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Drinks
Get boozed-up here. Try a relaxing tea or a buzzing coffee
Wagyu beef: the virtual farmer
This story came out in The Australian on Friday. I can’t find the link online so have posted the raw copy here. When the cast of Hollywood tucked in to beef burgers after this years 77th Academy Awards, it was made from Blackmore Wagyu Beef. When the first Yarra Valley truffles arrived at the Botanical restaurant in Melbourne, chef Paul Wilson served it with Blackmore Wagyu Beef. And if you visit what Gourmet Traveller has rated as Australia’s top restaurant, […]
Warming up for Sunday breakfast meme
Just warming-up the new Ricoh for Andrew at Spittoon Extra’s breakfast meme. Saturday morning at ikea. I was ready to be apaled. Two sausages, two hash browns, bacon (I avoided the spongy looking scrambled egg), tomato and beans plus an orange juice and a pretty good long black for AUD6. That’s about £2.50. And it was better than many hotels I’ve stayed in. I’m impressed. Let’s not forget the flat white. Delicious but sloppy with dribbles down the side of […]
Entertain MeMe: My entertaining must have
Image pinched from Williams-Sonoma I’m not sure about the kind of people Jennifer has coming round to her Entertain MeMe meme. Whenever I get wind of a band of firneds/strangers coming round I lie awake at night dreaming of the sound of smashing glass. There again I tend to mix with journalists and Australians, so anything can happen. Long stemmed crystal, or just plain, wine glasses tip, crash and smash. White carpets are spreckled red and I’m forced to waste […]
Snobbery comes with the terroir
Stephen Shelmerdine: prices influenced by the tangible and the intangible I’d link to this story I wrote for The Australian but can’t find one. So here is the unedited version: Take two wines from the same region, a few kilometres apart. Both are top-notch drops. One costs $30; the other nearer $50. Stephen Shelmerdine, managing director, Shelmerdine wines, with vineyards in Heathcote and the Yarra Valley, says it’s a marketing decision. “But it’s informed by a range of factors some […]
The naked winemaker: Pierre Naigeon
If you go down to the Yarra Valley today… Well a couple of months ago you may have seen this Frenchman stark bollock naked jumping out of a vat full of Shiraz. He was cherry red. As he described this to a lunch of wine journalists, plus flamboyant society hairdresser Lillian Frank, nobody flinched. That surprised me. Australian winemakers have become the masters of vast steel vats, mechanical agitation, or at least having the modesty to don a wetsuit before […]
Cooking the old fashioned way: pasar gato por liebre
Image pinched from the Humane Society International.For obvious reasons I don’t have my own picture for this entry for the Cooking the Old fashioned way quarterly event. I’ve long been fascinated by the kinds of old-fashioned foods that we no longer bother eating.At mama Tomato’s, in country England not too far from the university city of Cambridge, almost everything is for the picking. Plums are eaten from the tree and eventually made into jam and chutney. Sloes and sugar are […]
What’s the point of truffled honey?
That’s all we ask. We were served it with some chutney and quince paste accompanying cheese – a Grandorge pont l’Eveque, Roy de Vallees and Rouzaire Coulommiers. We’re only asking.
Has Robert Parker had his day?
Winemakers will sighing relief and watering down those “oh so big” (and alcoholic) reds. Check out Slate for the full story.