Moroccan Cooking

While driving rather aimlessly the other day Matt and I happened upon a Moroccan goods importer. I was drooling all over the shop full of tagines, lanterns, etched bowls, cook books..oh all sorts of lovely things that I wanted to move into my place as quickly as possible. We left with a gorgeous blue bowl and a set of mint tea glasses. With my newly acquired Moroccan stuff I felt the need to put it to use. I wanted to try and make my absolute FAVORITE thing I ate in Tangier, the Pastilla (aka bastilla, bisteeya, b'stilla or bstilla). We went back to KASBAH (the store) and picked up some spices and a cookbook.

I did quite a bit of reading and it was all sounding a bit complicated but I still wanted to give it a go so off to the grocery store we went. It sounds like this North African pie was more traditionally made with pigeon but I went for the easy access chicken option. One thing I love about Moroccan cooking is the blend off spices that I normally wouldn't think of putting together (ie the heavy use of cinnamon in savory dishes). Actually the first time I saw a pastilla in a tiny restaurant in the medina of Tangier I must admit I wrinkled my nose up. Who would like a savory, spicy chicken pie covered in confectioner's sugar and cinnamon? It turns out ME!! So I set to cooking the chicken with lots of cinnamon sticks of course. That part was easy but after that it all got a bit more tricky. Roasting almonds, grinding almonds, cooking up eggs in the manor of egg drop soup for the filling, draining the eggs, accidentally flinging a good portion of the egg mixture on the floor. All good stuff!!

The most difficult part was the pastry. The traditional pastry for pastila is called warka and is a cooked ultra thin crepe like pastry. Warka isn't easily accessible in Melbourne and I wasn't quite ready to embark on the warka making myself so I cheated and used filo. Ahh the filo. What a battle we had. At least I won the war and finally had a sort of a pie ready to cook. I need to do a little more practice before I would call myself a master of the pastilla but for a first attempt it wasn't half bad. It was all topped off with a tagine full of veggies, apricots and cous cous and of course, yummy mint tea.

Cheesy Tourist Pictures

In my never ending quest to get my husband in as many cheesy tourist pictures as possible I have acquired two more that I wanted to share with the masses.Matt with the Nando's chicken (or some kind of poultry).
Rocking the Villa Sombrero at Taco Bill's. Good Times!!!

Celebration Day in Ballarat

The Beginning of May is now a pretty special time for my family since Mother's Day, Matt's birthday and our "Australian" wedding anniversary are all within days of each other. We decided to celebrate all three by going up to Ballarat Wildlife Park to see all of the animals and have a BBQ. The Mullins clan was supposed to come with us but poor little Cooper came down with a cold so they couldn't come.

The day looked like it might be pretty lousy but it ended up being a beautiful day. The kids signed up to go in a see the koalas and happily the pictures were being taken in Elliott's house. Being a bit of a stubborn koala he refused to wake up and come out to say hello. I must admit I was a little sad to see nothing but his back. Anastacia was up eating eucalyptus so we had a lovely visit with her instead.

Luke really enjoyed the kangaroos. The kids were feeding the roos when I looked over, Luke had taken a seat and was chatting away for a good ten minutes to what seemed to be a very attentive kangaroo. Glad to see he could really relate to the animals so well.

Of course who am I to talk when I was having a lovely little conversation with the wombats. All in all it was quite a wonderful day.

Jambalaya Night

When one says the word "jambalaya" in Australia one might get funny looks. Same goes for creole, zydeco or boudin. Mardis Gras in Australia is not Fat Tuesday or the last day before lent but a massive gay pride parade in Sydney. So I took it upon myself to help educate my dear Australian friends! Matt and I have joined up with a group of people to host themed dinners so I picked New Orleans as my theme.

Jambalaya was the main attraction along with cornbread, boudin, muffaletta sandwiches and my version of a king cake. I also downloaded tons of Clifton Chenier(king of zydeco) to set the mood.

I also set up a "craft" table for some mask making activities. Matt didn't think anyone would bother with my craft idea but everybody really got into it and there were lots of very creative efforts.