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Spotlight Posts

Brewing beer- do it for australia

Satis in Watson

Malibu mex

the Green Herring restaurant

tafe teaching

sticky date cake for wesley

technorati? getting bloggy with it

September food events calendar

the myth of celebrity catering requests part 2 - politicians

where is the best coffee in belconnen?

palate pleasure Bowral

hi Jude

August food events calendar

Japanese nori rolls

food for surviving Harry Potter and the deathly hallows

review: beess and co.

crepes the winter breakfast

the eggplant (aubergine)

crisp cafe and bar review

welcome to my new site

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My produce

January 24th 2008 00:36

you say tomatos i say relish

Well i have had some success in my vegetable patch and some failure.
the biggest under achievers this year has been the Cucumbers and the beetroot. the former just never grew then when i moved them for a better spot they got eaten by snails

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Elsalvadorean pupasas

January 23rd 2008 01:14

Here is a little dish i have recently tried for the first time. bloody simple and very nice. my wife and i have been going to the gorman house markets to eat these delicious pancakes for a while when we decided that they can't be to hard to make.
the recipe i found was
2 cups Masa harina

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Brewing beer- do it for australia

January 23rd 2008 00:46

Now here is something all aussies should do around australia day, not for any patriotic purposes, quite simply the price of beer is such that you would have to be pretty well off to spend a whole day playing two up at the bbq with a cold beer constantly in reach. The honourable Kevin Rudd has said this week that everybody needs to tighten their belts to prepare for the economic flow on from the looming American recession, and what better way to curb expenditure, then brewing your own beer.
A friend of mine has lent me a kit, which is lucky as they do cost around 90 bucks ( almost three cases of beer!) that part of the set up does put you in the red for about 2 full brews ( as long as you do pretty standard ones)

coopers Aussie pale ale

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Just a quickie....

December 18th 2007 04:05

Went out to a christmas funtion at the green herring ( yes i know again but i promise they are not paying me to come) it was superb as per usual you could try to get in before christmas but to be honest i don't like your chances click here for the full review and some more links.
I also had the pleasure of dining at the cafe at reid CIT great food and very reasonable prices i have tried the pizzas and their steak sandwich and after you have that you can drop into the regional shop and pick up some great ready made meals and produce

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Satis in Watson

December 18th 2007 00:31

Well in all my time writting stuff for this site i have not found a cafe so invisible there are no photos on the net and no phone numbers the shop front is tiny and virtually no one has heard of it. sounds like the sort of cafe that will fade off into the distance very quickly if you look it from this angle, but i would have to say that this lack of advertisement has in no way harmed Satis's marketabilty. The sunday myself my wife and kids visited, the place was packed, the coffee was flowing and the food was sizzling. we bunched into the windoor seat (you know the one thats in the window next to the door and could easily be another door) and enjoyed the scene. the heavily timbered room was accented with antique light fittings with some more modern touches such as the arty stainless kitchen hood and funky art works.
now i will warn all you unadventuress carnivores out there that this is a vegetarian cafe, so no asking about the bacon and certainly don't ask for your tofu medium rare. The menu is fantastic and eclectic, the total absence of flesh is both refreshing and most importantly does not limit choice. I have worked in plenty of restaurants where vegetarians are not catered for lightly, but in actual fact cooking with out meat is both simple and varied and after eating at a number of vego places in canberra i would have to disagree with any die hard fan of blood and bone saying they must have meat in every meal.
for my dish i enjoy a wild rice porridge with a fruit compote ( i think it could have been vegan) the rice was cooked just perfectly with the grains not burst and just a touch of a bite with the dark red plum pear and i think berry of the fruit mix it made for a filling and thoughly enjoyable breaky. my wife had the scrambled soft tofu with chilli and basil. i managed to pinch a mouthful and it was also lovely but you have to ask my wife for more details as she did make short work of this tasty morsel

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Malibu mex

December 14th 2007 01:00

The sculpture wall

Like mexican food? i don't, not the stuff you generally get in a mexican restaurant, all too much cheese and ground beef no where near enough corriander real chilli guacomole and the thousands of other food innovations and ingredients that were pillaged form south America scant centuries ago. Malibu mex is still pretty much a standard mexican restaurant though it does come in near the top of the category, the food is fresh the helpings are bloody big and there is more ground beef and melted cheese then you would ever have time to poke a stick at. For the food that is all that needs to be said. The main reason people keep coming back is definately the atmosphere, no offence to the food, it's not bad i just think ive said all that needed to be said.

The coolest seats

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I am thru with apologies(welcome to the silly season)

December 12th 2007 22:47

Yes thats right no more apologies, in fact i won't even use the word. i love writting for this site but for the last few monthes i have been doing some really cool stuff at the reid cit. now you have my less divided attention i plan to go over a few other thing i might do. the last post i wrote was a third person piece on the green herring... i realised its been too long between posts when i find myself going back to same restaurant i did my last post on tonite.; so i will do an updated first hand regular style post on the green herring.. if you are looking for a booking they are pretty packed this time of year so dont be surprised if you cant get a table phoning a week before. I am currently learning some cool things to do with on line learning so i will most likely inflict some amatuer mulitimedia on y'all in the near future but have no fear of this becoming a techie kind of site, there will be some links to couple of cool design sites a friend put me onto and some chicken scratch photostories but i won't be posting purely in java script until hell is cold enough for a herd of elephants to ice skate over. i am pretty sure i made some promises about some up coming posts so i promise not to make promises like that again, i will however not apologies (oops there i go again) for making those promises, because i honestly think that lying to you all those monthes ago has kept at least a couple of people checking my site to see if the lying bastard has posted the much awaited post on... well i can't remeber now but i will when i have written it. Regards Dave.
oh by the way heres my animoto thingy i did took about 15 minute and was quite fun to make so have a go if you want

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the Green Herring restaurant

October 26th 2007 06:11

warm and cosy inside

now i know i have stalled on this one a while, but its for good reason. i didnt eat there as such for the review, it was my wife, but to be fair i asked mr Green to pack me a take home meal . if you havent been to the Green Herring yet then chances are you are walking around with this funny feeling like your life is not quite complete ( this could also mean you need to go out and buy a fancy sports car or go skydiving, but eating at the green herring is alot safer and cheaper then both of these) its a blody good feed and its atmosphere is unique and casual. i reviewed briefly the murrumbateman pub which has a plethora of antiques scattered round its resonably new walls, i mean, thats ok, but the green herring as a whole is an antique. housed inside an 1850's shearers hut it oozes history like some people ooze sex appeal, the many rusty implements on the walls were actually used for their intended purpose at some stage and the two fire places burn real wood rather then being those tacky faux wood gas versions. now thats enough about the look and feel the taste is what this is all about and also what i go back for every time, having worked there i know how ingenious the cooking is, its a small kitchen so everything thats produced has to be done with a bit of flair, and a lot of skill, any fool can produce great meals given a big kitchen and enough staff, but it takes some genius to produce quality where space and staff are scarce (and given the heritage value of the building expanding the kitchen is not an option). now as far as what my wife and her friends ate, there is a possibilty that due to the level of merry making that followed dinner the records are some what garbled. they were however being looked after by one of my favourite floor managers, Jane Herring whose relaxed and friendly service style always puts me in the mood for feast, i can tell you that the two vegetrians were very well catered for, with a variation of the pear and celery leaf salad with hazelnuts and a blue cheese dressing and a hand made parpadelle dish made specially for mains (dietry requirments are all accomodated for at the green herring) i will give you more precise info on what i had after i picked up my wife from the george later that evening. The Kangaroo red wine and garlic pie on swede mash with muscat sage sauce was simply divine. rich succulent and perfectly braised chunks of kangaroo in a rich and morish stew, wrapped in Grahams special shortcrust ( i won't say his secret but go along to one of his classes at cooking coordinates(click here) you might get the info that way) which was baked to golden brown. crisp and yielding with no stodgy bits ( where theres too much pastry somewhere on the pie and it doesn't cook), perched on a pepperery swede mash(bashed neeps for you scots men) and doused with sage muscat sauce, just to bring the last of your taste buds to their knees. i topped this off with a serve of the beetroot and dark chocolate cake,

green herring from the front

a moist and flourless epicenter of meal ending decadence, the texture and structure seems to defy physics in the way it is so moist and dense while still holding itself up on the plate and tasting so superb. sided with the light mousse and thick cream (to balance the yang of the cake) this dish is bound to make people very horny or energetic or both. i think i better leave it there before i invoke some censorship but in parting i thouroughly enjoyed this restaurant and plan to visit there numerous time in the near future (for real this time) i encourage all to give it a go, regards Dave
for more info go to their home page here

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Murrumbateman country inn

October 26th 2007 04:47

murrumbateman country inn

we had the pleasure of eating at this quaint and simple establishment last night. the building is only 16 years old though they have done a great job of decking it out in antique farm equipment for a colonial feel. we ordered straight off the board some olive tapenade bread a mixed grill, fish and chips and a shnitzel parmigana. all this is pretty simple food i know but my reason for getting this on the site is that it was fanastic quality very filling and pretty good value ($20 per head give or take). the olive tapenade was on fresh turkish bread and spread just thick enough with out being stingy, my mixed grill came with 2 minute steaks 3 rashers short cut bacon a lamb chop 2 sausages an egg rustic chips and salad, still not sold? forget you iceberg onion and under ripe tomato salad, this one had strips of carrot cucumber mixed lettuce balsamic dressing with alfalfa all very fresh. my wife's fish was pre fab but for 3 bucks more you can get fresh battered flathead. our dinner guest ordered a sizeable shnitzel for $15.50. all smiles on our table. so if your looking for a quick cheap and cheerful meal and don't mind a little drive (30mins from belco) then give this one a go. regards dave

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what a month

October 26th 2007 04:12

well i have had my busiest month so far this year, but mostly very enjoyable as well. i have been out to dinner more then most financial advisors would consider wise and i am now ready to pass on the in side stories to you. i thank any one who has been checking the site recently and if you bear with me just a bit longer i will be posting regularly very soon. i hope every one got down to floriade before it was dug up i managed 4 trips and each one was a joy. now the silly season is almost upon us so get out your pda's and get the phone ready to organise those all important work parties, there are restaurants frothing at the mouth for your custom, its been a hard year for restaurants in particular with pprice rises across the board bad press and a massive skills shortage so find a restaurant that desrves it and reward them with your office party. like i said i have been eating out heaps so i will give some ideas and some tips on how to make sure your booking goes well.
my vegie patch has been going great guns and now that the remnants of last years crop (mainly silverbeet and coriander) have seeded and died i am planning some more herbs and may be some chilli. any how just a heads up i wil be starting my next post right now so stay tuned. regards dave

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January 2008

3 Posts

December 2007

4 Posts

October 2007

3 Posts