Sydney Revisited

If you are a foodie, you’ll love Sydney! After landing at Kingsford Airport the other week, we were immediately whisked by our hosts, Aping and Salud, to the Sydney Fish Market in Pyrmont, a few minutes away from their Turramurra home, north of the city. And we were immediately overwhelmed.

The Sydney Fish Market, very similar to San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, is a complex of seafood stores-cum-restaurants (or grillers) with an endless variety of seafood, from the familiar tilapia which they call Dory to our much craved for pink salmon. There are also stalls for fruits (the atis or custard apple are huge), fresh produce (including the widest variety of lettuce and herbs) and cheese, as well as sauces and exotic cooking ingredients. The system is very much like ours: you pick the item you want and bring it to the griller to cook. It is served with whatever you like–fries, salads, etc.

We each had a salmon steak, succulent and nearly melting in the mouth. After our delightful lunch we moved around and noted the salmon heads in one corner, looking forlorn and abandoned. Turns out Aussies do not go much for this because they do not want to go through the chore of cleaning, cutting, etc. We managed to convince our hostess to get three pieces with some belly strips which we made into sinigang, using spinach instead of kangkong. We had a super dinner.

We find prices rather expensive, considering the US dollar has gone down a bit and now commands an exchange of P25 to A$1. While reading this, you might want to have a calculator with you, so you’ll have an idea of how much it costs to live and eat in Sydney, a city with a reputation for being expensive.

At the Fish Market you don’t even have to think of cooking. In this city there are so many cooked food outlets with such good offerings that one can really get lazy to do chores in the kitchen. The choices are plenty–smoked rainbow trout at A$13.90 a kilo, half-shelled lobsters at A$11.90 (either jumbo or regular) and marimara mix which combines scalops, fish and squid.

The steamed selection has a price range that starts from A$19.90 a kilo. There are smoked cod fillets, snapper fillets, bream which is our seabass or apahap and trevally, which we found out is talakitok. Barramundi is a typical Australian fish. All of these come in various cuts to meet one’s cooking requirements. Truly our eyes popped upon seeing all this bounty from the sea, wishing we could take some home. Take consolation though that a lot of the seafood here is also sold in the Philippines, only we have to pay a little bit more.

Middle Eastern food has been introduced here and has a lot of following. There are ready-to-cook falafels and in one of the stores in the market called Michael’s Fine Food we encountered Hummus among the spreads being sold. In the same complex there is this outlet called Blackwattle Deli, where we got the Spanish saffron which we wanted for the paella we intend to surprise our hosts with one day during our stay.

The Mad Cow disease not having invaded Australia, meat is still a major part of the diet here, for the locals, foreign residents and visitors. Name the cut, they have it and that includes beef, veal, lamb, pork and chicken. As in Manila, there are special sales either in the meat sections of big supermarkets or in the butcher shops scattered all over the city. Lamb legs ready to roast can be bought for A$9.90 and up. On our second day we had the most delicious and perfectly seasoned breaded lamb chops, fried in margarine and sprinkled with a bit of thyme. Super!

Like in Makro, some outlets sell meat in bulk, each package containing at least three kilos. Veal is a-plenty and for Manilans like us who cannot afford the prohibitive price of this meat, we were delighted to find a lot here. Chickens come in our preferred size, at least 1.6 kilos each, at a sale price of A$5.99.

What to cook all these with? A lot of fresh vegetables, seasonings, spices and herbs are available, but that would be another column from Sydney, which we will share with you next week. In the meantime, happy cooking.