Teppanyaki, Eggs and ANZAC Biscuits

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Our son was spending the Anzac Day long weekend with us in Perth. He had made a booking at our local teppanyaki restaurant for Friday night. During the afternoon we heard a community spread case of CV-19, the first in Western Australia for more than 12 months, had been detected. This resulted in us going into a three day lockdown, starting at midnight.

The restaurant assured us they’d be open but we had to wear masks except when we were eating. No problem. There weren’t many people there although the restaurant is usually full on Friday evening. We sat with a young couple, socially distanced, around the teppan, the metal grill plate.

Teppanyaki is a post World War 11 style of Japanese cuisine which uses a hot iron griddle to cook the food. Teppanyaki comes from teppan, the grill, and yaki, meaning grilled or pan fried. But it is much more than just cooking.

Teppanyaki is theatre! As we sat around the grill the performance began with knife swirling and tapping and energetic air slicing. This continues through the preparation of the food with the salt and peeper shakers, too. All very entertaining.

Teppanyaki is a very old Japanese method of cooking but the modern ways were influenced by American cuisine in the 1940s.

So what did we eat? I’d chosen the Chicken /Seafood Set menu and my husband and son had chosen the Steak/Seafood Set menu. The moody lighting is apparent is the photos!

Both of these set menus started with edamame, boiled green soya bean plus shichimi salt. You split open the pod and eat the round bean.

ENTREE Wagyu gyoza

ENTREE Beef Tataki

MAIN COURSES Cooking on the grill is Tenyaki Chicken and Black Angus Tenderloin. Both main courses also had prawn, scallop, squid and fish of the day served with them, plus salad, fried rice and miso soup.

Black Angus Steak Tenderloin with prawn, scallop, squid and fish of the day plus vegetable. Delicious balance of colour, crunch and flavours.

Miso soup with tofu and seaweed.

Fried rice. The set menu was a very generous sized meal and the rice was too much for me! The intensity of the heat and the speed of cooking resulted in heightened flavours. We had three dipping sauces and they were good, too. My husband and son drank Yamaguchi Weizen, wheat beer.

Theatre, anticipation, wonderful flavours, teppanyaki had it all and we really enjoyed our dinner. At midnight, Perth, where we live and Peel, the region to the south went into lockdown for three days. That has now been lifted due to no other cases being detected but we still have to wear masks outdoors.

EGGSHELLS

I was collecting eggs from the fridge to bring to room temperature to cook them and there was a conversation about the colour of their shells. There’s white shells, pink shells and light brown ones. The theory was that they came from different breeds of chooks (chicken) But do they?

dozen eggs on tray

And actually, that’s right! Different breeds lay different coloured eggs. There can be variation in the intensity of colour but the breed dictates the colour of the shells. The most reliable layers are preferred for commercial suppliers of eggs. In Australia they mostly have cream through to light orange, brown shells. In Australia the best commercial layers are Hy-Line Browns, ISA Brown and Hi-Sex Brown. These breeds are brown in colour and have a red comb.

ANZAC BISCUITS

ANZAC biscuits are traditionally eaten on ANZAC Day in Australia. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and ANZAC Day is celebrated 25th April every year in these two countries and in some other places in the world where these forces were engaged in a theatre of conflict or a Peacekeeping mission.

Apparently created during 1915 when ANZAC became a word during World War 1. There were recipes for rolled oats biscuits before this, such as nutties, brownies and munchies, but these are eggless and didn’t spoil on the ship journey from Australia.

The recipe was originally called Soldiers Biscuits but after ANZACs landed at Gallipoli in 1915 they became known as ANZAC biscuits. The name is legally protected.

fried food on white plastic pack

The ingredients include rolled oats, brown sugar, butter, golden syrup and baking soda and desiccated coconut. The ones I made are from a very old recipe in an 80 year old recipe book and didn’t spread the way more modern recipes spread. They still tasted very good!

DID YOU KNOW it is scientifically estimated plastic containers take 50-80 years to breakdown in landfill. They become micro beads, tiny plastic beads which don’t seem to completely disappear all.

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Using My Handmade Book, Eating and Reading

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USING MY HANDMADE BOOK

I made this book, or zine, during a recent workshop. I knew I wanted to use it to record some of the things I planned to do this year. First on my list was a water colour course to learn how to do quick paintings of places we visit. I’d seen people with their papers, pens and small paint boxes drawing and painting when we traveled and I wanted to do that, too.

These gorgeous mementos feature quickly completed views. In our course we started with tonal paintings, then coloured versions of the same image. Our next lesson was using washes with black silhouettes.

I’ve always glued maps, tickets and photos into my journals when we travel but really like these quick paintings. I have illustrated my notes with sketches but I’ll create an outdoor paining kit and buy some water colour paper for our next trip and do some paintings. I’m looking for an A5 pad so I can paint then tear out the finished work and glue it into my every day journal.

Had some leftover papers of the right size and thickness and some embroidery thread so I made another book.

Used a template to mark the stitching holes. Poked them through using an awl.

Stitched the binding. The new book, for idle thoughts, is complete.

While I had scissors, glue and paper out on the table, I also made an insert for the card I’d painted for Mothers Day. Australians celebrate Mothers Day in May, so that’s when I’ll give this card to my Mother. She grows many, many carnations and has a constant supply of cut flowers. I love the peppery scent.

FAST, FABULOUS FOOD

Last week I made a pot of Guava Jam using divine smelling guavas given to me. Although I halved the amount of sugar suggested in the recipes I read, the Guava Jam was still very sweet. I heated a few dessertspoons of the jam in a cup in the microwave for 30 seconds and then drizzled the warm jam onto ice cream. Instant fabulous, delicious dessert! We really enjoyed it.

And not so fast, but equally easy to eat, Pear Crumble. Pears are in season so I made a Pear Crumble hoping for cooler evenings. Hasn’t really happened yet, but the dessert was great. I added nutmeg to the crumble and we enjoyed the extra depth of flavour. Looks a lot like icecream and guava sauce, tastes very different. I’ll be making that again!

READING

I’ve written about Kit Kemp, co-owner of Firmdale Hotels, interior decorator and author, twice in the past few blogs, so I’ll just write briefly about her latest book I’ve been reading. Called “A Living Space” it is actually one of her earlier publications.

Kit Kemp: A Living Space by Kemp, Kit | Hardcover | 2012

Kemp focuses on you trusting your instinct and ignoring the rules! She combines antiques with newly made objects or recycled pieces, bespoke with readily available furniture and very valuable artifacts with ephemera. She encourages her readers to look at texture, add some humour and surround yourself with comfort and colour. Live with what you really, really like around you.

Chapter headings include Bespoke And One Off’s, Antique With Modern, Compare And Contrast, Art And Collections and an amusing chapter called Dogs. Kemp champions emerging artist and crafters whose work sits comfortably with traditional furniture or family heirlooms.

Kemp often frames pieces of fabric or wallpaper which look interesting on the wall if you have any wall space to spare. I haven’t. Obviously, I enjoy her style of decorating, her combinations of affordable and valuable, her cheeky additions and the pages and pages of gorgeous photos.

A few weeks ago my husband read “The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret, A Portrait of Georges Simeon”. He is the author of the Chief Inspector Maigret series. This biography resulted in my husband getting fifteen Maigret books from the library. After he finished the first one he put it on my side of the bed and said, “You’ll enjoy this.” I’m on number nine, now and looking forward to the rest.

Some interesting facts about Georges Simeon:

1) He wrote 193 novels under his own name and another 200 under a variety of pseudonyms.

2) Maigret books sold over 500 million copies in 55 languages in Simeon’s lifetime. Only Jules Verne and Shakespeare have sold more.

3) Almost all of his books took less than 2 weeks to write. He wrote without any revision.

4) Simeon wrote two autobiographical novels, followed by a 1048 page autobiography and then a 21 volume memoir of his life. He frequently contradicted himself in them!

5) Simeon desperately wanted to be seen as a serious writer, an intellectual and to be nominated to the French Academy. It never happened.

Simeon is a marvelous story teller. His writing style is simple and shows a deep understanding of human nature. He limits the actual vocabulary he uses in the Maigret series to about 2000 words. He is Flemish, not French and a few of his stories are set in Belgium, others in Holland but mostly set in Paris. As a travel starved Francophile, I have enjoyed meandering around Paris with Maigret although I wouldn’t like to see some of the things he finds. He is famous for investigating murders.

Between 1931 and 1972, Georges Simeon published seventy five Chief Inspector Maigret stories as well as another twenty eight short stories. Most of these have been republished by Penguin in the past six years. Great reading.

Yesterday was Earth Day. The enormous drop in pollution resulting from less flying, cruising and manufacturing during the early days of CV-19 indicates we can make a change. And please try and reduce the use of single use plastics.

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Making Guava Jam And Making A Book Plus Some Gardening

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MAKING GUAVA JAM

This week I was given some guavas. They smelt gorgeous! I didn’t know they grew in Perth but these had come from someone’s back garden. I set about researching ways I could preserve them. Settled on Guava Jam.

I based my recipe on several I read online, personalising them to suit the amount of fruit I had and also trying to use less sugar. The recipes I saw all used pink fruit, the fruit I had was white and slightly yellow in colour.

Started by washing then ‘top and tailing’ the fruit. Cut each into quarters. Put in a heavy based pot with 1 litre (4 cups) of water and boiled for 35 minutes.

Leaving the fruit/water mixture in the pot I reduced them to pulp using a immersion blender (a Bamix, in my case) before scraping it into a sieve and straining out the seeds and thick skin. Apparently, the seeds are very tough and can damage teeth

Scraped the strained pulp back into the pot and added a cup of sugar. Stirred until the sugar dissolved. Added one and a half tablespoons of pectin and stirred the jam occasionally until it thickened, probably ten minutes. I’d use less pectin if I was making the jam again.

Poured it into a sterilized jar. When it was cool I put it in the fridge. It would last about a week. The nine small fruit I used made 370gm of jam. It is very sweet and smells lovely. There must be different strains of guava in different countries as all the other recipes I read showed pink fruit. These taste like guava I have eaten over seas and smell as great, too.

MAKING A SMALL BOOK

I’ve always been intrigued by the process of book making. When I saw a workshop offering ZINE making I jumped at the opportunity. It was held at the Lawrence Wilson Gallery at the University of Western Australia, led by Carla and Jo.

Zines are defined as limited circulation publications of original text and images. It refers to the self publication of unique works of minority interest. Zines are generally produced in small numbers. My zine is purely for my own use and enjoyment.

An interesting array of materials on the table when we arrived, including embroidery floss, awls and sewing needles.

Our first activity was to create a template. We folded a sheet of A4 paper into 8 rectangles and cut across the middle two to create a simple, folded book. We then used this process to make a A3 book, folding the A3 sheet of paper into eight rectangles, too. We added a narrative, collage or a combination of both to make the book.

Lots of cutting, gluing, illustrating and writing to result in our books. We used fairly fragile photocopy paper which quickly became strong and thick when we glued in our cut out images from books, maps and magazines.

Then we made our zines. We had two card covers, some coloured pages, plain white photocopy paper pages and some graph paper pages. Depending on our choice of portrait or landscape book, we folded a strip of paper to create a guide for making the holes for binding our books.

My landscape book required four holes for stitching. I marked the distance using the template then created the holes using an awl. Then we selected the embroidery floss we wanted to use, threaded our needles and were shown how to start stitching in the middle about half way in the book, to hide the tails. Stitched from the middle to the top end, stitched over the end, stitched back down to the other end, stitched over the bottom end and ended up again in the middle.

Knotted our threads to finish off then admired our books!

My zine has a selection of white, pink and graph pages. I have glued a label on it and begun entering paintings, text and photos to create my own personal book for this year.

I have begun a three week workshop on making a travel diary, so I am gluing the information sheets and my own work into the zine. Working on quick sketches in pen, pencil and paint to go in with my notes detailing our travels. It’s one of the things I wanted to do this year.

IN THE GARDEN

We have had a few cool days. Autumn is a wonderful time to get out into the garden in our region. I have planted seeds, re-potted some plants, added to a few scraggly pots and topped up the soil in pots.

I soaked the ranunculus corms in water overnight and planted them with their legs facing down. I haven’t soaked the corms before but read about it and decided to do it this year. It will be interesting to see if the seeds germinate any quicker or if the plants were stronger or have more flowers. Time will tell.

Also planted poppy seeds. When the seed pod dries out completely it cracks open and a fine, black dust spills out. This is the poppy seed! You sprinkle it over the prepared soil, water it and keep it moist until seedlings appear. The seeds don’t need covering, unlike other seeds.

When you gather the seed heads at the end of the flowering season store the heads in a paper bag or an old envelope in a dry place until planting time next year. Always remember to label your seeds.

Did you know cigarette butts take 10-12 years to decompose?

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Matryoshka Dolls, Tomatoes, Salsa Verde and Kit Kemp

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MATRYOSHKA DOLLS

Matryoshka Dolls, or Babushka Dolls, are wooden stacking dolls. Also known as Russian dolls, nesting dolls, Russian tea dolls or stacking dolls, they are a set of dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. They are called Matryoshka nesting dolls in Russia, where they originated.

Thought to be first made in 1890 the original designer is disputed but most often the first set of dolls is linked to wood worker Vasili Zvyozdochkin and toy painter Sergei Malyutin. Their popularity quickly spread across Europe after the original set was displayed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The toy won a bronze medal and they became the “must have”toy!

No longer really considered toys, the Russian nesting dolls now made in the image of politicians, religious deities, a royal family, celebrities, even animals. Many are collectables. I like my traditional “matron” design with its links to fertility. This design portrays an old woman, a grandmother, generally associated with a headscarf tied under the chin. Probably because it was easier to say, my nesting dolls were called “Babushka Dolls” although this always reminds me of Kate Bush singing “Babooshka”, released in 1978.

Like so many people, our travel plans for 2020 were cancelled. We were going on a cruise which included a few days in St Petersburg. Apart from a planned visit to the Hermitage, I’d been looking forward to seeing the architecture. My other goal was to buy another Russian nesting doll. Instead I included my stacking doll with some Easter decorations. I’ve searched on the base and inside my dolls but cannot find where they were made.

The Russian nesting dolls can have five, six or seven dolls in each set. The smallest one is made first, then the others, getting bigger and bigger.

eating

TOMATOES

Tired of salads? Me too. Tomatoes still taste of sunshine so we keep eating them but needed some variety. These roasted tomatoes are so easy. I washed, dried and quartered some same sized tomatoes, taking care not to cut all the way through. I’d already drizzled olive oil in the glass baking dish. Used a teaspoon to put a little chopped garlic in the cut tomatoes, then sliced a leek and scattered it around them. Drizzled some more olive oil over the tomatoes. Added ground black pepper and sprinkled sea salt on them and roasted them 45 minutes at 190°C F/Forced ( 375ºF) . The hardest part is getting all the grit out of the leek.

Scattered some fresh basil on top. Delicious. Sweet and sticky and the flavours blended well. Light, easy end of summer food.

SALSA VERDE

Salsa verde is a green sauce. There’s so many recipes for it because the herbs you have available in abundance at the time will dictate your recipe. I like to add anchovies for depth of flavour but not all recipes do, and I add chopped, small gherkins, too. Originally this was based on a Jamie Oliver recipe but I have changed it to suit our tastes. The actual flavour can be different every time you make it depending on the ratio of herbs.

I used about four handfuls of basil, mint and common parsley, 1 tbspn chopped capers, 1 lge chopped gherkin, 6 anchovy fillets, 1 tbspn Dijon mustard, 20ml red wine vinegar and 60ml EVOO.

Pick over the herbs. It is easy to strip the mint and basil holding the top of the stem and running your fingers down, parsley takes longer. This part takes a while but the aroma of the herbs is lovely. Wash the leaves and leave to drain. Chopped the gherkin and capers if they’re large. I mash the anchovies with a fork in the jug later with the other ingredients.

Dice the herbs. Usually I chop them finely but this sauce is to go on turkey breast which is quite mild so I wanted a robust sauce. Mix everything together in a jug or serving bowl. Leave to amalgamate for an hour. Serve on meat, poultry, fish or stirred through salad leaves.

The basil is going to seed. As I picked it I stripped off the seeds and dropped them back in the soil for the next crop. I served this luscious sauce with turkey breast and oven roast sweet potato and Brussels sprouts. It was very good!

reading

One of the designers featured in the “British Designers At Home” book which I reviewed last week was Kit Kemp. Her own house was featured in the book and the vibrant designs led me to borrow her book “Design Thread” from the library.

Kit Kemp, with her husband Tim Kemp, is the founder and creative director of Firmdale Hotels. They have a collection of eleven hotels in London and New York. She has won many awards for her work. Her interiors are vibrant and witty. She’s known for mixing antiques with junk shop treasures, bespoke wallpaper with simple finishes. Her interiors are individual and personal.

Kemp discusses the aspects of each room featured and talks about the decisions she made which result in the final decor. Each room is different and items are individually selected. She also talks about her holiday house and the influences which decided how it was finished.

Kemp’s style is bold, quirky and individual but also comfortable and welcoming. She cleverly mixes old and new, luxurious and the everyday plus classic and modern styles. Gorgeous rooms and an inspiring book.

Did you know it probably takes an aluminum can 200-500 years to decompose? They are easily and cheaply recycled. In some countries they attract a small refund when you drop them off at a recycling point.

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Easter Cooking, Watching and Reading

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tomato tarte tartin

This Tomato Tarte Tatin, a recipe from one of my favourite sources, David Herbert, was published in The Australian Weekend Magazine, March 21-22, 2021. His food is hearty and fresh and this delicious tarte is no exception. We loved it hot and we loved it cold! Very easy and uses ingredients you probably have in the pantry or fridge. Perfect for Easter lunches during Lent.

spiced apple cake

Don’t be tricked by the Emma Bridgewater plate. I adore her china and have a lot of it. I like to use it when I can, so Spiced Apple Cake on a Bubble and Squeak plate. This recipe from Luca Ciano was also in The Australian Weekend Magazine. It was a very good cake and could be served as a pudding with cream or icecream, too.

fudge

Made trays of super easy fudge to give as Easter gifts. This is such a simple recipe. All you need is 90% cocoa chocolate, butter, condensed milk and dried cranberries. The basic recipe is (here), I added the dried cranberries instead of the walnuts in the recipe. Love the texture and the flavour, but nuts are a more traditional addition.

Covered a little cardboard tray I’d kept with some French text, lined it with gold paper and then baking paper and finally cellophane, a ribbon and a gift tag (here) Well received!

and finally, an easter cake

I like an Easter cake for when visitors come or we are just sitting and talking as Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Monday are holidays in Australia. The cake started as a plain cake but I added cinnamon and powdered cloves to the batter. The Spiced Apple Cake I made earlier in the week had both spices in it and we really enjoyed the flavour. Then I added apples. This time the apples were peeled, de-cored and cut into smaller pieces before being stirred into the mixture. I’m still trying to use up an over supply of apples!

Adore this lovely little furry rabbit, so cut a piece a baking paper the size of his base so he could sit cleanly on the icing, then surrounded him in speckled eggs.

french film festival

The French Film Festival, run by Alliance Française, is in full swing in Perth.

The Rose Maker is a film about Eve, a second generation rose grower on the verge of bankruptcy. Her assistant signs up to take on three workers from a rehabilitation scheme. They have no horticultural experience and Eve begins training them in the finer skills of growing roses.

She capitalises on their not so squeaky clean backgrounds to steal a rare rose to breed a new, award winning rose. It saves her business and provides futures for the three workers. Beautiful roses, well acted and a happy ending!

Eve’s typically French country house, the multiple character outbuildings and the paddocks and greenhouses of roses made me want to move to the country post haste. Add a few dogs, chickens and horses and it would be perfect. And a water view. And a miniature donkey.

As we were leaving the cinema we were given these camembert treats. I haven’t found them for sale anywhere locally.

reading

Jenny Rose Innes published Australian Designers At Home in 2019. It is an intriguing insight into the lives and homes and gardens of well known Australian Interior Designers. Then she published this book, British Designers At Home. As usual, in a house overflowing with thousands of books, I borrowed it from the library.

These generally are not minimalist houses. Their owners all seem to be collectors of beautiful things. I think the climate encourages cocooning and nestling, surrounding yourself with beautifully and sentimentally significant things as more time is spent indoors. The country has a tradition of producing fabulous fabrics and china and centuries of manufacturing household artifacts to retain and enjoy.

It always intrigues me to see how other people live. Their choices and arrangements are interesting and say so much about the owners. These designers are all well known and influential and they share their design tips and beliefs. These are all beautiful houses and gardens and the stories of the designers are fascinating. Another gorgeous book.

Following a recommendation on another blog I also read The Mission House, by Carys Davies. Set in a hill town in Southern India, this is the story of Hilary Byrd, who has been forced to leave his job as a librarian in a small English town due to increasingly erratic behaviour. A voracious reader, he is tempted by many destinations but ends up in India.

He meets a Padre on a train and is offered the use of the Mission House. He settles into exploring the town. He has a regular rickshaw driver and the friendship of the Padre and his adopted daughter. He feels calmer, but the conflicts of faith and non believer arise, concerns the adopted daughter is being offered as a wife and then finding to his consternation she isn’t and the conflicts of the Imperialistic past and the Nationalist future are all present.

The ending puzzled me for a long time. I went back and re-read the preceding chapters, I read reviews and I think I now understand what happened. It feels like the last chapter was dashed off in a hurry with an ending the author had implied previously but never really elaborated. I was relieved when other reviewers felt this was a weak point, a confusion.

This is an engaging and well written book until the last chapter. I found the contrasts between old and new very interesting. An easy read from an award winning author.

Yesterday was April Fools Day. I hope you had some fun!

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EGGSHELLS

ANZAC BISCUITS

USING MY HANDMADE BOOK

FAST, FABULOUS FOOD

READING

MAKING GUAVA JAM

MAKING A SMALL BOOK

IN THE GARDEN

<img decoding=async class src=https://images.stockfreeimages.com/1360/sfi226w/13608751.jpg alt="Free Group Of Russian Nesting Dolls Stock Image - 13608751" width=348 height=522>

MATRYOSHKA DOLLS

eating

reading

tomato tarte tartin

spiced apple cake

fudge

and finally, an easter cake

french film festival

reading