Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Bush and our Saturday night dinner.

We finally finished burning all of our CDs on the the external hard drive on Friday night. Now we have music playing through our Apple TV thingy. While I type away, I'm listening to a 60s genre with Buffalo Springfield - clever thing that iTunes.....it does genre, composer, artist, album and probably many other things I have yet to discover.

Last night was a pleasant balmy night and so No.2 son - (that's Mitchel who is off to Canada soon), Sue and I decided we would enjoy the weather with a meal on the outdoor deck. We'd been shopping in the afternoon and bought some salmon for a mains and yabbies to try for an entree.

I'll let Sue explain more about that.

Yep, that's her with a Yabbie. She's learn't how to hold them now, although this one is dead. Is there still some fear in that smile?

"The bush" means something quite unique to Austalians, I believe. The bush means beyond cities, beyond suburbia, beyond a reasonable expectation of comfortable, usual expectations. My father's siblings lived "in the bush".
Redbank in Victoria is now a place that makes very nice wines. In the 50's and 60's it was very much in the bush.
My auntie had the general store (read only store) in Redbank and our family used to make an annual trip to visit.
This is where I learned to love eating yabbies and rabbit. With difficulty! My cousin Darryl, a few years older than me took me yabbying in a local dam and taught me how to pick up yabbies "by the claws". No!!!
Ouch!! However, I also remember a big cooking pot and eating them. Yummy.
All the blokes (very Aussie word) in the family would go out with their 22's and shoot rabbits for dinner. They only took me once...I was far too soft hearted and when I spotted a rabbit, I would yell and point in the opposite direction...never stopped me eating them though. I don't know why they never let me go with them again.
My favourite fishmonger had yabbies last week. I know they are now farmed in places but I hadn't seen them before.
They are a sort of fresh water crayfish I guess. That's what they taste like. Yet they aren't the same as marron, which is our other sort of fresh water cray. Just yabbies, I guess.
They were already cooked. We just needed to get the meat out. The tail, just like lobster, and Leon cracked the claws to get out the tiny bit of meat so strongly defended!
It was certainly delicious, but very expensive for a small reward.
Leon said he felt like eating fish, so I bought salmon for our main course.It was cooked in parchment paper with lemon, white wine and butter to make its own sauce and was very nice. A potato bake and fresh asparagus finished it. Plus Mitch bought a lovely bottle of rose to go with it.
Figs...I love figs...until a few years ago we had a neighbour with a big fig tree who was good at sharing. Have to buy them now though. Boo Hoo.
Just pressed them in a little brown sugar, then cooked them in butter and served their caramel goodness with a little marscapone. Oh yum.

Before cooking

Entree, Yabbie, Avocado, Cos lettuce and a sauce that Sue made up.


Salmon hiding in the foil and lemon, with asparagas, and tatties.

Our son, Mitch's choice of wine - a very sophisticated young man.
It's from the King Valley and a very local Victorian Rose.

Figs and Mascarpone cheese - delightful.
Coffee and a muscat wine. Perfect.
And why do I eat here, guess!!!!
Looking out on the backyard during dinner - on a summer night.
A little bit of our iTunes music wafts out to make for a great night.
It's 10.30pm Sunday night and time for bed before another week of work - we'll catch up next Wednesday in France, won't we?

4 comments:

  1. Your Saturday supper looks delicious, just off to think about Sunday night supper here.

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  2. You could have asked me to dinner with a meal like that, my mouth is watering.

    We used to live in the bush in Rhodesia, yes it was Rhodesia when I lived there!! It is a word used a lot in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Diane

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  3. LLM - Hope you enjoyed yours as much as we did.

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  4. Diane - we have cycling friends who from Zimbabwe and they sometimes mention the difficulties of their life there.

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