Getting ready to move... Yuk!

I am a crab - born in the sign of Cancer, and I like my home comforts. Accordingly I am a little out of sorts at the moment. We are moving to Brisbane, and the movers invade on Wednesday and Thursday. I know I should take a glass half full perspective (and there are definite advantages), but I choose to believe that I am hardwired to protect my cave. 

There are advantages: 

-We don't have to do the packing/lifting/loading/driving/unloading. If you have to move, then a full service move has to be the way to do it. 

-We have been able to have a clean out of stuff we no longer need/want/use. For natural hoarders, this can be a blessing.

-We are moving closer to family. Big plus, and we are also moving away from the tropical humidity. Even bigger plus.

We won't have a new home for five weeks, and by then will desperately want to get into a home routine again. 

As a part of the preparations, we have to ensure the gardens are as they were when we moved in (this generally means bereft of any living thing, on the off chance that the next tenant will have no interest in things green). This is easy enough to do, unless a Curlew decides to make a nest in a garden. Which they did this week.

The Curlew is a ground dwelling bird from the same family as the Road Runner, but doesn't go "Beep Beep". It has a high pitched kind of wail that sort of sounds like its name. They are endangered, and looking at how they breed and nest it isn't hard to see why. They are actually a  pretty cool bird. They have excellent camouflage, and will often just lie flat on the ground as you walk past.

This is our curlew on her nest. Nice position - although she does get sun for most of the day!

When you get close to her she will come off the nest (technical construction...)

...Spread her wings, and hiss. Quite startling if you haven't seen them, and they come up behind you!

With a nest like this, it isn't hard to see why they are endangered!

MacK loves to watch the nest, but the birds get too agitated if he is close. All he wants to do is wave at the birds, and say "Hello Curlews", but they freak out a bit! He now sits inside, where he can make sure they are safe.

Jane had her birthday last week, and we combined a farewell brunch for work colleagues with a birthday cake. As it was Jane's birthday, we had lots of chocolate including Jane's favourite chocolate croissants. In addition, we had chocolate, prune and espresso sourdough, sausage rolls, feta and cherry tomato quiche, raspberry and passionfruit friand, mango, pineapple and mint salad, caramelised popcorn and banana chocolate muffins. 

The Cake - Chocolate cake, with a chocolate and cognac icecream centre, and chocolate ganache. Wicked!

We had a lovely morning, and now I think we are done for entertaining in Townsville. Time to start packing, finish cleaning and then to get on the road.

This morning I was breakfasting with MacK. He was finishing his weetbix, and asked for some of what I was having (chocolate prune and espresso sourdough). When he tried it he smiled and said "Yummy cake". I told him it was bread, to which he simply replied "cake!" This exchange went on for a bit before he gave me that look which I translated loosely as "you can call it whatever you want. You and I both know that it is cake. Or it should be. Stop trying to pretend its healthy. Oh - and give me some more, please!"

Our last Tropical food frenzy

As we do at this time of year, we held another dinner party last night. This one was tinged with a little sadness with the knowledge that it was to be our last here in Townsville. I do have to say though that any sadness was well and truly tempered by the thought of cooking in slightly less humid conditions in future.

Our guests for the evening's festivities were Phil & Kate Cox, Tim & Jo McGlinchey and Geoff & Lyn Hansen. As ever, I took the opportunity to try techniques for the first time. I don't know why I always do that - surely it would be easier to at least practice things once prior to going out on stage.

The menu we planned was as follows:

Hors d'oeuvres

• Peking duck rolls
• Thai style lamb salad in cucumber cups
• Flash fried prawns with red Nam Jim dipping sauce
• "Pea and ham soup"

Dinner

• Pork belly with rocket and cornichons, jellied pickled beetroot, carrot, mustard and roast tomato jam and caramelised cider vinegar glaze.
• Apple, lime and mint sorbet with apple crisps
• Chicken fricassee - Roasted chicken breast with potato, thyme and mustard frittata, glazed asparagus and carrot and mustard veloute.
• Esrom cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and grilled
• 'Frivolity' - Kiwifruit Ice
• Tropical Christmas pudding 

When people arrived we had a couple of quiet drinks, with hors d'oeuvres. This time we managed to photograph most of the courses, for your vicarious joy!

The Peking duck spring rolls and Thai lamb salad. 

We didn't get the prawns, but this is the Pea and Ham soup. Whilst not being a devotee of molecular gastronomy and the work of Heston Blumenthal, I was inspired to have a crack at spherification. Essentially what you see is a sphere of liquid peas held (just) by a gel shell, with a shard of baked prosciutto on top. This was definitely a single bite dish (the pea explodes in the mouth), and certainly had people talking. Everyone was in the kitchen, so got to see it taking place. I was so glad this one worked! It was really impressive.

This was our entree, and probably my favourite dish of the evening. I cooked the pork belly for the first time over rosemary and preserved lemons, and it had a wonderful citrus flavour. The carrot jam was fantastic, and the pickled beetroot jelly was just wonderful. Phil was particularly taken with the beetroot, and when I offered him another, I almost had a mutiny on my hands!  

This was how we served the sorbet... MacK particularly enjoys the sorbet, and refers to it as 'gelati'. Our guests asked if they could buy the apple crisps in a bag anywhere!

Chicken Fricassee - The breasts were brined before being steamed for five minutes. Prior to being roasted, they were pan fried to crisp the skin. So tender and flavoursome, and the sauce was spectacular. The carrots were a little bit arty, but had to indulge my fancy side!

We didn't catch either the cheese or frivolity courses on camera, but they were both very good. The Esrom cheese is a salty Danish cheese that is magnified in flavour when wrapped in prosciutto and grilled. Phil did say that the cheese was the MOST savoury thing he had ever eaten. It was lovely, but a single bite was enough. Any more might be inviting cardiac arrest!

Dessert (pictured above) was our tropical christmas pudding. We served a chocolate and cognac ice-cream with christmas fruit, marsala sabayon in a chocolate cup with a peppered pineapple crisp, and peppered grilled pineapple. What a way to end a meal!

After dinner we opened a couple of bottles of Schnapps. We had brought Jo a bottle of the Wild Brumby Pink Lady Apple Schnapps when we were in the snow and she wanted to knock the top of that after dinner. Tim and Jo had given me a bottle of Flaschengeist cognac and walnut liqueur which was just stunning. It tastes like a liquid ferrero rocher chocolate and was so good that some suggested they could brush their teeth in it. Geoff realised that he has finally found the tipple he can take with him on extended bush walks. 

All in all a brilliant night! Thanks Townsville...

What the table looked like immediately after our guests left us. 

MacK and the disappearing Carrot Cake

I know that some of you will by now have seen the video that Jane posted to facebook showing Mack attacking a carrot cake I made a couple of weeks ago...

I was doing a couple of birthday cakes which, in the tropics is just plain dumb at this time of year. The occasion was the 18th birthday for Riley, the son of one of our good friends in Townsville. We made him a chocolate mud cake, frosted with ganache and buttercream (last minute icing due to the humidity). Tim's birthday was the same day, and we did a carrot cake (his favourite) with a Harley Davidson logo on top as he had just bought a Harley as a birthday present to himself.

I pulled the carrot cake out of the oven, and left it on the bench to cool whilst doing some stuff at the other end of the house. I came back to see the centre of the cake had disappeared - into MacK's tummy!

As he had already destroyed the cake, we let him have another go while we filmed it. Every couple of bites, he would stop, grin and say "Yummy".

This one doesn't show the true size of the hole, but it was big enough to need a new cake

This one I love - MacK is dreaming up another nefarious scheme I am sure... Maybe standing there wondering when Daddy is going to bake another cake!