Subha Aluth Avuruddhak Wewa

Did you make any new year's resolutions this year? Planned to reduce your macaron intake? Wean yourself off Gossip Girl? Combat the Tight Pants Fairy's evil work? And did your good plans disappear as quickly as that box of macarons and the sight of your toes?

Well fear not, because the new year has only just begun! The Sri Lankan New Year begins on either 13th or 14th of April each year, with the exact time and date dependent on the time when the sun moves from Meena (Pisces) into Mesha (Aries). The recent new year began on the 14th of April (at 6:58am to be precise), and I was lucky enough to join in the Sri Lankan Cultural Society of Western Australia new year celebrations on Sunday the 18th of April.

It was held at Centenary Park in Wilson on a beautiful sunny Autumn day. I was enjoying the warmth of the sun in a singlet (and shorts, I might add) which turned out to be a clever idea as friends were able to find our group by spotting my blindingly white skin amongst the more melanin blessed crowd.

I was barely there for two seconds before food was being thrust upon me. I got the feeling I was going to enjoy celebrating the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year.

We decided to load up on foods and find some grass to relax on so there would be no injuries should we go into simultaneous food comas. The foods on sale were written up on a whiteboard, and I was glad to have my own personal translator, my friend Lil deVious, to explain the dishes. Fish Roti and Buriyani were fairly obvious to someone who is familiar with Indian food, but I was a little confused by the Cutlets, Chinese Rolls and Wadai under the Shorties part of the menu (though not quite as confused as I was by the chips, fish & chips and hot dogs on offer).

While we were lining up, I was a little alarmed by the apparent popularity of the chips and hot dogs, but I guess if you make your own yellow rice and curries at home every day, it might be nice to treat yourself with a bucket of chips on a Sunday. 

Chinese Roll (2 for $3.50) and Cutlet (3 for $2.50) - thanks to lovely hand model Lil deVious for giving some added authenticity to my photos

The Chinese Roll and Cutlet are somewhat similar, both containing a spicy fishy filling which tasted like a spicy, aromatic version of my Mum's tuna patties. I love my Mum's tuna patties and I loved these. The Cutlets are round crumb-coated balls of the fish mixture, while the Chinese Rolls are like a spring roll that has been crumbed before frying.

Wadai (3 for $2.50)

The next tasty fried shorties were wadai, spicy fried lentil patties. The outer layer was perfectly crispy and I loved the amount of heat contained within each naughty morsel. These would be perfect with a cold beer.

Rice and curry ($7.50); yellow rice ($8)

The "rice and curry" came with "fish, potato, beans, dhal", while the yellow rice came with "chicken, potato, eggplant", and both had a dollop of spicy spicy chilli. Both were aromatic, well spiced, filling meals. I would have liked a bit more of a kick to it, but was able to achieve this easily by adding the chilli to my forkfuls. I can understand that they couldn't exactly have every component knocking your socks off with the heat, as they were cooking for a large crowd and even with a mostly Sri Lankan crowd you sadly cannot assume everyone is a chilli fiend. 

Hot chips ($3)

One of the other non-Sri Lankans in our group got these chips. He's a Kiwi. I like to think he got them purely to entertain us with his pronunciation of "chips". They looked nice and crunchy but I was not willing to spare a single chip worth of stomach space.

The Hopper Man, working his magic

This was my first Sri Lankan hopper experience and it will not be my last. Oh no, as the magical Hopper Man is my witness, I will never go hopper hungry again! Hoppers are basically thin pancakes made in quite concave pans. There are many varieties of hoppers, but on this day we had a stack of plain hoppers finished off with an egg hopper on top. The egg was perfectly cooked such that there was no "snot" on the white (thanks Dad for giving me such a classy vocabulary) but the yolk was gooey and begging to be dipped into with pieces of hopper. The accompanying chicken drumstick was tender and spicy and the coconut sambol was heaven in a hopper scoop.

A plate of hopper joy

Goopy goopy googy egg

In addition to the good eating, there were a number of games being played throughout the day. I'm not sure what they are called in Sinhalese or Tamil, but I would call them hitting a claypot piñata, pillow fighting, and of course a good old game of cricket.

Watching a talented piñata smasher bust open the clay pot was amazing. All of the children that had been impatiently waiting around the sidelines rushed in faster than I could capture with my camera, eagerly grabbing at the freed treats while the triumphant stick-wielder pumped his fists in the air. I felt a little sorry for him - to pause for your success to be captured on film, or to make sure some of those liberated lollies make it into your pockets? A tough choice.

The pillow fighting went on for hours, with many heats leading up to the finals. Watching the men's finals was something else, these guys really meant business. I think they had been training in their backyards. The ultimately triumphant pillowman had a winning technique of absorbing all the force of his opponent's whacks in the side of his head before making his move with one or two hits to throw his opponent off balance and send him tumbling off the log.

I didn't watch much of the cricket, but I did manage to capture a little mini Muttiah Muralitharan deliver a killer doosra all of about 2 metres, forcing the batsman to run forward more than half the length of the pitch to reach the ball.

I didn't want the celebrations to end, and luckily they continued the following night when Lil deVious invited me around to her place for dinner. The place smelled so good when I arrived I could have just walked around chomping the air and almost have been satisfied. Almost. Fortunately for my bundy (stomach) we got to eat the source of the smells, and the kiribath (milk rice), chicken curry and seeni sambol were right on the rupee. Bohoma sthuthi, Lil deVious, your cooking is truly rasai. I'm worried my bundy is going it pack its bags and migrate to Sri Lanka without me.  

Seeni sambol, chicken curry and kiribath (milk rice)

Rasai dins, round 1

Polly wants a pastry house

One of the big hits of the food I made for my pirate party were the Parrot Pies. I made 72 of them and they disappeared before you could say yo ho ho (though not before some of my guests were able to drink a bottle of rum).

This is a pretty easy, cheaty and yet delicious peanut satay mix that you could put to a few different uses. I might possibly have eaten some of the "excess" mix with some vegies for lunch on the day I made the pies.

As the chicken mix is fully cooked before forming these pies, you can make these in advance and stick them in the freezer until you're ready to bring them out again, which is great when you are serving many dishes for a party and don't want to be doing too much work in the immediate lead up. This is particularly useful if you are like me and like to go barefoot around the house, leading to aching feet and legs after spending hours standing in the kitchen before berating yourself and putting on some sneakers (for sneaking), by which stage it is too late and you have wiped your feet out before even putting on your nice party shoes.

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Ginnie Joan's Swanky Speakeasy

It was a hot day. It's always hot in Gero, and today it was blowing more hot air than the mayor on election day. I was sitting at my desk with a pitcher of melted ice, sweating like a hungry fat guy at a hot dog stand where there are only two weenies left.. and he’s third in line. The door squeaked on its hinges and I looked up to see her walking in, the kind of broad that could get a guy into five types of trouble.

"Ginnie Joan's another year old this year, but this time it ain't no ordinary birthday," she said, "We gots to celebrate this one with a bang, and I hear you're the girl to help us do it."

"So what if I am, doll face. I ain't got the time, and you ain't got the dough," I replied, wiping the sweat off my brow and looking around for fall to appear.It was hotter than a $3 radio at an all-night pawnshop but this dame was cool as ice. She reached into her bag and tossed two parcels across the desk before moving to the door, arching her back against the frame "There's plenty more where that came from. You've got two days to get back to me, and keep your trap shut," she said before slinking out.

I picked up the parcels, looking inside and groaning like a cheap plastic chair at an all-you-can-eat buffet. This broad had my number all right - wholemeal pizza dough and freshly made too. I poured the pitcher over my head before picking up the phone and admitting surrender.

When my sister first approached me with her idea of throwing a 1920s/30s themed party for our Mum's milestone birthday this year, I knew it was going to be a night to remember. If you want a cool party organised, just ask my sister (only, you might not want to ask her right now or she might punch your nose flatter than a pancake driving off a cliff). Contrary to the above gumshoe, I eagerly jumped on board and soon we were watching old movies for ideas (watching Kevin Costner in fast forward doesn't make him any less annoying), making many a list and madly emailing each other even more than usual.

Keep your greasy mitts off my Ginnie Joan dollars!

Before too long, invites were sent out to the lucky chosen ones, giving each guest a moniker to use for the evening, and some Ginnie Joan dollars to use in case they need to bribe their way in past The Enforcer (my brother-in-law).

The Enforcer's shift at the speakeasy began early, shifting and moving the usual furniture out of the way to make room for the hired tables and chairs, the "band" and the piano. The band were an unusually quiet lot, but they made up for it by looking the part, framed by red curtains and gold chandeliers. The band and curtains were made by the speakeasy's artist-in-residence, my sister, who also happens to moonlight as a fine little moonshine brewer.

Just some of Ginnie Joan's posters and magazine covers

A couple of pinboards covered in photos of Ginnie Joan throughout the years, and a few photoshop-dodgy-ed up posters later, and we had the swankiest speakeasy this side of Chicago.

The band for the evening, and some Ginnie Joan moonshine

The food preparation began weeks ago, with my sister and I making all the freezable items in advance and storing them safely away until the big day. My sister put in some mammoth baking days for this, and soon we had a chest freezer filled with tasty treats. Cooking the fresh food involved two pretty solid days of cooking before the party, and by Sunday we were knackered but it was totally worth it.

The party was fantastic, with around 60 guests in attendance. I was so impressed by the effort that everyone went to with their costumes! I would love to put up some photos of us all but I'm not so sure everyone would be cool with me sticking their mugs up here so you'll just have to imagine how awesome us ladies looked with our drop-waists and tassels and fishnets and feathers and the men in their dapper suits! I had bought myself a nice feather boa to complete my outfit, but ended up leaving it out in fear of a guest choking on any stray feathers (the mob doc was outta town that weekend).

The night's savoury menu at this lavish juice joint consisted of:

• Selection of cold platters and dips (which I largely forgot to photograph!!)
• Party eggs (also totally forgot to photograph!)
  
• Smoked salmon and caviar blinis (kinda forgot to photograph)
  
• Assorted sushi rolls
• Salt & pepper squid
• Lamb koftas with yoghurt dipping sauce
• Mini quiches - ham, cheese & chives and sundried tomato & feta
• Spicy chicken sausage rolls
• Spanakopita triangles (made with puff instead of filo... don't tell George!)
  
• Spicy pulled pork buns
• Butter chicken pastries
• Mini beef & Guinness pies

No recipes in this post I'm afraid, but perhaps I'll write some up in the near future.

Pastries being warmed, ready to go out on platters to the hungry masses

My only evidence of Party Eggs, and a Caviar Blini

Assorted sushi rolls

Salt & pepper squid, butter chicken pastries, my only evidence of the platters, spicy chicken rolls and the sundried tomato & feta quiches

Spicy chicken rolls, sundried tomato & feta quiches, lamb koftas, beef & Guinness pies and spanakopita triangles

The spicy pulled pork process - rubbed with spices, after being very slowly cooked, pulling it all apart to be put back in slow cooker with homemade bbq sauce, then making the buns!

Spicy chicken rolls, ham cheese & chives quiches, spicy pulled pork buns

We were serving for a good solid couple of hours, before people started admitting defeat and we thought we'd let them rest their bellies in readiness for dessert. The rest period included some entertainment in the form of The Godfather theme being belted out on the piano, and a skit including some of the town's hottest young flappers showing off their dance moves. While all this was going on, my sister and I busily finished off the final touches to the birthday cake we'd been working on for a couple of days by this stage, and arranging the other desserts (provided kindly by some of Mum's sisters) on trays.

In addition to that slice of beetroot chocolate cake that I bought at the Subi Farmers market last week and stored safely away in the freezer for our coeliac guest, the other desserts were:

• Date slice (no photographic evidence at all! Trust me it was lovely!) (thanks Aunty R!)
  
• Banoffee pies, with a twist (thanks Aunty S!)
• Chocolate and raspberry tarts (thanks Aunty T!)

A chocolate tart, and some banoffee pies (mmm gotta love a twist that involves Cherry Ripe)

Now, the birthday cake/s was a labour of love. My sister came up with the overall design, and then got to work making the key component - an incredible fruit cake (man it's a tasty cake... I was lucky enough to score a big chunk to bring back to Perth with me, and every day is a struggle to stop myself from eating the whole thing.) I meanwhile put myself to good use by sourcing all the icing paraphernalia from various cake decorating stores. Of course, there happened to be a statewide shortage in the ready-to-roll icing we wanted, but I just hit up Jimmy the shoeshine boy for the info I needed. For the right price, Jimmy could tell you were to find a needle in a haystack, and where it had been 'til now, and he sure as hell knew where in town had some o' that fondant. (The Yellow Pages and many phone calls may have also possibly yielded the same information).

The cake process began on Friday with the baking of around 70 cupcakes - chocolate in black paper, and vanilla in white paper. We then got onto decorating the fruit cake. Neither my sister nor I had ever used fondant before, so we were incredibly apprehensive and had visions of it cracking horribly as we tried to roll it on and having to cover up our mistakes with lashings of ganache or icing sugar or just doing the Charleston in front of it to distract people. After watching a few youtube videos to get the process clear in our minds, we got started and it ended up being remarkably straightforward! Luckily the cake was lovely and goopy with all the booze in it, so it was quite easy to get the surface nice and level by plugging any little holes with pieces of extra cake before we did the rolling, and before long we had a mighty fine looking fondantified cake.

Making and decorating the central fruit cake

The piano decoration on top of the white fondant layer involved a bit more work, and I was able to put my engineering skills to good use by drawing up a template to cut the black icing to. Once the black squiggle and black keys were in the right position, we made the lines between the white keys with pieces of licorice before adding some black musical notes, placing some ribbon around the bottom and high-fiving each other a few times.

The high-fives may have been a little premature, as we then spent the rest of the night decorating the cupcakes with alternating black or white fondant, and musical notes. We also decorated some cupcakes to spell out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY", and saved four in each colour to place some gold candles into.


So, while others were shimmying up a storm outside, my sister and I arranged the cake and cupcakes on the previously prepared cakeboard (made and painted by The Enforcer, I believe, and finished off with the musical score by my sister). It was while doing this that I thought that perhaps we should check if the board actually fit through the door. Mild panic ensued until The Enforcer used his rifle as a ruler and confirmed that it would indeed fit safely through the door. Candles were then lit and the cake made its way out to the lady of honour!


Following much gorging of cake and cupcakes and pies and tarts and slice, there was only one duty left of the evening... selling the post-dinner cigars and cigarettes...

Cigars? Cigarettes? Humectant 420?

Big cheers for my sister for organising one hell of a party, and very big thanks to all who attended and helped that classy broad Ginnie Joan celebrate her birthday in style! Happy birthday Mum!

Slow Food, Good Food

Last night a friend and I attended a free public lecture presented by Carlo Petrini, founder and international president of Slow Food. If you are not aware, Slow Food is "a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world" (taken from their website).

Many more people attended than they were obviously expecting, so extra chairs were brought into the back of the lecture theatre, but then the organisers eventually decided to move to a larger venue, and then spent another 15 minutes trying to figure out the audiovisual system before being able to finally get started. Carlo Petrini is Italian, and my friend and I couldn't help but joke that with this level of organisation he must have felt right at home ;)


In many respects Carlo was preaching to the converted, and much of what he had to say may would be of no surprise to anyone with a healthy interest in food and gastronomy, but quite a few things caught my attention:

• More than half the food produced globally is wasted, with over 22000 tonnes wasted each day in the US alone.
• "We can't eat computers; we can't eat communication; we have to eat tomatoes, potatoes and spinach."
• "To eat is the first agricultural act. When I eat, I decide which agriculture I will support."
• We need to become fighters! One specific fight which he recommended getting involved in is doing away with the ban on producing cheese with raw milk in Australia.
• The Obamas have started a vegie garden in the White House (Also, I just discovered you can download a plan of their garden design, if you were so inclined...seems like they're big fans of lettuce, apparently)

Carlo also showed a video about Terra Madre, which essentially is a biennial gathering to bring together food communities from across the globe. I wonder if I can somehow convince UWA to sponsor me to attend the next one. Plankton is important to fish stocks, and fish is an important food, right?

(For those in Sydney, Carlo will be heading over to speak at the Sydney International Food Festival.)

After listening to so much Italian, we could not help but go out for some Italian for dinner after the presentation, so we headed into Subiaco to ecco! Pizza. This place has some of the best pizza in town - nice thin, tasty bases, fresh toppings and good sauces. Last night however, we decided to forgo the pizza option and instead tried all of the specials! Most of these "specials" are always on offer, but we were excited to see Fremantle Sardines written up there too this time (actually, it said "FREMANTLE SADINES").

So, to start with we ordered the Fremantle Sardines and the ricotta mushrooms, which I just can't resist ordering when I go here. My friend ordered the capretto with asparagus, whilst I ordered the chicken diavolo with rosemary potatoes and asparagus.

Fremantle sardines

The sardines were oily and tender, going beautifully with the slightly crunchy garlic toast they were sitting on. Our only complaint was that we would have preferred them to be saltier.

Herbed ricotta mushrooms

These are so tasty I can't help but order them every time. Last night the mushrooms were a little smaller than usual, but the flavour was certainly still there. Meaty, juicy mushrooms covered in creamy herbed ricotta. Delicious!

Capretto with asparagus

This is a favourite dish for my friend. Like with the chicken, the capretto is roasted using the pizza oven until it is fall-off-the-bone tender. I've had it before and would certainly have it again, but I thought this time I'd try the chicken instead....

Chicken diavolo with rosemary potatoes and asparagus

The chicken did not disappoint. Beautifully tender, juicy and succulent, and a really generous amount too! The potatoes and asparagus were also cooked well. Although the sauce was tasty, it was also incredibly oily, and I would have preferred much less of it on the plate. I did however have to stop myself from picking up the carcass to make sure I'd got every last skerrick of meat off it.

Overall, another delicious meal at Ecco. I've been here many times, and think I have tried all of the starter dishes by now and they're all really good. It's a great place to go with a few people, so you can share a pile of different starters and then either share pizzas or go with your own main. The blue cheese and pear pizza is particularly good, but I can also recommend the asparagus, the brocolini and the carciofo ones. Well, they're all quite good really.

Alberto the owner is a real character too.

ecco!
23 Rokeby Road, Subiaco
Phone: 9388 6710
Email: subi@eccopizza.com.au

There's also another ecco! in Fremantle, but I've not been there myself.

Like a phoenix (chook) from the ashes (oven)

What a wonderful few days I've had, and it feels so good to top them off by finally having time to spend on here! I've been a hermit for the past few weeks, as I picked up yet another winter illness (strep throat this time... it seems I'm ticking them all off and trying for a gold star) and also have been incredibly busy preparing for my PhD proposal defence which was held on Monday. As far as milestones go in my PhD, this was a pretty major one, and I am so amazingly happy and relieved to report that it went really well! So, I am officially now allowed to continue with my research and cross my fingers that in another 18 months time I will be hopefully somewhere close to adding "Dr" onto my credit cards.

Monday's greatness continued on by me winning Round 22 of my footy tipping competition, which also resulted in me winning the home & away season! Oh, and after weeks and weeks of illness, I also finally felt well enough Monday, Wednesday and today to get back to my second home - the gym - and happily survived pump classes without feeling like too much of a weakling. I don't think I'll quite throw myself back into my usual routine, but it's nice to know my muscles haven't entirely wasted away to nothing.

Now, of course one of the best things about now having more time up my sleeve, not being confined to either a sickbed or my computer and powerpoint slides, is that I have time to cook again! Hooray! I actually had to miss the August Daring Bakers' Challenge, which I was none too pleased about (sorry Lorraine, it looked like such a great challenge, too! Hopefully I'll get around to trying it in a non-DB way) but I'm feeling like my cooking groove is back. In fact, I was feeling reasonably confident about my slides and defence practice on Sunday night, so I made up a batch of my tried and true Macadamia Anzac Biscuits to give to my defence panel afterwards (I made sure to give it to them after so that it didn't seem like I was trying to grease them up - in more ways than one, ha ha).

To get back into my savoury cooking groove, I also went along a very well loved, and tried and true recipe, my roast chook (chicken for the non Aussie-vernacular minded). Thinking about this chicken, I seem to have made it for almost everyone I've ever cooked for. Friends I stayed with in Montreal, multiple friends I've stayed with in Perth (when I was in my inbetween-houses phase), family members when they've come to stay at my house, and most notably some friends that I visited in Stockholm earlier this year. I say most notably because one of these friends is Italian, and has quite particular thoughts about food (and is a great cook) and she said that this meal actually changed her mind about English cooking.

So, Tuesday night I made my roast chook for someone new, my housemate. She came home Monday night with a bottle of champagne to celebrate my proposal defence success, and after both cheering at the prospect of getting stuck into it we both realised that I was still taking antibiotics for my throat. So, into the fridge it went until Tuesday when I took my last pill (of 50! Glad it's over!), and I thought I'd whip up something nice for dinner for us both.

I don't always make the same sides to go with the roast, although they ALWAYS include roast spuds (potatoes). I decided this time to also include some roast pumpkin and sweet potato, some orange roasted asparagus and of course some gravy. Oh, and freshly made stuffing, following my Mum's famous, and deliciously simple, recipe.

As is the norm with such meals that we all have been making for years, I don't follow a recipe for this dish but I was determined to be really good and make notes so that I could put a proper recipe on here. Ummm, I guess I am a little out of my blogging state of mind, because I started off well then totally forgot to follow this through. I also dropped the ball in a big way in terms of photography. I again started off really well, making sure to get some shots of the stuffing after I made it, and then totally forgot to take any more until I was heating up some leftovers for lunch the next day!

So..uhh....here are a couple of half-arsed photos of my delicious roast dinner which I don't have a recipe for. Hopefully my blog-brain will return soon..

Tasty stuffing, ready to move into it's new chickeny home

Roast leftovers, about to be eaten for lunch the next day