Ode to Kevin

Ode to Kevin - why? Read further.

We went shopping this morning (we are talking Saturday here) to the Prahran market. Melbourne has been really wet in the mornings when I like to get out on the bike but not today. Probably not a bad thing considering we were out at a trivia night and home late last night.

The last time we went to the Prahran market I bought Sue the Jacques Reymond book at the Essential Ingredient Foodie shop. She said to me, "I'm just going to have a look around, why don't you just pop off to the cook book section". So devious that woman.



His Book.



The Recipe



How it should look (from the book). Go Sue.


Did I tell you - Sue speaks green........

Although he is a Frenchman and a French trained chef, his food frequently uses Asian ingredients. The reason he gives for moving to Australia are twofold. One, that he has access to fantastic Asian  ingredients and two, that Australia doesn't have set views on how dishes should be cooked. In other words, he feels free to mess with what are otherwise traditional recipes and of course make up new ones. I dislike the term fusion food, but it's probably correct for many of his recipes. Anyhow, his food is wonderful.

This dish maybe less so, or maybe it was my cooking of it.

I found 3 books I would have liked to buy for Sue at the shop but instead, I took photos with my phone and purchased them from the Book Depository from the UK at half price. Tell you more when they arrive but they are about the historic Paris bistros and restaurants.

Getting back to the shopping - Rabbit, duck, quail were all on the list but it was mainly the rabbit (Lapin for you Francophiles) Sue had in mind for a recipe from Jacques' book. It may be because a friend of ours whom we caught up with at the Trivia night was distressed because Kevin, her rabbit was missing. Now I don't know if she suspected Sue had snuck in earlier in the day BUT!
Anyway Kevin did turnup thye next morning snuggled up in their garage - cut little thing he is with those floppy little ears - I met him Sunday morning. He's very cute and sociable and at a guess he would be very tender.

The shoulder and forelegs of the rabbit are browned to make the slow cooked sauce

with veggies

The sauce has quite a lot of ginger, with a balsamic reduction and then hoisin sauce, Dijon mustard and a few other bits and pieces. I'll post the recipe if anyone wants...the sauce was quite nice, but not fabulous.

It reminds me of the joke about Watership Down. You've read the book, seen the movie, now try the stew.

Does anyone know who sang the soundtrack song "Bright Eyes" to the movie - no prizes???????

Reymond is a Frenchman who came to Melbourne in 1983 and became one of us. I remember Sue and I going to a Mornington restaurant (on the peninsula) where he was the head chef and I tried for the first time - Oeufs en Meurette or poached eggs in red wine sauce. I've never been big on eggs but I tried this again at Auxerre, France in 2009 and absolutely loved it.

I've posted on M Chapoutier wines before. He's from the Languadoc region in the south west of France. His labels have braille. Recently he has invested in winemaking here in Victoria and so we tried one of his Shiraz or Syrah varieties.

Ready to cook with the sauce and resting on a bed of sliced potatoes.

Ready to eat - Couldn't wait



All gone and for me (Leon that is) sooo enjoyable with the wine.

 Leon really enjoyed this dish, but I don't think I'd bother making it again. I wasn't overly thrilled with the sweetness of the hoisin as I think it masked the beautiful flavour of the rabbit. It was very tender, the potatoes had good flavour, but...nah, not a favourite. Especially when a farmed rabbit costs about $20. It's not too difficult to get wild bunnies which are cheaper, although they are still not generally carried in supermarkets or most butchers, and while their flavour is, in my opinion, superior, they can be tough and not suitable for  relatively quick cooking.

This afternoon I intend to make some gougeres also from a recipe in the book, so hopefully they turn out well. I bought a beautiful Gruyere type cheese made in Tasmania to go into them, and they should go nicely with a nice glass of bubbles this evening. Tasmania makes some very nice cheeses and has some lovely cool climate wines also. A beautiful part of Australia. Leon and I honeymooned there, many, many moons ago.With coffee we shared a very nice and smelly washed rind cheese and a soft blue cheese from Tasmania along with some quince paste and thin crackers. Mmmm, yummy.

As we post this, its Sunday night and we are ready to relax in front of the telly and have an early night. We'll catch up with you on "Wednesdays in France" when we discover a Brocante in Le Bugue.

Hope your weekend was enjoyable.

Maybe we'll cook pork next weekend.

Tom Roberts - Australian Impressionist

Not a great deal happened this weekend - well other than having an early Saturday morning ride with my fellow cyclist on the famous Beach Road on the edge of Port Phillip Bay, then meeting up with a client to do some weekend business negotiations. Oh, yes - then the girls had an exciting crochet night while us boys decided on a Thai dinner at the local restaurant and then back to watch a stage of the Giro Italia. Sunday morning was a late get-up to mow the lawns before a luncheon with our youngest son's girlfriend's mother (looking serious) before getting home to blog.

So you can see that we really were "light on" for blog stuff.
I decided that due to a fellow blogger saying he liked Impressionist artists, that I would extend on our Aussie Impressionist artists. Tom Roberts is one of my favorites.
As an art student in the 60s I was introduced to the paintings of Impressionist Tom Roberts. I studied art at Preston Tech before moving on to being a display assistant at Myer in the city. Some of his paintings hung on the walls of the Melbourne art gallery and our teachers took us there.


Shearing the Rams

Melbourne scene

Roberts was born in 1856 at Dorchester, England but after his father passed away, his mother and Tom migrated to Australia in 1869. They settled at the inner suburb of Collingwood where my ancestors lived.
It wasn't long after arrival he started to show promise with the brush and started studying art. Later in the 1870s he won an award for a landscape painting and in 1874 joined the National Gallery School.

From his paintings, I believe he saw the Australian landscape, particularly the bush with different eyes from past artists. His paintings took on a look of the French Impressionists and this influenced other local Melbourne artists. In particular, Fred McCubbin joined Roberts to paint at Studley Park, Kew. This was an area of preserved bushland across the river from working class Collingwood. He and McCubbin would walk along Johnston Street from where Roberts lived in Collingwood to paint in the parklands. Studley Park has memories for me also. My grandparents lived within the parklands a century later. My grandfather was a park caretaker and I would spend weekends in the biggest backyard ever.

Mentone Beach.
I know this area very well, its probably more Beaumaris and I suspect its the area where we would buy our mussels from.

Boat on the Beach - Queenscliff
Queenscliff is on the other side of the bay from Mentone. There's a ferry that runs from the tip of the Mornington Peninsula at Sorrento that goes past the heads to Queenscliff.

In 1883 Roberts took off to London and then to Spain to absorb further influences from other artists overseas. When in Spain some of these influences showed in his paintings while there. He returned back to Melbourne in 1885 to meet with Arthur Streeton (later Sir) and during 1887 they both would paint in our local area of Mentone and Beaumaris with other artist that would eventually join them two years later at Eaglemont and Heidelberg in the northern part of then rural Melbourne not far from where I grew up and spent hours riding my bike as a teenager.


Artist Camp
This is an area that I once lived close to. Over the years, Eaglemont had some of the most beautiful homes built within the Edwardian era and Art Nouveau style.



Darebin Creek
This was an area close by where I race on the indoor Velodrome on Thursday nights. Have you noticed that there's a theme happening here????



Roberts - taken as he was in the process of painting the above masterpiece

The finished painting



A Summer Morning

 I can't help feeling that Tom Roberts and I had something in common in some sort of strange way. He settled in Collingwood where my ancestors lived. He painted initially in the parklands where I played as a child with my grandparents. Later he painted in the suburb where I now live and again later with the Heidelberg school of impressionists, he painted around the hills where I used to train.

It was more than a decade ago when writing my book on Rob Roy Hill Climb, I met a man by the same name. This Tom Roberts that I interviewed talked about his motor racing career and the famous cars he owned. I touched on the subject of his name being the same as the famous artist and he told me that Roberts was actually his great Uncle.
Tom has a Gallery in Kew which is just across the Yarra river where his Great Uncle established the Heidelberg School of Artists.
Tom Roberts Gallery website
http://www.kewgallery.com.au/

I'm sorry that not much happened this weekend to report, maybe next weekend will be more exciting.....

As Weekends Go!!!!

This Saturday night was our first open fire for the coming winter season - we love winter in Melbourne. Open fires, scarves and overcoats. All the seasons have their special moments to enjoy. Coming home from work Friday arvo, the traffic was chaotic. The freeway was bumper to bumper on the Bolte bridge that spans the Docklands waterways BUT, there was a "special moment".

Storms approaching



I detest Friday late afternoon on Melbourne's freeways. One consolation is that Friday Champagne waiting for me when I get home.

Normally you are travelling at 80 kph and you don't have an opportunity to view the skyline of Melbourne. On this occasion with the stop-start traffic, high above the waterways, I could see the impending storm rushing towards the CBD. Blue turned to grey as the skies darkened. Like the Crowded House song, "Four Seasons in One Day", the storm had passed over and glimpses of blue poked through the clouds.
Friday night for us is Champagne to celebrate the start of the weekend and we had plans - firstly a very special friend with his lady were coming for dinner on Saturday night. Sunday was a cycling day where I was to introduce a group of my cycling friends to the excitement of riding on a steeply banked indoor velodrome - but more about Sunday later.

Sue being the obsessive foodie that she is, is preparing the meal as I write this. Now how obsessive is she did I hear you ask!
Well she's even instructed me on how to place these new plates on the table. I'm told to place the higher outer lip to the outer side - my God!!!!!
Oh yes, the other instructions included vaccuming, tidying, preparing the open fire, buying the wine for the meal - it's a tough life.

The wine:
A Hunter Valley Verdelho white for the entree.
For the main course, our favorite Cotes-du-Rhone from M.Chapoutier (2007).
We discovered a lovely sticky last year in France from Monbazillac through a friend who lives in Paris.
I found two bottles falling into my basket as I left Uncle Dan's cellar.
One for the desert and one for us at a later date.

The Menu:
Entree - Arancini Balls with a Capsicum Sauce. (What are these Sue? BTW, she talks in green)
Little balls of risotto stuffed with peas and mozzarella. Bought from a lovely deli. The sauce I made of roasted red capsicum, roasted garlic, blitzed with a little chicken stock, salt, pepper and a spoonful of cream added at the end. Shaved pecorino to finish.

Main Course - This is a Cous Cous chicken thing with roasted veggies of pumpkin, carrots, red onion, sweet potato, fennel, and that's about all I know - Hey Sue, can you explain this for our readers please?
Sure Leon..a bed of cous cous with raisins, perserved lemon and pomegranate. Then chicken marinated in a chermoula sauce then roasted and placed on top of the cous cous with a garlicy sauce on top. A little bed of rocket in the middle. Served with the cumin roasted veggies Leon mentioned, except for the fennel, which was sliced finely and added to spinach and fresh orange in a salad.



The dining table set ready for the guests. Sue's cook books and my CDs in the background.
And she says I have too many CDs - Ha!

Desert - Vanilla Panna Cotta with this really yummy raspberry coulis (which I got to try earlier) and almond bread. Sue how did you make that raspberry thing?
It was a vanilla and orange panna cotta, as I infused the cream with orange rind and a vanilla pod. Cheez Leon. The raspberry "thing" coulis was just blitzed raspberries with a little icing sugar and a little lemon juice.
It was a relaxing and pleasant Saturday night spent with friends.

My job is to be entertaining while clearing the table, bringing the kitchen back  from a middle eastern war zone and washing the dishes, etc.
Hmmm.......so that's what he does. Sometimes my kitchen still has a middle eastern accent in the morning!

Hope I can get up in the morning for a 7.30 am start.

Yes, I did and we are at the track. It's Sunday morning and I have a gaggle of newbies for their first ride on a steeply banked board track. They enjoyed themselves taking a little while to get used to the 45 degree banked bends but by the end of the day, most were skooting around the top near the fence - I was very proud of their courage.


The smiles of anticipation (or Fear) Behind is that wall of fear to ride on.

 Its now 9.30 pm Sunday Night and time to retire - hope your weekend was rewarding. I think I may have spent all my brownie points today and will have some house repair jobs next weekend.

A Bike Swap Meet and a Wedding

Went to a bicycle swap meet this Saturday - never been to one before.



I'll swap you this for that Monsieur

 I must be getting old because as I walked in the door I saw an elderly gentleman that I used to ride with when I first moved into Mentone.
Tony Birkett migrated from England in 1958 and loves a chat. We sat together for some time while we exchanged stories. I moved on later to be tapped on the shoulder by another old friend, well not so old, my age really. OK then, we are both in advancing years but the friend, I'll call him Graham (that's his name) was well in the know with these strange collector type people and so he introduced me to several people that might help me with my new bicycle restoration project. Its a pre-war stayer or motor pace bike, very big in Germany and Belgium and generally most of Europe I guess. It was popular here in Australia in the 30/40s.
The swap meet was held in Richmond at a bike shop under the Richmond railway station. The station is located on the intersection of Swan and Hoddle streets. I'm not sure where the Swan name came from but Hoddle Street is named after William Hoddle. He was responsible for the original open grid of Melbourne.

Richmond railway in the 1800s before the crossover  bridge

And later the bridge was built to ease congestion (early 1900s) yet in 2011 it is a bottleneck.

In recent times the railway station embankment has been used by street artists.

Initially the railway was a level crossing at the intersection but as the 1800s were drawing to an end, a bridge was built to take the trains over Hoddle Street. Built under the bridge are a number of shops, one being Abbotsford Cycles which held the swap meet. As we arrived my other friend, Bob - that's his name as well, spied a Malvern Star men's bike being unloaded for sale at the swap meet. It didn't get to the front door before Bob did a deal for this 40/50s 2 star Malvern Star bike.

A Malvern Star very much like the one Bob bought.

Later that day we had to get all spruced up for a wedding which was about 100 kms away in the Gippsland district at Nyora on the road to Poowong. True!!!
Steve and Karen were tying the knot and we were invited to join them for this joyous occasion. Karen and I had been training partners for when we were preparing for the World Masters Track Championships in 2007 and 2008. She was successful in standing on the podium with a silver medal and Steve was a great support, not only to Karen but to all of us. The wedding was on their country property at Nyora and the weather was a perfect autumn afternoon.



The butterfly kept Karen company throughout the ceremony, even thru the ring exchange and to the walk to the car awaiting the drive for photos.

Karen's best friend Peta read a Japanese proverb that if you wanted to have a secret kept, then you needed to tell a butterfly, because butterflies can't talk. Peta open this box of butterflies and they all flew amongst the guests but one landed on Karen's hand and that's where it stayed throughout the ceremony and even later as she and Steve walked by the guests afterwards. A very special moment.

Easter in Australia

The Easter Bilby needs to replace the Easter bunny, and not only in chocolate either. The Bilby is a traditional marsupial of Australia. The rabbit which breeds so prolifically in Australia has been a competitor for the Bilby's habitat. Portion of the profits of all chocolate Bilbys goes towards funding its survival.

Happy Easter to all our readers.

For further info on the Bilby, go to
http://www.easterbilby.com.au/default.asp

A No Cycling Weekend

That's right - can you believe it, no cycling this weekend. I had projects on my list for this weekend and what a perfect weekend for it.
It was one of those autumn weekends with cloudless skies, probably in the low 20s but with a cool morning around the 12s.
Just as compensation for a no cycling weekend, we started the Friday night with a gathering of the faithful to watch a re-run of the Paris to Roubaix cycling classic. It's always been a favorite of mine since discovering the sport in my early teens. I remember reading about it several months later when the English cycling magazine, "Sporting Cyclist" arrived in my local bike shop. Newsagents never stocked it.


The Hell of the North, the road to Roubaix.



We enjoyed a Guinness and just a few glasses of red, (that would be Leon, I drank bubbles) so it was with a heavy head that I started on my list of weekend jobs. The first was to clear the driveway of accumulated rubbish that needed to go to the local tip.

After thirty years in the same house, you do collect a lot of useless things, plus my son occasionally will bring something home such as a couch or two found on the hard rubbish collection. It usually finds itself back on the nature strip for the next hard rubbish collection.

Due to the friendship of two fellow cyclists, I was able to borrow a trailer and two extra hands to load and dispose of the rubbish at the local tip. My friend Bob is a hoarder. He has every possession from childhood to this very day - well he has one more thing. While unloading the rubbish, Bob spied an old very large luggage case about the size of a coffee table, and that is what it will probably become in its new life.
Before returning we filled the trailer with mulch - this was the second thing on my list. The garden needed weeding and mulching but that was for Sunday.

Sue must have been very impressed  with (or sorry for) me as she was cooking up a storm for a Saturday night dinner. She said she had a cooking Mojo happening.



Thank you Sue

It was a Jamie Oliver  6 hour slow cooked shoulder of pork which ends up meltingly soft with really crispy crackling and a rich gravy from the vegies it sits on.  Served it with a 2 hour braised red cabbage and apple with spices and such, and celeriac mash. Was very nice. Followed with some Gorgonzola (it was on special!) with muscatels, some Corella pear and amaretto biscuits. Very nice again.

Sunday morning and the bike clothes were on the chair but that's where they stayed - it was time to do the garden weeding and mulching. There's something to be proud of when the garden is in order. Sunday was another perfect autumn day with a cloudless sky, not even a puff of fluffy white in the sky.


Autumn is here and leaves are falling but look at that clear blue sky.
Taken at 5.30 in the afternoon.



Sue doesn't like straight so I do wavy. (Correct)



No more weeds - or out of place grass.



Although its Autumn, there's still some brilliant colour in our garden.

So now the back and front gardens have been mulched, and as I type this, I notice little spots of white paint on my hands. That was the third item on the list. Two weeks ago, I replaced some more rotting timber window frames and they needed undercoating. I can see the list growing for next weekend but I hope I can get a ride or two in first..... 

Mission accomplished this weekend - time to get back on the bike.

A Saturday Night in Maldon

A few of us "Boys" had entered for a Criterium. That's a bike race around a short city block, not more than 1 km around and usually run for 30 minutes to an hour. That was on the Sunday which seemed like a good excuse to get away for the weekend. The race was in Castlemaine which is reasonably large and well set-out on the grid system of town planning. On the way we decided that the little town of Malmsbury would be our late morning stop for my favorite pie and coffee. The whole township would be no longer than one kilometre long, but it has the best bakery. After some tom-foolery and a chit chat with the lady behind the counter, I discovered that she was the daughter of an old cycling colleague. Small world, huh!!!

Entrance to the Malmsbury Bakery outdoor Cafe area - Yes, Autumn is here!

A view from one of the tables in the outdoor tables.

Looking down the main street of Malmsbury.

Early Australian building materials consisted of

Bluestone, Timber and Corrugated iron.

We couldn't get accommodation in the town of the race which was Castlemaine, so we booked in at a B&B 17 kms out at a place called Maldon.

Palm House, built in the 1860s was our Saturday night stay, our room and the other three were all decorated of the era.

We've been there previously. It has several annual events to draw revenue into the town. In Europe, you'd call it a village. Maldon grew out of the Victorian Gold Rush era of the 1850s, as did many of the surrounding towns in the area. We visited Maldon in our classic car days. The Town runs the annual Tarrengower Hill climb for Historic cars - On this particular weekend the town was swamped by classic and historic motorcycles. Many of the riders looked like members of the band, ZZ Top.

The sign says it all. Maldon is in the middle of western Victoria's gold discovery region of the 1850s. I guess it was all very much the same in California's Gold Rush period.

A couple of photos for my blog-mate Jean who likes motorbikes

It's a very friendly town and people stop in the street to chat. The occasional smile and hello can open up a conversation that offers fond memories of a weekend away. We stopped to talk to a few of the motorcycle riders. We even stopped a man that we thought looked familiar and found that he was the brother of a fellow cyclist we rode with many years ago.

Captain John Mechosk found alluvial gold in December 1853 in the Bryant Ranges, now known as Mt Tarrengower. This find was the beginning of the Gold rush in this area and within a few months the local population had swelled to 20,000. In 1856 the new settlement was named for the town of Maldon in Essex, England.

Grand houses and buildings grew on the back of the gold rush and we were fortunate to stay at one in Maldon - The Palm House was established in the 1860s on the main road into Maldon and easy walking distance to the many shops and antique shops. We bought a few bottles of a lovely Rosé that Sue likened to the ones she has tasted in the Touraine.
We wandered around Maldon for the afternoon, intrigued by the originality of the town, it's under Heritage listing.

Dinner that night was at one of the few remaining pubs in town, the Kangaroo. In it's heyday, Maldon had numerous hotels and grog shanties, even it's own brewery.

After a wonderfully sunny afternoon, we oozed out of the Kangaroo pub with a bottle of port under "My" arm to be greeted by a torrential downpour. Those bluestone gutters were flowing with the rain waters and I could see why they were built the way they were.
Arriving home it was time for coffee and port, stories, fibs and jokes ending a great day in Maldon.

Good friends, good food, good wine, good times. I took the pics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldon,_Victoria   For more info on Maldon

Sunday morning, us blokes decided that we would ride to Castlemaine for our race - the weather was sunny but cold and the ride was enjoyable despite the heavy heads from the night before.

A great weekend was had by all.