Food

 I've had quite a foodie couple of days.

Julia and Travis gave me a gift token for Dokutoku for my birthday last December. I deployed it on Thursday evening.

Lindsey came around and we had an early dinner. Even at 6:30 it was very busy (it's not very big) so I was glad I had booked a table. And we had their wagyu sukiyaki menu to share. It is thinly sliced wagyu beef, with a plate of tofu, mushrooms, cabbage, carrots and konjac noodles, with rice on the side. You cook all. this in a simmering bowl of a soy sauce based broth and it is very delicious. It also comes with a raw egg which you are supposed to beat in your serving bowl and use as a dipping sauce.  I did not do this. I didn't really need to. Lindsey did but gave up after a while. The food was saucy enough with the cooking broth.

I have experience eating in Dokutoku (it is right next door to the front door of Victoria Point, the building I live in). I did not wear one of my best shirts to dinner!

Lindsey almost never seems to spread
Japanese sauces over her clothes

Yesterday I went to a cooking class in Abbotsford that Freyja and Simon had bought me for Christmas. It was a cooking with native ingredients class and we made damper with river mint, barramundi cooked in a banana leaf with samphire and lemon myrtle and garnished with finger lime,  then kangaroo with a pepperberry salt and vegetables. The chef made a Davidson plum sauce to go with the kangaroo. We made a sesame paste to have with the damper flavoured with saltbush and samphire. Everything had garlic or black garlic. I don't think I learned very much, although I have never cooked kangaroo before and I hadn't cooked with fresh lemon myrtle leaves. But it was very interesting and I had a good time. And, of course, delicious food to eat.

We were supposed to cook in pairs but there was an odd number of participants and they got me to cook alone to accommodate my nut allergy. This meant that the second chef came to help me with chopping things while I was using the mortar and pestle. My very own sous chef, with excellent knife skills 😊 It also meant that I had double portions of food, because everything was organised for two servings. I didn't eat both portions. I brought the extras home (by invitation, I didn't just help myself).

I was very pleased with my cook of the kangaroo. It was pretty much perfect. Although let me assure you that I will never do it that well again. I don't eat a lot of kangaroo, it not being one of my favourite meats, although it must be said that kangaroo that is lightly smoked and then gently fried with rosemary, garlic, olive oil and butter is rather nice. We had it with purple potatoes, taro and mushrooms also gently fried in oil, butter, garlic and rosemary.

Our ingredients came pre-prepared.
This is the dry ingredients for the damper

lemon myrtle, samphire and lemon zest
for the barramundi

vegetables to accompany the kangaroo

banana leaf parcel

revealing lovely barra

damper flat breads

cooking the vegetables

Perfectly cooked kangaroo
(to my surprise!)

The afternoon was enlivened by one of the participants collapsing while the chef was demonstrating how to cook the damper. Her partner and another participant (who I assume was a nurse or a doctor - she knew what she was doing) sorted her out and all was well.  But it was a bit disconcerting - the chef nearly burnt his damper!!

I came home, got changed and pretty much immediately went out again to meet Freyja and Simon at Hamer Hall for An Audience With Tony Robinson (Blackadder, Time Team, amongst other things). It was very funny, very informative and very entertaining - although I could have done without the angry, white, racist man/men heckling from the bleaches whenever indigenous history or culture were mentioned. No need for that at all.

I bailed at the intermission, not because I wasn't having fun but because I was getting very tired. I wouldn't normally engage with a day that starts with an online 8:00 Japanese lesson for an hour, contains a 2pm cooking class for 2.5 hours in Abbotsford and then finishes with a 7:30 theatre engagement in the city for another 2.5 hours. Very poor planning on my part, I agree, but that was just the way it was. Only having the first half of an audience with Tony Robinson was better than having no halves.

Freyja tells me that there was no further heckling in the second half. I surmise that he/they had taken the chill pill that the host had suggested they take, or that they had buggered off home or to the pub, or that perhaps they had been invited to leave

The river from Princes Bridge,
a little before 9pm

I don't often go into the city in the evening. It was very busy. The trams were packed. There were people everywhere. There was an Indonesian (I think) festival in Fed Square and Freyja and Simon went to a different part of Fed Square to watch a footy match on a big screen after the show. It was, of course, Valentines Day and there were obviously other things happening around the place. It was all quite buzzy.

I started writing this at 7:30 on Sunday morning. It is a beautiful morning. And I am looking at a very rare day when there is nothing in my calendar, nothing I have to do, nothing urgent that I should do. There are, of course, lots of things that I could do, that need to be done. But nothing that absolutely has to be done today (Though I should perhaps iron my clothes for work tomorrow)