A Hoddle Grid kitchen is usually a bench, a frypan, a rice cooker if you are lucky, and a clock. These recipes respect that. They are not a banquet, not a recreation of a laneway pass, and not a copy of the Melbourne nam prik ong. The unique complete recipe below is garlic-and-white-pepper pork with cucumber and jasmine rice — a Chinese-Thai café classic that suits a studio because it is one pan, twenty minutes, and a flavour you can shop for on the walk from the train.
Start the rice before you take your shoes off. Everything else can wait; rice cannot.
Shopping on a Grid walk
You will not live beside a Springvale grocer. You may pass a supermarket, a Chinatown grocer, or a convenience shelf that sells fish sauce and a coconut tin. Buy:
- jasmine rice in a small bag you will actually finish
- fish sauce, light soy, white pepper
- garlic, spring onion, cucumber, limes
- a bunch of coriander if it does not look defeated
- pork scotch or pork loin ready to slice, or chicken thigh
- eggs if you want a fried egg on top
Holy basil, galangal and green papaya are weekend jobs; send yourself to Richmond or Footscray using the Melbourne recipes notes, or skip those dishes on a Tuesday. A good paste from a grocer can be fried honestly in a small pan for a coconut curry on Wednesday; the main green curry method still applies — fry the paste until it wakes, then add coconut. Do not dump paste into cold milk.
Lime leaves freeze. If you buy a packet in the Grid, freeze them in a mug. Future you, making a small tom yum in a saucepan, will be grateful. The Docklands recipes use that saucepan logic beside the water; the Grid version below uses a frypan instead.
Garlic-and-white-pepper pork (muu kratiem prik thai)
Serves two hungry people, or two plus leftover rice for lunch. White pepper is the point: it is floral and sharp, not the same as a chilli stir-fry, and it does not need a wok to work.
Ingredients
- 300g pork scotch fillet or pork loin, sliced thin against the grain
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground white pepper, plus extra to finish
- 1 teaspoon cornflour
- 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 2 spring onions, cut into lengths
- Cucumber slices and lime wedges, to serve
- Jasmine rice, cooked, to serve
- Optional: a fried egg each, chilli flakes, coriander sprigs
Method
Toss the pork with soy, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, white pepper and cornflour. Leave it while the rice finishes — even ten minutes helps. Heat a wide frypan until it is properly hot. Add the oil, then the garlic, and stir until it is just golden, not bitter. Add the pork in a single layer as much as you can. Let it sear before you stir. Cook until the slices are just done and the sauce clings, 3–5 minutes. Throw in the spring onion for the last thirty seconds. Taste: it should be salty, peppery, garlicky. Add a pinch more white pepper at the end if the aroma has gone shy.
Serve on rice with cucumber and lime. The cucumber is not garnish; it is the cooling crunch that lets the pepper be loud. A fried egg is a café habit and a good one on a Grid night when the pork is not quite enough.
Notes
Chicken thigh slices the same way. Tofu does not; if you are vegetarian, use thick mushroom slices or pre-seared firm tofu and a mushroom stir-fry sauce, and still finish with white pepper and cucumber. Gluten-free diners should swap light soy for a gluten-free tamari and skip oyster sauce or use a gluten-free oyster-style sauce — the food guide explains why soy is the usual catch.
Do not crowd the pan. Two batches are better than steamed pork. Apartment extractors are weak; open a window. White pepper in the air is the smell of having actually cooked.
What a CBD weeknight table looks like
Rice, this pork, cucumber. Or rice, a tin-and-paste green curry using the main method, and a handful of supermarket green beans. Or a saucepan tom yum with mushrooms, lime, and a stock cube you refuse to apologise for if you also add lime leaf and fish sauce. The CBD tasting notes tell you haste shows in herbs; at home, you can wash coriander and use it the same hour.
If you are feeding a meeting that turned into dinner, do not cook five things. Cook rice and one pan, then walk to a table using the CBD hub method if the pan is too small. Independence includes knowing when a frypan is not a banquet.