Brekkie @ Highroad

Well, well, well. I'd never been to Highroad in Dickson before. Not for any deep and meaningful reason, but simply because Canberra has soooo many fabulous eateries it's hard to try them all. Anyway, my friend Michelle invited me to Highroad for breakfast today. What a treat. It was delicious. We started with coffee and hot chocolate then Michelle had:

Tropical chia pudding with coconut milk, rhubarb,

dried apple, pineapple, citrus peel and strawberry foam

and I had:

Tzatziki eggs: fresh cucumber, poached eggs,

radish, sumac, evoo*, chilli oil and focaccia

Nom nom! My dish was reminiscent of the Turkish Eggs served at Stepping Stone (another wonderful find in Dickson). We ended the meal with (ahem) more coffee and hot chocolate, to give us an excuse to keep sitting there and chatting. Nice to catch up. It had been a while. Anyway, recommended! Thanks Michelle.

* yep, I googled evoo. Turns out it means extra virgin olive oil :-)

Snickerdoodles!

We kept hearing snickerdoodles mentioned on American TV shows. What are snickerdoodles?! A little bit of googling suggested that they're soft, fluffy cinnamon cookies. The recipe I tried is here:

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/soft-thick-snickerdoodles-in-20-minutes/ 

Turns out they're both easy and delicious. Enjoy!

Brekkie @ Café Momo

Bruce, a Canberra suburb about 2 km from our place, used to be quite sleepy on weekends. It's home to the University of Canberra and various government departments so much busier on weekdays. That said, lots more apartments have appeared there in recent years so the range of eateries, services and shops is growing. Recently Andrew and I enjoyed a delicious Sunday morning breakfast at Café Momo in Thynne Street.

Coffee to start (of course)

Karin's choice: corn and haloumi fritters with beetroot

hummus, poached eggs and avocado salsa

Andrew's choice: apple cinnamon porridge

with maple, granola and fresh fruit

I'd visited Café Momo on a few previous occasions, for coffee or lunch with friends working in nearby offices, but it's also a great choice for a leisurely weekend brekkie! There's plenty of outdoor seating too, if you (like us) are still trying not to catch COVID-19 (again).

Brekkie @ Stand By Me (the vego reboot)

Stand By Me café at Lyons is a long-time favourite, though as it's on the south side of Canberra and we live on the north, it's more distant than most of our Sunday haunts. We started going there when it first opened about ten years ago and it's had (at least) three sets of owners since then. Happily, my favourite dish ful medames (Egyptian breakfast beans with yoghurt and chillies) is still on the menu. We noticed today that, since the latest (quite recent) change of ownership, the café seems to be fully vegetarian.

Today, we started with coffee:

then Andrew had:

Apple crumble French toast

and Karin had:

Ful medames (surprise, surprise)

Still a delicious spot for a leisurely Sunday breakfast.

Tasting Singapore with Singapore Foodsters

We recently spent four nights in Singapore, at the conclusion of our Java tour, and signed up for a five-hour walking tour of several foodie neighbourhoods before we left Australia. (In hindsight, maybe this was a bit ambitious? We ate a LOT of food in Indonesia!) Anyway, the tour was run by Gerry from Singapore Foodsters, and it was the second time we'd done one of his tours. They're a great introduction to the many, varied cultures and cuisines of the city.

We were collected from our hotel and the group's first wander was around a fresh food market in Little India:

Followed by generous tastings at an Indian restaurant …

… and in a hawker centre in Chinatown:

We also enjoyed gelato and coffee (not pictured, forgot to take a photo) in Kampong Glam. Our tour (on foot, MRT trains and a double-decker bus) took us to various fascinating places and Gerry's informative commentary explained many aspects of Singapore's history.

Since our previous trip to Singapore in 2018, a bunch of huge murals had appeared!

An excellent way to explore Singapore with a local. Recommended.

Battle of the egg tarts

I really like Chinese egg tarts. They're hard to find in Canberra, which is handy, as otherwise I would eat far too many of them. After our recent journey through Java Andrew and I spent four nights in Singapore. We've been there lots of times in the past – it's one of our favourite cities – but hadn't been back since 2018 due to the pandemic. On our final full day in Singapore we set ourselves the frivolous task of tasting and ranking various different local versions of egg tarts. Having googled 'best egg tarts in Singapore' we set off on the MRT in search of our snacks.

According to the internet, the best egg tarts in Singapore were at Tong Heng Confectionery in Chinatown. By the time we arrived they'd almost sold out of egg tarts so we tried one egg tart and one coconut tart.

The next taste test was a bit random … we spotted a Hong Kong-style bakery on our way back to the MRT station. I think it was called Leung Sang and they offered both traditional flaky and 'Western' style egg tarts. We opted for the traditional version :-)

Our third taste test came from Tai Cheong Bakery in the basement of Takaskimaya in Orchard Road. They had both egg tarts and pandan tarts so we tried (shared) one of each!

All three were on this list of the best egg tarts in Singapore. The ones we tried were numbers 1, 5 and 2, respectively, on the list. And our favourite of the three we tried? The middle one! The pastry was ambrosial. But all were delicious. Thanks, Singapore!

Breakfast fit for a king (or sultan)

Black [purple] sticky rice is one of my favourite desserts. I thought it was Thai but we saw it on heaps of breakfast bars in Java. Yum! The breakfast buffet at our Yogyakarta hotel was amazing – in fact, ALL the hotel breakfasts were spectacular – and included both sticky rice with coconut cream, and people dispensing (left) magical elixirs and (right) traditional music:

Anyway, to the recipe! 

 

Purple rice pudding … the home made version

While the rice is called 'black' when you buy it, it turns a lovely purple colour when cooked.

1 cup glutinous black rice
800 ml water
piece of pandan leaf
1 tbsp palm sugar
coconut milk
small pinch of salt

Wash the rice and place in a saucepan. Add the water and bring to the boil, then simmer gently with the pandan leaf, covered, for 40 to 60 minutes. Stir occasionally, and more frequently as the mixture thickens. After about 30 minutes, start testing for softness. Add extra water if necessary. When the rice is pleasantly soft (it will still be a little chewy) add the sugar and continue cooking for about five minutes. Remove the pandan leaf, pour into small bowls and leave to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature with lightly salted coconut milk, or ice cream. Slivers of fresh coconut add flavour and texture.

Notes: glutinous black rice, pandan leaves and palm sugar are available from many Southeast Asian grocers. This freezes well. Despite the name, glutinous rice does not contain gluten.

Java was superb!

Despite having done introductory courses in Bahasa Indonesia (ahem) four times over the past 28 years, and having visited numerous other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, I'd never been to Indonesia. In many Australian minds, Indonesia means Bali … and Bali conjures notions of drunken Australians offending locals and being jailed. So Bali had never been on the wish list, and you hear far less about tourism to other parts of the vast archipelago.

So, when Andrew and I saw an ad for a rail and bus tour from one end of Java to the other, we jumped at the opportunity. The tour, run by Railway Adventures, was just over two weeks long and included both well known Javanese places and experiences (Borodudur Temple, volcanoes, Prambanan Temple, puppet workshops, coffee plantations, mosques) and less obvious activities (musical instrument workshops, railway museums, architecture, rural villages and markets). The transport spanned the gamut, from trains (fast, standard and steam) to coaches, mini-buses, becaks (motorbike taxis), jeeps and golf carts, to a ferry.

It was a fabulous introduction to a country I'd long wanted to visit. We'd like to go back to explore some of its other islands one day.

In search of flavour

When I studied psychology back in the 1990s one of our units explored cognition and one subset of that was taste. Specifically, we learned that there were five core taste elements: sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami. Beyond those are flavours, detected by combining our senses of taste and smell, helping us to distinguish between foods. 

It's Day 7 of my COVID-19 experience and these theoretical concepts are coming to life. I can't really smell anything and accordingly have lost the ability to enjoy flavours, though I can still sense which of the taste elements are present. A piece of Persian Love Cake tastes blandly sweet but I can't detect the nutmeg and cardamom. A serve of nachos tastes salty (and my lips tingle from the chilli) but the spicy kick is wasted on me. Pickles are vinegary and lemon butter is sour but neither taste like their usual selves. This is weird … hoping things improve soon.

Eeeeek. We caught COVID. Or maybe COVID caught us?

After four years of managing to evade COVID-19, through hermetic behaviour and good luck, Andrew and I finally caught it about two weeks ago. More specifically, he caught it (probably from a café near his workplace) and I succumbed four days later. It has been … boring. Don't get me wrong, we're super grateful for the six COVID vaccinations we've had over the years, as they've likely saved us from severe illness or even death. But I have a short attention span and have struggled to simply rest and recuperate, rather than living my usual action-packed existence. Really hoping I test negative in a day or two so I can re-join the world.

Anyway. While trapped at home I've read some excellent books, such as:

Day by Michael Cunningham
Over Her Dead Body by Susan Walter
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch

and listened to plenty of fabulous podcasts, including:

Global Roaming
Legacy
Midsomer Murders Mayhem
The History Chicks
The Rest is Politics

If you, too, are languishing at home and looking for stimulation … enjoy!

What we ate: the 2023–24 edition

I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet listing the meals I cook at home since 2009. (Oh. My. Goodness.) Around 20 April each year I sum up what we ate most in the past year and write about it on this blog. I guess I'd hoped my cooking would become more sophisticated or more creative with time; not sure that has happened! Though the spreadsheet now has 296 rows, suggesting a reasonable amount of variety over the years. 

The data for this year still shows we're in comfort food mode … or, perhaps, that as I get older and more attached to my garden, I become less interested in trying whiz-bang new recipes. Ah well. We're alive and kicking so I assume we're meeting our nutritional requirements. Here's what we ate most times this year:

scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
cheese and kimchi jaffles
cheese and spinach triangles with veges
creamy tuna pasta
roasted veges (probably featuring yams!)
vegetable curry (Indian, Thai, Malaysian or Sri Lankan)
macaroni cheese
nachos

Despite the old favourites, there have been a couple of new entrants to the menu this year … following my fabulous trip to Sri Lanka in November I started making this lovely cashew and pea curry, and another new fave is zucchini, eggplant and pumpkin rendang using a curry base from Zest Byron Bay. Oh, and I went through a rash of making Middle Eastern-style casseroles (soooo good!) when Exotic Bazaar was selling cooking sauces; unfortunately they have stopped making the sauces and are now specialising in Persian Love Cakes. I may need to google how to make my own sauces from scratch …

On an unrelated note, here's a photo of some coffees purchased recently at the University of Canberra. Is it just me or does one of them depict a vaping seahorse??

Pomegranates are back in season. Yaaay!

Four months ago a brief but violent storm caused havoc at our place. For a few minutes the neighbourhood was a mass of flying vegetation. A large tree branch came through a window and another falling tree crushed the roof of our newish shed. The insurance claim was approved but we're still waiting for the shed to be repaired. Until that happens, I've been trying to minimise the amount of food in our fridge and freezer, as apparently the builders will need to switch off the electricity for several days, and we and the contents of our freezer will need to go elsewhere. As someone who really likes having a freezer full of curries, dals, soups and casseroles, I've found this quite challenging. Anyway, Andrew pointed out that maybe I've accidentally jinxed the building work by using up all the food in the freezer. Maybe, if I start filling it up again, the work will actually get done …? So tonight I'm making a pumpkin, eggplant and zucchini rendang, and sometime soon I'll make a pumpkin and pomegranate stew. All these things are currently in season and in stock locally. Autumn vegetables are amazing.

Pomegranates are delicious! Messy to eat but worth the effort. I avoid buying them for most of the year as they're often imported and I want to avoid the food miles, so it's always exciting when locally grown ones appear in the shops. I planted a pomegranate tree a couple of years ago; while it seems quite healthy, it has yet to bear fruit. Ah well.

Here's my recipe for the vegetarian Persian stew fesenjān (or fesenjoon). I cobbled this recipe together from several available on the web. The main alteration made (again because I prefer to use local rather than imported ingredients where possible) was to use pecans instead of the traditional walnuts.

1 large onion, chopped
olive oil
0.5 teaspoon turmeric
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
half a pumpkin, cubed
one large eggplant, cubed
2 cups vegetable stock
0.5 cup pomegranate molasses (try Middle Eastern grocery shops or delis)
1 cup pecan nuts, roasted and roughly chopped
seeds from a fresh pomegranate
fresh parsley, chopped

Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onion. Cook until translucent, then add the spices and cook a little longer. Add the pumpkin and eggplant chunks and stir till they're coated in the spices. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and add the pomegranate molasses and pecans. Simmer for about twenty minutes. Garnish with pomegranate seeds and parsley to serve. This recipe makes about six or seven portions. Freeze leftovers for another day.

Salted caramel ice cream

Nom nom! We discovered this recipe a couple of years ago when some rellies made it for Christmas Day. Super easy and super delicious. We've been having some unseasonably hot weather lately in Canberra – it should be autumn [fall] but feels like summer – so I made a batch of salted caramel ice cream earlier today.

600 ml fresh cream (or 500 ml plant-based alternative *)
380 grams caramel filling
salt, to taste

Whip the cream until firm. Mix in the caramel and salt. Freeze. Enjoy!

Here are some other flavours of home made ice cream you may like to try (no fancy devices required):

avocado, lime and ginger
Bailey's and macadamia [or other nuts]
basil, lime and honey
banana and cacao nibs
brandied fruit and nuts
chilli chocolate
coconut and cacao nibs
coffee and cardamom
green tea
Kahlúa and pecan [or other nuts]
rocky road
strawberry

Happy (southern) autumn.

* Today I used Flora 100% plant-based thickened cream instead of dairy cream. I'm a bit torn about this stuff. On the one hand, it is dairy-free, so suitable for people with physical or philosophical intolerances to dairy products. On the other hand, it's a bit of a chemical cocktail and is imported from Germany. Taste- and texture-wise, though, it is indistinguishable from cream. 

If you are trying to avoid dairy products, you could make most of the ice creams listed above with plant-based cream and coconut-based condensed milk.

Nurturing brain and body

Occasionally we hear sad stories about people who retire one day then die the next, or count down till retirement only to find it unsatisfying and boring. I'm trying to be strategic about my transition to retirement … gradually reducing the amount of paid work I do while increasing voluntary and leisure activities. 

In 2006 I dropped from five work days to four (taking a 20% pay cut; this was long before current ideas of four-day weeks) and took up two volunteer jobs. In 2012 I started doing some freelance work on the side of my day job, and in 2018 I left the day job to make freelancing my main activity. Self-employment can be a bit of a roller coaster, time-wise, and some weeks I'd work 30+ hours; other weeks it was fewer than ten. Early on, I felt compelled to accept most work I was offered in case the offers dried up. Over the past couple of years I haven't needed to do that; I have enough work (and enough income) to support myself so can afford to slow down and smell the roses.

Not my roses. One of our neighbours has a great collection though!

Anyway, it's been fun. Life, these days, features gardening, volunteering, socialising, exercise (boot camp, barre classes and cycling), a community orchestra, random lectures and webinars, and still some paid work. And while I exercise, cook and do housework, I listen to podcasts. They fill gaps in my brain! I didn't always pay attention in school, or take notice of momentous world events happening around me in the seventies and eighties, so am grateful to a whole flock of podcasters for letting me know what I missed. A few current favourites:

Global Roaming – current world affairs with Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald

Empire – how empires have shaped the world, with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

Legacy – stories of influential people, with Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch

Cautionary Tales – mistakes and what we can learn from them, with Tim Harford

Radio Atlantic – stories and conversations with various hosts

Lady Killers – Lucy Worsley explores historical crimes by women

7am – stories in the news

Full Story – stories in the news

The Waves – news stories from a gender perspective

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy myself a coffee. And listen to a podcast on the way :-)

I don't. (With thanks to Clementine Ford.)

I've read so many great books lately. Despite making a living as an editor (and having a sense of the constant stream of new ideas pouring into the world) I'm always pleasantly surprised to be exposed to points of view I hadn't previously encountered or considered. It's also fun, and intriguing, when multiple books coincidentally explore similar ideas, maybe across multiple genres. I want to recommend three books I've read over the past month:

I Don't: The Case Against Marriage by Clementine Ford (non-fiction, history/polemic)

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder (non-fiction, biography/musings)

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (fiction with a touch of history)

A little background about why these books feel so influential. In the 1980s-channelling-1950s household I grew up in, marriage was the only 'career' option for a female. (Never mind that it required no qualifications and was unpaid.) Girls in my family were not educated, not prepared for a working life outside the home; we were supposed to be 'married off' as soon as possible, preferably (to quote my dad) to rich blokes who could support him in his old age. Ha. I was a smart kid but somehow let myself get sucked into the vortex of doom. I was engaged at 19, married at 20, separated at 22 and divorced at 24. Did I expect that my marriage would be till death did us part? Well, yes, I did. If Mr Wrong hadn't been so thoroughly, utterly wrong for me, I probably would have tried to stay married. So, in a way, I'm grateful it was such an unmitigated disaster! I've been with my current partner, Andrew, for over 32 years. We're not married and never will be. That's not to say we're not committed to each other. But there's no need for a legal contract to say so.

Clementine Ford's book was revelatory as it clearly spelled out the case against marriage. That the institution is not about protection, it's about control. Her meticulous research provided insights into many aspects of relationships and the law, past and present. Anna Funder's book looked at the same issue but by examining one woman's experience of marriage: George Orwell's wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, brilliant in her own right but largely erased from history due to her subordinate role as wife. J. Courtney Sullivan's novel weaves together five compelling stories to explore the changing nature of marriage over six decades.

I'd never quite shaken that idea, instilled by my parents from a very early age, that one had to be married. That being married was the pinnacle of life achievement and that the unmarried were somehow lesser beings. Happily, Clementine Ford's book managed to snap me out of that outdated and frankly ludicrous idea. Hopefully forever!

Lunch @ KOTO

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but I recently had lunch with two friends at KOTO in Barton, Canberra (across the road from Old Parliament House, a.k.a. the Museum of Australian Democracy). KOTO had been in the news lately, as a relative newcomer to the Canberra fine dining scene. 

It was more upmarket than the lunch places my friends and I usually frequent … and it was excellent. The tasting menu (at $160 pp) seemed eye-wateringly expensive, and also a bit too fishy for our tastes, so we ordered off the a la carte menu. We shared:

Edamame

Agedashi tofu

Kinoko (mushrooms)

Cauliflower

Lamb cutlets

… and the décor was delightful too:

The whole meal cost less than $100 for three of us and we were all satisfied. No room for dessert! The food and service and ambience at KOTO were fabulous. Recommended :-)