she who eats eats what man that cooks cooks

Meet the Chef in the kitchen....


Cooking dinner for four

Today's main dish: fish

Stuffed up

And wrapped up

So were the grissini we're being fed, wrapped in prosciutto

So were the potatoes

Meanwhile, the table was all set

Whilst Chef's busy with his hands at cooking

Whisking

Frizzling

Sizzling

Finishing

...Et Voila! Pan-seared scallop and prociutto-wrapped potato with potato-leek soup and crispy pancetta. The scallop was tender, the potato was light, and the soup was rich and creamy, almost of sauce-like consistency. The pancetta made a nice contrast in texture. Yummm.

Back in the kitchen; oooo this must be for later...

...And this is for right now

White fish baked in banana leaves with freshwater prawns, lemon and chili, served with rosemary-roasted root vegetables. Baked in layers of banana leaves, the fish was almost like steamed - light and tender, moist and delicate.

After some beers and wines, there was even live music

And a cheese platter ("Australian Cheese, French Way"); organic camembert and Tasmanian cheddar, served with a choice of commercial and home-made quince pastes. I thought the combination of the cheddar and home-made quince paste was the winner, although the quince paste with camembert could almost make a beautiful dessert

...Unless we have a more proper dessert, which we had - oven-roasted figs served with a dollop of mascarpone, that is. Brown sugar and butter seemed to give a butterscotch-like flavor to the figs, and it tasted divine. I could have finished a whole panful of them all by myself if I had been allowed, which I wasn't. Which was probably a good thing, I guess.

With the figs we had some Belgian beer and that last sip finished me, who had been up for the past 40 hours or so, except maybe for a total of about one hour of sleep on the plane. It was a long dinner and I was tired, but I was having too good time to leave the table early, and every single bite of the dishes could not have possibly been missed. The photographs don't do the dinner justice at all; I did a pretty terrible job. I wish taking pictures of dishes at someone's house were as easy as eating ones. It was indeed a lovely dinner.

Now, I haven't been able to do a post about my Tassie trip nor my Auckland stay, but I have already left New Zealand and flown westward back to mainland Australia - in fact, further west way beyond Melbourne, I now find myself in a sunny, warm Westcoast city of Perth.

And I almost forgot to do Meet the Chef, didn't I...

Ladies and Gentlemen, here's our Chef in the kitchen!