Author: Ed

journalism

INTHEBLACK: In the trenches with animal trainers

‘Come into my office.’ Now there’s an expression to make everyone’s pulse quicken. Even if your boss is a good sort, you are likely to become all defensive. ‘What have I done wrong?’ you ask yourself. In fact the adrenaline in your system has kicked in because you have become conditioned to act that way. It all started in your school days when your principal called you in for that first telling off. The feeling is the ‘fight or flight […]

Cooking

Voluptous parsley: my favourite herb

Ingredients About 1kg mussels 1 onion Curly leafed parsley Slat and pepper White wine Olive oil Makes enough for two It’s great looking, vibrant green, perhaps the most voluptuous of herbs. As one of my favourite herbs, old-fashioned curly parsley is my choice for the first anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging at Kalyn’s Kitchen. She’s running a tally of the food bloggerati’s favourite herbs as part of her celebrations. It’s not fashionable but curly parsley is better than flat Italian […]

Restaurants

Lau’s Family Kitchen: hot off the press

STOP PRESS: Lau’s does now take bookings due to popular demand and a few walk in seats are kept vacant. It is worth bookiung earlier than later. Saturdays, in particular, fill up fast. A new restaurant needs to be put in context. For Lau’s Family Kitchen (4 Acland St, St Kilda 3182 +61 8598 9880) it is that dad, Gilbert that is, ran what the New York Times regards as the world’s finest Chinese restaurant. He’s sold out of Melbourne’s […]

Cooking

Gujerati carrot salad

Busy, busy, busy. What I need is a quick and easy recipe with both veggies and meat. One of my favourites is Gajar ka salad, a Gujerati carrot salad from my very stained and food stippled copy of Madjur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery. It is an excellent candidate for Weekend Herb Blogging over at Kalyn’s Kitchen. There are only two humans in the house and a single old fashioned large-sized carrot is enough – as opposed to the overpriced spring or […]

Paraphernalia

My favourite gadget: a little ray of sunshine

The electric juicer hasn’t left the cupboard for over a year. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in reality it is simply a sugar machine. Far better I say to cut out the middle man – the juicer – and simply eat the whole fruit, with peel if possible. That gives me sugar, nutrients and, importantly, roughage. And that means I don’t have to lurk in a dark corner at the pharmacist buying Proctologist & Gamble’s […]

Drinks

Five things to eat before you die

I’ve been tagged by Cucina Rebecca in Sydney to join the “Five things to eat before you die” meme. Devised by The Travellers Lunchbox, as I write this there are 103 entries, that’s 515 dishes. I know what I don’t want to eat and that’s hospital food. I’ve had this big plan just in case some dreadful disease decided to take me. It’s extreme ski-ing. Picking a steep couloir, with the big crevasse at the bottom, I would strap on […]

Chefs

Bourdain on Ronnie di Stasio

Perhaps your way here from the food issue of The Age (Melbourne) Magazine . If you haven’t seen the mag, London-based Aussie food writer Terry Durack quotes Anthony Bourdain from an interview with Tomato from a year ago. You can check out my full Anthony Bourdain archive. He says this of Ronnie di Stasio in part 3: “He’s a fucking madman. And you have to be a fucking madman to be in the reastaurant business. There should be a statue […]

journalism

A high bar for small beers

There are small but determined new businesses brewing in the heady world of beer, writes Ed Charles Entrepreneur, The Australian, August 25, 2006 THERE’S no going back. Cameron Hines, joint founder of the Mountain Goat microbrewery in Melbourne, says: “Once you start enjoying and appreciating your beer, it’s almost impossible to go back and drink crap.” The founders of Australia’s latest crop of microbreweries became beer nuts while travelling abroad. Hines acquired a taste for boutique beers as he travelled […]

Eat streets

Wine guru Len Evans RIP

One of Australia’s best known wine gurus, Len Evans, has died suddenly at the age of 75. According to a report from AAP he had suffered from heart problems and died in the car park of Newcastle Hospital while collecting a relative. Acording to Wikipedia, Evans transformed blind tastings into a competition sport through his creating and developing the options game in which competitors attempt to identify each wines tasted. In 1962 he became the first regular wine columnist in […]