High Tea at the Intercontinental

Sometimes you need a little indulgence... Inspired by Anna's account of High Tea at the Intercontinental Hotel, my dear friend Nora from Life's Smorgasbord and I went there, too. We hadn't been able to meet for quite a while so there was a lot of news to catch up on. And what's better than doing this with a nice pot of tea and some sweet little treats! The Intercontinental Hotel was the perfect backdrop for a cozy yet elegant afternoon and thanks to the Good Food Month we could sample a High Tea tasting plate including a hot beverage for the very reasonable price of 15 bucks.

In comparison to Anna's photo you'll see that they more than doubled the amount of vanilla sauce to go with the muesli slice. Good idea, otherwise it would have been a pretty dry experience. Flavour wise, my favourite was the praline stick (according to Nora, it reminded her of Nutella which I like quite a lot) and the sauces were pretty nice as well. Although I can't say that the sweets blew me away, they served a decent cuppa and the atmosphere in the courtyard was just perfect. We spent a wonderful afternoon and I hope to do something like this again in the near future!

Wanna know more about what's going on during the Good Food Month in Sydney? Check out Anna's round-ups of week one and week two and share the experiences of other food bloggers! Some time this weekend, another summary of the third week will be available at Morsels&Musings.

Baking and Cursing and Baking

I don't know what I did to deserve this. For months, I've been feeding my little sourdough culture dutifully. I (almost) never poured the surplus down the drain, having found another way to deal with it. Batch after batch after batch, my loaves turned out tasty even if sometimes mal-shaped. And now this. If there are any gods of the crust and crumb, I must have offended them in a really terrible way. At least, this is the only explanation I can come up with after suffering not one but several set-backs during my recent bread baking adventures.

It started off with what seemed to be child's play. One should not have any trouble with reproducing one's own recipes, right? After several trips, I decided not to bother with sourdough just yet. Instead I turned to an old favourite, a buckwheat bread with sunflower seeds. Well, let's just forget about this one, ok? It was the blandest bread I've ever made and I'd like to blame rancid buckwheat flour - but truth be told, I don't know for sure. Maybe, this was just too easy? I set to work with another favourite, my pain de campagne. Well, it could have been okay, if I had been able to properly use my new bread peel which is hand-made by my father (thanks again, Dad!). Instead of sliding the loaf elegantly onto my pizza stone, it stuck to the peel and I eventually plunked it into the oven, top-down of course. The carefully water-brushed side baked to a very, very crusty bottom; and the top with the remaining polenta sticking on didn't bake to anything crusty at all. Needless to say, the bread didn't rise properly.

But the worst was yet to come: my sourdough culture is playing dead! Before leaving for overseas, I had frozen three portions of rye mother. The first one got defrosted and bubbled nicely on my kitchen counter - until I realized that it's getting already too warm in Sydney. The top was mouldy. I took out the second portion. Slowly, I was getting a little bit nervous. After all, World Bread Day was approaching fast - and so far, nothing photo-worthy had happened. I now kept the culture in the fridge but there wasn't much action going on. It smelled sour but that was it. Before feeding it for the umphf-time, I decided to at least try to bake something with some of the culture mixed in. Since the last library foray, I was reading Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Bakers's Apprentice" and if I wasn't able to tackle one of the elaborate recipes, I should be capable of modifying the easiest recipe of the whole book, his light wheat bread. I added 500g of my lazy sourdough culture, added another 150g of bread flour to make up for the increased water content and used an 8g-sachet of dry active yeast for roughly 1.6kg of dough. A little more salt, some pumpkin seeds, olive oil instead of butter, and off you go into the fridge for almost ten hours (instead of rising at room temperature).

At least, this time I got the loaves off the peel properly. However, after baking they stuck so stubbornly to the pizza stone that I almost ruined my new bench scraper trying to remove them. Again, not enough polenta... Currently, the (long ago broken) pizza stone and the baking sheet are soaking in hot water. And whilst my light rye bread tastes quite all right, it simply isn't the real thing. Maybe it'll all work out in a few days. Let me just go and check on my sourdough culture.

PS: This morning, I discovered mould on the second batch of my sourdough culture - while storing it in the fridge. I always thought that the wild yeast inhibits exactly that!?! Something must be seriously wrong with my culture. With now only one last batch waiting in the freezer, I will probably get the opportunity to try Dan Lepard's method of cultivating sourdough - much sooner than I had planned...

Good Food Month: Market in Pyrmont

Planning is not my strong point, unfortunately. Neither is keeping various things in mind. Sometimes, I secretly wonder why this seems to get even worse lately. However, it is at least a - somehwat meagre - explanation why it took me almost two years to visit the Pyrmont Growers' Market for the first time. After having seen several mouthwatering accounts of the going-ons and with the "Good Food Month" currently running in Sydney, I thought this time it has to happen. To have some company when foraging for food (and in order not to forget it again) I invited two friends to come along.

After a 45-minutes walk we finally reached our destination and I felt instantly overwhelmed by the masses of people. Of course, on a bright, sunny day this was to be expected. Anyway, after a little while I lost all shyness, simply looked over shoulders and peeked with my camera through queues of waiting customers to get shots of all the lovely produce on display.

Remarkably many people had not grocery supplies sticking out of their bags but flowers. They were beautiful indeed!


Pretty soon we all felt pretty hungry. Although the bacon-and-eggs guy was truly impressive with his fast turn-around technique...

...I opted for a nice sourdough roll instead. Can't resist a crusty roll...


...while one of my friends chose a savoury tart to start the day. As you see, my focus was on the sweet ones...


Perousing all the food, it was pretty clear that this market had little to do with the small town farmers' markets I was used to. With plenty of fruit and vegetables stalls and the occasional beekeeper or baker inbetween, these markets are very local. Here in Sydney, the focus was on gourmet fare: smoked fish...

or rare cheeses...


even chocolates...
and unusual honey...



and even christmas cakes...

on this colourful stall:


After a first browse it was pretty clear that I had to prioritize in order not to splash out money triggered by all these visual stimuli. So I concentrated on the really important things and bought wattle seeds (finally, I could get my hands on them), lemon myrtle (its odour slowly permeates my fridge, need to think about proper storage), a jar of blackberry jam (it's a bit weird, looks and tastes more like blackberry honey), lots of fresh herbs and a few other odds and ends.


It was a very enjoyable way to spend a Saturday morning. With a little bit of envy we watched the people participating in the slow food brunch, a "Good Food Month" event that took place at the market. However, it was so hot that I wasn't too disappointed to get back into the shade after a while. Not sure how much this canine visitor enjoyed his market stroll in the blazing sun. With roaring breath and sticking out his tongue, he tried to cool down, poor little bugger...

In any case, if my friends happen to remind me in time, I'll go again next month!

Enjoying German Specialties

After processing all the pictures I've taken while traveling through Germany, I came to realize that I didn't photograph that many meals at all... Anyway, here are a few food related memories. A little bit late, I know - having just arrived in Australia again, I went to Western Australia for work. I was already looking forward to paying another visit to my favourite Australian grocery store as I did last time. However, my only day in Perth turned out to be a Sunday. All I could do was staring through the shop window at the huge bags filled with millet flour, pearl barley, and other hard-to-get foods. Of course, it should be possible to get the same stuff here in Sydney - however, they'll cost me an arm and a leg, I'm sure...

Where was I? You see, no matter how much I've enjoyed the stay in my home country, as soon as I had set my food on Australian earth, the daily life just sucked me in again.

One of the first things I did at home was baking a real German Cheese Cake (pictured above). Made with real quark instead of cream cheese or ricotta, it has a slightly tarter taste and a much lighter texture than American cheese cake. Eating it on a sunny terrace made it taste even better...

After having eaten my way through this and this, I attended the next feast, the wedding of a dear friend.

Another opportunity to indulge in Bavarian doughnuts (a very local food, this version from another part of Bavaria looks slightly different from mine), layer cakes, and God know what else. I'd rather not list all the cakes I've tried and I haven't even said a word about the savoury dishes...

At my parents' place, I used the occasion to watch once again how to make a real Bavarian pork roast. For traditionalists, this is the only way to celebrate a proper Sunday lunch. Whilst I'm not against having something else for lunch, I really enjoy it once in a while. So far, I didn't dare to try my hands on it. Provided I'm still able to decipher my handwritten notes, I'll dare cooking it some time soon. Hopefully, this time I'll be able to take a nicer picture - this one was taken just before shoveling in...


Furthermore, I made some pralines to give away as a birthday present. The cutest ones were these pistachio marzipan hearts - the recipe will follow soon. For some reason I thought using couverture would save me the tedious tempering process. First, I didn't want to go through all this trouble. Secondly, I don't have a candy thermometer. However, this was a misconception and the chocolate coating lost its shine after three or four days. However, they still tasted pretty good; even though I usually don't like marzipan. But who wouldn't love anything heart-shaped?

Back again - with a very festive Lunch

Even the longest visit at home must come to an end... I've enjoyed my stay back home in Germany thoroughly. One reason was for sure the endless number of feasts and parties I was able to attend. This will be just the first account of many more to come!

I was lucky enough to attend a very festive lunch which turned out to be a wonderful lesson in food styling - amost every dish had edible flowers as a colourful and tasty garnish. I also enjoyed taking pictures in full natural light (with just a little fill-in flash bouncing from above) - a completely new experience...

The feast started off with shrimp ravioli on braised fennel (pictured above).


The second course was a satisfying pumpkin soup garnished with pumpkin seeds and their oil. On the side a crispy grissini wrapped in Parma ham.


The third course was a creamy spaghetti dish with Oyster mushrooms and zucchini (unfortunately, morels hadn't been available as planned).


The main course was roasted duck breast served with crispy potato roesti and chanterelle mushrooms.

The sweet final was white poppy seed mousse served with caramelized apricots.

Truly delicious!