In my kitchen: September 2020

Instead of going to Paris to play music, I had a staycation for two weeks. It was a wonderfully lazy stretch of time filled with writing, violin, baking and gardening... I started a writing project where I revisit a travel memory by making a dish from the region - so far I've done El Salvador, Mexico & Wuhan! 

In my garden...

 

Shiso is sprouting, auto-regenerating from the year before. How interesting that it was a purple shiso plant, but the new leaves are green. 

This winter I've really enjoyed so much lettuce from my own garden, and picking my own snow peas for salad. 

My dad grew these loquats. There was a loquat tree in our old family home in Shanghai, and eating these takes me straight back to my childhood.

 

On the baking front... I had plenty of time to bake whimsical things! 

Baguettes are my latest obsession...

Getting a crisp outer and a soft interior with an open crumb is quite tricky - shaping baguettes is heaps of fun!

I had some pumpkin leftover so pureed it and put it into a spelt loaf in the shape of a pumpkin. It's easy enough to shape with kitchen string, and the bread rose well around the string forming the pumpkin shape!

I've never been much into baking sweets (I'm really a bread baker at heart), but making these eclairs were really fun. The choux pastry was much easier than I expected, and I had a lot of fun filling them and dipping them in chocolate. Of course the best part was eating them as I went along... 

This was a birthday "cake" that I made for my friend's daughter's 10th birthday, using a cinnamon scroll dough layered with apple. I made this once in May and this time it was much easier to assemble.

Onto Food and Music...  

I made this matcha scroll for my friend who I play piano duets with. It's a Hokkaido milk bread dough, which I divided in half and kneaded half with matcha powder till it turned green. Once proofed, I rolled the two doughs out to rectangles, layered them together and rolled it up to a loaf. This worked really well with a beautiful soft crumb thanks to the tangzhong technique! We ate this with a dose of the Beethoven Op 59 No. 1 String quartet impromptu arranged for 4 hands, and later listened to the Beethoven Op 131 String quartet on an original LP...   

Strawberries have been great this month and I took the chance to make this strawberry tart for my other piano duet friend's birthday. We ate this with the cheery Beethoven Violin sonata no. 8.

Finally I'll finish with one of the many best things I ate this month. Miso eggplant really is so easy to make and delicious. I microwave my eggplant for 5 minutes, then drizzle with olive oil and roast for 10 minutes. Meanwhile I mix up a sauce of white miso, mirin, rice vinegar and sugar, whisking till smooth. I paint the whole lot on and grill for 10 minutes. It is so delicious I could eat this every week!  

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the In My Kitchen series. Thanks Sherry for the opportunity to review all the food highlights of the month!

Travels via food (3): Wuhan via hot dry noodles and doupi

This week's Travel Via Food project takes us to Wuhan. 

Wuhan is a medium sized city in the industrial heart of China. Though it is prominent within China, it was pretty much unheard of outside China until the Covid-19 outbreak, and now it is famous for the wrong reasons! 

My connection with Wuhan is pretty serendipitous. In 2005, I travelled to Tibet for my medical school elective placement. At a random dinner, I sat next to a girl from Wuhan. She had just moved to Lhasa from Beijing and was working as an English - Chinese interpreter for an Ausaid project. As was the case with many foreign projects, both English - Chinese and Chinese - Tibetan interpreters were required as official interactions were in Chinese, but locals were not proficient in Chinese.  

Shabai and I became instant friends and spent a few weeks hanging out together in Lhasa. We explored the markets and spent hours lapping up the sunshine in teahouses. We stayed in touch through all the years, later travelling to Nepal together in 2008. 

In 2013, I went to Wuhan to visit Shabai and her family. She had worked in Lhasa for a few years, then moved back to Beijing. The pace of big cities in China is pretty overwhelming though, and she decided eventually to move back to Wuhan where life was slower and she could be closer to family. 

Wuhan is actually three cities close together (Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang), cobbled together to be known as Wuhan. It was May, unseasonably warm and humid for that time of the year. 

The air pollution had to be seen to be believed. The city was coated under a thick coat of dark grey smog, and visibility was extremely poor. We went to the famous bridge across the Yangtze River, and could barely see out the windows as we climbed up to the bridge level. 

Beautiful art deco windows on the ascent 

The Yangtze River

All right, one can see that the industrial cities of China are not super picturesque with their tourist attractions. I have some more photos of the grey, but evidently that was not why I visited Wuhan! Instead, we went to check out the street food scene.

Wuhan style Siu Mai - silky wonton wrappers stuffed with glutinuous rice and fatty pork

The infamous Doupi 豆皮, also known as the Three Delicacy Doupi 

Doupi is actually the Chinese name for beancurd-skin, a type of dried tofu typically pressed into sheets and rehydrated for soups. This doupi has nothing to do with tofu, but was named after the traditional method of grinding mung bean in the batter. According to locals, this time consuming method is no longer used, modern cooks now favouring plain flour and corn flour for the batter. The "three delicacies" in the doupi refers to pork, shiitake mushrooms and tofu. There are also three layers to the dish - a crepe like surface, sticky rice layer and a savoury filling. The whole lot is fried as one flat cake on both sides then served in squares. 

Here you can see the man in an action shot with a giant doupi, ready to be flipped over!

This is perhaps the most famous street snack food in Wuhan - Re Gan Mian 热干面 or Hot Dry noodles. Locals take pride in this dish, as it is the noodle "face of Wuhan" in China. Legend says that a noodle stall had some leftover noodles, which the cook tossed in sesame oil and put aside. When he reheated it the next day and added some condiments (shallots, pickles and chilli), Re Gan Mian was born. Wikipedia says there is even a novel dedicated to Re Gan Mian! As a little piece of modern day history, Shabai's family were in strict lockdown during the first wave of Covid for over 2 months. On the day that the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan, her father went to his favourite Re Gan Mian stall and bought it for the whole family! 

I loved how we could have a soy milk or a coke in these retro glass bottles with our noodles! 

Shabai played the violin as a child, and her father plays the Erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument with two strings, played vertically with a bow between the strings. It was pretty tricky to get a good sound out of it, here he is giving me some pointers! 

Wuhan street food... in Newcastle

(all recipes from Shabai's mum and modified to local conditions)

Re Gan Mian  热干面

Cook noodles in boiling water until 80% done. 

Drain well and toss with sesame oil. 

While the noodles are cooking, place 1 tbsp of sesame paste per person into a bowl

Add a splash of warm water and mix vigorously with chopsticks. Add some more and mix until the paste has loosened and has a runny consistency 

Mix the noodles in the sesame paste till well coated 

Top with finely chopped spring onions, pickles, chilli, a splash of light soy and rice wine vinegar if you like it

Slurp the whole bowl up!

PS. I will definitely try this again with more traditional alkaline thin noodles (like Japanese ramen noodles) 

Three - delicacy Doupi 三鲜豆皮

Incidentally this became vegan since my vegan friend dropped by as I was about to start cooking!  The three components are:

1. Sticky rice

Soak 1 cup of sticky rice for at least 2 hours, then drain

Steam for 30min until cooked and fragrant, spray the tops with water if too hard (Shabai's mum said I may need to do this, but I did not) 

2. Filling 

Finely dice spring onion, shiitake mushrooms, tofu and red capsicum

Fry the spring onions in some oil along with ginger (fresh or paste) 

Add mushrooms and tofu, a splash of light soy and some pepper 

Top up with shiitake broth or veg stock until almost submerged and cook until a reduced sauce forms, approx 10 min

Add red capsicum and cook for one more min, then set aside to cool 

3. Crepe 

2 tbsp maize flour + 2 tbsp plain flour 

Add enough water to form a runny pancake batter consistency, must pour easily

Final assembly: 

Cook crepe batter in a non stick pan till set and easily sliding around 

(Traditionally a beaten egg is also spread over the crepe as it cooks) 

Turn off the heat to avoid burning your fingers

Spread sticky rice over the surface of the crepe 

Spread filling on top of the sticky rice 

Turn the heat back on and cook for ~2 min till warmed through 

Flip the whole thing over to brown the other side if you dare (it may disintegrate)... we just took it out of the pan and ate it! You can tuck the edges of the pancake in to look neat. 

I dedicate this post to Shabai - one day when Covid is finished, I want to go back to Wuhan to eat all these delicacies again! 

Travels via food (2): Mexico via tortillas

This week’s episode continues to pay homage to masa harina, the ubiquitous white maize flour in Central America. I was shocked to find PAN brand Masa harina at my local independent supermarket, in a small city 2hrs outside Sydney. Always expect the unexpected..

In 2016, I took a break from "normal life". I had finished my specialty training in 2015 and was at a loose end. Somehow, I received an opportune email advertising the critical care fellowship at the University of Toronto. To this day, I have no idea what drew me to this, but inside me a strong voice told me to apply for it. The upside of the job was that I would have several months to go travelling before it started. I decided on Central America because it seemed obscure and a good budget place to pass a few months.

I got a cheap flight to LA and a cheap one way flight to Cancun. I had no particular plans for when I arrived in Cancun. Little did I know, my trip had started along with thousands of spring break students from the US. By the time I landed in Cancun, I knew I had to run away from the throngs of excited 20-somethings wanting to get drunk. 

I have a little game for times like this, called "where does the next bus/train go?" Incidentally the first bus out of Cancun went to Playa del Carmen, a party town that I hadn't even heard of. Arriving there a short time later, I was overwhelmed by the number of tourists and touts. So I used the same "where does the next bus go?" strategy, and the next bus brought me to Tulum.

Tulum is also super touristy, but the bus station was far away enough from town that I could not tell this at first sight. I wandered around aimlessly till I found a hostel, and collapsed into bed from heat and exhaustion. When I woke up, I was hungry and excited about the prospect of my first meal in Mexico. I asked the old lady at the tiny grocery store where to lunch, mimicking with my hands. I have no idea if I actually went to the place she intended, but I found a roadside shack with a few worn tables and brightly coloured plastic stools.

Soy vegetariana was the first phrase to come back to me from the Spanish I learned from a previous trip. Soon after, they brought me the first of countless tortillas I would eat over 3 months. 

I always thought Mexican food was like what the West associates with it - corn chips, spicy mince, heaps of stringy cheese, bland tomato salsa.

Tacos in Mexico are a different thing altogether. Made from finely ground corn flour, they are usually served fresh and still warm from the griddle. I ate plenty of rubbery or hard tortillas too, but the best ones were soft and pliable with the right amount of chew. The topping was lined up along the middle of the tortilla, so that it was easy to pick it up by the edges and hold it in the hand. Usual adornments were a simple wedge of lime to squeeze over, and a variety of hot sauces.

They sure love their hot sauce in Mexico!

After a few days in Tulum, I was sick of the noisy parties and drunk American college students stumbling around. I asked my friend whose brother travelled in Mexico extensively for a recommendation. He sent me an email saying

"Here is a list of places I enjoyed:

1. Bacalar lagoon"

A few days later he sent an email apologising for not finishing the list, but by then I had already decided to head there.

The bus took me to the outskirts of Bacalar, and it was a long 20 minute walk in the heat to the lagoon. The first glimpse of the lagoon was breath taking - an impossible shade of blue glimmering under the sun. 

I stayed at a hostel right in front of the lagoon, the setting was beautiful but the hostel was awful. The bed was unbelievably dirty and uncomfortable, and I had to sleep in my sleeping bag liner. I shared a room with two German girls, who woke up screaming in the night because one of them was allegedly bitten by a rat. I say allegedly because we couldn't find the rat even with all our torches at 2am. I don't know where they went in the end but I stayed alone then in the smelly room, fitfully tossing in bed. In the morning, the toilets became blocked in the only bathroom and the stench was overwhelming. I was exhausted from the light rat-fearful sleep I had, and melancholic being a long way from home.

I resolved to move. The day before I had seen a nicer guesthouse nearby, with flowering trees in the huge yard and a full lagoon frontage. When I showed up to enquire about a room, the German owner said they were completely full. Maybe because I felt tired then, I must have looked super forlorn when he told me this. He offered me the little caravan, which was parked in the yard. I had to use the bathroom in the main house, but I loved being away from everyone and close to the water - it was just perfect for me!

The German owner, who had two lovely German shepherds (mother & son), had moved to Bacalar some years before when he met a local woman. They set up the guesthouse there and retired to the slow life.

"You are Australian!" He exclaimed when I presented him with my passport for registration. "It's so rare for us to have two Australian guests at the same time!"

After my walk around town that day, the guesthouse owner he waved me over and excitedly introduced me to a girl who was sitting quietly with a book. His vigorous introduction was somewhat awkward, as if two random Australians out of 25 million, meeting in a tiny town in Mexico was a celebratory event.

Meeting people on the road is such a whimsical thing. Sometimes you share just a few lines of conversation, sometimes you end up travelling together for a few days or even weeks. Everyone has a "social needs" quota, much like hunger or thirst. I learned through many years of solo travel to take it as it comes – sometimes there would be long periods of solitude, other times one would meet people very easily.

It’s strange now to think back to that time in 2016, when Sam and I first met in the Bacalar guesthouse. Her name was saved as "Sam Bacalar" in my phone for ages. It seems so obscure that any two people in the universe could meet, and we are all somehow connected by invisible strands. We have stayed in close touch ever since then – meeting up in Guatemala, Melbourne and Sydney. 

Bacalar is a small sleepy town of 11,000 people. There’s no real “tourist attraction” other than the pretty lagoon. The crystal clear water had an unusual stripe of turquoise in the distance, signifying the shallow part where you can stand up (if you swim out that far!) It was a wonderful place to relax for a few days. 

 

We wandered the few streets and bought fruit (somehow, a very important activity). Another day, we went for a kayak in the lagoon while her then partner took a swim across the lagoon to a small island.

We found a hipster cafe, because hipster cafes are now everywhere even in rural Mexico. We went there a few times, hanging out in the cool courtyard.

We ate this delicious chocolate mole, which consisted of 22 ingredients! 

It’s hard to remember exactly how those days in Bacalar passed. When one leaves home, it's like going to another planet. I didn't care for the noisy parties of Tulum, but I loved the tranquility and easy languor of Bacalar. After a few days there, I felt the rhythm of travel returning to my bones...

 

 

Tortillas… in Newcastle

1 cup masa harina

1 cup water

Pinch of salt

Knead together to a rough dough, rest for 10 minutes then knead till smooth

Divide dough into small golf-ball sized balls

Place one ball inside a zip lock bag and squash with something hard and flat

(Note, if you squash it with a Jamie Oliver frying pan, the tortillas will be branded Jamie Oliver)

Serve with toppings of choice and a squeeze of lemon… here a simple stir fry of zucchini and red beans with garlic and green chilli; also roast parsnip, and a simple salad of lettuce, snow pea, radish and cherry tomatoes from my own garden. What a feast!

I dedicate this post to my wonderful friend Sam, because (A) we both love eating and (B) the world operates in strange ways to bring us together!

Travels via food (1): El Salvador via pupusas

Since international travel is off the cards for Australians, I decided I will reminisce about places I have been to and remember the foods that I ate in those places.

Somehow, my mind wants to start with Pupusas.

Growing up in Australia, there was very little contact with Central American culture. Maybe I learned about the Aztecs and Mayans in primary school, but they were so far removed from our reality that I thought they were ancient extinct tribes. I had no idea that Indigenous people in Central America are actually direct descendants of these people. Though Spanish colonisation brought about widespread change in language and culture, the local traditional culture is still strong.

I had never heard of pupusas until I went to el Salvador. All the neighbouring countries have some similar variety on this theme – a cornmeal dough, wrapped around a filling, flattened and cooked on a griddle until it is crispy and warm inside. In Mexico these are quesadillas and in Honduras these are baleadas.

I crossed the border by public local bus into El Salvador with a couple of German guys I met in Honduras. We changed buses a few times, each time laughing at the lurid colours that these retired US school buses were painted. We stayed for the night in La Palma on the border and then I went on my own way to Juayua, while the boys continued on to San Salvador. It was perhaps no more than 100km I travelled over these two days, but the local bus had its own rhythm. It would stop randomly on the side of the road while people and chickens hopped on and off. Sometimes the bus driver would get out and buy things from the roadside stall “for his sister”. There was always a continuous throng of people coming to sell their wares, local snacks and pass out bible pamphlets.

Colourful street murals in La Palma

Juayua is a tiny town in the north western mountains of el Salvador, a tourist destination along the Ruta de las Flores. “Tourist” was quite a strong word, as there were not many international tourists in el Salvador. Certainly it lacked the popularity of the adjacent countries due to its reputation of violence and some countries recommending its citizens avoid it.

I stayed in Juayua in a guesthouse run by a Salvadorean man who had lived in Europe. He had backpacked a lot and knew exactly what travellers needed – a communal space, a sense of sharing, a kitchen to make simple meals. He had two kids with a Dutch woman but they got divorced and he headed back home to Juayua. He set up this splendid guesthouse with a beautiful garden and lots of secret reading spots. I felt immediately soothed by the environment and wanted to stay forever.

That first night, I had my first taste of the pupusa. I can’t remember who told me about this ramshackle place now, it was just a non descript corner shop with no sign. My Spanish was good enough by this stage to discern what the fillings were and ask for a vegetarian option.

The dough for pupusas is quite thick but retains airy lightness. Usually pan fried or cooked on a griddle with a smearing of oil, the shell of the pupusa becomes crisp. Inside the fillings usually have a mix of beans, cheese and pork, but it was easy enough to find a non-meat version. The filling had simple savoury flavourings with not particularly strong spice profile.

Pupusas were always eaten with curtido, a pickled cabbage slaw which often contained pops of mouth numbing chillies, and a salsa roja (red sauce) made from tomatoes mixed with onions and coriander.

I ate these piping hot pupusas fresh off the griddle and fell in love with El Salvador. Later, when I lived in Toronto, I was excited to find them again in a Salvadorean restaurant, but they were never the same.

Maybe because there was always an element of danger in El Salvador that made them more delicious. After eating my first pupusas, I headed back to the guesthouse for an early night. One of my personal rules for travel is to minimise the time I spend out in the dark streets on my own. I lied in bed reading a book that night, listening to the firecrackers going off in the distance – It must be a festival of some sort? I thought as I fell asleep.

The next day I asked Maria, the lovely housekeeper who spoke no English, what the firecrackers were about. In between my choppy Spanish and charades, I tried to mimic the noises of la fiesta. She laughed and told me that it was no fiesta, rather it was la mafia! She mimed a gun shooting herself in the temple and pretended to die, giggling that the simple tourist thought shooting the banditos had been a celebration.

The day after that I became quite ill with a virus. 2016 was quite the time to be travelling in Central America when there was a zika outbreak. I felt the characteristic fever, chills and the start of a terrible ache in my muscles. The slightest movement induced severe head fogging and fatigue. I knew I was going to be laid low for a few days, so I thought I would make a trip to the supermarket to get some supplies before I could no longer walk.

I stumbled out of the guesthouse and walked down the street. Juayua is a tiny town with perhaps 5 or 6 streets in its central area. The 5 minute walk to the supermarket seemed an eternity, and I had to pause on a street corner to catch my breath. By the time I got there I was exhausted, so I quickly shoved a few things into my bag, paid and left.

Except I could not leave.

Standing in front of the automatic sliding door, it would not open. There were several other equally confused people near me, and we stood waving madly at the sensor. One of the supermarket employees came to us and fire off a rapid string of Spanish words that I could not catch in my viral daze other than Polizia being mentioned several times.

Then I heard the firecrackers again. Firecrackers? But Maria said it was no fiesta…

We stood impatiently inside the glass barrier separating us from the firecrackers. Inside, people kept shopping, loading their baskets with milk and bread as if nothing was happening. Was the outside world really separated from us just from this single glass sliding door?

Then as if it was some mirage, I saw a bunch of police with machine guns running down the street. They shouted at the “bad guys” that we could not see around some other corner. The police were dressed in baggy bulletproof clothes that seemed comically huge up close. Somehow the scene was chaotic and noisy, nothing like the streamlined, almost beautiful attacks that one sees on TV. Shots were fired and a woman screamed outside. Children started crying.

Inside, I felt numb. Maybe it was the viral illness, or the sense of disbelief that I was really here in the middle of a police vs mafia shootout. Who were the good guys anyway? I felt annoyed by the inconvenience and wanted to go back to my bed. An apple rolled out of my bag and I bent over to pick it up. The simple exertion of this task made me so dizzy that I had to lean on the door to prevent myself from passing out.

I closed my eyes and waited as the firecrackers continued to pop off into the distance, a strange staccato rhythm. Soon it was over and the supermarket employee opened the door to let the throng of shoppers out. We emerged into the dazzling sunlight and scattered off in all different directions, as if nothing had happened.

I went back to the hostel and slept for three days. I had high fevers and severe body pain that seemed to ravage even my bones. On the days I could not even get up, Maria brought me water in a little jug to my room. A Hawaiian woman I met in the hostel just before I got zika brought me plain rice and bread. The guesthouse owner was worried about me and asked if I should go to the hospital. I asked him where the hospital was and he said it was in San Salvador, but he could borrow his friend’s car to drive me down the mountains. I was struck by the random kindness of all these strangers I met in Juayua. I asked my ICU friend on Whatsapp for a consult, but how does one summarise one’s illness in a text message? She asked if she should contact my insurance company and I went back to sleep.

Eventually the body healed and I gathered enough energy to sit in the garden again. The owner asked me if I had even been outside the guesthouse to see the sights of Juayua – there were waterfalls and hiking trails, he explained. But I was tired and just wanted to have another pupusa.






El Salvadorean Pupusas (in Newcastle)

(My own, completely mashed up version from several internet recipes)

Curtido
1/4 wombok, finely sliced
1 carrot, peeled into fine strips
1 tbsp sugar + 1 tsp salt mixed with ~ 2 cups of apple cider vinegar and hot water 

Mix and leave in fridge for 6 hours to develop flavours


Salsa roja
1 small red onion, roughly chopped
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 can Italian whole tomatoes

Blitz in a food processor till a coarse paste forms. Season and add chilli flakes
Cook on low heat till reduced and thick, approx 20 minutes

Pupusas

Filling – mix 1 can refried beans with shredded mozzarella, season to taste

2 cups masa harina (fine white corn flour)
2 cups warm water
Mix the flour and water till a rough dough forms
Rest for 20 minutes then knead till smooth, a couple of minutes
Form into balls (I made 10)
Flatten and fill with a generous tbsp of the fillng, then seal into a ball and flatten again
Fry in a dry frying pan until browned on both sides, approx 3-5min each side



Et voila! It's amazing how food can transport you back to a place. I dedicate this post to Maria the guesthouse housekeeper and Vivian the Hawaiian girl I met in Juayua - hope you are well wherever you are!

In my kitchen: August 2020

What a strange year 2020 has been. After the first lockdown, there was a time of optimism that we had done so well in Australia to have averted many Covid-19 infections & deaths. The last month has seen some unravelling of this optimism in Victoria where they have gone back into lockdown. Despite all this, life and eating (and IMK) goes on...

In my garden...

Lots of my lettuce is thriving. There is something so wholesome about watching a tiny little leaflet emerge to become a full bodied confident leaf. 

There have been so many snow peas, and I have taken to the joy of eating one off the vine as a treat after work. 

 

On the baking front...

There have been several spectacular loaves this month. 

I tried sourdough baguettes again. My first attempt last winter was a flop as I had not let the yeast develop fully. I made these when my friend J came to visit for the weekend and they were really, really good. The crust was dark and crunchy but the interior was meltingly soft. The creamy texture of the crumb makes it feel like it's already been buttered! Definitely looking forward to making this again. 

My friend sent me an article about sourdough one day and I had a loaf proving, so I was keen to try out the bread-face Picasso style... 

I also celebrated my birthday this month, amid a very busy clinical week and some tragic news from a friend. Not to do anything by halves, I had 3 birthday cakes!

I baked this very simple apple cake for my family, with a tender moist crumb and whole mouthfuls of apple in every bite (4 in the whole cake!)

The next day my friend from work brought this extravagant chocolate hazelnut torte from Baked Uprising in Maryville. This was intensely sweet and went perfectly with some strong coffee.

The last cake was an orange almond cake which I made for my quartet. 3 whole oranges from my friend's tree boiled for an hour and blitzed together with half a bag of almond meal, half a dozen eggs and a generous splash of poppy seeds... the orange flavour was full on crazy! 

Finally, onto the Food and Music series....

I went up to Kirra to visit my friend L along with her mum and another music friend from Brisbane. We had a lot of fun playing the strangest combination of instruments - a piano quartet in our sense comprised piano, recorder, violin and trombone! We also played some simple Haydn piano trios with me on cello.  

I brought Barney my sourdough with me to Queensland, in hindsight it would have been funny to print him a border pass as a souvenir! We ate some spectacular rye loaves that were baked fresh while we were playing music. I love simple lunches like this with lots of fresh produce and warm crusty bread. The smoked salmon from her local place in Coolangatta was out of this world (red - chilli, green - dill)

My birthday menu with my quartet was this slow roasted lamb shoulder rubbed with yoghurt and spices. The musical menu was the Scherzo movement from the Brahms Piano Trio no. 1 (one of my favourite movements of all time), the Beethoven Op. 3 string trio and the Borodin piece for 2 violins and cello in G minor, based on a Russian folk song.

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the IMK series - thanks Sherry!

Dreams: Iguana fireworks, Chicken alfredo and the wrong flight

These three dreams punctuated the week during which I had my birthday...


Dream no. 1 - Fireworks




In this dream, I am driving to the airport to pick up Emily. The car is parked inside a multi level garage, and when I get to the entrance of the garage, I wonder transiently if I will be able to recognise which one my car is. Once inside, I found it with surprising ease, a dark blue non-descript sedan of some sort.




I get into the driver's seat which is in the left - I must be in Europe, or North America? I wonder to myself. The car makes little noise as we exit the garage. The time is early evening, and there is still a glimmer of the daylight on the horizon. I drive to the airport and pick up Emily. The process goes smoothly and soon we are back on the highway heading back towards town.




We drive towards the garage but I take a wrong turn and it is a dead end. Making a 3-point turn, I try a side street which turns out to be a one-way street ending near a park. I make another turn and finally I can see the parking garage some distance away.


At that moment, several fireworks go off. We hear the whoosh and explosion in the air quite close to us. Emily is very excited by the fireworks and asks if we can get out and see. We park the car on the side of the road, in quite a dark place with little illumination. We get out of the car and gaze at the sky - 3 fireworks are simultaneously launched from all around us and they climb steadily, streaks of orange piercing the night sky. At the same time, they all explode right above us, forming a handful of shapes that look definitely like iguanas. More fireworks are launched, and every single one forms a pattern resembling iguanas.


I am totally stunned and we are looking at each other like - how could this be what we are seeing? Then I think I would like to take a photo to show S, and as I take out my phone he is calling on WhatsApp.


Happy Bastille day! He says, beaming with positive energy. Then I wake up.


When I wake up there is a singular thought on my mind, which I immediately wrote down.
Bottle the essence of joy, and revisit it often.


(There was a tiny post script to this dream, where I buy a croissant stuffed with berries called Daisy and attend a concert where they are playing Grieg's Schmetterling on the cello)




Dream no. 2 - Island


In this dream, I am on a huge cruise liner. I'm not sure if I am a passenger or a staff member. The cruise ship is so large that it looks like it could be the Ruby Princess, but I'm not sure if it really is.


We are sailing along the ocean and soon come near land. The edge of the land curves inward gently, and we go towards the bay. The cruise liner is parked some distance away from the actual land, because there is nowhere for it to dock. I see a beautiful crescent of flawless golden sand, fringed by gently palm trees.


This is a tropical paradise. I say to myself in the dream.


We get into rubber dinghies that seem like life boats and head towards the beach. Soon many hundred, if not thousands, of people have disembarked from the giant cruise liner. Lounge chairs and beach umbrellas appear from nowhere, and someone is playing music on a portable boombox. The serenity of the tranquil island paradise is utterly lost.


Someone drags me into the corner and says they are short a dancer for the Traditional Welcome Ceremony. Before I have a chance to protest, they have put a string of flowers in my hair and a grass skirt around my waist. I am pushed out with a ring of similarly decked out girls and we start singing some traditional song.


It's a hoax! I am desperately screaming in my head to the crowd, who click endless pictures of us and cheer us on. Finally the awful dance is finished, and the crowd is receding quickly. Without the rubber dinghies, I have no idea how they are disappearing.


I look around me and the detritus of sudden tourism is everywhere - discarded candy wrappers, half crushed beer cans, trampled flowers.. I feel disgusted and suddenly extremely hungry. I ask a lady in a suit if I can eat something before going back to the cruise liner and she said that she would check on my order. I tried to explain that I didn't order anything but she wouldn't hear of it - You ordered the creamy chicken pasta right? She says with an air of authority.


I am resigned to my creamy chicken pasta fate and even start dreaming about it - maybe it won't be so bad? She comes back and tells me that all the creamy chicken pasta has run out now (maybe the generic food choice of all cruise attending people?). She says I have to settle for Chicken Alfredo instead - What is that? I wonder, and I wake up


PS. Chicken Alfredo is a creamy chicken pasta dish!




Dream no. 3 - Flight


In this dream, I am on my way to the airport to pick up Emily. (Crazy... another airport dream!) When I get there, I think it's actually the arrivals hall of Charles du Gaulle, where I waited for her last year while she was clearing immigration.


I stand in the same spot - at a little bakery shop just outside the arrivals area. The area is quite crowded and there are lots of people milling about.


After a while I see S and he is as surprised to see me as I am to see him.
What are you doing here? He asks me incredulously.
I said that I was waiting for Emily and I asked him if they had come together somehow.


No way! We broke up ages ago. He said angrily and turned away from me in a huff.
I start apologising for not knowing that they had broken up - I didn't even know they were together! He is angry and says nothing to me.


Finally he says that he had come with someone else and he was still waiting for them. I noticed that he had no baggage at all, and he was standing there with his hands in his pockets.


I keep looking out for Emily while S completely ignores me. I start to feel a bit uncomfortable about his silence and think maybe I've said or done something wrong? (An awful feeling). Then suddenly he says, There's the person I'm looking for. And I look over to where he's pointing - a man is pushing a trolley with 6 or 7 large suitcases, stacked up so tall that I can barely see the man.


As he comes closer I realise it is a guy that I used to date 10 years ago! I was absolutely speechless to see S with this man and then I wake up.

In my kitchen: July 2020

Where does the time go? I truly cannot believe we are halfway through 2020! Covid has made me so aware of how many things in my life I feel grateful for.


In my little garden....

Many of my Mr Peas have been eaten by bugs, slugs and snails, also grasshoppers.. but there has been the occasional adorable snow pea.

The radishes have been maturing, though the soil seems to fall away from the tops of them and they get eaten by various things. I finally grew enough radish and lettuce for a salad!


On the baking front...

I produced the most gorgeous loaf I have made for quite some time. This was flavoured with the aquafaba from soaking black beans, and ground / roasted black sesame .

This adorable rose-shaped challah was made with my friend's 9 year old daughter, who greedily stuffed each of the strands with chocolate chips that oozed everywhere when the challah was cut. I don't think I'd ever realised how much children love getting involved in baking!

I made these sourdough tangzhong cat buns (Kim Joy's recipe) as a special gift for my friend. Though this did take quite a lot of time and effort, I enjoyed every step of the way! I would totally make these again. According to my friend, they stayed soft and fluffy for days afterwards.


Onto the Food and Music series...

The other violinist in the quartet is quite a talented cook and she rustled up this delicious goat tagine. My favourites in the tagine are the blanched almonds and the apricots which become lusciously soft and infused with tagine spices.

We had a feast of the tagine, falafels (so bloody hard to grind!!) and pide. This was served with Schubert's Rosamunde string quartet and a special pianist also joined us to play Elena Katz Chernin's The Offering. It is really worth taking a listen to this wonderful modern Australian work with contrasting movements full of life and joy.

The violist made this dinner of beef stew with Yorkshire puddings. There's something intensely satisfying about poking a hole in the puddings and ladling warm rich stew all over them. We also enjoyed shelling the peas together - a fun group activity. We ate this wonderful meal with Beethoven's Op 18. No. 3 (particularly adore the slow movement), a little bit of the 2nd Razumovsky quartet and Faure's piano quartet after dinner.

I also got a bit obsessed with the idea of making a lattice crust for apple pie, so I ended up doing it two nights in a row. This one was the more pretty one. My friend L was visiting from the Gold Coast and we played some violin-piano duets together after this pie - including Beethoven's 5th violin sonata Spring (must be an all time favourite) and some piano 6 hand music with her mum (Rachmaninov's Romances for 6 hands).

Finally, Barney my sourdough turned 3 and we celebrated his birthday with the Merewether ensemble with Beethoven's wind quintet Op. 16! Barney was born on my kitchen benchtop in Darwin, and it's incredible just how far he has come in 3 years. He has produced countless loaves, taught me the virtues of patience and acceptance, and brought so much joy to my life. I stopped counting how many children he has now, but it must be over 50 - he lives in every state & territory of Australia and in 3 other countries (China, Canada and US). Happy Birthday Barney!


I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series - thanks for hosting Sherry!