Stomachs Eleven dinner party: One kilo of sea urchin roe

Sea urchin roe. The Japanese know it as uni, and it's one of the greatest indulgences when it comes to seafood: rich, creamy, buttery and briny all at once. One or two pieces is all you'll usually find on a restaurant dish so when Pig Flyin' sent me a photo of one kilo of uni for a upcoming Stomachs Eleven dinner party, I cleared the diary. Stat.

Tonight's sea urchin is purple sea urchin (also known as black sea urchin) and is native to New South Wales. Red sea urchin is also found in NSW. In Tasmania, you'll find green or white sea urchin.

The sea urchin is diver caught in NSW and sourced through Red Claw Seafood, primarily a supplier to high-end restaurants. Pig Flyin' managed to sweet-talk them into selling to a private customer, helped by a significant order that included sea urchin roe, live mud crab, sushi-grade octopus and a kilo (several sacs) of raw ocean trout roe.


Home cured ocean trout on mascarpone with a hint of yuzu served with potato chips

It's easy to forget you're dining at somebody's home when it comes to Mr and Mrs Pig Flyin'. Neither of them are chefs (nor do they work in hospitality) but the attention to detail at every dinner party they throw is ridiculously impressive. Stomachs Eleven is our little group of dedicated food lovers, created to encourage a rotation of home-hosted dinner parties, but increasingly being spoilt with far too many dinner invitations from Mr and Mrs Pig Flyin'.

We're immediately greeted with pre-dinner snacks. A bowl full of chips is at the ready for scooping into a dish of home cured ocean trout layered over homemade mascarpone. It's a dish we ate at Ronin in Hong Kong, and it's just as delightful here. The burst of saltiness is tempered by the creamy mascarpone which contrasts again with the crunch of salty potato chips.


Tamagoyaki omelette filled with unagi eel

There are delicate logs of tamagoyaki rolled omelette too, cooked in Pig Flyin's newly acquired cast iron tamagoyaki pan from Amazon.


Unagi eel inside the tamago rolled omelette

Inside we find a surprise filling of unagi eel. The rich and fatty softness of unagi melds perfectly with the plump and sweet dashi-flavoured omelette.


Adding homemade dashi broth to daikon and uni sea urchin roe

Our first uni course sees these delicate fillets perched on pedestals of daikon, slow poached in a homemade dashi broth made from this Japanese shop's bonito flakes and kombu purchased from Muroran Hokkaido (brought to Sydney by a very obliging friend).


Daikon poached in homemade dashi with uni sea urchin roe

The homemade dashi adds a beautifully nuanced flavour to the daikon, simmered long enough so your spoon carves through with ease. And we can't help but marvel at their exquisite collection of handmade vessels, especially this one made to look like a shimmering abalone shell.

Fresh uni is unlike the frozen versions you get imported from Japan. Tonight's one has a creamy subtlety and a pleasing suppleness to every bite. It doesn't have that distinct briny tang either, but there's a more elegant mellowness with every mouthful.


Shochu bar

There's no shortage of options to imbibe this evening. Mrs Pig Flyin' is a huge fan of shochu and raids her cellar just for us. The umehu shochu with added chilli is especially good. The black bottle is awamori, a distilled liquor made from rice that is made exclusively in Okinawa.


Tempura uni sea urchin roe 

The second round of uni is rolled up in shiso leaves and nori sheets and then dipped into tempura batter and deep-fried.


Tempura uni sea urchin roe wrapped in shiso leaves and nori seaweed 

The uni cigars look amazing on the plate, finished with an extra shake of truffle salt across the top.


Uni sea urchin roe, shiso leaf and nori seaweed inside tempura batter

And then there's the bliss of biting through the tempura batter to find a warm huddle of uni sea urchin roe within.


Handpicked mud crab with uni sea urchin roe and lemon verbena

Uni part three is another dish inspired by our Ronin dinner (a post coming soon, I promise). Pig Flyin's execution is much the same but infinitely more generous.


2.8kg worth of mud crab with sea urchin roe

We find out that Pig Flyin' purchased two live mud crabs totalling 2.8kg in weight. These were boiled, hand-picked and then put back in the shell with curls of uni. The only variation is Pig Flyin' serves this with a chifonade of lemon verbena leaves, not the mitsuba used at Ronin.

The crab is wondrous. The flesh is firm, fresh and fragrant and it's hard not to feel like royalty as we feast upon this with glee.


Sushi grade diver-caught baby octopus prepared Korean-style raw with fuyu fruit and shiso

There was raw baby octopus too, diver-caught and sushi grade, mixed through with Korean chilli bean paste. It's served with batons of fuyu fruit and shiso that work brilliantly together in a peppery, sweet and spicy chorus.


Koji marinated charcoal with yuzukosho yuzu paste on potato puree

The same sushi-grade octopus was also served cooked, marinated in salt koji (rice malt marinated in salt) and then barbecued over charcoal until smoky. Yuzukosho or yuzu paste adds a citrusy brightness.


Dengaku nasu miso grilled eggplant

And for vegetables we have dengaku nasu, eggplant basted with miso paste and then grilled until caramelised across the surface.


Preparing spaghettini with uni sea urchin roe 

More uni? Of course there was! Pig Flyin' flings handfuls of it into a pan full of spaghettini.


Uni sea urchin roe with spaghettini

Behold the most decadent pasta you could hope for. The uni is only tossed through at the last minute, clinging to the strands of pasta in buttery dollops. Extra fillets of uni are like icing on the cake.


Ocean trout roe home-cured with soy sauce and mirin

And then there's the gleaming sac of ocean trout roe I spy on the kitchen counter. Pig Flyin' has cured this at home with a mix of soy sauce and mirin.


Steamed rice with shoyu-zuke sujiko marinated ocean trout roe and uni sea urchin roe

The roe is sliced into fat wedges and then propped up on a bowls of freshly cooked rice sourced from Akita, Japan. There's more uni too, just in case we hadn't had our fill.


Carving the whole duck ballotine

And just when you thought dinner couldn't get any better, Pig Flyin' casually whips out a ballotine of duck - that's a whole duck deboned and then rolled up again with a stuffing of whole chestnuts, morels and juniper berries. Say wha-at?


Adding the cherry sauce


Whole duck ballotine deboned and stuffed with chestnuts, morels and juniper berries

Pig Flyin' says the entire bird was cooked sous vide at 75C for eight hours the night before. The duck flesh is a wonderment of succulency, sauced up with a veal and cherry jus enriched with duck bones.

The chestnuts were peeled and then cooked confit in duck fat.  I feel like we're being fattened up for slaughter but we continue to hoe into the shimeji mushrooms cooked in oxtail jus and scrape up the mashed potato too.


Upside-down quince cake with homemade mascarpone

We don't go home without dessert either. Pig Flyin' hacks this butterscotch apple spice cake recipe, eliminating the butterscotch sauce, substituting the apples with quince, and replacing the light brown sugar with half white/ half maple sugars.



The quince has been slow-roasted in a bath of pinot gris, cinnamon, allspice, peppercorns, star anise and cloves. The cake tin reminds Pig Flyin' of hako-zushi or box sushi, and the neat layer of quince draped across the top does feel sushi-like.

And seriously, this cake is a winner. The cake is ladled over with extra quince syrup once it's out of the oven, soaking its way down. It almost tastes like a steamed pudding, and a generous dollop of homemade mascarpone on the side is enough to leave us all with very happy and grateful smiles on our faces.

Thanks again Mr and Mrs Pig Flyin' for another mind-blowing dinner!



Related Grab Your Fork posts:
Stomachs Eleven: Bone marrow and pigs trotters by Pig Flyin'
Stomachs Eleven: Christmas dinner 2013 by Pig Flyin'
Stomachs Eleven: Deboned and stuffed pigs head by Pig Flyin'
Stomachs Eleven: Three kinds of twice-fried chicken by Pig Flyin'

Mr Wong, Sydney

Nobody likes to queue so if you find yourself in Wynyard looking for dinner at 6pm, you head on over to Mr Wong. We manage to walk straight in on a Monday night, hooking into the back alleyway that is Bridge Lane. There are no dinner bookings here (except for groups of six or more) which means you need to arrive early or be prepared to queue. By 6.45pm, the dining room is full.


Peking ducks in the kitchen

Mr Wong promises "classic Chinese influences in a contemporary style", presided by Executive Chef Dan Hong and Head Dim Sum Chef Eric Koh. The full dim sum menu is only available at lunch but there's a selection of dim sum baskets you can order at dinner.

The 240-seat restaurant runs over two levels, an impressive transformation of the former Tank Nightclub into a moody scene straight out of 1930s Shanghai. Since opening in August 2012, Mr Wong has cemented itself as a serious player on the Sydney dining scene, winning Best New Restaurant from Time Out Sydney, Australian Gourmet Traveller and the SMH Good Food Guide, and earning two hats in the 2014 Good Food Guide Awards.


Hainan province $16 and Anhui province cocktail $17

There's an impressive level of attention to detail here, from the warm and professional welcome we receive as soon as we arrive, to the considered decor that creates an unmistakeable sultriness in the air. We're a world away from cheesy Chinese restaurants with their bright lights, lazy Susans and salmon-coloured napkins. The crowd is different too: mostly small groups of couples, friends and business associates but there are large tables too of work groups and families celebrating a special occasion.

The menu might be primarily Cantonese-influenced but the cocktail list runs across twelve provinces, each concoction featuring an individual fruit, herb or spice specifically found in that region. I pick the Hainan province cocktail which combines Otokoyama sake with Paraiso lychee liquer, rhubarb bitters and a homemade ginger syrup. It's sweet but not excessively so.

Billy goes for the Anhui province cocktail just because it includes hoisin bitters, something which intrigues us both. It's shaken up with Wyborowa vodka, shochu, lemon juice, freshly muddled lemongrass and ginger, shiso leaves and a Sapporo top. Can you taste the hoisin? Definitely. There's an odd savoury note, as though you accidentally dropped a piece of pork in your drink but didn't want to waste it. Really.


Peking duck pancakes $45 (half duck)

Where you do want to taste hoisin, though, is on your Peking duck. You can order half a Chinese roast duck for $34 but another tenner gets you crispy skin, a steamer basket of pancakes and all the Peking duck trimmings of cucumber, spring onion and hoisin.

Peking duck is a one-course affair here, with the skin served still attached to the meat. Other Chinese restaurants tend to serve you mostly skin only, and then serve the remaining meat as duck san choy bao.

The skin isn't as glazed and crisp as I've had before but the flesh is impressive, with a plump and juicy succulence in every bite. There's a lovely flavour too, not overwhelming with star anise, but sufficiently complex to get your tastebuds firing.


Crispy eggplant with "fish-fragrant" sauce $19

I've always loved crispy eggplant, but I've been even more obsessed since eating the spiced red vinegar version at Lee Ho Fook in Melbourne. At Mr Wong the eggplant batons are sheathed in a thicker shell of batter - great news for lovers of toffeed crunch.

The fish-fragrant sauce refers to sweet and sour spicy sauce that is commonly used to accompany fish dishes in Sichuan cuisine. It's sweet and spicy but feels like it needs an extra oomph of vinegar to balance things out. This doesn't stop me reaching for seconds. And thirds.


Sweet and sour crispy pork hock $28

We'd hemmed and hawed about adding crispy pork hock to a dinner for two that already included half a Peking duck, but sensibilities took hold as we realised "Why compromise and live with regret? Our arteries will be fiiiiine."

The hunks of fat-ribboned pork glisten tantalisingly under the lights. I find the sauce a little on the sweet side again (what I would have given for an extra splash of black vinegar) but the pork itself is dreamily soft and sweet and fatty and good.


Stir fried sweetcorn, soybeans, almonds, lap cheung and spiced tofu served in lettuce cups $19

There's a reasonably broad selection of veggie dishes to choose from (water spinach, asparagus, bok choy, greens with XO or four types of mushrooms) but I convince Billy to get the stir fried sweetcorn served in lettuce cups. The cheerful mix of fresh corn kernels, soy beans, lap cheong and spicy tofu are a welcome counterpoint to the richness of our other dishes.

There's a fantastic undercurrent of star anise in the hoisin sauce that I relish with glee. With so many heavy dishes, I find that bundling the vegetables up with bits of the pork hock in lettuce works well together too.

We've ordered way too much for two but our food bill isn't too pricy at $55 per head. And there's a doggy bag to take home as well. Win.






Mr Wong
3 Bridge Lane, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9240 3000

Opening hours:
Lunch 7 days 12pm - 3pm
Dinner 7 days 5.30pm - 10pm 
(til 11pm Mon - Wed, till midnight Thu - Sat) 


Related Grab Your Fork posts:
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Chinese - Chairman Mao, Kensington
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Galician octopus in Santiago de Compostela, Spain

That first taste of Galician octopus will change your life. Forget about any previous experiences you'd had with chewy rubberiness. Galician octopus is prepared how it should be: simply, slowly and with utmost respect so each mouthful is nothing but bliss.

You'll see these giant cephalopods across Galicia in every restaurant and tavern window. They're giant, purple-y crimson in hue, and fascinating with their distinctive suction cups on each tentacle.



After my two nights in A Coruña last year (yes, I'm slowly catching up on my backlog!), I caught the local train to Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia and the final destination of thousands of Christian pilgrims every year.

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Pilgrim in Santiago de Compostela

My train trip was an easy thirty minutes but for many pilgrims, it takes weeks or months to reach their destination: the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where the remains of St James are said to have been buried.

Pilgrims must walk at least 100km or cycle at least 200km to earn a compostela or official certificate that confirms they have completed the Way of St James. In 2013 there were 215,880 who completed the journey. Numbers typically peak in holy years. In the most recent holy year of 2010, there were more than 270,000 pilgrims. The next holy year will be 2021.


Tourists at the rear of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral

There are pilgrims everywhere in Santiago de Compostela, all carrying walking sticks and loaded up with backpacks. It's an inspiring sight, and there seems to be a great sense of community spirit and camaraderie between them all.


Santiago de Compostela Cathedral

A pilgrim's mass is each every day at noon in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, announcing each pilgrim's country of origin and their starting point. The building is dramatically impressive, Romanesque in structure with Gothic and Baroque modifications. The cathedral was completed in 1211 and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.

It's extraordinarily beautiful inside too.


Mercado de Abastos farmers market


Mercado de Abastos farmers market

It may have been wet and drizzly when I arrived, but that didn't stop me from heading straight to the Mercado de Abastos farmers market. Stalls have been setting up here since the late 1800s. The granite hallway buildings were only added in 1941.


Shops inside the market

A combination of the weather and arriving post-noon meant that there were only a few shoppers around, with several stalls already packed up for the day. Most of the shops close for the day at around 2pm.


Seafood stalls

There's still plenty to look at though. The number of seafood stalls is impressive, each proudly displaying the best catches of the day.

Fishmonger with distinctive curved machete

I was fascinated with the curved machetes that Spanish fishmongers use, a large blade with a curved edge.


Razor clams

I couldn't wait to eat more razor clams either.


Everybody's buying fish today


Tetilla cheese - yes it's supposed to look like that. 

And it was hard not to giggle when I spied the tetilla cheese. It's supposed to look like a breast (tetilla is Spanish for small breast) and there's a reason. The story goes that an artist sculpted an extremely curvaceous female for the cathedral. When a strict bishop ordered that the statue's assets be reduced to a more modest size, locals protested by making tetilla-shaped cheese which suddenly appeared everywhere.

Tetilla cheese is now a local specialty, with much of the milk sourced from Fresian cows. You can buy the cheese in wedges and I was instantly enamoured with its rich and smooth creaminess. The cheese itself is almost pliable in the fingers, and there's a lovely buttery taste in each mouthful.


Bacalhau salted cod fillets


Fruit and vegetable stall


Spice stall


Pulpo a Gallega or Galician octopus

Food stalls at markets are always a drawcard, especially when you can see plumes of steam rising from a pot while you huddle under your umbrella. You could smell the sea from the cauldron filled with quietly simmering octopus. And how could you not stare at those tentacles, curled up on itself.


Adding salt, paprika and olive oil to the chopped octopus

There's a fantastic sense of ceremony as you watch the octopus being sliced with scissors and then piled in circles on a wooden board. A sprinkle of salt, a generous shake of smoked paprika and several glugs of Spanish olive oil complete the dish.


Pulpo a Gallega €8 (AU$11.80)

And that first mouthful. Wow. How can octopus be so amazingly tender? It's soft and yielding with just enough springiness to every bite. The salt, paprika and olive oil are all the seasoning it needs, enhancing the flavour without over-riding.

This dish is most commonly eaten at taverns as a tapas plate, but I'm so much happier I ate it standing in the drizzle of rain, fresh from the pot as shoppers milled around me.


Leche frita or Spanish fried milk

And for dessert I hoed into my purchase from a bakery stall, leche frita or Spanish fried milk. Traditionally it's a homemade sweet for kids, made from a custard that's cooked down until it forms a dough. Piece of dough are dipped in egg and flour and deep-fried.

It's a bit like eating a deep-fried vanilla slice without the icing and pastry, warm and comforting with its heavy dusting of cinnamon.


Casa Elisa Restaurante


Casa Elisa Restaurante

Dinner that night was at Casa Elisa Restaurante on Rua do Franco, one of the main eating streets of Santiago de Compostela that's lined with tapas bars. I liked that it looked a little old-skool, with small tables that would suit a solo diner.


A primat bottle of red wine. That's 27 litres!

I resist the giant bottle of red wine and stick with Estrella beer.


Caldo Gallego €3.95 (AU$5.80) 
Galician soup 
with bread €1.1 (AU$1.60) and Estrella beer €2.50 (AU$3.70)

Galician soup is another must-do around here. I'm ticking off Galician specialities like nobody's business. It's a white bean soup that's packed with chunks of potato, cabbage and pork. The broth itself is aromatic and flavourful too, the kind of tasty goodness that comes from ham or bacon. I love rustic soups like these, the kind of soups your mum or Grandma would make on a cold winter's day.


Navajas €8.50 (AU$12.60)
Razor clams

The razor clams take a while to come out but they're worth the wait. Half a dozen clams have been grilled until lightly caramelised and then dressed simply with olive oil, garlic and finely chopped parsley. The clams are tender and succulent. I could have eaten a dozen more.


Chipirones frites €6.15 (AU$9)
Fried baby squid 

And then there was my new Spanish obsession with fried baby squid. I ate these everywhere and was rewarded with crunchy deliciousness every time. Young baby squid, crunchy batter and a squeeze of fresh lemon will leave you smiling with happiness every time.

> Read the next Spain post: Five foods you need to eat in Madrid, Spain
<< Read the first Spain post: Where to eat in Barcelona, Spain




Restaurante Casa Elisa
Rua do Franco, 36-38, Santiago de Compostela, 15702, Galicia, Spain
Tel: +34 (981) 583 112

Opening hours:
Monday to Friday 10am - 5pm and 7.30pm - 1am
Saturday and Sunday 12pm - 4.45pm and 7.30am - 12.30am


Mercadeo de Abastos de Santiago (Santiago Farmers Market)
Rua Ameas S/N, Santiago de Compostela 15704, Galicia, Spain
Tel: +34 (981) 583 438

Opening hours:
Monday to Saturday 8am - 2pm

Related Grab Your Fork posts:
Spain - A Coruna: goosefoot barnacles and Galician seafood adventures
Spain - Barcelona: Where to eat
Spain - Madrid: Five foods you need to eat

Bulgaria - Dairy farms and yoghurt factories across Sofia and Plovdiv
Malaysia - Food tour with Australian Masterchef winner Adam Liaw
Philippines - Ice cream with cheese, turtle stew and sizzling pigs head
Singapore - Marina Bay Sands to hawker markets in 140 photos
USA - The great donut, fried chicken and bbq tour