I would, however, like to point out that the ash on the goats cheese was not ash at all, but crushed black sesame! Isn't that the best idea ever? And while J was eating the second fish course, Russeth and I were eating lamb breast. Please see above. I didn't know that lambs had breasts but I'm glad that the chef at the Estelle knew.
Readers, please do yourself the favour of going there and putting all of their delicious things in your mouths.
People, do yourself a favour and eat at The Estelle. You absolutely will not regret it.
Last year I went there for a friend's birthday drinks but I was pregnant and I wasn't drinking. Or eating. But I did have a very little taste of an espresso martini and a nibble on some food and it all seemed delicious. I always meant to go back, but you know how it is. Anyway, then a couple of weeks ago Russeth called me up and told me his boss had eaten there and they had a new chef who'd worked at Europe's fanciest, famousest restaurants and they did a delicious degustation menu for a very affordable price. So K, Russ and I went along for lunch on Sunday.
Who doesn't love a long lunch? A long, moderately boozy lunch is one of the best things. And the lunch at Estelle was hands down some of the best food I have ever eaten. Before the 5 course degustation even began they brought out snacks! Are you kidding?!?! I love these guys! Chickpea flour chips and some sort of sardine cracker with sour cream. Snacks plus meal. I love you Estelle.
I don't want to say too much about it. Mostly because my mouth will start watering a lot and I will feel sad I am not eating there right now. Plus last night after reading about food on the Internet I had to get out of bed to eat a piece of toast and I don't want that to happen to you guys. Perhaps you should just have a look at what we ate.
Reading The Devil Wears Prada was worse than reading The da Vinci Code. Why I did either of these things, I do not know. I guess I was in a really weird place back then. When I think of the book The Devil Wears Prada my face unconsciously contorts into something I assume is very unattractive. What I am trying to say is I hate that fucking book so much I would only watch that film if I was in some sort of clockwork orange nightmare strapped to a chair with my eyes held open by clamps. And I'm not even going to tell you what I think about Hathaway!
2. Anne Hathaway is meant to be unattractive and like she needs to lose a few pounds. Its ridiculous. Anne Hathaway is really annoying, but she is really good looking. No one is buying that ugly duckling BS.
3. Its not funny at all.
4. People with shitty jobs can't afford to live in totally cute apartments in Soho.
5. There is no friend chemistry amongst Anne Hathaway and her friends. Their 'banter' is appalling. They all seem like knobs.
6. We are meant to feel sorry for her because of all the crappy things she has to put up with at work. Everyone has had shitty jobs. I used to have a job that involved checking for fungus between the toes of old ladies. And that was a volunteer job!*
7. Apart from a few cute outfits in the post-makeover montage, Anne Hathaway totally looked better before the makeover.
8. It's not charming at all. Or insightful. Or enjoyable.
9. The fact that it is so crap is bad for Emily Blunt, who I really like. She is married to Krasinski in real life!
*Chambo and I once volunteered at a hospital where they did a lot of hydrotherapy with oldies who had had hip replacements, strokes, etc. We would get in the pool and teach them aqua aerobics. But first we had to check between their toes for fungus. It sounds worse than it was.
Your croissants were the yummiest ever! I'm so glad you made them, and that I got to eat one, while sitting in those extremely comfortable chairs they have at Gold Class Cinema whilst watching HP7pt2 on Saturday (best film ever, BTW).
But mate, even though you've totally convinced me that making croissants isn't really a big deal, I am pretty sure I would stuff it up when it comes to cutting the squares and rolling them up. Recipes that involve too much spatial reasoning are my dead set Achilles heel, no matter how clear the instructions. Oh well. Still worth a try, n'est-ce pas? A croissant by any other shape still a croissant, I think you'll agree.
I, as much as the next person, think that conspiracy theorists are crazy. Of course I do. BUT, I can't help but think that there is a conspiracy being orchestrated by the food industry. Like, they are always trying to make us think that making stuff is hard or some sort of big deal. But making stuff isn't hard! A couple of Christmases ago I got an ice-cream maker. Shit, it is so easy to make delicious ice-cream!
And then, the other day, I made croissants! It was so goddamned easy. I can not actually confirm that my idea that croissants would be hard to make was in fact put in my brain by the food industry or myself based on the fact they are so freaking buttery and twirly and delicious. Maybe I just I assumed they would be hard and labour intensive. But however that idea got in there it was an IDIOT of an idea. AN IDIOT! Croissants are so easy and the ones I made were among the best I have eaten. For reals. And I have eaten a lot of croissants in my time.
Because I like to eat croissants I have been thinking for a long time that I would like to try to make them. Then the other day I bought Gourmet Traveller. I never buy Gourmet Traveller. But for some reason something took me over and I just bought it. (It was like the time I was pregnant but didn't even know it and I was hungry at the supermarket and couldn't leave the chocolate aisle even though I never buy chocolate for a snack. And I couldn't understand why I wanted to buy chocolate so badly. It was a true sign.) So I bought Gourmet Travellerand when I got home and started reading it I saw they had an article on croissants with a recipe. A SIGN! A few days later I was making those bad boys.
The recipe is here. But let me give you a basic run down of how to make them: Make a dough. Let it rest in the fridge. Smash and roll some butter into a rectangle and put in the fridge. An hour later take out dough and butter. Roll out dough, put butter on top and fold dough over it. Roll out and fold into thirds. Sit for an hour. Then take out of fridge, roll and fold into thirds. Sit for an hour. Repeat 2 more times. Then after an 8-12 hour rest make croissants. Let rise then cook. It is actually only about 20 minutes of work, and most of that is just the making of the actual croissants. If this is how easy croissants are, what else could they be keeping from us?! What other delicious food should I be making, not buying?!?!
YAY! Freaky Friday! I mean Friday Favourites! Finally, Friday, you are here and we can think and talk about Prince. Mate, I am so glad you bought Prince up because I really love him so much.
There was a time in my life when I just used to hang out in my room listening to Prince for hours on end and on reflection I wonder why I don't do this more now.
God, to pick a favourite Prince song is like I imagine picking a favourite child might be. There are so many great ones. Raspberry Beret and Purple Rain are two of my favourites, both in life and in karaoke. And let me clarify that when I talk about favourite Prince songs this also means favourite all time songs.
Little Red Corvette is also another personal favourite. This is actually the song that made me really realise how awesome Prince was. I should confess that as a child in the eighties I remember that people would all talk about Prince as a musical genius and I didn't really get it. But as I matured I realised that maybe those musical commentators did know what they were talking about. Also I have to say that contrary to the essence of Friday Favourites I actually think all these songs are also best things.
Anyway, there are so many Prince songs that I love, but I think the one I have to nominate as my Friday Favourite is If I was Your Girlfriend. It has a good beat and you can dance to it. But there is more to it than just that. The song is Prince wondering what life would be like if he was the female best friend of his ex-girlfriend. What a creepy, awesome approach to a break up song! Dude is a genius! Also it is funny. "Can we just go to the movies and cry together?...Baby can I dress you, I mean help you pick out your clothes before we go out?" HAHAHA. Man, I love Prince! And I really love this song.
Welcome to the first installment of Miss Soft Crab's Friday Favourites!
Friday Favourites is what happens when it's Friday, and we have a favourite thing we would like to share with the crab community.
It is also what happens when something is not necessarily a best thing, it's just a favourite thing. It has a little special place in our hearts, but isn't hands down a best thing. For example, let's say that one of these days I want to do a post about cheese. Cheese is, absolument, a best thing. But maybe instead of posting about cheese in general, I post about babybel. I'm not sure if it could be described as a best thing, but a favourite thing? Sure. Look, this isn't science everybody. It's just a couple of ladies talking about some things that they really like. So here goes with Friday Favourites!
Readers, my first Friday Favourite is the song Seven by Prince. As we all know Prince wrote pretty much all the great songs in the eighties and nineties. All of them. If one wishes to choose a favourite Prince song, they have tens to choose from. Maybe even one hundred. There are so many options. But we're not here to talk about options, we are here to talk about favourites and for me, that's Seven from the love symbol album. I'm not sure I can explain why I love it so much. Maybe its because you don't really hear it as much as some of the others. Maybe it is because the lyrics have this kind of dark biblical thing going on. Like if Prince had written all the hymns we had to sing at catholic school, then this is what we would be singing. That is very appealing to me. In actual fact, I think that the reason I like Seven so much is because clearly, it is not one of Prince's best songs, and yet it is a shit -hot song that makes me so super happy whenever I hear it. It came on when I was in a shop recently and though I hadn't heard it in years and years I immediately thought to myself yes. YES! Seven, you are an awesome awesome song and I am choosing you as my first Friday Favourite. Have a quick listen everybody!
I'm so glad you brought this up because I have been wanting to talk about butter for ages. I'm actually surprised that we waited this long to talk about it.
First, bread and butter. Bread and butter is pretty much the best thing in a world full of best things. No matter how many delicious things I eat and will continue to eat (insha'allah), I am never ever ever going to get sick of bread and butter. It is straight up delicious. My heart sinks a little whenever I see bread and olive oil on a restaurant table. I eat it, of course, but I don't love it. Actually, sometimes I do, if the oil is particularly nice and I put a little salt on my plate and then dip the bread in the salt after dipping it in the oil. Then I love it. But still, I don't love it as much as bread and butter.
I love how you can put butter in something, and then on something. The other day I made pierogi. I put butter in the dough, butter in the potato and beetroot filling, and then butter and chives on top when I served it up. Somehow, it came out not tasting very buttery, just extremely delicious.
I love how butter is a friend to the sweet dish, and a friend to the savoury dish. You can't say that about many things. Salt, maybe. Rice, I guess. Probably lots of thing. But butter, you do it with such grace.
I could go on and on but I am getting really hungry, and must stop now. But finally, I just want to mention that I think butter and mushrooms also go together beautifully.
Butter, I love you on all breads. Not with other things. You go to waste on a salad sandwich. But on your own you shine. You are good on white bread and on multigrain. But I love you on rye bread best of all. I think it is the way rye bread is so fragrant and a little bit sweet. It is a beautiful marriage with you, butter. Your salty, creamy deliciousness. In debate about same sex marriage people often say that the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. But the marriage of flavors of butter and rye bread is as beautiful as any heterosexual marriage goddamn it.
Butter, I love you with corn too. Char grilled, sweet, hot corn. When you and corn get together you turn two nice simple things into a really beautiful thing. Butter, when you get on corn it's like when the dorky girl takes her glasses off in a movie so we can realise how beautiful she is.
You used to be cream, butter. Then they churned you from one beautiful thing into another. How do you do it. Cream! Butter!
Without you, garlic bread is nothing. And where would croissants be!?
Of course I don't eat you all the time butter. But that doesn't mean I don't care about you. I just thought you should know.
So in the interest of being able to relate to your morning post I went and had a look at the Herald Sun website and the pictures of the Twudd wedding and readers 2011 hottest WAG poll. (I can't believe that is thing. ) And I learnt this: the Twudd wedding did not look classy; and WAGs all pretty much look the same. How readers can tell them apart to judge who is hotter completely baffles me.
To be fair to the WAGs though the majority of them were smiling in their pictures with only a few remaining to pose with that stupid open mouth face.
This Hun gallery lead me to another called 'Punching above their weight'. This was basically a bunch of footballers and their girlfriends based on the premise that the WAGs were too hot for the them. But, though there are some pretty unattractive footballers around, it basically just looked like a bunch of regular looking dudes with some plastic ladies. The couple I was most struck by, who actually seem perfectly matched in terms of attractiveness, was Barry Hall and his girlfriend. They are not just similar in terms of attractiveness but also in terms of features. They look alarmingly similar in fact. A total brother/sister couple. Am I right?!
Yesterday on Chops at Home, Crimpy reviewed the Carlton football club theme song, and I provided special comments. I opined that this song is a total snore fest, which it is. This is not a controversial opinion, but I like to think that in the same way the flap of a butterfly's wings in the amazon can lead to a tsunami in the pacific (not that I want it to! please stay still little butterflies!), maybe Crimpy's post was the trigger that eventually caused Rebecca Twigley to go in to labour and give birth to the Twigley Judd (Twudd) baby. The birth of the Twudd baby was certainly the trigger that prompted me to look at pictures of R-Twig and C-Judd's wedding on the HUN online for about 20 minutes, then read an article called Footy's hottest WAGs, then look at a HUN photo gallery of footy's hottest WAGs. I'm not proud of any of this, but it's done now.
All of this activity left me with two overwhelming impressions: if I can just avoid looking at that first photo then I can avoid wasting a shitload of time on Herald Sun galleries, and, WAGs are boring looking and seem to permanently have their mouths open in their WAG photos. Check this out:
This is Jimmy Bartel's girlfriend, Nadia. She came fifth in the Herald Sun's hottest WAGs poll. As you can see, she has her mouth open in this photo. She isn't smiling. She is just looking at the camera with her mouth open. Let me tell you, I could have selected pretty much any photo from the Herald Sun WAG gallery as an example. If the WAGs weren't smiling in their photos, then they were doing some version of this face. I know this is meant to be a kind of sexy face, but to me she just looks like a total idiot. If a normal person was photographed in this pose, people would wonder why she looked so pissed off and perhaps whether she needed to go to the chiropractor because she is standing so awkwardly that she must have back pain. I'm sure she is a perfectly nice lady. Perhaps all WAGs are. Lauren Phillips certainly seems pleasant. But for pete's sake, close your mouths WAGs, you look like morons! That's all.
I remember you telling me about the porridge party. I tend to recall you mentioning something about a combo that included one or all of rosewater, soymilk and white chocolate. Perhaps that is the missing porridge? I hope my memory is failing me because I'm not sure I would like to eat porridge with those three things in it, it could be a little gross.
Mate, I'm so sorry you have stopped loving your porridge combo. Several times you have looked at me earnestly, and told me that I should have porridge with LSA, soy milk and dried fruit for breakfast at work. You have practically implored me to do this. Now I understand why - because you have stopped loving the shit out of your porridge, and knowing I have a microwave at work, you want me to have what you used to have. It all makes sense now.
I think you should eat eggs for a little while.
In the movie Indecent Proposal, Woody Harrellson says to Demi Moore that if you love something you should set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours forever. If it doesn't, it was never yours in the first place. It's possible that it was actually Demi who said this to Woody, or that this was not said in the movie Indecent Proposal at all. But none of that matters. What matters is that you fall in love with porridge again. I believe this will happen if you just take a little time out. Go and explore what eggs have to offer. Perhaps revisit toast. Just let porridge be free and I'm sure your love will come back tenfold.
When I worked in an office I used to eat a warm muesli that I would make for breakfast. I guess it was really porridge. I would put oats, LSA, roasted almonds and sometimes dried apricots in a bowl with some soy milk and microwave it. It was delicious and sweet and warming. It was a really good porridge. When I tried to replicate it at home it never quite worked. I think maybe the microwave was an important factor.
At home, for the last 18 months or so, I tend to have porridge with stewed apples, cinnamon, vanilla yoghurt and chopped dry roasted almonds. Sometimes I may vary it. No yoghurt. Raspberries or dried apricots cooked in the porridge. There are other things I may do. One time I had it with some left over raspberry coulis. YEAH BOYYYYYYYYYY!
But you can't do that every day. I have porridge and apples, etc. most mornings. At least 4 or 5 days a week. And I love this porridge. I really do. But 6 months ago it was still making my heart sing. Now I just enjoy it a lot. Where has the singing heart gone?
A couple of years ago Chickpea had a porridge party. It was on a Saturday afternoon and I was quite hungover. When I got there I was starving. What I really wanted to eat was hot chips. Of course what I got to eat was porridge. I think she served it four different ways. One of them totally slips my mind, but I remember the others, at least in sentiment if not in every detail.
There was one served in a waffle cone cup with maple syrup and facon; one infused with kaffir lime leaf, maybe served with coconut milk and palm sugar; there was one with dark chocolate and I think raspberries. And maybe the other was a more simple, regular kind of porridge. They were actually all very yummy. Even the American style one, but I don't really think any of them are the porridge to replace my daily porridge. I feel like maybe my porridge needs a change, but I don't know what to do with it. Maybe I should eat eggs for a while instead
Beetroot and ashed goats cheese
Blue Eye Bakala, fennel & lemon
Celeriac velouté
Slow poached egg with polenta
Some delicious fish thing that I was too drunk on food to remember what it was. Also was in the dunny when it was brought to the table.
Rhubarb, musk and rose. One of the three deserts we ordered after eating five courses.
This is Jimmy Bartel's girlfriend, Nadia. She came fifth in the Herald Sun's hottest WAGs poll. As you can see, she has her mouth open in this photo. She isn't smiling. She is just looking at the camera with her mouth open. Let me tell you, I could have selected pretty much any photo from the Herald Sun WAG gallery as an example. If the WAGs weren't smiling in their photos, then they were doing some version of this face. I know this is meant to be a kind of sexy face, but to me she just looks like a total idiot. If a normal person was photographed in this pose, people would wonder why she looked so pissed off and perhaps whether she needed to go to the chiropractor because she is standing so awkwardly that she must have back pain.
