Author: Ed

Cooking

Shadows of my colonial past: kedgeree

Ingredients Smoked fish – ideally smoked haddock but smoked cod will do. One good-sized fillet. Onion garlic Rice: long grain or pilau hard boiled eggs Curry powder plus turmeric, coriander and cardamon pods. Cinnamon quills. fresh coriander Bay leaf Butter Ghee or oil Lemons Yoghurt This is quite daggy and old fashioned. In fact it is a colonial dish. Yet I find it extremely comforting and delicious, probably because of the amount of butter involved. And it’s entirely appropriate that […]

Drinks

Aperol Pink Grapefruit Double Agent

Ingredients 45ml Aperol 45ml pink grapefruit juice Tonic water Ice A couple of months ago a bottle of Aperol arrived. I pitted it against Campari, my favourite aperitif. The conclusion was Aperol to Campari is as Averna to Fernet Branca. When I want to stimulate my appetite or put a meal to bed I go for the most bitter aromatic concoction that I can lay my hands on. The same before I eat a meal. Aperol was the junior partner […]

Restaurants

Frozen scallops vs fresh

It’s a no brainer really. You want fresh, not frozen, fish, especially when eating shellfish. Possibly the ultimate is a boating holiday on west coast of Scotland where you dive with scuba tanks for scallops. I’m sure there are similar experiences to be had in the cold waters off the US. Cold water adds an edge to scallops, which is perhaps why the best ones in Australia come from Tasmania. Ditto oysters. But for some chefs that’s not enough. They […]

coffee, Paraphernalia, Vietnam

Weasel poo coffee – as posh as pig’s arseholes

We are a coffee granule free zone. But I do have half a kilo of some stuff that passed out of a Weasel’s backside. At least in Vietnam they call it weasel. It is a civet and the beans are poohed out, it having eaten the coffee berries. Some poor bugger collects the droppings and (hopefully) washes them before roasting. It makes a very, very dark coloured bean and a very strong dark coffee. J says it even tastes of […]

Vietnam

Goat, veal, pork or duck?

“Like dried baby goat. Or perhaps – I know – like veal, like the veal of a baby suckling calf, only drier.” This is how Princess Mary of Denmark’s royal father-in-law Prince Henrik describes dog meat. The Hairy Bikers couldn’t decide whether it tasted like Pork or Duck. J warned me off this delicacy so I can’t tell you what I thought of the taste. I may have eaten it without knowing. I just don’t know. What I can tell […]

Cooking, Drinks

Missing ingredient makes the chai

Sometimes you just need something to calm you down… when you’ve become hot under the collar over teabags. When two interviewees postponed today. As a matter a fact, I’m hot under the collar now. So it was that I though I had to buy chai, that calming hippy dippy Indian spiced tea. Three local supermarkets later and I had none and was too bothered to drive or ride across town to buy it. The best selection was at the local […]

Bars & pubs, Vietnam, Wine

Drink within your means

How much should you pay for wine? Or let’s put it this way: How much more than the cost of food should wine be? In Melbourne the cost of a main course in a restaurant is fast catching up with the cost of wine. If I’m feeling poor I may spend $40 to $50 on a bottle in a restaurant. Feeling rich and I may double the figure. To put this into context in the kinds of restaurants where I’m […]