Month: March 2009

Dreamtime

So, a clear indication I had cheese at dinner:

I’m with a friend who’s suggested we go to Thailand for a holiday.

Awesomely excited about this girls weekend(?) sojourn away.

But there’s a catch.

We get to the airport and discover that once there, you are grouped into 20 and reviewed (like the Governor General reviews army ranks and the like) and then the King/Head Monk/Despot chooses who can visit the country and who’ll get killed.

We’re all dressed in these grey muumuus with these weird grey slip on sandals – a bit like those Japanese wooden sandals but in terry towelling. I know! All class around here.

We have 24 hours before we know our fate, during which time we’re housed somewhere that looks remarkably like my uni dorm.

Everyone else is practising speeches and reciting facts about Thailand in a bid to win favour.

I proudly announce to anyone that if I am selected there’s no point learning a speech because I’ll be too busy crapping my dacks. Curiously everyone looks on me with derision.

Someone says if you’ve got a pair of scuffed grey shoes they let you in. In Thailand it’s all about the shoes. Apparently.

I’m seriously pissed at my friend who didn’t warn me about this rather big negative in visiting Thailand.

The day arrives. The group in front of us are reviewed. There is one Japanese business man who has forgone the grey footwear for a pair of beige tap shoes. He is tut-tutted. Eleven are selected from that group (in this world 25 are chosen each day for the sacrificial death march). They seem oddly calm as led away to their fate.

We stand up. He looks at my hand which has a deformed finger and sighs. I’m trying to hide my feet under my sackcloth outfit.

We’re led to a holding room which is actually a 1970s suburban bakery, complete with neenish tarts, pineapple tarts, those little marzipan tarts with green icing that are iced to look like a cute little frog and importantly sausage rolls.

I start eating while everyone else recites their grovelspeeches. I proudly announce to them all that nothing is going to save us now so we might as well enjoy a savoury snack as the heartburn won’t matter so much when we’re dead.

Some dude comes in to look at my hand again, which is now perfectly fine. He leaves and I so know my number is up as I move onto eating a pie.

Unconscious Mutterings

  1. Sunburn ::cancer

  2. Aquarium ::sharks

  3. Otter ::dam

  4. Awesome ::news

  5. LOL ::hideous abbreviation

  6. Accordion ::serenade

  7. Hot Pocket ::rocket

  8. Grandstand ::ing

  9. Shaved ::head

  10. Upgrade ::to business class please

From LunaNina

    Briefly

    Felix went to his first drama class on Saturday and adored it. ‘I wish it went for two hours.’
    *****
    Grover has started asking why. I feel that 20 months is way to early for such questioning. Surely I deserve a few more months years of obsequiousness.
    *****
    I have seriously been pre-menstrual for seven days. Sometimes my uterus just pisses me off. Expel it already.
    *****
    I’m going to make a batch of nectarine and passionfruit jam today.
    *****
    After weeks of flooding rains in our north and raging fires in our south, now our north is dealing with a cyclone officially in the ‘really bad’ category.
    *****
    I did half an hour of yoga this morning. I sure did expel air. Just not always through my nose. Ahh, yoga in the privacy of your own home.

    Ricotta Tart with Poached Nectarines

    So I bought these nectarines to make jam with but just knew I wasn’t going to get to it in time, so I just poached them in a simple sugar syrup with a vanilla bean instead, thinking they’d be good for brekkie w/ yoghurt. But I haven’t been in a yoghurt frame of mind for a few days and they’ve just been sitting in our fucking small tiny fridge taking up space.

    So I thought, use them in a cake. But all the recipes I could find called for raw nectarines and I was worried they would be too wet.

    Combine all that with a hankering I’ve had to make a ricotta pudding or tart of some sort and who should come up with a solution but the trusty Allan Campion and Michele Curtis in their most recent tome, In The Kitchen. It gave all manner of possibilities in terms of combinations, one of which was roasted nectarines – so while mine were poached, it worked a treat.

    It tastes fantastic and looks very sophisticated which, you know, for me is quite a feat indeed.

    Ricotta Tart with Poached Nectarines
    Adapted from Campion and Curtis, In the Kitchen

    • 1 x 25 cm sweetcrust pastry shell
      (I used my shortcrust recipe, blind baked it until golden then proceeded as per recipe)
    • 1 cup ricotta
    • 1/2 cup caster sugar
    • 3 eggs
    • 1 tsp vanilla
    • 1/2 cup cream
    • 2 tbsp plain flour
    • grated zest of 1 lemon
    • 2 tbsp lemon juice
    • 6-8 poached nectarines (see ‘recipe’ below)
    • ground cinnamon
    1. Preheat oven to 180C
    2. In a bowl whisk together the ricotta, caster sugar, eggs, vanilla, cream and flour with the grated zest and lemon juice
    3. Line the pastry case with the nectarines then pour over the ricotta mix
    4. Sprinkle w/ cinnamon and bake for 40 minutes or until firm.





    The nectarines
    Guys look, I can’t really call this a recipe. I dumped a bag of nectarines in a saucepan, covered with water, poured over some sugar and added a vanilla bean. I brought it to the boil, turned it down and cooked until the liquid was vaguely syrupy and the nectarines soft.


    Piedmontese Coffee Custard

    Well I wasn’t going to post this recipe for a while (it’s down on the list somewhat) but BabelBabe mentioned that she makes pie crusts from amaretti biscuits for her lemon tart recipe so I had to get this up toot sweet.

    Don’t you think there is something infinitely comforting about custard? This is quite the grown-up number with the biscuits providing a lovely textural counterpoint to the silken baked custard underneath. Listen to me sounding all fancy.

    Piedmontese Coffee Custard

    • 1 1/2 cups milk
    • 1 cup cream
    • 1 cup strong, freshly brewed espresso
    • 1 cup caster sugar
    • 8 eggs, lightly beaten
    • 100ml dark rum
    • 100g amaretti biscuits, finely chopped
    1. Combine the milk, cream, coffee and sugar in a saucepan and heat for five minutes
    2. Combine the eggs and alcohol and then pour the heated milk mixture into it, stirring constantly
    3. Mix in the biscuits
    4. Pour into ramekins or one large dish
    5. Put the dish into a baking dish and add water to half way up the side
    6. Cook at 160C for 45-50 minutes
    7. Cool to room temperature and then refrigerate, it will keep for two days