rarerollingobject

OK, Monday morning. Blechh. Here's our weekday home coffee setup; a middling espresso machine (actually pretty good for its price), a grinder, and beans from Toby's. I am REALLY glad for my coffee this morning; I mentioned my boyfriend is a Professor of Resource Economics. Well, it's customary for PhD students to give their professors gifts at the end of their thesis. Because many of Michael's students are farmers' kids, this has often meant thrilling windfalls of produce from their farms; a litre of new season's olive oil? Yes please! A kilo of rare hen of the woods mushrooms? Yippee! And one of the latest ones was 2kg of coffee beans from the first crop of one student's fledgling family coffee plantation. And the grinder. We'd been using a tiny one you can just see at the left, but this grinder is much better. It was such a touching gift, but the coffee...wasn't good. I don't know if it was the beans or the roast, but knowing all the blood, sweat and tears his family had put into them, we couldn't bring ourselves to throw them away so have been suffering through 2kg of the worst coffee ever. I feel quite bad even saying that, but we drank it, dammit. We've only just finished it and I can't tell you how relieved I am.. So Michael makes me coffee while I'm in the shower, and serving it in these double walled insulated glasses means that I can dawdle as long as I want and the coffee doesn't get cold. It's pretty good, though he always makes it too milky and I've given up trying to steer him otherwise. And the salmon! This is last night's beet-cured salmon, with the cure washed off. Sliced thinly and served on a rye cracker smeared with avocado, black pepper and flaky salt, it's not a bad breakfast at all.

I think it's pretty amazing. And it's just a shop in the middle of a carpark in a suburban shopping centre..not exactly one of Sydney's 'celebrity' food destinations! Harissa, goose confit, halvah, smoked pigs' trotters, preserved lemons, fair trade coffee, buffalo yoghurt, yuzu salt, Persian fairy floss, samphire, edible flowers, fresh borlotti beans, Epoisses cheese, palm sugar dumplings, mache, chioggia beets, fresh (green) almonds, tiny wild strawberries, pomelo, bottarga..these are just some of the finds I've had from that wonderful place. (No, not affiliated..I wish I was!)

Amazing range of vinegars, verjuices and vino cottos. Fig vino cotto, fig and raspberry vino cotto, smoked pineapple vinegar..all here. Good antipasti and pickles: Want goose fat? No problem: Massive wall of cheese: Big range of flavoured labneh (yoghurt cheese): Goats' cheese section : Yoghurts etc: Savoury fruit pastes (quince etc, for cheese courses): Do you need some stinky durian cordial? They have that: Or elderflower cordial, or cherry juice? Chunks of Callebaut dark, milk, hazelnut and white chocolate; check out the massive slabs at the bottom! Deli meats, including Iberico ham: Ice cream (elderflower! burnt fig and balsamic vinegar! lemon curd! such great flavours) and handmade ice cream sandwiches: Xiaolongbao at the bottom, Taiwanese dumplings to the left and porcini mushrooms at the top: Big range of edamame, lots of different kinds: Buffalo dairy products - ricotta, butter, taleggio, gorgonzola, mozzarella: Bread: Five different kinds of horseradish! Another gratuitous wall of cheese shot: As you can tell, I'm in love with this store. They have EVERYTHING. If they sold toothpaste and detergent, I'd probably never set foot in a supermarket again.

I realised that I was totally remiss yesterday, as I forgot to show you the greengrocers we went to after the fish market! I tend to shop most days for fresh food, as I need it(meat, fish, herbs), partly because that's what keeps me inspired to cook and partly because I just like to. Vegetables and fruit though I do a big weekly shop and replenish mid week as need be. I alternate weeks between the farmers' market (which I'll show you on Saturday) and my favourite grocer, Harris Farms at Broadway, for Sydney players. This store is AMAZING. You wouldn't think it's much at first glance, but in addition to beautiful fruit and vegetables: They also have a good range of meat, including free range pork, which I really appreciate. (Free range and organic is now common for chicken, but less so for pork, which is pretty industrially farmed too): Lots of interesting smoked fish (tuna, kingfish, eel, trout): Six different kinds of couscous! Lots and lots of small-grower olive oils:

Yes indeed, in an hour or two from now, it'll be breakfast! I cure salmon a lot actually, I've posted this before, but other variations I've tried for the cure flavourings: Chineseish - flavourings of sugar, salt, Sichuan pepper, a little five spice, shaohsing wine, scallions and ginger Vietnameseish - sugar in the form of both sugar and caramel sauce, salt, fish sauce, cassia/cinnamon, star anise, black pepper and chilli. Added a splash of Vietnamese moonshine. Thaiish - palm sugar, salt, lemongrass, galangal, red chilli, tamarind, crushed coriander roots and leaves, and garlic. Didn't use alcohol here and it was fine, slightly different texture. Japaneseish - yuzu koushou, Okinawan black sugar, soy sauce and a mirin/sake combo Frenchish - sugar, fleur de sel, herbes de Provence, lavendar petals, and some Pernod. I used fresh thyme too but it was too overpowering by the end of the cure so would omit that next time. Well put. What a market! I'd get some baby abalone and razor clams to start. Can you find sea cukes there? BTW, ten out of ten for the uni on toast with lardo. Seafood and extreme cheese, thank you. You can get sea cucumbers from time to time, they're caught of Western Australia I think. I've seen them more regularly in Chinatown, and dried, of course. That cheese is a thing of beauty. And the best part is, if around dessert time I distract my boyfriend with, say, an orange or nice juicy apple, I can get things like blue cheese all to myself..

I haven't seen live sea urchin at fish markets, but if you're really keen and don't mind a bit of potential pollution, you can actually find them on beaches around Sydney. In fact, I go swimming at one of Sydney's dozens of ocean pools and recently stepped on a sea urchin that had washed over the wall! Much swearing and muttering picking those spines out of my foot. Photo credit: NSW Ocean Baths As for the prices, they are per kilo, so halve them again for a per pound price I guess. I actually think the Fish Market's prices are a little higher than elsewhere, for the absolute quality. Mid week, I'll show you my 'normal' fish shop in Chinatown, which is cheaper again.

Wow, very good eyes! They are indeed antique Royal Worcester egg coddlers! I do use them, but not hugely often..I like coddled eggs, but they are a pain to clean. One is holding paperclips right now, surely what egg coddlers aspire to for their retirement.

Thanks for your kind words, everyone! I'm very excited to be blogging and just thrilled that you're taking an interest! As for the colour coded books..there are two reasons for that. One is, as I mentioned, we have A LOT of books and apart from one shelf of queued newbies, have pretty much read all of them. I also have a pretty strong visual memory, so I realised one day that the majority of time I was looking for a book, I was first picturing it visually in my mind and then irritatedly scanning nine bookcases for books with that colour spine. It was a short jump to thinking that this is how I should organise my books in the first place, though it wouldn't work for everyone I realise. (It's actually been quite controversial among my friends, many of whom dismissed it as frippery and something the village idiot would dream up!). As for the doing..chronic insomnia. I average about 3-4 hours a night, and when you're regularly awake at 4am looking for something to occupy yourself with, reorganising that many books seems like a worthwhile endeavour.

Oh, and dessert: a little slice of this gorgeous, pungent, incredible roquefort-style Tarago River Blue Orchid cheese. Yum.

Roger that. Any requests? Not if I can help it. If the zucchinis are salted and drained and squeezed well enough, it doesn't usually need any, but if it does, I only add enough so that the mix doesn't sound wet when stirred. Too much flour makes them doughy and heavy, IMO. It's an artisan cultured butter I get from the farmer's market, called "Pepe's". Australian butter is generally not great, and hardly ever cultured, so for cooking, I use Lurpak Danish but for eating straight, either French or this Pepe's butter is what I prefer. Next Saturday I'm going back to the farmers' market for more, so if you stay tuned till then, you can "meet" the maker!

OK, just one more post for this evening..since I have the crab and prawns earmarked for a dish tomorrow night, dinner was a simple affair of grilled lamb cutlets and salad. Quite boring. Except! The cutlets were doused in this incredible spice mix, Super Ras el-Hanout. Ras el-Hanout is pretty special in its own right, but this mix has: I hope to take you to Herbie's spice shop if I can this week, it's like an Aladdin's cave. The cutlets: And I prepared something for tomorrow: beet-cured salmon. Grating beetroot and mixing it with sugar, salt, lemon zest and more of that intolerable Absolut vodka, I then packed this thickly onto a salmon fillet. Weighted it with cans and putting it in the fridge overnight, it will hopefully emerge tomorrow tinted with gorgeous pink, and faintly nutty and sweet from the beetroot.

Yikes ! I'm moving to Oz. "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh". Beautiful trout, and you 'll get neither uni nor awabi (abalone) for as little in Tokyo. "Bugs"... what are they ? Are the trout wild ? What I get locally is all Norwegian, farmed. I know, I LOVE the trout, one of my very favourite fish..most of them here are from Tasmania, and farmed. The wild ones are smaller, browner, and rarer. Though they're actually pretty easy to fish for yourself, around NSW. Bugs (either referred to as Moreton Bay or Balmain bugs) are a shellfish tasting (to me) pretty much like lobster. They may look like aliens but taste like the sweet, sweet sea.

This was the haul, in the end; some green prawns, some cooked Coffs Harbour prawns, a pretty blue swimmer crab, and a piece of salmon. I also couldn't resist that gorgeous tray of uni and wanted to eat it right away, but given that it was only 10am, settled for zucchini, feta and mint fritters with Greek yoghurt and green chilli sauce instead: And a bloody mary, in a valiant effort to use up the Absolut we received as a duty free gift with purchase. I make a fairly traditional one, with celery salt, black pepper, lemon, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce. When we did finally get to lunch a few (long) hours later, I made an appetiser of grilled bruschetta with the uni, and thin slices of lardo melted over: And prawns, bread and butter (with my whale butter dish starring!):

More cookbooks, including my set of Modernist Cuisine! I have these thanks to the kindness of annachan, long story short. I haven't quite gotten into them yet (apart from SV), as am waiting to pass a couple of work deadlines before I fall down the rabbit hole of MC. I should also introduce myself, I've just realised. I'm Kate - I live with my partner, Michael. We're both very interested in food, but for very different reasons - I'm into cooking and eating it, obviously, whereas he is interested in it academically; he's a Professor of Resource Economics at one of the large universities here, and one of his research areas is food security. He also consults to the Vietnamese and Indonesian governments about how to maximise farming outcomes while minimising natural resource depletion, so a lot of our conversations at mealtimes end up being about the food chain, production issues, and the economics of food. However, his interest is just that; academic. Actual eating-wise, he has no dislikes whatsoever and has never turned his nose up at anything I've cooked. This is incredibly liberating for me, as it gives me free reign to be as..eclectic as I like. He also humours me in that my hobby is food-browsing. I can look at markets forever, like many of us here. His hobby is coming along on my expeditions, standing patiently to the side, holding the bags, clearing his throat and staring into the middle distance. Example: he sees nothing interesting in fish markets(!), but nonetheless we went early this morning. I realise nickrey comprehensively covered the Sydney Fish Markets in his wonderful foodblog, but I figured, hey, I legitimately shop there too, and who in their right mind doesn't want to see more photos of seafood?! I thought so:

There are both community plots and plot plots. I take it you have to apply for a plot but not sure how competitive it is..I would only ever play in the community plot, since I know I wouldn't be able to devote the time to a plot of my own to justify taking it off someone else. As for the variety of the cuisine..I work in the nerve centre of varied cuisine, Chinatown, so I'm looking forward to showcasing some of its many treasures. Thanks for your kind words! I have a matching (non vomiting) whale butter dish too, who should soon be making an appearance! Many thanks - I realised I forgot to take a picture of one very special cookbook, so am about to rectify that! That looks like your oven under the hob - is the other one at knee-height your microwave ? It all looks spick & span. Yep, full oven under the hob, microwave at knee height and dishwasher to the right. Can't really complain about under-equipped kitchens, can I? Though it does irk me that the whole kitchen has ONE drawer not at ground level..hence supplementing it with a utensil tray sitting on top of the microwave. As for spick and span..yep, I run a pretty tight ship!

So here are a few photos of my fridge, and pantry, and kitchen. The kitchen drives me mad, it's about 5 foot by 5 foot but the actual floor space is maybe 3 x 3. It's fairly typical inner-city-apartment kitchen size actually, but my apartment itself is rather huge, so I often find myself pondering why they couldn't have shaved an extra metre off the living room and made the kitchen a bit bigger..anyway, it's hardly the smallest kitchen in the world, or even on eG, so I really should shut up about it: Looking in one way: Looking in the other way, noting my 'vomiting whale' vase: Utensils and condiments and knife block and detritus: Sous vide controller, knife sharpener, assorted fruit etc, Japanese knife so sharp I'm scared to take it out of the box, jar of Chinese stem ginger, herbs and scales: This is the fridge pre shopping this morning. Pretty bare - mostly condiments, jars of various kinds of rendered fats, beer, delicious Japanese black sesame paste and chilli sauces. Side door is about the same..condiment central. Though the second shelf, the round white thing, is my treasured Japanese sesame seed grinder. I'll show it to you in action later this week, the thing is awesome. Pantry: three buckling shelves. This houses all my hoarded pretties: Korean dried squid, seasoned seaweed, hazelnut oil, Pierre Herme Ispahan jam, mostarda, Tianjin and Yuquin preserved vegetables, 85% cocoa chocolate (I like it dark), muscovado sugar, various kinds of grains including barley, millet, amaranth and quinoa, yuzu salt and tonkotsu stock concentrate..you name it, it's probably in there. Incidentally, that canister on the bottom shelf, with the cartoon face on it? That's a CAN of Korean sausages my friend bought me as a joke, as apparently these sausages have the exact same texture as human skin, and were the cause of a craze sweeping S. Korea one winter, as people were carrying around these sausages to operate their touchscreen iPhones with, so that they didn't have to keep taking their gloves off.. I will eat them one day, I'm sure. And lastly, my cookbooks. Mostly taking up the bottom shelves, but they're actually spread all over the place (we have nine of these big bookshelves, and I've yet to get all my cookbooks organised together); I sit on the floor cushions or curl up in the armchair to browse them. Ignore the alcohol all over the place!

Oooh, apologies, Zeemanb! I'd forgotten about that whole hemisphere thing and started my foodblog too early..sorry! Very poor form on my part. Lengua is tongue, right? I LOVE beef tongue..can only find ox tongue in Australia, and only ever in Korean bbq restaurants, so those tacos really speak to me! (Bad tongue pun.)

Thanks for your kind words, and for the encouragement! I was a bit nervous about anyone replying at all, with visions of ending up talking to myself all week! Hehe, thanks! I got the idea from some pre-made ones I saw on an American kitchenware site somewhere, but the price was shocking..so I just bought bomboniere gift tins from a wedding supply store, and some rare earth magnets from an electrical shop and had at it. I like that I'm not (usually) having to scrounge in some dusty drawer or cupboard and can see what's what and what I'm running low on. It also just reminds me that I HAVE spices, so I use them more often.

A little bit more about Woolloomooloo. Even its name is ostensibly food related: depending who you ask, it either means "place of plenty", "fishing spot", or "oyster-catching place". OK, another interpretation is "young male kangaroo", but that could be food too! It's an area of severe contrasts, and that's no cliche. On one hand, it's home to the very, very rich, especially out towards the finger wharf that sits in between the rocky headland and the naval base. This whole building is very expensive waterfront restaurants, a very expensive hotel, and multimillion dollar apartments (Russell Crowe lives here). On the other hand, just one street back from the wharf are hundreds of housing commission apartments, a great number of homeless people, and a fair number of crisis shelters/soup kitchens. This is also an area of prostitutes, drug dealers, bikie gang hangouts and a relatively high crime rate in general. It still astounds me I can look out the window and literally see a homeless man asleep against a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin. In the midst of all that though, we have a barely-hanging-on community garden - in the second pic, you can just see my cavolo nero (that keeps getting ripped up to make way for flowers ): Woolloomooloo is also home to one of the original and best coffee roasters in Sydney, Toby's Estate. Their original shop and headquarters is just around the corner from my place, so this is pretty much my weekend coffee-setup. Even the wallpaper is coffee-themed! We do make our own coffee weekday mornings, but can never make it better than Toby's so weekends we just head down there, get a strong latte, and read the paper. Stupidly forgot to take a picture of the actual coffee though! Soon. Opposite Toby's: the worst and most obvious street 'art' in Sydney. Woolloomooloo - sheep toilet cow toilet, geddit? Groan. Everytime I see it, I want to /facepalm. And the tin sheep behind it? At the start of the busiest freeway in Sydney too. Wtf? Everyone with good sense hates it, but hey, we all talk about it at least. Anyway, coming up for the rest of today: the abundance of the fish markets, greengrocers, zucchini fritters, bloody marys and uni on toast!

Hello there! Talk about a hard act to follow, Zeemanb! But anyway - welcome, everyone, to a week of shopping, cooking and eating in Sydney. Woolloomooloo, to be exact - an area of Sydney basically in the central business district and on the waterfront, steeped in both Aboriginal and colonial history, and my home turf. The University of Woolloomooloo reference in the foodblog's subtitle, is, (for the fans) from the Monty Python sketch of the Bruces - this sketch was the genesis of the great Monty Python that accompanied many a beer swilling night in my own university days.Not many takers on my teaser pics, though kayswv and Kerry Beal were on the right track recognising the naval shipyard; that's the Garden Island naval base on one side of Woolloomooloo Bay. On the other side are the rock formations you can see to the left, jutting out to a peninsula into the harbour, called Mrs Macquarie's Chair, after the wife of one of the chief governors of Sydney when it was a penal colony - she had a chair carved into the rock at the very tip of the headland so she could survey the ships come in and out of the harbour. She really was a lynchpin in the early (European-led) economic development of Sydney in its transition from penal colony to free town, and I think of her keen mercantile eye when I walk out there most weekends. My second teaser pic really speaks to the fact that these days I get most of my food inspiration from the web (including from you guys! Sometimes mostly from you guys..) and often whack my iPad onto the fridge with its magnetised case to follow a recipe, or inventory what's in the fridge, or look desperately for dinner inspiration. You'll see why I'm into magnetised spice jars, measuring spoons and whatever else I can attach rare earth magnets to and whack on the fridge when I share some more photos of my very space-poor kitchen. So apart from that compelling prospect, I'm hoping this week to show you some of the interesting food scene of central and Eastern parts of the city, take you on some of my marathon food-mission adventures (I'm an obsessed food-shopper, but aren't we all?), share in cooking with the spoils of the hunt, and generally indicating how well you can do for yourself being a greedy girl in Sydney.

ScottyBoy, all that looks sooo good. I had to Google monkey bread, and promptly passed out from a carb/sugar overload just reading about it. Not that I'd kick it out of bed in the morning, so to speak. gfweb, love the dog holding court in the first pic..just making sure nothing untoward happens to the BBQ, naturally. Soba, that is a beautiful meal..just screams summer. Braised lettuce with mint and peas is a pretty classic preparation, at least in Commonwealth countries - British hangover and all that. You just need a Pimms Cup and some strawberries and cream.

Snark! Was the crust at all gummy where it hit the filling? That is some wild looking hot mustard; I can ALMOST smell it from here, and my eyes are watering! It was pretty damn good, for a shop-bought pie! I didn't detect any gumminess in the crust, but possibly because I was being hyper-vigilante for any dryness, which is a much worse crime IMO. The mustard was indeed HOT (and I doctored it up further towards the end with a bit of horseradish stirred in), but was a perfect accompaniment to the fattiness of the pie. Next: attempt making pork pies myself!

Great review, thanks for posting..your writing is so evocative, it doesn't even need photos! Love the sound of the jowls, and wagyu shortrib. Mm..might have to get myself to Becasse fairly soon.

Shelby - that prawn roe is incredible! I get pretty good seafood here but THAT is gorgeous. C. Sapidus - I'm going to try your rendang, I think. Kim Shook - duck breast looks perfect, and I agree about Dakki's tacos - I'm slightly obsessed with his tortillas..(and no, that's not a double entendre!) They just look so so textural and rustic and..corn-y. Genkinaonna - your (warm?) salad is definitely in my wheelhouse, although would you believe I have NEVER cooked a potato?! Hehe. Parmhero - that is one hell of a burger. The mushrooms must have really upped the umami hit. And dcarch - incredible as usual. That cabbage is just so beautiful against the plate. You are a true artist. Dinner here was more seafood - something I saw a local TV chef make and incredibly, I had all the ingredients on hand..couldn't believe it, that NEVER happens! Anyway, scallop crudo with a shaved fennel, chervil, and lemon zest salad, scattered with broad beans and then crisp maple-glazed bacon crumbled over.

This could be the best breakfast in all of history. it looks AMAZING. Thank you! It was delicious..I do love stem ginger, and I've come to rhubarb late in life so am making up for lost time. Verrry interesting. So you turned all that into a jelly and ate the cubes? Original! Mmm..I've never had proper pulled pork but even the name is evocatively delicious. Breakfast here was quinoa bread, a past-its-prime avocado, chunks of smoked eel and horseradish cream. Followed by a rather large bowl of cumquats.