Cheese and Roogan Josh

So it would appear my blow by blow account of life here has been somewhat slack over the last couple of weeks. What can I say? Life has been hectic.

However things are definitely pulling together, we have our office space, and hopefully we should be (albeit not completely) kitted out by early next week. I also have a flat sorted out in Bondi Junction, and possibly a flat-mate, though I'm waiting to hear back. My culinary experiences down here are also going from strength to strength.

When I first told people I was moving to Australia, one of the first things I was told was that their cheese was rubbish. I was told this by a self confessed cheese-addict who once upon a time spent some time in Melbourne. This was more than a little concerning for someone of my tastes, as cheese is (was) quite a major part of my life. The reasons I didn't change my mind immediately upon this sad fact were twofold: Firstly, what Sam describes as cheese, and what I would consider cheese have vastly diverging definitions. Secondly, they have fricking beaches here two minutes from my front door.

Thankfully, my fears in the cheese department were completely unfounded, as it turns out they can make cheese over here - or rather they can import some rather fine stuff. I'm about halfway through a block of perhaps the stenchiest cheese I've ever experienced - I'm convinced it's imported because judging by the smell it's probably spent a fair while on a container ship, there's also the name: Danish Blue. Holy hel; if it oisn't one of the best cheeses I've ever eaten though - it goes phenominally in a cheese and salami Manwich. There is unfortuantely a bewildering array of frankly abysmmal cheeses, but they are easily avoidable, as most of them come in either "presliced" form or "anonymous yellow plastic cube" varieties, never a good sign - especially when this sort of cheese is the aforementioned Sam's raison d'etre. If he can't stomach it, I think I'll pass.

One thing I was also looking forward to was the plentiful supply of sushi round here. I've had some pretty terrible stuff - I'm still curious how you can make raw fish chewy :( - I've also had some pretty decent stuff for $3-4 a roll. Thats about £2! Talk about a tasty bargain.

At some point in the not too distant past I made a curry with one of this countries national icons - Skippy. The dish is called Roogan Josh, and I promised at the time that I would share the recipe. So here it is. Firstly a word of warning, my cooking is rather "ad-hoc" so these quantities are fairly inexact. Secondly for my UK readers, you may find it tricky to get your hands on the key ingredient, namely the 'roo, but you could easily substitute beef or lamb (or both?!)

Roogan Josh with Mushroom Pillau (Serves 4)

Ingredients

2 cups Basmati Rice
4 Kangaroo steaks
2-3 Onions
4 tbsp Natural Yoghurt
2 Tins Tomatoes
1 cup dried mushrooms
1 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tbsp Cumin Powder
1 tbsp Coriander Powder
1-2 tsp Cayenne Pepper (to taste - careful this stuff packs a punch)
1 tbsp Turmeric
6 Cardamom Pods (crushed to open them up, but still intact)
3 Bay leaves
Handful fresh Coriander Leaves (or a couple of teaspoons dried)

1. Chop the meat into bitesized chunks, about an inch cubed should be plenty. Stick it in a bowl with half the yoghurt, the garam masala, cumin, coriander powder, half the turmeric and cayenne pepper. Massage it all together with your hands and leave it for a fair while to marinate - ideally overnight in the fridge. Be sure to remove it from the fridge at least half an hour before cooking as you want the meat to be close to room temperature.
2. Soak the dried mushrooms in a cup of boiling water and leave to one side. Meanwhile wash the rice in cold water to get rid of any excess starch - repeat until the water runs clear.
3. Fry the onions in some ghee (or cooking oil will do) in a large frying pan or wok, unitl they are slightly browned.
4. Drain the water from the mushrooms onto the rice, and add a further 3 cups of water the the rice pan.
5. Remove half the onions from the pan, and put them to one side. Then add the remaining turmeric, the cardamom pods, bay leaves to the pan and fry for another minute or so. Then add all this to the rice pan, and give it a quick mix around.
6. Put the rice pan on a very low heat with a well fitting lid. The aim is to steam, not boil the rice, so don't remove the lid once it's cooking (it'll take about 20-25 mins).
7. Put the empty wok back on the heat, and once it gets hot put in the marinaded meat, you shouldn't need oil at this stage and it will splatter if you do. Keep it moving until the meat is cooked on the surface.
8. Add the onions which we left to the side earlier back into the wok, and also add the tomatoes, which you can smush up with the spoon if they are whole. Bring it up to a simmer and leave until the rice is cooked.
9. You can tell when the rice is cooked as there will be no water left in the pan and it will be tender to the tooth.
   
10. Add a handful of chopped coriander to the curry at this stage with the remaining yoghurt, stir and serve immediately with some naan (or flat Italian bread covered with garlic& coriander in a pinch ;)

Unfortunately haven't had chance to proof read, but it's bedtime so what the hell. Please let me know of any typos in the comments below.

An Angry Irishman

Last night I went here:














...to see the rather delightful yet angry Dylan Moran. Despite slight issues with the sound, which was too trebley IMHO and thus made his diatribes somewhat tougher to listen to, it was a very good show, with Dylan truly showing the full brunt of his rage. However I can't help but feel that although the Opera House is an unarguably fantastic venue, the sort of crowd it attracts isn't necessarily his target demographic. Case in point being when he got very angry at some posh hooligan taking a flash photo of him (understandably so) mid flow he launched into a tirade against the offending party. Now most audiences would respect the performers wishes at this point and stop bothering him with needless flashes (I say needless because the majority of morons exhibiting this behaviour seem convinced their flash will make a difference from some 100+ feet away - morons reading this: it doesn't). However, the number of morons probably increased after this point, whether they were trying to try and attract his attention in order to have some "witty repartee" with him, or just annoy the "performing unintelligible monkey" I will leave as a thought excercise for the reader.

I should also point out at this stage, that I wasn't alone at the theatre, but with two very good friends Rich and Lucy (who have been begging me for another blog mention), who provided both excellent company, and a half time gin, which is always gratefully received. They are only in Sydney for the rest of the week however I think they will be glad to see the back of my "date-crashing" by the time Friday rolls around :D I was out with them the previous night, and tonight for curry night (Roogan Josh for those suitably curious).

As with any move, the hardest thing to get used to missing is the small things, whether its your local pub, or greasy spoon, or some online service that isn't available in your new place of residence. Trans-continental moves I guess are much more pronounced in that respect I guess and I'm currently looking for equivalents for many regularly used sites such as ebuyer, and toptable. However occasionally you find a gem which wouldn't be possible in your old home for one reason or another. Though my usual daily browsing, I've just discovered rewine which I look forward to trying out as soon as I have a permanent residence sorted. I'm also contemplating using a service such as smartypig to save for a decent camera for taking photos of the beautiful cityscapes Sydney has to offer. Rather than relying on the grainy snaps which only a camera-phone can accomplish.

My first week

What a weird weird place this, the sun rises at 6am and sets again at 5.30pm, and yet the average peak day temperature is about 20 degrees at the moment. It's like having a half day of summer in England, very odd and certainly not helping my jetlag - which is currently causing me to drift off at about 7pm.

Added to this is a ridiculous dawn chorus which begins around 5.30 am and comprises the most god-awful screeching from unidentified bird-life. This is then followed at about 7 am by animalistic grunting emanating from men playing tennis behind my apartment, and the couple in the next apartment.

My life thus far has been fairly low key, I've had one night out with other Nick and Rich & Lucy who are currently visiting from Melbourne. We went to a place called The Clove, on Crown St and I was expecting the worst as most people have told me that Australia curry is pretty dire. However I was pleasantly surprised to be served an edible Lamb Dansak, and the peshwari naan was also pretty commendable, so I will definitely be visiting again. A nice touch was that it was BYOB so we had three bottles of red between us which temporarily negated my crushing drowsiness.

Got a cab home as the buses here are somewhat of an art form. I will probably follow that up in a later post once I've had a bit more experience of them. The tricky part is knowing when to get off as I suspect I've been somewhat spoiled by the disembodied voice on London buses. I'm contemplating investing in a GPS to aid me in this....

Went for a walk down to the beach again yesterday, but it was dark and I didn't feel like being dragged to my death so didn't go in the sea, just bought a pizza from a friendly independent Mediterranean place, I think the guy called it "Pizza Hut", and snarfled half whilst watching prison break. The rest I had for lunch today.

My flight and first day

FIRST POST!

Right so I should probably start at the beginning.

After a few emotional goodbyes, I finally carried through with my threats, and got on a plane to Hong Kong (the first of 2 legs to Sydney). This was mostly uneventful due mostly to the fact that it was 11pm by the time I'd eaten my second dinner, and as I'd had countless booze throughout the day and a few glasses on the plane I dozed off watching Quantum of Solace. Woke up some time later, unfortunately due to the fact I wasn't wearing a watch I actually have no idea how long I slept, but it didn't feel like very long. However bacon is a very hard smell to sleep through and I soon woke up once I'd been handed breakfast mere moments later, the coffee also helped :)

About an hour later we landed in HK, at ~17:00 local time (WTF - I just had breakfast) and had just enough time to stretch my legs and find some time to send some emails which I'd drafted on the plane. Thankfully the only wireless internet was at the other end of the terminal so my legs got a much needed stretching trying to get online. Before I knew it, it was time to get on the plane again - joy - but the lovely stewardess handed me a glass of champagne to ease the blow and we were soon airborne again.

Unlike the first leg I had someone seated next to me on the second. Unfortunately rather than helping to break the monotony he didn't speak much English, and just spent the entire journey asleep. I also managed to acquire a special laptop cable for the plane as by now Candy was running distinctly low on power, this enabled me to catch up on the latest Doctor Who amongst other things. However after about 2 hours of telly I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, dispite the fact I'd only been awake about 6 hours and I fell asleep to the dulcet tones of Dave Gilmour.

Once again I wake up to the smell of bacon, rather worryingly nearly missing the food trolley in my slumberful state. Just a bacon and egg roll this morning as we were only airborne for another hour, so I watched some Simpsons and eagerly awaited our descent. Another uneventful landing and into the airport where my first encounters with Australians were to begin.

Firstly, and rather oddly, there was duty free on the way into the airport. As it happened this was rather fortuitous as I'd been unable to acquire a UK -> Oz power adaptor for Candy. Whilst browsing the shelves I was accosted by the weirdest noise I have perhaps ever heard. It turns out a sales assistant was asking me if I needed any help, which took me half a dozen attempts to decipher. In my defense my brain had barely woken up and the guy sounded stoned out of his tree - still it allowed me to calibrate my accent filter so hopefully my next encounter with the wildlife would go slightly smoother.

The next encounter was quite honestly the most miserable person I've ever met. He was on the passport control desk, and to be quite honest don't think he said a single word to me. Luckily it didn't take much to interpret his shrug/grunt/hand-gesture to mean "everything seems to be in order, please carry on your merry way". Next up: customs/quarantine where suddenly everyone was very friendly. I was particularly worried as I'd ticked "yes" to three of the questions on the customs form. First guy asked me what items I was bringing in that were worth over $900, so I told him I had a laptop. He asked if it was a nice one, I stared blankly at him for 30 seconds trying to work out if this was a trick question. I just shrugged and he let me go - phew. The other "questionable" items I had were animal products (though it turns out leather doesn't count) and a box of tea. Customs guy asked me if it was black tea, to which I replied in the affirmative, and he told me I had to have my bag X-rayed. (I'm curious what would have happened if it was green) but all was fine - no wildlife in it, and I was free to enter the country. w00.

I was then wondering what to do next and the idea of getting a bus to my apartment fleetingly went through my mind for all but the briefest nanosecond, by which time I'd autopiloted to the taxi rank - thank goodness for my sub-conscious - and in another half hour I was there! Sort of... You see it turns out it was 7.30 in the morning, and there was nobody around at such a godforsaken hour. Except a random maintenance guy who generously let me stash my bags in reception until it opened.

With bags ditched, I did what any sane man would do after 24 hours on a plane. I went to the beach, in my jeans and clumpy shoes I have to say I felt a little out of place strolling along the sand surrounded by joggers - haven't they got better places to be at 8am? Was pretty warm in the sun but it suddenly clouded over so I wandered to find some internet to send some more emails.

With emails sent I wandered back to the apartment complex, where the lovely Rosa let me check in early (should have been 1pm). Turns out she has a daughter living in Pimlico, small world... I had just about enough time to take a shower, holy god that felt good, and unpack before heading into town to meet my namesake for a chat.

After a bit of confusion as to where we were meeting, we went for a late lunch at Westfield (those guys are everywhere). Bought myself some essentials: a mobile, a skype headset and some kangaroo steaks for dinner before disappearing off home. With steak cooked and eaten, it was impressively tasty, I went to bed for some much required sleep.