Mmm, Vietnamese. One of the great cuisines of the world.
I had a little synchronicity event yesterday. The Dec/Jan edition of Delicious has a recipe for a Vietnamese prawn & glass noodle salad, which I instantly wanted to make. And when I dropped into a second hand bookshop (to buy a copy of Black Beauty as a Secret Santa gift for someone on an internet forum that I frequent) I found a Vietnamese cookbook. It's Lemongrass and Lime, and I just had to have it, because the pictures are so beautiful. Even if at one point it shows a picture of longans and labels them as mangosteens. Huh.
And the final touch was that the Bloke and I and a friend went for dinner to our local Vietnamese. We're back on the rice and spice train now - I knew the all-western kick wouldn't last long. Our local is "My Friend" at Watson shops. It's your standard Asian cheap and cheerful in style, with plastic tablecloths, BYO license, fake flowers, Vietnamese popular art on the walls, and a long menu. They do home delivery, and I was very glad of their chicken and sweetcorn soup while I was so repeatedly sick last winter. The bloke was also glad of it as I was not cooking, and he doesn't care to cook for himself.
The service is just fine for the kind of place it is: attentive enough without hovering, casual but competent. They give you a basket of prawn chips to nibble while you peruse the menu, which is a nice touch, and the food generally arrives in good time.
Their food is pretty good, too. It's not full-on gourmet, but it fills the local niche nicely. We had some truly excellent prawn and pork ricepaper rolls, a prawn and chicken hotpot, pork with cashews and snowpeas, and beef with lemongrass and chilli. Add in some garlic fried rice, some plain steamed rice, and whatever they charge for corkage for our 6-pack of beer, and it was $60 to stuff 3 people very full. There are minor flaws: they tend to overdo the sugar, soy and salt in their dishes, and at other times I've found their chicken stir fries to be too fatty for my taste. But the vegetables are fresh and crisp, and the pork is nice and lean, and it's served piping hot, and it hits the spot very well with a cold beer or three.
It's a very convenient local and I'm very glad we have it. I'd recommend it to anyone in the inner north area, though it's probably not worth specially trekking across from distant suburbs. I'm sure you have your own local cheap and cheerfuls.
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Lunch at the Studio
The Studio is the cafe at the National Film and Sound Archive. It's a tiny space near the reception, across from the shop, where you order your food and drink. You can then take it out to a spot in the gorgeous courtyard, where there are tables all around the deep verandah, and next to the fishpond. I had lunch there today with my mate Beth, and we'll be back. It's handy for those of us who work at ANU, and it's also open for the film screenings. One day I'll get to one of them. When life is less busy, and we can all kick back and watch the pigs soar lazily overhead.
They have a nice practical menu of ready-made sandwiches ($4.50) and assorted well-chosen things that can be microwaved and served with salad ($9-13). The coffee is pretty good, and there's an assortment of cakes and slices with no prices attached. Cupcakes $3.50. If you're going for a movie, you might also be interested in the wine, beer or packets of chips and lollies.
At lunchtime today the staffing was minimal - one man taking orders and making the coffees, and one woman in the kitchen getting the meals ready. There's no table service; you just wait and collect your food and drink as it is done. It worked OK for us, but I think it could easily go out of control. They'll need another person if it gets any busier. It was a bit marginal today. There was no water or water glasses out, and neither the barista nor the cook seemed to have time to do anything about it. I didn't see any tables getting cleared, either, and I wonder whose job that was supposed to be.
We enjoyed our lunch very much. The setting is beautiful, and the weather was perfect for sitting on a shady verandah. The pumpkin and spinach lasagne was delicious, and the spicy vegetable pattie (sic) came with a good coating of mixed seeds. The accompanying salads were crisp and fresh, and the coffee was good. I couldn't resist a cupcake, and picked a brown one. It turned out to be quite a solid chocolate mudcake, with a fabulous caramel praline icing. Not the light sponge I'd expected, but I coped. They had pink ones too (Hi Belinda!) but I'm always afraid that pink will be strawberry, which I hate. I'm fussy, I only like fresh strawberries.
It was rather odd to walk in there, as the last time I visited it was in the 70s. Back then it was the Institute of Anatomy, and you could go look at Phar Lap's heart, and actual real human skeletons. I remember it as dusty and chemical smelling and a bit dilapidated. Now it's sparkling clean and a beautifully and sympathetically renovated little gem of art deco and neo-classical architecture, with cute little Australian touches like the wombat head bosses over the arches, and the platypus skylight. Yes, seriously, go look at that link! The old portrait masks of scientists are still up the walls at reception. They include Pasteur, Darwin and Lamarck. Huh? Lamarck? How odd, but of course when it was built his name was not a by-word for getting biology wrong. Poor guy, I believe he did some very good work besides his big goof, and he could not possibly have known at the time. He, and the building, pre-date modern knowledge of DNA.
Cooking tonight: It was going to be spaghetti bolognese, but I only had bucatini. So bucatini bolognese it was. That's with the sauce I made on the weekend. A bit of extra simmering and long mellowing is a good thing.
They have a nice practical menu of ready-made sandwiches ($4.50) and assorted well-chosen things that can be microwaved and served with salad ($9-13). The coffee is pretty good, and there's an assortment of cakes and slices with no prices attached. Cupcakes $3.50. If you're going for a movie, you might also be interested in the wine, beer or packets of chips and lollies.
At lunchtime today the staffing was minimal - one man taking orders and making the coffees, and one woman in the kitchen getting the meals ready. There's no table service; you just wait and collect your food and drink as it is done. It worked OK for us, but I think it could easily go out of control. They'll need another person if it gets any busier. It was a bit marginal today. There was no water or water glasses out, and neither the barista nor the cook seemed to have time to do anything about it. I didn't see any tables getting cleared, either, and I wonder whose job that was supposed to be.
We enjoyed our lunch very much. The setting is beautiful, and the weather was perfect for sitting on a shady verandah. The pumpkin and spinach lasagne was delicious, and the spicy vegetable pattie (sic) came with a good coating of mixed seeds. The accompanying salads were crisp and fresh, and the coffee was good. I couldn't resist a cupcake, and picked a brown one. It turned out to be quite a solid chocolate mudcake, with a fabulous caramel praline icing. Not the light sponge I'd expected, but I coped. They had pink ones too (Hi Belinda!) but I'm always afraid that pink will be strawberry, which I hate. I'm fussy, I only like fresh strawberries.
It was rather odd to walk in there, as the last time I visited it was in the 70s. Back then it was the Institute of Anatomy, and you could go look at Phar Lap's heart, and actual real human skeletons. I remember it as dusty and chemical smelling and a bit dilapidated. Now it's sparkling clean and a beautifully and sympathetically renovated little gem of art deco and neo-classical architecture, with cute little Australian touches like the wombat head bosses over the arches, and the platypus skylight. Yes, seriously, go look at that link! The old portrait masks of scientists are still up the walls at reception. They include Pasteur, Darwin and Lamarck. Huh? Lamarck? How odd, but of course when it was built his name was not a by-word for getting biology wrong. Poor guy, I believe he did some very good work besides his big goof, and he could not possibly have known at the time. He, and the building, pre-date modern knowledge of DNA.
Cooking tonight: It was going to be spaghetti bolognese, but I only had bucatini. So bucatini bolognese it was. That's with the sauce I made on the weekend. A bit of extra simmering and long mellowing is a good thing.
Monday, 26 November 2007
Burgers and Chook and Spuds
Continuing on the no-curry kick, we had burgers from Flatheads yesterday, and a chook with baked potatoes and salad tonight.
Flatheads is in the O'Connor shops, on McPherson Street. As the name implies, they are a fish-and-chippy place, and I can attest that their fish is very good: it's always ultra fresh, and with excellent crispy batter. They also do the best takeaway burgers in the inner north - and if you disagree, please let me know where else to look! It's real meat, fresh salad, and real bread, and beetroot comes standard. If you want extras, the bacon they use is very good - a bit smoky and lean - and the cheese is real cheddar, not that plastic stuff. The torpedo buns are a bit unorthodox, but I really don't care if my burger is round or oval. The only drawback - and it's a big one - is that their service is consistently very slow. It's a good idea to ring your order through half an hour in advance, and I've known it to be even worse than that at times. Immensely frustrating if all you want is a quick burger - for speed you'd be better off ordering one from the All Bar Nun bar menu, though it won't be quite as nice and will cost more.
Tonight I came home from work about 6pm, and we were eating our roast chook and baked potatoes at 7pm. To do this, I turned the oven on the moment I was in the door. While it was preheating, I fed the cats and butterflied a smallish chicken. I then whacked said chook in a hot oven (200 fan forced) for 45 minutes, with a bit of lime juice and Herbie's cajun seasoning sprinkle over the skin. After 15 minutes, I added a dash of some leftover white wine to increase the pan juices enough to baste it with. I used my potato technique described below, and made up a salad. Simple and good.
Technique: Weeknight Baked Potatoes
To make quick baked potatoes, give your spuds a good wash and scrub, then poke a few holes in the skin. Pop them uncovered in the microwave on high - 5 minutes for two medium baking potatoes works well. Take them out carefully - they will be hot and there maybe som esteam in the microwave. Skewer each one with a metal shish-kebab skewer. Put these directly on the oven rack in a hot oven (you guessed it, 200C fan forced) and leave them alone for 20 minutes.
The effect of this is really pretty good - the skin ends up a bit crunchy, the inside nicely done. They're not quite as fluffy as slower baked ones, but the skewer and open oven does remove a lot of the excess moisture that you expect from a microwave treatment. And hey, weeknight! What do you want? Perfection, or dinner at a reasonable hour?
Flatheads is in the O'Connor shops, on McPherson Street. As the name implies, they are a fish-and-chippy place, and I can attest that their fish is very good: it's always ultra fresh, and with excellent crispy batter. They also do the best takeaway burgers in the inner north - and if you disagree, please let me know where else to look! It's real meat, fresh salad, and real bread, and beetroot comes standard. If you want extras, the bacon they use is very good - a bit smoky and lean - and the cheese is real cheddar, not that plastic stuff. The torpedo buns are a bit unorthodox, but I really don't care if my burger is round or oval. The only drawback - and it's a big one - is that their service is consistently very slow. It's a good idea to ring your order through half an hour in advance, and I've known it to be even worse than that at times. Immensely frustrating if all you want is a quick burger - for speed you'd be better off ordering one from the All Bar Nun bar menu, though it won't be quite as nice and will cost more.
Tonight I came home from work about 6pm, and we were eating our roast chook and baked potatoes at 7pm. To do this, I turned the oven on the moment I was in the door. While it was preheating, I fed the cats and butterflied a smallish chicken. I then whacked said chook in a hot oven (200 fan forced) for 45 minutes, with a bit of lime juice and Herbie's cajun seasoning sprinkle over the skin. After 15 minutes, I added a dash of some leftover white wine to increase the pan juices enough to baste it with. I used my potato technique described below, and made up a salad. Simple and good.
Technique: Weeknight Baked Potatoes
To make quick baked potatoes, give your spuds a good wash and scrub, then poke a few holes in the skin. Pop them uncovered in the microwave on high - 5 minutes for two medium baking potatoes works well. Take them out carefully - they will be hot and there maybe som esteam in the microwave. Skewer each one with a metal shish-kebab skewer. Put these directly on the oven rack in a hot oven (you guessed it, 200C fan forced) and leave them alone for 20 minutes.
The effect of this is really pretty good - the skin ends up a bit crunchy, the inside nicely done. They're not quite as fluffy as slower baked ones, but the skewer and open oven does remove a lot of the excess moisture that you expect from a microwave treatment. And hey, weeknight! What do you want? Perfection, or dinner at a reasonable hour?
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Italian and Greek
The Bloke and I are both hanging out for western food. No curries! No rice!
I was too tired to cook on our first day back. We had breakfast at a Newtown (Sydney) cafe, lunch at Debacle (yummy lamb, sweet potato and spinach salad) and dinner takeaway from Zefirelli's (pizza, pasta and salad). Zeff's serving sizes are ridiculously huge: a "main meal" spaghetti bolognese has done us for four meals!
So far I've cooked simple steak and salad, greek lamb casserole, bolognese sauce for spaghetti for sometime next week, and I have a small free range chook to roast for tomorrow. Tonight we're going to the Backyard Backanalia's election special, and they usually have good old sausage sangers. What with all that and vegemite toast, we're set to survive at least a week with no curry. The lamb was good, so here's a recipe.
Recipe: Greek Lamb Casserole (Slow Cooker Method)
Drizzle oil into slow-cooker bowl. Add sliced onion and coarsely chopped garlic, stir to coat. Add a layer of chops, a layer of herbs and lemon peel, and repeat until all lamb & herbs are used up. Pour over white wine and lemon juice, and leave on high for 3 hours, flipping layers occasionally if you can; it's good to let all the meat get to the liquid. Stir around, add new potatoes on top, and leave for another two hours. Fish out the chops and potatoes, and serve with some of the juices, and a side of steamed green veggies or a salad.
Notes: I realise I've not been putting serving sizes in to any recipes, but I think you're a cook then you can probably work it out. I'd say this one serves 4. More if you have entrees and desserts and big serves of salad and veggies. Less if you are really starving.
Leftover edit: We ate leftovers from this stew later in the week. I deboned the remaining chops, halved the potatoes, strained the juices, and used them to poach some mushrooms and spinach. I then added the meat and potatoes back to heat through. The onion, herbs and lemon peel go in the bin, they've done their flavouring job.
I was too tired to cook on our first day back. We had breakfast at a Newtown (Sydney) cafe, lunch at Debacle (yummy lamb, sweet potato and spinach salad) and dinner takeaway from Zefirelli's (pizza, pasta and salad). Zeff's serving sizes are ridiculously huge: a "main meal" spaghetti bolognese has done us for four meals!
So far I've cooked simple steak and salad, greek lamb casserole, bolognese sauce for spaghetti for sometime next week, and I have a small free range chook to roast for tomorrow. Tonight we're going to the Backyard Backanalia's election special, and they usually have good old sausage sangers. What with all that and vegemite toast, we're set to survive at least a week with no curry. The lamb was good, so here's a recipe.
Recipe: Greek Lamb Casserole (Slow Cooker Method)
- 8 large lamb chops - chump or lean BBQ.
- 2 large lemons
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 large onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon good olive oil
- Several big handfuls of fresh oregano and thyme
- 8 new potatoes
Drizzle oil into slow-cooker bowl. Add sliced onion and coarsely chopped garlic, stir to coat. Add a layer of chops, a layer of herbs and lemon peel, and repeat until all lamb & herbs are used up. Pour over white wine and lemon juice, and leave on high for 3 hours, flipping layers occasionally if you can; it's good to let all the meat get to the liquid. Stir around, add new potatoes on top, and leave for another two hours. Fish out the chops and potatoes, and serve with some of the juices, and a side of steamed green veggies or a salad.
Notes: I realise I've not been putting serving sizes in to any recipes, but I think you're a cook then you can probably work it out. I'd say this one serves 4. More if you have entrees and desserts and big serves of salad and veggies. Less if you are really starving.
Leftover edit: We ate leftovers from this stew later in the week. I deboned the remaining chops, halved the potatoes, strained the juices, and used them to poach some mushrooms and spinach. I then added the meat and potatoes back to heat through. The onion, herbs and lemon peel go in the bin, they've done their flavouring job.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
I'm ba-ack!
I tried to log in once or twice from overseas, but had bad net connections on the few chances I got. So now I'm back, with 4 Indian cookbooks and no Bhutanese one because there's no such thing. However, Lonely Planet mentions a website of Bhutanese recipes and google tosses a few hits back, and I plan to get cooking once I've recovered from my cravings for western food. I especially want pasta, vegemite toast, steak, and real coffee.
The trip was brilliant - mountains, scenery, chillies, yaks, mountains, roads with bits missing, roads with the whole road missing, mountains, blinged up TATA trucks, roads with streams running across them, monkeys, mountains, pashminas and silks, mountains, roads with ludicrous gradients, tea gardens, goats, roads with ludicrous gradients AND bits missing, elephants, beer, mountains... The Enfields cope with just about anything; it's like riding a two wheeled tractor.
The trip was brilliant - mountains, scenery, chillies, yaks, mountains, roads with bits missing, roads with the whole road missing, mountains, blinged up TATA trucks, roads with streams running across them, monkeys, mountains, pashminas and silks, mountains, roads with ludicrous gradients, tea gardens, goats, roads with ludicrous gradients AND bits missing, elephants, beer, mountains... The Enfields cope with just about anything; it's like riding a two wheeled tractor.
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
Last Post for a While
I don't know when or if I'll have a chance to blog in the next month; and even if I have a chance, I may be too busy to care. I'm off to Bhutan and India, on a motorcycle trip run by Saffron Road. We go to Sydney tomorrow, and fly out to Kolkata on Friday morning. Today's been a busy run of collecting all the doco and bike gear and toiletries and gadgets and cables and clothes. I haven't packed, but I have piles of stuff set out ready to be packed tomorrow morning. I decided to take my new phone with me, and leave the iPod at home and I've been spending the evening transferring music over to it (after a quick run in to Civic to buy a 2GB memory card). And greasing up my boots with leather conditioners, and charging batteries and testing the photobank hard drive storage thingo...
Food has not been very exciting; I've been on a use-up campaign. Last night Belinda came over, and we had some champagne and an all-microwave extravaganza dinner. I reheated a mixed dhal from the freezer, with basmati rice, pappadams, and one of those Indian ready-meals. All microwaved. Add some yoghurt, pickles and chopped tomato and cucumber salad and it was quite satisfactory. The "MTR" packet palak paneer wasn't great, I must admit, but it added a bit of variety. Then tonight we used up the cheese, tomatoes, spring onions, bacon and capsicum in a simple pasta sauce. We're about out of everything now, so I think we'll have breakfast at Satis tomorrow.
Food has not been very exciting; I've been on a use-up campaign. Last night Belinda came over, and we had some champagne and an all-microwave extravaganza dinner. I reheated a mixed dhal from the freezer, with basmati rice, pappadams, and one of those Indian ready-meals. All microwaved. Add some yoghurt, pickles and chopped tomato and cucumber salad and it was quite satisfactory. The "MTR" packet palak paneer wasn't great, I must admit, but it added a bit of variety. Then tonight we used up the cheese, tomatoes, spring onions, bacon and capsicum in a simple pasta sauce. We're about out of everything now, so I think we'll have breakfast at Satis tomorrow.
Sunday, 21 October 2007
Marinaded in Bourbon
Kangaroo fillets, not me. We had this with broccoli, and a beetroot, fetta & onion salad.
Recipe: Bourbon marinade
1/4 cup bourbon
1/4 cup soy
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 small onion, chopped.
Combine all, and marinade red meat, turning occasionally if you get the chance. Grill meat as preferred, brushing with marinade from time to time. Quantities work for about 500g meat.
Recipe: Bourbon marinade
1/4 cup bourbon
1/4 cup soy
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 small onion, chopped.
Combine all, and marinade red meat, turning occasionally if you get the chance. Grill meat as preferred, brushing with marinade from time to time. Quantities work for about 500g meat.
Saturday, 20 October 2007
ZenYai disappoints, pineapple muffins are good
Last night we had a beer at the Wig & Pen, dinner at ZenYai Thai, and saw Rod Quantock's show at the Street Theatre. It should have been a good night, and it was, except that ZenYai was very disappointing. I've been there before, though the most recent visit was about a year ago. They won awards in 2003 & 2004, and I really enjoyed their food back then. I wonder if they have a new chef, or if they have changed hands?
We didn't have a dinner booking, and were just wandering in along London Circuit looking for a place to eat. We didn't get in at Lemongrass, and then at ZenYai the waitress quite apologetically offered us a small table near the door to the toilets. That was OK with us; we were only in for a quick bite before the show, not a leisurely dining event. We ordered mostly very standard food - spring rolls and steamed wontons; red curry chicken and beef salad with garlic rice. It arrived promptly, as did our first drinks. Second drinks were a bit harder to obtain; the bloke had to resort to semaphore to get any attention for our table in Siberia.
I am unfamiliar with Thai steamed wontons, but I trusted in the good name of the restaurant - clearly a mistake. As far as I could tell they, and the spring rolls, were straight out of the supermarket frozen dim sum selection. There was nothing distinctly Thai about them, and the wontons were just very ordinary small dim sims, a bit overdone and leathery. The red curry was passable, though quite mild and dull of flavour. It was not very rich, either. I've made better myself with a tub of paste and tin of coconut cream - especially since I took a Thai cooking class a couple of years ago and learned a few tricks. And the beef salad was a great disappointment. I really love a good Thai beef salad - Yum Nua - and it needs to have fresh herbs in it. Coriander, mint, onion and chilli are essential... ideally some roast rice powder, maybe the salad vegetable choice is optional, maybe some Thai basil can go in, but definitely there MUST be herbs. Just google for a recipe, go on! ZenYai's had none, just slightly limp lettuce with cucumber, carrot, tomato and onion. Their dressing was rather short on the palm sugar and lime and long on the fish sauce, too. Overall, the whole meal was bland and dull.
Oh well. Rod Quantock's show, "The John Howard Farewell Party", did not disappoint at all. It was great fun. Rod corralled a bunch of people from the back of the queue to be official "latecomers". We got caught up in that, and were made to sing Mandy Vanstone's hilarious pastiche of Land of Hope and Glory while the rest of the audience pretended to be an orchestra - except for one designated heckler. I did my loudest bad soprano schreech, just because I could.
This morning I woke up and made pineapple muffins, and wrote this blog post. Yum. Here's the recipe.
Recipe: Pineapple upside-down muffins
Dry Mix:
1 cup white SR flour
1 cup wholemeal SR flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup rolled oats
Wet Mix:
2 eggs
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup light oil
1 tsp vanilla
300g crushed pineapple and 2 tablespoons extra juice
1 large carrot, grated (1 cup)
1 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped macadamias
Topping:
1/4 cup chopped macadamias
12 tsp brown sugar
Preheat oven to 200C.
Grease your muffin pans, if you haven't already moved to silicon. Put the topping into each of 12 muffin cups: 1 tsp brown sugar and some chopped macadamias apiece.
Mix all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat the eggs and sugar well with the vanilla and oil, then add the rest of the ingredients for the wet mix and combine evenly. Fold gently through the dry mix, and then divvy up into your muffin pans. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden, then turn out onto a rack and leave upside down to cool. Or do like we did and scarf some of them down piping hot.
Notes: This is adapted from this recipe. I used cranberries rather than raisins only because I'd run out of raisins. I used a 400g can of crushed pineapple in juice, and currently have some left over in the fridge. Next time I do this, I'll add the extra pineapple to the topping - this version came out quite solid, not caramelly and syrupy as the original recipe suggests. It's good, anyway.
We didn't have a dinner booking, and were just wandering in along London Circuit looking for a place to eat. We didn't get in at Lemongrass, and then at ZenYai the waitress quite apologetically offered us a small table near the door to the toilets. That was OK with us; we were only in for a quick bite before the show, not a leisurely dining event. We ordered mostly very standard food - spring rolls and steamed wontons; red curry chicken and beef salad with garlic rice. It arrived promptly, as did our first drinks. Second drinks were a bit harder to obtain; the bloke had to resort to semaphore to get any attention for our table in Siberia.
I am unfamiliar with Thai steamed wontons, but I trusted in the good name of the restaurant - clearly a mistake. As far as I could tell they, and the spring rolls, were straight out of the supermarket frozen dim sum selection. There was nothing distinctly Thai about them, and the wontons were just very ordinary small dim sims, a bit overdone and leathery. The red curry was passable, though quite mild and dull of flavour. It was not very rich, either. I've made better myself with a tub of paste and tin of coconut cream - especially since I took a Thai cooking class a couple of years ago and learned a few tricks. And the beef salad was a great disappointment. I really love a good Thai beef salad - Yum Nua - and it needs to have fresh herbs in it. Coriander, mint, onion and chilli are essential... ideally some roast rice powder, maybe the salad vegetable choice is optional, maybe some Thai basil can go in, but definitely there MUST be herbs. Just google for a recipe, go on! ZenYai's had none, just slightly limp lettuce with cucumber, carrot, tomato and onion. Their dressing was rather short on the palm sugar and lime and long on the fish sauce, too. Overall, the whole meal was bland and dull.
Oh well. Rod Quantock's show, "The John Howard Farewell Party", did not disappoint at all. It was great fun. Rod corralled a bunch of people from the back of the queue to be official "latecomers". We got caught up in that, and were made to sing Mandy Vanstone's hilarious pastiche of Land of Hope and Glory while the rest of the audience pretended to be an orchestra - except for one designated heckler. I did my loudest bad soprano schreech, just because I could.
This morning I woke up and made pineapple muffins, and wrote this blog post. Yum. Here's the recipe.
Recipe: Pineapple upside-down muffins
Dry Mix:
1 cup white SR flour
1 cup wholemeal SR flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup rolled oats
Wet Mix:
2 eggs
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup light oil
1 tsp vanilla
300g crushed pineapple and 2 tablespoons extra juice
1 large carrot, grated (1 cup)
1 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped macadamias
Topping:
1/4 cup chopped macadamias
12 tsp brown sugar
Preheat oven to 200C.
Grease your muffin pans, if you haven't already moved to silicon. Put the topping into each of 12 muffin cups: 1 tsp brown sugar and some chopped macadamias apiece.
Mix all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat the eggs and sugar well with the vanilla and oil, then add the rest of the ingredients for the wet mix and combine evenly. Fold gently through the dry mix, and then divvy up into your muffin pans. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden, then turn out onto a rack and leave upside down to cool. Or do like we did and scarf some of them down piping hot.
Notes: This is adapted from this recipe. I used cranberries rather than raisins only because I'd run out of raisins. I used a 400g can of crushed pineapple in juice, and currently have some left over in the fridge. Next time I do this, I'll add the extra pineapple to the topping - this version came out quite solid, not caramelly and syrupy as the original recipe suggests. It's good, anyway.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
On Losing Weight
I've done it. I lost 12 kg in 2006. In 2007, I've gained and lost and gained and lost a couple of kg, but I've kept the big loss. Eventually I want to lose maybe another 15-20kg, which would take me down to the "normal" BMI range. I'm not really doing much about it now, though. I'm settling around the BMI overweight/obese border - and if you think that makes me an elephant, well, here I am in my burlesque alter ego. Not skinny, sure, but not exactly spherical. (Photo credit to the amazing Allyeska.)
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
I've been reading some sites that made me think about this thing. The evidence of harm from obesity per se is nowhere near as solid as you might think from the media. Or, for that matter, from common wisdom and diet books and government advisory offices. I'm especially impressed by Junkfood Science here at blogspot. And this particular post from Shapely Prose summarises a lot of the common arguments. As a die-hard skeptic, I especially appreciated CSICOP's take on the subject. I'm not quite so sure of the credentials of this one, from The Center for Consumer Freedom, whoever they are; it has a slight astroturf flavour. It can be hard to judge the truth of what's on teh internets.
It's looking more and more as if the main health issue is fitness, well over and above diet. And with diet, it's about being mostly healthy, rather than obsessively meticulous about counting calories and avoiding fat or carbs or whatever. And BMI is a sucky measure. People with lots of muscle turn up as overweight or obese. People in the "overweight" category seem to have a lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer, and most other diseases, than people in the "normal" category. And the whole fat-morbidity correlation goes away when you factor in fitness. I'd better get back on that bicycle!
This ties in with some other things I've been reading, such as the "Don't Go Hungry Diet" of Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis and the "low GI diet"of Dr Jennie Brand-Miller. There's sound scientific reasons for not starving yourself, and eating the slow-release carbs can help with that. All you need to do is simply eat a good variety of food, with most of it healthy, traditional foods - whole grains, fruit, veg, dairy, seafood, lean meats. Or even more fatty foods if you're off for a day's heavy toting of barges and lifting of bales, but most of us aren't these days. And add a bit of sugar or oil for the taste; it will not kill you. Listening to your body is the best guide. That New York Times article by Michael Pullan that was being passed around the net a while back was similar - remember, the one that started with "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
It sounds sensible and unarguable, but surprisingly, even this is unsupported by actual research. Diet seems to matter less than anyone thought. On the whole, though, I think the popular idea of healthy eating is largely correct. When really eating "ad lib", I naturally want to eat plenty of fruit and veg; I start feeling logy and bloated if I eat too much high fat food. I'm satisfied by very small servings of chocolate or cake.
One thing that I think is missing from most of these discussions is the problem of "portion distortion". This page has some contrasts in standard serving sizes from 1950 to 2003, or you could look at the slightly annoying portion distortion quiz. Other research suggests that we are psychologically very easily led to overeat simply by large plates and containers. The "not too much" in Pullan's piece is a very important part of the puzzle. It's also a theme in the popular "French Women Don't Get Fat" book. Sure, eat your patisserie and fry your steak in butter - but in small amounts. Take the filet mignon, not the 2lb steak challenge. The Japanese variant mentioned the same thing, as I recall from skimming in the bookshop. (I couldn't bring myself to buy "Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat". Really?? What do they do? Shoot them? I have every intention of getting old thank you.) But anyway, it's like the French one: eat many tiny portions of varied and beautiful food, and stop when not quite full. Mmm, must go to Iori again sometime.
I found that my few months with Weight Watchers was simply invaluable for getting a grip on sane serving sizes. I needed this. I hated the primary school hectoring style, and the group-think, and the commercialism, and the lame educational materials that assumed that everyone was a housewife, but I still feel that I got my money's worth. I've never been much of a junk food eater. I couldn't give up soft drinks, or stop eating chips in front of the telly, because I'd never started. But I could reeducate myself on how much pasta or rice or butter or steak was a reasonable serve. It took a few weeks of feeling that I was eating far too little, but it eventually stuck, and I readjusted. I'll need to watch that this does not creep back up.
I'm pretty sure that I will lose more weight eventually. I'm getting more active, although I lapsed badly over winter with my many illnesses. I'm getting better at stopping eating when I've had enough. And I'm get better at eating what I really want, rather than just what's there on the tea table, or comfort food. This is surprisingly hard - genuinely eating "what you want, when you want" requires a fair bit of emotional self-awareness and maturity. A bad day at work doesn't necessarily have to mean chocolate or beer - though usually it does, still. A plate full of chips doesn't need me to eat it just because it's there. There is no shortage. Over time all of these changes have got to have some effect. But if I just get healthier, will that be enough for me? I don't know. I'm not too obsessed with the BMI and kilogram numbers. But I do want to be a size 14 again, as I was in most of my 20s.
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Using things up
Everything I gave recipes for in my last two posts has reappeared in some form, as a quick weeknight dinner. I served the remainder of the larb heated, stirred through some bean thread noodles, and with a side of gai lan. The beer can chicken I chopped and stirred through pasta with the last of the jus, and some cauliflower, peas, dried tomatoes and provolone cheese. The kibbeh is simply reheated, and served with some roasted cauliflower sprinkled with sumac, and a tomato, parsley and fetta salad.
I'm trying to use things up, and not buy too much more food. I need to leave the fridge relatively clean for our housesitter, and it's only 8 sleeps until take-off! In case anybody who doesn't actually know me is reading this, I'm going to ride a motorcycle through Bhutan, Sikkim, Assam and Darjeeling, on a guided tour by Saffron Road. And next year I'm going to take the train from Tibet to Beijing - I paid my deposit today!
I'm trying to use things up, and not buy too much more food. I need to leave the fridge relatively clean for our housesitter, and it's only 8 sleeps until take-off! In case anybody who doesn't actually know me is reading this, I'm going to ride a motorcycle through Bhutan, Sikkim, Assam and Darjeeling, on a guided tour by Saffron Road. And next year I'm going to take the train from Tibet to Beijing - I paid my deposit today!
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