Julien Doré

It ain't over till the fat lady sings! Click to view video on Youtube.



This guy is essentially the French equivalent of an American Idol winner -- his kooky video clips (click to see the Internet version or the other TV version) with this cute little song really won me over. Winners of Australian Idol haven't seemed to fare as well as their French counterparts; we tend to treat them with a bit of derision. (Tall poppy syndrome?) Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, one of his relatives is Gustave Doré, an illustrator.

Orange sorbet

I'm going through a sorbet making phase at the moment: warm weather, lots of gorgeous fresh fruit at the market each week -- how could you not?


The measurements in this recipe are very much an estimation, because it was one of my "add ingredients until it smells right" experiments...

300ml orange juice
zest of 1 orange
50g white sugar
1/2 cup Kaz (a 6% lemon soft drink)
2 tbsp Cointreau
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Heat the orange juice, orange zest and Kaz until boiling. Add the sugar, Cointreau and ginger, and stir until dissolved. Pour into a shallow pan and allow to cool to room temperature. Place in the freezer, stirring periodically every hour for 4 hours, then allow to freeze overnight (or longer) before serving in chilled glasses (the addition of alcohol lowers the freezing point and thus makes the sorbet more susceptible to rapid melting).

In lieu of the Kaz you could use some other kind of lemon soft drink or the juice of half a lemon, and then increase the amount of sugar you add -- the main reason I used Kaz was because I found a nearly empty bottle of it in the fridge, and wanted some extra tang, AND we didn't have fresh lemons... (my culinary inspiration stems mainly from assembling miscellaneous ingredients or leftovers that I find in the fridge or pantry!!)

Licking the Spoon

One of the best bits about being a kid and someone making a cake!

Marseille

I finally managed to visit Marseille -- winds up to 80km/hour, but sunny skies at least! Got my fill of maritime city, the Man in the Iron Mask (castle-prison on the Isle of If) boutque islands (Ratonneau and Pomègues) and soccer (that's football to non-Aussies) Olympic Marseillaise style!

Former Academic Glory

Click to enlarge:



Feeling consummately bored on a lazy Saturday arvo, I decided to Google my name. This was one of the things that came up: a paper I wrote and had published when I was 22, based on the thesis I wrote when I was at university doing my Honours degree. Ah, the fiery passion of youth, and the belief that things are important, that one can make a difference.

Academic research of note completed since then? None.

Amount of passion lost for research into music education after 6 years, 5 supervisors and far too many changes of an uncompleted and abandoned Masters degree? Total.

Piña Colada Sorbet!

Yummy!



Serves 4

200mL coconut cream
400mL pineapple juice
100mL Malibu
50g white sugar

Heat the pineapple juice and allow to boil for 5 minutes. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved, then the Malibu and coconut cream. Pour into a shallow pan and allow to cool to room temperature. Place in the freezer, stirring periodically every hour for 4 hours, then allow to freeze overnight (or longer) before serving in chilled glasses (the addition of alcohol lowers the freezing point and thus makes the sorbet more susceptible to rapid melting).

The recipe above ended up being quite sweet and pineappley, so next time I might try for a larger amount of cream to really bring out that coconutty flavour. In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter so much about the amounts as the stirring during the freezing process so that large ice crystals don't form and the sorbet texture is achieved.

Stormy Perth Skyline

Pic from my aunt of the Perth skyline over the weekend, when there were some pretty insane storms. Notice with the train tracks in the centre of the freeway -- the new Mandurah-Perth rail link that caused so much controversy (should it be built, no we don't want it, well it's being built anyway, why is it taking so long, it's so behind schedule and over budget)! And check out the flooding along Mounts Bay Road!

Si Clark

Feeling slightly despondent about the level of consumerism in modern society today, mostly because Baptiste's parents have rearranged their room for the 3rd time since I've been here, adding new rugs, ornaments and throws to the (still new from the last change) new bed, armchair and lamps. There are two gigantic bags of stuff to be thrown away or stored in the already tightly packed storage space in the garage. And also because during lunch I was flicking through an IKEA catalogue.

So I went trawling through the internet for some statistics or studies about consumerism, thinking that knowledge might make me feel a bit better. It didn't.

But I did come across some pretty cool illustrations by a guy called Si Clark. Kind of freaky, yes, but also kind of cool, and reminds me for some reason of Invader Zim.

Images courtesy of www.artshole.co.uk/siclark.htm.