Mr NQN often tells me that whilst doing jelly cakes and two tier wedding cakes are always nice, what people really want to know is how to make basics. I didn’t believe him of course, until I put up some of my simpler recipes and they were well received. Then I received a copy of What to Cook and How To Cook It by U.K. author Jane Hornby. It shows you how to make meals such as a basic omelette, smoothie, coq au vin, paella to chocolate pots and everything is laid out step by step with clear pictures and photographs.
Part of the Sydney International Food Festival, Jane is also holding a class at the Sydney Seafood School in Pyrmont. The class runs for three hours, including a three course meal, wine and a copy of her book What to Cook and How to Cook It (RRP $59.95).
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I don’t wish to ignite the Sydney versus Melbourne debate. I think you know that as a Sydney born and bred gal I’d instinctively defend Sydney but that’s not to say that I don’t fully appreciate the beauty and splendour of Melbourne. And if the weather were warmer I would perhaps be living there right now. One thing that I don’t ever bother arguing with is the brilliance of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Markets. We have nothing like this in the middle of Sydney. The Queen Victoria Markets are in the heart of the city of Melbourne and it is where you can find some of the most diverse, unusual and freshest ingredients in one place. And Mr NQN and I were about to embark on a guided tour!
Started 132 years ago, the 1000 plus stalls stretch across an eight hectare property. There is the closed building which we’re standing in front of and then the more outdoor area housing the fruit and vegetables. Four thousand people work here on a Saturday and every year 10.5 million visitors come here. It is one of the top Melbourne city attractions.
Offal and more offal!
We enter the meat area and there are three stands that sell all free range produce with most of the produce in Victoria (with some kangaroo from South Australia). We pass another stand where our guide Carmel tells us that they have expanded their offal section. There are dark red plucks (the sheep heart and lungs) which are popular around Greek Orthodox Easter where shopkeepers will stockpile a thousand of these. There’s lamb’s tongues, heart and mini marrows for $1, lamb’s brains for $1.50 each as well as beef tongues with the tastebuds still visible some with a black underside to them.
Female pork guarantee is prominent
The metal hook and rail system above shops
Most of the pork sold is from female pigs (meat from male pigs are said to have a distinct odour to it). Carmel tells us that at midnight to 2am they cool down the entire meat section and the meat luggers enter at 2am and hoist the meat up on the hook and rail system and deliver it to the various stalls. At 3am the butchers enter and do their work.
Gourmet sausages
We then move onto a gourmet sausage stand which are all gluten free using rice flour instead. “What’s your most popular flavour?” Carmel asks. “10 kgs of each!” the owner replies laughing. The most popular is the lamb and rosemary and the lamb and garlic along with pork & fennel and chorizo. In Summer, sales triple for the sausages.
Great deals (and this way of displaying mince-so different to the way we get it)
Prices for meats are quite amazingly good. At Quality Meats eye fillet is $24.99 a kilo and aged porterhouse steak is $20 a tray which has seven large steaks on it.
The best way to see things…
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Prejudices are one of those things that in a civilised society, you don’t want to admit that you have but of course, being human you inevitably do. You prejudge people because your brain tries to sort out friend from foe using a sample size of those you have met or read about. They’re not always correct, of course, many people defy prejudices or stereotypes. After all stereotypes are meant to be broken by personalities and individuals.
Rainbow bow pasta-sourced from unicorns (or the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne)
As I set this down in front of Mr NQN I said “Don’t be put off because of the colour”. I could tell there was slight alarm on his face when he saw how pink and colourful it was. He has a natural aversion to pink things and the suspicion was written all over his face. Until I explained that the pink was from beetroot, the colourful pasta was one that we had bought in Melbourne and not supplied by unicorns and the sauce contains delicious amounts of cream, gorgonzola and jamon serrano.
The sauce is really a cinch, made up in a matter of minutes with a total of four ingredients plus a touch of oil and is perfect for any Breast Cancer dinners or lunches you may be hosting or participating in or Spring lunches. It is absolutely delicious and has a balance of salty from the jamon serrano which I was saving from my lovely Brookvale Meat Supply delivery, sweetness from the roasted beetroot and richness from the cream and gorgonzola. I cannot stress how delicious this is. Don’t feel like you need to source this rainbow pasta from passing flying unicorns to make this dish, regular bows will do.
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“Chocolate naan…” Queen Viv’s voice on the other said and that’s about all that I heard apart from the words “afternoon tea”. Queen Viv’s colleague had mentioned the new concept of an Indian Afternoon Tea at Aki’s, Woolloomooloo and like I complain that Mr NQN has selective hearing, drowning out all cleaning requests with a gentle buzz, all I heard were the two words: chocolate naan.
I know, I know, high tea has a different meaning to afternoon tea and despite its lofty name, high tea was usually served to the working class, I get that, but I suspect that this high tea is not a working class affair. It’s on the Finger Wharf in Woolloomoloo and despite the sometime rainy day, there are already eager diners partaking of the afternoon tea. On every day during the month of October as part of the Crave International Food Festival in Sydney it will then be hosted every Sunday from then after.
Miss America and I take our seats at a table and we can see another table have just received their three tiered stand and are busy taking photographs of each other with their prized lunch. I secretly love it when tourists are about as I feel less conspicuous with my camera 
With the High Tea menu ($45 per person), you can choose a soft drink from a choice of three: masala chai or mango, sweet or salty lassi. Then you choose a Brown Brothers Sparkling wine-either a glass of their limited release Prosecco or their NV Pinot Noir Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. In the interests of trying something different, we order one of each sparkling, a masala chai and a mango lassi.
Mango lassi, masala chai and Brown Brother sparkling wines
Our sparkling wines arrive first and then the masala chai which is a strong black tea made with Indian darjeeling masala tea with cardamom and milk. The mango lassi is a mango flavoured buttermilk yogurt drink which is just the right consistency.
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This past week has been one of the most frantic of my life. I can’t quite reveal why just yet (although I’m dying to!), but I do have some rather exciting news to share with you soon. But with excitement comes much work and these past few days have passed by in a blur of sleepless nights-one evening involving a torturous one hour of sleep where I watched the projection clock goad me with it’s pulsing red digits and tell me that I was about to have the least sleep ever. I was tired and out of sync yet still I was deliriously happy.
In the midst of all of this activity I had promised to make Christie some cupcakes for her impending baby shower. She was having a Spring themed baby shower so I thought that making bees and ladybirds would be a good idea. I had some floral patterned cupcake liners and some sugar blossoms that I bought from the Adelaide Central Markets. I decided to make her some mango and poppyseed cupcakes as I’ve started to see some delicious mangoes in the stores.
I fashioned the bees much like Nigella’s chocolate bee cake by sticking some flaked almonds in some coloured fondant in place of wings. The ladybirds were sort of ad hoc and I made a vanilla buttercream icing (although a cream cheese icing would do quite nicely too). I rushed about and realised that I had no time to photograph them as I only had a tiny sliver of time between 7:30am and 7:45am one morning in between waking up, packing and catching a plane. Still, despite being a human kerfuffle, could not have been more happily frantic.
In this vein, shamelessly borrowed from the lovely Celia’s fabulously uplifting post from yesterday, this is my list of teeny tiny moments of happiness.
Teeny Tiny Happiness 1: I can pick a seemingly endless supply of jasmine from my neighbours from the bush that creeps out beyond their fence.
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