rarerollingobject

I think I might be getting sick, because that sounds pretty damn good to me right now.. My disgusting 4am munchies contribution: a not-thin slice of butter (yes, butter), sprinkled in sea salt and black pepper, rolled up in a sheet of toasted nori and chomped down with grim abandon. And repeat.

The problem with that is that hardly anything that would qualify as 'Australian bush tucker' (at least in the context Australians use that term, generally understood to be native plants and fauna etc.) grows around Melbourne. There is some of course, but in the environment of Melbourne city, it's mostly been replanted over time with non-indigenous plants. Keith - try this. You can search by state. http://weedyconnection.com/database/

Prawncrackers, that entire meal is amazing..I also bow to you, King of Pork.. nickrey, very good-looking meal there. I like the sound of the stuffed squid especially. Dinner here (a very early dinner, or a very late second lunch, depending how you look at it, since am going into project lockdown tonight at work and am not going to get to eat again till tomorrow ) was an old favourite using hzrt8w's fantastic pictorial for Steamed Garlic Prawns, here. Cut the eyes and feelers off some very large prawns and deveined them, crushed 8 cloves of garlic and softened it in a lot of butter with a little salt, soy sauce and sugar (my addition), and then steamed the lot on top of softened vermicelli for 7 minutes..the vermicelli soaks up the buttery garlic and all the juices from the prawn heads..

Nah, I'm too lazy for such efforts - like all my pictures, this was just taken haphazardly on the edge of my countertop with my iPhone! Only difference was this was pre-dawn, so what you see are the full glare of the kitchen lights. NICE sandwich too, sir. It looks more like a close encounter of the third kind (lighting-wise, I mean - the food looks delicious). Hmmm, that may explain so very much.. That looks amazing. That bacon! People look down on TVP, but ever since I did a 10 day survival course and basically ate nothing but TVP, I have a bit of a bent for it..think I'm going to get some this weekend, thanks! Breakfast this morning was plain smoked salmon, on avocado and rye crackers, and a lot of black pepper:

Morels on toast, with little truffle and porcini pork sausages.

Very pretty zucchini, those. My zucchini is indeed simply shredded in the food processor (grating makes it too pulpy and damp). First I browned some almonds in some olive oil, added the zucchini, warmed through and added salt, pepper and lemon zest. Sometimes I like to serve with shaved parmesan on top, or with fresh or dried mint and lots of black pepper. Either way, the key (to my taste) is to barely warm the zucchini - softening it a tiny bit but without letting it go soft and mushy. I think lemon confit would be lovely with it!

ScottyBoy, that's a lovely meal - I like the look of the eggplant especially. Percyn, that hot dog is positively indecent! C. Sapidus and Dejah, those are great Thai preparations for chicken wings. I ate some in Bangkok that were incredibly delicious, and sweet with a lick of coconut milk made them particularly golden as the sugars in the milk caramelise on grilling. Good times. dcarch, that is a ridiculously beautiful meal. Just amazing. I too am always looking for other treatments for zucchini flowers and have steamed and baked them, but will have to try boiling. mgaretz, that really made me laugh! I really wish you'd taken a photo of your dog's pleased but shamed face! Hehe. Dinner here was a pan fried snapper dusted in ras el-hanout, zucchini sauteed with flaked almonds and lemon zest, and a fennel, orange, radish and spinach salad dressed with some lovely mandarin-flavoured Australian olive oil. And dessert; Aperol and soda into which I squeezed a huge and juicy pomegranate.

Thai fish cakes are always a winner and will bear nearly any kind of fish.

Funny, that's what I said to the colleague who looked at me most disapprovingly while I was eating it: "Don't blame me pal, Percy made me do it!" Actually, he was also the one who felt the need to suggest that it was a most unlady-like thing to eat, at which point I was compelled to inform him that he was mistaking me for someone who cared.

A chorizo on a roll, with BBQ sauce, caramelised onions and rocket. Purchased at a cafe and eaten most non-ladylikely while waiting for an early morning meeting to start.

My last post of the blog. Squeezing in Sunday dinner, by the grace of the international date line. Was deeply contemplating cooking these gorgeous hunks of wagyu tonight (each piece is at least two and half inches thick), but decided it might be inelegant sufficiency, what with a big breakfast, pastries for lunch and three coffees. So something simpler, and homier; a gruyere, cavolo nero and caramelised onion panade, from the Zuni Cafe cookbook. The original recipe uses chard (what we call silverbeet here) but I had that baby cavolo nero from the farmers' market begging to be used. Here's the prep. The key ingredient here is the quality of the cheese, the bread, but most importantly, the stock. This is a dish to showcase good homemade chicken stock - I didn't even defat it for this purpose, as I wanted every last skerrick of flavour. Caramelising onions, wilting the cavolo nero, and heating the stock: Moistening cubes of day-old bread with olive oil and a little stock, grating the cheese and layering the components in my cute little Le Creuset: Dousing in the remainder of the stock and bringing to a simmer before covering with a cartouche, and sliding into the oven to bake: Finished. Golden brown, crispy, deeply sweet and nutty from the gruyere and incredibly flavoured with the mellow savouriness of good chicken stock: And dessert from earlier, cross-section: And that, dear people, is my week. I've had a lovely time cooking and shopping and sharing my kitchen with you. Thank you to everyone who's read, commented, encouraged and for just generally making me feel very much at home and part of eG. I've loved every minute of it! Kate

Good to know re the paprika..I actually haven't tried paprika from Herbie's before, as had a big tin it took awhile to get through. What kind of soups do you use it in? You're on crack, Herbie's shop has been there for yonks! Years and years, pre internet even, if such a thing were possible! But yes, I weep for Mexican food. I crave and long for it. And I don't even really know what the proper stuff tastes like! They were making it there, but I didn't try it..was still on a sugar high from Zumbo - ate in one day more sugar than I'd normally eat in a couple of months. Buzzzz. fireworksfoods.com.au is good for online Mexican ordering!

Nah, I kinda hate people. You should show us. I'd be interested! Pleasure = literally all mine!

And Dakki, I popped into one of Sydney's biggest 'gourmet' stores that is right beside Herbie's to take a picture of this to show you; the TWO shelves that are the grand total of Mexican ingredients available in Sydney. *cries* Actually there are some pretty good online shops, but this is it as far as browsing goes! And last post of the day's proceedings, before dinner; I mentioned before we were going to a coffee festival down by the harbour. It's actually the Aroma Festival - encompassing coffee, tea, chocolate and spice. A few random shots of a spectacularly beautiful Sydney day: The pavlovas Michael and his friend had. I declined to partake, having just eaten a cinnamon brioche and 6 macarons. Most restrained, wouldn't you say? Plus, they look kinda gross. Baklava with 'traces of nuts'? Say it ain't so! Gratuitous Opera House shot. And on our way back, these! Cockatoos, swarming to peck something up off the ground. It's food-related because THEY'RE eating.

Next stop in Balmain was Herbie's spice shop. Spice shops in Sydney fall along three main division lines: Indian/Sri Lankan, Middle Eastern and Herbie's. While the former can't be beat for buying in bulk, Herbie's has such an incredible range. Everything from quatre epices to mastic to Iranian black lime powder, to cubeb pepper, to Australian native herbs and spices, to lakhs & crores, the sugar-coated fennel seed sweets Indians use as breath fresheners after a meal. I suppose it's about equivalent to Penzey's. Normally, the shop makes my bloke sneeze uncontrollably so he likes to stand outside and talk to any nearby dogs, but there were none today, so he just mooched around looking at the dog-less ground sadly. Darienne, took this picture of za'atar for you: BIG basket of cinnamon sticks: And my purchases, basically restocking on turmeric, smoked paprika, ras el-hanout, black peppercorns and his lovely soft cinnamon sticks:

After the breakfast tagine, we waddled down the hill to Adriano Zumbo's patisserie. Zumbo is a celebrated Sydney patissier, becoming hugely famous after appearing on Top Chef or Masterchef or one of those shows. I'd known of him before that from some of the Sydney foodblogs, but after that TV show, wow is it hard to even get IN to his damn shop. Partly because it's so small only 6 people can stand in there at a time, granted, but after once waiting 45 minutes to get some pastries to give a friend as a gift, I swore I would not go back unless getting there very early, which we were today. He is touted as being highly original, and some of his flavour combos are indeed..unique, but as for the pastries themselves, I've spent enough quality time at the Pierre Herme shop in Tokyo to immediately see AZ gets alot of his inspiration from PH, with some direct copies even. I think he worked for PH in the past. He's also known for his macarons, in shock flavours (pig's blood? hamburger?) but I dismiss those as gimmicks. All in all, I think he's talented, but it's not something I would travel to Balmain FOR..given that we were already there, however: And our purchases, descriptions from his website: 'Enter the Dragon' - toasted white chocolate mousse, coriander cremeaux, peanut caramel, dried chilli sable and almond sponge: 'Butter up Mrs Palmer' - Burnt butter castriano and caramelised palm sugar creme legere, palm sugar almond crunch with caramelised puff pastry: Pain a la cannelle - brioche feuilletage with cinnamon crème amandes (marzipan): And macarons in salted butter popcorn, butterscotch caramel, mandarin, blackcurrant and chocolate with pop rocks (x2): We ate the pain a la cannelle as breakfast dessert as soon as we got home, and most of the macarons as well. And by 'we' I may mean 'me', and by 'most of' I may mean 'all'...

Thank you, sir. As the kid of a man who was the Reuters Asian (East and South East) Correspondent for 28 years, EVERYTHING in my family, every object, every memory, every photograph, has some kind of back story, mainly revolving around Chinese political history. What I really should have used as the foodblog teaser are some of the Reuters press photos of me from the time - a toddler in diapers, having broken free from my nanny and crashing the diplomatic dinner my parents were hosting in Beijing, and climbing up onto the lap of the Prime Minister of New Zealand to help myself to the beetroot on his plate, my face stained vermilion and a laughing Deng Xiaoping in the background..

Shelby, I definitely read your memorable foodblog! It actually got me very interested in wild game, until I had to accept that it wasn't a feasible research area living in the most urban part of Sydney! And I remember your goblets, and that another eG member also had some. So I know what being bit by a collector's bug is like, fer sure. And thanks for your kind words about my collection, such as it is..one day when I have more storage and display space and time, THEN I'll really do some damage!

Now am off again! I have some patisserie and spice shop photos to post later, but there is a coffee festival going on down by the harbour, so am going to head down there and see what's what. Over and out!

Ah yes, that is indeed my salt bowl. Yet another thing I dragged back from NYC, from the same shop as made my whale butter dish, vomiting whale vase, and haughty giraffe (not yet featured). Jonathan Adler is the shop. I really wanted their bowls and vases that covered in repeating breasts (noone prudish in this household) but my suitcase would only hold so much.

We headed to one of our favourite breakfast places today, in a suburb called Balmain. Balmain is a bit of a mecca for good food, and is one of the most beautiful suburbs in Sydney..right on the water, gorgeous old houses. Kazbah on Darling St is mainly Moroccan, though it trends off Turkish and Persian as well. Breakfast menu: Restaurant: Watermelon/ginger and pineapple, lime and mint juices (and crayons for writing on the tables!): We shared a breakfast tagine. Lamb mince, sucuk sausage, roasted tomatoes and capsicums, spinach, caramelised onions, feta, eggs, chilli and spices, and a big pile of Turkish and Lebanese breads: Also had a Moroccan mint tea, and a Turkish coffee, but failed to take photos due to post-tagine food coma.

I think they were originally used to store ginger, but now are just called that. Though I did buy a jar of Chinese candied stem ginger that came in a ceramic ginger jar - I think it's in one of the first kitchen photos I posted. Me too! Books, blue and white pottery, sushi, lipstick. These are the things I cannot say no to.

Before I post today's spoils, I thought I'd share with you some photos of my ceramics collection. I collect blue and white pottery, for a start..I use quite a lot of it for serving food, but other pieces not. The pieces I have are mostly from Japan, China or Vietnam but I'm not particularly precious about locale or vintage..one of these plates is from an American homewares chain I happened to pass by in San Francisco (the upside down plate on the very left with a big blue octopus on it!). I have lots of pieces scattered throughout the house, but here are some main pieces: A couple of these are particularly precious to me. This is my mother's Chinese government-issued yoghurt pot. Among the first Western expats to enter post-Mao Zedong Beijing in the late 70s (my brother, who's a US citizen, had a clearance letter signed by Henry Kissinger!), my parents no doubt had circumstances a lot more fortunate than many around them, but still had to line up every day for basic food rations at the state-run commissaries for the first few years. This pot, not very big at all, represented the daily yoghurt allowance for a family of 3. And this 1920s ginger jar, which belonged to my grandmother. A woman ahead of her time in many ways, she loved Chinese art and culture and had quite a few Chinese antiques, though she'd never been to Asia - not till visiting us in Hong Kong in the early 80s after I was born. Anyway, I love this because it reminds me of her and how unconventional she was for her place and time: This is a little bowl I came across in a Kyoto shop. I had gotten talking to the owner in my OK but patchy Japanese and after an hour or so of nattering away, I bought a few things and he insisted on giving me this pretty little bowl as a gift. It's cracked and dirty but I get the feeling it's quite old, or at least has had a lot of use in its lifetime: Obviously, I don't use any of these three things for food, as they all have decades of dust and grime that no amount of cleaning can seem to get off. One day I'll look into getting them professionally cleaned perhaps. Other things in the top photo; a Japanese platter from the early 1800s, china chopstick rests from the Tokyo Edo Museum, a plate with painted vegetables on it from a department store in Kyoto, and the big thing at the back right is a hibachi. Porcelain ones like this are actually not really used for cooking, but for heating. I have, however, filled it with coals, laid a mesh on top and used it for grilling, being a total heathen. I also collect ceramics from a lovely Australian potter called Bison. Based in Canberra, they make beautifully smooth and tactile pieces that are always cool and comforting to touch, but best of all, can be microwaved, frozen, used in the oven and dishwashed. They makes lots and lots of colours, but I'm partial to the blues, particularly the duck egg blues. Anyway, wanted to show a little bit of my non-food kitchen items.

Thanks so much, this is brilliant! I've just come back from 3 weeks in Italy and I ate my own bodyweight in gelato, but these photos and flavours look better than anything I tried over there. Can't wait to get to Darlinghurst and sample them... As someone reasonably new to Sydney your blog (and Nickrey's) has been invaluable in helping me appreciate the city's food. Much appreciated. (and something I found interesting - there's a Harris Farm near us in a suburb strangely named "Dee Why", the meat section is inside one gigantic cold room and so they hand out freezer jackets to people as they enter...) Ah, you'll love Messina. Follow them on Facebook for updates as to their latest crazy flavours; sometimes I see a post about something new and am up there within literally 10 minutes.

(I should clarify, lest everyone think I'm economically clueless myself, that we have a bit of a sweetheart deal worked out, where bella principessa dude will charge me the two scoop price for my two sequential single scoops!)