Sunday night in Sydney, sitting on an awful, awful couch in a room where
the cheapest internet is $27AUD per day. Thus I am writing
a blog entry in a text editor and I’ll upload it some other time.
This couch is unbelievably bad. It’s not very deep and the cushions are
huge, stiff foam rubber blocks. The bricks are upholstered in a horrid
synthetic material that is enormously slick. Consequently, sitting on
the couch is an exercise in consciously always pushing back with my legs
and ass to keep the foam brick from slipping off the couch.
Sounds bad, but I am typing on a disconnected pc from an idiotic couch
after eating a beautiful braised veal shank (osso buco/oso bucco),
garlic mashed potatos, and some simple green beans. And once Ling
finishes cleaning up all my mess in the kitchen, I’ll go out, finish
simmering the mango chutney for tomorrow, and make us some sheep’s-milk
yogurt smoothies.
Why this meal?
We arrived in Sydney at 0700AM on Saturday morning. After checking into
the service apartment here, we headed to Sydney Markets in Parramatta to
buy fruits and vegetables at the massive produce market. This is a full
time vegetable wholesale facility. It’s open to the general public, but
during the weekdays you have to buy wholesale volumes. On the weekends
you can buy smaller volumes.
But gee, why bother with smaller volumes when $5 buys you a crate of
peppers filling the box the size of a 10gallon fix tank, 10$ buys me a
flat of mangos, 12$ buys me an unbelievably huge box of gala apples
perfect for cooking. And on and on and on. The produce is good
quality. The vegetables are more “staple” vegetables, not weird high-end
artisan produce, but just good quality basics. I bought a daunting
quality of roma tomatoes, for example, but have already chewed through a
lot of them.
Thus my cooking die are cast for the week — a lot of vegetables and
fruits.
Yesterday I made a nice chili inspired by Alton Brown, but not following
his advice. He used stew meat cooked in a pressure cooker. I had
neither a pressure cooker nor ten hours to stew the meat, so instead I
bought ground beef and pork. The reason I could get away with that,
versus his recipe, is that I used a lot more vegetables than he did, and
included two cans of beans (kidney and cannelloni) which he didn’t put
in at all. My pepper selection wasn’t the best, but the ones I found
had enough heat and some decent flavor.
Dessert was a puff pastry tart with a gala apple filling. An okay
effort, but not brilliant. I need to develop my puff pastry
manipulation skills. Small screwups led to puffless patches here and
there.
In chopping pounds of peppers, onions, and tomatoes, I grew very
frustrated with Lee’s tired old knives and limited kitchen equipment.
This segues nicely into Sunday, and visits to the kitchen equipment
stores where I bought a bunch of tools Lee needed.
Most importantly she needed some decent knives. At a minimum a chopping
knife, a long, thin knife for slicing, and a paring-sized knife.
I decided to try a different solution and instead of buying some
high-end German knives, instead try one of the much-discussed Shun
knives from Japan. The principal reason I decided to get it was that
Alton Brown said they needed only sharpened once a year. I’m sort of
curious to find out how well they last. Do they hold a razor edge for a
year? do they hold a 80%-tolerable edge for a year? or something that
annoys me half the time after a year? We’ll see.
These are fairly expensive knives (expensive compared to standard decent
German stuff; not expensive compared to any high-end Japanese sushi
knife) Thus I bought a compromise between a chopping knife and a long,
fillet-style knife, rather than one of each. The knife is damn sharp,
just as sharp as when I pull a razor edge on my own knifes.
It’s got a very thick spine and, since it’s Japanese, a strange flat
edge on one side. When using it to do things like slice a melon in
half, you have to be careful of the knife tends to walk to one side and
you cut (imagine a boat with its rudder turned slightly, always tending
to steer).
One knife this won’t substitute for is a paring knife. Trying to use it
for small tasks (cutting the rind off a cantaloupe, for instance), it’s
just wrong, and i nearly sliced a knuckle off.
For her paring knife, I tried another experiment, a kyocera
micro-serrated ceramic knife. Also not cheap, but definitely sharp. The
salesman claimed “it stays sharp for 20 years, properly cared for.” I
find that hard to believe, but I’m curious to see how long they do stay
sharp. I think they cannot be sharpened, so I told lee to make sure to
keep it out of the dishwasher (chips the blade), cut only on plastic or
wood, and don’t hit bone.
I also bought her one of those hand-blenders I was carrying on about
recently, a food mill (we have a bushel of roma tomatoes and I like to
keep the seeds and skin separated from the pulp), and an ice cream maker
(we bought some brilliant melons that I want to turn into sorbet).
I used all that kit, plus some smaller accessories, to make tonight’s
dinner. The osso buco braised in the oven for perhaps 3 hours, barely
simmering so that the meat didn’t break off the bone or kick the bouquet
garni around the pan. (I couldn’t find butcher string to tie the met up
to the shank or restrain the thyme and rosemary, so I had to keep the
turbulence down).
I roasted a head of garlic in the oven till it was soft and sweet, then
squeezed the garlic out of each clove like toothpaste into the potatoes
and cream.
Made french beans for a side dish. I was going to give them a mustard
vinaegrette sauce, but decided against it — I didn’t want it to compete
with the sauce of the osso buco, only as some color and texture
against the potatoes.
Dessert was just mango and sheep’s milk yogurt smoothie. The freezer
here sucks and didn’t get the sorbet maker cold enough to use it in time.
Ok, so what else is going on ?
Tomorrow morning I’m headed out for my first kayaking lesson of the
trip. I’m supposed to learn how to roll it. An hour after writing this
a big front moved through with high winds, lightning, and rain. ha ha
moi do do. Hopefully it’s clear by tomorrow, at least the lightning.
Overclast and drizzle might actually be more comfortable on the water –
it was hot +80F here today and yesterday.
Had breakfast a Ganache Patissiere this morning. Was pretty nice.
Excellent homemade berry jam. Spinach quiche that tasted more of spinach
than the gross eggy things normally sold. The amazing thing was my
“long black” coffee (aka ‘Americano’) was actually really good. I guess
I need to credit a good barrista (I had low hopes) and good beans (these
were from Neoma roasters).
I’ve cut so much chili pepper during the last two days that my hands are
burning almost continually. Lee helped me yesterday and is having the
same problem.
TV? Saw an ad for a new season of ‘Cheaters’ — that show has some
legs. We were watching it back in 2001 I think. Follows the identical
formula it always has: mix stupid, young white trash with video cameras
and ugly late-model General Motors automobiles.
There are always weird sports on tv here. In November I watched ‘Lawn
Bowling’ or bocci. Today was lifeguard boat rowing races. They take
pretty big wooden rowboats with four or six people, paddle from the
beach, out 250m, and then back. The surf was quite out of control and
we saw some terrific crashes — one women team t-boned another team’s
boat at full speed. A different boat launched up and over a second boat,
nearly decapitating the second team.
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