A brief fooding journey through Malaysia

Fishball soup at Imbi markets in Kuala Lumpur. Not pictured but consumed at the same location: kopi ais, kropiah, and kaya toast. Yuuuum.


Black pepper crab on Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang, KL.


Fruit stalls on Jalan Alor.


Delicious feast of roast duck, sweet and sour fish, ginger chicken and kangkong at Sek Yuen Restoran in KL, where no one knows how to speak English, there are no menus, and hapless tourists (me) are forced to rely upon their mostly-forgotten Cantonese and sign language. It was totally worth it though.


Cocktails at Palate Palette, a cute bar/restaurant in Bukit Bintang, KL.

More photos after the jump.

Little Dorrit (TBR #9) and The Dragon Keeper (TBR #10)

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (#9)
Merchant's son Arthur Clennan finds himself involved in the affairs of the Dorrits - a wellborn family fallen on hard times, their patriarch now imprisoned in debtor's gaol while his children dance, sew and steal for their suppers. In his attempts to help the Dorrits extricate themselves from their debts, Clennan runs smack-bang into an impenetrable wall of British government bureaucracy.

Dickens as usual is at his best when sketching a scene, skewering the absurd, or bringing his eccentric characters to life - Clennan's former fiancee and her run-on sentences are something else to read, believe you me. There are many passages that made me want to laugh out loud or shake my head or read it over again. He writes with such a clear eye, too, on the bonds of familial love, and the ways people imprison themselves - through religion, through social convention, through fear.

But at the same time, as though he doesn't even know what's best about his own writing, the central characters are so dull and self-righteous - our heroes Clennan and Little Amy Dorrit are so virtuous and gentle and good that I could barely stand it. Give me arrogant Fanny Dorrit over good Little Dorrit any day - or the coldly man-hating Miss Wade and her protege Tattycoram, or the charming Ferdinand and Bar Barnacle. Any of them, please. (And this is also why I love Great Expectations SO much more than David Copperfield.)

The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb (#10)
The first of a projected 4 books in The Rain Wild Chronicles, this is both more of the same and a welcome return to form for Hobb. More of the same because this is more or less a continuation of the epic fantasy world she created in The Liveship Traders - focusing on a trading town in a lush but harsh land where the rivers run acid, and the townspeople find themselves in alliance with a newly hatched generation of misshapen dragons. And a return to form because as far as I'm concerned she's been in a slump since those very same books, published over a decade ago (let's never talk of The Tawny Man and Soldier Son books, okay?).

If you're familiar with Hobb, then this book should feel like somewhat familiar ground. A ragtag assortment of outsiders are our protagonists - this time a lonely Trader woman seeking solace in dragon study, a captain with a secret to hide, and a Rainwilder girl who should have been exposed at birth due to her disfigurements - on a journey without a clear destination - this time, escorting those misshapen dragons to a perhaps apocyraphal ancient city. Hobb's prickly, emotionally conflicted characters fit in well with her history bastard princes and tomboy noblewomen - if you enjoyed those books you'll likely enjoy this - if you've yet to try, I'd probably suggest starting with the Farseer or Liveship books anyway.

Twin Peaks Cherry Pie

Halloween = best time or best time for a Twin Peaks themed morning tea? We all dressed up for the occasion (most of us anyway) and I teamed up with my friend Serena to make this pie, served with some damn good coffee.



Cherry Pie

Pastry:
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
zest and juice of 1 lemon
400g unsalted butter, at room temperature (I used 350g)
200g caster sugar
600g plain flour
pinch of salt
brown sugar for sprinkling

Filling:
1.6kg of bottled cherries, or 4 x 400g pitted cherries, or 2kg of fresh cherries pitted (I used about 1.2kg of pitted Morello cherries)
300g raspberries (I used frozen)
zest and juice of 1 lemon
100g icing sugar
50g cornflour


To make the pastry, mix 2 of the eggs with the 2 egg yolks, vanilla extract and lemon zest and juice. Reserve the third egg for an egg wash later on.

Using a mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Beat until pale and creamy. Add the egg mixture a litle at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

Sift on the flour and salt, beating slowly until the mixture just comes together as a ball. Don't overmix or the dough will be tough. Shape the pastry into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and refridgerate for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 170C and grease a tart tin (or don't, if it's non-stick - the pastry was plenty buttery on its own, even with the reduction in the butter I used). Reserve a third of the pastry in the fridge for the topping. Roll out the rest on a lightly floured work surface to about 0.5cm thickness.

Lift the pastry on to the prepared tart tin and ease it in to the edges. Refridgerate for 20 minutes.

(Let me pause for a moment here to share a tip I learnt from - YES - Junior Masterchef. Hilarious, no? Maybe this is a trick everyone else knows already but it was new to me, and it was new to Serena, so: the thing is, in the past, getting the pastry from bench/board to tin has been my downfall. Often have I wept, gnashed teeth, etc, over pastry breaking and splitting in my hands. And then a couple of weeks ago, I saw a kid on Junior MC doing the most simple, amazing thing: he rolled out the pastry on his benchtop, then rolled the pastry back around and over his rolling pin, carried it over and then let it unfurl gently into the waiting tart tin. BRILLIANT. We did this today and it was perfection!)

Line the pastry with foil and fill with pastry weights, dried beans or rice. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the foil and weights, prick the base with a fork, and bake for 8 minutes.

Lightly beat the last egg and brush the pastry case lightly. Return to the oven for 2 minutes to seal, then remove from over and if necessary trim edges.

Roll out the reserved pastry to 0.5cm thickness and use a pastry cutter or sharp knife to cut into 1cm strips. If your filling's not ready, cover with a tea towel. (Serena was in sole charge of this part and she was great - she used a serrated bread knife to cut out the strips, which gave them nice little edges.)

We did the filling while waiting around for the pastry to blind bake, but I guess you can do it whenever you like. To make the filling, combine the cherries, raspberries, lemon zest and juice, and icing sugar in a large mixing bowl. Toss together gently to avoid breaking up the fruit. Tip into a colander to drain away excess liquid - we did this a few times, as we had a lot of liquid from the frozen raspberries. Mix gently with the cornflour. Then pile the fruit into the prepared tart shell.

Lay the pastry strips across the top of the tart to form a lattice. Brush the pastry with reserved egg wash, then sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake for 20 minutes or until pastry is golden. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then carefully remove from the tin.

Serve with icecream (optional), while drinking coffee (essential) and watching Twin Peaks (not essential but a laudable life choice).

From The Good Life by Adrian Richardson, via the Kinokuniya Cookbook Catalogue October 2011.

Melbourne eats

Last weekend a group of us headed to Melbourne as a surprise for a recently-moved friend's birthday. SURPRISE! We were pretty proud of ourselves for all keeping our mouths shut for the two-month lead up to the day.

Not a surprise: we ate a lot. A lot. (Full credit goes to Michelle for doing the dining research.)



After getting up at the crack of dawn to catch an early flight, good coffee was essential. St Ali in South Melbourne fit the bill, though their muffins (including one bacon and chutney savoury number!) were sadly dry and disappointing.


Then it was off to St Katherine's in Kew for the birthday lunch. St K's is a casual dining restaurant with Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern food, run by that little short guy from Masterchef. In contrast to the disappointing Press Club by the same group, St K's was fun, tasty and relatively cheap. The pides, fried chicken, rotisserie meats and salads were all good.


Lamb dumplings at St K's


Sangria jelly (compressed melon salad, passionfruit curd, fanta foam) at St K's

We were then only briefly slowed down by rain, shopping and chit chat before launching into dinner at Comme, a fairly traditional French joint in the cbd.


Pork belly at Comme

I'll spare you an account of the karaoke that followed.


The next day, again we started with coffee and breakfast, this time at Three Bags Full in Abbotsford.


French toast with rhubarb, Three Bags Full


Rice pudding with mango, strawberry and coconut, Three Bags Full


Still hungry? Lunch at Huxtable in Fitzroy followed.


Rice flour crusted oyster po'boy, iceberg, sirracha mayo, Huxtable


Yellowfin tuna and huon ocean trout, kim chi, sesame, avocado, Huxtable. The Korean BBQ pork ribs were also really good.


Last but not least, Chin Chin in Melbourne, where the music is too loud, the air con is too cold, the queues are too long (we showed up at 5 to make sure we got a table) and the food is... pretty good, actually.


Crab salad, Chin Chin


Palm sugar and honeycomb icecream with lime syrup, Chin Chin


And then we went (staggered) home. Good times, Melbourne, good times...

Gratuitous photo post and Crave Sydney Food Festival

It's been a fairly quiet food festival for me this year, in contrast to last year's frenetic dining. I was hoping we'd have a repeat of 2010's awesome Single Origin breakfasts but it wasn't to be, and a lot of the best Sugar Hits seem to have dropped off the list as well. Still - there's been some memorable meals.


Highlight: high tea at the Victoria Room in Darlinghurst, with the usual assortment of dainty nibbles, warm scones, freshly brewed tea and sammiches with the crusts cut off. Schmancy. Also, a good excuse to pull out pretty dresses and shoes.


Oddlight: Magnus Nilsson dinner at Marque. Nilsson, aged only 27, is making big news for his Swedish restaurant Faviken, so his dinners at Marque were well hyped. While there were certainly some good dishes (WA Marron with Oatmeal, Sprouting Barley, Fermented Vegetables and Almost Burnt Cream) and some challengingly tasty dishes (Crust of dried pigs blood and sea urchin; or the Dice of raw beef heart with marrow, spring flowers, toast and herb salt), there were also some truly wtf ones - like the Leeks, Cream Whisked with Beer, Vinegar and Dried Mullet Roe. The photo shows what I thought about that. Still, the company was excellent and was was the wine.


Best value: Azuma Kushiyaki, as always. For $38 at lunch time, you can get an entree with three items, plus this wagyu beef bento box, and a glass of wine or a beer. Taaaasty.


Least value: Night Noodle Markets. Again, not a surprise. Go for the company and the atmosphere. Or if you're a misanthrope like me, stick around for one entree, tasty betel leaves from Nu in this case, and then...


... escape to Spice I Am in Surry Hills for a meal that costs about the same, but tastier and with actual table service.


One photo for the road - cute Halloween cookies at Sweet Infinity, Strand Arcade. BOO.

Coconut chicken ricepaper rolls

Oh hi! Have some photos:


Pomegranate glazed duck with hazelnuts, prosciutto, radicchio and prunes. Orto Trading Co, Surry Hills.


Pork knuckle at my perennial favourite, the German Club in Tempe.


A gluttonous feast at Blue Plate, Neutral Bay. (Not pictured: entrees.)


Apropos of nothing, a Viet-inspired recipe:

Coconut chicken ricepaper rolls

300g chicken
125 ml coconut cream
125 ml chicken stock
10cm coarsely chopped fresh lemon grass
5cm finely chopped or grated fresh ginger
1 tbsp chopped coriander root and stem
100 g beans or snow peas, trimmed and sliced thinly
carrot, sliced thinly
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh coriander
12 or more rice paper sheets
lime or lemon

Sauce
Hoisin sauce
chilli sauce
fish sauce
Combine above to taste.

Combine the chicken, coconut cream, stock, lemongrass, ginger and coriander root and stem in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked. Cool chicken in the pan for 10 minutes. Then remove chicken from pan, reserve 1/4 liquid and discard the rest.

Chop chicken finely and combine with beans/peas, carrot, coriander. poaching liquid and a squeeze of lime or lemon.

Assemble the rolls - soak each in warm water until softened then place on a chopping board covered with a tea towel. Place a line of filling along the middle, with sauce if you like, then roll it like a burrito.

No pictures I'm afraid, as I'm lazy.

Adapted from Women's Weekly: New Classics

Chairman Mao's Red Braised Pork

First, some recent fooding:


Sashimi at Izakaya Fujiyama, Surry Hills. The real highlight though was the much less photogenic braised pork belly with eggplant - soooo gooood. The chocolate cake with condensed milk icecream and quince was also a winner.


Cherry trifle at The Carrington, Surry Hills, which has re-furbed itself as a hipster Spanish tapas joint. The cocktails are awesome - I liked the Spanish Pimp and the Single Mother, and doesn't that sound like a movie title? - and there's a lot of fun food to try like empanadas, medianoche (Cuban midnight sandwich), chicken wings, calamari sliders, jamon croquettes and churros with chocolate.


Secondly, another recipe from Fuschia Dunlop. Apparently this was one of Mao Zedong's favourite dishes. For my own part, I found this dish lacking a certain something - I think the pork needed longer cooking time to get it really soft - but the flavour is quite delicious.



Chairman Mao's Red Braised Pork

500g pork belly (skin optional)
2 tbsp groundnut oil
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
20g fresh ginger, skin left on and sliced
1 star anise
2 dried red chillies (I subbed in some dried chilli flakes)
A small piece of cassia bark or cinnamon stick
Light soy sauce, salt and sugar
A few lengths spring onion greens

Plunge the pork belly into a pan of boiling water and simmer for 3-4 minutes until partially cooked. Remove and when cool enough to handle, cut into bite sized pieces.

Heat the sugar and oil in a wok or pan over a gentle flame until the sugar melts, then raise the heat and sit until the sugar turns a rich caramel brown. Add the pork and the wine.

Add enough water to just cover the pork, and add the ginger, star anise, chillies and cassia/cinnamon. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer - the book suggests simmering for 40-50 minutes but I had to take it longer and on next attempt will probably try for twice as long.

Towards the end of the cooking time, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce and season with soy, salt and sugar to taste. Add the spring onion greens just before serving.

Adapted from "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: recipes from Hunan province" by Fuschia Dunlop

Steamed mince pork with eggs

This recipe is adapted from Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: recipes from Hunan province. Dunlop is a British food writer who's made her name by collecting and translating recipes from China, particularly Sichuan province, acting as a kind of cultural ambassador.

She's also the author of a really entertaining, funny memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, which follows her experiences as a exchange student in Chengdu, her impromptu enrolment in a local cooking school, and her subsequent adventures.

I saw her speaking once at the Sydney Food Festival in 2009, where she presented with and translated on behalf of husband-and-wife chefs Yu Bo and Dai Shuang of the unassumingly named but culinarily ambitious Yu's Family Kitchen in Chengdu, Sichuan. Some dishes in their demonstration:


16 dishes by Yu Bo and Dai Shuang, each illustrating a different flavour and technique.


Dai Shuang's hedgehogs. Tiny dough hedgies filled with red bean paste; their eyes are black sesame seeds. Each is hand made, with the 137 spikes of each hedgie individually snipped with a pair of embroidery scissors (and yes, she counted each spike in her demonstration!).


Yu Bo's playful 'calligraphy' set. The brush tips are pastry with a soft filling and the red wax is tomato paste. Dip the brush and eat!


And now to a much much humbler offering:



Steamed minced pork with eggs

4 medium or 10-12 small dried shittake mushrooms
A small piece of fresh ginger, unpeeled
300g minced pork
1 tsp sesame oil
200-250 ml or less of chicken stock
3 or 4 eggs
Salt and pepper
2 spring onions finely sliced

Soak the mushrooms in boiling water, leave for 30 minutes. Crush ginger with flat of a cleaver and place in a cup with a little cold water to cover.

Place the pork in a mixing bowl. Drain and finely chop the shittake (retaining mushroom water) and add to the pork. Add 3 tablespoons of the ginger soaking water, some of the ginger finely chopped, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Stir in the stock and mushroom water, a little at a time to allow meat to absorb, until you have a loose paste.

Pour the pork paste into a shallow bowl. Break the eggs over the pork (I did these whole, as suggested by Dunlop, but on consideration I would suggest beating them first). Place the bowl in a steamer and steam over high heat for 15 minutes until pork is cooked through.

Serve with scattering of spring onions.

Adapted from "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: recipes from Hunan province" by Fuschia Dunlop

With Nails by Richard E. Grant (TBR Challenge Book #8)

I think the first time I ever saw Grant on screen was during high school history class, in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1998). For a long time afterwards, my classmates would quote to one another:

"They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel!"

Anyway. Since then I've seen Grant many more times, on screen and off, including a live taping of ABC's First Tuesday Book Club; and presenting an anniversary screening of British cult classic Withnail & I (1987).

It's that movie, as the title of the book suggests, which kick-started Grant's tv and movie career. His role as the alcoholic, somewhat deranged and self-deluded 'resting' (unemployed) actor Withnail became his calling card to Hollywood.

This memoir spans more than half a decade in Hollywood. He describes his experiences taking good roles in bad movies (Warlock, Henry and June, LA Story), culminating in Hudson Hawk (1991), now infamous as one of the biggest, most hubristic and expensive flops of all time. For his part, Grant received a Razzie nomination! However, immediately after that trial by fire, the slate was balanced when he found himself working with three great auteurs: Altman, Coppola and Scorsese.

For Grant's eloquence and sense of humour alone, this book would be worth a read. As a movie fan however it's possibly even better - it's rare to see the workings behind the scenes of Hollywood from an actor's perspective described so frankly and honestly. He's not in the least shy about making his feelings heard about Bruce Willis (charming egomaniac), Joel Silver (pure egomaniac) or Madonna (narcissist) - it doesn't seem to have hurt his career either, with Madonna for one choosing to work with him again, on her directorial debut Filth & Wisdom (2008).

And he has good things to say too about movie sets that do work well, too, and about the different working methods of each director. Altman for instance keeps his sets easygoing and charming, inviting collaboration. Coppola is controlled chaos with a family emphasis; and Scorsese is focused and detail-oriented. He also offers tantalising glimpses of movies that could have been - Withnail was initially offered to Daniel Day-Lewis, for instance, while Grant himself was offered the Sheriff role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which eventually went to Alan Rickman in a movie-stealing role.

There are times when Grant's stories of Hollywood high life seem like a series of strategic namedrops – lunch with Steve Martin, dinner with Gary Oldman, not to mention hang-outs with Anthony Hopkins, Uma, Winona, Johnny, Madonna, Tom Waits, Hugh and Liz – but he's always undercutting that with his own sense of self-deprecation (convinced he'll be found out as a fraud, insecure as all actors are!) and his sharp observations on the excesses of Hollywood life - his descriptions of Sharon Stone's manipulations of shop assistants and Bruce Willis' ego on set are all priceless.

My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge

Nutella Whoopie Pies

To celebrate the return of Masterchef (which was about a month ago, so yes, I'm running well behind), my fellow devotees and I gathered for a ritualistic eating and watching session. Two years of this has taught us that we're addicts, and there's no point pretending otherwise.

(Have you noticed, by the by, how successfully Channel 10 has trained us in the binge-diet reality television cycle? A season of Masterchef follows The Biggest Loser, which in its turn followed Masterchef, which was preceded by The Biggest Loser, ad infinitum...)

My contribution was nutella whoopie pies. The whoopie pie seems to be a concept native to America. I know I'd never eaten one before making this recipe. They're much more cakelike than cookie, despite appearances, and they turned out much larger than I expected - just about the same size as a cupcake or a mid-ish muffin.



Nutella Whoopie Pies

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup of Nutella
2/3 cup of sugar
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla essence (or hazelnut liqueur)
1/2 teapsoon salt

Preheat oven to 180 C.

In a large bowl, beat the nutella, butter, and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add cocoa, egg, salt, buttermilk, and essence/liqueur and mix well.

Add baking soda and flour. Mix well

Line baking sheets with paper and place 1.5 tablespoons of dough in rounds.

Bake for approximately 10-13 minutes, until cookies are set and the top appears slightly dry. Remove from oven and let cool completely.


Frosting: as it turns out, I used about half of the frosting, so you may want to reduce the quantities listed here.

2/3 cup Nutella
225 g cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons whipping cream
1 tablespoon coffee-infused vodka (or hazelnut liqueur or espresso coffee)
3 cups icing sugar

With a mixer, whip cream cheese, vodka, nutella, and whipping cream.

Slowly add sugar and beat for 2-3 minutes. Adjust consistency by adding up more powdered sugar, or more whipping cream.

When cookies have cooled, place up to 1 tablespoon frosting on the bottom of one cookie, and gently press another cookie on top of the frosting, creating a sandwich.


From Twisted Kitchen

Long weekend fooding

No better way to celebrate a 5-day long weekend then a barbecue, right? Even if it was pouring outside. I made a cake and some appetisers. Others supplied delicious salad, sausages, chicken wings, bread, cookies and more cake. It was delicious.



Figs with goats cheese and proscuitto
12 ripe figs
6 slices of proscuitto, each sliced in half lengthways
120g goats cheese (or more to taste)
Rosemary sprigs to season
Olive oil
Honey

Cut the figs in quarters but only halfway down, so the segments don't separate.

Spoon in 2-3 teaspoons of cheese in the centre of each.

Wrap each fig in proscuitto and use a toothpick to secure.

Drizzle in oil and season with salt and pepper. Top with a sprig of rosemary.

Bake or grill until the cheese is soft or until it smells tasty.

Remove the rosemary sprigs, drizzle with a little honey, remove toothpicks and serve.



My cake to right. At left is a glimpse of an extremely delicious lime meringue tart.

Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing
Cake
80g sultanas
4 tbsp water
280g plain flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
120ml olive oil
160g caster sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
2 freerange eggs, lightly beaten
3 cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut in 1cm dice (Pink Lady, Jonathan or Granny Smith will do - Bramley was the suggested variety, but I don't think we have these in Australia)
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 freerange egg whites

Icing
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g light muscavado sugar (I subbed in brown sugar)
85ml maple syrup
220g cream cheese at room temperature

Grease a 20cm springform cake tin and line with baking paper.

Place sultanas and water in a saucepan and simmer over a low heat until the water has been absorbed. Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 170C. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and set aside.

Put oil and sugar into a large bowl. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways in half and, using a sharp knife, scrape the seeds into the bowl. Beat together using a whisk, then gradually add the eggs until smooth and thick.

Mix in the diced apples, sultanas and lemon zest. Then lightly fold in the dry ingredients.

Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl or in a stand mixer until at a soft meringue consistency. Fold into the batter, trying to lose as little air as possible.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The book suggested 90 minutes but mine took closer to 75 minutes so do watch out. The baked cake was golden brown on all surfaces.

Remove from oven and leave to cool in the tin. Once the cake is completely cold, remove it from the tin and slice horizontally with a serrated knife so you get two discs of roughly the same size. If it's very domed you may also want to slice some off the top.

For the icing, beat together the butter, sugar and maple syrup until light and airy; I used a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Then add the cream cheese, beating until smooth.

Using a palette knife or in my case a silicone spatula and a knife, spread a 0.5-1cm layer of icing over the bottom half of the cake. Carefully place the top half on top of that and then put the rest of the icing on top. Ottolenghi suggests using the palette knife to create waves or other patterns - for my own part, I was just glad to get it looking reasonably smooth and tidy!

From 'Ottolenghi: The Cookbook' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

TBR Challenge Books #6 and #7

Good As Gold by Joseph Heller (#6)
Heller's absurdist and blackly cynical sense of humour was perfectly showcased in Catch-22. Here, turning his attention to a Jewish professor with ambitions to work in the White House during the post-Nixon, post-Kissinger 70s, it's much less successful. In some technical senses it's as solid as Catch-22 and he's really great at tightly structuring scenes and dialogue for maximum effect. But the overall effect of the book is wearying and repetitive.

Heller's portrayal of Gold's dyfunctional family, tearing itself to pieces, is painful and unlikable rather than funny or relatable. He goes a little better in his depictions of Washington political life as a farcial scene dominated by double-think - but it's not like he's telling us anything new after the third or so scene of the kind. I forced myself to finish it but would have happily left off after about four chapters; by then, Heller has already said all he needs to say.

Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (#7)
The third collection of the serialised adventures in love and life for Mrs Madrigal's found family in San Francisco. By now we've hit the decadent 80s - Mary Ann's career is on the up, she and Brian are starting to think about settling down, while Michael's still playing the scene. This is the third in the series and Maupin has the formula down pat - the younger characters negotiating their way through the dating scene and professional life, with Mrs Madrigal presiding over it all with a loving eye. As always Maupin has funny, clever things to say about modern life, the gay scene and changes in society.

Though charming and funny to start, unfortunately Maupin's formula also contains some elements that are less than great and actually kind of bad. At about the halfway mark, the storylines all start descending into ridiculous soap opera melodramatics, complete with kidnappings, secret identities, a shooting, etc . None of these plot knots makes a lick of sense and all are much less interesting than the characters themselves. Another book that would have worked so much better if it had known when to stop.


My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge

The Tea Parlour, Redfern

I have been a lazy baker so I'm just ducking in here to share some pretty photos of The Tea Parlour in Redfern.

The food and drink is ridiculously good value at only $4 for a pot of tea on its own, or $8 with a plate of scones or those cute little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. An adorable, relaxed place to sit down, flick through a few vintage books or a pack of cards, and wait out the Sunday afternoon rain.


You had to duck past the peacock feathers to get to the bathroom. Feathery!



Huuuge pots of tea, and giant scones with jam and cream.



I love how the deer head has a little ribbon around its neck.


And here's a couple of illustrations from one of said vintage books, which was so cute I wanted to eat it. The book is Spin A Silver Coin, written by someone or other but more importantly illustrated by Beatien Yazz or Little No-Shirt, who the title page informed me was known as 'the Navaho Boy Artist'.


HOOT.

TBR Challenge Books #4 and #5

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (#4)

A woman breaks off an engagement to the man she loves; another, unhappy in marriage, is drawn to an old lover; and a rich widow decides between two very different suitors. Trollope's lengthy novel, originally published in serial form in the 1860s, looks at the state of marriage with an eye that's in turn serious, melodramatic and comedic.

Trollope intersperses the stories of Alice, Glencora and Mrs Greenow with some satirically sharp jabs at the British aristocracy and political life. Clever and cynical as these chapters are, the real heart of the story is with the three women.

Although the narrator asks us, solemnly, if we can forgive these unconventional heroines, my question is - what's to forgive? I'd say the narrator is Trollope himself, except that the three lead and several supporting women characters seem so much more flawed and complex and human than the sanctimonious narrator.

Though the book rambles and lacks focus at times, and the storylines wrap up waaaay too neatly, it's a fairly easy read for an 800-page C19th doorstopper, landing somewhere in the spectrum between one of the lighter-hearted Dickens and George Eliot's Middlemarch. The next time I've whittled my to-be-read pile down to something manageable, so perhaps some time in my retirement, I'll happily try some further Trollope novels.

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue (#5)

Currently in the spotlight as author of the much-lauded The Room, I'm more familiar with Donoghue as a writer of short stories. Her book of fairytale retellings, Kissing The Witch, is a good read if you like them Angela Carter-style.

The 17 short stories of this collection are each based in English and Irish history of the last millenium, focusing on often obscure episodes and forgotten supporting players. The title story, for instance, is told from the point of view of a woman jailed in the 1700s for conning the public into believing she - well, you know. The other stories cover a range of topics as diverse as pioneer animal rights activists, religious cults, king's mistresses and witch-burnings.

Linked roughly in geography and time, most of the stories are linked thematically as well through Donoghue's depiction of the female body through the ages: as commodity; as a site of contested or hidden identity; in terms of disease and physical strangeness. For almost all these stories, I found the premise interesting - in execution, however, Donoghue was as much hit as miss. While conceptually great many of these felt half-baked and underdeveloped.


My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge

Food photos and fish tacos

Saturday night was one of the hottest in recent memory - perhaps not the best night to be dressed up to the nines for a 7 course meal? But when the occasion is a friend's birthday and the catering is by roving underground resturant Transient Diner, in their last dinner ever, it's going to be good times regardless of the weather.



Transient Diner pulled off a really lovely meal for their finale, and the venue was stunning - a three-storey converted warehouse in Camperdown with beautiful wooden floors and furniture, internal courtyard, and indoor pool. Very, very swanky. The dish above was the final course: a three-milk cake with peach puree.



I also loved loved loved the quinoa, lentil, vegetable and oyster dish; and the chocolate mousse cake above was great.



And here's the birthday cake for the awesome birthday boy and girl - a macaron tower, half jasmine flavoured and half passionfruit. Though it melted somewhat in the heat, it looked amazing and tasted like sweet, sweet birthday partying. NOM.


Now for something completely different:


There's been a bit of a surge in American style diners in the past year or so - the late and beloved South, Eathouse in Redfern, and Jazz City Diner in Darlinghurst to name a few. The Stuffed Beaver in Bondi is one of the newest additions, serving old-school diner food - burger, hot dog, tacos, hot wings, you get the deal. Fun place to visit, pretty good food, and their cocktails are not bad at all. Above is a picture of their fish tacos. And here's something roughly inspired by the same.


Fish Tacos with Avocado Salsa

8 taco shells
600g bream fish fillets (or other white fish, e.g. whiting or flathead)
Cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp oil
100g rocket leaves

Salsa:
1 green capsicum, diced
1 avocado, peeled and diced
1 tbsp jalapeno chillies (I subbed in birdseye chilli)
1/2 red onion, finely sliced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 tbsp fresh coriander
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp olive oil


Combine the avocado, capsicum, chillis, tomato and onion. Mix the coriander, garlic, cumin, lime juice, salt and pepper and beat well. Combine and toss the salsa.

Prepare your taco shells - heat in the oven or microwave.

Dust the fish fillets with cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper. Sear in a pan, on both sides of the fillet, until golden and cooked through. Remove and break the fish into bite-sized pieces.

Fill the shells with rocket, fish, then salsa and serve.

From Jill Dupleix's Summer Food