Anyway, these friends from Melbourne were the sort you feel comfortable with, and they are foodies, though one is not able to eat onions or wheat. Bob made gluten free biscuits, which it turns out have to be cooked for a shorter time in our oven and are flatter than the usual, and I went out to buy all sorts of treats for nibbles : Segret brand Smoked Salmon dip ( gluten free), which is absolutely delicious served with carrot sticks or rice crackers., Yun's Spicy Mix and Orient Mix rice snacks, sheepsmilk cheeses, Jamon Serrano, olives, nuts......and lots of fruit. Of course there were the favourite drinks: white wine, and Rekorderling and Dirty Granny cider. But this visit, we avoided chocolate to avoid temptation.
We are all theoretically eating healthy though, so I tried to make the meals healthy. It sort of worked while we were home, But when we went out, things fell apart!
Lunches were salads and cold meats, and cheeses.
One dinner was flying fish roe,
sweet potato chips,
seasoned wakame, pickled radish, pickled vegetables and pickled ginger,
edamame, asparagus,
grilled mackerel,
and enare with sushi rice and seasoning.
To drink, we had Choya Umeshu, with a pickled uma in it. Very nice indeed!
Another was marinated and grilled lamb steaks
baby potatoes
and salad.
We had an old family favourite we call Eggs Flamenco, as well. We make this when we don't need a full meal and it is particularly nice in winter.
Eggs Flamenco
Ingredients:
Olive oil
chopped salami or chorizo (I used Schukltz's garlic salami)
Bottled tomato pasta sauce (flavoured is nice. I used a pepper one)
Frozen peas
pipped black or green olives
2 eggs per person
Sherry
Tomato ketchup
Ground pepper
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Grease ramekins with olive oil.
In the bottom of each ramekin put enough chopped salami, olives and frozen peas to fill half the ramekin.
Add tomato pasta sauce, leaving room for the eggs.
Add 2 eggs per person.
Top with ground black pepper, a dollop of ketchup and a slurp of sherry.
Place in oven and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes if you like your eggs totally cooked, less if not.
(Some nice bread to sop up the juices can be added if you like.)
Generally, we had fruit for dessert, like this pawpaw:
Last week, the Ladies Who Lunch took me to the Dudley Street Cafe, in Annerley, for lunch, but we had to evacuate after a cup of coffee because the traffic made conversation impossible. We ended up at the nearby Great Cafe and Restaurant, which looked pretty unimpressive, and had that rather ominous sounding name, but which served up rather good lunches of a prawn salad,
spring rolls and salad
and toasted bacon rolls and salad:
It was certainly a nice surprise. ( We also visited the very nice gift shop next door, Peter Baker-Finch and Co., and left with several brown paper bags)
With these Melbourne friends, since we were in Fortitude Valley hunting for clothes at Dogstar and wool at Tangled Yarns, we went to our favourite PhoB in Fortitude Valley for rare beef pho. Huge serves, tasty and filling as usual.
On the way back to the car, we decided to explore a Thai shop I had been meaning to visit. The lady in there was eating a snack made of browned coconut and peanuts, chopped ginger, red onion and lime (with peel still on), small bird peppers, and dried prawns with a sauce poured on, all wrapped up in a leaf She offered me one, advising me to eat it in one bite and it was so delicious I had to buy a pre- made packet of the ingredients to have at home. Apparently it is called Mieng Kham.Here's what it looks like:
We also bought other goodies like Chiang Mai dried cherries, salted sunflower seeds, and spiced and sugared nuts. We were very taken by the packets of these desserts of Black sesame balls in ginger syrup, Taro pearls in coconut cream and Assorted Beans in syrup
so we had the first two for dessert one night. We roared with laughter when we found out how much the packets lied, but we still like the desserts. The sesame balls got our vote.
We also went down to Albert Street in the city to try out the Japanese burgers at MOS Burger. What a nice difference to the usual fast food burgers. Our buns were made of rice and came with a range of fillings. They were small, but very tasty. We chose seafood kakiage (pictured), beef yakiniku, seafood okonomi and kimchi yakiniku rice burgers
and they gave us these apple bites (which were a bit ordinary. Sorry for the ingratitude).
We also tried the salad - uninspiring lettuce, tomato, corn, and onion, but the sesame flavoured dressing was beautiful.
and cranberry iced tea ( fantastic!)
Then it was off to Gelatissimo for gelato. Bob reckons Maleny is better, but they still enjoyed it.
On their last day here, we went to GOMA and while we were there, tried out their Cafe Bistro. We were impressed by the friendly staff and the confit duck, Toowoomba leaf salad, orange, kipfler potato and mustard dressing salad
and the Bangalow pork belly, du puy lentils and red cabbage slaw.
We took another break later in the afternoon for afternoon tea and tried out the QAG cafe by the water gardens. Watched by a very friendly, very handsome lizard, we really enjoyed our cakes:
orange cake
and berry cheesecake.
What a great long weekend holiday !
