Back in the swing of things

Since coming back to Australia, the weather has been getting warmer. This has induced me to start making smoothies again (and I suspect that my fondness for soup that I discovered over the winter will disappear) and to this end I have bought myself a new blender.



New blender

I've also posted another recipe to the smoothie blog and I suspect I will keep doing so, but on a very irregular basis i.e. less than once a week. I have lots of ideas (especially involving custard) but not enough time to try them out.

Yesterday it was time for the farmer's market again and we bought some cheese, some strawberries and some cakes from the French patisserie stall. We are less enthusiastic about the farmers market now we know what it sells.

We also went to the cancer shop to buy a hat for Sean. He chose a typical Aussie bush style hat. I also bought a straw hat that ties under my chin. It's not as nice as my other hat but it was the only style they had that I could tie on against the wind.



Hats

I also discovered another problem with it on the way home - the brim is not as wide as my other hat and lets more sun under. I'm not sure whether this was exacerbated by the fact that it was 4pm (i.e. the sun had started getting slanty). I shall try it next week and decide whether it is better to have more shade or more hat security. I suspect it will differ according to circumstance.

Last night we managed to get a table at Flying Fish a local restaurant with a single hat rating in the SMH Good Food Guide. It seems that if you are flexible (i.e. willing to eat at 6pm) then getting a table at a top restaurant at the last minute is not too hard.

We had the degustation menu and I took a photo so we could remember what we had. This didn't turn out too well. Don't get too excited about the fact that I remember the camera though. You will notice that despite taking it out of my bag and leaving it on the side I did not manage to take a single picture of any food. I know what the problem is now though. Food arrives and my first thought is "EAT".



Menu

Luckily the menu is on the website so I can reproduce it in full:

• Seafood tapas


• Yellow fin tuna with sweet crackling pork and ruby grapefruit


• Seared sea scallops with green pea puree, Jerusalem artichoke and horseradish cream


• Grilled green banana prawns with shaved green lip abalone and roast duck broth


• Lemon sorbet


• Seared John Dory fillet with " Pescadillos Salados" capers and parsley Served with hand-cut chips and green salad


• Pyengana cheddar with Japanese radish


• Dessert tasting plate


• Coffee tea and petits fours

The seafood tapas was basically seafood based canapes, all of which were nice but the best was the Kingfish Carpaccio. The artichoke in the scallops dish had been replaced by pancetta, which I think was unfortunate, although they were great scallops. I thought the lemon sorbet would be unexciting and rather irritating but actually was rather nice and a kind of mid course pudding.

The John Dory was great and the chips were very good. They add their signature chilli salt to them, which I was looking forward to. Unfortunately it was very disappointing but the chips themselves were magificent (thick cut real potato perfectly fried). We were both disappointed by the cheese, which was a couple of thin slices of a very dry, almost parmesan-esque cheddar.

The desert plate was magnificent. I had the usual advantage of Sean's lack of interest in anything that isn't chocolate. The only thing I left was the rum panacotta (I don't like panacotta and adding alcohol certainly doesn't help). The others were:

• Strawberry souffle with nougat ice-cream (this was not too insubstantial)


• Almond friand with banana ice-cream


• Passionfruit and mango tart


• Chocolate and raspberry layer cake with chocolate ice-cream

The chocolate cake and ice-cream were the best - the cake was really cakey (I don't think I can explain better than that) and the chocolate used was exceptional quality without being too bitter. The raspberry was just a hint of a flavour and didn't overpower the chocolate.

We also got petit fours (passionfruit jelly, chocolate nougat and chocolate and honey truffle) and tea. And all this for $125 (£50). We will be going back.

Today we are playing backgammon at George's (nice mediterranean restaurant across the water) so if I beat Sean in the final, expect a post from him later on about the injustice of it all.