Lavender Cottage

It's very rare to find a great restaurant which serves beautiful, simple food with local and seasonal ingredients. Many claim to do so but just don't quite pull it off. I have to say I am a bit fussy when it comes to dining out. I love doing it but often I leave unsatisfied and thinking 'Why didn't I just cook myself a medium rare steak at home properly?' As you can tell this is a big pet peeve along with grated carrots and cheese on the side of my plate claiming to be a salad. What the??!

And so to the review of Lavender Cottage in Albany which I recently dined at one Friday evening. This little cottage has been converted to a French inspired cafe/restaurant that is open for lunch during the day and every Friday night serves dinner. The Friday night meal was very tasty and the best I've had in a long time.. although I don't get out that much. The menu is simple with few options but I still found myself unable to decide, it all looked so good. Here's some of the dishes myself and my other two diners sampled.


Potato Gratin

Beef Carpaccio



French Onion Soup



 Photos courtesy of my sister










Hapuka and Prawns with a bouillabaisse sauce

I had the beef carpaccio and hapuka fish with prawns with a refreshing sorbet as a palate cleanser in between. All the main dishes came with potato gratin and a garden salad with mustard dressing.

I loved loved the beef with shavings of Parmesan and a celeriac remulade on top- nice touch. The fish was also nice but could have done without the rice due to the side of yummy creamy potatoes.

I will definitely be back to this place again and want to try the lunch. I hear they do a fabulous french-style bento box ??!!

Just a couple of extra notes fellow foodies: do book ahead, and this place is cosy and intimate, suitable for small groups and couples. I would probably suggest to get yourselves a babysitter and leave the kidlets at home. Although saying that they do have an outdoor area which is open during the day and great in summer months. I also love their big black dog 'Rembrant' who occasionally makes an appearance.

Lavender Cottage is much I love about a good dining experience in food, service, and setting. They do what they do and they do it well. It is some of the best food that Albany has to offer.



Mothers Day 2012

This year we did the trek to Fonty's Farm in Manjimup to pick chestnuts. The farm is beautiful and also grows apples, guavas, and avocados. We had a picnic lunch and roasted chestnuts on the open fire. Yummy and wintry and chestnutty...



 Miss A and her dad peel the spiky outer shell from the chestnuts and put them in a bucket. Gloves are very much needed!

I also had my first guava which tastes like bubblegum.

So now we have an abundance of fruit to get through. I think jam is in order or apple and pear crumble? Hubby's Italian cousin said they make apple jam which sounds interesting- time for some experimenting!



Old school, New School

I have been reading a few good books lately and trying multiple books from the same author, so the first instalment is Stephen King.

People that know me well know that my favourite author is the afore mentioned genius King. I have a few thing to say about this:

• many people regard Stephen King as a popular horror only writer which puts them off reading if they don't like the genre. 'This is not literature!'
• I read and like many different genres but can always come back to any of Kings novels and love them.
• Stephen King is essentially a great storyteller who drags you into his world from the first page. He writes about good and evil, the human condition, love, friendship.... 

So two reviews today that I have read in the last couple of months. Two very different King novels- an old school and new school.

Desperation- published 1996
This is your traditional horror, gore-fest, good v evil Stephen King old skool novel. This one had by-passed me on it's release so it's the first time I have read it.
Whilst not the best of his horror novels I still couldn't put it down. A brief plot blurb:

'There's a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It's known as Desperation, Nevada.
It's not a very nice place to live. It's an even worse place to die. Let the battle against evil begin.
Welcome to ... Desperation.'
courtesy of GoodReads.com

I loved the landscape in this novel which became a character, changing and evolving all the time. King always explorers his characters and in this case their personal demons and what they are capable of doing in an impossible situation.
If you also enjoy the odd apocalyptic drama this ones for you... 

11.22.63- published 2011
and now for the new skool.
This definitely is your most mainstream Stephen King novel, being part historical drama, part time travel. If you are skeptical about the Kingster this is your entry level novel. A brief blurb:

'WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a young teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, gets the chance to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting JFK in November 1963 is the premise of the brilliant new novel by STEPHEN KING: 11/22/63, the date that Kennedy was shot—unless . . .

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, on a fascinating journey back to the world of 1958—from a world in 2011 of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.'
courtesy of GoodReads.com

Very cool book. Time travel to the 50's- hell yes! I loved concept of this book from the get go. Always love a good time travel novel and this was no exception although at a whopping 740 pages it got a bit lengthy in sections. One of the great things about this novel was the exploration of 'cause and effect' and how the very littlest things may cause consequences in the future, and can some things never be changed? Read it and find out, you know you want to.
King fans look out for the shout out to 'It' and Derry. Always love a hidden reference. 

 

 

More Cooking and Eating...

Kung Pao Pork

Recently I have been experimenting with cooking Asian dishes- nice, tasty, authentic dishes. It is so hard to get good Asian food out here so I have to resort to making my own. Every time I go to Perth I overdose on Chinese and Japanese- but it is so worth it...

This dish of Kung Pao pork is inspired by Ming Tsai's recipe from the TV show 'Simply Ming'. He has great recipes which are very easy for the home cook. Kung Pao sauce is traditionally a very hot sauce but you can adjust the chili content- I like it hot! The recipe for the sauce can be used with any meats and here I have used pork belly (mmm piggy), it makes about 2 cups which I keep ready in a jar in the fridge for future meals.

Kung Pao Sauce



• 3 tablespoons fresh crushed garlic
• 2 tablespoon minced ginger
• 2 tablespoons sambal oelek
• 1 cup dark soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch with 1 tablespoon water to thicken if necessary

Method

For the Kung Pao Sauce:

1. In a wok or saute pan coated lightly with oil over high heat, add garlic and ginger and saute for 1 minute, just to soften. Add sambal, taking care not to inhale the chili, and saute until well-blended. Add soy sauce to deglaze, then add sugar and rice vinegar. Bring to a boil and slowly whisk in cornflour mixture to thicken. Check for flavor and season if necessary. Keep warm to use in recipes or cool to room temperature, store in an air-tight jar and place in the fridge.

I also have doubled this recipe to keep more in the fridge and I haven't had to add all of the cornflour as it has already been thick enough.

Make sure to always taste as you may need to make some minor adjustments. Use your instincts and be creative!

For the Kung Pao Pork:

 

Stir-fry chunks of pork belly coated in cornflour on high heat until just cooked, then remove from wok. Add any other veggies and quickly stir fry- I used spring onion, carrot, and capsicum- then return pork to wok with a couple of tablespoons of the sauce and heat through. You can also mix through some unsalted roasted peanuts at the end if you like. Serve with rice!

Tip of the day folks: For a nice rice mould like I have done above, wet small bowl first before adding rice and tipping on to plate. Most impressive for little effort...

Back on the Blog

After a small hiatus during the silly season I am blogging again- yay!! Once again I have grand plans for this year which include finishing what I start, finishing the kitchen, and to finish decluttering the house. A very tall order....

So, a quick update of the goings-on in the madhouse/farm...

 Harvest finally got finished although not until mid-January. This year we had two Italian boys working and staying with us.

 

Gabby started Kindy this year and is very pleased with herself.

Fun with face painting.

The newest additions to the family are three silkies. Two hens and one rooster which I just picked up on Tuesday. When they get big enough I plan to try and breed some. Too cute! The girls are still trying to decide on names- Roosty and Clucky?????       

The next major project to finish is the new kitchen. Tiling starts this weekend. Pics to follow...                                 

Book Review

One of my great loves is reading and lately I've been exploring the world of Swedish fiction. It is so refreshing to read these beautiful lyrical authors and have a whole new experience of location in fiction.
A few years ago I read the obligatory starting point of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series, of which I gobbled down it's great characters and plot.

The book I've just finished is Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. At first glance, a vampire novel. 'Not another one!' I hear you cry, but don't let that put you off because this goes beyond any vamp book I have read.

The horror/crime/supernatural novel centres around 12-year old Oskar who meets Eli (later revealed to be a vampire child) and is set in a working class suburb of Stockholm. Eli is not your traditional vampire and nor is their relationship. The novel is very dark and deals with issues which are very confronting  but still easy to relate to. Be warned, however, this novel does have a gore factor so not for the easily queasy. I won't say any more because the slow reveal is always better. Best read snuggled up in bed on a stormy night.

Forget every vampire cliche and Twilight movie and pick up this book!


Next books on my bedside table:
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo -Norwegian crime novel
11/22/63 by Stephen King - new one about time travel

Action in the Kitchen

One of the great things about living on the farm is being able to have fresh ingredients and produce on hand that you can go out and catch or pick. In recent years we have established a  raised veggie patch made from old tanks that produced the best tomato crop last year! We also have chooks, our own lamb, and yabbies. Hence the yabby pizza is born......

YABBY PIZZA
Really the easiest thing in the world to make but tastes so good.

Yabbies- boiled for 7 minutes

Get your slaves to do the hard work

Ingredients

• We used tortillas as the pizza base or Lebanese bread
• tomato passata 
• mozzarella cheese
• cooked yabbies
• Tabasco for the adults
• any other toppings you may like eg: fetta, capsicum, mushrooms, spinach

  Spread passata over base, add toppings and mozzarella and bake in hottest pre-heated oven until cheese is melted and base is slightly crisp. I like to keep the toppings fairly simple so you can still taste the yabbies.

Little A's yabby pizza 

WARNING: Men can eat at least 5 of these thin pizzas so make lots.

Chow down!