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Beef and pepper hotpot

Stephane likes my cooking. That makes me proud:

Martin made a great dinner. He was trying to duplicate a beef and scallop hot pot with black pepper as served at noted Canberra restaurant The Chairman and Yip. However, I think his version was even better. He added some mushrooms and green peppers. I thought it was pretty ballsy that he just broke up the mushrooms with his hands over the pot, rather than chopping them up with a knife. I liked the irregular shapes. He also made a spicy mashed pumpkin side dish with peanuts in it that I was really excited about.

posted Wed 30 Jun 2004 in /food/recipes | link

Evolutionary Psychology as a Foundation for Cuisine

Anthony Berno says:

I have elected to base my cuisine on the principles of evolutionary psychology.... This evolutionary approach has yielded four basic principles of cuisine: naturalism, organic symmetry, novelty, and disequilibrium. These are all different facets of the same core concept: that the goal of haute cuisine should be to stimulate the instincts that evolved within our species, and to do so more strongly than ordinary cuisine. It is this supernormal stimulation of our basic survival urge that makes food into art....

The final principle, and one of the most important, is that food must be always off-balance and in a state of change. In nature, things that are at equilibrium are dead, and are often dangerous to eat. Fresh foods, on the other hand, are either still alive - such as a carrot in a refrigerator - or so recently deceased that the disequilibrium of life still animates their form.

posted Tue 15 Jun 2004 in /food | link

Holiday Restaurant list

I wish I was cool enough to prepare proper reviews, but I'm not. So here are some quick notes, brought to you by the letters <, D, L, and >.

Breakfast Creek Wharf, Brisbane

Unhappy staff, food only adequate. Sufficient nautical detritus hung on the walls to entertain a toddler for hours.

Alegria, Sunshine Beach, Qld

Superb. Funky location. Amusing tropical fruit cocktails, e.g. lychee martini. Duck and pumpkin pizza. Trust the waiters.

Blue Lotus, Qld

Must see. Who else can offer you a 6, 8 or 12-item icecream degustation menu? We had wattleseed, lilli pilli, turkish delight, black sesame, fat-free chocolate, and apple-and-calvados. I don't know why it's not packed.

Canteen, Noosa, Qld

Great coffee, good breakfasts. Internet access via a 166MHz 486 with 8-bit VGA, which gets bonus nostalgia points from me.

Bill's, Darlinghurst NSW

Wait of about 15 min for breakfast, just enough to whet your apetite without reaching San Francisco heights of ridiculousity. Well-executed but pricy classic breakfast items. Our table had a magazine about the high life on the southern highlands. Presumably people interested in spending $2M on a country cottage also like to drop $40 on breakfast. Great neighbourhood.

Bel Mondo, The Rocks, NSW

Advertises tapas outside the front door, but highly reluctant to actually provide it, despite a near-empty bar. Disappointing after the high reviews it's previously received. If the bar service is any indication, I'm glad I didn't pay for a full meal.

Heritage Belgian Beer Cafe, The Rocks, NSW

Wow. Superb architecture, enormous beer list. According to an yellow planning poster outside the door, about to convert more space from restaurant to bar, which should be an improvement seeing as the bar was full and the dining part about one-third full. The average liver would take perhaps seven visits to sample all their beers.

Löwenbräu Keller, The Rocks, NSW

Enormous plates, good litre beers, wenches. Obviously a kind of Disneyland Bavaria, but if you can get into that it's good. 25-element schnapps list the perfect end to a perfect day.

posted Mon 12 Jan 2004 in /food/restaurants | link

Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Omelette and a Glass of Wine, after Elizabeth David.

posted Tue 16 Dec 2003 in /food | link

Dijon, Ainslie

Just superb. Friendly staff, excellent fresh ingredients, novel but homely combinations. On the night we visited, they had probably the best oysters I've had in Canberra, from Coffin Bay. Go there.

Mietta's says “Excellent”.

posted Thu 16 Oct 2003 in /food/restaurants/canberra | link

First catch your pig...

Stephane points to a luau on Manhatten rooftops.

posted Wed 16 Jul 2003 in /food | link

weekend

Stephane made delicious white french bread and wheatbran muffins.

Beet risotto, goat cheese, and buttered hashed Brussels sprouts.

posted Mon 30 Jun 2003 in /food | link

Mezzalira revisited

Stephane and I went to Mezzalira after my earlier good experience. It was even better this time; I heartily recommend them.

What they do really well is delicious and intellectually interesting simple dishes at a moderate price (~40/head) and in a comfortable environment. It might be described as Italian/Australian/Turkish fusion, which is a combination that seems particular to Canberra.

The signature, as much as anything, is an oven hot pide bread with salt grains, rosemary and olive oil. Think of a savoury donut.

We had the tasting menu of five small courses, served with half glasses of Canberra region wine (~$70). The Lark Hill 2001 Chardonnay stood out among the wines for a unique floral/vanilla nose. Stephane got to try a Moreton Bay bug tail for the first time.

posted Fri 27 Jun 2003 in /food/restaurants/canberra | link

Szechuan Tofu

• Fried triangles of tofu
• Sauce of rice wine, tamari, mustard, corn flour, water
• Stir-fried green onions, red and green capsicum

posted Sat 21 Jun 2003 in /food/recipes | link

Thomas Keller interview

Interview with Thomas Keller. (Who is, for those of you less into gastronomy than others, the Chef of The French Laundry, reputed one of the best restaurants in the world.)

Where do I want you to be after you've eaten something? I want you to be thinking, "God I wish I had a little more of that." Your memory of that taste is excellent. Also, it's more healthy - in the Japanese way - to extend the meal for a longer period of time. It helps your body digest the food instead of packing your body with so much food that you're uncomfortable for hours afterward. This way, you're able to taste better and you know when you've had enough. The law of diminishing returns is the most important part of that. [...]

[O]nce in a while you might see me at In and Out Burger; they make the best fast food hamburgers around.

posted Fri 20 Jun 2003 in /food/people | link

Belluci's, Dickson, Canberra

We went to Belluci's restaurant in Dickson last night. They have a new and very funky internal fitout: old diner style tables, but modern wood panels and halogen/dome lights.

Unfortunately the service was very slack and the food was mediocre. 45 minutes to serve pizza and pasta is pretty ridiculous. It's kind of a shame, they used to be quite nice.

posted Tue 17 Jun 2003 in /food/restaurants/canberra | link

Mezzalira

I went to Mezzalira last night with Luke. Very nice eggplant fritter and black mussell antipasto, and fennel&salt crusted Tasmanian salmon main.

After dinner coffee (decaffe Mokador) was really mediocre; I almost didn't drink it. I was surprised to find they're owned by the same people who run a nearby cafe that serves excellent coffee. Maybe the machine was just on the blink.

posted Fri 6 Jun 2003 in /food/restaurants/canberra | link

Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.