Before

committing postal fraud, one must make breakfast for those going to meetings.

As Gingold said, "Ha, real green eggs and ham."


I used up all the remaining creamed broccoli and whisked it with three eggs, a dash of soy milk and some salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, I fried up a rasher of diced bacon with the fat still on and sauted an onion. Then, I poured the egg mixture over the top and baked it at 200 for 15 minutes.

The two boys awake in the morning shared it between them and this was left. Me? I went to the post office and then the gym.

Oh, I also fried up potatoes for the gluten-intolerant one.

Such a hideous breakfast. Hahahaha.

Clearing it out.

I felt a sense of sadness and victory when I made this.

Sadness because I had no staples to actually make this properly and victory because I made it to the end of my Kewpie mayo.

No, that was a little sad too.

With all the nothing I had in the fridge, I had to somehow make food. Edible food. The problem with this is that I didn't know at the time that I had only a few eggs and no flour.

Actually, that is a lie. I had organic buckwheat and spelt flour from the market. And I guess that had to make do.

You see, I have the ingredients to make a curry or a really rockin' pasta, or even pizza if I work my flours right, but this is lunch. No, this is an after work-out lunch and all the above spells effort. I do have to say though, this just reinforces the fact that cabbage is such an underrated vegetable.



Look how sad and deflated that okonomiyaki is. I blame it on the flour and lack of eggs.

Hell, this was such a sad throw-together, I don't think I can really call it okonomiyaki. Now, that is true sadness. Funnily enough, I had dashi. I know, I know...I'm a fool, and I need to do a shop.

The saddest lunch in the world.

1 onion, halved and finely sliced
1/2 a head of cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, grated
a handful of bean shoots
a few spring onions, finely sliced

1/4 cup of dashi stock
buckwheat flour to bind. I did this by sight, but I am guessing something like 1/2 a cup
3 eggs
salt
ground red pepper

okonomiyaki sauce
kewpie mayo

Saute off the onion for a few minutes, so the raw taste doesn't kill you before adding to the other vegetables. Stir together.
Add the dashi stock and flour till you have a cake like batter, cracking the eggs in one at a time and stirring in to combine. You'd probably, ideally achieve a better result than me if you used plain flour, or had enough flour...or something.
Season with the salt, and ground red pepper.
Fry off, one at a time in a very hot pan and cover with a lid to allow the vegetables to steam through with their own moisture. Take off the lid and flip the damn thing and cook the other side. Brush the side now facing you with the okonomiyaki sauce and transfer to a plate.
Squeeze the last drops of mayo on your pancake and if you were not destitute like me, you'd be able to add bonito flakes and aonori (shredded, almost powdery seaweed) over the top.

Funnily enough I didn't consider that the buckwheat flour would make this a lot more filling than usual due to the fiber and protein content and I only made one. So, I have no idea how many this makes.

Desperation is sweet.

Being poor is okay in my books.

Funnily enough, this meal was calculated by my dining companion to have only cost four dollars to feed the both of us.

Ridicerous...yeah, I still get organic eggs, bitches.

Go team economic crisis and being casualties of the recession!

And funnily enough, the best thing I have eaten all week.

Steamed Chinese sausage, sliced up. Check out those little pools of saturated fat spilling on the chopping board.

Choi Sum stir fried in oyster sauce

The spread, banquet style. Soy and chili hidden on the side


Mine!

Poor Man Linner
Serves 2-3 people

Medium grain rice, washed
small handful of dried shittake mushrooms
2 tsp of dried shrimp
1 1/2 chinese sausages

3 eggs
1/2 bunch of garlic chives, roughly chopped
salt
white pepper

1/2 bunch of choi sum
oil
soy sauce
oyster sauce

chili and soy sauce to serve

Put the rice , mushrooms and shrimp into the rice cooker with the right amount of water. Place the Chinese sausage over the top, in the water to allow to steam while the rice cooks.
When the rice is ready, remoe the sausage, slice and set aside. Fluff the rice and allow to sit for 10 minutes while you cook off the rest of the meal.

Whip the eggs in a bowl till you break the yolks and add the chives. Stir till thorough and add salt and pepper to taste. Fry off in a heavy based pan or a wok on high heat till cooked, trying to keep it in a thickish slab, around 1/2-1cm thick.

Wash and dry the choi sum, sectioning it into edible lengths. Heat oil in a wok or heavy based pan over high heat and add the vegetables with a dash of soy. Cover with the lid for 30-60 seconds and allow to steam till it has cooked. Add the oyster sauce to taste, turn off the heat and stir.

Serve with the dishes separated and allow people to help themselves to what/how much they want on top of their rice. Dig out that hidden beer.

She did what?

Yeah, totally got take out.

Everything tasted metallic, and by everything I meant water, because I took a few sleeping tablets last night.

I finally regained my ability to taste at 5pm, but I was too tired to cook.

There is this place called Nasi Lemak House on Grattan st, between Cardigan and Lygon. They're good, and constantly packed with slant eyes.

Anyways, even though this is my breakfast, lunch and dinner....buncher, lunchfaster, linnerfast...I could only eat half of it.

It is very good.

Nasi Lemak Sambal Prawns $13.60
Sambal prawns with ican bilis, roasted peanuts, cucumber and a fried egg.

The only complaint is that the fried eggs sit under the bain marie instead of being cooked to order, like the prawns, and have a firm yolk.

Who cares, it's Sunday.

Brilliant!

(I assume if they're organic, they're also free-range. A little redundant here, hey?)

So, I was talking with one of the girls at the gallery today about her breakfast.

Girl: Oh, I had eggs with hollandaise on toast. Pity they gave me crappy white bread.
Me: I haven't eaten yet. You've made me hungry.
Girl: I love hollandaise on eggs.
Me: I know, eggs on eggs. Who would have thought that would go together? BRILLIANT!
Girl: You're a smart-arse, aren't you?

*blink*


[silence]


*nod*

I've already given you a hollandaise recipe, but here it is again.

3 egg yolks
Juice from half a lemon
150g melted butter
salt
pepper

Whisk the yolks over a double boiler and add the lemon juice till it is all nice and pale. Add the butter, keep whisking and season with salt and pepper. If it looks too thick, add a few teaspoons of water to thin it down.
Serve immediately.


I love how the chicken shit and feather are still stuck to the egg. Hell yes!

Comfort food is always hideous.

I am feeling a little worse for wear as I had been out drinking and didn't crawl into bed till 5am. The funny part is that I didn't intend to have a big night, a long night or any type of night past a dinner with friends that didn't happen anyways.
An outing was made and Match was revisited.

One of my friends was hell bent on a kebab and convinced me to eat part of one. I had the innards in a box and pretty much only ate the lettuce and a few strips of meat.
I had never had a kebab before.

Yes, gasp.

You done?

Well, I had been a vegetarian for 6 and a half years and just never had the opportunity. My friend was very proud of taking my kebab virginity. Needless to say, I could feel my tongue lining itself with animal fat (not in a good way) which is why I only ate a few strips of the meat before I waved a white flag.
My friend said she had to stop eating hers when she was about three bites from the end because she could feel her heart palpitating (though she said she felt unsatisfied because she really wanted to finish it). It is not to say that she is obese or even overweight, but between her ridiculously good eating (Vietnamese family), she has no qualms with sucking down a serve of nachos to herself or washing a Chico roll down with a bottle of V. Now, multiply this out over twenty-one years and add large melted Caramello koalas as snacks in between and you get heart palpitations.

Now, I know I am one for sarcastic exaggeration, but when I woke up from a "kebab" induced coma, I swear my heart was palpitating as well. I can only reconcile this by thinking that I don't usually eat such foods and my body is exacting its revenge. So, I exercise and I still feel like I have a brick of food in my stomach and realise it is 5pm.
I can only see myself balancing this out with vegetables, and such. So, from my youth, I cooked brown rice in a rice cooker, seasoned it, added dried shitake mushrooms for fragrance. Then, near the end, I stirred through chopped broccoli, fresh peas, marinated tofu (in chili, soy, sugar, sesame oil, ginger and garlic) and cracked an egg over and let it set.
When the rice cooker clicked over to "Keep warm," I served it up in a bowl with shredded lettuce and keep some chili and soy on the side. I was going to eat it with fried dace with fermented black beans, but I wasn't that hungry or in need for flesh. Plus, it is swimming in oil.

I didn't take a photo of it because it is hideous. All comfort food is.

So, instead, I will give you a photo of the best tattoo I have ever seen. It is from my friend who I will keep anonymous, but if you have ever seen him in the flesh, acting, performing or otherwise, you would have noticed this.


It is an amalgamation of the two best things in the world. It's the Bombay Sapphire logo with David Bowie's head in the middle.

I do dessert like you do dessert the way that you want dessert, I make the dessert.

That is enough.

I mentioned last week having run into this woman from NT who works the organic section at the Vic Market. Well, we were chatting and she pointed me to organic cherries which they were about to sacrifice because the woman who ran the stall ordered too many. That, and broccoli.



I ended up leaving her with about half a kilo of cherries for two dollars. Yeah, outrageous! I have had a pretty lazy day and ran the appropriate errands, and in complete serenity, I decided to make clafouti.

It's been a long time coming. I run off a Julia Childs recipe for this because I can't remember the exact quantities this French woman taught me when I was much, much younger.



I assume pitting cherries is much like pitting olives, but with more murder.


So Bateman right now...


Clafouti
Makes 6
1 1/4 cups of milk (I used soy)
1/3 cup of sugar
3 eggs
1 tbs vanilla (I used almond extract)
pinch of salt
1/2 cup of flour
3 cups of cherries, pitted
1/3 cup of sugar
icing sugar, to dust

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Find 6 ramekins and lightly butter and flour.
Pit the cherries if you haven't already.


In a bowl or a blender, mix together the milk, eggs, sugar,vanilla, salt and flour.
Pour half the quantity of the mixture into each ramekin and bake till it sets, around 8 minutes.
Remove them from the oven and scatter the cherries and top and sprinkle with the remaining sugar followed by the remaining mixture.
Bake for a further 10-15 minutes or till they have puffed up and a skewer comes out clean. Dust with icing sugar and serve hot with ice cream or cream.

Oh yes, and they will deflate.
Also, don't be like my housemate and eat one before a spinning class. I predict that she may throw up a little.

Oh yeah, and I also bought asparagus.

So, I handed in my last 12,000 words yesterday and celebrated by not exercising, drinking beer and making dinner for the boys and I. I bought three bunches of asparagus at the market and used one of them last night.

Here is how I used the other:


First, broad beans. In their full, unstripped glory.


Then, I took a bunch of asparagus, removed the woody parts, blanched them in boiling water for 60 seconds and refreshed them in iced water.


I did the same to the pods of the broad beans and they sexed it up with the asparagus.


After they chilled, I took of the outer layer from the broad beans. The clothes are in the front and the kids are in the back.


That got set aside and I made a hollandaise with three egg yolks, melted butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Oh, who needs a double boiler when you have a giant-ass bowl?
Note to self; tea towels, need to buy more...need to wash some.


And then I put it all together after poaching a few eggs, toasting a few slices of Irrawarra bread and getting my shit together.



And that, kids, is how you do a lazy brunch. Best eaten out the front, in the sun using crates as tables and on the olive couches.

I did what?

Pancakes for dinner.

Not crepes, where it would possibly be acceptable and easy to make savoury...but pancakes.

If there is anything that anyone has learnt from knowing me or even reading this blog, it is that I am not too keen on sweets, desserts, or what is essentially a dessert for breakfast.
Even at dessert, I choose cheese. I AM the cheese.

So, why the want for something sweet...or even, a pancake?

My only conclusion is that I am doing that crazy female hormonal thing that happens once a month, which funnily enough coincides with the full moon (according to one of my friend's observations).

There was also the welcome addition of a ginger ice cream that was donated to me from the Slow Food Market, made by the Gundowring Finest Ice Cream people. Surprising chunks of ginger made me all warm and fuzzy inside, so I am going to have to hide the rest of the half litre in the back of the freezer (which is like playing a really cold, 3D game of Tetris).

They're stupidly fluffy, rich and remind me of New York. So, obviously, I couldn't even make it through one. Funnily enough, I remember after parties, I would usually make up 3 batches of this and give it to the leftovers on my couch so they would help me clean up.

Why didn't I think of that on Saturday?

Yeah, blame the weather.

Buttermilk Pancakes
makes 12
375g plain flour
3 tbs caster sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
750ml buttermilk
125ml milk
3 eggs
85g butter, melted

In a huge-ass bowl, combine and sift the dry ingredients together.
In a separate bowl, beat together the wet ingredients.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk lightly with a fork, but don't overdo it. It may look like lumpy vomit.
Cook them in 1/2 cups and serve with whatever you want. In my case, ginger ice cream and maple syrup went on one quarter and ricotta, lemon and honey went on the other.

They keep well in foil, freeze well and can be warmed in the foil in the oven.

Then, go for a jog.

I Love My First Day of the Week.

I have a beautiful friend who is so giving, that sometimes the world kind of takes that opportunity to shit on her. When people find out her name, they do this annoying dance where they ask if her parents were hippies, or if she changed it. Stupidly enough, these people also don't know anything about art and who she was named after, or the contribution that this person made to the Heide.

Yesterday was one of those days where beer and some cooking could fix the girl. I thought that she probably needed some real food after what she got shat on with, and the only thing she had at home was pita bread and vegemite.

That was tragedy in its purest form.

So, I cooked for this woman, my real wife (sorry Bjork) and fed her booze.

Oh, I love my first day of the week. (Yes, yesterday was Tuesday, but if you're smart enough, you'll work it out.)

After I saw this tart on Haalo's site, I decided it would be a good way to use up asparagus. But obviously, the idea of the tart was the only thing, and I may have bastardized the idea.

Asparagus Tart For My Favourite Tart

1 bunch of asparagus, trimmed
2 slices of prosciutto, sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 leek, sliced, white part only
1 head of broccoli, stem sliced and florets quartered
1/3 barrel of La Luna cheese, diced
3 eggs
200mL cream
6 sheets of filo
butter
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Find a rectangular baking dish and measure the asparagus to the width of it and trim the excess off. Slice the trimmed parts and set aside with the broccoli.
Blanch the asparagus and halve length ways.
Meanwhile, render the fat from the prosciutto and add the garlic and leek, followed by the asparagus stalks and the broccoli. Season and allow to soften.
Line the baking dish with the filo, brushing melted butter between the sheets. Take the eggs and cream, and whisk together, seasoning with salt and pepper.
When the mixture in the pan is cooked, place it over the filo and pour in the egg mixture. Then, take the spears of asparagus and line it over the top, alternating direction of the spear.
Dot with the La Luna cheese and bake for 20-30 minutes, or till it has set.

Feed it to your lady.

Lunchfast

Weekends are meant to be slow things, where you wake up mid afternoon, naked from the waist down (thank Dylan Moran for that image)and cooking barefoot, despite your brain yelling OH&S at you the whole time, while watching your friend smoke cigarettes outside the kitchen window as they sit in a blue milk crate (one of the old ones, that records can still fit into) and you both drink espressos, clinking demitasse cups above the sill.
Needless to say, the day was disgustingly beautiful, in the traditional and obvious sense. Absolutely pointless for a hangover.

So, make this and listen to CocoRosie's Noah's Ark album.

Take it easy, kids.

Fritters of some sort

1 eggplant, grilled, flesh scooped out and chopped
1/2 bunch of silverbeet slices, ribs removed and diced
5 slices Irrewarra Breakfast Seed Loaf, pulsed to breadcrumbs in a processor
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 egg
100g ricotta

Saute off the silverbeet and cook. Mix together in a bowl with two handfuls of the breadcrumbs, reserving the rest, the eggplant, ricotta, garlic and egg. Season with salt and pepper.
Roll into balls and then coat in remaining breadcrumbs. Place in fridge and allow to firm up while you take a shower. Fry off in batches, five minutes on each side. Serve with a tomato based sauce and a wedge of lemon.

Saucey, Saucey

1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
1 clove diced garlic
5-6 marinated olives in oil, pitted and diced
slurp of red wine
balsamic vinegar
passata

saute off the garlic, add the tomatoes and olives, some of the oil and allow to boil. Splash in the wine, add some balsamic and passata to loosen the sauce. Cook for 15 minutes.

Our Spread



Our View...and the evil pollen. Pretty, pretty pollen...so, so full of bastardo!

Sad Face

Ok, so I had eggs and odd ends, and it has taken me to make sauces again to experience irony. That's right, everything in this post-modern world is so bloody ironic, and is even more ironic when you don't realise it till later.
I have a housemate who is never home and never cleans. Fair enough, he's not here to make a mess.

But, this is what happened. (I will, post-modernly tell you the story in a cartoon, seeing as the majority of my friends think I have walked out of one. The quality, I tell you now, is questionable.)








Anyways, My phone rings and I go off to another room to talk because I have no reception in the kitchen. Strange, I know.

Anyways, after the conversation, I see that my housemate who is never home is home (gasp!) and that he is cleaning (double gasp!). Actually, he is doing the dishes.

And really, I wanted to draw a picture of him because he is a body builder and I was going to make him look like an Asian Ninja Turtle, but I have already given up on that dream.

Back to the point...he looks at me and says,
"Oh, I wash dishes. There was this yellow stuff in a bowl, and I thought it was off milk because it is warm so I pour into sink.
Ok la. I go to gym now, bai bai!"

And this is me after he leaves.



But it is okay, I was just filling time and have nothing to eat with the Bearnaise anyways. So, what do I do with the whites?


*POSTSCRIPT*
I have learnt from using the 'Preview' option and checking in with my patience that I shall never attempt to use Paint again, and should probably use the camera. But it proves entertaining for me, nonetheless.

Make me dessert, bitch.

I went with my friend to Box Hill to look after his parent's house last week. There, we cooked a steak dinner with crispy potatoes, broad beans and salad. I did the potatoes and broad beans and he did the salad and steak.
At the end of it, we were both stupidly full and watching terrible late night television, telling our stomachs that it was all going to be ok. Of course, we were watching SBS where there was this awful Australian film with Jaqueline Mackenzie getting naked, yet again.
I think that was pretty much the only reason why we were watching it.
Boy, she really does like showing her tits.
Really, she's been doing it since Romper Stomper...and I am guessing that was quite some time ago.

As a woman, I feel obliged to say, good on her.
As a human being, I say, I'm over it.

Anyways, when we were finally comfortable, my friend turns to me and shamefully says, "I feel like dessert. A bread and butter pudding, specifically."

You see, the problem here is that neither of us can drive, and we had to work with what we had. No, correction, I had to work with what his parents had. It is a good thing that his mother is a big food person.

So, after scrounging around, I managed something that was apparently pretty awesome.

I didn't eat it. As I said, FULL.

NOT bread and butter pudding.

1/2 an apple tea cake, sliced to 1cm thickness
2 eggs
soy milk
cream
raw sugar
home made fig jam with brandy
butter

Arrange the tea cake in a greased, deep baking dish. Beat together the eggs with a splash of cream and some soy milk. Add a few tablespoons of fig jam and some sugar, and beat till the sugar dissolves. Pour over the cake in the dish and dot butter over the top of the mixture.
Bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes or till just set.
Serve hot with cream and icecream.

Do You ENGRISH Like I ENGRISH?

I have a group of people close to my heart who, when they were in Macau, were called "chee sien guai lou." The rough translation of that would be 'crazy white man,' (yes, my people are more racist...Lacist...than you think), but the direct translation would be crazy ghost man.
There is also an expression that my mother said to me the other day in attempts to be cool and hip. I asked her how someone who influenced my life in a huge way was. Her response (said in English) was, "He's now gone to sell salted duck eggs."
This actually means that he's dead.
A little like, "they've kicked the bucket."
Also, if you call someone a dickhead in Cantonese, you're really just calling them rolled rice noodles.
Yeah, that changed my view on that particular breakfast item.
If you're telling someone to go to hell (well, that is what the SBS movie translation is), you're really telling them to fall over in the street.
And won tons...yeah, that actually means to swallow a cloud.
And what really annoys me, is that Yum Cha, really means to drink tea. The idea is that the tea is a digestive between all the gossiping and dim sum that you're eating, hence the small portions.

And on the topic of Yum Cha, why are lazy susans called lazy susans? Who said that Susan was lazy, and in particular, why is Susan so important to have a round board named after her habits?

But...I digress.

Today, I looked in the fridge and realised that I had a whole lot of eggs and my tomatoes on the counter were on their last legs. I am a little sick of baked eggs and it is not breakfast time, although it is the first thing I have eaten today. We can call it Linner.
I was on the phone to someone who isn't Cantonese while making this, and I couldn't think of how to describe this dish. Basically, it is my comfort food. It is cheap, tasty and reminds me of my dad.
They're also directly translated to be Stupid Eggs.

Stupid Eggs

4 eggs
1 onion, halved and thinly slices
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tomatoes, chopped
100ml passata
1/2 cup water
seasoning
sugar
oyster sauce
soy sauce
3 spring onions, sliced
corn flour

Fry the eggs of in a pan and set them aside. Saute the onions and garlic and when transluscent, turn the heat on high and add the tomatoes, passata and water. Bring to a boil and cook till the tomatoes break down and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a teaspoon or so of sugar, depending on the acidity of the tomatoes, and then add a tablespoon of oyster sauce and a couple of dashes of soy sauce. Allow to cook down a bit and return the eggs to the pan with the tomato mixture. Check the seasoning again and readjust. Throw in the spring onions. Add a teaspoon of corn flour to water and stir till dissolved, throw in to the pan to thicken and turn off the heat. Serve over steamed rice as part of a dinner.

Hmm, this makes me forget that Chinese dinners involve around 2-5 different dishes on the table that are shared between family or guests. Erm...improv that.