Entries Tagged 'Notices and Announcements' ↓

Helen blogs at the Cast Iron Balcony, where you are most welcome to go and sit and have a glass of Rough Red or Bombay Blue, or perhaps a VB or Little Creatures ale, and chuck gumnuts at RWDBs and effing idiotic op-ed writers or bloggers passing in the street below. Although she describes herself as a political blogger, Helen often ends up posting on a whole lot of miscellaneous stuff. Small potatoes, you might say. Here’s a post on what to do with small potatoes.

I first encountered Harry’s writing at the now-defunct Back Pages blog during the 2004 election, and have been a fan ever since. He is very handsome for a nerd, which may explain his current employment as a part time scrotum model. Or not. I feel it’s proper to disclose that I have met him in person and, as it happens, have seen him with his trousers off. While I am able to vouch for his general good looks, I must confess to have paid inadequate attention to vouch for his employability.

He blogs at The Adventurerer, a travel blog about a boy who came home, where the following post first appeared, and also at the marvellous group blog For Battle! I would like to apologise for the number of commas in that sentence, but I’ve had some wine (like you hadn’t guessed that by now!) and it isn’t immediately apparent to me how to do it better. Suggestions gratefully accepted. Youse know who youse are.

Thanks this week go to the National Health And Medical Research Council, who have tentatively brought forward the deliciously ridiculous proposal to redefine binge drinking. Three glasses of wine or four middies a day puts you, reader, into the apparent same health category as trans-continental tinny-sinking legend David Boon. We can expect the legally defined binge to be separated from the capital-B Binge only by degree.

Drinking is a hobby engaged in by far more adult Australians than difficult, inconvenient and potentially dangerous sporting activity. Certainly Aussies might not know that much about health limits, but they know what they like. If Aussie-bender-friendliness wasn’t already a self-evident proposition, there’s evidence this week in the questions put to your Adversarial correspondent, largely having to do with gin, gin-based drinks and sex: all three the most popular historical pastimes of your national antecedents. I’d like to start here the people’s campaign against the NHMRC’s replacing the perjorative term “binge drinker” with the totally awesome phrase “elite drinker”. Get up off your couches, sedentary Norms of Australia, and life be in it! Get a cold can from the fridge, and c’mon Aussie!

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Ampersand Duck is a book lover, book maker, book designer, artist and letterpress printer. Her beautiful website is here and her personal blog here. She also writes for Sarsaparilla.

She is my dear friend and close neighbour - exactly the kind of person you want living around the corner. Although she is a very good cook, she sadly cannot hold her piss.

Nothing like inviting people around for soup on a chill Autumnal evening. Knowing that you’ve invited foodies adds a bit of pressure, but I chose soups that had been tried and praised before, so the only pressure was to cook them well: Lamb Shank & Penne Soup, and Spinach & Dahl Soup.

The Lamb Shank soup comes from one of those generic newsagent cookbooks: the Family Circle Pasta & Noodles Book. I’ve been trying to remember when I got this, and whether I inherited it from my mother when she had a clean-out, or whether I bought it from a garage sale. It’s quite a dull book, but there’s a couple of winner recipes that I’ve discovered and treasured. This is one of them.
 

The Spinach & Dahl soup was bought as a packet mix of spices produced by a fab little family company called The Saucy Spice Co., based in Pambula on the Far South Coast of NSW. They peddle online, but also have a stall at the Canberra Bus Depot Markets every Sunday. I highly recommend their spice mixes. They buy fresh supplies, and their simple packages are always marked with a use-by date so that they are never stale (unless you stash them in the back of a cupboard and forget them).

They sell packages of spice mixes for specific recipes, and you provide the rest of the ingredients. The ingredients needed are listed on the label, but the actual recipe is inside the packet. Their curries and soups are superb. I can’t include the recipe for the Dahl soup here, mainly because they tell you which spices they’ve used, but not the quantities, so I encourage you to buy a packet or two of their wares and enjoy. The heat of each recipe is always indicated, and they have some fantastic mild recipes that kids will love. I highly recommend their Javanese Chicken, my son loves it.

The Dahl soup needed blending at the 2/3 point of cooking, and I’d given my stab blender away to my mother years ago, once I’d stopped making my own baby food. I just never seem to need one. So I asked Zoe to bring hers… talk about the awesome power of the blend! It had a life of its own, with scary suction action…

I forgot to take a photo of the finished soup on the night, but I managed to catch one of the bowls when we had leftovers a couple of nights later:

Yum! Coriander garnish, and we added yogurt on the leftover bowl (both of which, stupidly, I forgot to offer during the dinner party. Sorry guys.) There’s a drip on the bowl, too, for which you can mentally slap me on the wrist.

Now, the Lamb Shank Soup. I’ve been promising Zoe this recipe for years. Here it is.

PENNE, PEA AND LAMB SHANK SOUP

Prep time: 15 mins
Cooking time: 1 hour, 15 mins
Serves 6 (just)

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 lamb shanks (about 1 kg), well trimmed of fat
2 medium onions, cut into strips
1/4 cup dry red wine
1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 whole cinnamon stick
1 dried bayleaf (I used fresh)
4 cups water (I added more later)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup penne pasta
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
1 cup fresh or frozen broad beans
1 clove garlic, crushed

1. Heat oil in pan. Add lamb, cook over high heat for about 3 minutes each side or until well browned. Remove from pan, drain on absorbent paper.

2. Add onions to pan, cook over medium heat for about 3 mins or until well browned.

(This browning of meat and onion is essential, because it dictates the colour of the soup. It becomes a lovely rich brown soup instead of a pale broth.)

2 (cont) Return lamb to pan, add wine, peppercorns, cumin, cinnamon, bay leaf and water; bring to boil. Reduce heat, simmer covered, 1 hour or until lamb is tender.

3. Remove lamb from pan, discard bay leaf and cinnamon stick from stock. Add soy sauce and tomato paste to pan, stir until combined. Bring to boil, add pasta, simmer, covered, 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. meanwhile, cut lamb into bite-sized pieces; discard bones. Return lamb, peas and broad beans to pan, simmer, covered, a further 5 minutes or until pasta is al dente. Stir in crushed garlic just before serving.

Yum! I forgot to photograph this one before serving as well, so here is the cookbook version, followed by the result of happy eating:

He needs no introduction.

Really.

I’m very excited to welcome another contributor to Progressive Dinner Party, Kirsty. She blogs on life, the academy, food, and the long road of the commuter at Galaxy of Emptiness and is also a contributor to the pre-eminent Australian culture blog, Sarsaparilla. Kirsty is a television scholar, which is one of those careers that sounds utterly fascinating but is something of a challenge to explain it to your Aunty Ethel.

Her“Gastropod” series at Galaxy long ago revealed her as a talented and thoughtful cook, and I’m thrilled she’ll be doing some food-related writing here too. Her first piece, the interactive “Chopping Board” appears below.

Them? They’re called bayla, love. The Aussies buy ‘em for the shell and throw the meat away. The Chinese people bash through the shell to get to the meat.

We were talking about the one in the front at the bottom. I can’t find out anything much about them, other than that it seems to be a gastropod(!) May even have the name wrong - although I made him spell it out for me I didn’t write it down. Anyone ever eaten one?