Closed for maintenance

I will be away for a while, travelling through Paris, northern France and London. Unfortunately the ticket that I have to the opening night of the Michael Jackson comeback tour will now be a memorial ticket, but nevertheless. I will return in a few weeks with photos, stories and memories. Feel free to snoop around and rat through my stuff until I get back.

Paris street food

Ah, Paris. I'll be there in just a few short weeks: five days of bliss, tramping around the French capital, poking into walled courtyards, ferreting out sunny gardens, smearing my grimy paws on every shiny windowpane in sight, avoiding Eiffel towers and museums, digging out the juiciest strawberries at the market, inhabiting every last dishevelled cafe in every grotty side street, nursing cafe cremes and Le Figaro for hours on end. Bliss.

Why? Because I can. And because the catacombs are open again for business, after renovations, and it's high time I was exploring skeleton-lined underground caverns and dreaming of Valjean's tunnel escape in Les Miserables.

One of the real delights of Paris is food, but not the high-end restaurant classics, or even the mid-level salades composees and bistro standards. It's the street food: the stuff prepared by dubious-looking immigrants and entrepreneurial fingersmiths on every street corner, with nothing more than a hole-in-the-wall to sell from or a portable hotplate. Street food varies according to the seasons, and in winter you'll find a roaring trade in crepes spread with Nutella and hot roasted chestnuts outside Galeries Lafayettes.

In summer, things are a little different. I have a soft spot for the ubiquitous jambon beurre, a crusty baguette section split down the middle and stuffed with fresh cold butter and fat slices of carved leg ham. Sitting on a bench in one of the gravel-lined Parisian parks, the sun on your back, unwrapping the thin paper that wraps your simple sandwich and taking your first big bite is a plain and exquisite pleasure.

Less simple but just as lovely is the merguez-frites. Better for when you crave an injection of something hot, salty, meaty and juicy: a baguette stuffed with spicy North-African sausage and hot chips, sometimes with tomato, chili or garlic sauce as well.

Footpath vendors sometimes also have little containers of tabouleh, layered with hard-boiled egg, red onion, mint, basil and lemon juice. These are incredibly light and refreshing after a morning's walking and sightseeing over hard cobblestoned streets.

Alternatively, if you are more the deep-fried snacktacular calorie-feaster, go for the brik a l'oeuf. This is a square of light puff pastry, deep-fried and with a runny fried egg inside. It's tasty but not all that filling and only really good with a vinegary salad to cut the oil content.

If you have a serious sweet tooth, then beignets are for you. I confess that I have never been able to eat an entire beignet, for the extreme sugar content is just too much for me. However I am in the minority and most people fall into ecstatic raptures over a fresh beignet. Think of a doughnut with no hole, crispily fried, dredged in grainy sugar and oozing a thick filling of chocolate or fruit. With a coffee, on a cool morning, I concede that this must be a good thing.

KFC Cayan Grill

What the hell is that?
What the hell is that word?

Is it cayenne?
Is it caiman?

No, it's cayan.

I have NEVER seen that word before. This is not a good sign, KFC. Google has no idea what it means, either. All the official KFC website tells us is that the Cayan Grill has herbs and spices on it, and it's grilled. As in, not fried. As in, trying to simultaneously alienate and win over the respective 50%s of KFC's market share.

Not a major KFC fan, unfortunately, except for the occasional stress-induced snack pack of popcorn chicken. However, this new menu item confuses me deeply and I wish to know whether or not it is a NEW FLAVOUR and if so WHAT FLAVOUR IS IT. And please stop inventing words that have no meaning, just random onomatopoeic associations with New Orleans.

WILL THE MADNESS EVER END?

Best boulangeries in Paris

Very useful...

Yellow roses and tulips

Campbell's Fully Loaded Can

He's hungry for danger
He can take the heat
Fully loaded man's got balls of meat
Over the edge
Flying through the sky
Fully loaded man, he could probably die
Time to slam a fully loaded can
A fully crammed dinner feast
For a meat, veg and pasta fan
Fully loaded can!



Those are the lyrics, apart from line seven which I can't really work out. Let me know if you can tell what he's saying! *update* sorted now- thanks!
How awesome is this ad? Seems like this is the kind of unashamed testosterone festival that we've been missing on Aussie TV recently. Compare the Fully Loaded Man with the Perfect Italiano metrosexual:



Looks like there's a fine line between 'metrosexually appealing' and 'pansy'. Personally, I feel the Perfect Italiano man would grow dull after a while. He can cook, he understands interior design, he is well-groomed and owns a functional set of emotions, but where's the excitement? Where's the PASSION? WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Cake Week

It was my birthday about a week ago. My office is full of creative, sweet-toothed people who all love birthdays, as it gives us all a chance to eat cake. We also love chocolate. There was that time last year when someone announced at 3pm that we needed chocolate, and then proceeded to return from the supermarket with a full plastic bag of various forms of sweetened cocoa. We scoffed it all. Then there was the time I recieved a gift box containing about 2 kilos of Cocoa Farm wine-infused chocolate. It took us three days to empty the box. And there aren't that many of us: about seven or eight. Anyway, you can see how seriously we take our sugar. The office motto is 'work hard, play hard, and don't forget the icing.' It was in the midst of this caffeine, cocoa and sugar-fueled carnage that someone, about three weeks ago, dropped the following question that was to change the course of all our lives drastically.

"Hey, your birthday's coming up. Who's making the cake?"

"I am."

"What? Why are you making your OWN cake? Shouldn't one of us make it and bring it in?"

"Nope, you're all too hopeless. My birthday cake needs to be really good."

WELL. You'd have thought I'd suggested cannibalism. There was much heated discussion and loaded statements about over-confidence and misunderstood abilities and general unfairness.

To their credit, they did concede I usually did a pretty good job of cakery, based on the lemolina cake and the Easter cupcakes. And so, a devilish plan was hatched.

Cake Week was born. It was decided that each of them would enter a cake into a competition that I would judge. There would be criteria, guidelines, scoring and an ultimate winner, who would receive blog recognition. We would judge one cake per day. It was a pretty good setup. People were getting very serious about the whole thing, and as each day drew to a close, we would all check the fridge door for the next day's entry and have a general discussion about the competition so far.

Specific scores and a copy of the Cake Week criteria are still to come, but here is a list of the official entries:

Orange and Poppyseed Cake (not pictured)

Sponge Cake

Lime Chiffon Cake

Black Forest Cake

Bouquet Cake (BouqCake)

And wasn't it a close-run contest! The winner, not by much, was the BouqCake. Gorgeous fresh little citrusy cupcakes, with a light buttercream topping and decorations, in the shape of a bouquet. The winner used a styrofoam ball covered in toothpicks to impale each cake before wrapping it in fancy paper. I couldn't fault it in freshness, lightness, flavour, presentation and effort. Coming very close behind were the Lime Chiffon and the Orange Poppyseed, as well as the very well-presented Black Forest. Props to the Sponge, whose creator bought an actual piece of round sponge from Clark Rubber before coating it in cream and marshmallows. It was an awesome move: we were rolling on the floor laughing for hours.

Congratulations to everyone for their efforts in Cake Week. You helped me get six cakes out of one birthday and I have new respect for other people's cakery skills!

We all enjoyed it so much, we're thinking about having Soup Week next.

Homemade hot chips

These are Dad's masterpiece. Ever since I can remember, we've been spoilt at home, chipwise. Unfortunately my efforts to duplicate these have been beyond pathetic. Luckily, he is around to prepare these perfect, crispy and fluffy hot chips at a moment's notice.

Dad slices his spuds, dries the starch off, then does them in two fries. The first fry is to cook them through, and the second fry crisps them up. Then comes the best part: he unfolds the newspaper onto the table and shakes salt and pepper all over it. Then he tips the piping-hot crunchy chips onto the paper, folds up the parcel, and gives it a good shake. Then he decants the potato parcel into a serving bowl. One day I will be able to do this without stuffing it up: until then, thanks Dad.

Ten secrets of a perfect roast chicken

Use the knowledge wisely, grasshopper.

1. Select well thy bird. Use a large chicken, organic, hormone-free, free-range, etc. Good quality. Anything else and you take your life into your hands.
2. Choose your seasonings. Tarragon is traditional, French and best. Chinese five-spice also very good. Garlic always lovely.
3. Loosen skin over breast with your hand, without breaking it. Under the skin, stuff some herbs and/or spices, and some olive oil. Rub over the breast meat and replace the skin.
4. Anoint with olive oil and a tiny pinch of salt. Rub in well. I also usually squeeze a lemon over it and shove the empty halves inside.
5. Skewer openings at both ends closed. No gaps = no juices being lost.
6. Truss loosely.
7. LOW oven, about 150C. Say NO to searing heat, NO to quickly-crisped skin.
8. Sit chicken on its side. Turn onto other side halfway through.
9. Long cooking time. You cannot roast a quick perfect chicken. About 2 hours.
10. REST chicken under tin foil out of oven for at least 15 minutes.

French autumn lunch

We had Mothers' Day a week late at our place. On the real Mothers' Day, family members were variously in Sydney, Melbourne, Jervis Bay, Brisbane and Goondiwindi. So we regrouped to have a special lunch the following week.

I created this simple French-styled autumn lunch for Mum.

Pouilly-Fumé

Pork rillettes with cornichons

Sourdough baguette with continental butter

Roast tarragon and lemon chicken

Bitter leaves with chevre, walnut and pear and a verjuice dressing

Tarte Tatin with creme fraiche

I think probably the standout could have been the tart. This was the first time I had made a tarte tatin and on the day before, I realised I had packed away my cast-iron frittata pan which would have been perfect to use for the tart. Luckily Executive Chef had plenty there and I got another one cheaply. The tart came from Patricia Wells' The Paris Cookbook. She has a very simple and effective recipe for pate brisee (crumbly shortcrust pastry) which worked a treat.

She also says to use the right apples. I used Pink Lady and I think it was a great choice.

There were no real problems making the tart. Probably, the most complicated thing was tipping it out onto the serving plate. The stovetop part was easy and low-stress. The New Farm Deli had lovely creme fraiche. I am definitely making this again!

Chicken-wise, all was well. This is the same roast chicken that I always make, except with the tarragon included. It was in the oven for about 2 and a quarter hours.

Salad- no real issues to speak of.

The rillettes were a bit of a find, at James St Grocer. I had been hunting high and low for ingredients to make my own terrine, but trying to find chicken livers and hard pork back fat in this town with no notice is impossible. If anyone knows a butcher that stocks this stuff without ordering in, I will be forever grateful. Anyway the terrine didn't happen and luckily I stumbled on the rillettes, made by a company in Noosa called French Sin. Basically, rillettes are a fancy version of potted meat. Like confit, but shredded. I have had lovely rillettes in France, solidified with a layer of goose fat on top and with a beautiful creamy texture. These ones were different, more shredded-looking and without much fat at all. Same but different. They were about $20 for a large pot, and they also make a duck and cherry version.

We spread the rillettes on crusty sourdough from the Rock n' Roll Bakery on Logan Rd at Greenslopes.

Pouilly-Fume is a dry French white wine. Dan Murphy's has a few good ones.

Bitter leaves salad

• baby spinach leaves, rocket, arugula, etc
• about 50g fresh goat cheese ( I use President imported, can get it at good cheese delis)
• handful walnuts, toasted
• 1 lovely Corella pear
• 1 tbsp Verjuice
• 1 tbsp Light olive oil
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper
• Juice of 1 mandarin

Finely slice the pear. Wash and arrange the leaves in a serving dish. Place the pear over the leaves. Sprinkle over the crumbled cheese and walnuts. Whisk the oil, juice, verjuice, mustard and salt together to taste. Pour over and season with pepper.

Tarte Tatin

• 6-8 perfect big Pink Ladys
• 150g sugar
• 150g unsalted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pate brisee, rolled out into a 23cm round and refrigerated

Peel, core and halve the apples each way, once through the width and once through the height. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the bottom of a deepish 24cm cast iron fry pan that can go in the oven. Slice the butter and arrange slices over the sugar. Drizzle over extract. Arrange apple pieces in pan as tightly as possible. Place on EXTREMELY LOW heat on stovetop for about an hour. Try to baste the apples with the liquid if you can. No burnination should occur! Eventually you will have a panful of cooked apples, buttery juices and some caramelisation happening on the bottom. Remove from heat, sit the circle of pastry over the apples and tuck in the sides. Put pan on a baking sheet. Bake in preheated 220C oven for about 25mins or until pastry is golden. If it bubbles over the sides of the pastry, fine. When done, have serving plate (with a lip) ready. CAREFULLY and QUICKLY invert searing-hot pan over plate. If apples stick, just peel them off and re-attach. Serve at room temperature or warm. Delicious!

Spray roses and paper-whites

From Perrott's Florist, Newfarm. These were beautiful.

Viktor & Rolf

Looking for a new perfume yesterday. Wandering through Myer in a vaguely bored dozy state, barely registering the umpteen new fragrances from Sarah Jessica Parker, Kylie Minogue, J.Lo, Britney, blah blah blah. Every single one of those lame perfumes always smells super sweet and like a tryhard teenager to me. Pass. There was a new one from Gucci which I liked. The Marc Jacobs range is always lovely. My favourite though was Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf, the Swedish nutcase design team who created paperclip eyelashes and 3-D word dresses.
Plus, the advertisement design below is beautiful. I love my new fragrance.

Easter roses

Maternity cake

Dad and I made this tonight. It's a plain vanilla cake, coated with apricot jam, white fondant and coloured fondant pieces. I designed the womanly outline and made the coloured pieces: Dad did the piping and the edging. He used to be a baker, so he's a handy man with the icing bag. We used royal icing for the lot. It's for someone at his work who's leaving to have a baby (obviously...) and we didn't feel quite ready for the big ball-shaped boobs and belly cakes.

Perhaps Dad and I can graduate to those.

Masterchef Australia

Have you seen that Masterchef Australia ad where the contestants chop and throw and jump and set fire to things in slow motion? Let's watch it now.


That dude cracking the egg is pretty cute. Shame about the hairdo. He needs a nice little side clip. Anyway, from this ad, it seems that the producers are attempting to create a picture in the viewers' minds as to what they can expect from Masterchef: INTENSE, SEXY and BRUTAL. Intense I can go. Sexy is in the eye of the beholder, fortunately, and if my egg-cracking friend there gets a fringe trim and decides to indulge in some apron-only poses for the camera, I could be there. Brutal: I doubt it. After Ramsay none of us will ever be the same again. But we'll see: that Animal Farm-guy raising his eyes at the end looks like he might have a few expletives up his sleeve. Hopefully.