Life with Bees

The leftover batter was delightful, but it killed me like a velvety, lemon assassin.

I've been on holidays and have been using the long, lazy days to catch up with some restaurants. So I had lunch at Sage at Gorman House this week.

The restaurant always gets approval from our friends and I was pretty keen to finally check it out. It's a small but very charming restaurant that sits just on the side of Gorman House in Braddon. The dining room is white and minimalist with plush seating and soft, first-date lighting, though this is all going to change in an upcoming refurbishment. The Canberra Times Food & Wine magazine reports owner Pete Harrington is going to go for a sunnier look with bright colours, which would be lovely for summer.

Sage offers an $18 Express Lunch menu as well as its a la carte menu of $18 entrees and $32 mains. I ordered a caramelised pork belly with yellowfin tuna sashimi from the express menu. It was a pleasant spring day, great for sitting outside in the courtyard. The squares of pork belly were glassy and caramelised on top and mostly tender beneath (I did get one leathery dud square). The tuna sashimi was clean and strong with a sprinkle of rock salt or sugar on top. It all went beautifully with a pile of basil and a puddle of raspberry caramel that had more in common with pekat soy sauce.

Because I'd had the cheapo main dish, I splurged on dessert. There's a short but sharp dessert menu (all $14) with interesting-sounding dishes such as a jasmine tea creme brulee and a chocolate fondant with malt ice cream. I got two fat brandy snaps filled to bursting with fig and whiskey cream, served with a scoop of olive oil ice cream and a citrus scone.

I had a beautiful dinner the other night. It was cold outside, the kind of chill that's like a bar of metal, and I was slated to work until 11pm. Luckily I had a packed dinner from TK to eat at my desk – beef goulash with pasta. It was a slow-cooked special, the meat tender even after a blitz in the microwave, and filled with savoury spikes of carrot and mushroom. I will admit it was very rich – the gravy was like lava, perfect for the fat pasta spirals, but disturbingly similar to confit when it went cold. But it was hearty food for a winter night and it was so delicious.

Awesome pic via moogs Flickr

And yet the more perfect it was for the occasion, the more homesick I got for something completely opposite. All I could think of was how wonderful it would be to possess a bowl heaped with gleaming cherries. Or lift a fork to a slice of mango. Even just feel a fuzzy peach under my fingers. I wanted the pleasure of sunshine food again. Not the weight of foods that are marbled with protective fat, or packed with stewed vegetables. I want light stuff, delightful stuff, food that tastes sharp and bright. It doesn’t even have to be sweet – I can’t pick a ripe peach to save my life, it’s always the acid too-earlies or the half-drunk too-lates. Just food that's alive again.


I am so ready for summer!

It's almost a meal in itself - a creamy mashed potato heaped with vegetables lightly cooked in white wine. I particularly like the mix of savoury pops of olive, crunchy onion and fresh tomato. This recipe is adapted from Buber's Basque website, which  uses orange peel for flavouring.

Let's praise friends who get things done. They make the bookings for the hotels, they remind everyone what time we were having drinks and harass everyone to pay their share of the bill. So thanks Al, for rounding us up and booking us in for no less than three Chinese restaurants in a month.

1. Spicy Ginger Cafe, 25 Childers St, Civic
It's Szechuan and it works. Dip into a hotpot of pork filled with chilli flakes (two of us inhaled  the fiery flakes and nearly choked to death).  Try not to squabble over a nest of super-thin french fries seasoned with onion and spices. They're the savoury, deep-fried equivalent of spun sugar.  A huge plate of thousand year eggs encased in aubergine is stodgy and less successful. Forget about desserts, which are mostly Western-influenced or old standards such as fried ice cream. It's student cheap - $99 for four of us.

2. The Scholar, 23 Woolley St, Dickson
There's a slightly more upmarket feel to this restaurant, which sits upstairs from the Dickson strip. A tank of live seafood and abalone at the front of the restaurant looks promising and the menu is diverse. Roast pigeon is a little dry but comes well seasoned and complete with pigeon head. Al, who loves pigeon, eats the (admittedly rather tiny) brain. TK is enamored of a beef brisket hot pot and a plate of tofu layered with seafood is picked off by the boys, despite the meatier dishes on offer. Desserts include a complimentary and lightly flavoured wolfberry jelly but the fried ice creams are redolent with grease and soon regretted. The bill for four of us is $120.

3. Shanghai Dumpling Cafe, 35 Childers St, Civic
This dumpling cafe sits on the same strip as its rival, the Spicy Ginger Cafe. But there isn't much to compare. For us, the food was a little forgettable. "What did we eat?" I asked TK a couple of days afterwards. There was an ominous silence. Eventually he did offer that the main dishes come complete with generous servings of rice, perhaps too much. The dumplings are a little thick but very reasonably priced. Desserts are possibly the best of the lot, with fried red bean cake and rice balls in sweet soup on offer. They're not terrific but it's a change from that damn fried ice cream. Another $99 for four people.

Banging through the door after work one evening, I tossed my keys into their bowl and relinquished my bag onto a dining chair. TK was cooking something, I could smell heat and garlic but he was being unusually quiet. Off with the shoes, padding into the little kitchen – nothing. He wasn't there.

Then I discovered the cookie tray on the dining table, heaped with treasure trove – rough crystals speckled through all bright green and ruby. The pile gave off a brilliant, tasty aroma, like someone cooking a chilli dish softly in the next room. From the bedroom, TK emerged with a particularly delighted look on his face. “What's this?” I asked, sniffing suspiciously.

He rubbed his hands together. “Chilli garlic salt. Isn't it great?”


It turned out to be a pretty simple mix of rock salt, green and red chillies and garlic, all blended together and spread out to dry. But it took a couple of days to dry, that delicious smell of chilli and garlic fooling everyone who walked through the door into thinking there was a meal prepping.

Finally TK scraped the mix into a blender and ground it into a fine – perhaps too fine – salt. It gives flavour with a good kick of warmth, if you use it carefully. Simex got a bit carried away and sprinkled a big spoonful onto fresh potato chips, leaving the boys a little choked up. But it's so tasty I sometimes sneak a (tiny) fingertipful if I see the jar on the counter, relishing the garlicky heat and the memory of ruby and green crystals, like Christmas quartz.