Where am I?

I'm not currently blogging about Canberra or cooking, because I'm not actually in Canberra at the moment. My friends and family know where I am, but for anyone else, here's a little guessing game. Based on the breakfast menu, where am I?

Breakfasts at various hotels have included:
* bread with fetta cheese, tomato, cucumber and olives
* olive stuffed pastries, and bread with butter and sour cherry jam
* bread with a boiled egg and olives, and yoghurt with peach preserves
* yoghurt with tahini and raisin syrup, and cheese pastries
* bread with butter and pine honey, and an orange
* bread with rose petal jam, and dried mulberries

They serve tea or nescafe, mostly. Although you can get very good coffee here, it's not usually served at breakfast. The bread is all lovely crusty white loaves, but by now I'm starting to crave a good chewy multigrain. Probably toasted, with vegemite. The bloke is very taken with the idea of olives for breakfast, so this may go onto the menu at home.

By the way, I'm reading a book published in 1950. It's an autobiographical memoir from this region, in which the author describes what this strange thing called "yogurt" is to his anglo readers. "A kind of sour junket", he says. These days, I'd bet that people are more familiar with yoghurt than junket.

Sydney feature, with New in Town in Newtown

As I mentioned earlier, we recently had a weekend in Sydney. We stayed a night with some friends in Dee Why, who took us off to a Korean BBQ place up behinds the main street. It's called Let's Meat - and if you know Lizotte's, a kind of newish dinner-theatre style music venue, it's directly behind that. Lizotte's looks fabulous - they get some great shows through and have a classy sounding menu.

I can't (yet) vouch for Lizotte's menu, though I intend to try it sometime. But I can say that Let's Meat stands out above the usual Korean BBQ for their meat selection. The chef puts a lot of work into the marinades, including traditional Chinese herbal spiced pork and the classic beef bulgogi, as well as inventing his own. The plum sauce sirloin was terrific. It's a buffet style, with all the kimchi, salads and pickles you could want, and fried dumplings and spring rolls to start off with.

On our second night we stayed in a hotel in town, so we could easily walk home from the Tim Minchin concert - the main reason for this visit. Next morning we slept in until half an hour before checkout time, and went off to Newtown for breakfast. It's been ten years since we moved from there now, and North Newtown seems to have gone a step too far upmarket to be interesting. Enmore road and South Newtown is where the off-beat stuff happens now. As a rough generalisation, Enmore road is more goth and kink, while south Newtown is more retro and hippy.

We had breakfast at a place called "New in Town", located where the old Chocolate Dog cafe is no more. They did a decent coffee, and we ate fluffy ricotta pancakes (me, $11), and a lovely BLT in a crusty long roll (bloke, $7). They do Polish at night, says their sign, and there's Polish sausage options for breakfast if that's your thing. Then we went for a short stroll as the shop owners were blearily setting up for their 11am and noon opening hours. We browsed around some Turkish and Afghan importers shops, and picked up some amusing jewelry from Mink Schmink. There's a nice range there, mostly in the cheap and quirky vein. So, that was fun, and then it was time to go home.

Scum Mushrooms and Magnificent Bikes

We've been to Sydney. The key reason was to go to IKEA, but of course other things fit in. We visited our friends with the orange tree, and the Bloke's family. And I got in my required Galaxy and Abbey's fix. I came home with only 8 new books - quite restrained of me, I thought. The Bloke didn't get to test ride his proposed new motorbike because the shop stuffed up, but at least he got to gaze in wonder at some amazing classic and custom bikes. And we got a new kitchen table.

In addition to mind-numbingly enormous selections of shelves, beds, tables etc etc, IKEA also stocks smaller things like kitchenware and food. The kitchenware is right at the end, and my mind was too numbed to comprehend it. I did have a scant quarter of a brain left for food, and since it was right there next to where we had to wait for our table to be got out of the warehouse, I browsed around and bought Swedish food. Because IKEA, as any fule kno, is Swedish. I skipped the refrigerated stuff and got lollies, cloudberry jam, and a bread mix. If I get a chance some time, I'll buy some cheese and caviar and pickled herrings, but frozen meatballs seems a little silly when they're so easy to make. I half wish I'd got to the cafe and had princess cake or real cinnamon rolls, but we were pretty full from brunch.

Anyway, these Skumkantarell lollies are quite inoffensive, despite the funny name. Actually, "skum" means foam - and "sylt" means jam. They are cute little white mushrooms with pink caps who - according to the packaging - like to wear glasses and take baths. The actual lollies are not anthropomorphic, so you don't have to worry about biting their heads off.

When you open the pack, the chemical raspberry essence smell hits you. They're very much like our milk bottle sweets, only raspberry flavoured and slightly softer. The other lollies I got were fruit gums, and they were also mostly harmless - except for the salmiaks. It's hard to describe salmiak to the uninitiated, but salted ammonia licorice comes close. I'm not a fan. Luckily these are easy to avoid, being a distinctive black.

We ate at several places, of course. On Friday night, we were at The Harp in Tempe. Their bistro has a fair amount of Irish-style food as well as burgers and such. We sat in a booth in the main bar, and I drank Guinness. For dinner, I had the pork knuckle ($20), which was delicious - mash, red cabbage, apple sauce and cider gravy with a huge lump of roast pig. Actually it's mostly bone, like a lamb shank, but it looks impressively enormous, and the meat is similarly gelatinous. Plus bonus crackling!

Saturday brunch was at Deus ex Machina, in Camperdown. This place is completely awesome. It was my second visit - I had a weekday lunch there about a year ago, and it was pretty quiet then. But Saturday late morning it was packed. I had a huge breakfast of poached eggs, bacon, tomato, mushroom, asparagus and toast ($17), all generously portioned - half a dozen fat asparagus spears, yum. And a rather good coffee. The space is a converted warehouse, and the hugely high ceiling makes it feel very spacious.

It's a gorgeous space with amazing art works, especially featuring bikes both motor- and push-. There's an associated bike shop adjoining, and we browsed around there without actually buying anything. I admit I was tempted by the polka dot open-face helmet, but it would look rather silly on my Kwaka with my boring practical body-armoured jacket. The Bloke picked out half a dozen retro and vintage styled bikes that he's going to get any day now, just as soon as we win lotto.

We had dinner with The Bloke's family - BBQ lamb and salads, and a classic chocolate mousse with cognac. The Bloke used to make this mousse, long ago before he got so out of practice in the kitchen. One day I must make it again; I see it's been a very long time and it is very good. The key thing about the mousse that it's made purely of eggs and chocolate, and a small splash of grog. There is no cream or butter or anything else filling it out, although a bit of cream is good to have with it.

And we tried to go out for brunch, but it was Fathers' Day and our preferred Cherrybrook cafe was running a fixed menu, which was excessive for us. We shared a pretty decent pizza next door instead. While we were in the shopping centre, I also visited the kitchenware shop and the lovely deli. I bought some fabulous pistachio & amaretto stuffed dates at the deli - not cheap at $2.60 each, but they are large and very well-stuffed. The Bloke's Mum gave me a very fabulous early birthday present which came from that very kitchenware shop. But I am not going to show it here, or even play with it, until closer to time. Three weeks to go!

More on Byron

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been in Byron Bay recently. Sunshine, water views, long walks, blobbing around reading, blues bands in the pub, a couple of fancypants meals, and no computers. Excellent. I had a hot stone massage, which was lovely, but I resisted the temptation to get my chakras rebalanced, auras rotated, meridians rewired, inner fairy photographed and all that.

We had a small apartment to stay in, and we knew it was the right place for us immediately we arrived. The entry way looked like this! Byron Central Apartments are, well, central. And the place was comfortable without being ridiculously luxurious, and the management were lovely. We had a late flight out on Thursday and they let us use a spare room for the day. Our "studio loft apartment" had a small but complete kitchen equipped with a coffee plunger. It was good to have this - we could make coffee and have a cereal and fruit breakfast without having to get dressed and showered to go out.

And now I'm home, and sadly the kitchen had not magically tidied and restocked itself while I was away. Half the pantry supplies were still in boxes in the bar. And after our indulgent week, we both want to eat a bit more fibre and vegetables and fruit and all that sort of healthy stuff. A market trip on Saturday morning helped. And I defrosted the tomatoes that I roasted before we left, to make a roast tomato and red lentil soup, so that's a good start.

Some of the things we did in Byron... included a walk to the famous lighthouse, which was lovely, but featured a bit more uphill and stairs than my calves were prepared for. The icecream seller at the top of the hill is onto a good thing: I really felt as if I'd earned it! And we blobbed around our "studio loft apartment" sleeping late and reading books. We also walked out to the Arts & Industry Estate, which is an odd sort of place - art galleries and craft shops interspersed in the more usual light industry. We got to sample Byron Gourmet pies at the factory, and buy jewelry from the Hammer and Hand collective, and flourless pistachio and orange cake at Luscious. And we are considering buying some engraved glass art to renovate our front entry way.

We spent several evenings at "The Rails", aka the Railway Friendly Bar. It's a pub next door to the station with a bit of a train theme, and live music most nights. We saw four different blues acts there, and ate several meals. If the seats had been more comfortable I would have been happier - sadly, over-tall wooden benches made it a bit uncomfortable for a long haul. The food wasn't bad - I had a large chicken salad with cranberries and rocket and almonds, a decent burger, and a rather good rare tuna pasta dish which would have been terrific in different weather. Tossing hot pasta with cold salad ingredients to get a lukewarm dish is nice in summer, but it was a bit too cool for the winter evening. Yes, it does get cold overnight in Byron. I was forced to buy a nice warm shawl and some red velour trousers just to cope. Forced, I tell you!

We had a lovely lunch at Fishheads, which in an odd freak of planning overlooks the carpark adjacent to the beach. It's the closest you can get to the water without buying takeaway and sitting on the beach. I'd class it as casual fine dining. It's BYO and they have takeaway at the city end of the building, but the restaurant is quite nicely decked out, with wicker chairs and Aboriginal art on the walls. I had a delicious mixed seafood pasta dish ($29) with chilli, garlic and preserved lemon. The seafood was top notch, fresh and buttery, though it was rather light on the chilli. And I followed it with a rather swish chamomile poached pineapple with macadamia icecream and honeycomb toffee shards ($13).

Orient Express sounds like a cheap takeaway in a mall, but it absolutely isn't. It serves mixed Asian and Asian-inspired dishes, in a setting with a big buddha, red walls and funky wooden furniture that like the menu is an eclectic assortment of Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese and more. We had peking duck pancakes ($16.90) and Vietnamese crabcakes on sugar cane sticks ($12.90) for entrees, and a gado gado salad ($8.90) and "tuna two ways" (illustrated, $28.90) for mains. The tuna was fantastic - the sashimi in the salad was good, but the char grill rare fish was out of this world. I would have loved to try a dessert - pannacotta with red date and goji berry compote, perhaps, or the classic black rice pudding, but I was too full.

We also went to the Balcony, and had a spiffy cheese plate. And O-sushi, which was very good indeed despite its unpromising location. Next to a supermarket in the strip mall, you'd expect some ordinary sushi chain, but this was top class. We had a mixed sashimi and salad plate and some fried chicken dumplings. And sake and genmai cha. I loved the sesame dressing on the salad, and the fish was exceptionally good. And one night we went off to the Buddha bar for a Dr Sketchy's anti-art night! I practiced my appalling life drawing skills on the burlesque models, and we ate the very reasonable pub grub.

We had a great time, and we want to go back. There are several reputedly good restaurants that I missed out on (Olivo, Whynot, Dish) and it's just a very relaxing place. I'd like to do some beach walking, and try another of the many different styles of massage and spa, and sample the organic doughnuts and the Earth & Sea pizza. Byron is not a high pressure, high activity kind of place, as long as you avoid the schoolies and the music festivals. The Splendour in the Grass crowd was just starting to arrive as we left, and I'm told it gets very hectic and crowded as the town population quadruples overnight. We got an upgrade on our transfer service on the way home - all the minibusses were booked so we had to have the limo. The low end limo with no bar, but big comfy seats for the 3/4 hour drive to Coolangatta airport was no hardship.

Melbourne Report

O hai. Mai naem is Perl and mai hoomanz let in sum straynj hoomins to stae at mai hows. Thay wented owt 4 sooshee and ated THIS MUTCH and did nawt brings me anny!1!! But thae patteds me lotz sew iz OK reely.

Who said they wanted more cats on this blog? You're sorry now, aren't you? At least it's a nice photo despite, or rather because of, the crappy phone camera.

So anyway, the Bloke and I were in Melbourne recently, and of course ate and drank at many varied places. We stayed with A, J & C, the people illustrated by the pile of plates. They live in Coburg, which is an easy tram ride from the city centre, and a magical multicultural wonderland for food shopping. I noticed Greek, Lebanese, Turkish, Italian, Vietnamese and Indian places. J obviously loves it - he introduced me to George the Greek deli owner, and the lady in the Bollywood sari & bling shop, and pointed out all the best places for fresh roasted coffee, nuts, cakes, bread and much more.

We also went out to eat a lot. Our first night we dined up at the Paris end of Collins St, dahling, near Bvlgari and Gucci and all that. We ate sushi from a sushi train - hence the collection of plates - and it was wonderful. The standouts for me were some seriously excellent sashimi, a tataki beef salad, and some cute little red bean paste buns that looked like mini-iced chocolate doughnuts. The place is Sakura, at 1/61 Little Collins St.

We spent an evening at the Tiki Lounge in Richmond. We had a pre-dinner MaiTai in a ceramic tiki mug, then popped round the corner to the Grand Hotel for pub grub, on the recommendation of the Tiki Lounge bartender. Their dining room is quite expensive and the menu reads like very fine food. It has a one chef's hat rating. But the Lounge Bar is more affordable. For $24 I had a superb veal pot roast, with potatoes and spinach, the meat melting tender and the juices as good as my friend HH's pot roast chook. Which is high praise, let me tell you. The Bloke had a $13 pizza, which he pronounced to be good. After that we went back to the Tiki Lounge for dessert cocktails and slightly tongue-in-cheek lounge music from the Kahuna Daddies.

I also enjoyed a scenic brunch at Fairfield Boathouse. I inhaled coffee, fruit salad with cream, and porridge with cinnamon apples and maple syrup, chatted a bit blearily, and declined to go boating. It didn't seem quite right the morning after several cocktails. But it was lovely sitting on the terrace looking over the water and watching the others row about.

We met up with some other friends at Cookie, on Swanston St. This upstairs bar boasts antique pressed tin high ceilings, a long wooden bar, and absolutely massive wine and beer lists. I'm told they do good Thai food, too, but we just had a few chips for bar snacks.

We had one takeaway lunch from Akaar, the Lebanese pizza spot in Coburg (254 Sydney Road). I saw a couple of other "Lebanese Pizza" places about, but as far as I know this idea hasn't spread to Canberra yet. It's good food: a thin yeast dough with fillings baked on top like a woodfired pizza, but then it's folded in half. Sort of like the missing link between Italian pizza and Turkish gozleme.

And our hosts provided for us as well, even though we were out and about so much. A made us a great pancake breakfast one day. She also made a cauliflower curry soup, which I'm using as inspiration to make my own variant. Very unusual, and good.

The Coastal Donna Hay Marathon

Last weekend, and some days surrounding it, I went to the coast with B1 & B2. We had a great chillout time - while we had planned to do some walks, it rained a bit too much so we spent most of the time indoors, reading and cooking. This is no hardship when the view from the couch looks like this picture.

We did do some shopping - food in Bateman's Bay, hippie clothes and pottery in Mogo - and we went to The River Moruya to celebrate B2's birthday in style. And we had a sandwich lunch in Mogo at Suzanne's bakery - they were out of the fabulous sourdough for retail, but not for the cafe, so we got to eat some anyway. Ha!

The cooking was an adventure. The stove looks like this: note the kettle on side giving scale. The oven is large enough for 2 small muffin trays or one cake, there are two hotplates on top, but you can't use them at the same time. There is also a microwave and an electric frying pan.

We did pretty well with it. We made hotcakes and risotto in the frying pan, and stuffed capsicums, roast cauliflower, and two lots of cake in the oven. The hotplate on top I used only twice. Once, to heat up some pumpkin soup, and the second time, for a cake topping. Dinner on day one was mugs of pumpkin & chestnut soup from my freezer, augmented with leftover pumpkin from the Easter pie-baking. A good post-driving snack dinner, with added cheese, biscuits, cured salmon remnants, avocado, olives and fruit.

All of our recipe cooking came from the latest Donna Hay magazine (Autumn 2009). B1 had brought it along with an eye to the bundt cake feature, and as we browsed it, more and more good ideas came to mind.

The hotcakes, as pictured on the magazine cover, were fabulous, and quite simple. I'm not sure why I don't regularly make these. It does require planned shopping, I suppose, though fresh ricotta and buttermilk are the only ingredients I don't keep in stock all the time. We used fresh blueberries, but of course frozen would do. I'll pop in the recipe at the end of this post.

The Donna Hay web people have posted the recipe to the Cinnamon-sugar Maple Bundt Cakes, so you can go look at it there. They are worth trying: thick textured, moist and fruity, with a fun cinnamon-sugar coating like a doughnut. They are also quite easy to make, though grating the apples is a bit of a pain. And they keep well.

These were less successful than the hotcakes, probably for a number of reasons. Not being in possession of any mini-bundt tins, I used B1's pair of rose-shaped mini cake silicon forms. These ended up being a bit overfull of the mix, and the cooking time was way wrong. The first batch out of the oven were underdone on the bottom and stuck to the pans - despite being apparently done by skewer test. The second batch I left a lot longer, and they came out fine. It could well be the oven: perhaps two batches prevents the heat circulating properly. Or the heat is too easily let out.

The other bundt cake that B1 made was a fig and date one. This worked better - the single tin may have helped. I made the toffee coating for it, and I think there was too much. If you have bought this mag and want to make this cake, try using half the amount of toffee. It's amazing when first made - shades of sticky date pudding, with crisp toffee like a brulee coating. The toffee topping softens after a day, though, as you'd expect. It's still good, just not so much of a showpiece.

And just so you don't think we ate nothing but sweets, we also made the roast cauliflower and almond risotto from that issue. This is actually misnamed: it's a simple risotto flavoured with fresh sage. The cauliflower served alongside. The risotto is just butter, onion, sage, rice, sherry, veggie stock and parmesan. Then you add a side of the cauli, and some slivers of washed rind cheese - Taleggio if you can get it. The result is totally wonderful, and I want to do it again. With one caveat: use good stock. The standard Campbells brand veggie stock is a bit salty and rather unsubtle. I'd prefer a good chicken stock, and maybe some white wine.


Recipe 1: Ricotta Hotcakes
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites, whisked stiff
200g ricotta
butter, to fry
1 cup blueberries (optional)
Mix the egg yolks, buttermilk and vanilla well.
Combine this with the flour and sugar.
Fold through the whisked egg whites and the blueberries.
Fry up in batches, using about 2-3 tablespoons of batter per hotcake.
Allow 3-4 minutes per side, or until puffed and golden.

Notes: You'll need a slightly lower heat than with regular pancakes as these are thick, and the middle needs to cook before the outsides burn. Serve with maple syrup. Or lemon and sugar. Or maple butter if you can be bothered making it. We couldn't.


Recipe 2: Roast Cauliflower with Sage & Almonds
500g cauliflower florets
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 bunch sage
1/4 cup chopped almonds
Preheat oven to 220C.
Toss the cauliflower into a baking tray with the salt, pepper and oil.
Roast for 15 minutes.
Strip whole leaves off the sage, discarding stalks, and chop the almonds.
Add to the pan and roast a further 5-10 minutes until cauliflower is golden and sage is crisp.


Notes: Serve this as a veggie side to anything you like, but it's especially good with a cheesy sage risotto! But Donna, darls, what on earth do you mean by "a bunch" of sage? Who knows? In general supermarket sales, sage seems to come in smaller packs than parsley or coriander, so maybe it's about 1/4 cup of leaves, loose-packed? Whatever.

Sydney trip, and Easter plans

I was in Sydney last weekend, to see Tim Minchin at the Enmore. We stayed at Arncliffe, with the very nice R & P, who took us off to their local Lebanese for an amazing feast. Naji's Cedars Palace is the name; there's a takeaway kebab and chook shop next door run by the same people. We had the basic set menu, and the food just kept on coming. Fabulous hummous, baba ganouje and labneh, plus tabbouli and fattoush and felafel and kibbeh and shish kebab and more. Nothing unusual, except for the gratuitous bowl of hot chips, but it was all very good. The regular menu had many more tempting delicacies; I hope to try a few more of them sometime.

We also had a great breakfast at the Fairtrade cafe in Glebe - I forget the name, it's on the same block as Badde Manors, closer to Broadway. Very good coffee, huge breakfasts served until late. I had some lovely buckwheat pancakes with thinly sliced granny smith apple and strawberries.

We stayed over until Monday. In the morning, we did the usual city shop: Galaxy, Abbey's and Mecca for coffee. Then it was off home with our loot. I bought thirteen books, a Tim Minchin T-shirt, a funky tin box with "Devil Girl" on it, and a pair of shiny black shoes with a black-on-black stealth cat design. Only one of the books was food-related - a collection of essays by AA Gill, the English food reviewer. He is hilariously snarky, in a way that I only wish I could emulate.

This weekend we have, as usual, houseguests for the folk festival. Since our main bathroom is devoid of any plumbing, the bloke and I are moving in to the bar to allow better access to the ensuite. And we've sent our Sydney hosts off to stay with B1 & M, who nobly volunteered. Or at least B1 did. M seemed a little surprised when I mentioned it the other day...

Anyway, we will have our traditional dinner party, and I still haven't quite decided what to make. I have got some hot cross buns rising now, and a hunk of cured salmon on to marinade, and a cinnamon icecream base underway. I've got some pumpkin puree ready to make a pumpkin pie. Maybe I'll use this recipe instead. And it's Okonomiyaki for tonight.

Goulburn Blues

Every February, the Australian Blues Music Festival is held in Goulburn. The Bloke and I have been going for several years now, first staying in a caravan park on the edge of town, and more recently at a motel in the centre of town. There are dozens of musical acts, from all over Australia, and they perform in the various clubs and pubs around town. There's workshops and jam sessions, and a market day in Belmore Park, and a shop window decorating competition. Most places do some sort of blue theme - this bakery's blue cup cake faces cracked me up.

The festival has downsized somewhat in the last couple of years. There used to be a big tent out the back of the Tattersalls hotel, but that stopped with a change of management. But it's still a terrific festival - and it really is an Australian Blues festival. All Australian acts, and all bluesy. No international acts, no pop, no hiphop - unlike some others I could name...

So what do you eat? Goulburn itself isn't exactly a foodie destination. The surrounding countryside is our own local region and has much good stuff, but wanting to get to various acts leaves you with very little time for lunch and dinner breaks. You're not about to drive off to a Lake George winery for lunch. The Saturday market tends to just knickknacks, jewelry and clothes, with no food. Sometimes a local vegetable and honey seller is there, and a Rotary Club does a sausage sizzle. But still, there's some quite decent stuff around.

We had dinner on Friday night at the Suwannee (how I love ya, how I love ya), Thai restaurant. It's pretty good food, and has quick service: we were in and out in under an hour. The chicken satay sticks were nicely moist with a good peanut sauce; the massaman beef curry was a bit too sweet for me, and the potato and sweet potato had been microwaved separately rather than cooked in it. But the beef chunks were large and tender and well-flavoured. The "hot" chilli basil stirfry prawns were probably frozen rather than fresh, but good nevertheless. They came with plenty of crisp veggies in the stirfry, though only a mild chilli.

I had breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday mornings at Cafe Book. This is new - last year there was some other cafe there, with dreadful slow service and very ordinary food. Cafe Book is a huge improvement: it's light and bright, with country style pale lime-wash painted tables down the centre. Dark wood and banquette tables line one wall, and bookshelves line the other. The books are second hand, for sale, and organised eclectically by author. There's no genre separation: China Mieville, Herman Melville, Val McDermid and Henry Miller all jostle in the Ms.

The menu is quite simple - variations on bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast; sandwiches, burgers, quiche, roast meat rolls and sausage in a bun for lunch. The coffee ($3.20) is not bad, as long as you remember that you're in a country town and ask for double shots. My bacon and eggs ($9.90) was served piping hot, with a baby spinach garnish, and the white toast served on the side so it doesn't get soggy. The eggs are free range, the bacon is short rindless rashers. On Sunday I had raisin toast and fruit salad, which was similarly sound without being flashy. Thick slices of toast, nice and hot, with butter. The fruit was varied and fresh - the apple was just starting to brown a little; they should learn the lemon juice trick. Good honest grub, friendly and competent service, and books, too! I'll be back. Beats waiting an hour for your coffee at the Paragon.

We also ate at the Astor, taking our food from the service counter to the upstairs bar where the music was playing. The electronic pager discs came in handy. The Astor had a makeover several years back. They seem to be aiming for upmarket pub grub, with some fancy presentations and interesting combinations. The menu reads well, but the execution is a bit patchy. I wouldn't choose to eat there purely on its merits, but it's not a problem if there's some act on that you want to see. Unlike the Bowling Club, which is very dire.

At the Astor, I had a chicken salad ($12.90) for lunch, which came with a mound of thin sweet potato crisps on top, and a generous sprinkle of sugar crusted kahlua pecans. A very nice combo in concept, and the chicken was nicely warm and moist, but the greens were a tad on the flabby side. The bloke had some bacon and cheese potato skins ($6.90) which he found over-greasy. They came in an edible bowl made of flat bread (I think) - a bit poncy and not so nice. We didn't eat the bowl and neither did a couple of other people around the room. Their pizzas ($13.50) were much more successful, I thought. The Astor kitchen has a wood fired oven, and the pizzas come out with a nice crust. The local cheddar mixed in the cheese topping gives them a bit of difference, the toppings are plentiful, and the tomato sauce has a strong oregano note that I enjoyed.

Down the Coast

I spent that recent hot weekend down the coast, with my mates B1 and B2, and it was just lovely. First stop was Braidwood, for lunch at Cafe Albion. This has changed hands in the last year, and the new management has extended into the former antique shop next door. It's in a simple and clean country style - a slow combustion fire, wooden furniture, open to the air in the heat.

The menu has been fluffed up a bit, but it's still a cafe. Coffee and cake, sandwiches, light meals. I'm impressed - the coffee ($2.80) was good; my salad was pretty good; B2's tomato bruschetta ($9) was tasty with a noticably good olive oil. I had a smoked trout salad with mixed leaves and kipfler potatoes, beetroot and asparagus - the veggies were warm, the horseradish dressing was mild but good. The menu concentrates on local produce, with a few exceptions like Fremantle sardines. They have a license now, and the wine list is also mostly local. Lots of their cakes are gluten-free, too. Nice place - I recommend it without hesitation.

After lunch we grabbed some sourdough from the Braidwood bakery, and headed on down the mountain. B1 has a coast house at Guerilla Bay, not a fancy one but a pair of little shacks set in among the trees. The shade and the sea breeze keeps it pleasantly cool - even when in town it was sweltering up round the 40 degree mark. We swam, we ate random snacky meals of fancy cheese and fruit from the fridge, we threw fruit and bread scraps at the foraging possums, we lazed around and read books, we shopped at Mogo.

Mogo has quite a few places to shop, but mostly we went to the Trading Post and Suzanne's. The Trading Post is clothes, jewelry and knickknacks all in the general hippy eastern vein. I bought a couple of cheesecloth shirts and two rayon ones, and some shell earrings. And in a surge of fellow-feeling, the three of us now have matching beach cover-up shirts. It's like a club. I feel so teenaged!

We ate lunch at Suzanne's, which is now known in the local pamphlet guides as the "Blue Fox Cafe". This will not help you if you're looking for it: the only external sign says "Suzanne's". The cafe is on the left side of the entry, the bakery and organic grocer on the right. The bakery is deservedly well known: Suzanne bakes the most amazing sourdough breads. B2 and I shared a loaf of fruitbread to take home. It's $10.50, which sounds a lot, but it is a large heavy loaf. It's jam packed full of figs and dates and apricots, and baked with a layer of nuts on the base, and amazingly good.

I was hoping to come home with a loaf of 10-grain sourdough, too, but they were closed when we dropped in. We had placed an order for pickup on Sunday, and they said they'd be open to 5pm, but they were firmly closed when we got there just before 4pm. Damn!

I had sampled the 10-grain sourdough with my lunch on our Mogo shopping day. The Blue Fox does a simple menu of cakes, sandwiches ($8-14) and salad bowls ($12-18). They are very good. The salad bowl is the larger meal: it's accompanied by two slices of toasted 10-grain sourdough, as well as some home made potato salad. I had a tuna one, with a balsamic dressing, and some olives and semi-dried tomatoes. Very delicious - a good simple lunch. The coffee is organic and free trade, and not too bad. My macchiato was a little too bitter for perfection, but with plenty of flavour.

Our final meal was at the Star Deli in Bateman's Bay. This is a very reliable standard large cafe-restaurant, which is also open longer hours than most. It's light and airy, and looks out over the river. They do fish & chips, pizza, sandwiches and regular meals; they have a kids menu, and a standard type wine and beer list. The toilets are updstairs, I'm not sure if there's any disabled access.

This was our last meal before coming home, a very late lunch after clean-up. We had a mixed seafood platter to start, and two different veggie pizzas between the three of us. The platter was very good: 3 large oysters, quite a few large cold prawns, some dips, fetta and olives. The pizzas were pretty good, too - though the chef there has a big thing for roasted garlic. Quite a few huge whole cloves of it on both pizzas, not just a thin smear in the sauce. I thought it was a bit much, and only ate about half of mine. They were easy to pick off, being so large.

Well, I'm Back

Hi everybody, I'm back! I've had some very strange and unusual culinary experiences during my absence. I went to MacDonalds, KFC, and even Starbucks! Weird stuff, man. I mean, have you ever seen what Starbucks call a macchiato??!

Seriously, I've had a fascinating and amazing trip, but the food was mostly not amazing at all but quite disappointing. I was on a "Wendy Wu" tour, accompanying my mate Beth, who was in turn accompanying her sister and niece. It's not the type of tour either of us would normally pick: far too regimented and westernised and bland for my taste. And despite being classified as "active", it wasn't. Very lazy, very plush, very easy. We had an octagenarian on the trip, the easy going and charming Lesley, who managed it all with no problem, except for the very steep Great Wall climb.
I'm downloading my 1300-odd photos as I write this, and I will try to do a more comprehensive post soon. I'm about to go out for a birthday lunch though (CHEEEEEESE!!!!!), so here's just a couple of summary points.

We went to
* Chengdu - pandas, Szechuan food.

* Lhasa, Shigatse and Gyantse - temples, monasteries, soldiers, mountains, yaks, bad chinese food, occasional glimpses of Tibetan food, and one Nepali meal. Also, yak bolognese.

* Lhasa-Xining train - amazing views, mountains, yaks, surprisingly excellent railway food.

* Xining - Qinghai lake, bizarre Chinese Butlins-style resort, more yaks, peculiar local food and more bad Chinese.

* Xi'an - terracotta army, wild goose pagoda park, great hotpot dinner. And oh, those gorgeous honey rolls!

* Beijing - forbidden city, summer palace, temple of heaven, hutongs, great wall, massive crowds, huge apartment buildings, olympic tat. Dodgy food and not even proper peking duck. Excellent pizza, though!


I am going to come back and edit this post with some pictures and more detail, but I'll pop it up all incomplete right now, just to say hi!

First update: Chengdu
Pandas are the big thing here. We visited the panda research and breeding project and I took at approximate count a brazillion photos. It's a very nice spot, green with large enclosures and lots of play space for the young ones. They do seem to keep the animal welfare firmly in mind.

On the food front, this was probably the best we had. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, more often known to us as Szechuan. Not the spiciest food in China, as Hunan wins that one, but still powerful stuff. We got split into two tables: spice-lovers and others. Our spicy table got the best Kung Pao chicken and Ma Po tofu I've ever had. The famous szechuan pepper, when fresh, has some amazing citrus and cardamom notes, as well as its mouth tingling properties. We also had some delicious fried corn cakes, the fresh corn niblets barely held together by the least light batter. Yummo. I was surprised at how much corn and potato showed up. The Chinese in general seem to have really taken to these foods.

Unfortunately, the Kung Pao chicken never left us. It got progressively dumbed down as we travelled - still quite chilli fiery in Tibet but less szechuan pepper; then even milder as we went along, until finally in Beijing we got a version with no chilli at all, and cucumber instead of celery. And we had it every sodding day, at least once and often twice. AAAAARGGGH!!!!

More updates to follow...

Cairns Food Report

Well, I promised so I'd better get to it before I forget. This week has been a bit problematic for blogging - apart from writing for the paper, and trying to go back to work, I've also been unwell. Some kind of virus, probably - headaches & exhaustion. As I settle back into routine I should do better. Maybe even get another internet salmagundi up.

Anyway, four of us went to Cairns, and stayed in a small apartment in a resort complex. In between lounging about, soaking in the spa, lazing around and chilling out, we also managed a few activities and a few meals. On Sunday we went to Rusty's Markets in town, and spent up big on fruit. We came back to our resort apartment with pomelo, pineapple, passionfruit, custard apple, dragonfruit, bananas, starfruit, black sapote, pink papaya and limes, all very cheaply. We also bought a few cookies, a big bunch of flowers, and some shiny things - the Sunday market features some craft stalls, too. I picked up a freshwater pearl ring, little abalone shell earrings and some purple shell earrings for $5 a piece.

We had Sunday dinner with my family and a guest of theirs, at Tamarind restaurant. This place is in the casino downtown, but it's nevertheless tasteful. Lot of warm brown wood and bamboo decor, and a menu of modern Oz/Asian fusion. In typical Cairns fashion it's a little too air-conditioned, so I was very glad I had my purple pashmina (from Darjeeling, part of last year's Bhutan trip). The food and service were terrific; and I recommend it to anyone who wants a high end meal out in Cairns.

I had a tasting entree plate, a spatchcock with black rice, and a kaffir lime scented creme brulee. The mixed entree plate ($21) here has a coconut battered prawn, a vietnamese vegetable ricepaper roll, a scallop with nashi, lychee and watercress salad, and an oxtail consommé with enoki mushrooms. The consommé was wonderfully rich, with shreds of meat at the bottom; and was my favourite of the set. For a main course, I had the crispy skinned lemon glazed spatchcock with roasted chilli and coconut salad, and black rice ($34). Imagine if lemon chicken could be transmogrified from a cheap Chinese restaurant standard into excellence... I don't remember what everyone else had for mains, but the bloke had a braised Angus beef cheek red curry, which was a huge serving. We had some mixed asian greens, as well, beautifully crisp.


Desserts were a must for some of us, although the bloke was so full from his red curry that he even passed up the cheese plate. I went for the kaffir lime creme brulee with peanut wafers ($12), while some others picked the waiter's recommendation of the iced hazelnut and cassia souffle with frangelico cream. I was quite glad I didn't, as it was very rich. I didn't finish my brulee, either, but the sharp lime tang was very refreshing.

The next day we had lunch at Far Horizons, in Palm Cove, which is where the top photo comes from. The food was lovely, and the place has a great outlook through palm trees out to the beach, but the service was rather slow. I had a very good marinara pasta, and shared a papaya risotto dessert with Belinda. Mmmm, glorified rice pudding.

So we were off to a great start. We ate a lot of the fruit during the week. The black sapote, which is also called chocolate pudding fruit, was good with coffee blossom honey and greek yoghurt. It's not actually chocolatey in taste, it's the colour and texture that gives it the name. I especially love this coffee blossom honey, it's very dark and strong and waxy, and comes from Jaques coffee plantation up on the Atherton tableland. We didn't go there, my sister got it for me specially, so thanks, Gill!

We also ate at the German sausage shop in Kuranda, where we had lunch and pints of a light, refreshing Swiss honey beer, before browsing the markets and the aviary. I had an icecream from the famous tropical fruit icecream cart, but was not a little disappointed with the lumpy icy texture of the macadamia and tropical flavours that I tried. I'm sure it was better when I was there two years ago. Dolce & Gelato in town did a lot better at the tropical fruit flavours - their passionfruit and dragonfruit were really great, and so was the dark chocolate and jersey caramel.

The cafe in the Botanic Gardens was a lovely spot for lunch. Several of us tried their special seafood pie, which was fresh baked, piping hot with a creamy filling of scallops and prawns in mornay sauce. Sadly the pastry was underdone, and the coffee was weak - which seems to be normal in Cairns - but it's a nice place anyway; I'd go back. We also got excellent Thai takeaway from the Banana Leaf restaurant in the city. We had melt in the mouth grain fed steaks at the Bull Bar. Mostly we avoided the esplanade, as rather too backpacker-laden and overpriced, though we did try a couple of the cafes and found them, umm, unspecial. And with weak coffee.

But on our last night we took my sister's advice again for the Raw Prawn, which is on the esplanade, and although pricy it's also pretty good. I had a very pleasant cream soup, that was supposed to be a chowder, and a barramundi fillet with asparagus, guacamole and kipfler potatoes. But unfortunately I got a nasty headache and had to leave - so no dessert for me :( Maybe next time.