Do you ever have those days when nothing ever goes right in the kitchen? As if everything that you make is cursed and nothing turns out just how you want it to be? I’ve had my share of those days on occasion. I call these curse days. The best I can do is try again another day and usually lo and behold, the next day things just happen to work, even if you are using the very same recipe!

Today however I was lucky. I must have been blessed by the gods of pastry because the two things that I made today the pineapple meringue pie and these Gundel pancakes actually worked out exactly how I wanted to. I had no time to do another before I went away so I was praying that they would come together. And it was in this rush that I wanted to skip the chocolate sauce part and just mix chocolate and cream together. I was sorely tempted but I decided to give it a go. After all I wasn’t on a curse day so perhaps it would work out fine.  I also thought that this would be wrong as I wouldn’t be making it authentically and there’s nothing I love more when people say that it tastes like it should and there’s nothing I dread more than people saying that it doesn’t.

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My friend M once gave me a packet of quinoa for Christmas and it sat on the pantry shelf for the longest time. I would occasionally glance at it and talk to it. “I know I’m ignoring you but I don’t know what to do with you” I’d say to it like a parent to an unruly teenager on at least on 5 or 6 occasions and then I’d shut the cupboard door like I was the parent shutting the bedroom door on this grounded teen. All I knew was how to pronounce it, keen-wa if you’re curious ( pronounced a bit like Joaquin Phoenix backwards but without the beard and strange behaviour). I had hoped that something would come along to inspire me to make something with it. And like magic it did in the form of a Peruvian cooking class. I’m ashamed to admit that I never knew that quinoa originated in the Andean mountain region so the quinoa probably had no idea what I was saying to it in English .

Royal White Quinoa

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Last year I went to a launch party for Russian Standard held by a Russian Billionaire. Now please understand that I don’t start off every post with a line like this and billionaires aren’t my usual folk. It was held at one of the most expensive places to hold a function (on the North side of the Sydney Opera House under a huge marquee). Models in fluffy white hats slinked past and hors d’oeuvres laden with caviar and sashimi wafted past in lavish amounts. At about 9pm the Russian billionaire arrived and left a few hours later citing an early breakfast with Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch as the reason for not staying out later.

I wondered to myself, how do they know each other? Do billionaires join a secret billionaire club and was rule No.1 “Please photocopy all bank statements and post them to us for verification”? And sure he may know Rupert but how does he know the kids and most importantly… what did they serve for breakfast? Caviar may seem a little extreme for an Australian breakfast (and he probably bathes in the stuff) but toast with jam or cornflakes seems like you haven’t quite made an effort for your international guest.

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