Thursday 2 July 2009

Thursday 2 July 2009: A slight break in the kitchen

Sarah and my heart just left for Brisbane last night, but luckily I’ll get both back in five weeks time when I join them. This also has consequences for this secret, or soon to be not so secret, blog :) What it means is that the end of a chapter has arrived in this covert blog’s young existence, a sort of coming of age, as the cooking which will so gratefully be blogged about will not be from our checker-floored kitchen at 140 Dien Bien Phu, Saigon. Instead, the salivating smells and sound of sizzling will emanate somewhere from an apartment in Brisbane – hopefully without the masses of cockroaches (mostly dead or dying) and elusive mice that die in the sink and then miraculously disappear. Also, it means that there will be a temporary break from diarising Sarah’s cooking exploits until we are reunited. I also plan on documenting the dishes in picture form, which will add an extra element. Until then au revoir and bon appetit (or born up a tree as my sister says) for now!

In a hospitable kitchen in a freezing Pokhara, Nepal

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Monday 15 June 2009: Vegetarian Lasagne

Oh it’s been a while. We had the best vegetarian lasagne last night (and this morning, I couldn’t help stealing a cold slice from the fridge). The “meat” of the lasagna was made of lentils, garlic, chopped onion, green or red pepper, tomatoes and tomato paste, chopped celery, zucchini, and olive oil and dried oregano. Again, Sarah experimented as she couldn’t get ricotta cheese for the white sauce (I believe the term is béchamel? bleh) so she used a mix of normal cheddar. She’s really waxing the white sauce bit, which is really hard because you have to get the temperature and stirring technique just right otherwise the consistency turns into a pubescent British teenager’s face, all lumpy and pale. For the cheesy top she used a pizza topping mix (mozzarella and cheddar) which was perfectly crunchy and gooey, again hard to get right as we have a very shallow baking oven but all I could do was droooooool again and wolf it down. Nyumnyum.