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Who else cooks to relieve stress? A few of us, I imagine. Although, while some people bake, I've noticed that I tend to cook more vegetarian or vegetable-based dishes when I've had a horrible day..I think the nourishing, cleansing, freshness appeals to me, though it's not a conscious choice really.. So here we are. A winter vegetable tagine over quinoa, and a radish, kale, pistachio orange and cinnamon salad. Here tis the prep: The vegetables were carrots, parsnips, butternut pumpkin and shallots, roasted with bay leaves, star anise, ginger, paprika, turmeric, cayenne and cinnamon. Stirred in chopped apricots and a little water in the last few minutes of roasting to plump them up, and then garnished with chopped preserved lemon, cashews, mint and rose petals. Satisfying and healthy. The radish salad: Sliced radishes very thinly on the mandoline I'm terrified of (I have lost a tiny corner of a thumb to it, and that was enough!), sliced blood oranges, dressed with honey, cinnamon, olive oil and pistachios and then tucked some spinach and kale throughout. The finished dishes: And late night nerve tonic:

Bogan? You really are an Aussie!! We get the "homely" sauce on some of the menus around Chinatown here as well. I'm pretty sure it means "homey" or home-style. The food looks good, though the eggplant dish looks like it has been cornstarched to death - the bane of so many stir-fries in restaurants. Eggplant wasn't too bad, actually, gloop-wise. Just enough to cling to the rice, which was bone-stickingly good on a day as cold as today (17C - that's cold for us!!).

Lunch today was another of the many delights of Chinatown: Uighur food. We don't have that many 'Chinese' restaurants here, to my eye anyway..they tend to be pretty solidly regional: Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Shanghainese, or in this case, the food of Xinjiang, in the north, bordering Mongolia and Russia. The food is very strongly focused on wheat, lamb, cumin, chilli and handmade noodles. I've been there, and one of my main memories is of the delicious skewers of charcoal grilled lamb, intense with cumin and chilli and salt. There are a couple around Chinatown now. They all have plastic grapes hanging from the ceiling (must be a thing) but this one has colourful murals of Gobi desert scenes. You can just see the proprietor through the kitchen window. The menu: Braised chilli eggplant (and hand of colleague): Leek and egg stuffed pancake: Handmade lamb noodles in 'homely' sauce (menu description, not sure what that means): And my favourites, the salty spicy lamb skewers on sharpened metal rods of death: A very satisfying lunch for a chilly winter's day. Hiccup.

Yikes! If you're that far from an Asian market..you must live in some very beautiful countryside! But yes, I think we're incredibly lucky here..great seafood, meat and produce abounds, and the diversity and ease of access to virtually every cuisine (other than Mexican, it seems) makes Sydney my favourite food place in the world..for cooking. For pure eating..Tokyo. I love Marco Polo from Mariage Freres, which was my favorite tea house when I lived in Paris, but never had a chance to try it in the "green tea" version, only black. I bet it's wonderful too. Speaking of Tokyo, that's where I got the MF, in their shop in Ginza. Possibly explains the green tea variety, they have lots of blends there that seem to have been designed especially for the Japanese market. PM'd and apologies to your delicate sensibilities in advance! Thanks, Dejah..that is really a compliment, I've been a fan of your food for ages..

Stock, yes indeed. It's funny, I was thinking just yesterday that I always make my prawn stock with Asian flavourings (ginger, white pepper, green onions, sugar, fish sauce) but my chicken stock with the classic celery/carrot/onion combo. It's one of the reasons I didn't take a picture of my freezer earlier in the week: it's a veritable graveyard of shells, bones, fats, carcasses and other delights I'm saving for the zombie apocalypse. The crab paste is also referred to as aligue. Look for the stuff with as few additional ingredients as possible. And the e-fu noodles are indeed pre-cooked..deep-fried, I believe. You only need a brief dunk in hot water to soften, and then they're best further softened in the braising liquid so they take on the flavours. They are nice and chewy, yes..good pickup, that's exactly what I was after, as I wasn't in the mood for the softness of fresh pasta, or the toothsomeness of dried linguine etc..

I don't know about anyone else, but I generally wake up hungry enough to eat the bum out of a low-flying duck. Which is colourful Aussie expression for being a bit on the fang. Which is to say, hungry. There are also lots of charming expressions for being thirsty, but none of them G-rated enough for a foodblog! Breakfast this morning was a bit of a mixed bag..first, the neon green kiwi/pear/mint/spinach smoothies I've trained my boyfriend to make (he eats SO much fruit of his own volition, so I'm always looking for ways to up his vegetable intake). I also put in some soy/linseed/almond and some coconut oil, for 'mouthfeel' (how I hate that word). I think the colour is actually quite pretty. Then, oatmeal for me. I like Scotch-cut oats better, but no time, no time, so rolled it is. I also LOVE ginger, so this was a three ginger oatmeal: crystallised ginger, stem ginger and powdered ginger. And some rose petals I'm using up. The result. I couldn't help gussying it up with pink peppercorns for extra zing: And a girly cup of my favourite Mariage Freres tea: Suitably victualled, I'm off to work. Give me strength!

Yes, we eat there A LOT..I know how much, since the sushi restaurant has an agreement with Qantas to credit frequent flyer points, and I looked at my points balance the other day to realise, in horror, that I've nearly got enough for an interstate flight, just from sushi points alone!!

Had to google etouffee, and you know, that's not that far from one of the Filipinos' most popular preps for the paste..in a paella-style dish, with shellfish! It would be perfect. And thanks for your kind words about my meals..I don't really know much about food, formally, but I AM very greedy, so that helps!

That's it - my kitchen may not be grand, but everything in it has been specifically thought about - not that I like the word "curated" for these things but I don't have the space to do anything else. That whale dish (and the vomiting vase, upthread, and a large ceramic giraffe!) were finds I dragged back in my suitcase from NYC one year, wrapped in layers of clothes and layers of hope against hope that they wouldn't be smithereens by the time they crossed the Pacific.

Heh. Thanks. I'm on a bit of a Scotch odyssey. I can't really say I collect them, since I'll buy a bottle of something I haven't tried before, drink it to the end while pondering it deeply all the way through, and then move on to the next Scotch. Lagavulin next. But I must say, I'm really enjoying the Talisker.

And last thing for the night:

Erm...d'you know, I'm not sure. Shows how effective the advertising was! Maybe recipe cards??

Funny, I was actually going to post that it's unlike the Thai crab paste, which is pulverised and grainy, and unlike the Vietnamese stuff for bun rieu..I literally typed that and deleted it, thinking "OK, shutup about the crab paste".. Ordering Japanese online..check out http://www.chefsarmoury.com/ It's a Sydney shop with not only Japanese food and kitchenware, but they also have a lot of the sciencey stuff you'd want to really get into Modernist Cuisine.

Beautiful from start to finish. Thanks, Blether! That means a lot, coming from you, as you create some rather beautiful dishes yourself. Nice reference... . Nice dish. Heh, thanks. Oh, and weinoo: I saw this and thought of you, so took a picture. See?? He's everywhere!

Thanks so much for reading!

I ended up just buying some gai lan (Chinese broccoli), noodles and flowering chives to make dinner of: *Prawn, Crab and Crab-fat braised E-Fu noodles *Gai lan in ginger sauce *Cucumber quick pickle Here's the prep. First, the quick pickle; chopped cucumber, salt, sugar, rice vinegar and sesame seeds: Then the gailan: Melted some duck fat, softened some shredded ginger, added washed gai lan and stirred to coat in the fat, added a sauce of Shaohsing wine, chicken stock, more ginger and a little sugar and stirred in some cornflour slurry at the end to thicken: Finished: Then the prawn and crab noodles: Say hello to my little friend: Blue swimmer crabs are incredibly sweet..steamed it slightly for 5 minutes, and then picked the meat: Picked meat, deveined and shelled prawns, chopped flowering chives, minced shallots and sliced garlic. Also a little dried red chilli: Softened the chives, garlic, shallots and chilli in a little butter, added the prawns and deglazed with Shaohsing: And let me introduce you to one of my favourite ingredients on earth: crab fat. It's a Filipino product called taba ng telangka, and it's basically the crab roe/fat/tomalley whatnot..it's sooooo unbelievably tasty, totally rich and decadent and crabby: Added that to the saute pan and meanwhile, softened some e-fu noodles. E-fu noodles are the noodles you get under braised crab or lobster in Cantonese seafood restaurants: Drained and added to the pan, crab meat gently stirred through and seasoned with fish sauce and the flowering chive tops: A delicious meal, if a bit culturally confused..Chinese noodles, Filipino crab paste, Vietnamese fish sauce, Japanese pickle..hehe. ETA: Boy, am I glad I'm not doing the washing up!

Right, a very brief walk around Chinatown, my favourite Chinese supermarket and dinner. As I got out of work and night was falling, I took a few quick photos of some of my favourite places around Chinatown. None of these photos are particularly thrilling, so will take more comprehensive pics later, but: Dim sum shop, selling take home frozen yum cha items: My favourite Vietnamese pho place, comfortingly named 'Pasteur': Sol Levy, Tobacconist Extraordinaire (I just like the name): Chinese herbalist: Chinese BBQ buffet. Notable for not being Korean BBQ. A goodly range of offal here: Do you need a Roman centurion helmet? You're in luck: Really great but tiny Japanese place: And the hugest Chinese supermarket, my heaven: Oyster sauces: Woks and strainers and other good things: Claypots: Big range of tofu and soy products: Korean chilli and soybean pastes: Noodles and dumpling wrappers: Jerkies and lup cheong sausages: Spices and so on: Cooking wines and vinegars: Every single kind of Chinese sauce you can imagine: Flavoured oils (inc ginger, abalone, sichuan pepper oils): Baked goods, lotus seed bun type things: Freezer full of dumplings and pancakes and wonderful things: Preserved, salted, century duck and chicken (and quail) eggs: Yet more dumplings:

Thanks for your kind words! I only cure the fish a short while because I'm usually doing a small piece, yes. But also because I don't like the texture salmon can take on when you cure it longer..a little firmer, less fatty and unctuous. It's probably more like a semi cure, enough to impart flavour and so on.

A word about lunches. Personally, I DO eat lunch out most days, and you'll see that clearly this week. This is partly because the food around me is so varied and delicious, but also because my workplace is pretty intense and stressful, with a fair bit of conflict, so some decompressing socialising over lunch is one of the few ways we form/repair bonds. On the occasions I need a break and to not see any of these guys for an hour or so lest I rip their spleens out, I might pretend I've brought my lunch in, but that's usually a ruse they see right through. Incidentally, they're all very intrigued and mystified as to why I'm taking photos of my food and coffee, and are mooting all kinds of theories, from sudden onset OCD to something for a reality show application..hehe. I'm gonna keep the b*%tards guessing for awhile!

No, Shining Wit! (just going with the acronyms, or thinking of spoonerisms... ) But you're right, I should have clarified that my mention of NSW refers to the state I live in, New South Wales. Famous for...err..hm. Rugby league?

My work coffee setup. I actually wasn't that much of a coffee drinker before I started this job, but now I have a solid 2-3 a day habit. I work in a ridiculously male-dominated environment (ie. senior executive: 19 men, 3 women including me), which I raised eyebrows at when I first started, but I quickly realised it's not so much a boys' club as a coffee drinkers' club. EVERYTHING, every meeting, every planning session, is done over coffee, the whole organisation runs on it. But it's quite a nice custom, really. We all run up tabs here and half the time I get down there to pay mine and find someone else has already paid it. Not much time to get out around Chinatown today but did stop in for sushi from a sushi train next door. The quality here is good, and the turnover/freshness is high. That's a huge aquarium that runs the back wall..the awkward irony of looking at fish looking at you eating fish. In a hurry, so grabbed octopus, bonito, tuna and a soft shell crab roll. Still peckish on the way back, I stopped in at the Thai grocery next to my office (there are 4 in a 1 block radius!) to browse all their amazing pre prepared meals and snacks and sweets. I often buy their zhoong. Came away with a tub of mango and a little sachet of chilli salt to dip the sweet mango slices into. Hot and sweet and salty..that should shut me up for awhile.

And a new series of Underbelly is about to start - it's also set in Woolloomooloo, and it's about the notorious (real life) feud between warring brothel madams, each of whom headed up violent all-female roaming razor blade gangs in the 1920s and 1930s. Razor blade gang fights were apparently very common, a lot of slashings and throat-cuttings and disfigurements..among the women! You can't make this stuff up.

Hehe..well I HAVE an underbelly, so it's not totally unrelated! Actually, depending on which series you've seen, a lot of it was set around where I live! A heady combination of head, vast Google docs spreadsheets and Evernote. I jot things down in Google docs (ideas for meals, flavour combinations, shopping lists, planned meals) so I can access them from my phone, ipad, work laptop or at home. Then if they're a keeper, I tag them into Evernote, which is kind of a universal capture tool, also accessible from anywhere. I keep notes, recipes, web links, photos there..like a shoebox of ideas. But also, from my head..mind is constantly racing with ideas and curiosity and lying awake thinking about things. This doesn't always work so well though - refer totally forgetting white pepper in the salmon rub.

Sure am. There as we speak (my office is in Haymarket). Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to (re)see, always happy to take a walk. WHAT?! That really astounds me..passionfruit is common as dirt here. I don't know why I'd assumed you could get them in the US..I suppose they're just one of those things so ubiquitous I've come to take them for granted. Last week alone we went through 18 of them, squeezing them for juice!

It is gorgeous, I just love the colour of the ruby beetroot against the coral salmon..the beetroot just gives it a faintly nutty, sweet but also savoury flavour, nothing very strong at all but definitely interesting. And it couldn't be easier, you should try it! The proportions I use are: for about 300g of salmon, mix 1 large or 2 small grated beetroots, 25g salt, 25g sugar, zest of 1 lemon and 1 tsp of white pepper, which I forgot this time around. One tablespoon of vodka is optional, it slightly changes the texture if you leave it out but still nice. You could also add chopped dill, or even a tsp or so of horseradish or hot mustard. I like a short cure, 12 hrs or so, because I don't want to change the texture of the fish too much but 24hrs will give you a firmer result.