Gastronomy Blog

Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely and enjoyable night last night .

We stayed in at Merilyn’s and cooked up a feast from the cookbook Secrets of the Red Lantern, a restaurant in Surry Hills.

I started the day however, with some breakfast of course. 2 pieces of fruit toast with a little butter, a bowl of All Bran and some dried fruit pieces.

I was so tired from the late night at Spice Temple the night before that I didn’t go for a run yesterday (or Wednesday either). I’ve been a little slack these last few days since getting back from Forster and in general I’m feeling really sluggish from all the food and drink. We are heading home this afternoon though so the holiday is all coming to an end. Once I’m back in Perth I’ll get back on the exercise wagon .

Yesterday afternoon we met up with Saul and Cath for a late lunch at Bills in Woolhara. It was packed but we only had to wait 10 minutes or so for a table. My food was delicious! I ordered Bucatini with spinach, peas and ricotta. It had the option of adding pancetta and I said no, but when it turned up, there it was. I ended up leaving it in though because I was starving by that point and it tasted pretty good though I left all the fatty bits. 

Adam ordered a burger and I had a some of his fries too.

So our Red Lantern feast was a real group effort! Everyone cooked a dish and helped out. I bought some Yumi’s Tuna and Egg Salad dips earlier and we had those as a snack with some dark rye bread while we cooked.

I had a slice with a bit of both on top.

So here were the starters!

Dad made the tuna and salmon sashimi.

Helen, Jez and Adam made the spring rolls.

 

Mum and I made salt and pepper tofu.

Helen made grilled eggplant.

I had a little of everything and 2 spring rolls. They were my favorite, absolutely delicious especially because there were fried shitake mushrooms inside. Yum yum yum!

Here is my dad filleting the barramundi for our main course!

And Adam mincing away at his garlic for his chicken dish.

This one was bok choy with fried shallots, bamboo shoots and corn which I made. 

Mez made a fish curry with vermicelli noodles at the bottom.

The fish once grilled on the BBQ.

Adam’s chicken,

 

which was served with this salad of cucumber, tomato, watercress and chilli.

Helen made a beef salad.

Rice in the new rice cooker we got Merilyn for Christmas!

My plate. I had a bit of everything and didn’t go back for seconds because I was pretty full from all the starters.

All the main dishes we made from the book here were SO DELICIOUS. Seriously tasty and pretty healthy too. I highly recommend cooking from this book if you can get your hands on it!!!

James (my sister Helen’s boyfriend) only arrived from London yesterday morning and was seriously jet lagged but still managed to whip up our dessert!!! Thanks James! It was a lemon lime tart and was amazing.

  

My serve. I could have eaten a LOT more of this, it was so delicious .

Midnight fireworks from the roof!

Lots of bubbles, wine and cocktails were also had! I stuck to the bubbles and white wine though but there were also lychee martini’s going around that looked amazing .

Goodbye 2009!