Wednesday we’re going to the Blue Mountains for an overnight trip. I haven’t been there since I first visited Australia in 1998.

Yesterday we went shopping. I bought a pair of RM Williams boots.

RM Williams Arnhem Yard Boot in “Distressed Biscuit color

There are a number of bike stores I want to visit while I’m here. Hopefully I can find some 20″ rims as well as some panniers and other equipment for the Le Chacal.

Tonight’s pizzas at Nick’s were well on their way to being really good.  Just the right medium thickness, yet crispy.  I noticed the pizza boy running a tool like looked like a lawn aerator vigorously over all the crusts, perhaps that’s why.
The toppings were pretty good.  The mushrooms were the best. The pepperoni was small diameter, would have liked that to be larger gauge.  The cheese, which they brag about being, “low fat,” shouldn’t be — the pizza could have used a more muscular cheese.

The single best improvement?  If I eat there again I’ll request extra sauce.  It simply needed
more. It tasted good when I’d hit a patch of it.  The other improvement?  Provide ice with pitchers of soft drinks. Yuck.
Funny thing was that the 20yo store had the same homey independent feel that Pizza Pub has.  Including a strange semi-roof of brown shingles helping separate the kitchen from the dining.

The only questionable thing I saw was the owner quarrelling with a table of ugly women about a messed-up order. They insisted they had ordered one thing, and the waiter heard something else, and said he’d repeated their order as he heard it.  The owner was stepping in and giving the, “why would the waiter repeat your order and you not correct him?” sorts of lines. By the time he capitulated, “well then what, do you want me to make you a new pie?” the damage was long since done. I don’t know what the point of bickering over $3 of ingredients with customers was. Whatever… not my problem.

Anyway, the place has good pizza.  Order extra sauce.

Open 7 days from 5pm

9416 2276

374 Pacific Highway

Lindfield 2070

Understand that I am not an ice-cream enthusiast in any way. For me to have eaten two orders of ice cream there says something! I had something called ‘kinder’ which was white chocolate and gnutella. It was probably the creamiest ice cream I’ve ever eaten in my life. The sweetness level was perfect and the texture of ribbons of gnutella in it made it a real treat. My second order was a cone of screaming Blood Orange. It had a fantastic color and a really punchy, powerful taste. Maybe a bit exhausting after a while, in fact, but still, good.

Espresso Bar? Well, yeah, they run lavazza beans. I had an espresso. It was fine.

362 Pacific Highway

Lindfield NSW 2070

9416-2275

Overall impression?  Fairly large, well-run, busy cafe.  No magic, but also no complaints.

Ling ordered field mushrooms and spinach on thick toast that tasted fantastic.  I think it was  a combination of many types of mushrooms plus a lot of garlic that gave it such good flavor.  Her drink was atrocious, turned out to be a glob of ice cream floating in enormously sweet cocoa milk. She hated it.

I don’t remember my coffees at all, which means they were neither fantastic nor horrible, just fine.  I think it was a long black to go along with my scrambled eggs/toast sort of meal.

I’ve found that most cafes in Sydney can manufacture a coffee that you’d have to at least give an “above average” mark to.  Also, they seem to have dialed in what good toast is:  big thick, crusty slices.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here, but if I was in the area, and wanted a cafe lunch or breakfast, this would be a top-three candidate.
23 Plumer Road

Rose Bay, NSW 2029

Phone (02) 9327 5717

It looks shabby, like a bad and greasy Chinese restaurant selling “economical rice” to hobo’s. But it only looks old and tired because it’s old and established, run by a Japanese couple, the Oka’s, for many years. It turned out to be very tasty. Half the customers were Japanese, which was also a good clue.
I order Katsu Curry and Ling called a salmon/avocado maki. In a restaurant that looked like this, I thought hers was a brave choice, but she said it turned out to be really good, especially against the standard of other “family” Japanese restaurants we’ve eaten at. My katsu curry was good, the gravy looked rough and from scratch, and had good seasoning. The rice tasted good, too, as if it had been cooked in mineral water.

We ended up calling another dish we saw several people eating, tempura soft-shelled crab. This tempura is not light-colored in the Edo-style, it’s more old fashioned which is darker. Tasted good, no hint of grease-logging, and was sprinkled with a nice, crisp dressing and served on some salad.

My biggest regret? Not ordering the kara-age (deep fried chicken). I saw numerous people call the dish, it’s clearly good. The chicken looked mouth-watering. It was served (oddly) on a bed of penne-like pasta, then sprayed down in a light matrix of Japanese mayonaise. Not exactly healthy-looking, but must taste fantastic.

51 Druitt St, Sydney

Phone (02) 9283 0606

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.