I’ll admit I was veeeery sceptical. I don’t usually go for chill out CDs-for starters I operate at a purely frantic pace and the idea of chilling out to music is something that I only ever really do on islands and even then I’m still thinking about my next blog post or the next recipe that I will be making. So when I was sent a copy of the Vibe Chillout Suite CD I popped it in not expecting much. But I was pleasantly surprised and it seems I’m not the only one. Vibe is the hotel chain and this is their fourth CD and it has just hit Number 6 on the ARIA chart.

There are 40 songs on the two CDs by artists such as Röyksopp, Mark Ronson, Florence and the Machine and Hot Chip as well as Australian artists Angus & Julia Stone, Washington and Sparkadia. Plus legends such as Jeff Buckley, Lenny Kravitz, and Bill Withers are wedged in between debut singles from young Aussies Gypsy & The Cat, Big Scary, Kid Mac and Georgia Fair. The CDs can be bought in music stores, downloaded through iTunes or from the Vibe hotel reception or as part of a chillout hotel stay package.

Read More

Not a mountain of snow, but a mountain of salt…

I lick my hand. I taste salty. I taste exactly like Mr NQN does after he has been out all day sailing (although he usually also smells like rubber wetsuit which thankfully I do not). Where am I? I’m discovering how salt is made. A group of eight of us have taken the two hour drive east of Adelaide in South Australia to the area of Price where we will be seeing salt being harvested and the salt farm. Yes put your hand up if you were like me and thought that salt was harvested in salt mines!

First things first. What is the difference between table salt and flake salt which is seen as the more premium salt? The taste of salt itself is dependent on its magnesium content. Flake salt is made into a brine and it is then set and crystallized and then they crack it to produce the distinctive flakey shards. It is exactly the same original product as table salt (although some table salt can have anti caking agents added to it). But between the two types, the shape of the salt crystals and its ability to melt on the tongue determine the taste. Saxa’s flake salt is a softer salt than Maldon salt which is hard when rubbed between fingers. And where does the term salt mine come from? Well salt here isn’t mined, it is farmed but in the Dead Sea, salt is mined as the salt is locked into the ground.

So how do we make salt in Australia? The Cheetham salt farms at Price in South Australia take water from the pure, cold Southern Ocean and deposit it in one of twelve ponds. There are six processes that occur in these twelve ponds and they tell us that salt takes a year to create from start to finish. Each of these ponds are progressively saltier. The first pond is the least salty and has fish in it and  during the months of Summer when they make salt (they harvest it during Winter) the heat from the sun and wind evaporate the water in the ponds.

First of all litres and litres of water are drawn from the ocean into the condensation pond and it moves through the 12 ponds over the course of summer with movement coming from gravity and the evaporation process. The last pond is the crystallisation pond where the water is very high in saline as so much evaporation has occurred. Each of these ponds has a unique ecosystem that supports itself with marine, plane and bird life and humans cannot disturb it. Also the pond system can never go backwards as that would encourage bacteria growth.

One of the early condenser ponds with birds and wildlife

In the final crystallisation pond the salt drops out of the water as the water can no longer support the dissolved salt crystals and the salt settles on the bottom of the pond. The salt is then harvested and then washed with a saline saturated brine which is necessary to ensure that the salt doesn’t dissolve in the liquid. If they are using iodine, they will add it after this step. The washed salt is then placed into enormous salt stacks which resemble icebergs or snow covered mountains for a year. The harvest takes approximate three months to complete.

Magnesium chloride

A by product from the crystallization pond is a secondary deposit collected called magnesium chloride which they use to manufacture cosmetics and to thicken and set tofu. This looks like a clear spirit and is incredibly bitter in taste. You can find it in face creams where it absorbs moisture from the skin and air but gives the skin a moist, dewy feel. Sneaky buggers these cosmetics companies are huh?

The ponds are about 1 foot deep which is optimal for UV light to get in. The ponds also have a “floor” of salt and to create this floor they sacrifice  one season’s worth of salt and then everything else grows over it. We pass samphire bushes which we pick and they’re similar to a very salty small budded cactus with moisture inside and also remind me of very, very, very green grapes. It gets so salty out there and there is so much salt in the air that if you spend a few hours out there you will taste salt all over you. The site is 10kms large and is bordered by national park and they own the surrounding land to that to ensure that they can control the product better so that there aren’t any additives or chemicals added to the soils.

Samphire

The whole process is an organic progress so it is all organically harvested but they point out that salt itself cannot be called organic as it is indeed a chemical called Sodium Chloride or NaCl.

Driving across the salt ponds

Read More

As Chinese parents who bring up children in English speaking countries are wont to do, my parents gave my sister and I Chinese names as well as English ones. My name translated from Chinese into English means “Little Pretty” (although my mother would often sniff that I had more in common with my English name Lorraine which means “warrior” according to the book she used). Not so fortunate was my sister when she asked my father what her Chinese name meant.

“It means ‘Little Homely’” he said.

My father is not usually known for his diplomacy or tact. My mother horrified at his translation scrambled to find a less offensive descriptor and translated it to mean “Little Quiet” before giving up and admitting that my grandfather named me and my grandmother named my sister and that there wasn’t really a word for her name. “I just thought it sounded nice in Chinese” she offered weakly.

And so I knew that it was with both my parents that we had to visit Fei Jei meaning ‘Fat Boy’ in Chinese. Recommended to me by a friend of mine Woolloomooloo resident Petrina formerly at Donna Hay, she was melodically swooning over the omelette said to be lighter than air. Fei Jai is the “fat child” or more accurately small compact moodily lit child of Peter Lew whose uncle owns Flower Drum in Melbourne and Nicole Holloway formerly of Hugo’s. And my Cantonese father who prefers to eat Chinese only food would no doubt have his own opinion of the food. It sits on Challis Avenue or as well call it the street of no restaurant names (aka too subtle signage) and we only find it because we know that it is at number 31.

Scallop and prawn dim sim $15

OK they’re not the cheapest little morsels at $15 for four but they are a cut above the rest. The filling for the siu mai is chock full of plump and juicy Hervey Bay scallops and prawns. And before you know it, your siu mai is gone and you don’t have another to replace it which makes one a bit sad. Between each and every course they clear and replace our plates which secretly pleases my mother who leans over and whispers “I’m very impressed by that” but Mr NQN and I feel that we don’t need such frequent plate changing picturing the towers of plates in the smallish kitchen so we ask to keep our plates.

Crab omelette $16

The star dish, the crab egg white omelette is fluffy and light and creamy with delicate pieces of blue swimmer crab, and not just tiny threads of crab, some big enough to notice that they’re there and it’s made from freshly picked crab. There’s a small bowl of black pepper to sprinkle on top of the omelette which brings it all together beautifully.

Char Siu pancakes $18

Read More