Saturday 23 December 2006

Eating dinning the whole Shebang


Went out last night with Anj to a great little resturant in the coastal town of Huskinsson, Kiosk. Danni, girlfriend of Glenn Co-Chef from another great local resturant Pavilion (where I also do the odd Wait shift) has recently started as the weekend night chef. The general layout of Kiosk is Cafe, which is the main business that it does. Simple tables, a great bench seat on one wall but the atmosphere is one of casual relaxed friendly eating. Danni who has worked in some of Sydney's best resturants is a fabulous chef who takes the small kitchen, the cramped tight conditions and makes us a wonderful meal.

It was going to be a 6 course degestation meal, with sea food being the main drive, but due to apparent lack of numbers (there were only 3 empty tables ??) the menu was changed at the last minute to a 2 choice three course.

Anj and I decided to order each dish and share (as evenly as possible). So for Entree we had a warm lamb salad and seared scallops in a sweet corn soup. The lamb was cooked brilliantly with all the flavours and richnes captured within, the salad was crisp and matched well with the meat. A great start to the meal. As for the scallops - words cannot even try to describe the mouth watering tenderness cooked just righ so that the middle of the scallop was at that just cooked point and the outside crisp and seared perfect. The sweet corn soup I could have drunk by the bowlfuls - De-Lish!

For mains we had Salmon with a basil risotto. The salmon was beautiful and pink with a such sweet flesh you know it was fresh as fresh can be. Danni had coated the skin with a salt mixture so that when eaten with the sweet flesh it was an explosion of tasted in your mouth. By adding the risotto to the combination, again the salty tastes and basil with a fair bit of dill and fenel (which always goes well with fish like a salmon) it was trully an awe inspiring dish! The alternative was pork belly, which came with a dauphin of potato (thin slices of potato layered with cheese and cream me thinks! then baked) a rich sweet apple sauce and two wedges of candied baked apples. The pork belly had crackling skin with the sweet tender meat beneth, one of my favourite dishes was pushed to new highs, the rich potato, sweet sauce and apples with the tender almost illegally good pork I was feeling like NOT sharing this dish and missing the salmon! In the end I had to give it up and swap for the taste of the salmon - it still wins my award as the best dish of the night, biased though I am!

Dessert was a slight let down, the Christmas pudding was great and the anglaise sauce briliant the orange cake was not was I was looking for after such a good meal. A fruit sorbet or tierene woul dhave been better. But as this is a cafe turned resturant and dessert is never my favourite dish of the menu it only has a slight cloud over a great evening. And the coffee was great as well!

We must say that both Anj and I needed a walk on the beach to let our meal settle and to let the bottle of wine we shared run it's course though our system - note to self get half bottles!

All in all a wonderful evening full of great company and fantastic food. Looking forward to another visit to Kiosk to try there standard menu. which is on a three week rotation 3 opitions in Entree and Main with cakes etc for dessert. I'm going to go 2 entree a main and skip dessert to have a coffee and another beach walk!

Thursday 21 December 2006

Python


I have recently been given a copy of Michael Palin's Diary the Monty Python Years... What a great read. Not only has he kept s diary of his life for such a long period of time but it is so insightful into the man and moment when all this excitment took place. Even if it is just the mundane 'normal' this that happen like your car breaking down or a child growing up or you write some fantastic comic sketch. Well that is normal to some people!

The interrelationship the Pythons is so rich and varied. The way Michael writes it - in a semi detached, viewed with hingsight makes it more like we a a voyuer looking into the lives shown not a person who was there and part of it at the time.

I think this is why I also like to read Blog - like Wil Wheaton *and John Scalzi these are real peopl living real lives but doing fantasic things (writing, actor-ing, etc) and we get to see them as both real people and as the fantasy. I mean by fantasy, the unreal pedistle that our minds put on to these people be it the parting superstar - or the rock god - or the writer who lives this greater then our dull lives. It is both satisfiying that they are like us but at the same time it gives us hope that something better is out there. Be that a convention where YOU are the guest who answers questions, or the person who was chatting with so and so the other night.

Imagination and reality MUST go hand in hand - with out a grounding you will lose yourself to the world of make believe and become something less. If you can temper that powerful force of make believe of unreal reality then you have so much more...

Something to think about me thinks!


*Is it weird that as I link this Wil is talking about John... just something to think about!!

Monday 18 December 2006

Welcome to the first of many... (wishes)

I like to think of my self as a poet for the people... hehehe just like (p)Rik from the Young Ones (complete with the silent p)

So here is something I wrote earlier... and published in an anthology of poems many moons ago...

Undone

‘It’s all been undone’ I cry
the howling winds the only eye
I look around the forest floor
And met my shattered life’s front door
A naked man stands before me
His teeth chattering to ancient glory
His gnarled and wrinkled hands and feet
Began to make their own true beat.
I run around in morbid fury
Of all the fireflies dancing near me
Flashing images of ancient light
The purple sky burns just right
Beckoning me to journey on
An old hag begins to sing her song
The trees around all fall down
A crash of thunder. The only sound
The hag lies dead at my feet
The man has lost his only beat
A time will come for this dream to end
Then all will be as it was, again.

R'93...

Told you it was a while ago...

So what does this mean - it is about a dream land where everything and anything is possible a place I like to go to now and then images of things that happen there are contained within... enjoy!