Abercrombie & Feast

Last Saturday afternoon, at about 5.00pm, Andy and I entered a happy cheese-coma.  We’d eaten so much strong, rich cheese over the course of so many hours that we felt our minds go blank.  Our steps slowed down.  Our eyes glazed over.  We longed to lie down for a rest. 

But, we couldn’t rest!  We were still at Cardiff Castle in Wales, site of the 2009 Great British Cheese Festival.  There were thousands of others just like us… wandering around, dazed by the sheer amount of cheese to be tried. 

It was a perfect autumn Saturday, blue skies and sunshine and cider and live music and cheese, cheese, cheese!  What a celebration of the genius of British cheesemakers.  We tried simple cheddars and gooey white-rind cheeses and Stiltons so strong they made my eyes water.  We had cheese made from cow’s milk, cheese made from goat’s milk, organic cheese and cheese with garlic added in.  All of them different and all of them delicious. 

I’d like to say that we went to Wales to explore the culture and the language and the breathtaking landscapes.  But, honestly, we were there for the cheese.  I’ve been trying to learn more about European cheeses since we arrived in the UK and what better place to start than the Great British Cheese Festival?? 

We took two classes during the day, each led by engaging and funny cheesemakers (are there any other kind???)  We learned what makes blue cheese blue and we learned what makes soft cheese soft.  We learned that we love Stilton and I don’t really like cheeses with other flavours added. 

When the cheese coma finally set in, we reluctantly took our leave of the Cheese Fest.  We plodded through the rolling green park beside the Castle and back to our lovely old B&B.  We napped briefly and dreamt of gooey, stinky, creamy, yummy cheese.  Those were sweet dreams!

A few years ago, for our first wedding anniversary, Andy and I treated ourselves to a week in Thailand.  My brother was living in Bangkok at the time teaching English, so we decided to spend a week in the capital city.  Lots of people head to Thailand and spend 2-3 days in Bangkok, before heading out to the islands or beaches.  We wanted to stay in Bangkok and really see the city itself (plus… I’d already been to the beaches!)

I have to say, this trip was one of our best.  We stayed very close to a SkyTrain station, so the whole city was available to us.  We could go from our hot, sweaty, fast-paced train station to a cool, quiet, serene temple in a matter of minutes.  We trekked to all of the famous sites and palaces and statues, but our favourite place in the city was a tiny outdoor bar near our hotel on Soi 22.

I am having trouble thinking of a way to describe the little outdoor bars that dot the streets of Bangkok.  They aren’t really bars.  They are barely even rooms.  Basically, when the sun goes down, chairs and tables are set up on street corners.  Passers by can grab a table, get a very very cold beer and a little bowl of nuts or rice crackers.  There were 2 corner bars on our street.  They were directly across a small laneway from one another.  You could talk to the people in one bar from the other bar. 

Andy enjoying a beer at our local outdoor bar

Almost every night after our journeys for the day, we would stop at our favourite of the two tiny bars and have a few cold Tiger or Singh beers.  We would smile and make small talk with the friendly lady-boy tending the bar.  We could watch European soccer being played on the tiny, grainy TV nailed to the side of the building.  We could smell the food from the street vendors who come out at night… lemongrass and lime and 5 spice and chilis.  We could see the men driving motorbikes piled high with deliveries to be made.  We could watch the women cook in the little open air restaurants, using just two woks to cook the food for the whole place.  After our 2nd night in a row at this bar, we were treated like locals.  We didn’t even have to order, they just knew us and brought us our beers and peanuts.  The beers were incredibly cheap (most street food in Thailand is outstandingly good and cheap).  Some nights it was tempting not to leave the bar at all, but to stay there, being refreshed and watching our own personal showing of the theatre that occured in the streets of this humid and complex city. 

In the middle of our trip we spent half a day at a Thai cooking class.  This is one of the recipes we learned.  It’s pretty straightforward and doesn’t require any difficult to find ingredients.  It is also, just so you know, really rather authentic.  We had khao pad moo all over Bangkok, for a few reasons.  First, we knew how to pronounce it (cow pad moo) and wouldn’t look stupid trying to order it in tiny little places where English is not spoken.  Second, it is very good.  Of all the recipes we learned in our Thai cooking class, this is the only one I’ve made regularly at home.  In fact, I just made it last Thursday again, which is what prompted me to write this post.  It reminds us of our wonderful trip to Bangkok and our smiling friends at the corner bar on Soi 22. 

Khao Pad Moo

Serves 2

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or peanut oil
1 small onion, diced
1 chili, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
100g pork, cut into small pieces
1 small carrot, diced
1 handful snow pea pods, diced
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups cooked rice, cooled
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2 tablespoons seasoning soy sauce* 
2 spring onions, diced
juice of 1/2 lime

Cucumber slices, lime wedges and chili sauce to serve.

Put the oil in a wok over medium high heat.  Add the onion and the chili and cook for a minute.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

Push the onion mixture to the side and add the pork to the wok.  Stir so it doesn’t stick!  After about 3 minutes (once the pork is no longer pink), add the carrot and cook for 1 minute.  Add the snow peas and cook for 1 more minute. 

Push all of the vegetables and pork to the side of the wok and add the eggs.  Scramble the egg until it is cooked- about 1 minute. 

Add the rice and stir.  Add the sugar and seasoning soy sauce and stir until combined.  Turn the heat off.

Add the spring onion and the lime juice and stir again until well combined.  Taste for seasoning.  Does it need more salt?  Add more soy.  Does it need more tang?  Add more lime juice. 

Serve this with extra chili and spring onion sprinkled on top and slices of lime, cucumer and chili sauce on the side. 

We’ve just returned from a gorgeous long weekend away in Barrington Tops, NSW.  It was my birthday trip this year… all arranged and organised by my outstanding husband.  We stayed in an adorable little B&B, visited national parks with huge sweeping views and small towns with cozy country pubs. 

We enjoyed hot tea and peanut butter toast (my favourite!) for breakfast, cheese platters with crisp white wine in the afternoon, and simple hearty country dinners at night.  Nothing fancy actually.  Just lots of relaxing and enjoying the fresh air and amazing views… and the sunshine!  It is starting to look like spring may actually make an appearance this year and we got our first, long-awaited taste of it this weekend.  It was worth the wait.    

However, the fresh air and restful afternoons of a weekend away do tend to come to a screeching halt during the drive back into Sydney on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  We got back to our apartment in the late afternoon, which gave me enough time to hit the grocery store while Andy returned the car.  I wanted to make something fresh and exciting with enough zing to remind us of the exciting weekend and enough substance to gird us for the bumpy re-entry into city life. 

I know some people won’t think that soup qualifies as exciting… but those people are totally wrong.  And mean.  And probably hate kittens.  This soup was spicy and tangy, with hefty little meatballs and the tart, lip-tingling taste of roasted jalapenos.  This is exactly what I want to eat while I bask in the memories of our time away and enjoy the slow warmth of a spring evening in Sydney. 

Spicy roasted tomato soup with meatballs

Serves 4

For the roasted tomatoes
6 roma tomatoes
1 jalapeno chili (may substitute any spicy chili you like), finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a handful of basil leaves, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbs olive oil

For the meatballs
200g (about 1/4 lb) pork mince
200g beef mince
3 shakes Worstershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

For the soup
4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup very small pasta

Preheat oven to 180C or about 350F.  Slice the tomatoes into quarters and arrange in a single layer in a baking dish.  Sprinkle over the jalapeno, garlic and basil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Pour over the olive oil.  Place the tomatoes in the oven to roast for about 1 hour. 

Meanwhile, put the pork mince and the beef mince in a large bowl.  Add the Worstershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste.  Mix well.  Use this mixture to form small meatballs (about the size of a marble).  Drop the meatballs into a pan of cool water. 

Once you have shaped all the meatballs and added them to the pan, bring the water in the pan up to a boil.  Allow to boil for about 5 mins.  Then, place the top on the pan and remove the pan from the heat.  (This step isn’t strictly required.  I wanted the meatballs to have the very soft texture that they get when they are boiled, rather than baked or fried, but I didn’t want all the fat from the meat in the final soup.  So, by par-boiling them, I got a lot of the fat out first.  You can skip this and drop them right into the tomato soup if you want.  No worries.)

Once the tomatoes are roasted, scoop all of the tomatoes and their juices into a blender or food processor.  Add 1 cup of chicken stock and process for about 1 minute (be careful if it’s too hot!  It will explode!  Let the tomatoes cool for a min first.)

Add the processed tomato mixture to a large soup pot.  Add the remaining chicken stock.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the meatballs from the water they boiled in and add them to the tomato soup.  Allow the soup to simmer for about 20 mins.

About 15 minutes before you are ready to eat, add the pasta to the soup.  The soup is ready when the pasta is done.  The pasta will soak up a lot of the soup, so you might have to add a little more chicken stock or water to get the right consistancy.  I didn’t want it to be very watery, so I didn’t add anything else to mine.

This is great served with a big green salad and good toasted bread sprinkled with Parmesan.  You could also stir some Parmesan or pesto into the soup before you serve it. 

Ahhhh… that’s better! 

We’ve just returned from a weekend away in Port Stephens and it was just what we needed.  Things have been crazy around here, so when I saw a rare (like, bald eagle rare… panda bear rare!) empty weekend in our diaries, I decided we needed to get away, tout de suite!

What is it about a road trip??  If we had stayed home in Sydney with no plans we would have been tempted to be busy.  We would have run errands, gone out to the pub, invited people over, something.  But being away allowed us to indulge in a weekend of not much.  And it was fabulous.  We booked a villa with a huge ocean view, a tiny little hire car and we hit the road on Friday afternoon.

Port Stephens is a sunny little area made up of about 4 or 5 towns just north of Newcastle on the NSW coast.  We arrived at our lovely villa on Friday night, just in time to throw some snags (sausages, saucisses) on the barbie and make a quick salad before watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics from Beijing.  (This is totally off topic, but, as many of you know, I love China and thought the opening ceremonies were just fantastic.)

Saturday we spent the afternoon cruising around the area, having a lovely salad for lunch at a cafe on the water in Shoal Bay and practicing with our new camera.  Observe: 

We spent the early evening reading, playing pool and enjoying some antipasti.  Here’s a picture of our sunset snack:

That’s a bunch of mixed olives, some spiced salami, a creamy blue cheese and, the star of the snack, an Austrian (yes, like the European country, not Australia misspelled) cheese called Ambrosia. 

Now, when I think of Ambrosia I think of my grandmother’s famous dessert.  For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, this is the same grandmother who used to cook pork until you could barely cut it.  Grandmama was a gorgeous woman with a huge laugh and a heart of gold, but a gourmet she was not.  The Ambrosia that she made had baby marshmallows, mandarin oranges from a can, pineapples segments from a can, shredded coconut and something else… Cool Whip perhaps??  I hate marshmallows, so I would always just pick out the mandarin oranges and the pineapples and leave the rest.  It sounds yucky, but I loved those little pieces of fruit.  Possibly because they were sweet and covered in whipped cream, but more likely because Ambrosia was made for me by Grandmama. 

But, I digress… as usual.  The word Ambrosia means something very different to me than “cheese”.  So when I saw this little Austrian Ambrosia, a cows-milk cheese, I was skeptical but willing to take a risk.  Dude.  I’m very glad I did.  It was different from most cheeses I’ve tried.  It was firm like a cheddar, but the flavour was not cheddar-like at all.  It was creamy and mild and a lovely pale yellow colour.  In fact, all of those attributes also describe my grandmother’s Ambrosia, so perhaps I should give her recipe another shot now that I’m all grown up?  Or maybe I will just raise my wine glass to Grandmama whilst I enjoy another slice of this lovely cheese?

Oh boy, the puns never stop around here. 

We’ve just returned from a weekend away in Berry, NSW.  Berry is a charming town about 2 hours south of Sydney (or 3.5 hours if you try to leave after 4pm on Friday- but no worries!)  The trip was to celebrate the birth of Andy as well as the birth of our friend (and favourite Croatian/Canadian) Maja.  Six of us rented a big house complete with a pool, tennis court and putting green- none of which were used.  There was also a huge wrap-around porch, a fireplace, an enormous flat screen TV and a guitar- all of which were used. 

As we were planning the trip we determined that the best way to make use of the house, and to safely drink large amounts of very good red wine, was to stay in and cook dinner for ourselves on Saturday night.  There was a barbie available, so I assumed we’d use that.  However, on Friday morning a cryptic email arrived from a fellow traveller.  Jason wrote us to say that he was bringing “a surprise” for dinner on Saturday night.  We tried to guess what the surprise was (the best guess was a pheasant), but Jason was resolute in his secret keeping. 

Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  We relaxed on the porch with books and glasses of fresh orange juice (there were fruit trees in the yard!  Maja made OJ!  She is Martha Stewart!) 

We went into town for a late lunch at the pub.  It was there, in the beer garden over bowls of cauliflower soup, that Jason revealed his secret…

A PASTA MACHINE!!!

Seriously, I was so excited.  Andy and I took an Italian cooking class a few years ago and we learned how to make fresh pasta.  But we never invested in a pasta maker due to moves / lack of space / blah blah blah… see previous post.  We’ve made pasta at home a few times, but rolling it by hand and trying to cut it using a knife and your finger as a guide does not good pasta make. 

So Jason and I assembled a dough of semolina, ’00′ flour, 5 eggs, a little olive oil, a little salt and a little water.  We kneaded the crap out of it.  We let it rest.  And then, the real fun began.  We made two pasta dishes- tagliatelle with tomato sauce and tortellini with spinach and ricotta stuffing and butter sage sauce.  Everyone got in on the act.  Jason and Andy were in charge of rolling the dough in the machine.  I caught the strands of tagliatelle as they were cut and cut the circles for the tortellini.  Steve managed to totally master the tortellini stuffing and sealing process and set up an assembly line so productive and efficient that Henry Ford would have been jealous.  Maja and Jody carried out the tortellini making process to Steve’s high standards.  It was a pasta-pa-looza!

I have to say, I was really pleased with the results.  Both dishes were excellent.  I didn’t manage to get a picture of the tortellini before it was eaten, but here’s a shot of the tagliatelle. 

Don’t be fooled by the deceptively simple bowl of pasta in the photo above.  It took 6 people to create that!  The pasta was firm and had a wonderful robust texture.  The sauce was sweet with slow cooked tomatoes and was topped with a sprinkling of salty Parmesan cheese.  It went very well with a glass of red wine, a fireplace and some lovely friends.  Happy birthday Andy and Maja!!