This past weekend I went to Perth for the birthdays of several members of my family (including my own). I booked my flights last minute and had to end up flying via Melbourne and damn the food was sub standard, even for airline food but more so for business class.

On the flight to Melbourne I had a steak sandwich that had rock hard bread and piping hot steak and what were meant to be fried onions and rocket. Simply awful. The flight to Perth was great, I sat next to a really great woman named Michelle and we chatted the whole flight over. Again the food was quite awful, I had a barramundi with an unidentifiable brown mush spread across the top of it. I took pictures of both of these but they really aren't worth publishing. The bonus was the small tub of Maggie Beer's Passionfruit Ice Cream and dessert wine (Noble One I think). Damn it was nice. Almost as good as the leg room on the upper deck of a 747-300. I stretched out and couldn't touch the seat in-front of me with my feet.

Maggie Beer's Passionfruit Ice Cream

The flight home was a long red-eye on the lower deck with considerably less leg room. The food was better but not by much. The cabin lights were ambient, so the picture is sort of funky. James Morrison was sitting a few rows in-front of me.

Business Class Supper on Qantas Under Ambient Light

Tags:Qantas, Business Classs, Ice Cream, Dairy, Maggie Beer, Perth

I was originally thinking of making this gratin with some nice organic pork sausages and organic cannellini bean for Is My Blog Burning's "Waiter. there's something in my... pulses!" hosted by Cook Sister, but when I saw some smoked bunny sausages at David Jones today I knew I had to have them in this recipe. Given that there are a few things I really enjoy eating, smoked food, sausages and bunnies, all that and given it's almost Easter, it was a sign.

The sausages themselves were fantastic, only slightly smokey and with a bit of a cheesy flavour that works well with the parmesan cheese crust on the gratin. The best part of bunny, more dramatically seen in sausage, is that bunny is very low in cholesterol so it's still really quite healthy. Even though the bunny stands out in this dish and there's a very soft fennel back-note, the texture of the beans really stands out pulling the dish together, not to forget the blended beans making the sauce thicker and more substantial.

Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans and Wantirna Estate Amelia Cab Sav Merlot

Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans - Serves 2
2 Smoked Bunny Sausages
1 Onion, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Fennel Bulb, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Capsicum, sliced thinly (about a cup)
400g tin Cannellini Beans
1 teaspoon of dried Oregano
1 teaspoon of dried Parsley
2 Tomatoes, diced (I used halved grape tomatoes instead)
½ cup of Chicken Stock
½ cup of Bread Crumbs
½ cup of Grated Parmesan


Fry the sausages in a little oil until cooked through

In the same pan, fry the onion and fennel until the onion is translucent. Take half of the beans and their liquid from their tin and blend to a puree; add this to the pan and stir through. Add the remaining vegetables, chicken stock and herbs and beans; cover and simmer for 5 minutes.


Slice the sausages thinly and add mix through the vegetables. Spoon the mix evenly between two bowles or ramekins and top with the breadcrumbs and cheese.

Heat a grill or broiler to medium and place each bowl under the grill and cook until the cheese has melted or the bread crumbs are golden.

Tags:Bunny, Rabbit, Gratin, Fennel, Beans, Sausage, David Jones, Tomato, Vegetables

Via The Kitchn, I came across something stunning that I knew I had to bake as soon as humanly possible. A Hazelnut and Brown Butter Cake covered in chocolate ganache. Of course, I threw in my own twist with a layer of apple between the cake and the chocolate, to make it my own. Pears would have worked well too but I happened to have some delicious apples sitting around that were begging to be eaten.

Hazelnut and Apple Cake with Chocolate Ganache

This isn't any ordinary cake, it's more of a dacquoise which is a meringue or cream with ground nuts mixed in. Today I used Hazelnuts left over from the torte I made a few weeks ago. The tricky things with this cake is the air bubbles from the beaten eggs is what gives this cake its light and delicate structure, and probably explains why mine sunk a little in the middle and broke apart as it cooled. Chocolate to the rescue to cover those bits up though!

Apple and Hazelnut and Brown Butter Cake

1 Cup of Hazelnuts
3 Apples
250g Unsalted Butter
1 Vanilla Bean
1⅓ Cups of Icing Sugar
⅓ Cups of Flour
5 Egg Whites
3 Tablespoons of Castor Sugar
100 grams Dark Chocolate
⅓ Cup of Thickened Cream

Pre-heat the oven to 170°C

Place the hazelnuts on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. When done wrap them in a tea-towel and let them steam until cool. Rub them in the towel to remove all of the skins.

Line the bottom of a 10" cake tin with baking paper and butter the edges. Slice the apples thinly and layer evenly on the bottom of the cake tin.

Place the butter and seeds from the vanilla bean in a saucepan and melt together, stirring often until the butter has browned.

Grind the hazelnuts and icing sugar together until the nuts are fine, mix with the flour and set aside.

In a stand mixer, whisk together the egg whites and castor sugar until stiff-peaks are formed in the egg whites. Alternating between the nut mixture and the butter in thirds, combine with the egg whites. Pour the final mixture over the apples in the cake tin and bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

Let the cake cool completely and turn out, upside down on the platter you're going to serve it on so the apples are on top.

While the cake is cooling, over a double boiler melt the chocolate and then whisk in the cream. Pour the ganache over the cake and spread evenly. Allow to cool and set.

Update: Actually, after typing out the recipe, I think I forgot to add the flour! It still looks and tastes okay but it would add to the reason the cake was so delicate.

Tags:Recipe, Hazelnut, Nuts, Chocolate, Dessert, Butter, Vanilla

Tonight I made a quick and easy prawn curry for dinner, loosely based on Dinner Tonight's Curried Shrimp which in turn is from Martha Stewart. It was quite nice but turned out completely different to what I'd planned. The sauce was really more like a butter chicken sauce than anything. I also made up the spice blend and just used what I had at hand.

Steaming Hot Prawn Curry

Prawn Curry - Serves 4
1 teaspoon of Celery Seeds
1 teaspoon of whole Allspice
1 teaspoon of Cumin Seeds
1 teaspoon of dry Curry Powder
1 Red Chilli, finely diced
2 Garlic Cloves, finely diced
1 Onion, sliced
2 Tablespoons of Tomato Paste
2 Tomatoes, diced
Assorted Vegetables (I used carrot, golden squash and broccoli)
300mL of Sour Cream
500g of Green Prawns
Basmati Rice
Lime Wedge (optional)


Dry roast the spices in a large frying pan or wok until fragrant then grind in a mortar and pestle.

In the same frying pan, add a dash of oil and fry off the chili, garlic and onion until the onion is translucent. Add the spices and fry for a few minutes until you can smell them clearly. Add the tomato paste, vegetables and sour cream and simmer until the vegetables are soft.

Add the prawns and cook until pink but still tender.

Serve over basmati rice with a lime wedge on the side.

Tags:Curry, Seafood, Prawns, Vegetables, Rice

I met Mel for breakfast today at the Newtown Café, surprisingly in Newtown. From the outside it's looks like the last place you'd want to eat breakfast, especially if you're sitting outside because it's sitting on the promontory created by the forking of King Street and Enmore Road, thousands of cars busses and trucks rumbling past every minute. Surprisingly though, the noise isn't an issue and neither were the fumes. Although I think they might have started to get to some of the staff who've worked there too long. She didn't pull of the narky-sarcastic waitress stick very well. On the plus side though, the service, for our table at least, was very efficient. There were a number of times the wait-staff lost customers or attempted to deliver orders to the wrong table. If the traffic still puts you off, the inside was a lot better than you'd expect, clean with high ceilings (filled with a giant plasma TV) and air-conditioning.

Café Newtown, Newtown


As for the coffee and food though, it was great. The coffee was a little off but I think that was just the blend, it was a bit too dark for my liking but I still drank it and enjoyed it. Mel had the Eggs Benedict with a side order of baked beans that was so big she struggled to finish it which is great considering most eggs benedict is just an english muffin and not much else. The big breakfast I ordered was big and it had everything you'd want, except baked beans but I didn't miss them; I only got through two thirds of mine. With the very generous serves and low costs (my big breakfast just crossed over the $15 mark) it's great value.


Eggs Benedict @ Café Newtown


Big Breakfast @ Café Newtown

Food, 9/10 - Very generous serves of well cooked food
Coffee, 6/10 - Darker roast than I'd have liked but still good
Service, 7/10 - We didn't have a problem with it but other tables struggled to get their food
Value, 8/10 - Pretty darn good for what you get
Location, 7/10 - Very convenient location across from Newtown Station

Tags:Newtown, Restaurant, Breakfast

No it's not what Jason Bateman suffered from in Teen Wolf Too, that was just bad scripting. Lycopene (lie-sow-peen) is found in the stuff that makes tomatoes red, called carotenoids which are full of anti-oxidents.

Unlike the anti-oxidents in some substances, like Vitamin-C, those from Lycopene aren't destroyed by cooking, infact, cooking increases the amount you can absorb, so even after Leggos has fully reconstituted what used to be a tomato into what can only loosely be described as tomato paste, there is still actually some benefit for you. That's not to remove the fact that fresh tomato is still going to be better for you than a fully processed substance, but if you want to create a home made tomato sauce with out any other preservatives and chemicals, it's a good way of increasing the anti-oxidents in your system. The currently recommended daily amount of lycopene is about 30mg, which can be had in just a single glass of tomato juice.

A perfect recipe to get some more Lycopene is Hugh's Tomato Ketchup. It makes about a liter.

Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall 's Tomato Ketchup

Tags:Toamto, Lycopene

Saturday was Gay New Years in Sydney so I was having a bunch of friends over for a bbq and some other nibbles. The night itself was a lot of drunken fun watching the parade from my balcony and since it was for a special occasion I tried to theme the food to Balls, Meat and Tarts.

Hot Guy and the Dykes on Bikes



Marching Boys - Mardi Gras '08

For the balls, who else could I turn to except Jamie Oliver? I took his spiced doughnut recipe and to simplify things I made doughnut balls instead of the traditional shape. I was pretty happy the way they turned out, very light and puffed into almost perfect spheres when they fried. It took a little bit of time and effort but they were great. The dough was so soft and silky it was a pleasure to work with, particularly because I was worried that it'd even turn out. I don't usually have any milk in my house and I forgot to get some at the store so I took a gamble and watered down some plain yoghurt. It seemed to do the trick.

Doughnut Balls

As for the meat I stopped at Hudson Meats and picked up some moroccan lamb burgers, american bbq ribs and some honey soy chicken drummetts. I hope I didn't smoke out my neighbors too much. There were a few other people having bbq's so I don't think it really mattered.

Moroccan Lamb Burger

Then there was the tart, a very simple tomato and cheese tart using ready made puff pastry. It took all of 5 minutes prep time and 12 minutes to cook. Using two sheets of puff pastry, I used one as a base and cut thumb width strips from a second one and used those as an edge, two layers worked just about right. Once the sides were built up I grated in some mozzarella and parmesan, layered with sliced tomato and seasoned with salt, pepper and a bit of dried oregano. Popped in the oven for 12 minutes and it was done. I think it tasted better when it was cold and looked like it'd have held up well for a picnic.

Tomato and Mozarella Tart

Tags:Doughnuts, Mardi Gras, Frying, Tomato, Tart, BBQ, Baked, Puff Pastry