Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Not strictly food related post per se but these are nice colourful tulips damnit. I wish to write about them. If food, shoes and books are my three favourite things in the world, colourful, interesting flowers sure come fourth.

Tesselaar Tulip Festival happens once a year from mid September to mid October which is the Melburnian tulip season. It’s in Silvan which is up in the Mount Dandenongs area. It’s gorgeous up there this time of the year. Every house seems to be glowing with stacks of flowers.

We went there on the food, wine and jazz weekend (they have a different theme every weekend). There were quite a few food and wine stalls and each person was given tokens for wine tasting (or a free coffee) which we completely missed out on. Read the rest of this entry »

And so it was the day after New Year’s Day of 2009, and we, newly married on the second leg of our honeymoon, found ourselves wandering along Shijo-dori in the famous Gion district of Kyoto.

(Yasaka Shrine, Gion, Kyoto)

A little fact about Japan: the Japanese visit temples on around New Year’s Eve and shrines on after New Year period. And Gion happened to have one of the most popular ‘first-shrine-visit-of-the-year’ shrines, the Yasaka-jinja. Our guide book said that the Japanese visit the shrines to received blessings from the gods but the author had reckoned that if you managed to visit the Yasaka-jinja on New Year’s Day and not be trampled by the crowd, it meant that the gods do indeed bless you. Sure he was attempting humour, but when you were squeezing through the crowd two days after New Year (read: not even the busiest day of the year), you began to wonder how other people survived!

(Spotted a lady walking her pet pigs in one of the lane ways off Shijo-dori)

Guess what? Pretty much the entire Shijo-dori (the main street of Kyoto) was just as packed and most of the restaurants had closed for the new year. Every other restaurant that opened had queues so long like you wouldn’t imagine. Luckily, we stumbled onto an izakaya (a Japanese-style pub). As in my previous post, we had been staying away from izakaya because of the concentration of smokers in pubs but on the day we had no choice since nothing was opened and we were starving!

So we went in and at the counter (at that point we were so grateful to even find a place that didn’t have queues to Hokkaido) and were given menu in English (yay!). Read the rest of this entry »

Last post on my Central Australia trip. Yay! Are you guys bored of reading about it yet?

(Bush food – an Aboriginal survival presentation at Alice Springs Desert Park)

We spent the last two nights in Alice Springs before travelling back to Melbourne. We drove from Alice Springs to Adelaide (yes in one day) before a stop over in Adelaide and then back to Melbourne the next day. I don’t think I can ever drive that much in one day again.

(Joshua’s kinda carbonara)

Just some quick pictures of a few meals that we cooked ourselves in Alice Springs as we were back to having a fully equipped kitchen. We did a round of fresh food shopping at Coles in Alice Springs, which was rather big and very stocked.

(the carbonara sauce, recipe here)

Josh made spaghetti carbonara, his usual way with mushrooms and capsicum. We had it for lunch back at the apartment one day.

I made stir-fried beef with onion, chilli and snow peas (recipe here, just add snow peas).

The snow peas were nice at the supermarket so I bought them instead of green beans. I served it with rice and omelet soup.

(omelet soup)

Omelet soup!?! Yep. Omelet soup. I might talk about it sometime later to include recipe but now is not the time.

Also made some more pasta sauce (with broccoli, zucchini, olives, bacon and capsicum) using the Leggo’s stir-through sauce for lunch on the road.

(rock wallaby)

And that concludes most of the foods that had been consumed during my time away from home! I shall leave you with some pictures of a cute rock wallaby at the Heavitree Gap resort in Alice Springs and Adelaide’s West Beach.

More Melbourne eating from now on!

Note: Lots of pictures in this post. Sorry about the load time.

(Seriously)

King’s Creek Station is a bit of a tourist spot on the way to Watarrka National Park (King’s Cayon), they have a service station with a diner, helicopter rides, quad bikes and camel rides. All of which were very expensive by Melbourne standard. We went off to see the beautiful King’s Canyon at Watarrka National Park, which was amazing. Unfortunately, due to lack of choices in lunch, we stopped there for quick steak sandwiches.

(steak sandwich with the lot – $12.00)

The beef was a bit of a piece of tough old boot really. At one point when we were talking about camel riding, Mum stopped chewing and asked, ‘Um, what kind of meat is this? It’s not camel, is it?’

The ‘lot’ included fried egg, bacon, cheese, caramelised onion, tomato, lettuce, tomato and barbecue sauces. I’d say it was rather yummy despite the really tough bit of beef. But then again, it was 2pm and we had been hiking through King’s Canyon. We were starving!

And now for some obligatory pictures from the Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Watarrka National Parks:

The Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) at sun set

In chronological order:

Kata Tjuta (the Olgas)

The Uluru (up close)

(Yes, the tiny dots are the people)

King’s Canyon

Don’t have too many pictures from King’s Canyon without people in it:

And then we headed on to the town of Alice Springs. Ah, the Alice.

(Ayer’s Rock Resort’s communal kitchen at around 9pm)

Wow I never thought I would ever do this. I figured I have already missed my boat on the whole backpacking/youth hostel thing. We were camping out at the camp ground at the Ayer’s Rock Campground near the Uluru-Kata Tjutu National Park because I planned the whole trip out in two days and I couldn’t get us reasonable accommodation that didn’t cost, like, $500 a night. So sleeping in a tent, it was.

(the choice of cooking implements were sadly lacking)

It seemed like, though, that everyone around us was well prepared and came with their own portable stove and cooking equipment. We only had some provisions, plates and cutleries and a billy can! I actually planned to just buy food there but the choice was so sadly lacking that when we by chance discovered the communal kitchen, I decided that I would hit the supermarket and make us some food. It was absolutely packed at first but once we made a trip to the supermarket and came back, the crowd had died down and the kitchen was nice and empty.

(I didn’t realise there was a water boiler there, I actually set a huge wok to boil some pasta)

To the certain extent I was prepared for everything to cost more, but I didn’t expect everything to nearly double in price! Amazingly, the only thing that wasn’t double in price was the steak. They loved their steak out there. That was the only thing in that entire Ayer’s Rock Resort IGA that didn’t cost much more than it would in Melbourne!

(pasta sauce with broccoli, zucchini and bacon)

So I ended up making us two meals there on both nights we camped there. The first night I made pasta with vegetables and bacon, having all the ingredients from the box. The second night, Mum insisted on some more meat and so I made green curry with beef and mushrooms and stir-fried lettuce with bacon.

(we had salad every night)

Things I already had in the provision box (some of which desperately needed to be used up):

1. 1 x 500g. fusili
2. 1 jar of Leggo’s Stir-Through pasta sauce
3. 2 slices of bacon
4. an iceberg lettuce
5. cooking oil
6. fish sauce
7. seasoning soy sauce
8. salt
9. green curry sauce (Mum bought this in Thailand so it really wasn’t so bad)
10. 2 tomatoes
11. 1/2 broccoli
12. 1/2 zucchini
13. 3 x mushrooms

(our pasta mean on the first night)

The rest I had to acquire at the supermarket, of course. I cut up some bacon, broccoli and zucchini. I stir-fried them in a bit of oil and added the Chilli, Tomato and Olive Stir-through pasta sauce in this mildly-filthy frying pan that I had to stir with a bent-up ladel. The shared equipment’s cleanliness had a lot to be desired I have to admit. Mum insisted on rewashing everything but some of the burnt on filth just wouldn’t come off. Ah well. The food they were selling there didn’t look much more appetising though! I’d rather have something I made!

(pasta dinner for three, cooked in a communal kitchen, served in provided bowls)

I ended using all of the pasta and sauce and we had some for lunch the next day (we needed to energy to climb the Uluru!)

(green curry with beef and mushroom, this is me breaking every Thai cooking rule here)

The second night saw us procuring some very nice and reasonably priced scotch fillets, which Mum promptly grilled up (in a wok I might add as it was the only thing we could lay our hands on because we went in during peak time on that day). I sliced the other one up and marinade it in 1 tbsp of fish sauce.  I brought the green curry sauce to boil and added the steak and mushrooms and simmer and cooked them quickly so that the beef stayed nice and tender.

Yes I know. There is no mushroom in any Thai curry, ever. But I needed to use up the mushrooms as we didn’t have a fridge and I would be damned to store anything in the communal fridge! Again, I made a lot of food hoping to have it for picnic lunch the next day. Not a great idea with the curry as the fat solidified, so we saved it (and thankfully it lasted) until we get to Alice Springs where we had a microwave!

(stir-fried lettuce with bacon)

I also stir-fried lettuce and bacon together quickly in very hot oil. I only used salt as a flavouring ingredient. Everyone thought it tasted great. But the wok was so filthy it really put me off that I just couldn’t enjoy it knowing it was cooked in such a filthy communal wok. I literally added a heap of salt into a heated wok to clean out all the burnt bits that were on there that couldn’t be removed by detergent and scouring. It was rather disgusting to see what came off it. Although I cleaned it rather well, the memory lingered! I know the lettuce probably wasn’t a traditional stir-fry veggie but everyone should try it. It’s rather good.

(Rice cooked in a billy)

I made some rice in a billy! The trick is to use a lot less water because the billy is much taller and narrower so there’s less room for water to evaporate. Still the same ten minutes, just as it takes on the stove.

I guess I wouldn’t mind cooking in a communal kitchen again. I loved the big space and industrial-sized stove. The cleanliness had a lot to be desired but I think I’ll be happy to do it again provided that I bring my own saucepan, wok, frying pan, etc!

I saw a few families cooking in the kitchen together and it seemed like a great family bonding experience. I think that’s what everyone should do at home. Cook with your family. Sit down and eat the meal you have all prepared together. It was an experience for me observing all the family dynamics that were going on. I found it very interesting.