A Breakfast of Champions

I've spent the past week working in an unusually cold, wet and windy Coffs Harbour. The Northern Rivers area of NSW is one of my fave parts of the world. I've many a happy memory of summer holidays, of camping near the beach, sleeping in a tent and cooking on a camp stove. Awww....

Coffs is all grown up now. New housing estates have popped up along the coast, the mall has been expanded, and the dive that was Park Beach Plaza is now the biggest regional shopping centre between Tweed Heads and Newcastle. The upside is that Coffs now has a great selection of cafes and restuarants. And I'm pleased to report that thanks to the Vouyer magazine I swiped from our Virgin flight from Sydney, I found one of the best:

Cafe Aqua, 57 Ocean Parade (opposite the Park Beach Bowling Club)
Tel 02 6652 5566.
I had grand plans to work my way through the breakfast specials board during my stay cos it looked so good. Unfortunately I got a little distracted by the sensational Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon on Day 1 and ordered it every day.

Breakfast math for the week: 4 x (EB + ss) + 8 x cappuccino = 1 Happy Em. :-)

Another gem we found (but didn't photograph!) was
Granma's Restaurant, 92 Park Beach Road
Tel 02 6651 4777.
This is a small German restaurant just near the Plaza. Great decor, homey feel and lots of yummy food. The pork knuckle, which I'd been craving since dining in Munich in January, was a whole new world of pork and cabbage joy.

A New Toy

Last night I dined with Mark Henry, the great mind behind Furitechnics and Furi knives. Mark and I went through uni together - or at least we did until until he postponed studies to become legend in the knife trade! It's nice now to be able to catch up over sparkling shiraz and Sydney seafood, reminiscing about our poor student days and marveling at the paths our lives have taken.

Anyways, at some point during dinner the conversation turned to the US food industry and the success of one Rachael Ray. Turns out Ms Ray is a very brilliant TV chef on the Food Network, and host of the insanely popular "30 Minute Meals" and "$40 a Day programs". Rachael has a large selection of products, including a range of Furi knives. I'm very excited to say that thanks to Mark, one of these knives is now sitting happily on my kitchen bench:
Check out that funky orange handle!

A Dessert Storm

I actually cooked this about two weeks ago... but it's been crazy busy around here and I haven't had time to post. :-(

My dessert reportiore is surprisingly limited (strange considering how much I love sugar) and it is rare for me to cook anything sweet. However in this case I had two inspirations:

Ms Sarah's adventures with Nigella at
http://sarah-discovers-how-to-eat.blogspot.com/2006/02/good-crumble.html

and the luscious peaches and raspberries on sale at my local greengrocer.

I couldn't resist. Armed with little more than good intentions, I set about whipping up something gorgeous. I started simply by finding a suitable bowl and dumping in four sliced peaches and the 150 g punnet of raspberries. A splash of white wine was mixed with (no joke) a tin of Heinz pureed Apple & Peach [7-9 months] and poured over the top.
The crumble was a little tricky. I don't generally carry flour in my pantry as I cook alone and always end up throwing it out. The only suitable substitute was a bag of toasted muesli lurking in the back of the cupboard (a vague reminder of a long-forgotten health kick). A tablespoon each of butter (melted) and brown sugar plus two teaspoons of cinnamon later, we were ready to crumble! < /lame >

30 minutes in the oven and out came....

OK so it doesn't look fab, but with a little double cream, this really was a Dessert Storm. :-)

A New (virtual) Home

Welcome to my new home. It's good of you to drop by. For those who don't know me, I moved all the way from Blogginginsydney (the site of my original posts at http://blogginginsydney.blogspot.com ) to Kitchem. Seemed silly to have such a long address when the shorter one was free!

Unortunately there hasn't been much in the way of blog-worthy cooking of late. Work is busy, I've been exhausted and resorting to the old faithful, bruschetta. Having admitted that, I now of course have a convenient excuse for posting my fave photo:

Yum!!