when I grow up...

when i was very young I wanted to be a ballerina. my favourite story was "the little ballerina" - a book my parents tired of quickly, and one I knew so well that if mum tried to skip a page to hasten the proceedings I would pull her up and let her know I wanted the whole story.

somewhere along the line i dropped this ambition; puberty wasn't kind to me and unless they had a ballerina troupe for elephants, unemployment was an odds-on prospect. I decided I was going to be a pilot; goodness knows why, although it probably has more to do with my dad, his travels, and we talked about planes.

In my final year of school considering being a doctor. I missed out on the marks - a good slice of fate, as i have a particularly sensitive nose and start dry reaching as soon as i smell vomit, and don't particularly like anything squishy, slimy, bloody or ugly.

for the past few (perhaps 10) years i have thought that my dream job would be "restaurant reviewer". Can you imagine dining out as an occupation, getting the scoop on the newest, the greatest, and the tastiest? or so I thought until last week...

my family went out for my mother's birthday to a picturesque establishment on Sydney's north shore hosting a menu that is, prima facie, reasonably priced (nothing over $30) with a easy to please list of dishes. Its location is so discreet that we got there and turned around before calling and finding that we had been in the right location. once seated, our bottle of bubbles was surrendered to join the other bottles that had been brought to imbibe.

to begin we ordered stuffed zucchini flowers amongst us to share. I was gobsmacked when they arrived. these were not the luscious fertile looking zucchini flowers plump with soft cheese and tender stalks that I had become accustomed to at cafe sopra. on the plate sat 3 tiny, wilted, anaemic looking zucchini butts, with chewy petals, the batter sitting heavily upon them, and the caponata resembling more of a cold leftover ratatouille. we smiled our way on, pleading the staff to fill our now empty glasses with some of our wine that we had brought and they had hidden.

and then the mains arrived. I rarely order pasta out; i think it's a waste of money to pay for pasta, but on the night a prawn angel hair pasta fitted my mood and so I (and my sister) had ordered that. "be careful the plates are hot" warned the waiter as she popped our plates on the table and the next set of alarm bells started ringing in my head.

smiling to keep the peace, I sarcastically thought to myself "excellent, my meal has been sitting under a heat lamp for 10 minutes".

the rest of the meals came and the table tucked in. the pasta had been garnished with ever-so-fashionable micro mix, which had fallen foul to the heat lamp and resembled the remnants of dried oregano sprigs that you find in the bottom of the bag. The pasta had been overcooked and was in danger of turning to one single rope. The prawns were tough; they'd been cut in half (which i have no issue with) but as such don't need much cooking. the 10 minutes under the heat lamp would have been enough for these babies but i suspect they were well done before they got there.

the other meals on the table were steak - a safe and simple choice, cooked quite well and the best choice of the night, duck -which had the trademarks of the pre-cook preparation, and then a speedy reheat, and something else which was unmemorable. desserts were nice, but unremarkable, coffee for those that wanted, a bit more begging for the last of our wine (which I meanly poured the dregs into glasses to ensure the staff weren't actually trying to keep it for post-work drinks) and off we went.

I had a lovely evening. eating, and dining out, is something I am pretty good at, however frequenting good restaurants is a habit that I am currently unable to support. But if I could afford it, if I had paid for that meal, I would have been bitterly disappointed. Despite this establishment touting its "reasonable prices" I felt that it was anything but reasonable.

with good produce and simple execution it is really hard to bugger up something in the kitchen. yet time after time 'professionals' manage to do this; particularly in mid-range eateries. My comments on this are usually met with "but you've had a privileged life with parents that can cook" or words to that effect.

cooking was once a skill of survival - eat or die; now having someone, let alone all of us, do it well in a family is a privilege?

but back to my dream job... I realised that if I reviewed restaurants in a professional capacity, tolerating such mediocrity and finding words to describe them, without landing myself and my publishers in a defamation case, would be a very bad dream.

just so cool!

apparently I am too cool for school! 

well,  not really. 

I have never considered myself much of a trend setter, but I do like to think I have my finger on the pulse...

after mentioning a certain "dead wood" blog last week, this week the aforementioned blog has a post somewhat similar to this post...

I cast no aspersions, simply point out that it brought a rather wry smile to my face...

tell me though, would you eat something that looked like what's in the picture (linked above for reference) posted? no wonder there are left overs!!!

who ate all the pies?

read the article here

blood from a stone

Woolworths, Australia's largest supermarket chain expects profit in fiscal 2008 to rise by between 19 and 23 percent over the previous year.

It's not clear however how CEO, Michael Luscombe, intends to do this; the article notes that he believes competition in the food area was very strong, and notes that grocery prices had become an issue in the current federal election campaign.

"Essentially, I just want to reassure you about the efforts Woolworths is making to keep prices as low as possible for our customers whilst ensuring a fair return for suppliers,'' he said.

although according to another report Woolworths' food prices rose by 2.2 per cent between April and June this year.

do you believe him and if so, where are these massive increases in profitability going to come from?

see the article as published in the Sydney Morning Herald

S.O.L.E. straightforward

the bloggers' banquet in Melbourne this week was a great opportunity to meet, as Anne of Green Gables would say, some kindred spirits, to discover new ideas even find a new talent of my own.

I marvelled at Duncan's macarons, the vast quantity of Ed's pizza dough, the delicious toppings brought by many others, Vida's haloumi (and apparently her cake was beyond sublime), Ella's prosciutto wrapped asparagus and balsamic strawbs with cream, Jane's barramundis on oh-my-goodness-it's-sublime porcini risotto, John's array of wonton & meatballs and Emily's macaroni cheese patty pans and peanut clusters to name but a few... photos on flickr

One of the things however that struck me, albeit later in conversation with others who had enquired, was the magnificence of the food brought to the communal table in all its simplicity. That's not to say that no effort was made, au contrare! simplicity in the best possible way - lacking complication, unnecessary refinement, embellishment, ornamentation. in fact, just taking plain old good ingredients and making them into great food. which brings me to the real point of this post...

the application of straightforward simplicity to every day food without spending a bomb to do so.

take the everyday sandwich. millions across the nation are eating them on any given day. many of them, maybe most of them, are full of overprocessed and refined foods - some white bread, possibly artificially enhanced with fibre and omega-3, "cheese" that next to the real deal tastes like anything but, processed meats if you're lucky, and a piece of stale old lettuce, over 2 weeks old by the time it comes home from the supermarket, void of any nutritional qualities.

yet the sandwich need be anything but humble with a little of thought.



sandwiches are a great way to use up leftovers - the random piece of steak from last night thinly sliced, pickings of chicken off the carcass, left over casseroles, takeaways and salads. one of my favourites when I was at school was the leftover chicken from a curry that my mum made frequently. of course line the bread with something less permeable - lettuce or something, to stop the bread from going soggy if you aren't going to eat straight away.


here's one version:

• bread was sourced from am local bakery specialising in sustainable grains and baking techniques. whilst a 750g loaf will cost about $5.60 a 1kg loaf is about $7.20 making it, on an pound for poud basis, relatively affordable.


• the dressing/mayonnaise i used was home made, using local, free range eggs.


• the lettuce came from salads direct, based in the huntervalley and practicing sustainable farming practices


• the tomatoes were purchased at Flemington and grown in the Sydney basin. I roasted them at home.


• the chicken was from a local wholesale butcher - sourced indirectly from La Ionica using chemically free processing methods.


• some salt (Horizon salt - from ancestral subterranean streams in the Loddon Valley and cheaper than other salt flakes on the market) and pepper (can't tell you where this came from I'm afraid.

the cost? well bugger all really, as most of it was stuff I had bought for other things, and this was what I did with it. eating well, eating sustainably, eating relatively healthily is straightforward as long as you are prepared to flex a little creativity and get on with it!