Crepes Suzette

1 Cup flour
3/4 cups  reduced-fat milk
1/2 cups water
2 eggs
15g butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar

To make crepes, place all ingredients into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.  Set aside for one hour or over night.

Pour 2-3 tablespoons of batter into a heated, lightly greased fry pan and tilt the pan so batter covers the base thinly and evenly.  Cook over a high heat for 1 minute or until lightly browned.  Turn crepe and cook on second side for 30 seconds.  Remove from pan, set aside and keep warm.  Repeat with remaining batter to make 12 crepes.

Serve as is with your favourite topping… or:

1/2 cup orange juice, warmed
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
1 tablespoon of orange-flavoured liqueur
1 tablespoon of brandy

Fold crepes into quarters and arrange overlapping in a heat proof dish.  Pour over orange juice and sprinkle with caster sugar.  Place orange liqueur and brandy in a small saucepan and warm over low heat, ignite, pour over crepes and serve immediately.

Serves four.

Paella con Amigos

Paella (pronounced pie-eh-ya) is a rice dish that originated in Spain.  This version is made with seafood but can also be made with chicken and sausage.  It’s a great dish to share with friends.

Prep time: 30 Minutes  Cooking time: approx 2 hours

½ Cup Olive Oil

½ Tsp sugar

½ Tbsp paprika

1/8 Cup red wine vinegar

1 bay leaf

1 Spanish chorizo

½ Cup small scallops

½ Cup shelled prawns

½ Cup clams

2 small tomatoes, grated, no skins

½ Spanish onion, grated

2 finely chopped garlic cloves

1 Cup cremini mushrooms

2 marinated bell peppers, sliced

2 ½ cups Arborio rice

7 ½ cups of hot stock

1 pinch of saffron (let sit in a couple of tablespoons of hot water before use)

salt and pepper

3 lemons to serve.

Sofrito This will become the base flavour of the paella.  Heat a paella pan to medium-high heat and add 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, onions, bay leave and sugar.  Cook until the onions are lightly browned (30-40 minutes).  Add garlic and paprika and cook for an additional minute. Deglaze with the red wine vinegar.  Once the vinegar is mostly cooked off, add tomatoes and cook until the sofrito is a deep burgundy and has thickened to almost a paste.  Set aside.

In the same pan, lightly sauté the mushrooms about 5 minutes on medium heat.  Set aside mushrooms and mushroom liquid.

Next, in the paella pan, ‘sweat’ the chorizos on low-medium heat (until oil is removed) about 15 minutes.  Drain oil from pan.

In a medium sauce pan, begin warming the stock to a soft simmer.  Once simmering, add sofrito and saffron liquid and threads to stock.  Keep warm.

In paella pan, over medium heat, pour ¼ cup of olive oil, add the rice and toast the rice to a light golden brown.  The grains will become opaque and begin to smell nutty.

Pour in the sofrito/stock/saffron mixture and raise the heat to high, bring to a boil and adjust the seasoning by adding salt/pepper to taste.

Stir well for a few minutes and begin adding the reserved ingredients, decoratively distributed across the rice.  Add the sliced peppers.  Continue cooking on high heat and stir the paella for a few minutes.  Start to occasionally rotate the pan for even heating.

Keep cooking over high heat and add clams.  Now make sure not to touch the paella from here on out, but keep rotating the pan every few minutes for even heating.

When the rice begins to appear above the liquid, after 8-10 minutes, reduce the heat to medium low.  Set prawns on top of the rice, add the scallops and continue to simmer, slowly rotating the pan until the liquid has been absorbed, about 10 additional minutes.

Cover the pan with foil and cook gently on low for another two minutes, ensuring the top layer of rice is evenly cooked.  Continue to rotate the pan.

With the foil still in place, increase the heat to medium high, rotating the pan, cooking until the rice begins to make a popping noise (about 2 minutes).  The bottom layer of the rice will become caramelized, creating the socarrat.  Socarrat is a crispy layer of rice at the bottom of the paella.  Remove from heat.  Let the paella rest still covered for 5 minutes.

Sit everyone down, squeeze ½ lemon over the entire contents.  Eat directly from the pan, starting at the perimeter, working towards the centre.  Give half a lemon to each person for garnish.

Serves 6.

Three sleeps, no passports

With the farewell party last night and all this talk about the blog, the pressure has really mounted for me to keep a captivating, witty and informative account of the goings on on our round the world tour.

So, let’s begin this blogger journey for all the new comers at the very best place.  Where I left off last time: an itinerary to the end of March and our African adventures and a quick recap on vaccinations and the mad dash to get the visas to Canberra.  That was just over a week ago.

Since then:

Friday 21 January – ventured into Frankies Number down on Sydney Road in Manly to wet our whistles while waiting for Sam and the Red Indian.  I liked the place – very funky!  I think they do live music some days a week, so it had a grungy, jazzy vibe about it.  More of those retro mis-matched couches that are popping up everywhere, but still had a friendly, comforting and welcoming feel.  Maybe that was just to woo us in to read and order from the unpriced cocktail list (which they might as well have priced POA).   At the end of the night (by which time our group size had grown) we all left there loving the place for the welcoming staff, the comfortable seats and the audible noise levels.

Visa status – sent.

Saturday 22 to Tuesday 25 January – Quick swim up at Newport and then into the Silver Chariot for his last road trip.  This time it was a mini break in Goulburn to farewell the Coffey side.  Fantastic little getaway, with Paula’s lovingly home cooked meals, rumbles and tumbles with the three year old nephew, bike rides, Chinese for lunch with Jack and a day trip to Canberra to see Pop and Amy.

Call Shosholoza Meyl (the train company) in South Africa to try and organise how I can send proof of payment for our Joburg to Cape Town tickets.  I send a print screen of my international payment receipt in an email. Two phone calls and four emails later they tell me that I have sent only half of what they asked.  Three phone calls and two emails later we work out that I sent the correct amount for our booking but ZAR125 is missing.  I thank Platinum for my international payments experience and vocab.  Two phone calls and an email to St George and two emails to SM about the fee being from the intermediary bank and…. Nothing.  Hope we don’t turn up at the platform and they don’t have us down as passengers.

Visa status – receive email on Monday reading:

Dear Applicant,

Your application has arrived safely at the Canberra office and is currently being processed. The estimated processing time for your application is 15 working days plus mail time.

Gulp.

So travelled back to Sydney on the train and totally loved it.  So much more beautiful than the highway and definitely an option I’d recommend if you have any visitors from overseas needing to commute from Sydney to Canberra.  You actually get to realise why the place is called the Southern Highlands.

Wednesday 26 January – Australia Day.  Not sure what we did in the morning, but in the afternoon we made a bee line to Bronte and the Red Indian’s place for a BBQ, drinks and some poker.  Fantastically chilled day with a plethora (that one’s for Sam) of what turned out to be very multicultural food, cool drinks, lazy swims, Hottest 100 tunes and some drunken poker.  Great times!

       

Thursday 27 January – cry on the phone to the Visa office and send an email to Mum that reads: It seems nothing is easy when you want to leave the country. We called Telstra to cancel our Internet on tuesday and they cut the contract when we hung up the phone.  We have to pay money to virgin to keep our phone numbers. I just spent $400 at the chemist. To suspend our MBF we had to pay $80. The travel agent confirmed we would either get a hotel room or access to the lounge in KL for our 14 hour stop over at the cost of the airline when we booked, but now says that's not possible and wants us to change our flights or book a place to stay. We had to leave the daewoo in goulburn...

We meet Dan, Jen, MacIver, Kat and Shalini at the Old Fitzroy Pub for $35 beer, laksa and the Arj Barker Crapper or Keeper show in the theatre.

EXCELLENT NIGHT! It’s on for another week.  Get yourselves there, but skip the samosas.

Friday 28 January – D day has arrived.  We must cancel the visa applications or risk not getting our passports back in time for the travel.  In sheer desperation I call both Malaysian Airlines to see what it would cost for us to defer our travel and call the consulate to see if my brother can pick up our passports (and work his wit and charm on the staff and see what strings he can pull) for us.  I’m thinking we will have to wait until after 15 February to make our trip and how I can incorporate our family visits into the last two weeks of our African trip.  I’m also mourning the loss of the London experience.

At the same time, Jono gets home from the travel agent where he has already emailed the consulate asking them to urgently review our applications and either process them or cancel them and express post our passports back.

Just as John is driving into the car park of the visa processing centre Jono gets a phone call.  Drew at the consulate has processed our visas and is returning them in tonight’s mail.

Hip Hip Hooray!  The risk paid off!  We’ve got our two year working/holiday visa!

As quickly as my anxiety subsides it is replaced by another feeling – a sore throat and a runny nose.  Totally typical!

But the email that reads:

Your approved application will be despatched within 2 working days.

It will be delivered by EXP POST Their reference number is 005250205090

Makes it totally worth it.

Final mad rush at the mall for glasses, Moroccan hair oil and priceline products and it’s nearly time for our farewell party!

In the taxi the visa things starts to sink in, but even when I’m saying goodbye to friends at the end of the night I have no comprehension of what is happening.  My feelings haven’t caught up with my actions.

I can’t help but imagine the scene in the Spanish Apartment when Xavier walks down the gang way to the aeroplane that will take him to Spain and his new life. Only moments before he has hurriedly and without feeling farewelled his mother and girlfriend, but now with his back turned to them has tears streaming down his face at the enormity of what he has done. 

And that’s just a trip from France to Spain!

Luckily for us we have had many others beat the track before us.  Emily Wells and her Japan trip in year 11, followed later by trips to France and Cambodia.  Ange Smith with South Africa, Canada, Thailand and now also the UK.  Sal with France, the UK and now New York.  Dan and Jen and their ten month trip around Australia.  Bek and Roz for their continued adventures in Europe.  My brother who is planning his fourth German experience.  My Great Aunt Hod.  My hairdresser yesterday.  Iain, for Ireland, Tonga and everywhere in between.  My Mum.  Chris Lewis. Dan CW.  Cousin John Jones.  Jack and his ‘once every quarter’ adventures… he tells every story seven times, but when I ask him to tell me the one about how he had to pull a knife on a taxi driver in Hong Kong back in the day he won’t tell me it again. ..

Stay tuned for more enthralling adventures folks!

This is a bit of a cheap shot at blogging about food from our travels when this recipe is from a trip we made three or four years ago to France, but I need to put my name to it right now before anyone else claims fame from it.  This is an excellent starter for a boozy lunch.

Step one - find yourself a patio or lovely outdoor eating area with dappled sun, preferably after 11 am (this depends on your personal standards).

Step two - find yourself one rockmelon for every two friends you have eating with you.

Step three - half rockmelon and scoop out the seeds.

Step four - add two to three shots of drinkable port and a spoon.

Step five - serve.

The drinkability of this port is questionable...

Legs 11

God Speed to our little passports.  We said goodbye to them yesterday when we express posted them to Canberra with little notes attached pleading that they would be returned to us before we fly on 1 February… Oh MG the trepidation.

It's beginning to feel like this is it now.  The itinerary is coming together with only a few empty spots between now and LA on 3 May with Ella May.  We had a lunch with some of my old work friends in the city on Wednesday and the goodbyes after that got me a bit nervous!  The passports are gone (never to be seen again).  Jono's had his shots.  I'm collecting travel goodies and travel wear and I'm thinking more seriously about what I'm going to put down in this blog between now and the end of the trip.  

If my crossed fingers don't hold me back in my packing and bring back our passports in time, our planned trip is such:

1 February - Click our heels and leave Oz, fly to KL, arrive 6am 2 February.

3 February - Fly to J'burg, board train to Cape Town.

4 February to 13 February - Western Cape wine times with the family.

13 February to 19 February - Cape Town to Port Elizabeth on the Garden Route, with stops in Nice Knysna, surfs in Jeffreys Bay and holiday time in Plett.  

20 February - Fly PE to Durban and meet our dear friends, Margie and Trevor.  Note to self: remember to pack wine for Trevor's cellar. Road trip to Hluhluwe (last time I was there the guy driving us told me that to pronounce it you just tell Louis to shoosh… Shooshlouis) to the amazing Mziki - we are lucky ducks!

22 February - Back to Durban where I want to take Jono to the Oyster Box - you have to see it to believe it, Margie took me there for tea and scones.  Love!  Time to potter about in Durban.

24 February (maybe) - head for Johannesburg to meet a tour via the Drakensburg Mountains.

26 February - join the Intrepid Tour that takes us up through Botswana and the Okavango Delta to Victoria Falls.  Glad I reacquainted myself with tent accommodation over New Years and you should see our minuscule sleeping bags!… Urgh… that makes me think that I need to drag my pack up from the garage and start lumping things into it.  Wonder how Dan and Jen will feel about me turning out my wardrobe onto the lounge room floor?  (3rd March - Jono's birthday!)

6 March - Tour ends in Vic Falls and the second Honeymoon begins, roll out the carpets Matetsi, we're coming over!

9 March - Staff at Matetsi send us on our way, where we go no body knows…  Have been thinking unceremoniously of bringing ourselves back down from luxury heaven and jumping on an overnight bus to Windhoek in Namibia and heading back down to Cape Town that way.  My friend Ange recommended a stop in Langebaan where they do some brilliant beach braais and where there's the Seeff Weskus Marathon and half marathon on on 19 March… I'd do the half just for the t-shirt (and also the half only costs $11)!!

23 March - Our visa applications say we are due to arrive in London today.  The plan is to stop over to see friends before making our way to Italy for Easter, maybe via France…

If you see any blanks that need to be filled in, or trips that need to be beefed up all suggestions will be considered!

With 11 days until our adventures to chase the sun across the globe begin, this is the results of today's efforts - 

Alright kids, over and out.  I have to work out what's next on the list of things you do before you leave your home country for months and months… I know there's something else I need to cancel..

Missing New Years Road Trip photos

Missing Hunter Trip photos

Summer Loving

Happened so fast.

Have just returned from three sun chasing Australian mini breaks in quick succession.  Tripped down and up the coast of New South Wales and then finished off with a journey to the Hunter Valley this weekend.  Epic and a great way to see the state I love before we hit the road in February.

Sydney >Bermagui - Pre Christmas

We headed down south to my parents' place on the south coast just before Christmas.  I usually get down there and then find I never leave the kitchen and this visit was much the same!  I was pumping out Christmas treats for the family left right and centre with dukkah, shortbread, gingerbread and fruit mince pies.  I tried my hand at marshmallows too, but only succeeded in producing a sweet, sloppy mess!

A rare treat though, was that my dear friend was also visiting the area so we had a couple of country side jaunts.   First stop her parents' place where we met Mint and Lois, two much loved and spoilt rescue bovines.  Next stop Tilba for lunch and a window shop - such a pretty part of the world!  Think Nescafe ad.

The next day we met again to crash the Dad's lunch at the local pub for a burger and chips.  I think it was quite overwhelming for these two Dads to be joined by their kids and wives at a lunch they were expecting to be quiet and Dad-like.  Nice start to the day for Jono, Amy and I though!  On to the Bermagui Country Club for a game of lawn bowls for us and then across the road to the new look Fishermen's Wharf and the brand new wine bar where we were joined again by Mum and our ride home.

It was very sad to say goodbye to Bermagui when we left on Christmas Eve.  I never get there enough!

Bermagui>Canberra - Christmas

Two days of chaos as I experienced my first Christmas where I was really truly on the adult side of things.  Will learn that spoiling children results in the creation of monsters and that the excitement of a Buzz Lightyear toy wears off for the adults at 10:30pm on Christmas night when Buzz has told me to 'Halt' because I'm 'under arrest by the intergalactic something something' through the bedroom wall for the umpteenth time that day.  Or will I?

Boxing Day means a drive back to Sydney and two days to pack a bag for the New Years Road Trip.

Sydney>Seal Rocks>Coffs Harbour>Lismore>(Byron)>Nashua>(Bangalow, Mullumbimbi, Brunswick Heads)>Lismore>(The Big Banana)>Crescent Head>Sydney - The New Years Road Trip

Lock in at Botero Coffee, Guinea Fowl, Fish and Chips at Brunswick Heads, Housie, Keno, Euchre, Jersey Shore, Simon Baker, No Leg Room.


Sydney>Hunter - Sam's 30th

Good Friends.  Family Home.  Pool.  Poker.  Wine.  Wine.  Wine.  Cheese.  Wine.  Tatlers For Lunch.  1974 Cab Sav.  Terrible Dancing.  BBQ Dancing.

In other news, I'd like to point out that I'm aware of how terribly inappropriate this blog's name is given the rainfall this summer - http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/queensland-flood-death-toll-to-rise-dramatically-20110111-19ldz.html.

Will improve efforts - 21 days until the big trip.