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

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (2011 TBR Challenge #3)

In 1913, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. Ninety years later, her granddaughter Cassandra will journey back to England to unravel the mystery of her family’s past. The story moves back and forth from present to past, revealing a story of a secret garden, a mysterious lady authoress, a supposed family curse and two cousins who quarrel.

The book is a brick at 554 pages but it's an easy, quick read. Morton handles the timelines and point-of-view switches reasonably well, and I particularly liked the way she uses rather melancholy, lovely nested fairytales inside the narrative.

However, mostly this felt like something I'd read before. This is partly deliberate, I guess, as Morton wears her references on her sleeves. The plot bears more than a passing resemblance to AS Byatt's Possession and Frances Hodgson-Burnett herself, author of The Secret Garden, appears briefly as a party guest. But all references aside, I doubt it was Morton's intention that the central mystery of the story doesn't feel much like a mystery at all.

My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge