and welcoming.... a guest blog from NGO chick!

Mmmm pastries. I love you.

My latest Darwin food experiences include...

Some pretty good curries from Saffron in Parap on the weekend - Lamb Roganjosh and Eggplant something - both yummy and lasted well in the fridge for a couple of days. Oh, and a roti that was almost up to Hanuman standard!

Saffron on that rainy night had sexy wait staff but an offhand supervisor person who irriatated me and wasn't so kind to staff I didn't think - oh, and there's a woman working in the kitchen, and that's always a good sign :)

It also has a highly confusing method of take away ordering. It was an intelligence test, and I failed, so someone else had to support me through the process... it was however a very 'green' ordering system - recycled orders from other diners where on the flip side... I'm not sure if that made me feel dirty or not...

Anyway, it was reasonable priced as well - all that for $45, and for good sized meals.

Cornucopia...
Life is always a gamble there.
There were three cakes doing the rounds that day. My pal, Food Doctor and I choose the French Apple Flan loveliness (we hoped) thing and the Chocolate Mousse number cos I figured the Chocolate Mud would be far too dry and oh so Sydney in the 90s, that I couldn't bear to eat it... Hungry knew better though..

The bottom layer of the Chocolate Mousse was so laden with gelatine that I thought I'd been beamed up into dead horse heaven, the rest of it didn't compensate for being unceremoniously and without consent, dumped in pony world. I love chocolate, and moussey food and I wanted with all my heart to gobble it up, but I couldn't, and neither could my partner in eating, the Food Doctor.

The apple number was even more heart breaking, this day too, was rainy (like the Saffron experience), I think I may have even been slightly cold! I've just returned from Paris and the mere mention of any thing apple-y and french sent me into a twist! I looked into that condensated cake fridge at Cornucopia and squeezed my eyes shut, praying to the cake Goddess that she would make it all OK at Cornucopia, just once, just for me...

But alas, the cake Goddess may have been caught at the Travelling Sydney Film Festival in town, or in the storm over Darwin harbour, cos my Apple French tart, weren't a tart, it certainly weren't french and it was only just apple.

It was ice cold, hard, and it was a cake. And I was sad.

Hungry's Chocolate Mud Cake (it was so retro it may have even been called a 'Mississipi' Mud Cake!)was almost perfect (by Darwin cake fridge cake standards). It was tall and dark, moist and chocolately with a very generous chunk of chocolate ganache / icing on top!

Thanks Cornucopia!

More to come :)

that reminds me

In a fit of pique (the reasons i won't go into here, suffice to say BURNETT HOUSE YOU ARE ON MY HITLIST!!!) on sunday afternoon i flounced down to Cornucopia cafe at the museum for tea and cake. Cornucopia isn't high on my list of Darwin cafes to frequent, because, as was noted by NGO chick (was that you NGO chick with your hilarious account of saffron and cake?), the cakes are soooo often disappointing, clearly made somewhere (that crappy generic place where all crappy generic cafe cakes are produced) that is not there on the premises. Anyway we were treated lovely-ly (this is is a word by the way) by the staff who happily pulled together a table for 15 people, and they were very accomodating of the 10 adults ordering different things at different times and all paying separately and the 5 screeching, running kids who galloped around the museum gardens climbing trees and hiding in their sculptures. i bravely decided to order the french apple loveliness and you know what? Perhaps my eyes were clouded with the rose glasses of it all but it was apple-y and it was moist and it went pretty nicely with my T2 tea ( i could have been in Melbourne but for the howling rain coupled with the brown sea and darwin humidity). Cornucopia, you did good that day.

holiday part 3 - cake

It was my 4oth birthday while i was awandering the south west of WA and just for posterity I want to post a picture of the cake that my old bud and Director Chick conspired to produce (thanks guys!!!!!!!!). It was made by Edible Art in Margaret River - they are just off Boodjidup Road in MR. Carmello is the guys name and he did an awesome job!!! The boobs and the ass were slightly bigger than my own though.

:-))))))

http://www.edibleart.com.au/