I ate kangaroo three days in a row. The same meal in fact: kangaroo bolognese with zucchini. On the first night I served it with penne. On the second night I had it without pasta; just by itself with cheese. On the third day, I had it for lunch--to introduce some variety, you understand. This time I had no cheese with it. I had a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice to accompany it instead.
I had the same breakfast two days in a row: a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich with my daily dose of plant sterol spread. Did I mention the bread was multi-grain with oats? Simply by virtue of doing this diary exercise I felt compelled not to have a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich on the third morning. Instead, I toasted my bread and filled it with ham, tomato and cheese.
I didn't drink any alcohol for the whole three days. I had 6 cups of coffee; 2 cups of Caro; 4 glasses of Peach Tea flavoured cordial; 1 glass of milk; and two glasses of orange juice.
I ate three nectarines; 130g of blueberries in natural syrup; and 150g of frozen raspberries. The last was blended in a food processor with 1/2 cup of yoghurt and 1/4 cup of sugar to make home-made frozen yoghurt.
I ate out twice: a chickpea salsa and a pasta salad from a shopping centre food court on the first day. On the second day, from the same food court, I had 2 cinnamon donuts and a coffee. That was lunch.
On the third and final night of this record keeping, well and truly over kangaroo for the week, I made fried eggs with spring onions and oyster sauce. I served them with steamed rice, bok choy and more oyster sauce.
There are a couple of things I consumed over the three days that didn't make it into the official diary. One was a stick of celery that I ate while I prepared dinner on the third night. I forgot to record it and then I didn't want to make it look like I ate a stick of celery after the frozen yoghurt I consumed for dessert. The second item was the 30 or so mixed cachous that I snuck from the cake decorating supplies when I wanted a guilty, sugary treat in a house otherwise devoid of sweets. I had no idea how to explain that, dear diary.
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
You Can Have It Thai
What an odd dining experience friends and I had last night. We went to My Thai in the Brisbane suburb of Auchenflower. Just looking at their website, they're clearly a well-established restaurant and J suggested it because she'd been there before for work dinners and could recommend the food.
Well, the food was excellent--that which they deigned to serve us anyway.
J and I arrived earlier than our dining companions, and after negotiating a move of table from just outside the kitchen to the front of the restaurant, we ordered an entree of Goog Tod, deep-fried prawns with special sauce. They were really just so fresh and crisp. Wonderful.
While waiting for the others, J and I had studied the menu and made a selection of two of the three dishes that four of us would share. J's choice was My Thai Duck Curry, while I indulged my ongoing obsession with pork mince and chose Laab Mu, spicy pork with mint leaves. The others arrived and we added Tofu with Cashew Nuts to our order.
Again, the mains were fresh and delicious. My favourite was the Laab Mu which was juicy, spicy and refreshing, but the whole pineapple, grape, shitake mushroom and duck curry combination worked so well, I found myself snaffling the last meaty bits of pineapple coated in the sauce.
The trouble arose when we attempted to order dessert and were refused. Have you ever heard of such a thing?!
The reasoning offered was that the next sitting was due, so effectively, we had to clear out. Not content with this explanation, we tried again, and again it was explained that we had booked for the 6.30 sitting and weren't we told when we booked that there was also an 8 o'clock sitting? Well, yes, apparently we had been, but let's just stop and think about this for a moment.
Is an hour and a half sufficient time for people to sit and enjoy up to three, maybe four courses, when ordering from an extensive ala carte menu? The concept of time sittings is fine if the menu is set or you're limited in your choices, but when a kitchen has to deal with potentially 72 different dishes at any one time, and that's just the mains alone, well, the time between ordering and the dishes arriving at your table is probably going to be at least 30 minutes. Now, I think that 30 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to wait for good food, but when you take 30 minutes away from an hour and a half, well, you see where I'm going. And if you don't manage to make your selection from such an extensive menu within the first 5 or 10 minutes of arriving at the restaurant--whether your dining companions are running late or not--well, you see where I'm going. At least half of the alloted hour and a half is whittled away in logistics.
We ate reasonably fast, taking about 40 mins to make our way through the dishes between sips of sparkling wine and beer and conversation, so it was 8 o'clock before J decided she had a hankering for sticky black rice pudding. We only had another 45 minutes before the movie we were seeing afterwards started , so we really wouldn't have been more than another 30 minutes depending on the time it took for the dessert to arrive from the kitchen.
I think what was most shocking, aside from being refused the opportunity of ordering dessert, was the inflexibility of the sitting policy which took no account of whether there were people arriving to take our table or not. Yes, there were people arriving, but there were more than enough tables to accommodate them. Our continued presence would not have lost them any additional diners. I remain completely puzzled by the failure to assess the situation, to even attempt to problem solve, and the intransigence of the restaurant staff and presumably the ownership.
As it is, My Thai's intransigence has cost them some future diners. I won't be going back, and especially since as we stood outside the restaurant, finishing up conversations and expressions of outrage, we noticed that while our table was cleared and reset no-one, in the 25 minutes we were gathered, was seated at the table or even led in its general direction.
FAIL My Thai, FAIL!
Well, the food was excellent--that which they deigned to serve us anyway.
J and I arrived earlier than our dining companions, and after negotiating a move of table from just outside the kitchen to the front of the restaurant, we ordered an entree of Goog Tod, deep-fried prawns with special sauce. They were really just so fresh and crisp. Wonderful.
While waiting for the others, J and I had studied the menu and made a selection of two of the three dishes that four of us would share. J's choice was My Thai Duck Curry, while I indulged my ongoing obsession with pork mince and chose Laab Mu, spicy pork with mint leaves. The others arrived and we added Tofu with Cashew Nuts to our order.
Again, the mains were fresh and delicious. My favourite was the Laab Mu which was juicy, spicy and refreshing, but the whole pineapple, grape, shitake mushroom and duck curry combination worked so well, I found myself snaffling the last meaty bits of pineapple coated in the sauce.
The trouble arose when we attempted to order dessert and were refused. Have you ever heard of such a thing?!
The reasoning offered was that the next sitting was due, so effectively, we had to clear out. Not content with this explanation, we tried again, and again it was explained that we had booked for the 6.30 sitting and weren't we told when we booked that there was also an 8 o'clock sitting? Well, yes, apparently we had been, but let's just stop and think about this for a moment.
Is an hour and a half sufficient time for people to sit and enjoy up to three, maybe four courses, when ordering from an extensive ala carte menu? The concept of time sittings is fine if the menu is set or you're limited in your choices, but when a kitchen has to deal with potentially 72 different dishes at any one time, and that's just the mains alone, well, the time between ordering and the dishes arriving at your table is probably going to be at least 30 minutes. Now, I think that 30 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to wait for good food, but when you take 30 minutes away from an hour and a half, well, you see where I'm going. And if you don't manage to make your selection from such an extensive menu within the first 5 or 10 minutes of arriving at the restaurant--whether your dining companions are running late or not--well, you see where I'm going. At least half of the alloted hour and a half is whittled away in logistics.
We ate reasonably fast, taking about 40 mins to make our way through the dishes between sips of sparkling wine and beer and conversation, so it was 8 o'clock before J decided she had a hankering for sticky black rice pudding. We only had another 45 minutes before the movie we were seeing afterwards started , so we really wouldn't have been more than another 30 minutes depending on the time it took for the dessert to arrive from the kitchen.
I think what was most shocking, aside from being refused the opportunity of ordering dessert, was the inflexibility of the sitting policy which took no account of whether there were people arriving to take our table or not. Yes, there were people arriving, but there were more than enough tables to accommodate them. Our continued presence would not have lost them any additional diners. I remain completely puzzled by the failure to assess the situation, to even attempt to problem solve, and the intransigence of the restaurant staff and presumably the ownership.
As it is, My Thai's intransigence has cost them some future diners. I won't be going back, and especially since as we stood outside the restaurant, finishing up conversations and expressions of outrage, we noticed that while our table was cleared and reset no-one, in the 25 minutes we were gathered, was seated at the table or even led in its general direction.
FAIL My Thai, FAIL!
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Meow Laughs
I intend to blog about about some low-cholesterol dishes I've been making lately as part of what I have come to think of as the Great Cholesterol Lowering Experiment (you say that in a big booming voice).
One of these meals, which was surprisingly tasty, is a vegetarian lasagne with lentils. While I get my act together I offer you this LOLCat for your amusement:
I've had that LOLCat pinned in my Bloglines for sometime now in anticipation of the lasagne post, but clearly my desire to share it with the two people who don't obsessively refresh their feedreaders for new LOLCat chortles is greater than my impulse to write a post about saturated fat-free food.
Today I came across this LOLCat and it also must be shared. Check out that expression:
Actually this cat reminds me a bit of dogpossum's Squeeze, and it's just the kind of thing he might say too. (That is a compliment, really!)
N.B. There is no significance to be found in the juxtaposition of the lasagne LOLCat and the barfing LOLCat.
One of these meals, which was surprisingly tasty, is a vegetarian lasagne with lentils. While I get my act together I offer you this LOLCat for your amusement:
I've had that LOLCat pinned in my Bloglines for sometime now in anticipation of the lasagne post, but clearly my desire to share it with the two people who don't obsessively refresh their feedreaders for new LOLCat chortles is greater than my impulse to write a post about saturated fat-free food.
Today I came across this LOLCat and it also must be shared. Check out that expression:
Actually this cat reminds me a bit of dogpossum's Squeeze, and it's just the kind of thing he might say too. (That is a compliment, really!)
N.B. There is no significance to be found in the juxtaposition of the lasagne LOLCat and the barfing LOLCat.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Food of the Bunya Mountains
You didn't think I went to the Bunya Mountains (indeed, do I go anywhere) and not manage to sniff out the local produce did you?
Well, 'local produce' might be overstating it a bit in this instance, but the Bunya Mountains, being one of the few places in the world where the Bunya 'Pine' grows, is home to the Bunya Nut, which on account of the Bunya tree not growing at all outside of Australia--barely outside of Queensland, even--is quite unique as an ingredient. So, I thought I would take the opportunity to post a few more photos that I took on the Queen's Birthday long weekend, because I can delude myself that an unusual ingredient is a bit more interesting than boring you all with my holiday snaps.
In South East Queensland, the story of the Bunya Nut and its use by local Aboriginal peoples is part of what you know. At least it seems that way for me, although I concede this might be a consequence of participating in a youth theatre that, at the time, concerned itself with cross-cultural communication between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
Ever since I found out about the Bunya Nut Olympics (in the sense of putting aside differences), I've been intrigued. I think the Bunya Nut has come to assume a mythic status in my mind; this is a nut, and it can bring about world peace! As a foodie from way back, I can get on board with laying down arms for days of feasting--I've never understood the notion of sport as an impetus to do the same.
The first weekend in June is not Bunya Nut season. I have to report that the only actual sighting of the Bunya nut in situ was scavenged casings littering the forest floors through which we bush walked:
I did take a photo of a preserved cone that was sitting on a shelf in the local shop:
It's a pretty awful photo, but I was a bit nervous, unsure of the policy towards people taking random phone photos of the shop displays. You might do better to click through to those links above to get a proper sense of what the fruit looks like. Or if you can't be bothered, here's a shot from Wikipedia:
We were lucky that the local historical society were selling bags of the nuts, frozen, for a couple of dollars. They threw in a leaflet with cooking advice too:
The main recommendation was to boil, peel, and salt the nut. It was cold that weekend, and since I fancied the skins of the Bunya nut reminded me of the leathery texture of chestnuts, I took charge and roasted them in the oven.
Taste-wise, they were fairly subtle in flavour. I wouldn't say bland because there was enough in the nut texture-wise (floury, oily) to make them somewhat moreish.
The next day, after the marathon walk I reported on in an earlier post, we went to a cafe and sampled scones made with Bunya Nut flour:
I'll go out on a limb and say they're the best scones I've ever tasted. The Bunya Nuts added a top-note to the palate that was irresistible, and I dare say that it was the fat of the Nut that imparted a wonderful lightness to the texture of the scones.
Next time: Jimbour: On the Way Back from the Bunyas.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Dinner At Zoe's
Many of you will already know that Zoe from CrazyBrave has started a new blog about food, Progressive Dinner Party. She generously invited me to contribute and my first post is up.Work on channelling your inner Jeremy Clarkson (you'll see what I mean) and head on over to make your nominations. Then, you must hang around Dinner Party for further courses of food-related bloggery.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Lunacy
For the recent Lunar New Year I decided to have just a small celebration. I invited a friend over for dinner and it also happened to be her first visit to my new home.
I wanted to cook something special to make up for years of never feeling quite comfortable enough to invite anyone over to my previous place (mostly due to the unfortunate proximity of the toilet to the dining room).
The meal started with some boiled soy beans seasoned with sea-salt. I already had these in the freezer.
These photos are of left-overs from the next day. I swear the presentation was better. I was practising restraint by not being all paparazzi throughout dinner.
Next on the menu was a recipe I got from the February edition of Delicious Magazine: Eggplant with Minced Pork in Szechuan Sauce. The recipe is one from the chefs at the Melbourne restaurant, Flower Drum. And you know this is the closest I'm ever going to get to eating their food.
These are two dishes of left overs. On the bottom is Steamed Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce. This is also from Delicious, but Lau's Family Kitchen contributed the recipe. The beans are an adaptation of a Kylie Kwong recipe. I wasn't that creative, I only swapped asparagus for green beans.
I've only included a picture of the rice because my friend complimented me on it. She thought I'd used a rice steamer, but I've never bought one because living by myself, I'll rarely eat enough rice to warrant purchasing one. I used one cup of rice and two cups of water.
When I was planning this dinner, I made the decision to put the most effort into making a dessert. Mostly this was because I've never really made an Asian dessert before and I wanted to try making one. It only occurred to me afterwards that it might all go horribly wrong and I might have had to rush out for some ice-cream and topping (How very suburban Chinese Restaurant of me).
For some reason I rarely contemplate failure when I'm cooking. I really do wish I could translate that to other areas of my life where I seem to constantly contemplate failure.
That said, this dessert wasn't difficult at all. I found this recipe for Red Bean Wontons with Coconut Sauce and Sesame Wafers in a book I already had, Food With Friends by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis. I halved the recipe.
Coconut Sauce: 2 x 400ml coconut milk, 75g grated palm sugar, 3 pandan leaves (optional, but as you can see I found some pandan leaf extract).
Red Bean Wontons: 180g packet wonton wrappers, 300g sweetened red bean paste (after buying sweetened black bean paste as a substitute, I stumbled across some whole sweetened red beans that I bought and pureed in the food processer), 70g fresh bread crumbs.
Sesame Wafers: 90g caster sugar, 60ml water, 2 tsp sesame seeds.
Coconut Sauce: Put coconut milk, palm sugar and a dash of pandan extract into a saucepan. Bring to the boil--it boils like lava, so watch out for stray and unexpected eruptions--and simmer for 10-15 mins.
Red Bean Wontons: Mix the red bean paste and the fresh bread crumbs together. Place teaspoons into the centre of the wonton wrappers and seal from corner to corner as in picture above. Use some water around the edge to make the wrappers stick.
Sesame Wafers: Put the sugar and water into the saucepan on a low heat and stir gently until the sugar dissolves and the liquid is clear. Bring the resulting syrup to the boil for about 12-15 minutes, until the syrup 'is a lovely mix of gold and carmel, not dark brown'. Pour onto a greaseproof paper-lined tray and sprinkle with sesame seeds (although next time I make this, I think I'll just add the sesame seeds to the syrup). Allow to cool and harden before breaking into shards.
Assemble the dish as per this picture. You got lucky with this last photo; the dessert looks better the morning after because I forgot to serve it with the sesame wafers on the night itself.
Oh, well. I think it got tastier overnight too, because when I was eating left-overs, I wasn't so concerned that my friend might not like the dessert since it's hardly the taste in desserts either of us are used to. She did like it though. The sauce was delicious. The pandan extract made a difference to the flavour adding a subtle and delicious taste. I've always been a fan of sweet red bean things on the few occasions I've had them. I reckon you could even give these wontons a quick deep fry if you wanted a different texture. And you could smash up the sesame toffee, sprinkle it over the top, so there wasn't too much jaw-breaking crunchiness.
Happy Lunar New Year.
I wanted to cook something special to make up for years of never feeling quite comfortable enough to invite anyone over to my previous place (mostly due to the unfortunate proximity of the toilet to the dining room).
The meal started with some boiled soy beans seasoned with sea-salt. I already had these in the freezer.
These photos are of left-overs from the next day. I swear the presentation was better. I was practising restraint by not being all paparazzi throughout dinner.
Next on the menu was a recipe I got from the February edition of Delicious Magazine: Eggplant with Minced Pork in Szechuan Sauce. The recipe is one from the chefs at the Melbourne restaurant, Flower Drum. And you know this is the closest I'm ever going to get to eating their food.
These are two dishes of left overs. On the bottom is Steamed Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce. This is also from Delicious, but Lau's Family Kitchen contributed the recipe. The beans are an adaptation of a Kylie Kwong recipe. I wasn't that creative, I only swapped asparagus for green beans.
I've only included a picture of the rice because my friend complimented me on it. She thought I'd used a rice steamer, but I've never bought one because living by myself, I'll rarely eat enough rice to warrant purchasing one. I used one cup of rice and two cups of water.
When I was planning this dinner, I made the decision to put the most effort into making a dessert. Mostly this was because I've never really made an Asian dessert before and I wanted to try making one. It only occurred to me afterwards that it might all go horribly wrong and I might have had to rush out for some ice-cream and topping (How very suburban Chinese Restaurant of me).For some reason I rarely contemplate failure when I'm cooking. I really do wish I could translate that to other areas of my life where I seem to constantly contemplate failure.
That said, this dessert wasn't difficult at all. I found this recipe for Red Bean Wontons with Coconut Sauce and Sesame Wafers in a book I already had, Food With Friends by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis. I halved the recipe.
Coconut Sauce: 2 x 400ml coconut milk, 75g grated palm sugar, 3 pandan leaves (optional, but as you can see I found some pandan leaf extract).Red Bean Wontons: 180g packet wonton wrappers, 300g sweetened red bean paste (after buying sweetened black bean paste as a substitute, I stumbled across some whole sweetened red beans that I bought and pureed in the food processer), 70g fresh bread crumbs.
Sesame Wafers: 90g caster sugar, 60ml water, 2 tsp sesame seeds.
Coconut Sauce: Put coconut milk, palm sugar and a dash of pandan extract into a saucepan. Bring to the boil--it boils like lava, so watch out for stray and unexpected eruptions--and simmer for 10-15 mins.Red Bean Wontons: Mix the red bean paste and the fresh bread crumbs together. Place teaspoons into the centre of the wonton wrappers and seal from corner to corner as in picture above. Use some water around the edge to make the wrappers stick.
Sesame Wafers: Put the sugar and water into the saucepan on a low heat and stir gently until the sugar dissolves and the liquid is clear. Bring the resulting syrup to the boil for about 12-15 minutes, until the syrup 'is a lovely mix of gold and carmel, not dark brown'. Pour onto a greaseproof paper-lined tray and sprinkle with sesame seeds (although next time I make this, I think I'll just add the sesame seeds to the syrup). Allow to cool and harden before breaking into shards.
Assemble the dish as per this picture. You got lucky with this last photo; the dessert looks better the morning after because I forgot to serve it with the sesame wafers on the night itself.
Oh, well. I think it got tastier overnight too, because when I was eating left-overs, I wasn't so concerned that my friend might not like the dessert since it's hardly the taste in desserts either of us are used to. She did like it though. The sauce was delicious. The pandan extract made a difference to the flavour adding a subtle and delicious taste. I've always been a fan of sweet red bean things on the few occasions I've had them. I reckon you could even give these wontons a quick deep fry if you wanted a different texture. And you could smash up the sesame toffee, sprinkle it over the top, so there wasn't too much jaw-breaking crunchiness.
Happy Lunar New Year.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday
Here at Chez Galaxy, Friday nights could not be more exciting. On the way home from work, I decided to forgo the still novel pleasure of taking the Great Circle Line bus home--have I told you about the incredible view as you go along Stuartholme Road?--and head for my old Friday night pit stop, the Queen Street Mall.
All day, it had been just me and the microfilm machine for company in the Fryer Library, so I think I was craving a bit of human interaction, the bustle of Friday night shoppers, the conversation of retail workers.
I found myself, as I often do, salivating over various gadgets and appliances in a kitchen ware shop. They're all so pretty and shiny. This time I actually decided to purchase something, a 20cm skillet pan that I've been contemplating for at least a year. I'm not much of an impulse buyer. Now I won't have to lug the big frying pan out for small jobs. I'm especially looking forward to those moments when making Indian and Chinese food where they call for toasting various seeds or creating a flavoured oil to pour over the final dish.
Speaking of cooking, here's a blurry photo of an okra and potato dish I made last week:
After leaving the kitchen shop, I used the magics of a phone with an internet connection to look up the location of the new city branch of my favourite eco shop. They'd sent me a catalogue by email and I quite liked the look of a few things, plus since I lost my Sigg water bottle at a gelati counter on Lygon Street in Melbourne, I've been buying and refilling various plastic water bottles, which I really prefer not to do.
I looked at the water bottles, but my aesthetic snobbery got in the way of me buying a replacement. That, and I really want it to fit in the side pocket of my backpack, so I can try to minimise the chances of losing it. Well, I can live in hope. I've always been a bit prone to losing things. I remember when I heard that song that went 'Dancing in the disco, bumper to bumper. Wait a minute, where's me jumper? Where's me jumper? ... And my mother will be so, so angry...' I decided that it was my personal theme song.
Having put off the water bottle until another time, I looked at the magnet picture hangers that seemed to promise hope for renters who like pictures on their walls but aren't allowed to put up hooks or use blu-tack. Unfortunately they still involved double sided tape, but gee, what strong magnets, they could definitely keep the Andy Warhol pictures I drooled over at the GoMA shop in place, without damaging them.
I ended up buying some dish washing liquid, and then, as if to completely mock my earlier proclamation that I'm not an impulse buyer, I decide to get a Bokashi All-Food Compost Kit.
I'd never heard of them before, but just talking to my sister now, she says she's seen them on television.
Anyway, it's this bin you put your food scraps in, between layers of a Bokashi mixture, that's some kind of bacteria. Effectively what happens is that the food scraps get pickled, and after a few weeks of tamping down the bin, getting rid of air pockets, and making sure you put the right ratio Bokashi to food scraps, you can dig a hole in your garden and leave it for about three weeks, upon which time it will have turned into humus, full of nutrients for your garden.
I was a bit excited when I saw it at the eco store because straight away I could see that it was something that a renter could do, and now that I have a small patch of dirt, I also saw that it could help along my fledgling herb garden, which, by the way, was one of my new year's resolutions to establish. Even if I end up with too much pickled garbage, the pamphlet suggests I can give it to my local community garden, and since moving to this new place, I have one that I walk past most days.
I almost made it home for an exciting evening of setting up the Bokashi Kit, but I got waylaid by the bottle shop across from the bus stop and gave in to more traditional Friday night pleasures, treating myself to a Wine Adventure Pack consisting of six small bottles of Margaret River Reds.
See? The adventure never stops here at Chez Galaxy, even the wine attests to the excitementt.
All day, it had been just me and the microfilm machine for company in the Fryer Library, so I think I was craving a bit of human interaction, the bustle of Friday night shoppers, the conversation of retail workers.
I found myself, as I often do, salivating over various gadgets and appliances in a kitchen ware shop. They're all so pretty and shiny. This time I actually decided to purchase something, a 20cm skillet pan that I've been contemplating for at least a year. I'm not much of an impulse buyer. Now I won't have to lug the big frying pan out for small jobs. I'm especially looking forward to those moments when making Indian and Chinese food where they call for toasting various seeds or creating a flavoured oil to pour over the final dish.
Speaking of cooking, here's a blurry photo of an okra and potato dish I made last week:
After leaving the kitchen shop, I used the magics of a phone with an internet connection to look up the location of the new city branch of my favourite eco shop. They'd sent me a catalogue by email and I quite liked the look of a few things, plus since I lost my Sigg water bottle at a gelati counter on Lygon Street in Melbourne, I've been buying and refilling various plastic water bottles, which I really prefer not to do.
I looked at the water bottles, but my aesthetic snobbery got in the way of me buying a replacement. That, and I really want it to fit in the side pocket of my backpack, so I can try to minimise the chances of losing it. Well, I can live in hope. I've always been a bit prone to losing things. I remember when I heard that song that went 'Dancing in the disco, bumper to bumper. Wait a minute, where's me jumper? Where's me jumper? ... And my mother will be so, so angry...' I decided that it was my personal theme song.
Having put off the water bottle until another time, I looked at the magnet picture hangers that seemed to promise hope for renters who like pictures on their walls but aren't allowed to put up hooks or use blu-tack. Unfortunately they still involved double sided tape, but gee, what strong magnets, they could definitely keep the Andy Warhol pictures I drooled over at the GoMA shop in place, without damaging them.
I ended up buying some dish washing liquid, and then, as if to completely mock my earlier proclamation that I'm not an impulse buyer, I decide to get a Bokashi All-Food Compost Kit.
I'd never heard of them before, but just talking to my sister now, she says she's seen them on television.
Anyway, it's this bin you put your food scraps in, between layers of a Bokashi mixture, that's some kind of bacteria. Effectively what happens is that the food scraps get pickled, and after a few weeks of tamping down the bin, getting rid of air pockets, and making sure you put the right ratio Bokashi to food scraps, you can dig a hole in your garden and leave it for about three weeks, upon which time it will have turned into humus, full of nutrients for your garden.
I was a bit excited when I saw it at the eco store because straight away I could see that it was something that a renter could do, and now that I have a small patch of dirt, I also saw that it could help along my fledgling herb garden, which, by the way, was one of my new year's resolutions to establish. Even if I end up with too much pickled garbage, the pamphlet suggests I can give it to my local community garden, and since moving to this new place, I have one that I walk past most days.
I almost made it home for an exciting evening of setting up the Bokashi Kit, but I got waylaid by the bottle shop across from the bus stop and gave in to more traditional Friday night pleasures, treating myself to a Wine Adventure Pack consisting of six small bottles of Margaret River Reds.
See? The adventure never stops here at Chez Galaxy, even the wine attests to the excitementt.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Gastropod: Lasagne
It's been a while since I've done a Gastropod post--for the uninitiated, that's a post about what I've been cooking and eating lately (it's as exciting as watching a snail move)--but since it's undeniably lasagne weather in Brisbane at the moment, a bit of extra-effort cooking has been underway at Chez Galaxy.
I've been craving lasagne all week. The vegetarians amongst my readers will be pleased to know it's vegetarian lasagne, in particular, that I've been salivating over.
I'm afraid I can't claim any ethical highground though, because any wish for meat has been well and truly satisfied by another dish I've been eating throughout the week. It's also been soup weather in this part of the world, so on Monday or Tuesday I made myself a big pot of rice noodle soup with bits of pork mince, sliced chicken, dried shrimp and fried tofu in a chicken broth with fish sauce and lime juice served with various bits of sliced green vegetables and a few slices of chilli and fried garlic that I've added to the mix for each meal.
Suffice to say that recent blood tests reveal my iron levels are sufficient.
Anyway, because I will eat soup no matter what the weather, even in the middle of summer, the rice noodle soup is a less significant culinary occasion for me than any that has me buying lasagne sheets.
Remember when lasagne was just about the fanciest thing you could serve at a dinner party? It was mainly because of all the effort involved, I think. It might have been some variation on that Middle Eastern entertaining principle: if people can see you've spent a lot of time cooking for them, it means they're valued guests.
Throughout the week, I thought various times about making lasagne. The first time I didn't have any flour. Shocking, I know. What kind of Gastropod am I? Well, I threw out the last lot because it was weevil infested; they wouldn't have gone down too well in the bechamel sauce.
On my next lasagne attempt, I got distracted by looking at recipes for the range of possible fillings I could make with various ingredients including mushrooms and capsicum. I bought an eggplant and some zucchini at one stage, imagining they would make excellent fillings. Alas, the eggplant could not be resisted and was grilled before some made its way onto a pizza, while the remainder was eaten on crackers for lunch one day.
Finally, today, I whipped up a bechamel sauce. I sliced some zucchini and sauteed it with butter, olive oil, garlic, parsley and oregano, then I mixed the two together (reserving some plain bechamel for the bottom of the lasagne dish), and added grated fontina--must have eaten all the parmesan--and some freshly grated nutmeg. I put the reserved bechamel on the bottom of the cooking dish, then began the layering process: pasta, zucchini bechamel, pasta, zucchini bechamel, etc. I finished the top layer with a grating of the fontina and put it in the oven for 20mins on 200°C. Voilà :
Sorry about the blurry shot; it's the camera phone--it looked in focus when I pressed the shutter button.
Here's another blurry photo. This one's of the salad I ate with the lasagne:
While the lasagne wasn't that cheesy, I decided I needed the tomatoes and onions for their anti-cholesterol properties. Can you tell I've been watching anatomy documentaries again? On the heart smart premise, I also had a glass of red wine. Now I might have some chocolate. 70%, of course.
What I suffer for my heart health.
I've been craving lasagne all week. The vegetarians amongst my readers will be pleased to know it's vegetarian lasagne, in particular, that I've been salivating over.
I'm afraid I can't claim any ethical highground though, because any wish for meat has been well and truly satisfied by another dish I've been eating throughout the week. It's also been soup weather in this part of the world, so on Monday or Tuesday I made myself a big pot of rice noodle soup with bits of pork mince, sliced chicken, dried shrimp and fried tofu in a chicken broth with fish sauce and lime juice served with various bits of sliced green vegetables and a few slices of chilli and fried garlic that I've added to the mix for each meal.
Suffice to say that recent blood tests reveal my iron levels are sufficient.
Anyway, because I will eat soup no matter what the weather, even in the middle of summer, the rice noodle soup is a less significant culinary occasion for me than any that has me buying lasagne sheets.
Remember when lasagne was just about the fanciest thing you could serve at a dinner party? It was mainly because of all the effort involved, I think. It might have been some variation on that Middle Eastern entertaining principle: if people can see you've spent a lot of time cooking for them, it means they're valued guests.
Throughout the week, I thought various times about making lasagne. The first time I didn't have any flour. Shocking, I know. What kind of Gastropod am I? Well, I threw out the last lot because it was weevil infested; they wouldn't have gone down too well in the bechamel sauce.
On my next lasagne attempt, I got distracted by looking at recipes for the range of possible fillings I could make with various ingredients including mushrooms and capsicum. I bought an eggplant and some zucchini at one stage, imagining they would make excellent fillings. Alas, the eggplant could not be resisted and was grilled before some made its way onto a pizza, while the remainder was eaten on crackers for lunch one day.
Finally, today, I whipped up a bechamel sauce. I sliced some zucchini and sauteed it with butter, olive oil, garlic, parsley and oregano, then I mixed the two together (reserving some plain bechamel for the bottom of the lasagne dish), and added grated fontina--must have eaten all the parmesan--and some freshly grated nutmeg. I put the reserved bechamel on the bottom of the cooking dish, then began the layering process: pasta, zucchini bechamel, pasta, zucchini bechamel, etc. I finished the top layer with a grating of the fontina and put it in the oven for 20mins on 200°C. Voilà :
Sorry about the blurry shot; it's the camera phone--it looked in focus when I pressed the shutter button.
Here's another blurry photo. This one's of the salad I ate with the lasagne:
While the lasagne wasn't that cheesy, I decided I needed the tomatoes and onions for their anti-cholesterol properties. Can you tell I've been watching anatomy documentaries again? On the heart smart premise, I also had a glass of red wine. Now I might have some chocolate. 70%, of course.
What I suffer for my heart health.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Heart Starter
I was jolted from sleep this morning by a particularly graphic sequence in a dream. My unconscious mind had obviously been inspired by a number of things in my waking life right now:
In the dream, I’m travelling in a bus with my sister. Somehow I’ve managed to extract my own heart, and I’m trying to separate the pericardium from the main organ. I’m sitting upright and using my teeth to bite through the lining. I think I’ve managed it, so I turn to my sister and ask if she’ll put my heart back in my body. She looks at the heart and notices that I’ve been a bit exuberant in my auto-surgical procedure; I’ve also bitten off two chunks of flesh from my heart. V is unperturbed. She pats the pieces of heart into place and then proceeds to return my heart to my chest, with her bare hands, via my mouth and throat.
At that point I had a brief sense that the procedure had been successful, and then I woke up, my breath trapped in my throat and my heart feeling especially heavy.
I got up and made a banana smoothie that I’ve been having for breakfast occasionally, lately. I have called my recipe the Heart Smoothie, because it contains ingredients that are good for lowering cholesterol.
As I was drinking the Heart Smoothie, I recalled my mother telling everyone recently that her blood cholesterol had been measured at 7.2. That was when I realised that instead of having anxious, heart-bothering dreams, I should probably just go and get my blood cholesterol checked.
The Banana Heart Smoothie
200ml light Soy Milk
100ml ‘Heart Active’ Yoplait Vanilla Yoghurt*
1 Banana
1 tbsp Oat Bran
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
*This is the only possible use for this yoghurt. Do not eat it plain under any circumstances. Unless you’re trying to throw up. It’s truly disgusting without all the other ingredients to mask its taste and texture.
- Over at Sterne, Tim has recounted a harrowing turn of events that saw him rushed to hospital and diagnosed with Pericardia, an inflammation of the pericardium, which is the lining of the heart.
- As I was reading Tim’s post, I recalled an episode of Anatomy, ‘Circulation’, that I’ve only just watched having recorded it a couple of weeks ago. The program showed the live dissection of a recently deceased human body in order to reveal the pulmonary-thoracic organs and so examine how they worked to circulate blood and oxygen around the body. I believe there was even some discussion amongst the hosts about diseases of the linings of the lungs and heart, especially in relation to how their effects made the dissection more difficult (Sorry, Tim!).
- Both Anatomy and Tim’s plight conjured up thoughts of my sister, who is a nurse in a coronary intensive care unit.
In the dream, I’m travelling in a bus with my sister. Somehow I’ve managed to extract my own heart, and I’m trying to separate the pericardium from the main organ. I’m sitting upright and using my teeth to bite through the lining. I think I’ve managed it, so I turn to my sister and ask if she’ll put my heart back in my body. She looks at the heart and notices that I’ve been a bit exuberant in my auto-surgical procedure; I’ve also bitten off two chunks of flesh from my heart. V is unperturbed. She pats the pieces of heart into place and then proceeds to return my heart to my chest, with her bare hands, via my mouth and throat.
At that point I had a brief sense that the procedure had been successful, and then I woke up, my breath trapped in my throat and my heart feeling especially heavy.
I got up and made a banana smoothie that I’ve been having for breakfast occasionally, lately. I have called my recipe the Heart Smoothie, because it contains ingredients that are good for lowering cholesterol.
As I was drinking the Heart Smoothie, I recalled my mother telling everyone recently that her blood cholesterol had been measured at 7.2. That was when I realised that instead of having anxious, heart-bothering dreams, I should probably just go and get my blood cholesterol checked.
The Banana Heart Smoothie
200ml light Soy Milk
100ml ‘Heart Active’ Yoplait Vanilla Yoghurt*
1 Banana
1 tbsp Oat Bran
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
*This is the only possible use for this yoghurt. Do not eat it plain under any circumstances. Unless you’re trying to throw up. It’s truly disgusting without all the other ingredients to mask its taste and texture.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
How Life Is
Today was the first time this Autumn that I’ve felt the slightest nip of cold in the air. It was more of a challenge than ever to stick to the four minute shower regimen.
I’ve discovered that it takes approximately 2 litres worth of water streaming from the shower head before a temperature suitable for my ablutions is reached. I know this because I’ve been collecting said water in an especially purchased bucket and tipping it into my water filter for drinking and cooking purposes.
It was cool enough this morning so that I withdrew my light pink robe and matching ugg boots from their storage space in the cupboard and donned them while I drank coffee and marked the last in a pile of first year assignments.
I read that ‘99% of Australians occupy one television’.
For the past week or so, I have been trying to fight off an imminent cold. The first sign of being run down arrived in the form of a tingling in my eye, which heralded the beginning of a sty. As I became aware of the proto-sty, I realised my throat was sore.
I bought a new vitamin supplement called Immunodefence. Its active ingredient is Lactoferrin-Bovine (Dairy). I have also been drinking Immune juice which contains guava, pineapple and an Echinacea supplement. I have further supplemented my Echinacea intake with Echinacea + C lozenges.
Yesterday, I slept until 11.30am.
Late last week I warded off the effects of a disappointment by treating myself to a new cookbook, Growers’ Market: Cooking with Seasonal Produce by Leanne Kitchen. It's an Australian book. It’s nice not to have to translate everything from Northern Hemisphere climes in order to make sense of it here in the Antipodes.
It’s the season for eggplant.
These were transformed into an eggplant jam that I’m eating on scoops of pita bread.
You know your life is not worth living if you don’t know what I’m eating.
This is a home-made tomato soup. The recipe came from the hand-held blender-processor manual. It’s nothing you couldn’t find in any recipe book. The soup’s smooth consistency was achieved using the hand-held blender-processor, which boasts it is also capable of crushing ice.
I’ve been experimenting with cooking kangaroo. It’s higher in iron and protein than beef. I’m finding it difficult to get good results. It has practically no fat. It’s the kind of meat that I think you have to wrap in layers of proscuitto, a bit like rabbit. I’ve made meatballs and bolognaise with the mince, but they seem a bit dry for my taste. The best meals have required the least preparation: a fillet brushed with olive oil and seasoned, then char grilled to medium rare.
Big Brother has started. Painting Australia has finished. Medium returns this week.
I have been buying TV Week for a month or so now.
Every now and then I am consumed with fury when I replay the comments from my last Sarsaparilla post in my head.
I try to concentrate on the fact that a senior colleague read my post and the ensuing comments and said that he considered me an equal; he didn’t need to defend me or look out for me—I knew how to conduct myself.
I have over forty unwatched programmes on the hard disk of my DVR. Many of them are films.
David Stratton has an entire double page spread to highlight which movies are worth watching on free to air TV.
TV Week doesn’t provide the schedule for ABC2.
Some of my students have started watching Autopsy:Life and Death on SBS at my recommendation. We talk about how queasy we feel when we watch it. I watched Top Gear because my students said it was good—beautifully shot—even if you weren’t into cars. They were right.
I’ve loaned my copy of twenty-six lies/one truth by Ben Peek to a friend who teaches a popular culture course because I think it’s the kind of thing the kids of today should be reading. If she sets it she will get complaints from Christians and education students. When I was in undergraduate they complained about 1988 by Andrew McGahan. In Toowoomba they complain about Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas.
I am secretly reading Middlemarch because people I respect say it’s the best book ever written. Other people I respect disagree.
This Friday is Audrey Hepburn’s birthday. That means it is my birthday too. Therein all similarity ends.
I’ve discovered that it takes approximately 2 litres worth of water streaming from the shower head before a temperature suitable for my ablutions is reached. I know this because I’ve been collecting said water in an especially purchased bucket and tipping it into my water filter for drinking and cooking purposes.
It was cool enough this morning so that I withdrew my light pink robe and matching ugg boots from their storage space in the cupboard and donned them while I drank coffee and marked the last in a pile of first year assignments.
I read that ‘99% of Australians occupy one television’.
For the past week or so, I have been trying to fight off an imminent cold. The first sign of being run down arrived in the form of a tingling in my eye, which heralded the beginning of a sty. As I became aware of the proto-sty, I realised my throat was sore.
I bought a new vitamin supplement called Immunodefence. Its active ingredient is Lactoferrin-Bovine (Dairy). I have also been drinking Immune juice which contains guava, pineapple and an Echinacea supplement. I have further supplemented my Echinacea intake with Echinacea + C lozenges.
Yesterday, I slept until 11.30am.
Late last week I warded off the effects of a disappointment by treating myself to a new cookbook, Growers’ Market: Cooking with Seasonal Produce by Leanne Kitchen. It's an Australian book. It’s nice not to have to translate everything from Northern Hemisphere climes in order to make sense of it here in the Antipodes.
It’s the season for eggplant.
These were transformed into an eggplant jam that I’m eating on scoops of pita bread.
You know your life is not worth living if you don’t know what I’m eating.
This is a home-made tomato soup. The recipe came from the hand-held blender-processor manual. It’s nothing you couldn’t find in any recipe book. The soup’s smooth consistency was achieved using the hand-held blender-processor, which boasts it is also capable of crushing ice.
I’ve been experimenting with cooking kangaroo. It’s higher in iron and protein than beef. I’m finding it difficult to get good results. It has practically no fat. It’s the kind of meat that I think you have to wrap in layers of proscuitto, a bit like rabbit. I’ve made meatballs and bolognaise with the mince, but they seem a bit dry for my taste. The best meals have required the least preparation: a fillet brushed with olive oil and seasoned, then char grilled to medium rare.
Big Brother has started. Painting Australia has finished. Medium returns this week.
I have been buying TV Week for a month or so now.
Every now and then I am consumed with fury when I replay the comments from my last Sarsaparilla post in my head.
I try to concentrate on the fact that a senior colleague read my post and the ensuing comments and said that he considered me an equal; he didn’t need to defend me or look out for me—I knew how to conduct myself.
I have over forty unwatched programmes on the hard disk of my DVR. Many of them are films.
David Stratton has an entire double page spread to highlight which movies are worth watching on free to air TV.
TV Week doesn’t provide the schedule for ABC2.
Some of my students have started watching Autopsy:Life and Death on SBS at my recommendation. We talk about how queasy we feel when we watch it. I watched Top Gear because my students said it was good—beautifully shot—even if you weren’t into cars. They were right.
I’ve loaned my copy of twenty-six lies/one truth by Ben Peek to a friend who teaches a popular culture course because I think it’s the kind of thing the kids of today should be reading. If she sets it she will get complaints from Christians and education students. When I was in undergraduate they complained about 1988 by Andrew McGahan. In Toowoomba they complain about Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas.
I am secretly reading Middlemarch because people I respect say it’s the best book ever written. Other people I respect disagree.
This Friday is Audrey Hepburn’s birthday. That means it is my birthday too. Therein all similarity ends.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Duck Soup
Last night I went to dinner at a posh restaurant. A friend, E., who started her Master’s when I did, organises to go out to dinner every time another friend of her’s returns to visit Brisbane from Sydney, where he now works. For three or four years now, once or twice a year, I find myself sitting at a table with a group of wonderfully witty and interesting people, ordering exquisite food, and relaxing into a really enjoyable evening.
On a couple of occasions we’ve visited a restaurant at West End called Mondo Organics. We returned there last night and we noted quite a few changes since our last visit. Aside from a bit of remodelling, it seems to have become a fully-fledged fine dining restaurant. Just before I stopped buying Gourmet Traveller regularly, I noticed that Mondo had begun to garner a few favourable mentions in various brief notes throughout the magazine, and once, if I recall correctly, there was even a full feature article about the restaurant and the vision of its owners. This was remarkable because it always seemed to me that, outside of an ongoing reverence for Philip Johnson’s E'cco Bistro* and the very occasional mention of Pier Nine or Cha Cha Char, Brisbane was a bit neglected by GT.
Mondo was always a very good restaurant to dine at because of their commitment to organic ingredients and the range of choices they offered vegans, vegetarians and allergy sufferers. It will be disappointing for some, if not surprising, to learn that with the change towards more traditional dining standards the attention afforded to those with specific dietary requirements has waned. While I have much sympathy for those who are no longer catered for by Mondo, I, personally, cannot say I was unhappy with the changes.
On some level I enjoyed being surprised by dining on food, the price of which would normally serve as a deterrent to entering an establishment in the first place. But there I was, my vegetarianism a distant memory, finally in receipt of my first payment for tutoring—it’s only 6 weeks into the semester!—embroiled in various debates about the relative merits or lack thereof of Pan’s Labyrinth, Pink, and the end of irony**—not necessarily in that order—and I decided I would have bread, dessert and wine, in addition to a main, and, for a change, not worry about anything.
The ciabatta style bread was accompanied by a fruity olive oil that was apparently a hundred years old. I wasn’t sure if that was the age of the trees the olives came from or the oil itself. Whatever, I could have sipped it like wine, it was so delicious. It made me wonder about the age of the sticky black balsamic vinegar that had some roasted garlic cloves marinating in it. One of my dining companions declared that she thought it must have been at least two hundred years old to even grace the same table as the aforementioned olive oil.
For my main, I chose the duck, the name of which I wish I could remember. It was effectively two cuts of duck cooked and presented in different ways on a rectangular plate. The first portion was a breast of duck sitting atop a fig concoction with some wilted spinach greens. The second portion was a leg of duck, this time perched on a small bed of parsnip mash. There were a couple of slivers of carrot that formed a visual bridge between the two preparations. In the spirit of not worrying, I agreed to the suggested wine accompaniment of a pinot noir. I made everybody sniff the wine because it just smelled so good in the enormous glass it was served in; but I gave no one a chance to get close to the duck.
The dessert was a revelation. Served on another rectangular plate, at one end was a mould of vanilla pannacotta , next a scoop of rose sorbet, topped with a shortbread like biscuit, and finally a small bunch of muscatels drenched in a syrup that partly reconstituted the dried fruit. I relented and offered tastes of this delectable combination to everyone, but I had to decline their offers of chocolate and other sorbet desserts because I just couldn’t bear to sully the subtlety of the pannacotta.
I finished the meal with an espresso, which I never drink, but it just seemed right at the time, even if I had to drink three more glasses of the never-ending supply of water the attentive waiting staff kept pouring, so I could cope with its strength.
After we got around to paying the bill there was still plenty of conversation to be had, so we adjourned to the sidewalk outside the restaurant where we chatted and laughed for another half an hour. Our party finally broke up for the evening after we had promised one another that we’d next meet at E'cco, or perhaps another fine dining establishment. I guess I’ll have to revisit Gourmet Traveller—just to see if they’ve been to Brisbane lately.
* Was it a coincidence that the year that E'cco Bistro won The Best Restaurant of the Year, an overseas-based judge, Rick Stein, who had little inkling of the hierarchy of Australian cities, made the final decision?
* *To say nothing of the intrigue aroused by the revelation of one of my dinner companions, who is soon getting married, that she has created a spreadsheet on which she has calculated the probability of attendance for every one of the guests she has invited to her wedding. Did I mention that at least half of the table was comprised of maths nerds?
On a couple of occasions we’ve visited a restaurant at West End called Mondo Organics. We returned there last night and we noted quite a few changes since our last visit. Aside from a bit of remodelling, it seems to have become a fully-fledged fine dining restaurant. Just before I stopped buying Gourmet Traveller regularly, I noticed that Mondo had begun to garner a few favourable mentions in various brief notes throughout the magazine, and once, if I recall correctly, there was even a full feature article about the restaurant and the vision of its owners. This was remarkable because it always seemed to me that, outside of an ongoing reverence for Philip Johnson’s E'cco Bistro* and the very occasional mention of Pier Nine or Cha Cha Char, Brisbane was a bit neglected by GT.
Mondo was always a very good restaurant to dine at because of their commitment to organic ingredients and the range of choices they offered vegans, vegetarians and allergy sufferers. It will be disappointing for some, if not surprising, to learn that with the change towards more traditional dining standards the attention afforded to those with specific dietary requirements has waned. While I have much sympathy for those who are no longer catered for by Mondo, I, personally, cannot say I was unhappy with the changes.
On some level I enjoyed being surprised by dining on food, the price of which would normally serve as a deterrent to entering an establishment in the first place. But there I was, my vegetarianism a distant memory, finally in receipt of my first payment for tutoring—it’s only 6 weeks into the semester!—embroiled in various debates about the relative merits or lack thereof of Pan’s Labyrinth, Pink, and the end of irony**—not necessarily in that order—and I decided I would have bread, dessert and wine, in addition to a main, and, for a change, not worry about anything.
The ciabatta style bread was accompanied by a fruity olive oil that was apparently a hundred years old. I wasn’t sure if that was the age of the trees the olives came from or the oil itself. Whatever, I could have sipped it like wine, it was so delicious. It made me wonder about the age of the sticky black balsamic vinegar that had some roasted garlic cloves marinating in it. One of my dining companions declared that she thought it must have been at least two hundred years old to even grace the same table as the aforementioned olive oil.
For my main, I chose the duck, the name of which I wish I could remember. It was effectively two cuts of duck cooked and presented in different ways on a rectangular plate. The first portion was a breast of duck sitting atop a fig concoction with some wilted spinach greens. The second portion was a leg of duck, this time perched on a small bed of parsnip mash. There were a couple of slivers of carrot that formed a visual bridge between the two preparations. In the spirit of not worrying, I agreed to the suggested wine accompaniment of a pinot noir. I made everybody sniff the wine because it just smelled so good in the enormous glass it was served in; but I gave no one a chance to get close to the duck.
The dessert was a revelation. Served on another rectangular plate, at one end was a mould of vanilla pannacotta , next a scoop of rose sorbet, topped with a shortbread like biscuit, and finally a small bunch of muscatels drenched in a syrup that partly reconstituted the dried fruit. I relented and offered tastes of this delectable combination to everyone, but I had to decline their offers of chocolate and other sorbet desserts because I just couldn’t bear to sully the subtlety of the pannacotta.
I finished the meal with an espresso, which I never drink, but it just seemed right at the time, even if I had to drink three more glasses of the never-ending supply of water the attentive waiting staff kept pouring, so I could cope with its strength.
After we got around to paying the bill there was still plenty of conversation to be had, so we adjourned to the sidewalk outside the restaurant where we chatted and laughed for another half an hour. Our party finally broke up for the evening after we had promised one another that we’d next meet at E'cco, or perhaps another fine dining establishment. I guess I’ll have to revisit Gourmet Traveller—just to see if they’ve been to Brisbane lately.
* Was it a coincidence that the year that E'cco Bistro won The Best Restaurant of the Year, an overseas-based judge, Rick Stein, who had little inkling of the hierarchy of Australian cities, made the final decision?
* *To say nothing of the intrigue aroused by the revelation of one of my dinner companions, who is soon getting married, that she has created a spreadsheet on which she has calculated the probability of attendance for every one of the guests she has invited to her wedding. Did I mention that at least half of the table was comprised of maths nerds?
Monday, April 09, 2007
What Einstein Told the Easter Bunny
When I was in year 12, I wanted to be a food technologist. I even got as far as nominating a degree on my university application forms that would have secured the first step in my pursuit of that profession. Then the forms came back, asking for confirmation of my choice, and I changed my mind. At the time I was unsure about my ability to do four years of chemistry.
Recently, I have come to recognise that during my high school years I drew the meagre sense of self-esteem I had from my teachers and any praise they meted out. While not wanting to blame my chemistry teacher for my lack of application in her subject, I do recall how devastated I was the day, early in our acquaintance, when she laughed off her mispronunciation of my name, with ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Rightly or not, something within me was permanently altered from that moment on, and I never fully engaged with chemistry again.
In contrast, I had known my English teacher since my first year of high school. She had been my form teacher and my maths teacher in year 8. In year 9 a new school opened up closer to my home, so I went there, but in year 10, Ms W. transferred to the new school and she taught me English for the next three years.
It was she who first told me I was intelligent—in class, in front of everybody. From her I learned that my eyes were blue. In the middle of a maths lesson, where eye colour was being put to use in the service of a maths problem, she said ‘Kirsty, your eyes are blue, aren’t they?’ It might sound strange, since I now know that my eyes are especially blue, but until that point, it was something that I hadn’t known. I had been convinced by a comment from my mother that they weren’t any particular colour; that they were sort of non-descript.
I joined the debating team, solely because Ms W. was the co-ordinator. The team used to go over to her place, where her husband, who was my biology teacher, would serve us cordial and biscuits. After watching Kramer vs. Kramer in English, when it was apparent that everyone else in the class was convinced that the Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep characters would reunite, Ms W. asked what I thought. She knew that I would have a different perspective.
So, when it came to making, what seemed then to be an irreversible and permanently life-altering decision about what to do for a living, I decided to pursue a course in an area where I had received the most encouragement, and therefore had been the most successful. I left any thought of pursuing my interest in science behind.
It’s really only recently, via my interest in food and cooking—I also did home economics to senior level—that I find my interest in the science of food once again piqued.
For Christmas I received a voucher from Borders and I was able to get a book that I’d been looking at longingly for at least three years. What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke promises ‘Kitchen Science Explained’. And so it does. When Morgan Spurlock asked people on the street what a calorie was for his documentary Supersize Me that was screened on Channel Ten a couple of weeks ago, I knew the answer, courtesy of Einstein’s mutterings. When I caught a repeat of Mythbusters on SBS over the weekend that sought to demystify the many urban myths around microwaves, I had already read with much interest Wolke’s chapter, dedicated to ‘Those Mysterious Microwaves’. I read the book too late to answer Laura’s question about sulphured molasses, but I’ve found it a wonderful complement to another repeated SBS programme that I missed the first time around, Sweet Paradise.
Sweet Paradise is a Canadian-produced documentary series about the history of sweets. Because of its Canadian origins, there’s a focus in the series on maple sugar that isn’t proportionate to its broader use in the history of sweets on a global scale, but still the sections on maple are interesting because of its novelty as a sugar and for its unique production process. Maple sugar aside, the history of other sugars and chocolate have been a bit of an eye opener. I don’t know why I hadn’t reflected on it before, but of course both the cultivation of sugar cane and the cacao bean have been an integral part of colonialism with slaves being coerced into the production of the sugar and chocolate destined for the exclusive tables of the European courts.
The series details various shifts in the history of sweets, from their initial ceremonial and medicinal uses to the royal edicts that transformed them into a source of inexpensive pleasure for everyone. Learning of the struggles between confectionary empires—Nestle, Lindt, Hershey, Mars, Cadbury—has also been fascinating. Why do we associate chocolate most readily with Switzerland when Spain was the first European country to know about chocolate? It was the Swiss who first thought to add milk to chocolate. Genius.
The connection between Sweet Paradise and What Einstein Told His Cook is most evident in the exploration of the various kinds of sugar, and the multiple products sourced from cocoa, including their discovery and development.
The murky origins of the jellybean have me intrigued, but so too does the apparent skill required to produce this common sweet just so. Of all the innovations in sweet making, I keep thinking that they are likely attributable to a food technologist, or a precursor of that profession.
Have I missed my calling, I wonder? I don’t know. Although, I did find out years later that on the strength of my teenage career musings, a school friend, who moved away in my senior year, did go on to become a food technologist. Sweet.
Happy Easter!
Recently, I have come to recognise that during my high school years I drew the meagre sense of self-esteem I had from my teachers and any praise they meted out. While not wanting to blame my chemistry teacher for my lack of application in her subject, I do recall how devastated I was the day, early in our acquaintance, when she laughed off her mispronunciation of my name, with ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Rightly or not, something within me was permanently altered from that moment on, and I never fully engaged with chemistry again.
In contrast, I had known my English teacher since my first year of high school. She had been my form teacher and my maths teacher in year 8. In year 9 a new school opened up closer to my home, so I went there, but in year 10, Ms W. transferred to the new school and she taught me English for the next three years.
It was she who first told me I was intelligent—in class, in front of everybody. From her I learned that my eyes were blue. In the middle of a maths lesson, where eye colour was being put to use in the service of a maths problem, she said ‘Kirsty, your eyes are blue, aren’t they?’ It might sound strange, since I now know that my eyes are especially blue, but until that point, it was something that I hadn’t known. I had been convinced by a comment from my mother that they weren’t any particular colour; that they were sort of non-descript.
I joined the debating team, solely because Ms W. was the co-ordinator. The team used to go over to her place, where her husband, who was my biology teacher, would serve us cordial and biscuits. After watching Kramer vs. Kramer in English, when it was apparent that everyone else in the class was convinced that the Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep characters would reunite, Ms W. asked what I thought. She knew that I would have a different perspective.
So, when it came to making, what seemed then to be an irreversible and permanently life-altering decision about what to do for a living, I decided to pursue a course in an area where I had received the most encouragement, and therefore had been the most successful. I left any thought of pursuing my interest in science behind.
It’s really only recently, via my interest in food and cooking—I also did home economics to senior level—that I find my interest in the science of food once again piqued.
For Christmas I received a voucher from Borders and I was able to get a book that I’d been looking at longingly for at least three years. What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke promises ‘Kitchen Science Explained’. And so it does. When Morgan Spurlock asked people on the street what a calorie was for his documentary Supersize Me that was screened on Channel Ten a couple of weeks ago, I knew the answer, courtesy of Einstein’s mutterings. When I caught a repeat of Mythbusters on SBS over the weekend that sought to demystify the many urban myths around microwaves, I had already read with much interest Wolke’s chapter, dedicated to ‘Those Mysterious Microwaves’. I read the book too late to answer Laura’s question about sulphured molasses, but I’ve found it a wonderful complement to another repeated SBS programme that I missed the first time around, Sweet Paradise.
Sweet Paradise is a Canadian-produced documentary series about the history of sweets. Because of its Canadian origins, there’s a focus in the series on maple sugar that isn’t proportionate to its broader use in the history of sweets on a global scale, but still the sections on maple are interesting because of its novelty as a sugar and for its unique production process. Maple sugar aside, the history of other sugars and chocolate have been a bit of an eye opener. I don’t know why I hadn’t reflected on it before, but of course both the cultivation of sugar cane and the cacao bean have been an integral part of colonialism with slaves being coerced into the production of the sugar and chocolate destined for the exclusive tables of the European courts.
The series details various shifts in the history of sweets, from their initial ceremonial and medicinal uses to the royal edicts that transformed them into a source of inexpensive pleasure for everyone. Learning of the struggles between confectionary empires—Nestle, Lindt, Hershey, Mars, Cadbury—has also been fascinating. Why do we associate chocolate most readily with Switzerland when Spain was the first European country to know about chocolate? It was the Swiss who first thought to add milk to chocolate. Genius.
The connection between Sweet Paradise and What Einstein Told His Cook is most evident in the exploration of the various kinds of sugar, and the multiple products sourced from cocoa, including their discovery and development.
The murky origins of the jellybean have me intrigued, but so too does the apparent skill required to produce this common sweet just so. Of all the innovations in sweet making, I keep thinking that they are likely attributable to a food technologist, or a precursor of that profession.
Have I missed my calling, I wonder? I don’t know. Although, I did find out years later that on the strength of my teenage career musings, a school friend, who moved away in my senior year, did go on to become a food technologist. Sweet.
Happy Easter!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Prunes
When I was in primary school and still young enough to think that parents knew everything, I was convinced that prunes were not plums before they became prunes. I thought this because my father had told me that, ‘Prunes are prunes’. At the time this seemed like some great existential revelation (although of course I did not know of existentialism then), a sort of Being and Nothingness of the fruit universe. He used to travel for his work and he told me that he had seen how prunes grew. In my head, I imagined that prunes grew in the way that grapes did, in trestled vineyards, and pickers would come along, hands clad in canvas gloves, and pluck the shrivelled but still moist fruits from their stems.
Impressed with this new information I stored it in my mind, only to discover that I had occasion to retrieve it far sooner than I might have expected. As part of a worksheet exercise in class one day, there was a question that asked ‘What is a prune?’ Before learning from my father about the Zen of prunes, I too would have answered, ‘a dried plum’. Equipped with this new counter-intuitive knowledge, however, I insisted that, ‘Prunes are prunes’, and nothing would dissuade me from my conviction.
The teacher tried very hard to convince me, even going so far as to show me a concise dictionary entry which stated that a prune was indeed ‘a dried plum’. At that point I conceded—outwardly, at least. On the way home from school, I continued the discussion with my friend. I said that I wasn’t entirely persuaded by the teacher’s proof because it was clear for anyone to see that prune pits were quite a different shape to those of plums: prune pits were more oval and had sharp pointed ends, while plum pits were round.
Much to my chagrin, my friend didn't agree with me. I forget the exact details of her argument but she was more adamant than I was about the genealogy of the prune. I recall eventually admitting that perhaps prunes were dried plums, but wondered if she would concede that they weren’t the same variety of plum that we were familiar with in the fresh form? She never really did acknowledge my observation, and stubbornly insisted that I admit that prunes were dried plums without any mitigating details.
Since then, I hadn’t really thought of The Prune Incident, but I was reminded of it recently when I began buying trays of sugar plums from my favourite green grocer. I’d never tried this variety of plum before, but at $3.99 for 750g, they seemed worth trying.
After I ate the first one and saw the oblong shaped pit with pointy ends, I wondered if at last I had encountered the variety of plum that was the precursor of the prune as I knew it. I haven’t checked any sources, but I’m convinced the sugar plum is the prune plum.
Not only is the pit the right shape, but the shape and size of this plum are more similar to the dried prune than the large round variety of plum that was a treat every summer when I was growing up.
Just looking up ‘prune’ in another dictionary now, I see one of the definitions is:
prune³ proon, n a plum (obs); a dried plum; a plum suitable for drying (US)
Is it worth mentioning that prune can also mean ‘a dudteacher pilot (airmen’s slang); [and] a despised or silly “friend” person (colloq)’?
Impressed with this new information I stored it in my mind, only to discover that I had occasion to retrieve it far sooner than I might have expected. As part of a worksheet exercise in class one day, there was a question that asked ‘What is a prune?’ Before learning from my father about the Zen of prunes, I too would have answered, ‘a dried plum’. Equipped with this new counter-intuitive knowledge, however, I insisted that, ‘Prunes are prunes’, and nothing would dissuade me from my conviction.
The teacher tried very hard to convince me, even going so far as to show me a concise dictionary entry which stated that a prune was indeed ‘a dried plum’. At that point I conceded—outwardly, at least. On the way home from school, I continued the discussion with my friend. I said that I wasn’t entirely persuaded by the teacher’s proof because it was clear for anyone to see that prune pits were quite a different shape to those of plums: prune pits were more oval and had sharp pointed ends, while plum pits were round.
Much to my chagrin, my friend didn't agree with me. I forget the exact details of her argument but she was more adamant than I was about the genealogy of the prune. I recall eventually admitting that perhaps prunes were dried plums, but wondered if she would concede that they weren’t the same variety of plum that we were familiar with in the fresh form? She never really did acknowledge my observation, and stubbornly insisted that I admit that prunes were dried plums without any mitigating details.
Since then, I hadn’t really thought of The Prune Incident, but I was reminded of it recently when I began buying trays of sugar plums from my favourite green grocer. I’d never tried this variety of plum before, but at $3.99 for 750g, they seemed worth trying.
After I ate the first one and saw the oblong shaped pit with pointy ends, I wondered if at last I had encountered the variety of plum that was the precursor of the prune as I knew it. I haven’t checked any sources, but I’m convinced the sugar plum is the prune plum.
Not only is the pit the right shape, but the shape and size of this plum are more similar to the dried prune than the large round variety of plum that was a treat every summer when I was growing up.
Just looking up ‘prune’ in another dictionary now, I see one of the definitions is:
prune³ proon, n a plum (obs); a dried plum; a plum suitable for drying (US)
Is it worth mentioning that prune can also mean ‘a dud
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Gastropod News
You might be wondering what these apparently unattractive green packages have to do with anything in the realm of culinary delight. It turns out I couldn’t be bothered taking a photo of my efforts in the kitchen after I came home from work on Friday, so I’ve just had to take one now. It’s unfortunate for this green curry paste that I’ve done it absolutely no justice by photographing after it had been frozen into handy packages.
I had a particularly frustrating day on Friday, and since I’d been drooling over recipes in Charmaine Solomon’s Thai Cookbook, I’d had visions of making a curry paste in the most violent way possible, in a stone mortar and pestle: ‘Take that you long green chilli! Don’t think you’re surviving coriander root! You’ll be nothing but pulp when I’ve finished with you galangal!’ Fortunately for everyone concerned, by the time I got home with my ingredients, I began to doubt the strength of my pestle wielding skills and chose the far less flat-shuddering option of the food-processor (still going strong after all other hand-me downs have died).
I’ll make a green chicken curry with at least one of those packets in a couple of days time. Meanwhile here’s a photo of Thursday’s dinner and Friday’s lunch, while it was still in the wok.
It’s another dish I’ve made lately which signals the end of my vegetarianism. There’s some pork mince in amongst the silken tofu, and I’ll admit I’ve been eyeing this recipe from Kylie Kwong Recipes and Stories for some time now. I’ve made all the other silken tofu dishes in that book on a regular basis—can’t get enough of them—and this was the only one I hadn’t tried because it had meat in it.
I have to say it was very tasty. I think I’ve become addicted to black vinegar because of this cookbook, and it seems to combine particularly well with the pork taste and together they made for a wonderful syrupy gravy. I don’t have a picture of the final dish but the whole taste was set off with some sliced green spring onions and a home- ground Szechuan pepper and salt mixture that I have also become addicted to thanks to Ms Kwong.
(Have I ever mentioned that I have jars of different varieties of peppercorns? Black, white, green and Szechuan. Does this seem excessive?)
In other Gastropod news from chez Galaxy, I’ve resurrected the bread-maker. I’ve never been very thrilled with the bread from it, but that’s probably because I need to experiment more, be a more vigilant bread maker and eater. I’ve always excused its imperfections thinking I couldn’t expect too much of it because if it wasn’t quite a hand-me-down, it was purchased never-used for only $50. That and my main reason for wanting it was for the dough setting to make hassle-free pizza bases. As you may know, I’ve been relying on pita bread bases for my pizza for a while now, but since I had some flour that it didn’t seem I was otherwise going to use, I’ve made four pizzas over the last week or so. In addition to using the flour, I’ve managed to use up some other ingredients that might have been relegated to the garbage bin if I hadn’t put them on pizza, including some roast pumpkin and a tomato pasta sauce. I’m glad I didn’t have to waste anything—these peasant cuisines know how to make the best of things, don’t they?
I had a particularly frustrating day on Friday, and since I’d been drooling over recipes in Charmaine Solomon’s Thai Cookbook, I’d had visions of making a curry paste in the most violent way possible, in a stone mortar and pestle: ‘Take that you long green chilli! Don’t think you’re surviving coriander root! You’ll be nothing but pulp when I’ve finished with you galangal!’ Fortunately for everyone concerned, by the time I got home with my ingredients, I began to doubt the strength of my pestle wielding skills and chose the far less flat-shuddering option of the food-processor (still going strong after all other hand-me downs have died).
I’ll make a green chicken curry with at least one of those packets in a couple of days time. Meanwhile here’s a photo of Thursday’s dinner and Friday’s lunch, while it was still in the wok.
It’s another dish I’ve made lately which signals the end of my vegetarianism. There’s some pork mince in amongst the silken tofu, and I’ll admit I’ve been eyeing this recipe from Kylie Kwong Recipes and Stories for some time now. I’ve made all the other silken tofu dishes in that book on a regular basis—can’t get enough of them—and this was the only one I hadn’t tried because it had meat in it.
I have to say it was very tasty. I think I’ve become addicted to black vinegar because of this cookbook, and it seems to combine particularly well with the pork taste and together they made for a wonderful syrupy gravy. I don’t have a picture of the final dish but the whole taste was set off with some sliced green spring onions and a home- ground Szechuan pepper and salt mixture that I have also become addicted to thanks to Ms Kwong.
(Have I ever mentioned that I have jars of different varieties of peppercorns? Black, white, green and Szechuan. Does this seem excessive?)
In other Gastropod news from chez Galaxy, I’ve resurrected the bread-maker. I’ve never been very thrilled with the bread from it, but that’s probably because I need to experiment more, be a more vigilant bread maker and eater. I’ve always excused its imperfections thinking I couldn’t expect too much of it because if it wasn’t quite a hand-me-down, it was purchased never-used for only $50. That and my main reason for wanting it was for the dough setting to make hassle-free pizza bases. As you may know, I’ve been relying on pita bread bases for my pizza for a while now, but since I had some flour that it didn’t seem I was otherwise going to use, I’ve made four pizzas over the last week or so. In addition to using the flour, I’ve managed to use up some other ingredients that might have been relegated to the garbage bin if I hadn’t put them on pizza, including some roast pumpkin and a tomato pasta sauce. I’m glad I didn’t have to waste anything—these peasant cuisines know how to make the best of things, don’t they?
Friday, January 19, 2007
Gastropod: Rocket
I’ve written before about those times when you get to the end of the day and discover that you haven’t managed to consume anywhere near the recommended daily servings of vegetables (I never have any trouble with the fruit quota, indeed, self-restraint is always required). I hear that for a lot of people, who, like me, ‘have no reason to be alive’*, cooking at the end of the day is a nigh on unendurable chore, a time of day when all pretence of self-care and worth is dropped into a toaster and served with baked beans. Well, aside from noting that baked beans are pretty good for you, even I, food obsessed that I am, have lived through such times—although I tended to stir my self-worth into tinned soup, because even toast was too much effort.
What I hadn’t discovered then was the virtue of rocket (arugula), that peppery, green, salad leaf that has risen from its humble beginnings as a roadside weed, to become the darling of the fine dining set, held aloft by prime rib fillet, truffles and other founding members of the ingredients elite. Lately, the towers of rocket may have slipped from their privileged positions in esteemed restaurants, to be replaced by... well, I wouldn’t know ... but now we, home cooks, with only ourselves to please, can celebrate its simple genius.
Rocket Engineering **
The night before last, I made myself a tuna pasta, and topped the whole dish with a big handful of rocket, lightly tossed in some extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. The rocket wilted slightly with the heat of the pasta, but that only assisted in stirring it through the rest of the dish, which made eating it more manageable. Divine.
The beauty of rocket is that I can imagine topping a serving of baked beans on toast with it. It would be perfect on melted cheese on toast too, another preparation which suffers from too little in the way of vegetables. You don’t have to go to the effort of making a marinated mushroom, roast capsicum, and fetta pizza to make the most of rocket.
But if you have some less than perfect mushrooms and a beginning-to-shrivel red capsicum that shouldn’t be wasted, you might like to.
And that’s only a pita bread pizza base I’ve used there.
I think I can declare that Cooking for One, Tip #2 is: Embrace the virtuosity of pita bread. I’m thinking pizza bases; dipping bread or chips, if you toast it in the oven first; pan fried sandwiches; the more traditional use as a wrap for falafel and salads, meat if you’re anaemic, left-overs (hey, that chicken saffron dish would be aw-right in a pita bread) ...
* From lyric of ‘Far Away’ by Martha Wainwright: “I have no children. I have no husband. I have no reason to be alive. Oh give me one.” I must admit I can only read that ironically if I ignore the later part: “Whatever happened to us all? Annie had two young baby boys. And Jimmy went crazy crazy crazy late last fall.”
** You know that pun is the only reason I decided to post on Rocket. 'Arugula' seems lacking on that score, doesn't it?
What I hadn’t discovered then was the virtue of rocket (arugula), that peppery, green, salad leaf that has risen from its humble beginnings as a roadside weed, to become the darling of the fine dining set, held aloft by prime rib fillet, truffles and other founding members of the ingredients elite. Lately, the towers of rocket may have slipped from their privileged positions in esteemed restaurants, to be replaced by... well, I wouldn’t know ... but now we, home cooks, with only ourselves to please, can celebrate its simple genius.
Rocket Engineering **The night before last, I made myself a tuna pasta, and topped the whole dish with a big handful of rocket, lightly tossed in some extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. The rocket wilted slightly with the heat of the pasta, but that only assisted in stirring it through the rest of the dish, which made eating it more manageable. Divine.
The beauty of rocket is that I can imagine topping a serving of baked beans on toast with it. It would be perfect on melted cheese on toast too, another preparation which suffers from too little in the way of vegetables. You don’t have to go to the effort of making a marinated mushroom, roast capsicum, and fetta pizza to make the most of rocket.
But if you have some less than perfect mushrooms and a beginning-to-shrivel red capsicum that shouldn’t be wasted, you might like to.
And that’s only a pita bread pizza base I’ve used there.
I think I can declare that Cooking for One, Tip #2 is: Embrace the virtuosity of pita bread. I’m thinking pizza bases; dipping bread or chips, if you toast it in the oven first; pan fried sandwiches; the more traditional use as a wrap for falafel and salads, meat if you’re anaemic, left-overs (hey, that chicken saffron dish would be aw-right in a pita bread) ...
* From lyric of ‘Far Away’ by Martha Wainwright: “I have no children. I have no husband. I have no reason to be alive. Oh give me one.” I must admit I can only read that ironically if I ignore the later part: “Whatever happened to us all? Annie had two young baby boys. And Jimmy went crazy crazy crazy late last fall.”
** You know that pun is the only reason I decided to post on Rocket. 'Arugula' seems lacking on that score, doesn't it?
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Gastropod: Packet Mix-Up
This is what I ate for dinner tonight. I found the recipe on the back of some 'Spice Sensation' flavoured couscous that I tried.
The pictured couscous is actually a different variety to the one I expected to find in the 'Spice Sensation' packet. I worked out that it was the 'Tomato Tang' variety; obviously there was some mix up at the factory. Anyway, that accounts for why I bought the couscous at the greatly discounted price that I did.
The combination of chicken thighs with apricot, saffron, cinnamon and chilli, with sundried tomato wasn't entirely disasterous, but I think it would have gone better if I'd been able to make the intended match.
The pictured couscous is actually a different variety to the one I expected to find in the 'Spice Sensation' packet. I worked out that it was the 'Tomato Tang' variety; obviously there was some mix up at the factory. Anyway, that accounts for why I bought the couscous at the greatly discounted price that I did.
The combination of chicken thighs with apricot, saffron, cinnamon and chilli, with sundried tomato wasn't entirely disasterous, but I think it would have gone better if I'd been able to make the intended match.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Gastropod: The T-shirt
This is not the post I told you I was preparing. No, that one will be much more angst-ridden, if it ever appears. And by posting this one, the whole point of the other one might be rendered moot, which may well be a good thing for all of us.
***
Anyway, to 'Gastropod: The T-shirt'. This is the t-shirt I wore yesterday as I whiled the day away at home, catching up on taped episodes of Oz and The Sopranos.
From left to right (not necessarily in order of appearance):
1. Home-made pizza sauce (three spots). I wasn't going to be nearly so ambitious, but discovered I had no tomato paste, so I had to make a tomato sauce if I was going to satisfy my pizza craving. I used the last of the pita bread as a base for two small pizzas the first of which was topped with anchovies and kalamata olives. The second had feta cheese and dried chillis and oregano. I didn't have any melting type cheese, but I tend not to really like melted cheese on my pizzas. Drizzling olive oil does the job for my taste.
2. Chicken Thighs Braised with Apricots & Couscous (one large spot). This was dinner the night before, and you may notice it has meat of the non-fish variety in it. I bought some chicken from the organic shop up the road during one of my infrequent moments of concern about my diagnosed iron deficiency. Not that chicken will do me much good on that score I suppose. Still, it was one of my better efforts at cooking meat after 8 years of veg-aquarianism. I had it for lunch, which is why it made it down the front of my t-shirt.
3. Pomegranate (one large purple spot). Pomegranates are the most visually pleasing fruit in the world, and since I like sweet/sour things, they're also one of the tastiest fruits in the world. Some might consider the seeds annoying, but I love the way they demand you savour each bubble.
***
Anyway, to 'Gastropod: The T-shirt'. This is the t-shirt I wore yesterday as I whiled the day away at home, catching up on taped episodes of Oz and The Sopranos.
From left to right (not necessarily in order of appearance):
1. Home-made pizza sauce (three spots). I wasn't going to be nearly so ambitious, but discovered I had no tomato paste, so I had to make a tomato sauce if I was going to satisfy my pizza craving. I used the last of the pita bread as a base for two small pizzas the first of which was topped with anchovies and kalamata olives. The second had feta cheese and dried chillis and oregano. I didn't have any melting type cheese, but I tend not to really like melted cheese on my pizzas. Drizzling olive oil does the job for my taste.
2. Chicken Thighs Braised with Apricots & Couscous (one large spot). This was dinner the night before, and you may notice it has meat of the non-fish variety in it. I bought some chicken from the organic shop up the road during one of my infrequent moments of concern about my diagnosed iron deficiency. Not that chicken will do me much good on that score I suppose. Still, it was one of my better efforts at cooking meat after 8 years of veg-aquarianism. I had it for lunch, which is why it made it down the front of my t-shirt.
3. Pomegranate (one large purple spot). Pomegranates are the most visually pleasing fruit in the world, and since I like sweet/sour things, they're also one of the tastiest fruits in the world. Some might consider the seeds annoying, but I love the way they demand you savour each bubble.
Friday, November 03, 2006
I Want To Believe
LOVERS of fatty food may be able to have their cake and eat it too, according to striking new research into a special compound found in red wine.
Pass the brie and a glass of red, please.
Do you think the obese one looks perkier for its age? I mean, they're all still alive, aren't they?
Maybe these mice need to adopt the more discerning culinary habits of the Indonesian luwak:
Apparently they're quite fussy about the coffee cherries they ingest. Some ingenious type has taken advantage of the luwak's discernment and proceeded to demonstrate what could be described as a lack of discernment, or even, from another perspective, a kind of hyper-discernment. They have taken to trailing behind the poor creature with a pooper-scooper, gathering the undigested coffee beans, washing them (thoroughly, I hope), and then roasting them lightly before selling them for $1250 per kilo.
According to The Curious Snail, the only cafe in Australia that sells you a cup of coffee (only $50) brewed from these beans is in North Queensland, thereby giving this state the cultural edge over Lygon Street in Melbourne. Depends what you mean by 'culture' I guess. Not sure it's what Raymond Williams had in mind.
Pass the brie and a glass of red, please.Maybe these mice need to adopt the more discerning culinary habits of the Indonesian luwak:
Apparently they're quite fussy about the coffee cherries they ingest. Some ingenious type has taken advantage of the luwak's discernment and proceeded to demonstrate what could be described as a lack of discernment, or even, from another perspective, a kind of hyper-discernment. They have taken to trailing behind the poor creature with a pooper-scooper, gathering the undigested coffee beans, washing them (thoroughly, I hope), and then roasting them lightly before selling them for $1250 per kilo.
According to The Curious Snail, the only cafe in Australia that sells you a cup of coffee (only $50) brewed from these beans is in North Queensland, thereby giving this state the cultural edge over Lygon Street in Melbourne. Depends what you mean by 'culture' I guess. Not sure it's what Raymond Williams had in mind.
Monday, October 23, 2006
98 Reasons For Blogging: 3 - 6
3. While checking whether I had misspelled ‘impeccable’ in a comment I had already submitted to Laura’s blog, I noticed the word before ‘impeccable’ in The Chambers Dictionary aka ‘The official reference dictionary for Scrabble®’ is ‘impearl’. I learned that it meant ‘to decorate with, or as if with, pearls; to make pearl-like’, which seemed quite lovely. Then I turned my attention to the word before ‘impearl’, which is ‘impeach’. Alas, ‘impeach’ does not mean “to make peach-like”. It would be incorrect to say, “I am going to impeach this cake”, something which would be decidedly good to eat the outcome of, I think. If it meant to ‘decorate with peaches’, that is.
4. ‘Sunday on the Porch’ is a tradition that has been instituted by a friend while she has been house-sitting for three months in a spacious and renovated old Queenslander house. Yesterday was the last ‘Sunday on the Porch’. I wish I had taken my camera so I could show you some pictures of the very fine time we have on such occasions, but I was too busy collecting prawns and Riesling from the shops when my lift arrived, so I ran back down the hill and didn’t go back into my flat. I suppose I could have wielded my camera phone, but then I was too busy consuming at least a week’s ration of chocolate in one sitting. And laughing. And just talking about everything and nothing.
5. I don’t know what went on with Australian Idol last night. Big mistake letting the kids mangle contemporary music with a swing band make-over. That’s not a criticism of swing, more a sense of mystification about why they just wouldn’t just stick with music written especially for all that brass. Maybe the producers got sick of all those excuses along the lines of ‘I don’t know any swing/jazz songs’ and ‘This isn’t my comfort zone’. Oh wait, I think I counted at least five instances of the latter excuse. Will someone audition some musicians for this show please? You know, those people who are curious about genres of music that pre-exist the 1960s.
Now I have to reveal that, last night with the magic of video recording, I much preferred the other singing contest going on in this country at the moment, Operatunity Oz, in which contestants vie to sing in an Opera Australia production of Rigoletto and their very own recording with ABC Classic. Last night we found out that David Parkin, the bass, IT guy won the competition. I am very pleased by this.
When he sang in those low, low tones I swear my body vibrated the entire time. Excellent that Emily Burke is getting an ‘operatunity’ as well.
Here’s a joke from Richard Gill, the conductor of Opera Australia:
Q: How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Ten. One to change the bulb, nine to say they could have done it so much better.
6. ‘You may think that ‘cause you’re so much older than me, you know more about the world. Well, in some cases, that may be. But I read magazines. I watch TV. I know how people are supposed to treat each other’.
4. ‘Sunday on the Porch’ is a tradition that has been instituted by a friend while she has been house-sitting for three months in a spacious and renovated old Queenslander house. Yesterday was the last ‘Sunday on the Porch’. I wish I had taken my camera so I could show you some pictures of the very fine time we have on such occasions, but I was too busy collecting prawns and Riesling from the shops when my lift arrived, so I ran back down the hill and didn’t go back into my flat. I suppose I could have wielded my camera phone, but then I was too busy consuming at least a week’s ration of chocolate in one sitting. And laughing. And just talking about everything and nothing.
5. I don’t know what went on with Australian Idol last night. Big mistake letting the kids mangle contemporary music with a swing band make-over. That’s not a criticism of swing, more a sense of mystification about why they just wouldn’t just stick with music written especially for all that brass. Maybe the producers got sick of all those excuses along the lines of ‘I don’t know any swing/jazz songs’ and ‘This isn’t my comfort zone’. Oh wait, I think I counted at least five instances of the latter excuse. Will someone audition some musicians for this show please? You know, those people who are curious about genres of music that pre-exist the 1960s.
Now I have to reveal that, last night with the magic of video recording, I much preferred the other singing contest going on in this country at the moment, Operatunity Oz, in which contestants vie to sing in an Opera Australia production of Rigoletto and their very own recording with ABC Classic. Last night we found out that David Parkin, the bass, IT guy won the competition. I am very pleased by this.
When he sang in those low, low tones I swear my body vibrated the entire time. Excellent that Emily Burke is getting an ‘operatunity’ as well.
Here’s a joke from Richard Gill, the conductor of Opera Australia:
Q: How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Ten. One to change the bulb, nine to say they could have done it so much better.
6. ‘You may think that ‘cause you’re so much older than me, you know more about the world. Well, in some cases, that may be. But I read magazines. I watch TV. I know how people are supposed to treat each other’.
--From Northern Exposure: Shelley to Holling, after he abandons her at the altar.
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