TOP 10 highlights from my trip to Australia in January 2017

I'm a slow girl, a typical northener, you see. Back in January I had the opportunity to visit Australia, courtesy of the Australian winemaker, Jacob's Creek, and it's probably about time I shared some of the highlights from that whirlwind tour.

First of all, I almost didn't go, meaning I almost turned down the offer to visit. Leaving our three small kids in charge of my busy partner in the middle of the school term seemed a bit daunting, but he was more than happy to accept the challenge and let me go on a business trip for a change. Our girls were 4 and 7 in January, our boy turned 6 on the day of the departure - and there was school for the oldest and kindergarten for the two younger ones, violin practices, ballet classes, basketball and football/soccer sessions and so on and so on to be followed. On hindsight, he did a great job, my dear K, so next time such an exciting opportunity arises, I'll accept it without hesitation :)

Meeting new friends

Jacob's Creek invited two Estonians to participate at their first international Our Table event. I was travelling with a well-known Estonian wine expert, Kalev Vapper, whom I knew only from the TV screen. He used to host several TV shows few years ago, and is now the wine buyer for one of the big supermarket chains here in Estonia.

A trip to Down Under is not an easy one, when travelling from such a small country far north. We met at the Tallinn Airport late on a Sunday evening and hopped over to Helsinki in Finland - that's less than 30 minutes up in the air. We then had a few hours to chat in Helsinki, then spent the next 11 hours on a Finnair plane from Helsinki to Singapore. Another few hours of waiting, then 8 more hours on a rather, well, cramped Jetstar carrier to Melbourne. Factor in the different time zones - and here we are, all exhausted and bleary-eyed after arriving in Melbourne on Tuesday morning:

Catching up with old friends #1

While my travel companion headed straight to the hotel, I had a date at the airport. Back in 1992-1993 I spent a year in Denmark as an exchange student, part of an AYUSA programme. It was at the beginning of the programme that I met Anthony, a guy from Melbourne. He actually spent his exchange year in Sweden, but the orientation programme for all the Estonians, Americans and Australians was in Denmark. We've kept touch over the years, and Anthony has actually been to Estonia twice.

I was of course looking forward to catching up with Anthony while in Melbourne, but as it happened, he was due to go on a family holiday in Tanzania on exactly the same dates. We did manage to meet a at the airport, however, and I'm extremely happy about that.

room picnic with Heidi Gruyere from Tasmania, potato crackerthins (Valley Produce Co.), mushroom and verjuice pate (@maggie_beer) also a bottle of @puntrdwines 2015 Pinot Noir from Yarra Valley and some mineral water :) #hotelroompicnic

Melbourne welcomed me with a soaring 33 Celsius - little did I know that this was only the beginning!

Lovely, lovely food #1 (Sezar, Melbourne)

After waving goodbye to Anthony, his lovely wife Maryanne and their two kids, I headed to the hotel. Although the initial plan was to unpack, refresh and get out to explore the city, I  succumbed to sleep and only woke up before the first meal. Our Table group (rather big, 40+) was bussed toGlen Waverly, a suburb of Melbourne, for a welcome dinner and drinks at a trendy Sezar, a restaurant specialising on Modern Armenian food.  I love Armenian food - although there's just lone recipe on this blog -  with its heavy use of lamb, aubergines/eggplants and soft lavosh flatbreads, and I adored the food at Sezar. Served family-style, subtly spiced, well seasoned, cooked to perfection - That lamb! That pumpkin! The place was crowned, the buzz was overwhelming and I left the place very satiated indeed.

 Here's a list of my three favourite dishes from Sezar:

Roasted Pumpkin, Red Pepper Paste, Crispy Bulghur, Sheep's Milk Cheese

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Kataifi Wrapped Lamb Neck and Sesame Mayo

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Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder, served with Sour Cherry Sauce, Garlic Yogurt and Tahini Yogurt

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Twice-Cooked Chicken Wings with Pomegranate Glaze, Pistachio and Coriander

(I'm also a lucky recipient of recipes of all those dishes - thank you, Kora & the Sezar team!)


This being a wine tour, we drank lots of good wine. Our wine ambassador for the night was Stockholm-based Australian musician/oenophile Richard Doumani (see @clarinet2claret), and he had paired the food at Sezar with Reserve Chardonnay Pinot Noir (Vintage 2016), Adelaide Hills Reserve Chardonnay (Vintage 2015), Limited Release Mataro Rosé (2016), Adelaide Hills Reserve Pinot Noir (Vintage 2015), Double Barrel Shiraz Barossa 2015 (which ended up being one of the favourites during the trip). Lots of good Australian wine, lots of it :)

Visit to Steingarten Wineyard, where it all began

To be continued...

ANZAC biscuits (recipe for coconut oat cookies)

 

From the recipe archives. Originally posted in 2013.

Did you know that it's ANZAC Day today? ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The Department of Veterans' Affairs of the Australian Government explains the Anzac day and tradition in detail. This being a food blog, it suffices to say that apparently these eggless crispy oatcakes were the cookies sent by the Australian and New Zealand women to the soldiers on the frontline during the WWI. And they're lovely - at least their modern equivalent!

The original recipe uses golden syrup, but honey works as well. I actually find the flavour very appealing, similar to the Estonian honey cake, and the chewy-crispy texture went down a treat with my family.

ANZAC-biscuits 
(ANZAC-küpsised)
About 20 cookies


125 g butter
2 Tbsp or 45 g golden syrup or runny honey
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
2 Tbsp water
150 g or 250 ml or 1 cup all-purpose flour
100 g rolled oats
60 g shredded coconut
150 g caster sugar

Line a large baking sheet (or two smaller ones) with a parchment paper. Heat the oven to 175 C/350 F.

Place butter and honey/syrup into a medium-sized saucepan, heat and stir until melted and combined.
Mix soda with water and pour into the saucepan. The mixture will sizzle and foam - this is exactly what should happen. Stir until combined and remove the saucepan from the heat.
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, oats, coconut and sugar. Pour in the butter-syrup-soda mixture and stir until combined.
Using your hands, roll the cookie mixture into golfball-sized balls. Place these on the baking tray, leaving plenty of room between the cookies. Press the cookie dough into thinner disks for especially crisp cookies (that's the way I like them).
Bake in a preheated 175 C oven for about 10 minutes or until cooked (the cookies will harden as they cool down; if you didn't pat the cookie dough down, they may need few more minutes in the oven).

Store in an air-tight cookie jar.

SIMILAR POSTS:
Heidi @ 101 Cookbooks (Heidi adds some orange zest)
Lottie + Doof
Tori @ The Shiksa in the Kitchen (Tori toasts the coconut first)
Emily @ Chilli Marmalade
Jennifer @ Use Real Butter (nice step-by-step photos!)
Sneh @ Cook Republic
Martha Stewart
Laura @ Pies & Plots

Raspberry and vanilla friands with cacao nibs

Here's another delicious friand recipe, following the lingonberry and coconut friands and blueberry and lemon friands I wrote about last year. I'm still in love with those Australian little cakes, and whenever I have excess egg whites, I bake these as opposed to meringues or mini-Pavlovas.

Raspberry and vanilla friands with cacao nibs
(Vaarika-vanillifriandid kakaotükikestega)
Makes eight, suitable for freezing



100 g unsalted butter, melted (1 stick minus 1 Tbsp)
125 g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar (1 cup)
30 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (50 ml or 3 Tbsp + 1 tsp)
80 g finely ground almonds (1 cup)
3 medium-sized egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g whole raspberries (a generous handful)
a handful of roasted cacao nibs (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Generously butter eight non-stick friand or muffin tins.
Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl, add the almonds and mix.
Whisk the egg whites in another bowl until they form a light, floppy foam.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg whites, vanilla and the cooled melted butter. Stir very gently to form a soft batter.
Divide the batter among the tins. Sprinkle some raspberries and cacao nibs over each cake.
Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 200 C oven for about 20 minutes, until just firm to the touch and golden brown on top.
Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack. To serve, dust lightly with icing sugar.

North meets South: Lingonberry and Coconut Friands

Friands again. I wrote about these dainty Australian cakes just a short time ago when posting a recipe for blueberry and lemon friands. This is the same basic recipe, but I wanted to use coconut this time and paired the pure white coconut with bright red lingonberries. The combination worked like a dream!
I am pretty sure that lingonberries - while widely available and used here in Estonia - are hard to come buy Down Under, so in a way it's a North-meets-South fusion recipe :)

Again, it's an excellent recipe for using up those egg whites, when you're tired of making meringues and mini-Pavlovas.

Coconut and Lingonberry Friands
(Pohla-kookosefriandid)
Makes 8 regular-sized friands

100 g unsalted butter, melted
125 g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
30 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (50 ml or 3 Tbsp + 1 tsp)
50 g finely ground almonds
50 g grated/desiccated coconut
3 medium-sized egg whites
a very generous handful of lingonberries

Preheat the oven to 200C. Generously butter eight non-stick friand or muffin tins.
Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl, add the almonds and mix.
Whisk the egg whites in another bowl until they form a light, floppy foam.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg whites, then lightly stir in the butter to form a soft batter.
Divide the batter among the tins. Sprinkle some berries (I used about a tablespoon for each) and flaked coconut over each cake.
Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 200 C oven for about 20 minutes, until just firm to the touch and golden brown on top.
Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack. To serve, sprinkle with more coconut

Blueberry and Lemon Friands

Ever heard of friands? These are the Australian "cousin" of the famous French financiers, the little moist egg-white cakes. Both are excellent for using up all those egg whites in the kitchen if you're tired of making Pavlovas and meringues! There are some differences, however. Whereas the financiers tend to use browned butter and are plain, the friands are made with melted butter and usually with the addition of fruit or berries. Another difference is the shape - the financiers are (traditionally) baked in oblong rectangular forms (to look like gold bars, apparently), the friands are usually baked in small oval tins (though you can use regular muffin tins or even tiny fluted tins like this talented Estonian food photographer did). Dorie Greenspan has written more about those two pastries.

I've adapted a recipe from BBC Good Food magazine. Note that I used ground whole almonds - hence the slightly darker colour of the cakes. The texture has more, well, bite to it as well, but you can obviously also use ground blanched almonds.

Blueberry and Lemon Friands
(Mustika ja sidruni friandid)
Makes 8 friands, suitable for freezing



100 g unsalted butter, melted
125 g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
30 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (50 ml or 3 Tbsp + 1 tsp)
80 g finely ground almonds
3 medium-sized egg whites
finely grated zest of one lemon
a generous handful of blueberries or bilberries

Preheat the oven to 200C. Generously butter eight non-stick friand or muffin tins.
Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl, add the almonds and mix.
Whisk the egg whites in another bowl until they form a light, floppy foam.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg whites and lemon rind, then lightly stir in the butter to form a soft batter.
Divide the batter among the tins. Sprinkle some berries over each cake.
Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 200 C oven for about 20 minutes, until just firm to the touch and golden brown on top.
Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack. To serve, dust lightly with icing sugar.