Tofu and Veggie Stir Fry: Castaway Bar and Restaurant, Dili.

Note to self: Castaways stir fries suck arse.

Tonight I wanted healthy but tasty. I was imagining a really fresh, crunchy, veggie stir fry with golden tofu puffs soaking up all the flavour.

I was sure that I’d ordered one of these before, and my memory of it wasn’t of the “never again” kind. You get to choose what sauce you want from a list: hoisin, oyster, plum or blackbean. I chose oyster. I can’t remember what I chose last time. Probably oyster.

The tofu was completely white – no sticky, marinated, fried surfaces soaking up flavoured goodness. The rice/hokkien noodle combo was a bit of carbo overload. It also had tinned champignons, which always tend to remind me of eyeballs. I must have been really hungry though, because at one stage I caught a glimpse of my fork just before putting it in my mouth and it had about 5 slices of champignons on it, and I thought to myself, “Nooo! I hate champignons!”, but in it went and I chewed those little eyeball slices up and swallowed them down.

Some of the veggies weren’t too bad – the snow peas and carrots did have a nice crunch – but it was generally a disappointing meal. To make matters worse, I had dinner table envy the whole time (don’t you hate that??), watching Wade enjoying his “Cheese and Broccoli Ravioli”, which I really wished I’d ordered, but I’d always been too scared – the unpredictability of food quality in Dili eateries generally, combined with the word “cheese” put me off. But I tasted Wade’s tonight and it was really nice – a rich, garlicky tomato sauce, some sort of white, creamy substance (sour cream?) and a home-made pesto (made with Thai basil, but it tasted really fresh), and lovely fresh shavings of parmesan over the top. I’d recommend that instead. It looked like this:

 
The best part of my meal was my “pineapple and ginger kicker“, which contained orange and pineapple juice with a real hit of ginger. Sensationally zingy. Wade had a fresh orange juice, and these are always good, because of their creamy texture.

There were some really nice tunes playing at Castaways tonight, too. They have live music on a Thursday and Sunday. Tonight there were a couple of young Timorese guitarists/singers playing some cruisey acoustic tunes.  I especially liked the instrumental pieces.

I'm not writing off Castaways by any means, but this was not one of my more memorable meals there.