Welcome!
The view of Christchurch from the Crowne Plaza
Our trip to New Zealand was nearing its final stages. After driving through Hanmer Springs we arrived at Christchurch and checked into the Crowne Plaza Christchurch. We’re given a great room with a welcome plate of goodies including a macaron (how did they know? 
) with the room situated on one of the top floors which means… yes access to the Club Lounge for pre dinner drinks and food and access to the internet. A very nice welcome indeed.
Denheath Custard Slice
I take a moment to scoff down an item that I searched all over the city for, a Denheath custard slice. The lovely Rosa from Cakes by Rosa had taken the time to write out a Christchurch foodie guide for me and she recommended that I try these legendary New Zealand custard slices. I take a bite into the square custard slices topped with sweet dessicated coconut. Wow. The custard is moussey and light but still firm and the whole thing is quickly and rapturously downed by me. And then regret as I know that this square of deliciousness is out of my reach when I get back to Sydney.
Club Lounge
Complimentary nibblies at the Club Lounge
Complimentary nibblies at the Club Lounge
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It all started with a Laduree cooler bag. We had brought one back from our trip to Paris and I was desperately looking for it. We have an apartment so there are very few places that it could hide and I turned the whole place upside down in search for the elusive bag and in turn I found a scribbled note saying “Bannoffee Peanut Butter Cup” in my typically messy handwriting (a handwriting profiler would think I were a doctor). Given my adventure making Peanut Butter cups only a few days before I wasn’t able to put this to the back of my mind like I had when I had written the note. The stars and planets aligned perfectly at that moment and I had everything there was including the motivation and knowledge of how to make them so of course I did.
The Bannoffee Peanut Butter cup of course this would have to be a fresh cup and not one that could sit on the counter for days on end on account of the fresh banana and cream. And would I be able to keep them true to the many layers? Could I fit them in the mould? I decided that if I did want to have the cream, banana, caramel, biscuit, chocolate and peanut butter the Wilton mold wouldn’t do. I’d have to make them in taller patty pans (albeit mini sized in diameter). This would allow for a good ratio of flavours to chocolate and peanut butter.
I tried to variations as the biscuit crumbs had me stumped. How could I get the crumbs to stick without baking it? I didn’t want it to be harder than it already was and omitting them wasn’t an option as Bannoffee absolutely needs to crunchy biscuit. It’s all about balance: the buttery crunchy biscuit, the thick, rich caramel, the simplicity and trueness of fresh banana, the decadence of cream and chocolate and of course the thick tongue sticking peanut butter. Yes it’s all about balance.
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If I ever were in a position to give a restaurant an award for Best Name it would have to be Posh Spice in Newtown. For I am speaking about a restaurant, not the emaciated fashionista ex Spice Girl perched on increasingly vertiginous shoes who only has a fleeting familiarity with actual food.
The entrance to Posh Spice advertises Bollywood Dancing on Friday and Saturday nights and the colourful fuchsia walls and staircase lead to a very nicely outfitted restaurant – one that is adorned with plasma screens playing Bollywood videos, wooden carvings and all things chicly Indian.
The other Posh Spice. She wasn’t there by the way.
Cameron, my husband and I are dining using the Eatability two for one main discount (now finished but keep an eye out for it should it appear again) where feeding two famished men fresh from sailing all day is paramount. We order four mains-the three restaurant specialties, as well as the Spinach & Cheese Naan and the Peshwari Naan and a selection of sides for $6.50 (Katchumber: chopped tomato and onion salad; mango chutney and Raita: cucumber and yogurt).
Aishwarya Rai mocktail $6.50
Given the intriguing names in the cocktail menu like Sex in Mumbai, Slumdog Margarita and Sachin Ballbanger, I start with the Aishwarya Rai, a ginger ale and grenadine mocktail. My husband and Cameron go for the Salty Lassis ($4 each). They’re similar to the Ayran drinks and not too bad although my husband admits he prefers Mango Lassis.
Complimentary appetisers
Our complimentary appetisers are made of deep fried bread, spread with three types of cheese (a mint cheese and two others), battered and deep friend.
Gosht Mirch Ka Salan: Lamb $19
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I never meant to that that girl, quite honestly. You know, the weird one that just has to make something weird when everyone else makes something normal that pleases everyone. It just happened that way. I recall my dad getting a heart shaped thankyou mug from his work and saying “This is weird, Lorraine will like it-she likes weird things”. I don’t know if it’s it’s the chicken or the egg, whether I chose to like spooky or gruesome things or whether they chose me and seeing something similarly off kilter in them as I saw in myself, I embraced it.
Blue cheese and camembert
So when planning the Daring Bakers challenge, I was chatting with Y, whom I often chat to about baking things, and she said that she wanted to do a brie cheesecake and we discussed doing a cheeseplate cheesecake together. As it turns out, life and the fact that neither of us drive prevented us from doing the challenge together (which would have made life easier I’m sure), but I was still determined to do something like a cheeseplate cheesecake as I loved the idea.
Blue cheese cheesecake
Ricotta would have been easy, after all there are plenty of ricotta cheesecakes but I knew that I had to try a Blue Cheese Cheesecake. I figured blue would be suitably strange. I then thought camembert would make a delicious cheesecake and wanted to do a lighter, more moussey or souffle-y camembert cheesecake that wasn’t sweet and therefore could be eaten just like camembert on a cheese plate although I wasn’t brave enough to try that on the blue cheese cheesecake. And by the way, the camembert cheesecake, when it’s just out of the oven is beautifully fluffy and gorgeous eaten with a spoon out of a ramekin and some caramelised onions although it firms up on chilling. On the plate you can also see another cake – a Cheddar cheese and pear cake that wasn’t a cheesecake but more on that another day.
Camembert Cheesecake
I did adjust the recipe so I hope that was permitted as I made two 4 inch round tins of cheesecake to fit the Cheese plate idea (two whacking great sized cheesecakes just seemed a little too much). I also replaced the cream with sour cream and added the requisite cheeses.
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.
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I hope you’ll forgive the culinary traversing across the globe. I still haven’t finished with my New Zealand stories and now I confuse matters by putting up a Tokyo story? I wish I could say that I jetted off to Tokyo briefly but not so. This visit to Sakata Udon was my last Japan story so I thought that I should “get it out” before things became irrelevant or changed.
Having lost my faith somewhat in my Lonely Planet Tokyo edition (hopeless maps getting us lost most of the time) we had originally tried to go to Sakata Udon in Ginza only to find ourselves in front of a demolished building. Granted the fact that it had been demolished at the end of last year wasn’t Lonely Planet’s fault as they scarcely had time to update their book but the fact was we wandered around for ages trying to find the pre-demolition spot that they had given directions to. We finally found it after a bit of research and a helpful hotel concierge who had given us a proper map.
Finding restaurants in Tokyo tends to mean that you often have to look up. Literally. A lot of the great find restaurants are housed not just on the ground floor but upper floors of a grey building. Sakata Udon is on the 3rd floor or a building and it doesn’t have an English sign, just script in Japanese. It was recommended by Lonely Planet with this praise “If you eat only one meal out, you’d do well to eat it here.”
We enter and it’s all brown woods and soothing tones – we had almost expected a place like a ramen joint, a bit rough and ready but this is much nicer. We sit down and receive some refreshing chilled tea while we peruse the menu (they have an English menu although this might be abbreviated). A friend of mine recommended “Bukkake Udon” which had me almost splattering my drink in all directions when I heard the name. For those of you including my parents who don’t know what Bukkake Udon might suggest, don’t worry and don’t google it (especially if you’re my parents!). For those of you who do, it’s not what you think. Bukkake is a colloquial expression that means “throw something at/in/on” so the udon is just that.
We can see the making of the udon through a window (as well as a small window when you step out of the elevator) and before long our bukkake udon arrives (we ordered one dish cold as it’s a hot day) as well as a hot Tempura udon soup. I also get my husband a serve of Nattō, the Japanese version of Australian Vegemite that the Japanese love but I personally find repulsive but I want to hear what my husband thinks of it.
Nattō Y150
I can see that while he is chewing it, he desperately wants to like it (being a boy he wants to say that he likes really grotesque sounding food) but it’s only one mouthfull for him and the remaining Nattō goes untouched.
Bukkake Udon Y700
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