Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

The MCA staff laughed when they heard us squealing…”Look how skinny we are in this mirror!”

I think…that when you’re blessed with friends who have extensive experience in a particular field, you should jump at any offer they make to share their knowledge with you.

So when my dear friend Roz MacAllan, former gallery owner and long time art collector, offered to visit the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the MCA with me, I wasn’t about to let sluggish public transport or heavy rain stop me.  We met at the very cool MCA gift shop, then headed to the top floor café for a long and chatty lunch, before setting out to explore the exhibition.

And it was amazing.

So much so that I actually considered not blogging about it, because there was simply no way my photos could do it justice.  Often I find contemporary art moving and/or thought-provoking, but in this instance, I found it exhilarating and great fun. And that’s because nothing was quite what it seemed to be (which in turn made it difficult to capture the experience in photos).

On the ground floor is Kapoor’s My Red Homeland (2003) – an enormous dynamic sculpture created from 25 tons of paraffin wax and oil pigment paint. A huge motorised arm rotates slowly, cutting a swathe through the wax, constantly and gradually reshaping it as it goes…

The artist offers very little commentary on his pieces (often we couldn’t even locate name plates), preferring to allow viewers to come to their own conclusions. To me, the wax resembled butchered flesh…

Mirrors, mirrors, everywhere! Fun, large, tricky mirrors, which incorporated the observer as part of the artwork, which in turn meant that every piece was different depending on who was viewing it and from what angle…

My favourite piece of the exhibition, with the mirror shards cut and rejoined at a variety of different angles, creating ever changing reflections…

Here I am…

…and here’s Roz…

This piece intrigued us – it’s hard to see from the photo, but depending at the angle from which it was viewed, a skin seemed to appear over the surface of the inverted dome…

Several of Kapoor’s artworks explore depth and colour perception – this one appeared to my eyes to be a square of red velvet.  In fact, it’s a one metre deep void, but despite my standing there staring at it for nearly ten minutes (from nearly every angle), I just couldn’t perceive any depth to it (please forgive the very ordinary photo)…

The diversity of Kapoor’s pieces was fascinating – Roz could see his signature touch on all of them, but I found this one quite different. It’s an early piece entitled 1000 Names, and appears to reflect the artist’s Indian heritage in its use of colours and shapes…

This large red lens magnified the image on the other side – I adored the Stargate feel to it…

Memory is an enormous (24 ton) Cor-Ten steel structure, which completely filled the room it was displayed in.  From an adjoining corridor, you can look into the cavernous interior of the structure…

Mirrors, and more mirrors! These pieces, entitled S-Curve (front of photo) and C-Curve (back), were a huge hit with the children, with different sections of each piece offering a quirky and slightly different reflection…

As I left the MCA, the rain eased up just long enough for me to take a photo of the Sky Mirror, one of Kapoor’s most celebrated artworks. The ten metre mirror reflects an inverted image of the sky, but on that overcast day, it seemed to glow like a beacon, sending signals into space (I was being fanciful, I know, but the afternoon had left me feeling quite euphoric)…

Sydneysiders, if you haven’t yet been to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the MCA, I hope you’ll get a chance to go before it closes on the 1st of April.  Entry costs $20 for adults, and it’s definitely money well spent!

Museum of Contemporary Art
140 George St
The Rocks,  Sydney  NSW  2000
10am – 5pm Mon – Wed, Fri – Sun
10am – 9pm Thursdays

Website:  Anish Kapoor at the MCA

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Chris Starke is a very clever man.

Don’t let his quiet demeanour fool you, because he really knows what he’s doing. First he created Youeni in Surry Hills, which charmed all of us (my friends Tania and Lorraine have both written about it). It’s a tiny café, with enthusiastic, friendly staff, and a small menu focused on delicious organic produce. Since discovering it last year, Pete and I have rarely lunched anywhere else.

Chris’ newest store is located in Castle Hill – some 33km from the CBD. Other restauranteurs might have baulked at branching out so far from their inner city roots, but as I said, Chris knows what he’s doing.  The Youeni Foodstore in Castle Hill opened just a week ago, and has been packed with eager customers ever since.

Pete and I promised that we’d drive up for a visit once they opened, and we took the opportunity to do so yesterday. We arrived at 9.15am for breakfast and sat at the bar, as all the inside tables were taken (on a Tuesday morning!).

This new Foodstore is much larger than the previous one, and has allowed Chris and his team (including Ky, Nolan and Damien from the Surry Hills store – it was so nice to see familiar faces) to expand their offerings. Their street front location comes with ample free underground parking, they now have a liquor licence, and the food selection has widened considerably.

As always, their bread is all baked in-house…

A selection of loaves can now be bought over the counter, with the range due to expand in coming weeks…

Their homemade muesli is packed with fruit and nuts…

…and served with fresh yoghurt and stewed rhubarb ($9) – I would have taken a prettier photo, but Pete didn’t wait…

We shared a jug of Ky’s “mystery juice” ($8.50), which changes daily depending on available fruit.  Ours was a freshly juiced blend of orange, pear, beetroot and carrot, and it was delicious…

Pete and I sat at the end of the bar, watching the food being prepared, and listening to Chris as he patiently tutored his new staff…

Nolan was busy working his coffee magic…

My breakfast of avocado toast with a side of bacon ($11) was perfect.  Next time I’m there though, I’m going to try the scrambled eggs, which were cooked without cream or milk. Prices were very reasonable, especially for organic, homemade food – we paid $28.50 for our meal, including the jug of juice.

We resisted the pastry cabinet, which Damien was working frantically to keep filled – by 10am, they’d nearly sold out of lemon meringue tarts and the apricot tarte tatins were on their second run…

Youeni Foodstore in Castle Hill is far more than just an eatery – it also offers fresh organic produce, homemade edibles, and an admirable philosophy for eating and living.  You won’t find fizzy soft drinks on the menu here.  But you will find carefully crafted, well thought out meals, smiling staff and a mellow, relaxed atmosphere.  It’s easy to see why it’s already so popular!

. . . . .

Youeni Foodstore, Castle Hill
250 Old Northern Road
Castle Hill   NSW  2154
www.youeni.com

Current Opening Hours: 7am to 5pm, 7 days a week
(they’ll be serving dinner in the near future)

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Pete and I have just celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary.

It’s a milestone for us, as we’ve now been married for half our lives. As always, we marked the occasion by having dinner with very dear friends.

Nick and Mary, whom we met a couple of years after our wedding, were married on exactly the same day as we were.  We live in different parts of Sydney and all lead busy lives, but once a year we get together to celebrate our joint anniversary, and have done so since 1995.

This year, we went to the love.fish seafood restaurant in Rozelle. It was a mild night, and we had a table outside on the footpath, perfect for alfresco dining.

The menu offered a wide assortment of sustainable and ethically produced seafood…

The entrees (starters) were the best part of the meal for me.  I could happily have sat outside in the balmy night air and eaten crispy school prawns and nothing else for the entire evening…

The polenta chips were delicious, as was the loligo squid on shredded green mango (top photo)…

The West Australian whitebait was simply prepared, but very tasty…

Nick thoroughly enjoyed his main of battered flathead…

…and Pete was very happy with his crispy skinned salmon special…

…but Mary and I were a tad disappointed with our grilled South Australian Bite red fish fillets, which were a little on the dry side. We had an assortment of sides and sauces as well, but by that time the light was dimming and the wine was flowing (corkage being just a tiny $3/bottle), so the photos ended up a little blurry…

We had to laugh – Mary received her mum’s ring as an anniversary present, and my mum gave me a pair of her earrings.  Thank goodness for mothers, because neither of our husbands bought us gifts. Though to be fair, we didn’t buy them anything either…

It was a wonderful night!

love.fish is a great restaurant – the staff are particularly friendly and knowledgeable, and being able to dine outdoors adds enormously to the charm of the place.  We’ll definitely be back – for the school prawns if nothing else!

More information about love.fish and their environmentally responsible operating principles can be found in Terry Durack’s Good Food Guide review.

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You know how there are some people in this world who make things worthwhile?

My neighbour Michelle is one of those.

Last week, she asked me to teach her to bake bread.

“I want to make grain bread,” she said, “just a basic recipe, but I want it to be MY thing, so I can bake it and give it to people as gifts, like you do.”

And since I adore Michelle, I was more than happy to oblige.

On Tuesday, she came over for a lesson. Here’s the formula we used for her very first loaf (photo above)…

• 500g bakers flour
• 300g water
• 50ml extra virgin olive oil
• 8g fine sea salt
• a handful of grains, soaked overnight in water
• 10g dried yeast

We followed the basic instructions in the Bread #101 Tutorial, although we only kneaded the dough for a minute or so.

The finished loaf was tender and delicious. Michelle was excited, her husband Shaun was overjoyed, and I sent her home with a bag of flour and some yeast.

On Thursday, Michelle baked a loaf all on her own, and brought over a wedge for us to try. It tasted better than the loaf she’d baked with me – she’d tinkered with the quantities, and added slightly more salt…

Today, she baked a baguette, a small focaccia, and two round loaves.  She brought over a slab of the focaccia, which was light, salty and very moreish.  In the short space of a week, she has already developed her own style – her loaves no longer taste like mine. It’s now truly HER bread, and it will continue to evolve with time. She has enthusiastically fed her loaves to family and friends, and tonight she took the baguette to a barbeque.

As I sat in her kitchen today, watching her scrape dough onto a floured board, she announced, “Now that I’ve figured this out, I’d like to learn how to bake sourdough next!”

As I said, some people just make it all worthwhile.  ♥

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