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earthkissed

Just me and my thoughts, most of them silly.

Name:
Location: brisbane, queensland, Australia

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend. Sometimes I am good at these things, sometimes I am not.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Silly Songs With Larry

Veggie Tales. Thanks to Sally for showing me a new Silly Song with Larry.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Anise

Saturday night Matt and I went to the best restaurant we've been to in a very long time. It is just a small little wine bar at New Farm called Anise. It seats maybe 22 people and you need to book. It serves food until quite late in the night - when Matt and I were leaving at 1130pm, people were still coming in and ordering.

We walked in, and there was essentially a wine bar and you sat up at that for dinner, they had an amazing menu, but having already looked online, we'd decided to go with the degustation menu with matching wines as it's such a great way to try a variety of dishes and taste a variety of wines. So I've cut and pasted the menu from the web, and will just add a comment at the end of each one.
Theme: a celebration of game bird & pinot – a perfect match

quail egg w truffl e salt
nv chevalier crement pinot rose – loire valley, france
---yes this is just a mouthful, but it was a fantastic little mouthful, truffle really is amazing

confi t partridge, celery heart & pomegranate salad w emerson goat curd
’05 42° degrees pinot noir – south tamar valley, tasmania
----- goat curd is one of my favourite things ever, so naturally I loved this dish, I never knew before how sweet and yummy pomegranate was, but that was certainly fantastic, and the partridge just added that beautiful complexity to it all. This was my favourite pinot of the lot, more on that in the next description

guinea fowl & foie gras terrine
’05 port phillip ‘morillan’ pinot noir – mornington peninsula, victoria
------ foie gras really adds that extra something to these kind of things, and I really enjoyed this one. In regards to the pinots - mornington peninsula is supposed to be kind of famous for pinots but when I went there, I didn't enjoy them as much as some other pinots I'd had. Whilst I like earthy wines, I find the mornington peninsula pinots (and in fact the Hunter Valley Shiraz's) have a certain earthy aftertaste that to me isn't quite right. Having said that, Matt really enjoyed this one (he also doesn't have my aversion to warmer climate shiraz's) and I didn't mind it, but it still did have that aftertaste.

poached pheasant roulade w king brown mushrooms & broad bean puree
’06 bouchard aine et fi ls – beaune, burgundy, france
--- It was good, what more can I say.. can't distinctly remember about the wine on this but as I recall I think it had a similar after taste to the mornington peninsula one

roasted wood pigeon w herb gnocchi & leek veloute
’05 foxes island pinot noir - marlborough, new zealand
----- This dish was absolutely divine. Forget every gnocchi you've ever had. This was not the dense filling italian style gnocci, this was a light fluffy fried on the outside delicious mouthful that you wished would never end, but that melted away. The wood pigeon was delicious, cooked very similarly to the last time I had it - which means not much - which is how it should be done. About this point I was starting to struggle to get through the wine, they were supposed to be half glasses, but I think maybe they were slightly more generous then that.

duck egg crème caramel
’05 yering station late harvest pinot gris – yarra valley, victoria
------- the creme caramel was delicious, not exciting, but delicious. The late harvest was quite yummy, I like stickies and I've enjoyed most yarra valley stickies I've had. Unfortunately I could only manage about two sips, apparently all my study has put my liver out of practice for wine.

I'm dying to go back and try the rest of their menu. They do "wine flights" where they have a theme (eg shiraz's from a particular region) and you get to try a smaller amount of about 6 wines and compare them. It's a great way to taste a variety of wines, and you can have great french food at the same time. So I'm keen to go back and do that. Any takers who wants to do that with me??? If you do go, you will find your wallet rather lighter, but it's totally worth it.

I just found a photo online of the bar set up at anise, so I'm editing this post to add it in, what you see here is almost the entire restaurant:

Sunday, May 18, 2008

It's Over

And after all, when it comes to exams, them being over is the most important thing. Thanks for all the well wishers.

Here is what I'm listening to at the moment (I had to use a "fan video" of it as I couldn't find a reasonable sound quality one that actually involved Kimya Dawson)

Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants

Monday, May 12, 2008

Busy

I have been busy and haven't posted for quite a while. So a few exciting things:
#1 - So far with the lemon oil we have made lemon shortbread biscuits, lemon merengues, and lastly but not leastly - lemon truffle chocolates and lemon fondant chocolates. The chocolates so far are the most delicious. The flavour is just awesome from the lemon oil and I look forward to using it in stirfries and other savoury dishes

#2 I got some awesome sci fi books delivered. If you want to get completely lost in the imagination of a future world, enjoy some great reading and support an independent author, start with the first one in the darkling series "Darkling" by J M Patterson. Some of you may know the author..... For friends in Brisbane - you can borrow my copy to see if you like them or not.

#3 6 days until my final exam. So I have been attempting to prepare for that. Which means I got my haircut, bought a new shirt, some new long pants, a new pair of shoes. Surely the clinical is just about looking competent? I have also been attempting some study.

#4 I went deep sea fishing!!!!!! SOOOO much fun. We headed out on my boss's boat about 50km or so off shore. I couldn't see the shore at all. There were dolphins all around the boat. We caught a bunch of snapper and some reef fish. We were out there for about 24 hours (so overnight). It was fantastic fun. We ended up with perhaps 3-4kg of fillets each. Fresh fish is so delicious!! more importantly there was no toilet on the boat and I managed (through some well managed dehydration techniques) to avoid having to pass urine for 24 hours so that I didn't have to go in a bucket! I forgot my camera so I can't show you photos of all the pretty fish we caught, we only have photos from when Matt turned up with the camera at the end, which means the photo of me and my fish is post filleting. There is a photo someone else took of me and a snapper, but I don't quite recall where that one is at the moment. Please try to remember in these photos that having just spent 24hours on a boat fishing I was a bit grotty!