My Favourite Things

Hey everyone!  And welcome to a special edition of An's Country Cooking Misadventures!  It's been my last two weeks in Wangaratta, and because I love this town so much, and also because I've been too lazy to cook anything, I wanted to share with you all of the amazing places I've been to in Wangaratta and the Great North East.  Unlike Oprah, I won't be giving away any plasma TV's or espresso machines, but you might discover a few nice places to visit if you're ever up this way.

Flagpole (The Corner Shop)

It's only appropriate that I start with Flagpole because it was the first place I fell in love with in Wangaratta.  Conveniently located across the street from the Wangaratta ED, the corner shop is the perfect place to go for a long lunch and a decent coffee, much better than the swill they serve in the hospital cafeteria.  Silvanna the store owner can make any type of sandwich or roll you want, and is often very generous with her fillings.  And today there was a delicious true Italian style home-made lasagna on the menu that made everyone else in the department insanely jealous.  Though I haven't had much of a chance to do it this year, my fondest memories of working here will always be of sitting with my team outside the corner shop on a sunny Wangaratta day.

Your friendly neighbourhood milk bar

The Bead Shop and The Idyl Book Cafe

For a REALLY good coffee in Wangaratta there is only one place to go.  The Bead Shop near the Wangaratta train station is actually two stores in one: it is a retail outlet for Bead & Bauble, a Wangaratta-based bead and jewelery making company, which also houses Cafe Derailleur.  If you don't mind being surrounded by hundred upon hundreds of beads and kitsch  jewelery (and hey, you may like it), then you can enjoy the best coffee in Wangaratta.  In fact, I think it stands up to anything that's served in Melbourne, including all those big name roasters (I'm talking to you, Seven Seeds).  Plus, their desserts are legendary.  Have a coffee and a vanilla slice.  You won't regret it.

It looks a lot crazier on the inside

For a different kind of cafe experience, try The Idyl Book Cafe on the north side of town on Faithfull St.  A cafe and second-hand book store, The Idyl Book Cafe makes obvious my affection for multi-purpose meeting places.  Complete with great coffee and comfy couches, it is a lovely place to spend a lazy afternoon with a good second-hand book.  And the staff won't berate you if you don't end up buying anything.

Bargain basement books!  And coffee!

Espresso On Ovens and Intermezzo Cafe

If there was one good thing about doing night shifts in ED, it gave me the opportunity to go out to breakfast with my fellow night team members.  Affectionately (and unimaginatively) dubbed 'The Breakfast Club', we would go out most mornings and rotate through all the breakfast cafes, most of which are conveniently located on one street.  My top picks for a Wangaratta breakfast are Espresso On Ovens (on Ovens St) and Intermezzo Cafe (also on Ovens St).  Espresso is a cozy little place that does an amazing Eggs Florentine with mustard hollandaise, and they have a great selection of freshly squeezed juices.  Intermezzo is a much more spacious venue with a dynamite Big Breakfast.  The view of the cathedral from the outdoor dining verandah gives a nice spiritual touch to the whole breakfast experience.

Espresso On Ovens.  The bar by the window is a great place to people watch

Intermzzo Cafe.  It was raining that day, but usually outdoor seating is choice

Parker Pies

Drive north past Wangaratta for about half an hour and you'll hit Rutherglen, a historic Victorian town that is home to Parker Pies.  With a menu that boasts lamb cooked in mint and rosemary sauce, or venison flavoured with juniper berries and orange, Parker Pies can easily claim to having the best pies in Australia.  In fact I think that might even be an official title.  I did see a plaque in their store that said something to that effect, though I can't remember the exact wording.  Regardless, Parker Pies is worth the trip out of town, and you can even buy frozen ones to take home.  Just make sure you bring as esky.

All Saints Estate

All Saints Estate in Rutherglen is one of Australia's oldest wineries, and one of the prettiest places you will see in Victoria.  A sweeping, picturesque estate, complete with castle, lake, and tree-lined driveway, it is the kind of place that I imagine would be perfect for a wedding.  Actually, according to their website you CAN have your wedding there.  The Rutherglen region is famous for its heavy reds and fortifieds, so be sure to sample as much wine as you can.  There is also an outdoor dining terrace that serves lunch everyday and dinner on Saturdays.  I enjoyed a suckling lamb braised in All Saints Durif with mashed potatoes and roasted zucchini and capsicum, accompanied with the Family Cellar Durif.  If all their weddings are catered like this, I may just have my own wedding up here.

A little castle and a big tree

It's OK to have wine with lunch, right?

Sam Miranda Winery and John Gehrig Winery

These are just a couple of wineries in the region that I wanted to highlight.  Sam Miranda Winery is only about 5 minutes west of Wangaratta on the way to Milawa, and is famous for its 'cool wines' or refreshing whites.  They also do a fantastic lunch, which you can enjoy with a great view of their estate.  They probably do the best pork belly in Victoria, at least of all the pork bellies I've had, which is a lot.

John Gehrig Winery is a tiny boutique winery in Oxley, which is also on the way to Milawa from Wangaratta. There is not much to the winery itself, and I only mention it because I have fallen in love with their Pinot Noir. I have probably bought more than a case of this stuff over a few trips.  If anyone does decide to head this way, can you please pick up a few more bottles for me?

Michelle and The Milawa Mustard Shop

There are plenty of famous attractions in Milawa, including the Milawa Cheese Factory and Brown Brothers Winery, but I always find myself coming back to this humble little mustard shop.  Perhaps it's because Michelle, one of the store managers, was so nice to me and gave me a whole bunch of free herbs a while back.  They also have huge assortment of seeded mustards ranging from very mild to super super hot, as well as a variety of other locally made produce.  It's worth a visit between Brown Brothers and the Cheese Factory, even if only for a friendly chat.

And that's really all I wanted to say.  Of course there are plenty of other attractions around here.  Beechworth have their famous bakery but also three top class restaurants (Provenance, Warden's and Gigi's) which you need to go to if you're staying in the area.  The Indian Tandoori Restaurant in Wangaratta is always good for take-away if you're stuck, and I've heard good things about Chips R Us and their gravy chips.  Personally I'm not a gravy chip fan, but give it a go if that's your thing.

Before I finish off I wanted to make special mention of some of the medical students here who invited me over to their place for dinner a couple of times.  Will, who coincidentally went to the same school as me in the year below, cooked up a roast lamb with potatoes, carrots, pumpkin and onions which went down great, proving that sometimes all you need is a roast and three veg to make a great meal.  The next week, Amy, who obviously doesn't read my blog, made a Donna Hay chicken curry which actually turned out OK.  It definitely had a heap more flavour than my sorry attempt.  Perhaps Donna Hay isn't to blame.

Will is excited about his dinner

Oh and I also made some brownies this week.  I got the recipe out of Delicious and made good use of my silicon baking kit.  The mixture made too much for my cake tray so I had to put the extra mix into the muffin tray which made excellent little brownie muffins.  They tasted very chocolately but I think I may have overcooked them a little because they turned out a little bit hard and dry.  But a blast in the microwave helped bring them back to some warm chewy goodness.

A stack of brownies

My brownie muffin, with Connoisseur ice cream

And that's all from me folks.  I have to wrap this up quickly because it's 1:40am and I have to catch a flight to The States at 9:30am tomorrow/today.  I just REALLY wanted to get this done before I leave, that's how committed I am.  As a final word, I wanted to thank everyone in Wangaratta who made my time there such a pleasure.  I really love that town and everyone in it, and I'm sure I'll back again soon.  In the meantime, I'm not sure what the future holds for this blog now that I'm not in the country anymore.  An's City Cooking Misadventures just doesn't have the same ring to it.  I should have some food photos from my trip to New York and London though so look forward to that.  Until next time!

Back To Basics, Christina Aguilera Style

Hey everyone!  Yes, even though I said I would put up another post soon, I bet none of you thought it would actually happen.  Hell, even I had my doubts.  The PS3 sitting here in front of me is begging me to push its buttons, but instead I'll sit here typing away, at 12:30am on a Tuesday night, listening to Paul Anka belt out swing covers of classic rock songs whilst I lounge around in my home clothes.  I'm not sure if everyone knows what home clothes are, but they are very loose, very comfortable, very daggy clothes to bum around at home in.  I don't understand why people would choose to keep on all that suffocating going out apparel.  And shoes!  Shoes?  Indoors?  Seriously, free those feet.

Alright I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent there and its only the second paragraph.  Let's get back on track and head on a journey that will take us through some of the very core dishes that I think every cook should know how to make.  As the title suggests, over the last few weeks I've tried to steer away from anything fancy-pantsy and instead concentrate on some very basic dishes.  When I first started this thing, I really just wanted to be able to cook a few things:

• Lasagna
• A Stir Fry
• A Curry
• Some sort of cake or tart, ooh or brownies
• A good roast/casserole type dish

I also wanted to be able to replicate some of my mum's food.  I didn't notice so much when I was growing up, but after eating out at Asian restaurants I realise now that my mum is an amazing cook.  However as much as I want to fry up a plate of Banh Xeo or whip a huge vat of Pho, Asian food is often so involved and uses so many different ingredients, most of which you can only get at specialty Asian grocers.  It's definitely not anything I can attempt in my little isolated corner of Wangaratta.  Perhaps I will try something once I get back to Melbourne.  Look forward to An's Asian Cooking Misadventures in the near future.

Alright moving on now to the aforementioned Basic Foods of the Week!  True to my word, the first dish is a basic lasagna which I got out of 'The Cook's Companion'.

Stephanie Alexander's Lasagna

I really do love a good lasagna.  There is something about the combination of a lovely rich bolognese and creamy white sauce in between soft layers of pasta that just makes you feel good inside, like you're home again.  My lasagna started out really well.  I was so proud at finally making a bechamel, and my bolognese was looking fantastically thick and rich, and tasted great.  However when it came to constructing the actual dish things quickly came apart.  For one thing, I didn't have a proper lasagna tray, so I had to make do with a deep circular dish thing that I assumed was OK to put in the oven.  I ended up having to break up all my pasta sheets so they all fit, which I'm pretty sure is OK coz I've seen it done before.  The second problem was the order of my layering.  Though I'm sure it's mostly my fault, some of the blame has to go to Stephanie Alexander herself.  Her recipe explicitly says that the lasagna sheets should be on the outside i.e. beginning and ending with pasta sheets.  However I think that she was using fresh lasagna sheets, while I only had Leggo's instant lasagna sheets at my disposal.  Consequently, the top of my lasagna became hard as a crisp, and no amount of re-heating could take away that yucky rubbery texture.  But beyond that, everything tasted pretty good!  I thought it was going to be a lot harder to make than it was, but those sauces weren't too involved at all.  I just need a spare hour to let the bolognese reduce properly, and another 40 minutes to an hour cooking time, so all up a 2 hour dish that will always be a house favourite.  And next time I'll get the layering right.

Well that doesn't look like much

Bechamel and Bolognese.  I don't know why that other pot is there.

Layering

More layering

That dastardly top layer

It may not look it, but it tastes OK

Stephanie Alexander's Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

Part two of my basics cooking misadventure had me itching to bake something using the silicone baking gear I bought off Catch of the Day a while back.  Unfortunately, that baking set didn't include a cake tin, so I would have to make do with tarts, muffins and loaves of bread.  Having already made banana bread (which I never posted up here unfortunately) and not game enough to make a pastry, I decided to take a stab at a muffin recipe from 'The Cook's Companion'.  I'm loving this book at the moment.  Not only does it sort recipes by ingredient, Stephanie Alexander provides a whole bunch of 'base recipes' such as this muffin base, and then tips on adding all the extra bits.  Thus, Apple and Cinnamon Muffins.

So from a batch of 12 I kept three for myself and took the rest into ED to share around.  They went down great and I got a lot of compliments, from mothers no less, and you can't get much better praise than that.

Donna Hay's Red Thai Curry with Eggplant and Pumpkin

Blergh.  I don't want to talk about this dish too much because it turned out to be a bona-fide disaster.  Probably the worst dish I've made since those zucchini fritters circa 9 months ago.  I should have known it was going to turn out bad when the only spice on the ingredients list was red thai curry paste.  And on my end, I left the vegetables to cook for too long so they all broke down into a mushy paste.  What resulted was a flavourless slop of a curry that tasted worse than it looked.  The majority of it ended up going into the trash. And I will never trust a Donna Hay curry ever again.

Nigella Lawson's Pasta Puttanesca

So after a week of triumphs and tragedies in the kitchen with my basics experiment, I was back on night shifts in ED yet again.  This of course meant going to my fall back of cooking a big pot of pasta for the week, but rather than cheat again with stir-through sauce I instead took a recipe out of Delicious for Pasta Puttanesca, or 'Whore's Pasta' as Nigella calls it.  I don't know why she calls it that, but I can definitely imagine her describing it in a very sexy way.

A very oily sauce

More of that swirly pasta thing

This recipe called for a lot of oil, a lot of garlic, a whole jar of anchovies and a container full of olives.  It tasted great, and lasted me most of the week, but I don't think it did my breath any favours.

Well that's all for this week guys.  It's Saturday already and I have to head back up to Wangaratta tomorrow for the final two-week stretch in this rotation.  Even though its taken a few days this post still feels kind of rushed.  Obviously I've had to stop and come back to it a few times, and more often than not I was typing while concurrently watching Dexter in side-by-side windows.  But that's no excuse for poor quality posting.  The next post will be my final one from Wangaratta so I'm going to try and highlight a lot of the town itself before I leave.  Looking forward to it.

An Goes North of the Border!

Hey everybody!  It's been a while since I last posted but I guarantee it's been worth the wait.  In this edition of An's Country Cooking Misadventures I take a break from the usual collection of disastrous dishes to bring you tales of my journey to Sydney and Canberra, complete with a review of Austalia's premier fine dining establishment Quay, home of the now infamous Snow Egg.  Before I go on, a big shout out to my cousins in Sydney, and to Eddie and Cindy in Canberra for letting me crash at their places.  It was great hanging out with you guys and I'm sorry I haven't been up more often.  But enough with all this sentiment, let's have at them stories!

My Kingdom For A Decent Cup Of Coffee

It is a point of pride for Melbournians that we have the best cafe culture in Australia, and that even a mediocre drip in Melbourne is better than anything on offer in Sydney.  I tease of course, but even my Sydney-sider cousins agree that the their city is lacking in top notch coffee.  Enter AIR, or Australian International Roasters, whose mission it seems is to bring high quality beans to the Sydney scene.  My cousins were big fans, stating that it was probably the only cafe in town comparable to Melbourne standards.  I was curious, and despite the oxymoronic name I was determined to judge this coffee for myself.  Tucked away in the middle of suburbia and housed in a drab-red industrial building that lacked any aesthetics, the approach to AIR was less than inspiring.  A stark interior with black furniture and a roasting table, not even some nice lounge music to help the mood.  But the coffee?  Excellent.  Smooth, fragrant, and a big hit of coffee flavour that I think is lacking from a lot of milk-diluted coffees these days.  These guys are serious roasters interested in distribution, and this pseudo-cafe is really just a front to help promote their product.  Come for the coffee, stay...because you have to.

Even Sydney-siders like to read the Melbourne Coffee Review

Philosiphisationing On Circular Quay

With my cousins busy at work during the day, I was left to explore the big bad city on my own.  Opera House, Harbour Bridge, I had seen it all before.  Instead I chose to hit up the Guylian Cafe in Circular Quay for some chocolate indulgence.  I use to go to the Lindt Cafe but we have one of those in Melbourne now so its not so much of a novelty.  Plus the Guylian Cafe has a great view of the harbour and is a nice place to sip a Belgian chocolate milkshake while being alone with your thoughts.  Here are some things I jotted down in my phone while I was gazing across the water:

"You know who hangs out at chocolate cafes?  Old tourists and asian couples, and old asian tourist couples."

"Cruise ships?"

"There is a ridiculous gay couple here.  Ridiculous not because they're gay, but because they have ridculously skinny jeans."

"When I rest my head on my hand, I'm not sure if I should go with the fist or open palm.  They both feel kinda awkward."

"The waitresses must think I'm a total loner.  I would if I was a waitress.  I mean waiter."

That shit is deep.

The Long Way Round

It had been a long and lonely day in Sydney, and apart from the milkshake things had not been so great, particularly since I couldn't find anything to buy down Pitt St mall.  But things were looking on the up when my cousin said we were going out to dinner at Porteno (pronounced with funny accent of your choosing), the hottest Argentinian restaurant in town.  The plan was to leave from the city early so we wouldn't miss out on the limited quantity 8 hour slow-cooked lamb.  The plan was to be sipping cocktails by sundown while the soft tango beats filled us with South American passion  The plan WAS NOT to drive around for an hour to travel 5km out of the city.  After multiple wrong turns down one-way streets, it was obvious that even local drivers could not contend with the traffic chaos that is the Sydney road ways.  But eventually we made it, we had our lamb and our cocktails too.  The lamb was lovely and succulent, though the serving size not as healthy as the lamb shoulder at Cumulus Inc.  The surprise of the night was the deep fried brussel sprouts.  Normally not a big fan of the sprouts, but these were quite tasty.  It just goes to show that everything tastes better when its deep fried.

Sorry, forgot to take pictures!

The Wacky World of Zumbo

Coming to Sydney I only had two major goals: buy macarons from Zumbo's and dine at Quay.  Part one was fulfilled when my cousin took me to a very unassuming little shop in a very unassuming little suburb in Sydney, which was home to probably Australia's most famous pastry chef.  For Masterchef fans Zumbo hardly needs any introduction.  But for those not in the know, or any overseas readers out there, Zumbo is known for creating diabolically complex desserts like the V8 cake and the Crockenbush (a tower of profiteroles covered in spun sugar), which unwitting amateur chefs then have to recreate under the intense pressure of a reality television audience.  He also likes to experiment with macarons, creating wild and crazy flavours much like Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.  I bought myself a collection of all the macarons available on the day.  I can't remember all of them, but off the top of my head they included Smartie flavour, Cinnamon, something with pistachios and maybe something with rose-water.  We also bought a couple of cakes, which again I can't remember but I think one was an aerated chilli-chocolate cake and the other was a mango cake with various mango toppings.  We enjoyed our cakes by the water on Darling Harbour, and the macarons we saved for later at Dan's Cafe, a local favourite in 'The Hills' regions of Sydney.  Not remembering the flavours is sometimes a bonus, because it then allows us to play the Macoron Guessing Game, a fun and delicious past time of all Zumbo fans.

Just one of three Zumbo shops in Sydney

Our cakes got knocked around a bit en route to Darling Harbour.  Still delicious!

Happiness is enjoying a cup of coffee with macorons while reading the Sydney Morning Herald

This dog was just chillin' outside Zumbo's.  He is totally cool

An Le Versus The Matching Wine List

After a few days farting around town (often literally), the time had finally come to fulfill the long-awaited highlight of my Sydney trip.  Peter Gilmore's Quay restaurant is Australia's highest ranked restaurant, and only one of two Australian restaurants to make San Pellegrino's World's 50 Best Restaurants list.  When I told my cousin that I was coming up to Sydney, the first thing we did was confirm a booking.  And so, on a crisp and clear Thursday evening, my cousins and I headed to Circular Quay to and sit down to this country's greatest dining experience.  It was a rough beginning, as we found it difficult to find the inconspicuous little elevator that would take us to the restaurant floor (I suspect this was a back way, because I can't believe Quay wouldn't have a more grand entrance).  However once we found our way in, our jaws were dropping from the moment we stepped into the restaurant.  Situated on the water between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, Quay boasts a view that is as stunning as its tasting menu.  And we were lucky enough to experience both, along with a matching wine list that was a struggle to get through.  In fact I barely made it to the last dish because I had to step out onto the balcony for some fresh air to stop the room from spinning.  Anyway, in the interest of saving time I won't go through each individual dish like my last review of The Royal Mail Hotel.  Instead I'll just put up all the pictures with some captions and let you know my thoughts at the end.  Enjoy!

This was just a little amuse of caviar and some sort of puree.  It looks like a tiny bunch of grapes!

Sashimi Hiramasa kingfish, pickled kohlrabi, octopus, nasturtiums, white dashi jelly - with Vegneti Massa 'Pietra del Gallo' Vin Rosso

Baby white heirloom cucumber gently braised in oyster and wakame juices, shaved black lipped abalone, oyster cream - with 2009 Falesco 'Poggio dei Gelsi'

Native freshwater marron, rose salt, organic pink turnips, jamon de bellota cream, oloroso caramel, green almonds, society garlic flowers - with 2010 Jauma Grauburgunder

Me enjoying some broth between the seafood starters and protein mains - through my nose

Butter poached coturnix quail breast, pumpernickel, morel and ethical foie gras pudding, walnuts, quinoa, truffle custard, milk skin - with 2008 TerraVin Pinot Noir

Slow braised Berkshire pig jowl, maltose crackling, prunes, cauliflower cream, perfumed with prune kernel oil - with 2009 William Downie Petit Manseng

Glenloth squab breast, roasted cherries, banyuls, almond cream bitter chocolate black pudding crumbs tonka, beetroot chard - with 2007 Tapanappa Shiraz

White nectarine snow egg - with 2009 Cascinetta Vietti Moscato D'Asti

My cousin Nathan eagerly awaiting to dig into the Snow Egg

Preserved wild cherries, coconut cream, chuao chocolate crumble, cherry juice and chocolate sorbet - with Claude Courtois 'Les Cailloux-du-Paradis' Vin de Mistelle

So that makes a grand total of 8 dishes along with a couple of mini-bites and coffee with petits fours.  It really was an incredible meal.  Unlike The Royal Mail which focused on very simple home grown ingredients, Quay goes out of its way to bring you some of the finest and most interesting food you will ever eat.  The seafood courses, with all their little embellishments, provided a wonderfully tasty and textured start to the meal.  In particular, I loved the cucumber that looks like a little watermelon.  And I don't care how you feel about micro-herbs, I think they're fun-tastic.

From the mains, the stand-out dish for me has to be the pig jowl.  A disgustingly soft and fatty morsel of pork, wrapped in a genius sugar 'crackling' that adds an amazing sweetness to the savoury meat.  I also have to mention the quail breast, cooked to perfection and served with a generous helping of foie gras and truffle.  Oh and the squab breast with all those wonderfully crunchy little chards of beetroot.  Ah who am I kidding, they were all amazing.

And then we come to the Snow Egg, which stands up to its reputation as Australia's most famous dessert.  While the flavours may change with the seasons, the wow factor remains every time you crack into that egg to get to all that yummy goodness inside.  The super-sweetness of the egg centre is balanced out by the coolness of the nectarine sorbet, which is a delight in itself.  I envy all those Masterchef contestants who now know how to make this for themselves.  I suppose I could give it a try one day.

I only managed a few bites of the final dessert before my Asian sensitivities got the better of me, which is a shame because I always like a good chocolate dessert.  But it was better perhaps that I recovered because after Quay we hit up a salsa club in town, where those 3 salsa lessons I took 4 years ago did not help me in the slightest.  But we still had a great night listening to the music and watching the guys fling the girls around with sexy precision.  That was my last night in Sydney, and it had definitely been an almost perfect ending to my excursion up north.  The next morning, it was downwards to our nation's capital to catch up with friends, buy porn and play with fireworks.


A Condensed Summary Of My Trip To Canberra

This blog is becoming a lot more wordy than I had initially hoped, so to end things I'll quickly go through my goings-on in Canberra.  This is no offense to Canberra, but let's face it, there's not too much I can talk about.  I think I'll just recap a few of the highlights with dot points:

• Missing a turn after driving into town, then realising I could just keep going around the round-about until I hit my street again.  How convenient!
• Steak dinner with Canberrian friends Cindy and Eddie.  Actually, not so much a highlight because the place wasn't that great.  But it was nice to catch up with my buddies again.
• Clubbing in Canberra on a Friday night.  Yes, it does exist, and yes, it probably is everything you imagine it to be.  Which is not much.
• My friend Cindy getting absolutely pissed, and blaming me for letting her get so drunk.  Apparently I am a bad influence.
• The view from my friend's apartment balcony.  I cannot believe he lucked out with such a great place.  I should have visited more often.

And, in the two days I was there I ran into FOUR other people I knew.  One who kind of knew me through my ex, one who was in the year below me at school, and a couple of friends of mine who were recently wed.  What the hell were they all doing up there?  And how small a town is it that you can run into all these random people?

That't the end guys!  Phew, it was a tough slog writing all that up, especially since most of it was written during another week of night shifts.  That may explain all the spelling mistakes, poor grammar and disjointed phrases, but hopefully it hasn't been too bad of a read.  I've got a week off work now so I should have time to put up another blog very soon.  There has been heaps of cooking happening so stay tuned as we return to our regularly scheduled program whereby I make an absolute fool of myself in the kitchen.  It's reality programming at it's best.

Late Night Ramblings from the Emergency Department

Night #2

It's 4:30am.  That alone should give you an idea of the state I'm in.  Imagine if you will me typing this up in a slow, slurred drawl, eyes closing lazily, the slightest hint of drool out the corner of my mouth.  It's my second night in this seven night stretch in ED, and all in all it's been (let's not jinx it now) pretty quiet.  There's only two patients in the department and no one in the waiting room.  The nurses are looking at trashy online gossip, the med reg is working on yet another admission, and me, well I've decided to keep a running commentary on all these crazy happenings in blog form.

With all this spare time on my hands, and because I care about you all so very very much, I thought I would try to squeeze in another post before my trip up to Sydney.  Please don't be expecting anything too brilliant.  Like I said, I will be hard pressed to cook up a decent meal this week.  No matter how well adjusted you are, nights will always throw you off kilter.  When do you sleep, when do you wake up?  When do you eat, and what meal should you have?  Is it breakfast at 8pm?  Or should I be eating cereal before I go to sleep?  And yes, all of my dilemmas are centred around the base functions of eating and sleeping.  I would throw sex in there too, but we all know that's not happening.

So I awoke at 6pm yesterday evening to discover that my flat was completely devoid of any food.  I didn't even have any of the basics like milk, bread, cereal, BBQ shapes or chocolate.  I made a quick run to the local Woolies where I ran into my night reg, who presumably was also doing a last minute diner dash.  It was late, I was lazy.  I picked up the basics and a few other ingredients to throw a sneaky dinner/breakfast together.

Cheater's Pasta

I feel extra naughty about this dish.  It's basically instant spaghetti with Leggo's stir-through sauce, and the only thing I did was throw in some mushrooms, capsicums and chilli flakes.  I wouldn't normally put a dish like this up here, but I'm a bit short on options this week.  The photo looks pretty good though.  I took a leaf out of the ol' Donna Hay presentation files and did the whole twisty pasta thingy.  Anyway, it was good.  But next time I promise I'll make my pasta sauce from scratch.

Night #3

6:00am.  Another good night.  There is only one patient in the department who I'm a bit stumped on, and will have to wait until morning to get some advice.  Nurses are doing their thing.  Miss Night Meg Reg is off seeing some sick patients on the ward.  She is a looker that one.  I wonder if she's single.  Unlikely, the good ones never are.  Don't worry, she doesn't have my facebook so she will never read this blog.

There has been no cooking tonight/last night.  I got invited over to a BBQ at the medical students' place where there was backyard cricket and rissoles a plenty.  Is it wrong that a 2nd year resident feels more comfortable hanging out with the medical students than his colleagues?  Maybe all those women were right, maybe I am immature.  Or maybe they're just stupid-heads.

I have arranged to have breakfast with Matt the resident this morning after my shift.  We are totally gonna bro it out over poached eggs and wilted spinach.  No coffee for me, I need to sleep today.  Maybe I will invite Miss Night Med Reg to join us.  It will be fun times.  I'll take photos just so I can have something to put up here.

Night #4

Over the hump.  Any motivation I had to do something productive during the day is rapidly declining.  I forgot to take photos at breakfast, but look at what I ate after I woke up!

It has been a while since I've devoured a good Whopper.  Normally I'm a KFC Zinger fan, but Hungry Jacks was on the same side of the street on the way home from the shops.  Yes, I am even too lazy to cross the street to go to KFC.

There is a new med reg on tonight.  Mr Night Med Reg is not as attractive as Miss Night Med Reg, but he is quite lovely and helpful.  Still, I miss having something pretty around to look at.  It just makes for a more pleasant working environment.

I have been eating left over pasta for ?lunch for the last couple of nights, but tonight I am having Campbell's Country Ladle canned soup.  All the staff here agree that Country Ladle is the canned soup of choice for canned soup connessieurs.  Although I quite like the Chunky Fully Loaded soup.  Afterall, this fully loaded man needs a fully loaded can.

Night #6

The last couple of nights have been fairly hectic.  Walking into a packed emergency department at the beginning of your night shift gives you a sinking feeling unlike any other, except maybe a post-take patient list the length of your arm.

There is finally a bit of down time in the department.  The nurses are sitting around chatting about their kids, about houses, about recipes.  I keep myself occupied by checking facebook on my Android and playing late night 'Words with Friends'.  I'm getting absolutely slaughtered in most of my games, though surprisingly I'm beating my ex (that doesn't sound right) who is a whiz with the words.  I'm guessing lucky letters has a lot to do with success in that game rather than actual knowledge of words.  Give me a good game of Scrabble any day.

Night #7

IT'S THE LAST NIGHT!!!  And it really couldn't have come soon enough.  The last few nights have been hellish, and I've realised I've made quite a few errors.  Nothing that will turn out too serious I hope, but it's still a horrible feeling knowing you've made mistakes with people's health.  This job can be quite taxing physically and emotionally.

I think that may be all I have to say for now.  Thank you for reading all these crazy late night thoughts of mine.  Looking back at what I've written, my mind appears to be quite disjointed and unstable, but I guess we already knew that.  And it hasn't been a great week for food.  Cooking was relatively non-existent, and my meals, well let's just say that Hungry Jack's had a few friends over.  However now I can look forward to a week of deliciousness in Sydney.  Photos, reviews, and more general randomness to come soon!


Addit.

So I woke up late before leaving for Sydney and had to rush out of the flat.  After getting lost a couple of times (stupid Google Maps) I finally arrived, only to find out I did the whole 7 hour trip with two odd socks and my underwear inside out.  On the up side, I did end up beating my ex in Words with Friends.  Suck it Addy!  (Still sounds wrong)

Resurrection, With Potatoes on the Side

"Bring back the food blog!"

"When are you gonna cook again?!?"

"We miss your writing and your classic good looks!"

The voices in my head have spoken, and their demands have been heeded.  The cooking blog is officially back in action!  But why the long absence?  Where have I been?  What in God's name have I been doing all this time?  Answers to these questions and more coming up in the next few paragraphs.

So when I last left you, my loyal readers, I was probably half way through my rotation in Wangaratta.  Life was good, lots of laughs, plenty of fun, the cooking was going well, but blog frequency was dropping dramatically.  Maybe I was just too busy, maybe I had other things to do.  Maybe it was my pathologic fear of committment (I'm seeing someone about this).  Regardless of the reason, the blog that had held so much promise died a slow, undramatic death into cyberspace oblivion.

Meanwhile, my country adventures finally ended and I moved back home to do a rotation of nights and rehab.  Needless to say, my brief dalliance with cooking ended quite abruptly as I returned to exceptionally excellent home-cooked meals courtesy of mother.  It seemed my experiment was one born out of necessity rather than interest, and that my passion for food could not translate into a love of cooking.

But the hands of fate have tweaked their puppet strings and led me straight back to Wangaratta for yet another rotation, back to the town I adored so much.  Wangaratta, where the wine is good, the weather is beautiful, and sandwiches at the cornershop defy the laws of physics with the amount of filling they are able to contain.  My country home, where the faces may change but the people stay the same.

OK enough of all this waffling.  Bottom line: 10 weeks in Wangaratta, still no cooking skills.  Two cook books and a stack of Delicious magazines idly decorating my bookshelf, and food porn that was more often frustrating than satisfying (Am I right guys?).  There was good food to be cooked, and dammit if I wasn't the lonely old country doctor to cook it.

Spicy Tomato Soup with Chorizo, Chickpeas and Beans

This recipe I got out of the latest edition of Delicious magazine, and I have to say it turned out pretty well.  I like a hearty soup, and it doesn't get much heartier than chorizo and chickpeas.  I generally prefer a thicker, creamier type of soup rather than a brothy soup, but the chilli really gave it a good kick.  And even though I halved the recipe, I still made enough to last me 4 meals.

Steak with Roast Potatoes and Buttered Rocket

Once the soup ran out I was stuck with what to make for dinner.  My fall back option has always been to cook a quick steak, but this time I wanted to try something I hadn't done before.  I decided to try my hand at roast potatoes, to add to my mashed potatoes success from last year.  I ripped the roasting instructions from taste.com.au, and the buttered rocket came from Donna Hay's 'The Instant Cook'.  All in all a very simple but tasty dish.  And I'm well on my way to having a full arsenal of basic potato skills at the ready.

Pasta Primavera

This recipe for pasta primavera (which for those of you who don't know means 'spring pasta') I grabbed from another edition of Delicious.  I've never had primavera before but I imagined it as a very light pasta dish with a lot of vegetables.  This recipe however was fairly light on vegetables and very heavy on the sauce.  A few beans and asparagus' (asparaguses? asparagi?) and a whole thing of marcapone (which I pronounce 'mar-sca-pone', but I think may actually be 'mar-sca-po-ny').  It turned out to be quite rich, and to be honest, a little bland.  Without the basil to add some flavour it wouldn't have really worked at all.  But I suppose a primavera is not meant to be all that exciting.  And I made the mistake of cooking a whole vat of this stuff, which meant trying to a keep a cream-based pasta.  Bad idea.

The picture doesn't look all that great.  I had to use a small bowl because my flat doesn't have those big plate-bowl things.  Later on I found it easier to just eat off a regular plate, but I don't have any photos of those.  I invited Matt, another resident working up here with me and who is also my next door neighbour up in Wang, to help me finish this pasta.  He seemed reserved in his opinion but I think he agreed it could've done with a bit more...something something.

And that's all I've got for you guys.  Three dishes in two weeks is not a bad effort, especially when I'm trying to be a bit more thrifty and cooking for a few meals now.  That being said, I still buy lunch and coffee everyday at the cornershop.  I think Silvanna (the owner) would be very sad if I didn't turn up one day.

Looking ahead to the future (it would be hard to look ahead to the past, no?), I'm starting a week of night shifts in ED, so it's going to be very hard to cook any decent meals.  You may see a lot of breakfast dishes popping up in the blog.  However, I do have some very exciting news.  I'll be heading up to Sydney in a weeks' time to visit my cousins and have been promised a journey of gastronomical delights.  I think two words may sum it all up:

Snow Egg.

Fennel Fantastatic, French Toast, and Food Poisoning (Almost)

Yet another month passes by, and the glaring lack of blog posts is apparent to all my faithful followers, and weighs heavier on my mind with each passing day.  The weekly affair that I had envisioned in those early days of naivety has petered out into a semi-monthly occasion.  I know I do this every time I post, but I have to apologise again for letting you all down.  I promised more blogs, and more blogs is what I should have delivered.  To make up for it, this is going to be a super-long blog full of super-awesome dishes.  Please enjoy responsibly.

So what have I been doing this last month?  For the most part I've been working, and I use the word 'working' loosely since most of our day is comprised of sitting at the corner shop sipping lattes and shooting proverbial breezes.  It becomes a disappointment if my registrar and I haven't managed to order our coffees by 11 o'clock, followed closely by a long lunch.  Living in a country town which moves at a country pace definitely has its advantages, and now that Spring has arrived in Wangaratta it's hard not to sit back and enjoy the serenity...so much serenity.

But it hasn't been all coffees at the corner shop.  My kitchen has been a flurry of boiling pots and piling dishes as my country cooking adventures pick up the pace.  It has been a highly productive month full of dinner parties and desserts and fine dining, and one star dish that my co-interns can't stop raving about.  I'm not usually one to hype up my own food, but it was pretty damn good.

But we start with the simplest of the simplest dishes.  After touting my amazing non-stick TEFAL pans in the last post, I felt obliged to give the dreaded omelette another go.  The results will amaze you!

Yes! My perfect 3-egg omelette, successfully slid off my super non-stick pan.  I kept it simple and just put cheese in the middle, but now that I know how easy this is to do I'll start getting fancy with my fillings.  Breakfast will never be the same again.  I lie, breakfast has been the same everyday since.  I just don't have the time to whip up an omelette batter and cook it.  My quick breakfast of choice is Uncle Toby's Plus Omega 3 Lift, a tasty nutritious meal that even your kids will enjoy.  Find it in your supermarket cereal aisle.

The second dish on the menu is a variation of one I've made before.  You may remember me cooking Jamie Oliver's prosciutto-wrapped roast chicken in a tin foil tray.  I really enjoyed cooking it last time, particularly the part where I could throw away the make-shift tray and have less cleaning to do.  Jamie actually features 4 different single-serve roast chicken recipes, and I decided on rosemary roast chicken breast with asparagus and cherry tomatoes in white wine.

 

Not too bad to look at, but unfortunately I did a very naughty thing and didn't cook my chicken properly.  After biting into a very raw and very salmonella-looking piece of chicken, I promptly spat out the bacteria-infested wad in my mouth and nuked the rest of the chicken in the microwave.  Damn these electric ovens and their crazy cooking times.  Luckily I didn't get food poisoning, but I did get a nice colourful picture for my blog.

By this time I was feeling a bit lazy (which is not all that unusual for me) and decided to make a big pot of something or other to last me through the week.  Noting the lack of pasta-based dishes throughout my country cooking adventures I threw together a bolognese sauce from a recipe my mum taught me, which is basically crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, mince meat, garlic, onions, red wine, salt, pepper and sugar, and whatever veggies you want chopped into little pieces.  I also made use of some of the herbs Michelle gave me during my last trip to Milawa, bless her soul.  Thrown together with fettucine, this is what it looks like:

Not great, but not terrible.  I was a bit impatient and didn't let the sauce reduce down into nice, rich, thick loveliness.  I really want to aim for the restaurant quality sauce that looks all creamy and oozey.  Instead my sauces usually turn out wet and runny.  Still I can't complain too much; it got me through a whole week of meals, including lunch!

I returned home for Father's Day weekend, and as has become a tradition in our family my younger sister and I cooked breakfast for the family.  Up until now it's mostly been a lot of pancakes, with a fairly fantastic batch of ricotta pancakes whipped up just this last Mother's Day.  I decided to change things up a bit this time around and searched through my Donna Hay book for some ideas.  I settled upon a delicious looking breakfast/dessert that was also really simple to make.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but those are Dark Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches.  The name alone is enough to make your mouth water and your pancreas shut down for good.  They were really quite tasty, however the dark chocolate really overpowered the french toast, so it felt like we were just eating nutella.  Plus it was super rich.  I recommend a side of bananas or strawberries to accompany this dish, sliced to perfection of course.  P.S. I'm pretty sure my parents enjoyed it, though they could have just been trying to make me feel good.

Delighted with my french toast experience, I returned to Wangaratta filled to the brim with cooking confidence and girlish glee.  I invited my fellow interns over for dinner, with the aim of cooking an awesome lamb rack roast I saw in Donna Hay.  Trundling down to the Woolworth's the night before the night, I discovered that supermarkets don't routinely stock whole lamb racks, which was disappointing needless to say.  Also, the recipe called for figs, but me being the foodie novice that I am didn't realise figs weren't in season.  Plus, as my cousin informed me later, they are really expensive.  I was wracking my brain trying to think of an alternative and decided that apples might do the trick.  The next day I called the local butcher while I was at work (and sipping lattes simultaneously of course) to order a few lamb racks, and by 5:30pm I was all set to start cooking.  Apples chopped, fennel sliced, lamb coated in salt, pepper, rosemary, and garlic mustard from my favourite mustard shop.  A surprisingly short cooking time later:

So to recap: Lamb rack roast on a bed of roasted apple and fennel, with a serving of mashed potatoes on the side for good measure.  Yes, its all just a lot of brown a beige, but this is the dish of the trip so far.  Better than my lamb shanks probably.  The fennel/apple combo worked a real treat.  In fact, one of co-interns keeps asking me to make the fennel/apple and mash potatoes again, she really couldn't get enough.  I have to say I'm quite proud of this one, though next time I'm gonna try and add a bit of colour to the dish.  If you have any suggestions about what I could use, please let me know!

The following weekend I came back down to Melbourne again to hang out with my cousins, one of whom was visiting from Sydney.  Being ever so much more the foodie that I am, each visit from her takes us to yet undiscovered culinary gems hidden from we who have lived in Melbourne practically our whole lives.  Last time she was down she took us to The Panama Room, which had a great atmosphere and very good food which was surprisingly hearty given the young hip chic vibe I was getting from the place.  This time around we went to Pearl restaurant in South Yarra, which got some great reviews in The Age and two hats.  I have to admit though, I really didn't enjoy it all that much.  I think I just can't enjoy "asian fusion" dining, particularly Vietnamese fusion dishes.  When my whole rainbow trout came out all I could think was, "My mum could probably make this."  I suppose the same could be said for other cultures and their traditional cuisines.  You don't really want to be paying fine-dining prices for a home cooked meal.

The highlight of the visit for me was brunch/lunch at Outpost, which coincidentally is near my old high school.  Fantastic coffee and atmosphere, and for lunch I had the Chicken Pot Pie which was delicious.  Commenting on the apparent simplicity of the pot pie we got into a discussion about stews and the such.  I didn't even know where to start making a stew.  Apparently you just brown some meat, throw it in together with chopped veggies and stock and whatever else you like, simmer and thicken with flour to your liking.  It was just that easy!  So why not try it up in Wangaratta?

So for my stew I used bits of mystery beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, vegetable stock, red wine, copious amounts of salt and pepper and some bay leaves.  It sat on my stove top for ages, and being the impatient guy that I am I added a lot of flour to speed up the thickening process.  In the end the texture wasn't far off from where I wanted it.  What I didn't like was how bland it all tasted.  I know I didn't have a lot of fancy herbs to throw in there but I didn't expect it to be so tasteless.  The next day I was talking about it with some of the other people and I realised I didn't add any tomato paste or garlic.  I guess the great thing about stew is if you make a big enough pot you can just keep cooking it till you get it right.  After adding the tomato paste and garlic, and some random thyme I found in Michelle's herb garden, the stew suddenly tasted like a completely different dish.  You really need the tomatoes to add that extra bite to the whole thing.  And to complete my stew adventure, I stole a ramekin from home and bought some puff pastry so I could make my pot pies.  I don't think the puff pastry really adds anything to the dish, but it does look better than serving up a bowl of stew with rice.

My final dish is another Donna Hay recipe, or recipes should I say.   Chicken breast cooked two ways: parmesan-coated roast chicken breast and roast chicken breast on a tomato and eggplant base topped with cheese.  To accompany this I decided to make a salad that was suggested to me by, you guessed it, the ever so lovely Michelle at the mustard shop.  I forgot to mention I went back to Milawa on one of my afternoons off and picked up some more mustard, this time opting for the hot honey mustard flavour.  Wondering what might go well with it, she suggested I make a salad with roast pumpkin and spinach and top it all with the honey mustard.  I took her advice and added some roast sweet potato and pine nuts for extra texture.

Both the chicken components of this dish were crap.  The 'parmesan-crumb' that was meant to coat my chicken breasts really just became a melted cheese flavouring.  And the eggplant and tomato base turned into a soggy mess.  The only saving grace was that the chicken was cooked well, or at the very least it wasn't raw, which is lucky since I was serving it to my other interns.  Also, the salad was fantastic.  The combination worked really well, though next time I probably need to dice my pumpkin and sweet potatoes into smaller bite size pieces.

The following day I still had heaps of salad left over and some chicken strips I had cut off the breasts, so I put together a grilled chicken salad for dinner.

To be honest this salad tasted a lot better than the dishes I made the night before.  Sometimes a simple chicken salad is all you really need.

And that finally bring us up to date with all the exciting happenings in my cooking world.  I hope it hasn't been too much of struggle reading through all of that.  I've been writing this blog up over a few days so I haven't noticed how long it is, though on preview it's probably the longest one I've done so far.  Normally I'd finish it here but I wanted to let you all know about all the other exciting stuff that's been happening in Wangaratta.

Living together in a block of flats so close to the hospital opens up opportunities that just aren't available to you in the city.  Like flat parties.  Big drunken flat parties on Thursday nights that somehow end up being in your flat.  Big drunken flat parties with a bunch of rowdy medical students that aren't all too careful with their beer and red wine.  I woke up the next morning to the stench of beer and dude and rotten as.  Actually it was Chance my medical co-intern who woke me up with a phone call 15 minutes after I was meant to start work.  Good times!

I much more sedate news, I discovered this last month that a friend of a friend of mine is working as a dentist in Benalla, which is not too far of a drive from here.  I actually found out after finding her name on a dental review of one of my patients.  What a random crazy world we live in.  We ended up meeting up for dinner and she dragged me along to a swing dancing class that she attends here in Wangaratta.  OK, so she didn't 'drag' me along.  Truth be told, I love dancing, absolutely love it.  I don't care that I was swing dancing in a hall with a group of mostly over 50's who look like they might do a hip if they sway too much.  When I get back down to Melbourne I will definitely have to con some people into coming to dance classes with me.  If you have any interest in it at all please let me know.  I'm putting the call out!

Alright guys that's it.  It's now 11:38pm on my third day of blog writing.  And I've only just realised I've skipped over one of my dishes.  It's too late to add anything now; I'll have to add it on to the next blog.

Whenever that might be.