Melbourne

This is a very delayed post of my now, not so recent, trip to Melbourne. The main purpose of which was to eat, drink and be merry; and that is pretty much all we did, that and walk, a lot!

First stop on our culinary adventure was Fifteen Melbourne. We went for lunch as we thought it would be a good way to kick things off, and indeed it was. After gingerly making our way down the steep stairs, we were shown through to the dining area, past the bar (where Toby was sitting having his lunch) to a lovely little table with an excellent view of the open kitchen (which was very calm and orderly, I must say). The waiter quickly asked us if we would like a drink, perhaps a gin and tonic, to get started, and as E and I were there with the distinct purpose of drinking a lot of gin, we were very pleased with his suggestion. Things improved when a different waitress came to ask us if we had any preference for our gin. We said we normally drank Tanqueray, and she suggested Hendricks with cucumber. After hearing its praises sung by Pips, we were very keen to try it, and it was amazing!! We couldn't get over it, so fragrant and crisp and delicious. We were truly in awe, and most definitely in love. After phwoaring over our gin for a bit we decided on the Express Lunch menu, which was two courses and a glass of wine for $35. The range was limited, but delicious all the same. We both went with the squid salad and parpadele with veal ragu. The squid salad was amazing; Beautifully cooked baby squid with a good hint of chili,and citrus with snowpea shoots and the most delicious fried capers, which were crispy little bursts of salty flavour, and were amazing. The ragu was lovely too, though the freshly made, perfectly cooked pasta was the star of the show. The nice mild red that we got as part of the lunch went perfectly with the ragu.

Breakfast the next morning was the next important stop as we found a gorgeous little Spanish cafe down a laneway off Flinders Lane and we ended up there every morning. The coffee was amazing, strong and sweet and the perfect temperature. I had sourdough toast rubbed with tomato and olive oil with a generous amount of delicious, smooth, jamon topped with parmesan. It was gorgeous. E had french toast made with brioche that came with a poached pear, maple syrup and cinnamon. It was gorgeous too, and I had it on our third visit and it lived up to my expectations. The second day we both had big breakfasts, which was huge (too much protein for me) but delicious all the same. It included delicious though quite spicy chorizo, bacon, two eggs, tomato, mushrooms and sour dough toast. After staggering out from that protein charged breakfast in search of juice, a little jazz band had set up at the end of the laneway, and we passed a good hour sitting over a coffee listening to them bust out some smooth tunes. It was really good, and left us wishing for such things in Sydney.

On Friday we wandered down the Southbank and were lured into a very stylish bar by the prospect of beer and by a Virginia Woolf quote by the menu. I can't remember what it was called for the life of me, but the wait staff were very attentive and lovely. We decided on some bar-type food, though this was pretty special bar food. We ordered goats cheese cigars which were the most delicate pastry filled with chived goats cheese. One end was dipped in what seemed to be dehydrated raspberries and it came with an olive caramel. It was beautiful and one of the most intriguing flavour combinations I have had. We also got some Wagu beef sliders (mini-burgers). This tender piece of wagu was served on a mini brioche bun with a pickle and blue cheese. They were very tasty indeed.

Dinner that night was much anticipated. We went to Comme a beautiful French restaurant, which I will say right away the food was delicious. Our table wasn't quite ready when we arrived so we waited in the bar with a gin and tonic, though sadly not Hendricks, and people watched for a bit. It was a lovely bar with nice, sensible, smart looking people, somewhere you would like to come for a few drinks and some of the very delicious sounding bar food. We were ushered in to the restaurant and eventually decided on our meals. I had the new seasons lamb with aubergine puree and garlic fondant and sauce ratatouille, though it is changed on the online menus slightly. It was delicious. There were two or three different cuts of lamb, all cooked perfectly, and the garlic and aubergine went wonderfully. The sauce was a very delicate , thin ratatouille with tiny pieces of capsicum, though it was a bit too capsicumy for me (I should have paid more attention when ordering. E ordered the Western plains rabbit, foie gras croquette, etuvee of courgette flower, crystal bay prawns, hazelnuts and tarragon. It looked amazing and E's reports were that it tasted fantastic. It included several different parts of the rabbit and was a beautiful well balanced dish. It was E's favourite of the trip. For dessert, although I was almost swayed by the poached peach, we both decided on the chocolate fondant with milk sorbet. We were happy to wait the 20 minutes for it to arrive and curiously watched what the other diners were getting. Due to a bit of a back log in the kitchen it took more than 20 minutes, and our lovely waiter couldn't have been more apologetic and came back several times to let us know the progress of the fondant and to assure us that it was worth the wait, and indeed it was. It was possibly one of the best desserts I have ever had, and certainly the best chocolate fondant. It was perfectly oozing in the middle, soft, tender, rich and delicious. The milk sorbet was the perfect accompaniment, and we did all but lick our plates clean.



Saturday night dinner would turn out to be the highlight for me and it was, I have to say, one of the best meals of my life. Gills Diner was our port of call, on what was a cold and rainy Melbourne evening. Set down a little alleyway, Gills is a charming little place with loads of character and a friendly, if noisy, atmosphere. We had an early booking, and although we were early were shown straight to our table. We were pleased to see that they had Hendricks, and quickly ordered some. Deciding what to eat was another question, as everything on the menu sounded delicious. We had heard that the meals were quite hearty so after a delicious selection of bread with excellent butter, we decided to start with a main. I decided on the pork, which was a roast Otway pork chop (clearly from a rack of pork) with a pumpkin and chorizo puree, a fennel and apple salad and asparagus. The pork was perfectly cooked. The meat was tender and juicy and the crackling was to die for. The pure was amazing, rich and smooth, and a generous amount. There was also a drizzle of heavily reduced cooking juices, which was perfect. The fennel and apple salad was finely chopped, like a coleslaw and the asparagus, which was white asparagus had been lightly battered and fried. It was a wonderful, tasty and perfectly balanced meal. E ordered a special, which was an eye fillet steak topped with an olive crust served with potatoes, cabbage, onion and bacon. Though full, we were sorely tempted by the dessert menu and decided on basil panacotta with strawberries and pistachioes. All I can say is wow! The panacotta was perfect, niether rubbery nor runny. It was a beautiful green and the flavour of basil was both distinct and subtle. The strawberry had been cooked and the syrup around was perfect with the panacotta. We were also persuaded into a dessert wine. We weren't sure which to choose and asked for one that would match the dessert, and we were not disappointed. The staff were lovely again and the whole experience was wonderful.

We finished off the evening with a trip to the Paris Cat jazz club where we saw Kimba and the Gin remedy - which was a fantastic show, if you like jazz and ever see her playing I can't recommend her strongly enough. Her band was wonderful, her husband was the lead guitarist and musical director, and was just amazing. All in all, it was a wonderful way to round off a wonderful day.

Our final culinary stop was Giuseppe Arnaldo & sons where we had a bit of an antipasto selection. We had some delicious Cacciatore salami, A ricotta basket with chili, lemon, mint and grilled bruschetta and aranchini made with spinach risotto. Again, Hendricks gin rounded off the meal.

We left Melbourne full and content and wishing that we could afford to eat and drink like this always.

HH

Poached Pears

Since my last post nothing has been done on my thesis, which is a terrible thing. The stress of having too much to do prevents you from doing anything, which compounds the stress you already feel, which in a vicious cycle, makes you do even less.

On the upside, I enjoyed, immensely, my time house sitting, getting into the Balmain lifestyle, making friends with the Gourmet Grocer, watching too much of the food channel, drinking, and having people over for dinner almost every night. My bank balance will, I am sure, be suffering for this extravagance, seeing I am only working one day a week at the moment, but, what is money when good friends and good food are to be had.

The highlights of the two weeks were a curry made with ginger, chili, turmeric, coriander, cumin and cardamon and chicken, pumpkin, and eggplant; Roast beef, which made delicious sandwiches the next day; a beef, eggplant and zucchini tagine, made with Herbie's Moroccan spice mix. I added dates and then honey at the end, it really was lovely with just the right amount of heat and fragrant spice; Moussaka, made with beef and pork mince, a bottle of white wine, beef and chicken stock, plenty of garlic, onions etc...and apart from almost dropping it on the floor as I took it out of the oven, it was amazing.

I didn't deprive my guests of dessert, and after making some more crumble topping, I made apple crumble one night, followed by mixed berry crumble the next. The berry crumble was by far the winner. I just used frozen mixed berries, a splash of vanilla, and a little brown sugar, let that sit whilst I finished dinner, and then topped it with the crumble and baked.

The overall winner, however, was poached pears. I have never made them before, and I couldn't find a recipe that I liked. Jamie's recipe wanted me to bake them in the oven, I didn't have time for that. Nigella doesn't seem to have one in the books I have, briefly looking on the BBC site, I couldn't find one that I wanted. I had, however seen Valentine Warner on his show What to Eat nowpoaching some pears, so armed with that and Jamie's recipe I proceeded.

Poached Pears:




1 Bottle of red wine
4 pears (though I could have fitted 6 or even 8 at a push)
Around a cup of caster sugar
Rind of half a lemon in thick strips
Juice of the lemon
A couple of Star Anise
A couple of Cinnamon sticks
A xouple of good slugs of vanilla
Knob of butter
Creme Fraiche

Peel the pears (slightly better than I did)
Add all the remaining ingredients to a saucepan big enough for the pears. Bring to the boil. Add the pears and cook for about 20 minutes until the pears are tender, turning the pears a couple of times if they aren't covered in the liquid. (My pears were pretty soft do didn't need a great deal of cooking). Leave to cool slightly in the warm liquid.

Divide the creme fraiche amongst the bowls. Place the pears on top. Meanwhile, reduce some of the poaching liquid, adding a bit more sugar to help sweeten and thicken it. Once reduced, add a knob of butter to make it silky and glossy. Pour over the pears and put any remaining syrup in a jug to add as you eat.




The (almost) best part of poaching the pears, however was not the delicious deep red pears, it was the remaining, unreduced poaching liquid, which I reheated, added a little more sugar to, and poured into a tall glass with a couple of shots of cointreau. Delicious, citrusy, peary, spicy mulled wine.



HH

'In the shape of some fragmented journal'

After a string of posts, I have once again become terribly slack in my blogging, and I do apologise, though I have had nothing of note to say. (perhaps I still don't).

I have finished my tutoring for this semester, all the marking is done, I just have to record the marks and haggle with my supervisor on the scaling. So this is excellent. I am now waiting, anxiously, to hear if I will be tutoring next semester. I hopefully will be doing a 20th C course, that I took when I was a first year, many moons a go. So fingers crossed.

Other points of interest were another trip to the Lord Nelson Pub where many pints were drunk, and where the pie with mushy peas (well peas that were mushed), mash and gravy was had. It was all very delicious, and Nelson enjoyed him self as well.

These pics are courtesy of my good friend Brennan




In other news, Mr A has booked his flights to Australia for a holiday in January next year. It is all very exciting and now we just have to work out our movements as he has family in Adelaide and Melbourne and go to see them before I spend a bit of time showing him round Sydney and its surrounds (and convincing him that he really wants to live here).

Finally, on the baking front, which was been relatively silent, I have made White Chocolate cheesecake cookies from Hungry and Frozen, as prompted by Foodycat. They are delicious, so creamy and tender and delicious, though I didn't enjoy them warm, patience in this case, is a virtue.



I shall try to be more diligent with the blogging, but seeing I have a chapter due in just over a week, perhaps it will have to wait. On the other hand, uni work tends to make me blog like fury, so you never know your luck!

HH

"A faithful promise! "

I seem to open all my posts with a disclaimer about what a slack blogger I have been and promises to improve greatly in the near future. This hopefully will be true this time as Semester (thankfully) draws to a close.

Things have been busy and tiring lately, but good. I am enjoying tutoring for the most part, and (legitimately) got to talk about Nelson in class a few weeks ago. I stopped at pulling out my Nelson figurine and placing him on the desk next to my 'nothing says "hello, sailor" quite like ruby red lipstick' pencil case. I am hoping to maintain some semblance of sanity so that the students can't claim special consideration on the grounds that I am mad.

It is annual review time this week, so while I am nervous I had a pep talk from my supervisor on Thursday and I am hoping the positive reinforcement lasts until Thursday this week.

I have incidentally been spending a lot of time on the Internet, procrastinating, but also just to give me little breaks in between marking and the like. I have therefore been reading every one's blogs, and as such was inspired today by Foodycat's most recent post to make something delicious for dinner. Out of the ingredients in the recipe I only had Haloumi, which didn't stop me. I had zucchini as a replacement for sausages and eggplant and grape tomatoes for peppers. I laid them all on the tray with two cloves of sliced garlic, a little olive oil and a good crack of black pepper. I let it all roast away for 15 minutes or so and then ate (ashamedly most of it!) with a good squeeze of lemon. Lovely!


HH

"You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly"

I have been a bit silent of late, and I do apologise,the week "off" over Easter was greatly appreciated, though I could have done with two weeks. I am no where near where I want to be with my thesis work. Tutorials are going well however, and the feedback I have gotten from the students has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great.

Taking advantage of a lovely autumnal day we went to the Art Gallery to see the Archibalds. It was heaving with people, we had to wait in line for 10 minutes just to get tickets! The exhibition was good, though not overly profound. The highlight of the morning was seeing Bonita from Playschool in the crowd. That being said there were some very good portraits, particularly one of the little kid from Australia, that was stunning.

We then went to The Lord Nelson Pub for a pint (of real ale!!!) and lunch. We have been meaning to go here for about 5 years, and it didn't disappoint! I went for Fish and Chips and an Admiral's Ale, which was delicious, I am very much looking forward to going back there when I don't have to drive home and having several pints. It is a lovely pub though, and I am curious about the accommodation too. I am scheming for when Mr. A comes out to visit, it might be a nice place to stay for a weekend.

On the baking front, it has been also been a bit silent, or at least not worthy of photography. I did make some more choc-chip cookies, like the ones I made previously, but they turned out so different as I left out about 90 g of flour for oats. They were much crunchier, though equally delicious. I will make another batch tonight I think. I made ANZAC's too, but they weren't quite right. I think they needed more golden syrup. I will try again.

My Annual review paper is due in about 3 weeks. I haven't done it and I don't want to think about it. The panel is pretty nasty, and it isn't a stretch to say I am very nervous and anxious about the whole thing. Fingers crossed they don't hate me. Perhaps baking to soften them up might be the way to go!?

Ah well, better go and do some of the work that I have been putting off.

HH

"that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head"

Being in Ireland, of an age to be drinking, and inspired by Mr A, I decided that I should try as many different stouts as possible. I quite like Guinness at home, but know that it is better in Ireland, closer to the source. Though having tried a can of Guinness after making a Beef and Guinness stew for Mr A, we thought that it was a bit on the watery side, even though everyone kept saying that it was thick oily stuff. Thinking it was perhaps because it was in a can, I was determined to have it on draught to see if I was mistaken.

On our jaunt to Belfast we tried a Chocolate Stout which was brewed using cocco, and while it was nice, it wasn't on draught, and didn't quite have the taste that we were looking for. Whilst in the first pub we fell in with some men, one of whom was a member of CAMRA who was bemoaning the evils of Guinness and their monopoly on the Stout market. He pointed us in the direction of the John Hewitt Bar hoping they would have a non-Guinness stout. They didn't have one on tap, so we settled for German Black beer instead, which was lovely. It wasn't pretending to be thick like one imagines a stout should be, but was full of flavour. The two we tried were bitburger and Kostritzer, the latter of which was the favourite.

I headed down South last week, and was determined to work my way through a good few pints of stout. The first evening I had a Guinness as there was no other stout on offer. It was better on draught than in the can, but still was lacking a depth of flavour. Perhaps, I thought, I was seeking a holy grail of stout that didn't exist. In Dublin I backed my Dad's enthusiasm for a slightly dodgy looking pub because they offered Beamish, a stout from Cork, on Tap. This was getting closer to what I was after. A fuller flavoured stout than Guinness, though not bitter. A nice creamy head and no disappointing watery texture. I was very impressed. For dinner we trooped into another pub off O'Connell St, and another stout was on offer, Murphy's. Again it had a fuller flavour than Guinness, but was lovely and smooth, like the Beamish.



A small pub in Roscrea was our next stop where I had a pint of "Good Guinness" according the the barman, and indeed it was good, better than the previous pint, but a lighter option to Beamish and Murphy's.


In my uncle's pub I indulged in more Murphy's and then I pulled myself a pint of Guinness, which had its merits for having pulled it. All in all I am pleased that there are other stout options than Guinness, and that I am now an established Stout drinker, to add to my love of Ale which was carefully nurtured and trained whilst in England. I won't know what to do with myself when I go back home and have to make do not only with no real ale, no varieties of stout and worst of all no pint glasses!!

" I do not like to eat the bread of idleness"

Apart from my recent misadventure, my research and family time I have also been enjoying being in Ireland and the excuse to cook and eat as many potatoes as humanly possible, including chips with Chinese takeway. Potatoes and Nutty Krust bread. Nutty Krust is the Northern Irish answer to sour dough. It is dense, tasty bread, which I could eat by the truck load, toasted with a good whack of butter and if in the mood jam. I am sure my carb conscious self will reemerge when I return home, but for now I am enjoying eating too much toast. (Though I don't really believe such a thing is possible!)

Though I clearly am not carb conscious at heart, because not only have I been indulging in Nutty Krust, I have also been making potato bread, or Irish Griddle Scones, as my recipe states they are called. These delicious little pancake crossed with a scone triangles are wonderful, simple to make and can be eaten at any time of the day or night. (As I have proven, and are particularly good for absorbing beer when one hasn't had any dinner and has drunk several pints). They are made in a similar manner to scones, rubbing butte and flour together, then fork though some left over mash potatoes, add milk to bind and then knead the mixuture until pliable. You then roll out and cut into triangles and cook in a dry pan until browning. They are also good in these credit crunchy times, as any scrap of mash potato that remains from dinner can be made into bread, and they also go well with baked beans, another staple of the frugal. (Apparently, baked bean sales have sky rocketed in these trying times!). They are also healthy (until you fry them in oil or fat rendered from bacon, or toast them and smother them in butter) and children and grown ups alike love them. I love them toasted with butter and tomato sauce, though with equally as part of a fry, with bacon and beans. I will have to make sure I continue making it when I get home, and never throw out mash spuds again!