat in actual Italy with only a few toppings tastes so much better than one you have in Aus. You know, with 50 different toppings with their competing flavors overwhelming the taste-buds. The Cheeseworld Cheeseburger consisted of a juicy, thick brown beef patty complimented with a combination of thick, creamy mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato relish (though I opted out of that – good on them for actually letting customers modify their burger) and some soft fresh buns. But what made this a brilliant cheeseburger was indeed the cheese.
Oh the cheesy-beefy goodness!
Above the patty was a slice of cheese whilst just below it was grated cheese. Both different varieties of Coon (for our overseas readers that is the name of a cheese brand here in Australia – yes I know they should change it but overseas comedians have a great time with the concept every time they visit here. Just watch the last half dozen appearances of Stephen K Amos on Spicks’n’Specks [another name that could use a more politically correct moniker]). And it was these two cheeses, both very slightly melted from the beef patty, that made this burger great. The whole thing was tasty, flavorful, had excellent texture and with a side of chips was reasonably priced. Not the fanciest cheeseburger on the planet but certainly the tastiest I have sampled – well done!
Whilst on the subject of the Cheeseworld café menu, let’s look at the opposite end. They had home-made large pies on the menu but dissapointingly were sold out so I tried their ‘Home-made Beef & Pork steamed Dim Sims’. These looked great; huge and plump and a bargain at $1.80 each. I ordered 3 thinking the family could share them – my wife and son like beef well enough but my daughter, who is not yet two, has developed a taste for pork that rivals my own!
Smelled like encased animal droppings – tasted about the same.
How can I sum up these Dim Sims? Worst. Dimmies. Ever! Absolutely disgusting! It was like they had accidentally knocked half a jar of raw cumin into the mix and hadn’t noticed. My wife tried a bite and gave me almost the exact same response my brother-in-law did when I was trying the 1.5kg pork challenge at Hofbrauhaus a few months ago: ‘No, that’s disgusting! Don’t eat that – you’ll be sick!’ A buck eighty a piece and I still felt ripped off, so awful that even when I subsequently covered them with soy sauce I couldn’t even finish one.
So, when travelling along the Great Ocean Road, if you happen to stop at Cheeseworld I heartily recommend the Cheeseworld Cheeseburger. I don’t recommend the Dimmies unless you enjoy something that tastes like buckshot mixed with entrails.
Pork Crackling. I’m an atheist by trade but dear Primus if there is a foodstuff that indicates that there may be a higher power at work then it is that! Bacon, Ham, Pork – bless the humble pig for growing such tasty flesh upon its bones! Of course it’s not the pigs flesh we are talking about here but the fat.
I’m not a big fat fan as a rule. I always leave it on when cooking so it helps hold in all those lovely meat juices, but I tend to cut it off more often than not when it comes to eating the meat in question. But pork crackling is different – it should be its own food group! Was it not the great Winston Churchil that said ‘All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope, crackling’ (Historians tend to leave that last word out but many of them are vegetarians – too much time in damp book depositories and not enough exercise so I wouldn’t put it past’em to have cut it on purpose). And today I am going to share with you the simple yet effective way of getting yourself a good a tasty hunk of this salty pig elixir!
Oh the sordid beauty of it!
Step 1: Select a nice piece of pork for roasting, one with a decent carapace of fat on the top. I usually go for lion roast myself – great for crackling!
Step 2: Score the fat. Using a serrated knife cut thin gashes through the fat to just the edge of the meat beneath. How many gashes you cut is up to you.
Step 3: Rub a mixture of sea salt and oil into the fat, making sure you get plenty in the cuts you have scored.
Step 4: Roast the pork for the appropriate time, depending on the cut of meat and size. Half an hour before the pork is due to be fully cooked remove it from the oven.
Step 5: Use a knife to cut between the pork and the meat and remove the fat in one big piece. Flip the fat over and on the underside sprinkle some table salt and throw on a small dash of lemon juice. Return both the roast and the fat to the oven, making sure the fat is underside up.
Step 6: Remove the pork from oven at the appropriate time and check the fat. It should be solidifying by now and a reddy-brown colour. You should be able to bend the piece of crackling a little bit but not too much. Too dry and it will shatter, too moist and you will be eating a piece of salty rubber. If the crackling appears too moist pop it back in the oven for another 20 minutes, giving it a little spray of oil.
Step 7: Give the crackling a short amount of time to cool – then eat the lot! If someone tries to take it from you – well you are at the dinner table with all those big knives handy – defend your pork!
And that’s it! – oil, salt and a bit of lemon juice is all you need! Oh there are plenty of recipes out there that call for garlic or rosemary (much better on lamb than on pork in my opinion) but for crackling where you want to still taste that delicious pork, then keep it simple and don’t overpower it with competing flavors. Happy eating!
Have a different Pork Crackling recipe? Share it below for everyone to enjoy!
I’ve had a love of German food since I first visited the country many years ago. While the French might win on exquisite taste, the Germans win on cooking up succulent huge pieces of quadruped, wrapping it in cabbage or breadcrumbs and washing it down with a enough beer to sink a footy team. I had some brilliant feeds in Germany, so when I heard there was a food challenge to be had at the Hofbrauhaus German restaurant in Melbourne I simply couldn’t resist.
The challenge:To eat a 1.5kg pork schnitzel, a bowl of chips and a liter of German Bier in 45 minutes. If you do it, your meal is free and you get a t-shirt. If not, it costs you 75 big ones!
Now I was pretty confident going into this challenge. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve eaten that much pork in one sitting. When in Germany my girlfriend and I visited an old monastery where the only food you could order was Pork Knuckle with Sauerkraut and you ordered it by weight. I ordered a 1.5kg portion with a stein of Bock beer to go with it. We sat down with a bunch of Bavarian’s who told me in no uncertain terms that I should not have ordered the Bock beir, as with it being so heavy there would be no way I could finish that much meat.
Half an hour later they gave me a round of applause for out-eating them in their own country!
So yeah, I was pretty confident going into this. No-one that I had talked to doubted my ability to meet this challenge, though some thought the bowl of chips might trip me up. So on a Monday night myself and my good friend Matt went to Hofbrauhaus to show them how it’s done.
We were seated by our waitresswho may have had the Bavarian Beer Maid costume with the requisite, and possibly mandatory, pushed-up cleavage but came across as a young, timid Aussie lass who probably has had one too many customers try to pinch her butt in her short career. The manager, again, not German, definitely Indian and still had a decent accent going, came and explained the challenge to me. He also had us move tables as the one we had been seated at was not big enough to accommodate my coming plate, which we thought was pretty cool.
MEAT!!!
Soon after, the manager comes back out ringing a big cow bell, followed by a man carrying my huge plate! My mouth watered at the sight of so much meat! He set the timer, told me I had 45 minutes and wished me luck.
I never saw him again.
With only 45 minutes to eat a kilo and a half of pork, a ton of chips and a litre of bier, I hoed straight in. First pitfall – this meal was at about a thousand degrees! I didn’t have time to wait for it to cool so I cut half of it into large mouthful sized pieces so it could cool somewhat and started shoveling the overly hot meat into my mouth. I could feel it burning the roof of my mouth when the rough schnitzel coating was scraping against it but I persevered.
About 400gm and 10 minutes in into the 1.5kg the food had cooled enough that I could now actually taste it and here is where the trouble began. This was a BAD schnitzel. I mean, it tasted TERRIBLE! The hard coating of it genuinely tasted like bad KFC (is there truly any other kind?) and upon examination it was not grade-A pork within but rather this really fatty, low quality meat. Matt hypothesized that maybe you can’t get a piece of pork that big without it being fatty but I’m assured by my friend Margie – who like me grew up on a farm – that you can have non fat-ridden pieces of pig meat that large.
Now up until now I had NEVER had bad German food. All the food in Germany itself was brilliant and the few times I’ve visited German restaurants in Australia the food has been pretty good. I also don’t think I’ve ever had a particularly bad schnitzel either. So for this giant one to taste as bad as it did was a massive surprise and the one eventuality I did not prepare for. Since the waitress was Aussie and the manager Indian, I’m guessing there were no Germans in the actual kitchen because I guarantee that no German chef worth his salt would have served up this monstrosity.
I continued to eat but with every mouthful I felt queasy. At about 600gm and 25 minutes in I realize that if I manage to eat the whole thing I am going to be seriously ill. Matt and I had tickets to see Henry Rollins at the Arts Centre for about 90 minutes hence and all I could imagine was me missing half the show because I’m in the toilet vomiting. That’s when, to my shame, I realize I am not going to meet this challenge. None of the staff have come back to check on my progress, which I found a bit suss considering the big deal they made of it. Since I am not going to eat it I offer Matt a bite to gauge his opinion on the quality of the food. Matt takes one bite of the Schnitzel meat, screws up his face and says “No, that is seriously disgusting. Don’t eat it man, you’ll be sick”.
And that’s it. That was the end of the challenge – I didn’t even finish half! Once again, even when the 45 minutes expired (we had timers on our phones) no staff had come back to check progress which leads me to believe that between the heat of the food and the low quality they really didn’t expect me to finish it. If I’d had a bag with me I could have just tipped the boards contents into it and claimed I’d eaten it all – would have saved me $75.
Afterwards I was shaming myself for not having eaten it all, and seriously examining my own perceived self-image and who I was as a person if I could not eat a 1.5kg pork schnitzel. But then I realized, it’s like someone saying “Here, have sex with this person whom you find to have an offensive, horrible personality and a body to match” and you can’t get an erection. It’s not that you are suddenly impotent – you just can’t bring yourself to have sex with that train wreck. And that is what this food challenge was. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat a kilo and a half of pork, it’s that I couldn’t bring myself to eat a kilo and a half of that foul shit. I did drink all the beer though.
Pretty poor fare from Hofbrauhaus. I’d been there once before about 8 years ago and while the food was not fantastic it hadn’t been bad either. Oh there could be excuses for why this schnitzel was so bad. Maybe their usual supplier of top quality huge pork pieces had nothing this week so they were forced to go with a dodgy guy. Maybe they treat their chefs like Men’s Clubs treat their strippers – they use their top quality ones on Friday and Saturday nights when business is busy and then use their rough ones (the chefs that couldn’t make toast and the strippers with acne and cesarean scars) on slow nights like a Monday. But I don’t think there is any excuse for a German-styled Pork Schnitzel to taste like bloody Kentucky Fried Chicken, especially when you are paying $75 damn dollars for the meal!
So overall quite a disappointing experience. But just in case I am giving myself an excuse I don’t deserve, I think I’m going to cook up a kilo and a half of good pork soon and chow down, just to prove to myself I still have what it takes. Will keep you crazy kids updated and post proof that my gastronomic prowess is still alive and kicking!
For years I have believed, quite rightly, that Octopus were truly the most evil of all animals (for details on why I believed this the case please see my blog post HERE). However I have to be man enough to admit when I am wrong, when I have made a mistake. Because I have discovered an animal that is even MORE evil that Octopus, a creature that causes such pain and misery that it’s eradication is well overdue.
This evil creature is the Australian Paralysis Tick.
Who knew the ultimate evil would be so small? I always thought it would look like my ex-wife – though there is a certain resemblance with the hairy legs and bulbous arse
What this tick does is truly abominable, truly evil,truly horrendous. This little bastard will bite some animal like a bandicoot or something and take something called alpha-gel from the animal away with it. Then when this gelled-up tick see’s you it leapfrogs on like the mini-assassin it is. It crawls inside your clothing and bites you to suck your blood, little vampire fragger, and deposits some of the gel. Now this can cause things like rashes or even an anaphylactic reaction. But there is something it’s bite does that goes waaaay beyond that.
It’s bite… wait for this… it’s bite can make you ALLERGIC TO RED MEAT!
Let me say it again so the full horror of this can sink in…
IT’S. BITE. CAN. MAKE. YOU. ALLERGIC. TO. RED. MEAT!
Have you ever heard of anything so frighteningly horrible in all your days?! You can’t eat red meat anymore! You can never in your life have a steak again – ever! No pork, beef or lamb for you for the rest of your now miserable days!
I don’t believe in suicide personally, but f*ck me! If ever something was going to make me put a bullet through my own brainpan it would be that!
There are three true joys of life: Family, Transformers and Meat. Those are the top three without question, undebatable. Beer & Hobby Farming come a close 4th and 5th but those are the three that truly make life special, bring joy to your soul, let you know that the world is a wondrous place (yeah sex is good too and probably up there when you are young, but when you have a family it’s just a nice treat for those ultra-rare times when the kids are asleep and you are both not exhausted).
Anyway, imagine yourself sitting outside on a sunny spring day, having lunch with your family on your little farm, watching the bee’s and butterflies flying from tree to tree pollinating your fruit crop. Birdsong in the air. Your son is playing with his Stunticons at the table while you have your latest Protectobot sitting inside awaiting your attention. You have a beer in one hand and sitting in front of you is…. a salad.
…. where the f*ck is the f*cking meat?! No good tick there because some bad tick decided to f*cking bite you!
Now I don’t mind veggies, hell I grow a lot of’em. But they are the secondary food source, they are there to add a little colour to your meal which by all rights should have a steak so big it’s overlapping the edges of the plate. To take that away from someone, to deny someone that true pleasure for the rest of their lives….. I’m getting all teary just thinking about those poor souls it has happened to. Yes you can technically still eat chicken and fish – but for every damn meal? Forever?! And fish is a honorary meat at best, ranked alongside cheese and potatoes.
So that’s what this bastard of a creature does – truly the total prick of the animal world! Apparently this tick lives on the east coast of Australia, spread out from Lakes Entrance in Victoria up to Cooktown in far north Queensland. Or as I refer to it “The area of Australia I will now never, ever visit again!”
Where is the government on this? It’s been recently announced that the AIDS epidemic in Australia is now officially over, the sector that has monitored it said that the statistics of AIDS in Australia are now so low that they are not really quantifiable. So if an awful disease that stopped people enjoying sex is at an end, how about we channel all that funding into combating this latest horrific threat that stops people enjoying red meat!
They might be a thousand miles from here but not taking any damn chances!
Where are the guys is Hazmat Suits, with giant magnifying glasses and flamethrowers stalking through every tick ravaged area, destroying these filthy little mongrels? Why has the entire eastern coast of Australia not been evacuated so that giant airships full of tick-killing spray can strafe the areas for weeks, killing each and every single one! Hell, maybe we could get giant earth digging equipment and cut off the entire eastern edge of Australia and shove it out to sea where we could safely bomb it into oblivion.
Seems a bit extreme I know, but I’d rather let loose a bunch of nukes than never eat a porterhouse again. I can take living on the continent that has the most poisonous spiders and snakes, has the biggest crocs and sharks, but there is only so much a man can stand.
F*ck you Australian Paralysis Tick, you dirty f*cking evil little prick tick bastard you!
Last year, after having it a few times at a friends house on their beautiful home-grown goat meat, I discovered I had a bit of a taste for Hot Sauces! So when Fathers Day came around I found myself presented with a present with 15 Hot Sauces in it!
Now, we were having a big rib night at casa’ de Trev and my friends challenged me to eat all 15 Hot Sauces. Their challenge was to try them all in one evening, but as ever I had to up the ante and decided I would take a big beef rib and try all 15 Hot Sauces inONE BITE! Then to take it even further (like the idiot I am), I decided that I would wash it down with ‘Chlli Beer’ – promised on its to bring tears to the eyes!
This video records the results. Enjoy!
Incidentally, everyone that drank the chilli beer was coughing hard after the merest sip. To me, with my fried throat and tastebuds, it genuinely tastes like water.
As a rule if a dish has a manly name like ‘Tradie’, ‘Truckie’ or ‘Bomb’ then it’s going to be something yours truly is going to want to shove in his gob! Why? Well besides desperately trying to hide ones insecurities from the world by appearing macho and gruff on the outside, hiding the wobbly, gelatin-like persona within, it usually means there is going to be lots of MEAT!
On a recent state-crossing trip I had occasion to drop in to three different cafe’s which had foodstuffs like those described above on their menu. So lets examine them and see if they were worth this weary traveller’s mastication.
The TRADIE Burger
Location:Gray St Café, Swan Hill, VIC
Despite the blokey name this came across as a pretty standard, average burger. Cheese, lettuce, egg, bacon, tomato, sauce – the patty was sausage mince with carrot throughout which was kinda different. No onion which was a shame. It was nice that they will change the fillings based on your predilections (I went with two friends; one didn’t want bacon, another didn’t want egg, I didn’t want tomato) but it all came across as something that you could buy most anywhere. If these burgers were boobs they would be B-cups – certainly enough there to sate your appetite, but leaving you wishing there had been more to them. Not really recommended.
The TRUCKIE Burger
Location:Balfours Cafe, Birkenhead, SA
Now we are talking more of a burger! The usual lettuce, tomato, sauce, onion, egg etc but then double meat, double cheese and double bacon! And by Primus the amount of bacon – they easily could have referred to it as quadruple bacon! The amount of oil dripping off this burger was a bit disturbing, the wrapper felt like I could use it to grease myself up and then toboggan on my gut down the nearest freeway. But you know what, after eating what felt like half a pigs worth of crispy goodness I was feeling sexy enough to try! Happily recommended.
The MALLEE BOMB!
Location:Cobb & Co Café, Murrayville, VIC/SA border
I ordered this thinking it was a lamb burger, but when it arrived it turned out to be some sort of weird dissected souvlaki. Chips covered with Mallee Lamb, with cheese, fried onion and garlic sauce drizzled all over the thing! Chuck a few bits of pita bread on top and yeah, it looks like a souvlaki had a bomb implanted in it which subsequently burst on your plate, leaving it’s yummy innards splayed upon the ceramic battlefield. I will say that they were not mucking about when they said they were using Mallee Lamb – this was really top quality meat! Very tender and succulent indeed, you will walk away from the table feeling fit to burst – the sign of a damn fine meal! Highly recommended!
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