Citrus pavlova with pomegranate

I made this recipe for the pavlova: worked fine. On top I put some segmented blood grapefruit and mandarins, passionfruit and pomegranate seeds. I also added some creme fraiche under the fruit. I liked it a lot, even if OTHER PEOPLE were all like "Usually I have BANANA on a pavlova." Whatever, freaks: I like citrusy desserts and I get to make them how I want, so there. This was our Easter Sunday dessert. 

Cup Specialty Coffee

Cup Coffee, Russell St at West End: I will gladly marry every single one of your baristas and have all their babies, if you promise never to close down and never to change. No altering with the years, no upgrades, no tweaking. Just stay frozen in time, just as you are, right now, today.

Today you made me a long black. It changed my life.

This coffee you made me contained not a single tiny trace of bitterness or acidity. I didn't know that was even possible, especially with black coffee. The flavour was not just full: it was rich. It was nuanced. It was full of earth and wind and terroir. It was juicy. It was fat and rippling with life.

I would gladly choose your coffee as my last meal. This is the best coffee in the universe. 10 out of 10.

Plus there is a funky robot on the wall and he is also on the cup itself. That increases the awesomeness to 11.

Aussie truffles welcomed in France

From the Courier Mail, June 23 2011

THE world's top producer of truffles, France is saying 'oui' to our own home-grown tubers.

Almost eighty per cent of Western Australian-based Wine & Truffle Co's 2011 harvest is to be exported to Europe, with France being a particularly strong market.

Australian truffles are even starring on the menu at a dinner for European dignitaries at the Australian Embassy in Paris tomorrow night.

Brisbane based Frenchman, Phillipe Reboul, aka the Truffle Man, said he believed that the French were becoming more aware of Australian grown truffles.

"Some of them are already familiar with Australian truffles and have used them before, others have never heard that we grow them here and are still suspicious."

Mr Reboul left Brisbane for Paris on Wednesday night with a consignment of Australian truffles, which sell for upwards of $2500 a kilo.

"I have an order from a shop in Paris and I plan to visit a few more restaurants in the city to sell more," Mr Reboul said.

The black or Perigord truffle (tuber melanosporum) vary in size from as small as a marble to a kilo or more. They grow in the ground, attached to the roots of hazelnut or oak trees that have been inoculated with truffle spores. Specially trained dogs are used to unearth them.

Currently, Western Australia is the country's biggest commercial producer, but truffles are being grown in all states apart from the Northern Territory.

Harvested in winter from June through to the end of August, the black truffles are being seen as an opportunity to fill the gap between Europe's own opposite season. Last year, the harvest in Australia was approximately 1.7 tonnes compared to France's 50 tonnes, however estimations are that our production could increase by as much as 40 per cent each year as more trufferies start to produce.

PRIVATE BUYERS

DESPITE the hefty price tag, truffles are being snapped up by a surprising number of aficionados, including keen home cooks.

According to Mr Reboul, he is selling as many of the tubers to private buyers in Brisbane as to restaurants.

Fruit shop owner Tass Maniatis, of Superior Fruits in Graceville, says that he's seen a steady increase in private customers in the five years he's been selling them.

"In our first year, we only sold a kilo, in the second year and third years it was three or four kilos, while last year we sold five kilos. This year we hoping to sell at least six or seven kilos."

Mr Maniatis sells the truffles for $25 for 10g, enough, he says for a meal for two.

"We order smaller truffles so that people who might not have had the opportunity to try them before can afford to buy them," Mr Maniatis said.

HOW TO USE TRUFFLES

WHILE truffles are a luxury food, a little goes a long way, says Phillipe Reboul.

"You need to take good care of your truffle, storing it in a moisture-free, sealed environment such as a tuppaware container with a paper towel."

While some people store their truffle in uncooked rice, Mr Reboul says it can draw too much moisture from the truffle and advises storing it with raw eggs, which will absorb the flavour without drying out the truffle.

"Then scramble the eggs with with some thinly grated truffle or grate about 20g of truffle into 100g of a really good butter and mix," he said.

"It's fantastic on meat or steamed veg and you only need a very small amount."

Mr Reboul warns not to use one of the old fashioned 'punched hole' graters but a microplane which will grate the truffle wafer thin .

"Use a microplane grater instead, which can grate the truffle wafer-thin and try to use your truffle as soon as possible to get the best from it," he says.

Cupstart: online coffee ordering

Pre-ordering your coffee and collecting it on the run from your local cafe. What a good idea. Obviously there will be more locations available soon, but in the meantime I hope they get enough business to keep it rolling.

Cherry pavlova

Inspired by Margaret Fulton's Christmas pavlova.

My version involves a jar of sour morello cherries, the juice reduced with a tiny bit of sugar, unsweetened whipped cream, and tons of fresh cherries.

Good news for pork

Coles has announced that it will be phasing out pork that comes from sow stall-using producers.
Good news for animal rights, mindful carnivores and pigs everywhere.

Garden drama

Some photos I took in the back yard.

Gail Sorronda headpiece

I WANT IT NOW.

Bluesfest and beach pipis

So... we went to Byron Bay for the Bluesfest, aka the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival.

Lotta mud. Lotta hippies. Lotta wannabes and shouldabeens and hipsters: also a fair sprinkling of ACTUALLY cool people, like the old dude wearing the shirt that said "OLD GUYS RULE", the Zen Buddha hippies in all-white shrouds watching the ska band, the freaks with pink rooster feathers in their hair and the middle-aged diehards wearing shirts from the original Festival in 1990.

They put down a billion tonnes of cedar chips to soak up the mud and create some sort of dry walking surface. As the chips were trampled and trod, you could smell the sweet cedar mingling with the fairy floss, ginger nectar, bourbon and hot chips. Good times.

Anyway, we also spent a lot of time beachside out at Pottsville, communing with nature. I lay on the beach and contemplated the insignificance of human life. It was healthy.

Karen went for a giant beach walk and came back with a shirtful of pipis. I was all like, "You don't know how to cook THOSE", and she was all like, "Yuh-HUH", and then I was all like, "Fine, let's SEE it, then, smart guy." And she was all, "I'm going to put them in the seafood marinara". And I said, "Huh."

Then she boiled them up in the saucepan and put them in the marinara. They looked great, tasted juicy and sweet. Unfortunately we didn't soak them in the fresh water for long enough, cos they didn't have enough time to hawk up all the sand that was within their flesh. Pretty gritty. Note to self. Soak pipis more.

But I learned that even in this modern interweb age, one can still find and eat something from nature without dying from germs or lack of third-party insurance.

Lamingtons

Happy Australia Day! I made this lovely lamington recipe (from the paper.)

Lamingtons

5 eggs

50g caster sugar

70g cornflour

70g plain flour

70g self-raising flour

Grease a 30cm x 20cm tin and line it. Preheat oven to 160C. Beat eggs and sugar in mixer for 5 mins or until light and fluffy. Sift in the flours and fold gently to combine. Pour in tin, bake 20-25 mins or until skewer is clean.

Let it cool completely in the tin. Split it lengthways with a serrated knife (I had to divide it into quarters first) and spread the inside with jam. I used strawberry, heated a bit to make it easier. Cut the filled cake int0 5cm cubes.

Make the icing: 250g icing sugar, 50g cocoa powder and 150ml boiling water. Mix till smooth. Carefully toast 250g of dessicated coconut VERY LIGHTLY- you want it still mostly white with a few flecks of caramel colour.
Dip each cube into the chocolate and then straight into the coconut. Teatime.

Jocelyn's melting moments

From Jocelyn's Provisions: yum.

Paula Walden jewellery

Ooooh.

Lightly Asian birthday dinner

This was really lovely. Light, delicate flavours, great company, simple quality food.

Ginger fried prawns

Whole steamed coral trout with soy, ginger and shallots

Jasmine rice

Thai salad with peanut chilli dressing

Raspberry lime pavlova

The pav was interesting. See how tall and round it is? Yeah, it's basically hollow. I thought the deadweight of the cream and berries would implode it. Originally I made another pav, one whose recipe I followed off the interweb and mindlessly set the oven to the temperature stated. Forty minutes later, I smelt brown. The oven was too high, too soon, and the outside was caramelised and crispy. Still good, but NOT GOOD ENOUGH. So I cried for a while and went through the seven stages of grief in about twenty minutes, then went for Attempt 2. This one was tall, smooth and completely white in an unashamedly Aryan dessert mindset. The toppings were inspired by something in last weekend's paper which I forgot to keep. Whip some cream and then smash a punnet of raspberries through it: pile on pavlova. Sprinkle more fresh raspberries on and then grate some lime zest, and dust with icing sugar.

Originally I wanted to also add lychees (for the Asian theme) but they were grey and ugly against the whiteness. Also wanted to add fresh pink rose petals and intended to purloin them from next door's rose garden, but she must have read my mind because all the roses were cut when it was fence-sneaking time.

The candles are set into balls of tinted fondant around the edge of the platter.

The sharpness of the berries and lime, the unsweetened cream and the melting shell-like pavlova all combined beautifully. It was said that this was the best pav/fruit combo EVER. Perhaps I agree.

Meat tray

The Great Aussie Meat Tray.

I finally won my first meat tray at the work Christmas party raffle.

Score!

The steak meat got chopped up and made into the filling for my Christmas Eve meat pie. The lamb chops and snags made a lovely old-timey mixed grill for dinner. Eggs went in the fridge. Rissoles got frozen. Pork chops still awaiting their assignment.

I didn't realise how useful the meat tray was until I got one- but it seems its days might be numbered.

Also, click here.

Hummingbird Lager

Apparently, girls, this is made just for us.

Much like we are addressing an oversight of female artists, we are also
addressing an oversight for female drinkers by bringing you a light refreshing
beer created especially for women - Hummingbird Blonde Lager. Australian women drink over 44 million cases of beer a year but there wasn't one beer made
especially for them. Lower in carbohydrates, a smaller 275mL bottle, light and
fresh tasting with a hint of citrus -Hummingbird Blonde Lager by Cruiser is
something for the girls to enjoy.

Anyone tried it yet? It's made by the same mob who do Vodka Cruisers, so that's already a turnoff. Seems like they want to appeal to 19 year olds who are trying to look classy in front of their 18 year old mates. Perhaps not really a grown women's beer. Then again, maybe it tastes great, what do I know?

They are milking the whole thing at the moment with their 100 Top Female Artists campaign. Much as I admire the sentiment, it all seems a little too cold and calculated for my liking.