Cooking: Oven-baked sausages and balsamic tomatoes

Last night I decided to cook this recipe for oven roasted sausages and tomatoes.

Very easy to cook and a nice dish for a midweek meal. I made a salad to go with the sausages, but it wasn't really needed as this a one pot meal and the tomatoes and onions provide enough vegetables. I bought a mix of three different types of sausage to try and add some variety to the dish.

For next time I would roast the sausages, onions and garlic for 30 mins before adding the tomatoes and not 15 mins as suggested by the recipe. It would be nice to get a bit of caramelisation and crunch going. As it was, the sausages and onions were only just cooked. You don't want to cook the tomatoes for any longer than the final 15 mins otherwise they will disintegrate.

Rubik's Cube: The Perfect Storm

When I was in Thailand the Rubik's cube was going through a resurgence. You saw them for sale at every market and by a lot of the street vendors that appeared each evening with their wares.

When I left Thailand John gave me a Rubik's cube. Thanks John! (I am assuming John gave me the cube, it was left next to my suitcase, so I took it!)

On Aussie TV we have been watching a series by Lawrence Leung who can only be described as a geek. The Rubik's cube has appeared in every one of his programs and was the star of one show when he attempted to become Rubik's cube world champion! He failed in a pathetic but comical fashion. (You'll understand if you ever see the show, he'd rather be funny than actually succeed.)

Today I decided to scramble and then try and solve my cube. After 10 / 15 mins I was completely lost, so I decided to turn to the internet for help. I was using this site and making good progress - using the beginners white cross technique - with the helpful animations.

It was going well and I was getting excited about being able to solve the cube in under sixty seconds with a bit of practice. And then BANG! My cube broke into the pieces you see above.

Sorry John. Especially if I wasn't supposed to take it and you wanted the cube back!

Iron Cove, Sydney

Not too far from where I am living in Sydney is Iron Cove. The bay has an attractive path circumnavigating it, providing the ideal route for a walk or run.

On the shores of the cove are the Drummoyne Olympic swimming pool, and a couple of rowing clubs and cafes. So far I have only been to the pool...

On my walk around the cove today I took a few photos and have created the short slide show below:

Restaurant Review: Carpaccio, Sydney

Yesterday, I went for lunch at Carpaccio on Norton Street in Sydney with some friends.

Norton Street has a large selection of Italian restaurants. To emphasise the Italian, set back from the main road there is a sunken piazza, filled with cafes and surrounded by flats clad with faux shutters in a supposed European style. Don't let the kitsch put you off. Carpaccio is situated just round the corner from the piazza and is somewhat more stylish.

The service seemed friendly and efficient. When we asked the waitress a question about the menu she replied with a certainty and precise answer that can often be lacking in part time waiting staff.

We started with some olives and garlic bread. The olives and been warmed, a great touch I am not sure I have seen before.

For the main courses, Dave and I both had the papardelle with duck and porcini ragu. The pasta was perfectly al dente and the ragu was a delight, neither the duck nor the porcini were overly heavy. Dave and I were both mopping up the juices from our bowls at the end.

Ali had the chicken breast stuffed with ricotta, lemon, thyme and sage, wrapped in proscuitto and served on a bed roasted pumpkin. Sounds like a mouthful, was presented perfectly and by all accounts tasted delicious. The ricotta filling was the star of the show.

Pen had the mussels in a napoletana sauce and served with homemade bread. While Clint had the white bait and pumpkin fritters. Neither plate had a crumb left on it by the end of the meal.

Reading other reviews suggests Carpaccio is a cut above your average Norton St. Italian restaurant. I can't make any direct comparisons, but from the food and service received I can believe the reviews.

UPDATED: As Dave has pointed out in the comments, about half way through our meal some live music was put on for our entertainment. To give the singer his dues, he wasn't that bad and the number of out of tune notes was acceptable. It was also at the right volume to be background music and didn't prevent us chatting. However, what wasn't so acceptable was the dreadful song selection. He also had with him a violin, that he didn't play once (that might have been a good thing). It's the credit crunch and I think the owners should save themselves some money, by scraping the live music. Your punters wouldn't miss it!

Blog Tinkering

With a lot of prodding in the right direction from Clint I made a few changes to the blog yesterday. All probably unnecessary, but it is nice to re-decorate every once in a while!

None of the changes were very difficult, but they do go slightly beyond the usual template changes and required some editing of the HTML.

First up I added a Twitter feed which you can do very simply by clicking here. I think you need to be signed into both Blogger and Twitter at the time. No changes to HTML needed for this one.

Next I removed the Blogger Navbar from the top of my site. You can't so obviously tell that it is a Blogger blog. (Although it is still pretty obvious!) The easy to follow instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Finally, I created a new Favicon. If like me you have never heard of a Favicon before it stands for Favourites Icon and is the website / shortcut icon associated with the site. If you look up in the address bar you will now see an white on blue background "RE" instead of the old Blogger logo.

You can create a Favicon using this web page. You then need to save it somewhere so your blog can link to it. I have used Google Sites. Lastly you have to make a simple change to your HTML which I found here.

I recently spent some time updating all the labels on my posts for easier categorisation. I hope to add a labels bar to the top of the site soon, although this is harder to do and will require another tutorial from Clint!

Friday Cooking: ANZAC Biscuits and Spaghetti Carbonara

In honour of ANZAC Day on 25th April, I made some ANZAC biscuits. Originally baked to send to the troops in Gallopli they are frequently seen in cafes this time of year.

Crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle, they have had the thumbs up from the locals.

For dinner I cooked spaghetti carbonara, which I have never made before. Ubiquitous on all Italian restaurant menus, done well is a dish that I love, but too often it is a disappointment.

I used this Rick Stein recipe. When I saw the dish cooked on TV a few years ago, Rick was adamant that you shouldn't use cream in a carbonara. The sauce should be made solely from eggs. I did some quick research on the web, but couldn't find a definitive answer (I didn't look very hard).

I was pretty pleased with the results. It was flavoursome, rich without being sickly and quick to make. I didn't measure any of the quantities and we ended up with a bit too much pasta compared to the volume of sauce.

Thursday night cooking: Thai pork

Tonight I cooked another recipe from the magazine Delicious, that I read while staying in Adelaide. The recipe I used for the pork can be found here.

All done within 30 mins, it was a very easy little recipe and used some of the curry pastes I bought with me from Thailand.

For the salad I used two small cucumbers peeled, de-seeded and chopped, half a red onion, some mint, juice of one lime and a tea spoon of fish sauce, all mixed together.

Sailing in Sydney Harbour

I've just got home from my second sailing lesson in Sydney Harbour. The lessons are run by Pen and Clint's friend Jonathan, who is an expert sailor and has his own sailing school. Unfortunately the winds were virtually non-existent this morning so we spent the time practicing putting up and taking down the main sail, as well as talking about some theory and learning a bit of boat safety.

The most amusing part of the morning came when Jonathan went round the boat asking us all in turn if we felt safe, secure and in control. We all replied that we were perfectly happy, at which point Jonathan pointed out a large tanker coming round the headline. The message was clear, we need to keep our eyes open. Hard to port!

As well as sailing Jonathan also works in TV production. He was part of the moving documentary called Solo following the journey of Andrew McAuley who attempted to kayak from Tasmania to Milford Sound in New Zealand. The documentary was shown in Australia last week. It was aired in the UK on BBC2 in February, but unfortunately is no longer available on the iPlayer. If you get a chance to see the program I would highly recommend it.

Tuesday Cooking: Chicken fried rice and braised pork

I'm cooking for my housemates and I every night this week. Comically it is something that Clint seems to feel quite guilty about. Why? I enjoy cooking and I am not working crazy hours (or at all). With the rain outside it gives me a nice focus to the day!

I'm going to try a new recipe every day this week (with the exception of the chicken pie which is going to make a re-appearance) and make some ANZAC biscuits for this weekend. I thought I would share some of the recipes with you.

Thai Chicken Fried Rice
For lunch today I cooked myself the Thai staple, chicken fried rice. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, not too far off an authentic taste.


I used this recipe. The peas aren't authentic, it is more usual to get some finely chopped carrot or perhaps Chinese lettuce. Easy and quick to make, a good lunchtime dish.


Braised Pork with Risoni
I got this recipe from one of Emily's food magazines while I was staying in Adelaide.

I couldn't find the recipe on the web, so here goes. Makes enough for six people.
Ingredients:
1kg pork shoulder (diced)
2 onions sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cinnamon stick
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
400ml chicken stock
500g risoni pasta (pasta the same size as a grain of rice)
200g feta, crumbled
Chopped parsley to garnish
Olive oil for frying

Method:
- Heat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
- Brown the pork in two batches and set aside. Drain excess fat from the pan.
- Put the pan back on the heat and cook the onion and garlic for 5 mins.
- Add pork, cinnamon, tomatoes and stock. Cover and cook in the oven for 3 hours until the pork is tender.
- Stir in pasta and cook for an additional 20 mins.
- Remove from the oven and stir in most of the feta.
- Season and served garnished with chopped parsley and the remaining feta.

I was quite pleased with the result and the one pot cooking made it pretty easy and limited the washing up.

Things I am going to try for next time:
- It was a little bit dry. I might double the amount of stock. This is going to look pretty wet at the beginning, but when you add the pasta it absorbs a lot of liquid.
- I think it could have had a bit more flavour. I am going to start by adding more cinnamon and then take it from there.
- You'll notice that it doesn't have many vegetables. I am going to add some more. Think of the 5 a day! (A mark of how much healthier the Australians are than the Brits, they promote 7 a day.)

I tweet, you tweet, he tweets, they tweet

I have just succumbed to the inevitable and signed up to Twitter. You can find me here.

I don't really know what I am doing yet. Any tips on how to get the best out of Twitter would be greatly appreciated. Is there a good Twitter app for Blogger? What is the best app to get for my iPod Touch?

Dear readers I want to follow you. Please drop your user name into the comments. Any recommendations of the best celebrity Tweetters to follow?

UPDATE: The first person to follow me on Twitter is a spamming jobs website. Apt and relevant as it may be, I was hoping for a real person!

Sydney Weekend

On Friday afternoon I went for a walk through the trendy district of Balmain and took the above snap from the end of the peninsula. It's my first pic of the iconic Harbour Bridge on this visit.

I am actually living nearer to the ANZAC bridge at the moment, which I find equally attractive, proving not everything built out of concrete needs to be ugly.

On Friday night I organised some drinks in The Rocks to catch up with everyone in Sydney that I haven't had a chance to meet up with yet. I probably had one too many beers and was feeling a little bit tender on Saturday morning. A swim only partially sorted me out!

Chicken and Leek Pie

Pies to Australian food are the equivalent of fish and chips back home. Warm, comforting and what many outsiders think of as the dishes that typify the nation.

Above is my first effort at cooking a pie since arriving in Oz. Flying the flag for Britain I used a Jamie Oliver recipe. The pie was pretty easy to cook and tasted pukka!

There was blue cheese in the sauce, which added an interesting tang but next time I will go for a milder blue or scale back the quantity as I found it slightly over powering.

Can you spot the leaves I made and put on top of the pastry. Couldn't resist!

UPDATE: I have noticed that this post is getting quite a few hits and people are probably leaving disappointed because the post doesn't contain the recipe. Here you go....

Ingredients:
- Small knob of butter
- Olive Oil
- 4 leeks, cleaned and sliced
- 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
- 600g chicken thighs, diced
- 2 thyme sprigs
- 1tbs plain flour
- 500ml dry cider
- 100g Stilton / blue cheese
- 375g puff pastry
- 1 egg

Method:
- Heat oven to 200 degrees
- Melt butter in a pan with the oil. Add leeks and garlic and sweat for 15mins
- In a large frying pan season and brown the chicken in batches with the thyme
- Add all the chicken back to frying pan, add the softened leeks and stir in the flour
- Pour in the cider and simmer gently for 20mins
- Remove from the heat and stir in the blue cheese
- Line the base of your pie dish with pastry and add the filling. Cover the top of the pie with the remaining pastry. Seal the edges together with the back of a fork
- Brush the pastry with egg wash and make a hole in the top of the pastry
- Bake for 30mins

Camping with Le Creuset

I'm just back from an Easter camping weekend at Pebbly Beach a few hours drive south of Sydney. It was my first Aussie camping experience and it was a bit of an eye opener! The Aussie's are serious about their camping and take everything with them to make sure they don't miss out on any home comforts while they are away.

For me, Pen, Clint, Ali and Dave, luxury definitely means eating well. Tea was made from leaves and served from a Denby tea pot (above), coffee was freshly ground and meals were cooked from Le Creuset pans. I would never have dreamt it, but certainly was going to complain!

On the first day morning tea was a coconut bread baked by yours truly:

We had roast chickens cooked on the BBQ and finished with a little spit roast above the open fire:

Blueberry scones for morning tea on Easter Sunday:

These were just the dishes that I managed to get photos of. Equally yummy were the aubergine curry, homemade coleslaw and rice salads.

Pebbly Beach

For the Easter Weekend I went camping with Pen, Clint, Ali and Dave to Pebbly Beach, in the Murramarang National Park, three / four drive south of Sydney.

Pebbly Beach feels pretty remote, located at the end of part paved / part gravel road. The campsite doesn't have any electricity, but all of your basic needs are met and we were pretty comfortable in our tents and sitting around the camp fire.

The beach is stunning and we had a fantastic few swims in the sea. The sea was about 10 degrees colder than my last swim in Koh Samet, but it didn't stop us having some fun.

The campsite was packed with wildlife. There were a family of Kangaroos who lived on the beach, kookaburras, rozelles and parrots in the trees, and finally my first sighting of a possum. All of the animals were pretty tame having got well used to the campers over the years.


On Easter Sunday we went to jazz in the vines at the nearby Bawley Vale vineyard. It was very pleasant to sit around chatting in the afternoon sunshine for a couple of hours. Unfortunately the wine was pretty ropey.

My photos of the weekend are here.

Melbourne GP Montage

(Click the above photo to see the video)

With an enormous amount of help from Clint, I have made a little video montage of the Melbourne Grand Prix weekend.

I hope you enjoy!

I am two! Happy Birthday to my blog!

My blog has just turned two years old. Blogging has now become a regular part of life as I pen my thoughts and travel adventures. The thought of writing travel diaries seems quite arcane now.

Thank you to all those of you who have stopped by during the last year to read and comment. A special thank you to the top referrers to the site over the last year who are all good friends and sources of traffic: Blue Eyes, Thailand Musings, John Dang, Shakespearemate and Brockley Central.

My most popular 10 articles during the past year are below. Some I haven't penned this year, but for reasons beyond my comprehension seem to be lastingly popular and make a second appearance in the top ten.
1. BBC iPlayer vs 4OD - one of my few attempts at a tech review continues to draw people in.
2. Thai Massage - using the words thai massage and happy ending in the same article continues to attract the crowds.
3. Restaurant Review: Memories of Bengal - the only review of Cholsey's finest curry house.
4. In Remembrance of Paul Spackman - a sad obituary of a friend who passed away last summer.
5. Restaurant Review: Maze at London, NYC - Gordon Ramsey gets reviewed, ineptly.
6. What does SOHO stand for? - seems that it is not just me asking the question.
7. First Fridays not quite the Guggenheim - gets a slew of visitors just before the first Friday of the month, every month.
8. Restaurant Review: Gandhis Kennington - a mighty fine curry house.
9. Restaurant Review: Kolbeh at Skitby
10. Restaurant Review: Caminata Balham - one of the few reviews to have incurred the wroth of an anonymous reader in the comments.

The blog this year has been dominated by travel news and restaurant reviews. I've been lucky enough to do a lot of travelling in the last year for work and pleasure, and have made a point of trying the local cuisine where ever I went.

An unspecified customer blog got a mention on Sky News just after Icesave went under. They repeated my blog almost word for word, but sadly no formal credit...

I also got 300 visitors in one day when my turn in the lottery came up and I appeared on the front page of Blogger. I am sure at least 299 0f those visitors left disappointed with my performance in the Williams F1 simulator which was my most recent article at the time.

Melbourne Food Scene

Melbourne has a buzzing food scene and cafe culture. We spent two very pleasant evenings in the districts of Carlton and Fitzroy during the Grand Prix weekend.

Melbourne also has what is reputed to be Australia's best food market, the Queen Victoria Market. Personally for me that is a tight call with the excellent Adelaide Central Market. Quibbles aside they are both excellent.


Caffe e Torta
For breakfast one morning we went to Cafe e Torta in the Royal Arcade. Despite the Italian name the decor had a French flair. The food was typical Australian cafe culture (fresh and simple ingredients) with a pan-European influence.

The dish that intrigued me the most was Clint's poached eggs on avocado and toasted Turkish flat bread. A lovely looking brunch dish. I have since attempted to re-create the dish at home. Unfortunately my avocado wasn't ripe enough. A good excuse for a second go!

Red Chilli
For dinner on the Saturday night we went to the Thai restaurant, Red Chili in Fitzroy.

It is the first time that I have eaten Thai food since leaving Thailand and it wasn't too bad. We had a pretty authentic pork laab and red chicken curry. The stir fried vegetables were less authentic, but I have found this is often the case as local vegetables differ from country to country.

I was pleased that I managed to speak exclusively Thai to the waiter and we got exactly what we ordered. Always a positive sign! For the first time outside Thailand my Thai wasn't remarked upon, it usually draws some form of reaction. Polite compliments, at best, or raised eyebrows.

There seemed to be some form of chili conspiracy going on in Brunswick St. In addition to Red Chili, there was a Blue Chillies restaurant and a third restaurant with chili in the name that I can no longer remember. Tremendously useless fact for you.


Labour in Vain
We had a pleasant candlelit drink in Labour in Vain during Earth Hour.


Pen and Clint have visited the pub on all of their previous visits to Melbourne. I can see why. It is a very welcoming and atmospheric pub featuring some of Melbourne's famous graffiti.

They used to brew their own beer, but have stopped since Pen and Clint's last visit. I was more than happy to settle for a Coopers Pale Ale followed by a Mountain Goat.

Babysitting

I've just got back from a week in Adelaide where I was staying with my friends Emily and Andy and their beautiful daughter Milly.

This was the first time that I have spent an extended amount of time with a friend's baby, only ever having exposure in 2/3 hour bursts before. Luckily Milly is gorgeous and I didn't have a single sleepless night while I was there. She was only sick on me once, but I can forgive her for that.

Everyone knows that looking after a baby is an awesome responsibility and when they can't speak, but are crying uncontrollably despite being fed, changed and having recently slept, it can be tough to work out what is wrong. However, what stuck me was the pressure having a baby puts on the relationship between mum and dad. It is not something I had considered much before.

Having been away for a week normal blogging will return. I have quite a few posts I want to catch up on from Melbourne and Adelaide. Plus a little project I am trying to get Clint to agree to work with me on.