Parapou/parippu

I've been making this dish for so long I've forgotten where the recipe came from. When I first posted the recipe (ahem) 16 years ago, I don't think I'd ever heard of curry leaves, and certainly wouldn't have known where to buy them. Now they're easy to find, fresh or dried, and make a wonderful inclusion. Plenty of deliciousness and protein here ...

I'd written the name down as 'parapou' in my recipe book, but when I google 'Sri Lankan lentil curry' a bunch of recipes for 'parippu' appear. Regardless of the spelling, this is quick, easy, and yummy.

2 cups orange lentils
1 tomato, chopped
3 or 4 cloves garlic
1 tsp mustard seeds
turmeric or saffron, to taste
red chillies, chopped
curry leaves
1 onion, chopped
coconut milk

Heat a little oil in a big saucepan. Add onion and stir-fry for a minute. Add tomato and mustard seeds, stir until mustard seeds jump then add wet lentils. Add garlic, chillies and curry leaves. Cover with coconut milk and add turmeric/saffron. Simmer about 15 minutes, and serve with roti or rice.

Made a big batch today to freeze for weeknight dinners :-)

Ghormeh sabzi (Persian herb stew)

Back in the lockdown days of COVID-19, I bought a box of meal bases and ingredients from Exotic Bazaar, an Australian company specialising in Middle Eastern feasts you can make at home. I tried (and enjoyed) all five of their savoury meal bases and have also baked some of their cake mixes. All good. Over the subsequent three years the comapny has grown and branched out – which is great! – and even had some of their products adopted by a major supermarket chain. Unfortunately, in doing so, they reduced their range of meal bases and deleted my favourite: ghormeh sabzi or Persian herb stew. Apparently it may be reintroduced, if supermarket sales take off, but in the meantime I've taught myself how to make ghormeh sabzi as I missed it. My recipe, recorded here so I have permanent access to it, involved web searching, improvisation, and trial and error ...

First: in a large saucepan, fry together one brown onion, some cooking oil, salt, turmeric, pepper, vegetable stock (powder or cube) and fenugreek seeds. 

Next: when the fried mixture is fragrant, add 400 grams baby spinach, one bunch of coriander and one bunch of curly parsley. Cook until mushy. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, cool, and blend until smooth.

The mixture above makes enough of the meal base to serve four people, so I split it into two portions (one for now and one for the freezer).

When dinner time comes, fry 180 grams haloumi till crispy, and combine the herby mixture with the haloumi and one can (400 grams) of red kidney beans, heat through, and serve on a bed of pearl couscous.

Nom nom! You can't see the haloumi in the photo (it's buried under the herby stew) but this is a delightful combination of flavours :-)

Brekkie @ Kiln

It's almost spring! The well-below-zero overnight temperautres seem to have finished, for now, and there are daffodils, jonquils, wattle flowers, cherry blossoms and baby birds about. In a spring-ish spirit, Andrew and I cycled to a new (to us) cafe for breakfast this morning: Kiln at Belco Arts. We enjoyed coffee, to start:

then I had:

Dirty samosa

and Andrew had:

Belco brekkie

It was delicious. We sat inside, this time, but will sit outside in future if the weather permits. The outdoor seating overlooks the beautiful Lake Ginninderra. Nice :-)

Brekkie @ Cafe Luzon

There's a little strip of shops at North Lyneham, Canberra ... a cafe, convenience store, hairdresser, gym ... up until recently there was also a lovely organic shop, but sadly it closed down after 18 years. (Alas! I shopped there from their first day to their penultimate day. Sniff.) Andrew and I lived in North Lyneham for fourteen years before moving to nearby Kaleen, ten years ago, so have watched the comings and goings in the area. For many years the eatery was called Cafe Charisma, then it was replaced by Hide 'n Seek for about three years, then when that closed almost a year ago we wondered what (if anything) would replace it. 

Happily, Cafe Luzon opened in early 2026 and has become another favourite! The Filipino-inspired menu is diverse and delicious. I often pop in for coffee on the way home from boot camp, and today we went there for breakfast. I had:

Eggs benedikto (with pandesal and crispy kale)

while Andrew had:

Tocilog (grilled marinated pork with garlic

rice, Asian slaw, fried egg and house vinegar)

It's a warm and friendly spot and a fine addition to North Lyneham. Oh, and their cakes are wonderful too. I rarely eat sweet treats when out (can't really afford the calories) but Andrew and I shared a slab of their awesome purple ube sponge cake recently:

So gooood!

A night at the zoo!

The National Zoo and Aquarium in Canberra has been around since the early eighties and they have offered overnight stays at Jamala Wildlife Lodge for about ten years. I'd always wanted to spend a night at the zoo and was very lucky to stay there on Sunday night as a birthday treat. The package included lunch, tours, dinner, accommodation and breakfast. It was a spectacular experience. Here are some pics ...

Light lunch on arrival

And from the self-guided Sunday afternoon tour:

Our luxurious room, which had a lemur enclosure on one side and an expansive view of lion habitat on the other:

Lemur-viewing window

Yawning, snuggling lemurs!

Dinner:

Assorted canapes

Madagascan vegetable and tofu curry with coconut rice

Creme brulee

Mischka the white lion snoozed next to the room where we ate dinner and was still slumbering there when we reconvened for breakfast the next morning :-)

Breakfast:

Vego eggs benedict

We expected to be in a group for our guided tour on Monday morning but the other participants didn't show so Andrew and I received a very personalised tour with our knowledgeable guide, Lucy. Some highlights:

We were allowed to pat the rhino!

We had access to our room for one more hour between finishing the walking tour and checking out ...

... which meant we could watch our lemur friends enjoy breakfast

Such am amazing experience. Delightful and delicious and educational.

A Dubai-style chocolate experiment

When my friend Jacqui mentioned Dubai chocolate to me in July 2025, I was quite late to the party. Apparently the flavour/texture combo (chocolate + pistachios + crunch) had been around since 2021. Suddenly I started seeing it everywhere. The first block I bought was from the gorgeous Turkish Delight store in Adelaide, and variations are available in supermarkets and Asian grocery stores. Of the types I've tried, the Adelaide version tasted best, as it was not so sweet as the others, but I'd prefer an even less sweet option. This particular style of chocolate is also very expensive – ranging from about $125 to $150 per kilo – so I've been pondering how to create something similar at home.

My first thoughts were to combine Chang's Fried Noodles with pistachio paste, then coat it in melted chocolate. However, all three brands of pistachio paste/spread I found had sugar as their main ingredient (unlike, say, peanut butter which can be made of 100% peanuts) so I decided to use whole pistachios instead. The ingredients:

I melted the chocolate, then mixed in the noodles and nuts, and spread the mixture in a silicone loaf mould. (More usually used to bake things like date loaf and banana bread, but also perfect for shaping chocolate blocks, it seems!) The result:

Andrew and I taste-tested the chocolate and we liked it! These ingredients achieve the qualities I was seeking but without being cloyingly sweet (though, if I try it again ... I may use milk rather than dark chocolate). The mixture was also much cheaper than commercial versions, with the ingredients costing $20.10 for 410 grams (so about $49 per kilo). Nom nom. 

The magic of mushrooms (and other fungi)

It's been a while since I posted here! I mostly use the blog as an electronic recipe book these days (most recently cooked: really easy pizza on Friday) but hope someone else out there finds it handy too? Feel free to say hello if you do :-)

I've been thinking about mushrooms, and fungi more broadly, lately. With the weird weather we've had in Canberra, all sort of intriguing fungi has appeared. Many different shapes, sizes and locations, and (most likely) unsafe to eat. I may have trespassed a bit on a neighbour's lawn to photograph this beauty:

Today, Andrew and I went out to brekkie at a new place (well, new to us): Ground & Graze, on Grazier Lane in Belconnen. I had the Herbed Mushroom Toast, which was delicious:

Spiced herbed mushrooms, cashew cream, rocket

and grated Grana Padano on thick-cut toasted sourdough

and his very elegant Full Grounds Breakfast also featured some mushrooms:

If you too are craving mushrooms I have some great recipes. A smattering ...

asparagus, blue cheese and mushroom risotto

Bagus mushroom soup

creamy Austrian mushrooms

mushroom, lentil and rice casserole

paprika mushrooms

roasted mushrooms with feta and garlic

Usually the Canberra Truffle Festival is in full swing around now, but I've barely seen any mentions of local truffles this year. Don't know if the weather has led to fewer truffles, or the festival has been discontinued, or what ...?

One more thought about mushrooms. I think last year's mushroom murder case made Australians more nervous about eating them, and food producers less likely to offer mushroom products for sale. This is unfortunate, as there's no chance of death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) being sold – they can't be cultivated and only grow wild – and mushrooms are both nutritious and delicious. A particular disappearance I've noted is from the Leggo's Fresh Filled Pasta range. It's a quick and easy weeknight dinner option, and the mushroom version was a favourite in our household. I hope it reappears one day.

Weeknight meals ... the 2026 edition

Seventeen years ago (!) I started an Excel spreadsheet recording all the dinners I cooked at home. Over the years I've become more efficient at producing tasty, nutritious, quick meals. On the one hand, the annual number crunch indicates quite a lot of repetition; on the other, we're (mostly) enjoying healthy, delicious food that isn't over-complicated and leaves plenty of time for the many other delights of semi-retirement: gardening, reading, socialising, exercise, volunteering …

So, here's what I cooked most between April 2025 and April 2026:

creamy tuna pasta
hearty vegetable and barley soup
pasta and sauce
macaroni cheese
kimchi and cheese jaffles
scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
spinach and feta triangles with veges
nectarine, rocket, haloumi and pecan salad
spinach and feta quiche
tomato fondue

A couple of new favourite recipes this year have been paneer fried rice and crispy haloumi with tomatoes and white beans. Apparently we need extra protein as we age, so I'm trying to be conscious of including plenty of legumes, eggs, nuts and cheeses in our diet, particularly as I rarely cook meat anymore.

Cheers!

For about two weeks each year, Majura Valley Farm becomes

a sunflower maze. Andrew and I enjoyed a lunchtime

walk among the flowers and the artworks last month

On the hunt for protein ...?

We all need more chick peace in our lives

(sign spotted in Sri Lanka in 2023)

I've been doing boot camp classes for almost ten years and they're great fun. I started doing them, at my then workplace, as a way to regain strength after fracturing my humerus in 2015, and enjoyed the classes so much that I continued attending even after I left that job eight years ago. (Funnily, a bunch of other regular attendees are also ex-employees. Or even spouses of ex-employees :-)

Anyway, some of the group are doing a February protein challenge where they are trying to consume extra quantities of protein this month. The mid-exercise conversation today turned to how to reach the goal, which got me thinking about recipes that might be packed with protein. I'm not much of a meat eater so dishes featuring legumes, nuts, soy and dairy products sprang to mind. Here are a few meatless ideas that might boost protein intake:

Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce

Cheese souffle

Chickpea delight

Dal makhani

Lentil, cauliflower and sweet potato soup

Mushroom, lentil and rice casserole

Nachos

Palak paneer

Peacamole dip

Rocket and haloumi salad

Shakshuka

Spanish omelette

Sri Lankan lentil curry

Tandoori tofu salad

Teriyaki tofu and veges

Vegetarian shepherd's pie

Zucchini, basil and feta fritters

and for dessert …

Chocolate cheesecake

Orange and almond cake

Portuguese tarts

Wattalapam

Enjoy!

Chocolate cheesecake re-re-engineered

Chocolate cheesecake just got even easier to make! I've tinkered with this recipe over many years, removing the sugar from the base (it's sweet enough without it), halving the sugar in the topping then deleting it altogether, deleting the egg whites and increasing the amount of chocolate. It works well.

First, make the base

200 grams plain, sweet biscuits [I like to use Malt or Digestive biscuits]
100 grams butter

Crush the biscuits. Melt the butter and combine well with the crushed biscuits. Press the mixture onto the bottom of a foil-lined springform pan and chill.

Next, make the cheesy topping

250 grams cream cheese
200 grams chocolate [milk, dark or white]
300 ml pouring cream

Soften the cream cheese a little and beat well. Melt the chocolate over a bowl of hot water or in a microwave. Allow the chocolate to cool slightly, them combine with the cream cheese mixture. Whip the cream. Combine the chocolate and cream mixtures well, and pile on top of the base. Decorate with extra cream, grated chocolate, or fresh fruit. Refrigerate until ready to eat.

Back to Timor-Leste

I first visited Timor-Leste in 2018, as part of a study tour, and last week I returned. It's a fascinating place … exotic and chaotic, the opposite of Canberra's clean, controlled streets. A bunch of people have asked to see photos and I'm afraid I didn't take many this time. Too busy soaking up the experiences and the atmosphere. You can see photos from my 2018 trip here and here and here if interested. Anyway …

Sunset on the beach in Dili

(Ahem) gin cocktails at Hotel Timor

The main event: I attended the inauguration

of a school I'd helped contribute to

Remembering murdered journalists in Balibo

Ruined building at Balibo

Watching the film Balibo at Balibo.

Very poignant.

Cute critter

Brekkie at Balibo Fort Hotel.

Mie goreng. Delicious!

Tropical flowers at Balibo

When several malae (foreigners) trekked to see a magnificent waterfall

near Balibo, a bunch of kids from the nearby village joined us. The

little girl pictured, Amana, grabbed my hand and kindly

helped prevent me falling into various streams!

Obrigada barak, Amana :-)

'Only Timorese coffee is allowed in heaven':

spotted at Agora Food Studio

Portuguese tarts at a Dili café

Timor-Leste is very close to Australia, about a one hour flight north of Darwin. A beautiful place.

Brekkie @ a bunch of places

I've been very remiss lately and failed to blog! Too busy living my life to blather on about it. But Andrew and I have continued our weekend breakfast adventures and have tried some new places and tastes among all the old favourites lately. For example …

At Frankie's at Forde, he ate:

Frank's brekky

And I had:

Smashed avo

At The Irvine Cafe & Bar, at Florey, I enjoyed:

Vegan rosti stack

while he had:

Mexican eggs

At Stepping Stone, Dickson, I finally tried something different (having become addicted to their Turkish Eggs):

Golden Goddess (spiced scrambled tofu)

while we checked out Café Cultura in Civic last weekend and were delighted by:

Turkish breakfast for two

Last but not least – and this was eaten for lunch rather than brekkie – my meal yesterday at Al Manoosh Lebanese Bakery in Mawson was spectacular:

Labne, zaatar and veggies

Three cheers for Canberra and its wonderful food options!