August 2007 - Canberra Table

Canberra Table

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Vimu Subscription

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

[ more ]

Canberra Table - August 2007

technorati? getting bloggy with it

August 30th 2007 01:15

just been to the site called technorati haven't explored it properly yet, though it is all part of my search for higher blogging profile. now i am new to all this so i am going to impart a little of my journey so far.
to be honest i chose orble initially because it was the first free one i stumbled across. i have been very happy with their web hosting and will testing the limit of what i can do shortly.
initially i searched for sites that will send traffic to me for free, but my under standing is that the inclusion of their codes in my source page will inevitably send more traffic away. the freedom to change code on the source page is an obvious right you give up for free blog hosting, but with my new understanding i would hypothesise that setting up these kind of links in the source code can only funnel people out of your hit count. to test this theory in my last post "september calendar of events" i included more links to other sites then i had before, and my hit count went down drasticly, so i have a new plan which in stead of sending the my readers to other sites i will be writing the extra information up in additional full posts written and updated by me but linked from the calendar. links will be provided to contact the origin of the info but not before i have said my piece. i am signing up to Technorati with this post, it is one blog registering site that orble does approve of. so i want to hear of your experiences i will conducting the experiment as of now and will track some results, but to really get an idea of if it is working i want to hear from bloggers with different content, my site is pretty much all about food if you haven't been here before . regards Dave <a Really Long Link rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

September food events calendar

August 27th 2007 02:44

floriade

[Spring will be here shortly and with the warmer weather we have a plethora of events planned for September here in Canberra. I will make mention of floriade (14 of september to 15 october) although it doesn’t seem to have as much of an emphasis on food anymore. I urge you to find some loved ones pack up a gourmet picnic basket and get down there any way, a better setting for alfresco dining will not be found any where near by.

September 1 Russian Food Fair 10:00 am - 2:00 pm (Community

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

the myth of celebrity catering requests part 2 - politicians

August 23rd 2007 02:06

During my apprenticeship at the lobby I cooked for politicians on a regular basis. Functions were held there for those of labor and liberal persuasions, and many political journalists dined there also, the lack of Gossip I have about our local and federal members is due to most Australian politicians are in fact pretty down to earth people. I remember one night we had some prominent members of the labor party in for a function and when the mains (steak) were brought out a former prime minister ended up with a former treasurers steak (one well done one rare) any right minded famous rock star would probably throw a chair through a window jumped over the bar and held a bottle of Hennessey hostage till the right steak appeared, fortunately these former office holders didn’t put on a show, they simply swapped the steaks across the table, and the waiters would not have had they not seen it. To me, that seems a pretty normal response to something that’s bound to happen if you attend functions all the time.
Some of their international contemporaries, are perhaps just as grounded, the following is the menu for a function president George W. Bush attended recently
Hors d'oeuvres
[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

the myth of celebrity catering requests part 1

August 19th 2007 01:03

good luck getting this Bjork!

I have often thought that it would be great to cook for someone famous, especially a musician and hopefully one whose music I liked. I have had little experiencein this of the two times I recall once was when I was twelve and working at the Kuranda amphitheatre in the kitchen, before the show I was drawing up one of the chalk boards when Tex Perkins of the Cruel Sea came looking for something to eat, there was nothing yet, we’d barely started but he managed to step on my hand with his ostentatious cowboy boots during his enquiries. Another time as a chef we had Dame Edna (Barry Humphries) staying at the hotel I worked in, his only request was that we had Barilla pasta bowties on hand, most of the time he ate out or had take away in his room, consequently nearly all the pasta was still in the stock room three months later when I left the job.
I stumbled across a site (the smoking gun), which listed the riders of hundreds of acts, and to be frank most of what they listed was pre-packaged crap! There were a few surprising inclusions such as Ozzy Osbournes need for gummi bears, Emmems lust for pop tarts (I didn’t even know they existed anymore) and Bjorks very wierd requests in the picture above, but mostly it was all comfort food, boring and simple. The most straight forward ones were artists like Marylon Manson and Metallica I though Manson would ask for food prepared by virgins or Metallica might insist on a spit roast prepared by Charlie Trotter but alas, the myth of bands asking for crazy back stage stuff isn’t based on many facts. The first rock stars to do get attention for unusual riders was Van Halen who requested no brown m&ms backstage, on pain of forfeiture of the show, (according to Aussie website “the blurb”) but as bizarre as it seems, this was just a tool to make sure promoters read the contract properly. though the riders are “boring” there is no lack of extravagance, but if I wanted to out “rock star” Pharrel Williams for instance I’d just have to order more alcohol and dancers, which is easy, expensive yes, but easy, no thought or style is displayed by this request. Having discovered that most bands seem to like hotel style, convenience, eat with one hand and full fat/sugar/salt crap to eat, there’s little wonder they die younger, and I thought it was always the drugs.
my search for a worthy client turns briefly to movie stars, I find that equally pedestrian, though at least some of them eat real food, just less of it. Next post I will look at politicians and diplomats I have heard they eat a bit better lets sees if the research proves me right

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

where is the best coffee in belconnen?

August 16th 2007 03:48

coffee art

i have lived in belconnen now for 6 years and noticed a number of great coffee shops opening around the place. i have always been a fan of Cafe injoy and have recently visited Ricardos in Jamison and Wild berry near Belconnen library ( they make a mean laksa you can smell all the way down the street, now thats a good sign for sure!) but i am putting this post up to get my readers take on it. traditionally meeting for coffee was the sport of the southern suburbs, but with whole new eating districts opening up here in the far north good coffee has arrived. when the poll results are in i will visit the top three cafes and give everyone the low down on what beans they use with what machine, the food they serve and a critique of the all important beverage. so get clicking i will leave this poll open for the rest of august with the winners announced in my calendar for september. regards, Dave
Really Long Link " target="_blank">cafe poll" target="_blank">Belconnen cafe poll

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

my veggie patch

August 16th 2007 02:09

With the weather getting warmer I am turning my attention out of doors to get my veggie patch organised. Over winter I had a constant supply of coriander that had self-seeded, over 30 plants came from the 4 original ones. My spinach also survived, and still looks to be going strong. I must have accidentally bonzaied The half dozen leeks I planted, having grown for 9 months the biggest one was still only as thick as my thumb.
Last week we visited a friends alpaca farm and were giving 2 hefty bags of their manure, which I am told is the rolls Royce of garden fertiliser.

alpaca manure the rolls royce of fertilisers

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

palate pleasure Bowral

August 9th 2007 05:40

Don Bradman's oval Bowral's favourite son

My wife and I go up to Sydney a few times a year, and on these trips the half way coffee often ends up being at “the Scottish restaurant”. I Know, a bit boring but when you are feeling lazy and those big yellow arches loom out of the left…. Well you know the rest, but before you click out of my blog this won’t be a review on such a business, I am writing to tell you that my weekend trip to Sydney found us off that beaten track a little, in a town called Bowral.
An anonymous reader put us onto a café called Palate Pleasure, and having the opportunity to visit, we did. The homely dining area of Palate pleasure was quite swamped as we entered we made for the only free table. Arriving just before the lunch menu started we opted to wait with some hot drinks, Peppermint tea ($3.50) and Belgian hot chocolate ($4.00), both lovely, the slightly bitter sweet hot chockie maybe not to every ones likings, but very much to mine.
Looking round the place I wished it was a little closer to home so I could try some of their take home meals, apart from the modern country menu on offer there was a great selection of cakes and pastries to have in or take a way

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

hi Jude

August 9th 2007 04:35

nice apples

hello every body. yesterday i got an email from my high school art teacher, and when i tried to reply my computer revolted saying something about the address being all wrong. so this post is really to try to contact Jude, if you get the message please drop us a line on the site or email some other adress/ phone or something. now so that this post has something to do with food i'm going to tell a yarn from my art class days in year 11. we were all given the task of putting together individual pieces of performance art. it was a cool project as none of us had ever done anything like that before. most of the pieces on the day were pretty whimsical and fun. the last student to perform did the experiment of trying to graft a real cows eyeball onto an apple. now that in itself was a bit off chops but to finishour class mate ate the apple! so bad! i mean figs with eyeballs, maybe but apple is much to acidic and would juxtapose with the chewy texture making the eyeball seem hard to eat.

cows eyeball...yum

thanx for indulging me today i will have a more relevant post for ya all tomorrow, Regards, Dave

Vote

Comments (1)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

The big pantry clean out

August 7th 2007 04:48

my pantry before the clean up

Yesterday I had unenviable task of cleaning out the pantry. Now even for the average household this can be a bit of a daunting task, but I’d wager that my obsession with ingredients from the wild and weird side, plus the fact that our cupboard has many hidey holes, Makes the task more akin to archaeology then domestic duty.

pantry after clean up amazing huh

Here is a pared down list of some of the stuff I found. 8 packets of flavoured jelly, 20 odd single serves powdered soup, rice paper, lasagne sheets, 4 different types of gluten free flour, 2 packets gelatine, a x-mas pudding, sumac, Sichuan pepper… and list goes on to include things I bought once for cooking competitions, one off dishes and stuff people gave us to try. I ended up with quite a large box, and the plan is that I am going to use it all. I started last night with lasagne and jelly and tonight I think I will be trying out some rice paper rolls, my kids wont try them but I have the left over lasagne.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: David John Burke - Category: No Category

Email this Post to a Friend

August food events calendar

August 3rd 2007 02:10

Well it has been quite a busy week. Coming into August the first hints of spring are apparent some Canberra Well it has been quite a busy week. Coming into August the first hints of spring are apparent some Canberra residents have been cited venturing outdoors for the first time since April. I had in mind that now would be a good time to start up a calendar of events. Of course in my search around Canberra for appropriate food related info I have come across some real must sees and must dos.