Moroccan Lamb Shanks with pumpkin and sultanas and Mulberry-ade @ Mum’s place

Mum's place

There’s nothing like a good ol’ lamb shank with your dear ol’ mum, is there? 

I’m not quite sure what it is about mums and slow cooking, but it’s all very comforting, and, perhaps combined with some sort of menstrual-related need for iron, I was craving a real fall-off-the-bone meat dish.  So we went with this one:

Moroccan Lamb Shanks with Pumpkin and Sultanas 

Serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 lamb shanks, French trimmed

2 medium onions, chopped

1 x 420 can chopped tomatoes

1 x thumb-sized piece ginger, grated

1 bunch coriander, chopped

½ cup water

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (140g) sultanas

300g peeled pumpkin

Preheat oven to 180 degrees/160 fan forced.

Heat oil in a large pan.  Add lamb shanks. Cook until well browned all over. Transfer lamb shanks to a tagine or ovenproof dish.

Add onions to the same pan, cook, stirring, until soft and golden.

Add tomatoes, ginger, coriander, water, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt and sultanas. Bring to the boil, then pour mixture over lamb shanks in dish.

Cover the dish and cook for 1 hour.

Cut pumpkin into chunky cubes.  Remove lamb from oven; add pumpkin, cover and return to oven for another 30 minutes.  Remove lid, cook for a further 30 minutes or until lamb is very tender.

**

We served it with minted, buttered couscous and steamed asparagus, which was just what we had on-hand.

I also made my favourite (and ridiculously easy) dolloping condiment:  Tahini and yoghurt – simply mix equal-ish quantities of tahini and yoghurt and dollop on anything that resembles Middle-Eastern/North African fare.  It’s simply delicious.

Mulberry-ade

I think my parents live in the most quintessential of suburban streets – in the old fashioned sense.  All the neighbours know each other’s names, they talk to each other over the fence and they offer lemons and, in this instance, mulberries, from their over-abundant trees.  Thanks to the very neighbourly “Pat”, for making this lovely pre-dinner refreshment possible.

2 cups mulberries, stalks removed

2 cups water (approx.)

½ cup sugar (approx – depends on how sweet you want them to be)

Soda water

Ice

Swizzle stick

Put the mulberries into a heavy-based saucepan and add enough water to just cover them.  Sprinkle over the sugar and gently bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.  Cool.

The fruit (and some of the juice*) can now be used as a base for pies, crumbles etc.

Fill tall glasses with ice.  Extract a couple of tablespoons of the liquid per glass and top with soda water.  Stir intermittently and thoughtfully with swizzle stick.

* NB – if you’re making a crumble, don’t do what I did and not include any liquid at the bottom of the pie dish.  This made the crumble come out really dry and the fruit sticky.  It needs to be moist!

A rest stop @ The Art Kafe Bar, Ubud

Walking up and down Monkey Forest Road, the decor of this cafe had caught our attention a few times with its boho-meets-nana-meets-shabby chic (or whatever) deco.  We thought it could be interesting, so we popped in for a juice one day.

Upon perusing the menu, I was delighted to find a little history of the owners and their story of how they came to open the cafe...

We did enjoy the artsy fatsy feelings.  And I’m sure you will too.

The $25-a-cup cup of poo

Yes, you read right.  A cup of poo for $25 (and that’s just an espresso shot). 

Bali Kopi Lubak comes from Asian Palm Civits (a small mammal – maybe like a possum), whose favourite food is the red, ripe, coffee cherry and they eat the fruit, bean and all.  But, the civits only take the best-quality beans, so after they are pooed out, the coffee producers know that the beans inside the poo are the best quality.

The result?  A load of bullshit, of course!  Even the big ANZAC biscuit and glass of water didn’t make it worth the money.

We couldn’t taste the difference, although I don’t drink short blacks, so I can’t really compare it to anything.   The texture was smooth, I will admit that, but it was supposed to taste earthy, with hints of caramel or chocolate, which I can confirm were NOT there (I know chocolate when I taste it).  It was quite bitter, but I didn’t feel like I’d be doing it justice if I added sugar. 

I wouldn’t mind trying a latte made with the beans, but I won’t be paying another $25 to find out.  We did manage to smuggle out a few beans that were left on a saucer, so I will give it a go at home and get back to you.

Tofu and Veggie Stir Fry: Castaway Bar and Restaurant, Dili.

Note to self: Castaways stir fries suck arse.

Tonight I wanted healthy but tasty. I was imagining a really fresh, crunchy, veggie stir fry with golden tofu puffs soaking up all the flavour.

I was sure that I’d ordered one of these before, and my memory of it wasn’t of the “never again” kind. You get to choose what sauce you want from a list: hoisin, oyster, plum or blackbean. I chose oyster. I can’t remember what I chose last time. Probably oyster.

The tofu was completely white – no sticky, marinated, fried surfaces soaking up flavoured goodness. The rice/hokkien noodle combo was a bit of carbo overload. It also had tinned champignons, which always tend to remind me of eyeballs. I must have been really hungry though, because at one stage I caught a glimpse of my fork just before putting it in my mouth and it had about 5 slices of champignons on it, and I thought to myself, “Nooo! I hate champignons!”, but in it went and I chewed those little eyeball slices up and swallowed them down.

Some of the veggies weren’t too bad – the snow peas and carrots did have a nice crunch – but it was generally a disappointing meal. To make matters worse, I had dinner table envy the whole time (don’t you hate that??), watching Wade enjoying his “Cheese and Broccoli Ravioli”, which I really wished I’d ordered, but I’d always been too scared – the unpredictability of food quality in Dili eateries generally, combined with the word “cheese” put me off. But I tasted Wade’s tonight and it was really nice – a rich, garlicky tomato sauce, some sort of white, creamy substance (sour cream?) and a home-made pesto (made with Thai basil, but it tasted really fresh), and lovely fresh shavings of parmesan over the top. I’d recommend that instead. It looked like this:

 
The best part of my meal was my “pineapple and ginger kicker“, which contained orange and pineapple juice with a real hit of ginger. Sensationally zingy. Wade had a fresh orange juice, and these are always good, because of their creamy texture.

There were some really nice tunes playing at Castaways tonight, too. They have live music on a Thursday and Sunday. Tonight there were a couple of young Timorese guitarists/singers playing some cruisey acoustic tunes.  I especially liked the instrumental pieces.

I'm not writing off Castaways by any means, but this was not one of my more memorable meals there.

Chicken Caesar Salad, Castaway Bar and Restaurant, Dili

So, this dish was a bit of a gamble: Was Castaways going to be able to pull off the chicken Caesar? In my opinion, the Caesar salad can be a wonderful adventure in both flavour and texture, combining the smoky, salty flavours of bacon and anchovy, the crunch of lettuce and croutons and the creamy eggs and dressing. Or it can be really, really crap. (We’ve all been there.)

Despite the fact that this was the second meal of my day that involved bacon, I enjoyed it immensely. The lettuce and bacon were crispy, there was a mere suggestion of anchovy every few mouthfuls and the chicken was pretty darn succulent. The dressing was nice and creamy with a good hit of zing. My only complaint about it was the croutons. They were quite stale and a bit difficult to chew. Oh, and I think perhaps a nice soft-boiled egg would have rounded out all that salt nicely. But I won’t get too fussy on the balancing of flavours thing. I got the entree size, which was enough for me, given I’d gorged myself on French toast with bacon and maple syrup just a few short hours beforehand.

Afterwards, I was close to shrivelling up with all the salty pig I’d eaten, so luckily my beverage was rehydrating. I asked for a soda water with lime, and my goodness, did they take the lime seriously!! My ice-filled glass came with a shot of fresh lime juice in the bottom to make a delightful, citrus refreshment on a sultry Dili afternoon. It was fantastic! It looked like this:

Wade ordered a Napolitana pizza, which looked like this...

...and tasted pretty darn good too. Simple yet effective: black olives, capers, anchovies and mushrooms. Nice.

His drink was a “Banana Macadamia”, taken off the Castaways’ fun and exotic juice and smoothie menu (items on which often aren’t available due to missing ingredients). It tasted as good as it looked:

Yoghurtie, banana-ie, nuttie, smoothie. Yum-ie.

Castaway Bar and Restaurant, Dili