Cats – Love – Cooking

Feels like: 35.7°C.

That’s the weather in Sydney, right now. As I write this I’m sitting in our sauna / spare room, with a pedestal fan blowing hot air at me just a metre away.

I’m feeling dramatically overheated.

Yes, I’m one of those people who complain about the heat in summer. Nobody likes a whinger though (especially when all of my friends are heat-lovers), so I do try to keep my complaining restricted to my inside voice, most of the time

Despite my dislike of the heat, I can see the positives to it:

1. My clothes and sheets dried very fast on the line today
2. I’m on leave today so it didn’t matter that my face is red and my hair is a mess on top of my head
3. AND there’s nothing like an icy cold sorbet (or a Calippo!) to cool oneself down and take the edge off this hell

Unfortunately I’m all out of sorbet, but I can reminisce about a few I’ve made this month.

The 3 recipes below are very simple, and give quick, chilled gratification. After churning they need to freeze for at least a few hours to firm up. If you don’t have an ice-cream machine, you can make ice-cream via this method from David Lebovitz, or this method for sorbet.

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Filed under Dessert, Easy, Frozen, Fruit, Ice-Cream, Recipes

Tagged as coffee, dessert, food, ice-cream, mango, pineapple, recipes, sorbet, summer

Our ‘Cottage on Mount View’, and a scene from Jazz in the Vines (bottom right)

For our first wedding anniversary Paul and I returned to the Hunter Valley, and to the restaurant where we were married. This trip was back on weekend of October 30 last year, so I am very late in posting this but it was too good to discard.

We stayed for 3 nights at Cottages on Mount View, around 15 minutes drive from the centre of Pokolbin. Mount View is accessed by high, narrow, country roads, which had me gripping to my seat in fear for the first couple of drives up and down (I’m scared of heights).

Once we were in Mount View though, the serenity was beautiful. At home we live under the sound of loud planes taking off, and trucks (which I call Optimus Prime due to the volume of their noise) rattling past our house. At Mount View there was the peace of quiet, interspersed with the tranquil sound of native birds chirping.

I love living in the city, but as I’ve said before, I love escaping to the serene Hunter.

Our itinerary was simple: arrive Friday afternoon/evening, celebrate with dinner at Muse Restaurant & Cafe on Friday night, spend Saturday at Jazz in the Vines, do whatever we felt like on Sunday (our anniversary), and return home on Monday.

This is our food story of that weekend, at Muse Restaurant & Cafe, and Muse Kitchen…

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Filed under Cafe, Eating Out, European, Fine Dining, French, Hunter Valley, Lunch, Modern Australian

Tagged as dinner, fine dining, food, Hunter Valley, lunch, restaurant, review, Wine

Isis | Paul & I on Christmas Day | Satine

…I apologise for being 11 days late in wishing you all a Happy New Year. I did intend to spend time over my Christmas holidays to catch up and prepare a bunch of blog posts, but instead I completely lazed around relaxed and did a whole lot of nothing. Which was actually just what I needed.

I’ve been a very sporadic blogger of late, with my post frequency dwindling terribly towards the end of the year.

Over the holidays I did some reflecting on why I wasn’t posting much. Last weekend I typed up my thoughts and it ended up being a 1.5 page essay.

My intention was to share those deep thoughts with you, but then I realised how utterly boring it was. I also realised that instead of dwelling on the past couple of months, I should instead look forward a fresh start in 2012!

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Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as cooking, food, goals, New Year

Once upon a time, when I was around 19 years old and living at home, I would have a rare fit of inspiration where I wanted to cook something.

Despite not being particularly interested in food or cooking at the time, I would take over my Mum’s kitchen, create a huge mess, and cook something. Some of those somethings were gnocchi from scratch (oh, the mess!), semolina halva, and… vegetarian lasagna.

Undeterred by Kurma Dasa’s full-page lasagna recipe, the many ingredients, or my lack of cooking skills, I set to it. The recipe said it would take around 2 hours 15 minutes in total… but it took me hours.

After hours of cooking, a missed TAFE class from running out of time, and a terribly messy kitchen, it was done. And it was worth it.

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Filed under Cookbook Author, Kurma Dasa, Pasta, Recipes, Vegetarian

Tagged as food, kurma dasa, lasagna, recipe, vegetarian

Growing up, one of my favourite perks when having a birthday was choosing my cake. When I was younger I would always have an ice-cream cake which was perfect for my January summer birthday. Though as I got into my teens, my cake of choice was a pavlova.

My Mum would buy the pavlova from The Cheesecake Shop, and my requested toppings were always kiwifruit, strawberries and passionfruit. I was never too keen on the rockmelon.

Even now, for me those tart, fresh fruits are the perfect complement to the pavlova’s exceptionally sweet, light marshmallow meringue and crunchy exterior, and will always be my favourite combination.

Sometimes I feel tempted by recipes of chocolate pavlova with bright raspberries on top, or layers of meringue with lemon curd, but I always choose my favourite classic fruity Aussie pav.

The pavlova is definitely not for those who don’t like super sweet desserts. That was never an issue for me though, as I was a child who would secretly drink undiluted red cordial by the spoonful, as if I was in Mary Poppins (‘a spoonful of sugar…’). Terrible, I know. I’m lucky I still have all my teeth.

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Filed under Baking, Cake, Cookbook Author, Dessert, Donna Hay, Easy, Recipes

Tagged as baking, cake, dessert, food, pavbloghop, pavlova, recipe