Duck, Duck, Duck ... Goose (well beef actually)

The plan for lunch today was yum cha at a Chinese restaurant in one of the local clubs.  I don't know what has happened to Canberra clubs, but there are currently good Chinese resturants in the Italian, German, and Greek clubs.  I would have thought that their own cultures offered enough food variety, but it is Chinese food culture that seems to be thriving.

Yum Cha on a Friday at the Italian Club has been a long tradition, however when we arrived today, we discovered that it is a discontinued tradition!  As we were already there, we decided to eat Chinese anyway and started reading the menu.  Someone quickly voted for a duck dish and we all enthusiastically agreed.  So enthusiastically that someone else suggested two duck dishes.  After some discussion we decided that maybe two wasn't enough, so we ended up ordering three duck dishes between 5 people.

We started with that most marvelous of dishes, duck pancakes.  I have to say, this dish is very high on my list of favourite foods.  While not the best I've ever had, they were extremely tasty, and I could probably just have had a meal of those and been quite satisfied.  The wait staff also helpfully left us with the carcass so once the pancakes had been devoured we could pick delicious crispy bits off the bones.

For main, we had crispy duck in plum sauce and shredded duck with bean shoots and chilli.

The crispy duck had a deliciously crispy coating around very meaty, boneless chunks of duck.  The sauce was generous and nicely plummy.

The shredded duck was almost a salad with lots of bean shoots along with mushroom, shallots, plenty of fresh chilli and other tasty ingredients.  I really enjoyed this one.

While there were a few other duck items on the menu that we could have tried, we did decide to stretch ourselves somewhat and our final dish was chilli beef.  It was tasty, but by then I was in the duck zone and it couldn't quite compete.  I think the waitress was a little surprised at our order, but I have to say, I loved my duck lunch.

DIY Pizza

I'm going to blame the freezing weather for the fact that I completely forgot to take any photos yesterday, but S and I went to a fantastic birthday party.

Pretty much everyone likes pizza.  Even better is gourmet woodfired pizza.  So how did my friends top that?  With gourmet woodfired pizza that we assembled ourselves and cooked in a woodfired oven on a trailer in the front yard!

Yes some very clever people in Canberra came up with the excellent idea of putting a woodfired pizza oven on a trailer that you can hire for parties.  It arrived, set up involved lighting the fire and then we got stuck in.  Our fab hosts had provided an amazing array of delicious items from which to create our toppings.

For the carnivores there was chorizo, steak, prosciutto, duck, chicken, ham and salami.  Cheese selection included shredded pizza mix, fetta, bocconcini (which had an unfortunate habit of rolling off the pizzas while they were cooking) and brie.  There were marinated veggies, pumpkin, beetroot, semi dried tomatoes, rocket, potato, mushrooms, olives, pine nuts, capsicum, shallots, herbs and a whole host of other things I've forgotten.

People got very creative and came up with some truly delectable creations.

The only issue was that it was FREEZING yesterday.  Strong winds occasionally threatened to blow the toppings off the pizzas before they made it into the oven, we had a few dashes to catch plates or topping containers before the wind took them and during the cooking process we tended to huddle around the back of the oven keeping warm.

But in spite of the less than comfortable cooking conditions, we had a fantastic time and my long held desire to have a pizza oven in my backyard (and a backyard big enough to fit a pizza oven) is well and truly reignited!

Pikelets

Today I woke up and thought, gosh I feel like eating pikelets.  This was a rather strange thing to think as I don't think I've had pikelets in years, and I've never made them.  But the thought was there and S agreed that they would make a perfect lunch option.

Not having a recipe, we basically made mini pancakes but they turned out delicious.  Golden brown and fluffy, I was in charge of the cooking, S was in charge with the toppings.  I love how creative he is.  We had the traditional pikelets topped with butter and jam, but we also had jam and cream, caramel and cream, chocolate topping, lemon sugar and on one notable pikelet S tried cinnamon and chilli (not good).

They were a real flashback to childhood and a delicious, if rather nutritionally deficient lunch.

Temptation - I can't resist

I'm very bad at saving money.  I fall foul of temptation regularly, the extra treat in the shopping basket, that dress online I spotted at lunch, the new shoes I desperately "need".  I'm not a complete spendthrift, I do manage to live within my means - I just don't manage to save a whole lot extra. 

I used to be an excellent saver, it is how I've achieved a load of things in my life, but at some point I just got out of the habit.  The thing is, I love to travel and that takes money, so I'm hardening up against temptation, re-learning those good habits and doing my best to be thrifty and save.

To help me, I've resurrected something I used to do when I was at uni and had to watch every dollar, I'm keeping a spending journal.  Boy oh boy do you think about what you are spending when you have to write it down.  That sneaky afternoon snack doesn't seem so sneaky when I know it is going in my spreadsheet.  It is slightly mortifying to see how the dollars add up so easily.  I'm sure it will be good for me, I've already found the strength to resist a few temptations.

However, being sensible and saving doesn't mean that I'm going to live an austere life.  I'm working hard to find some happy medium of decent savings AND a full and comfortable life.  So today I'm adding a new line to the spreadsheet as I go get pampered at the hairdresser.

I LOVE having my hair done.  Honestly, it is one of my favourite things, to just sit back and be pampered.  I always come out of the salon with a little extra spring in my step.  As I have long hair, I can usually manage to leave a fair bit of time between the visits which means that it isn't too hard on my wallet and is something I look forward to, a real treat.

My salon is rather lovely.  It is equipped with massage chairs, there is always a wide variety of magazines, I get my cup of tea and the staff are just gorgeous.

This is money well spent and a line in my savings journal that won't make me cringe!

Breaking the Ice

Winter is really getting stuck in this week.  Maximum temperatures in single figures, icy rain and gale force winds.  It is the kind of weather that makes you grateful for open fires, red wine, snuggly doonas and hot bowls of soup.

The other thing it makes me extremely grateful for is my collection of thermals.  A few years ago I was heading on holiday to South America during winter and knowing I would be facing some extremely cold temperatures, I thought I had better invest in some thermals.  I had visions of ugly, itchy, stripey garments, the kind of thing you would be mortified to have anyone know you own.  However somewhere along the way, thermals underwent a transformation and became gorgeous clothing items.

I favour Icebreaker.  A New Zealand brand, they have taken the softest, warmest merino wool and have transformed it into garments that are not only warm, they are beautiful on your skin and look great too!  They don't come cheap, I hang out for sales and even then I'm counting the cost but then along comes a day like today and I realise that they were worth every cent.

I woke this morning to the house pretty much rattling in the wind and opened the curtains to a spray of icy rain against the window.  At that point I seriously considered just turning around and getting straight back into bed.  But instead, I pulled out a pale lilac thermal top to layer under my blue and purple striped shirt.  I added a jacket, a coat and scarf but once out of the wind, found that my thermal was so effective at keeping me warm I didn't need the coat or scarf!

I think that Winter is a beautiful time of year, but I do enjoy it more when I'm feeling warm and comfortable so I think my thermals and I will be inseparable for the next couple of months!

French Onion Soup

There are some meals you can whip up in 30 minutes after work, there are others that require many hours of long slow cooking - the kind of meal that is just right for a cold Sunday in the middle of winter.  French Onion soup is one of those.  For a really great full taste, it requires hours of long slow cooking to really bring out the caramel flavours of the onions and develop that deep brown colour.

My recipe is pretty simple.  I slice (using a mandolin slicer - yes Dad, with the hand guard) a pot full of onion.  And I mean full, right to the brim of the pot.  I add a bit of butter and leave them cooking over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, for hours until the onions are about a quarter the volume and a deep golden brown.  The key is to make sure you regularly scrape the bottom so it doesn't stick and burn.

2-3 hours later, it will smell fantastic and be a beautiful colour. Add a couple of tablespoons of plain flour and cook it off.  Throw in a few sprigs of thyme, ground pepper, beef stock and some water.

Simmer for an hour or so then - and this is key - serve topped with cheese croutons.  Perfect delicious winter comfort food for a Sunday afternoon.

Feeding the family

I remember being quite young and reading a list of things to do to prove you were grown up (it was most likely a Dolly quiz or something similar).  On it was picking up the bill for a meal at a restaurant with your parents.  That same summer I spent much of my holidays paving an area in the backyard to prevent the dogs from digging it up, for which my parents paid me.  Shortly after I'd finished we all went out to lunch and I picked up the bill, paying for it from my paving earnings.  I have to say, I did feel awfully grown up while at the same time being amazed at just how quickly my hard earned cash could disappear!

That episode was a very long time ago, but for some reason that notion of the significance of providing a meal for my parents has stuck with me.  These days when we go out, everyone pays their own way so the Dolly quiz doesn't really apply.  However, despite having done it numerous times, whenever I cook for my parents I still have a little feeling of pride, of being grown up.  It is quite ridiculous really given my age, but somehow nothing makes me feel more like my parents child than serving them food.  Food is such a special element in our family that I always want it to be perfect, but I also like to try something a little different from the usual family favourites.

Thursday night is family dinner night when we all converge on the family home and Mum cooks up a feast.  However, with my sister away and my parents having a busy day yesterday, I offered to do the cooking for a change.

I made a delicious beef and chorizo ragout with crispy potato stacks from this month's Australian Good Taste magazine.  It really was yum and I followed it with chocolate lava cakes.  They could possibly have done with two more minutes in the oven so that they preserved their shape better when I turned them out, but they obviously tasted good as they disappeared in record time.

It was lovely to give Mum a break from the cooking, we are going to make it a regular thing.  So now once a month that little girl in me will be looking for the perfect meal to show my family just how much they mean to me.