• Texture of the shell is airy and not dried up
• Flavour is prominent and not artificial
• Macaroons are invariably sweet, but there is a balance still. Too sweet then you can’t taste the flavour. Balance please.

Here are a few of the best shops and simple gorgeous. I will add more. Sorry, I can’t take these back to Australia.

Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki - macaroons on the wall decoration

Aoki - here you can find Japanese flavours such as various teas, yuzu and sesame

Laduree - very famous and for a good reason. If I was to pick one shop for macaroons then this is it.

Their salted caramel macaroon (not pictured) is a must try. Though the filling is thicker and denser than their other flavours, it is an explosion of salted caramel

Patisserie Pain de Sucre

Patisserie Pain de Sucre - more on the denser side. They have an espelette/saffron flavour.

Looks good and will not disappoint

Weiss - a chocolate company. Very genuine flavours. I am pretty sure it was the best pistachio I have had so far.

Café Pouchkine - originating from Russia, brings a new range of flavours and textures with very refined techniques. Here are double flavoured macaroon shells.

It’s not tea that he drinks from the cup during service.

One day Hiro will no longer be there. I think he is truly forming each nigiri with passion and love for the art.

Chef Hiro-san

Clockwise from top left: starter usually with pickled vegetables and fish, dory?, pickled mackerel, salmon

An audience, chef Hiro-san and his assistant

Beef, ark shell, tuna, salmon belly

The king fish belly (below, top right) is my favorite. Never walk away from this place without eating this. You may as well not bothered to make a reservation in the first place!

? Chu-toro, king fish belly (F*@$en the best), oysters, sesame crème brûlée

"unknown fire"

This will be my downfall. A friend of mine gave me a stick of this from Leo’s Fine Food in Kew a few weeks ago. It’s so delicate, light and the taste more complex and will elevate warm bread into another level. Commercial butter in Australia contains about 16-18% water and the rest mainly fat. Cultured butter contains a variable water content. European butters typically less (14%) which is good for browning butter.

But the main difference is the flavour. Butter is traditionally made from the cream that settles on top of fresh milk. After a few days, naturally occurring bacteria in the milk and air slightly ferment the cream and turns it into crème fraiche. The flavour comes from the fermentation process, just like cheese. The crème fraiche is then churned to separate the butterfat from buttermilk (mainly water). Over-whip cream from the supermarket and the yellow-ish substance is essentially butter.

So really, they are about to start a Butter Club. The proverb on the packaging reads “Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past”. Hmmm.

A Bottle of Milk, Lorne.

"Thomas Keller's BLT" from Dead Man Espresso

Take note…pork belly is as common as the Synesso in Melbourne now.

After lunch and a great coffee, we headed to Port Melbourne Beach and felt…cold! It reminded me when I was in Norway after a few months of below zero temperature. A sunny day, warm (relative) and the entire student village was outside on the lawn receiving their yearly dose of vitamin D with the famous engangsgrill. We went to a small island off the city center for a BBQ and realized it was really ‘only’ 12 degrees.

Summer at Port Melbourne was a bit early

I still love the cold.

Kiritappu Wetlands, Hokkaido, Japan

Yep, these are wild irises and Hemerocallis middendorffi (yellow). To give you an idea how dense the irises were in some places here is another photo taken a few hundred meters away. It is difficult to make the irises show well in this photo since the green and purple are both quite dark. It’s either close up and beautiful flowers or wide angle but not much contrast.

Irises

I couldn’t be bothered changing my lens that afternoon. The 50 mm 1.8 works wonders but taking ‘domesticated’ sea gulls is still very difficult. I laid prone for a good while.

The Goondiwindi show is on in 2 weeks time. It’s the Brisbane Ekka equivalent of Goondiwindi. Probably one of the biggest events on the calendar here. From what I can gather, there is produce, livestock, baking, arts, tapestry and photography competition. You can enter upto 8 photos per person. So above are the 8 photos selected. Prints are now being ordered and should be on its way now.

So we shall see.

Summer by Ragingyogurt

Corn by Souvlaki For the Soul.

Eat.Drink.Blog has a list of blogs and updates

I am very happy to see my photo displayed in the SBS Food Bloggers Photography Exhibition, as part of the 2010 Food Bloggers Conference Eat.Drink.Blog. (SBS, The Age)

Part of the captions submitted: This photo was taken on my recent trip to New Zealand. It was raining the whole day and the clouds were just beginning to break. Warm sunlight filled the pub. I was content with my bowl of chips and crisp green apple cider, and the thought that I still had more than a week of adventures in New Zealand. The quote on the wall, the people and the warm glowing room had it all framed up.

Gallery opposite to St Ali on Yarra Place, South Melbourne

Broad beans

The Vic Mac’s Brewbar Nelson NZ

Tutto Bene Gelati Melbourne

GM tomato graffiti Melbourne

Takayama beef Japan

We drove through a rainy front and crossed from the east to west coast of New Zealand South Island. Heavy rain turned into a a steady drizzle. As we walked out of our hostel, the rain stopped and 20 minutes later, blue skies and warm sunlight hit the wet roads of Nelson. It was a very pretty town. The main Trafalgar st had flowers blooming on every lamp post. Hungry, this warm bar really made my afternoon. Has hot crispy chips and ice cold green apple cider ever been this good? Bright glow of the sun on wooden floors and table. I could have sat there for a long time.

I was flipping though a few cook books at Borders after work today and I thought about how in Masterchef Australia they commented that the brown cooking that Chris produces wont look good in print. But a chunk of meat with charred surfaces smell and taste so good!

Takumi in Melbourne looks good – serving wagu cooked just like the way I had it in Takayama, Japan. The meat and the sauce better be just as good!

I prepared 4 artichokes for dinner. Stir-fried it with some Chinese flavored bacon and shitaki mushrooms.

Is it the recent trend of casual/shared dining like Cumulus, Gigi Baba, Svago and ? Koda making Melbourne’s fine dining not as popular anymore? Sydney has topped Melbourne in terms of 3 star restaurant according to the Gourmet Traveller’s 2010 Australian Restaurant Guide.

9 to 1!

I am a bit over fine dining. Takes too much effort and concentration. But if you want to take me…please DO!

Actually, the restaurant near this graffiti is overrated. A teaspoon of salt used erratically.

Takayama Japan

I received a CD in the mail from Tzu-yen today. The gallery has been updated with photos including his trip to Spain. Other galleries : United Kingdom, France, Japan, Melbourne were all updated with new photos.

http://6lumens.com/gallery

Enjoy

A typical tapas bar, San Sebastian.

Sagardotegi, the Basque cider. The drink is poured from head height from a bottle with a special spout. Here is a little passage from wiki:

In the most traditional sagardotegi, each guest, after having paid in the region of 25 euros, receives a glass and at various intervals a txotx (pronounced [?o?]) is called. At this, everyone who wishes for cider gets up and heads to the lower section of the sagardotegi where the barrels are located. The large barrels, which are stored horizontally, have a small tap in the lid at about head-height. This is opened by the innkeeper or the first guest to reach the barrel and a thin stream of cider exits, which the guests catch with their glasses as low down as possible to aerate the cider. People then return to their tables to continue with their meal and cider until the next txotx is called. Each guest may drink as much cider as they like.

Jamon with little up-side-down hats to catch any dripping fat.

Really, this is just a photography post than anything else. I like my scramled egg cooked under high heat and rapidly rather than the slow/creamy texture of the French method.

For some reason I have been thinking of sweets lately, which is highly unusual for me as I am normally a savory person. Perhaps I should do a glucose challenge test. I found these Madeline baking tray sitting in the cupboard so I went on an hunt online for recipes. I came across these on 101cookbooks. My recipe below has been slightly modified. These Madelines turned out pretty well and go exceptionally well with a Macchiato.

Madelines:

• 100gm butter + extra to grease pan
• 90gm plain flour + bit extra to dust pan
• 80gm sugar
• 4 large eggs
• zest of 2 lemons
• half vanilla pod

Firstly, preheat oven to 180deg Celsius and well butter the pan. Dust the pan with flour and tap out the excess.

Make clarified butter: Melt the butter in a pan in low heat and watch it boil and turn sightly golden brown in colour. Take the butter off the heat and strain it into another container removing all the milk solids and wait until it cools to room temperature.

Scrape the vanilla seeds into the sugar. (You could save the used vanilla pod into a container filled with sugar to make vanilla sugar.)

Whisk the whole eggs in mixer at high speed until it forms silky pale meringue about 3-4mins. Slowly add the sugar with vanilla seeds into the egg while whisking at high speed and continue to whisk for another minute or two.

Sift the flour onto the egg mixture and add lemon zest then fold gently until mixed then add the cooled clarified butter into the egg/flour mixture. Fold again until all mixed until just mixed. Don’t over mix this mixture or it wont rise.

Spoon the mixture into the baking tray then bake for about 5-10 minutes depending on size. Watch it change colour very quickly.

 So after tasting some serious Pierre Herme’s Macaron in Tokyo, I figured it was time to make some myself so the bank stays happy. It was made on a recipe based on so called Italian meringue where after whipping the egg whites into meringue, you add hot (112deg C) syrup into it and continue to whip into almost satin like texture. This seems to give it a nougat-like texture in the middle.

Recipe: http://www.syrupandtang.com/200712/la-macaronicite-3-the-more-reliable-macaron-recipe-and-a-few-tips/