Quinoa, I think, has done well to go from seemingly nowhere, straight to superfood status, totally bypassing the stigma of being hippie food. Other things, like yoga for example, took a long time to evolve from being an activity for new-agers to being an utterly normal – clichéd, even – thing to do. Continue reading “Quinoa salad with mushrooms, kale and balsamic tomatoes”
While the exact origin of the Reuben sandwich is uncertain, different accounts put its genesis at somewhere between 1914 and 1926. Now that’s a sandwich with staying power. This American deli classic made its way onto menus and into the vocabulary of Australia’s sandwich-eating Continue reading “The rise of the Reuben”
A guy walks into a cafe and orders a takeaway coffee. The girl behind the counter asks if he’d like any sugar and he replies, no. ‘Sweet enough already?’ she quips. ‘No, I want to stay bitter’ he replies. Continue reading “Paradox Coffee Roasters – chorizo, kale and sweet pepper omelette”
A while ago I bought some ricotta for a new recipe that I wanted to try out. I would say that I’m generally indifferent about ricotta. In the ’80s I used it to make spinach and ricotta parcels, like everyone else, but I can’t say that I’ve used it much at all in the last, ahem, few years. Continue reading “Whipped ricotta and honey popsicles”
Ok, I’d just like to start by saying sorry about the photo of this dish. I was in a hurry. It really tastes a whole lot better than this looks. Now that that’s out of the way, if you’re anything like me, you are ever on the quest for quick, interesting things to cook for dinner. And you also have a top five (or so) that you have on high rotation. They’re the dishes that you make without really thinking about them: you always have the ingredients and somehow you can eat them over and over again without getting bored of them. Well, for a while, anyway. Continue reading “Ginger noodles”
One of the great philosophers of our time once posed the theory that ‘You don’t win friends with salad’, but I would tend to disagree. Strongly, actually. I’ve got a few special ones up my sleeve that definitely win fans, if not friends exactly. I promise to tell you about them all, Continue reading “Roasted pumpkin and mushroom salad with rocket and marinated feta”
Caution: rant ahead. What is it with real estate agents? I mean, they’re not popular, are they …? The one that particularly has my goat at the moment is the one that I hand over vast sums of cash to each month so that I can continue to live in a very excellently located yet poorly contrived shoe box. Continue reading “Fresh mint tea”
I asked my Vietnamese friend what ‘nom’ means, thinking that it was probably similar to the Cambodian ‘nyum’, meaning ‘eat’. But it doesn’t. Turns out it’s more like the sound that adults make when they’re trying to get a baby to eat something, kind of like ‘num num num num num’. So there you you go.
Sometimes when you order a dish in a restaurant, what arrives in front of you is so perfect, so completely unfussy and deliciously satisfying, that there isn’t much that needs to be said about it. Continue reading “Duck confit at the City Wine Shop”
eating & going places 