Friday Bubbles #1 & Beirut Champagne Club

Welcome to Talking Adelaide's first Friday Bubbles post – the plan is to share regular beverage suggestions (especially Champagne) for the weekend.

 

The fabulous five - details below

The fabulous five - details below

In the wake of this year’s Bastille Day, six of us gathered on a wintry night in a little dining room, in the smallest house in the city to taste French Champagne.

Taste, not just drink.

And thus the Beirut Champagne Club was born. The name is a nod to our first meeting place. It’s a nickname the locals gave the south-west corner of the city a while ago.

Our hostess Anne-Marie did us proud. Not only selecting 5 different and palate challenging bottles but serving a 4 course French-inspired dinner including her own Gougeres (recipe below). Gougeres are a cheese-flavoured puff that go so well with Champagne.

The five Champagnes we tasted where all accessible and pretty much entry level wines.

There was only one Grand Marque – the Laurent Perrier NV, which we started with, chosen deliberately by Anne-Marie to awaken the mouth and set a benchmark for comparisons.

My personal favourites were No.s 3 & 5.

What amazed some of us was how much the Champagnes changed, as they grew warmer in the glass or bottle. Some more than others.

We compared (to say judge would imply too much knowledge) each Champagne on colour (out of 3), nose (out of 7) and palette (out of 10).

This is what we drank, some of our thoughts and my votes in parentheses:

1. Laurent Perrier Brut LP NV $69.99 @Champagne Gallery.

A typical tasting French Champagne that grew duller or flatter but also sweeter as it grew warmer. Suit newcomers to real Champagne drinking (2/5/6).

2. Le Mesnil 2004 Blanc De Blancs $79.99 @ Edinburgh Cellars.

This is a grower’s wine that had a slight sourness to the back palate that became more interesting the longer it was in the glass. From the same village as Krug Le Mesnil. (2.5/6/7).

3. Chartogne-Taillet 2004 Brut $85 @ Champagne Gallery.

The 60 per cent Pinot Noir meant it tasted yeastier, it smelled like bread dough, also had a taste of wood. More golden in colour. Expect to taste pears, hazelnuts, almonds and spices. This wine finishes on the tongue really well. (2.5/7/8).

4. Christophe LeFevre Cuvee Prestige $58.99 @ Champagne Gallery.

A toasty, biscuit wine and a bit drier – 80 per cent of this wine comes from “outstanding” (according to Champagne Gallery) 2008 vintage, the rest from 2007. This is an organic wine grower. (3/6/7).

5. Canard-Duchene Cuvee Leonie $68 @ Edinburgh Cellars.

A blend of 50 per cent Pinot Noir, 25 per cent Pinot Meunier and 25 per cent Chardonnay; a great colour and opens up as it warms in the glass. It’s described as an aperitif and excellent accompaniment to food – it also worked well with cheese and our dessert of quince tart. (2.5/7/8)

Anne-Marie's quince tart

Anne-Marie's quince tart

Gougere Puffs


This recipe requires a Thermomix or similar. This is a link to a Dan Lepard recipe that doesn’t.

Makes 18 – total time including baking 45 minutes

Ingredients

Handful fresh chives (or herbs of choice)

80g strong hard cheese cubed (Romano, Pecorino or Parmesan are ideal)

250g water

Pinch each salt and chilli powder

110g butter

180g plain flour

3 eggs

Method.

Pre-heat oven to 220ºC. Line 2 baking trays with paper and set aside.

Place chives or herbs and cubed cheese into Thermomix (TM) bowl and mill for 10 seconds on speed 9. Set aside.

Place water, salt, chilli powder and butter into TM bowl and cook for 10 minutes at 100ºC on speed 4.

Add flour and mix for 30 seconds on speed 4, or until you see the pastry coming away from the sides of the bowl. Cool for about 10 minutes.

Add eggs to the mixture by dropping one egg at a time through hole in lid as you mix for 30-40 seconds on speed 5.

Add herb and cheese mixture to TM bowl and mix in for 5 seconds on speed 5 after the last egg, reserving a little of the cheese to garnish the tops of the profiteroles.

Proceed to pipe or spoon as for normal profiteroles, top each puff with a little of the cheese and bake for 10 minutes in pre-heated oven. Reduce heat to 180ºC and continue baking for a further 20 minutes until tops are golden.

Source: recipecommunity.com.au

Author: Thermomix in Australia

 

 

Tour 75 years of the city in one afternoon

Cover art of Lance Campbell and Mick Bradley's book chronicling the changing streetscapes of Adelaide.

Cover art of Lance Campbell and Mick Bradley's book chronicling the changing streetscapes of Adelaide.

Anyone who knows Talking Adelaide knows TA has a passion for the Art Deco period.

This has manifested itself over the years in purchases and gifts of furniture, homewares (lamps, bookcase, drinks trolley), glassware, assorted Bakelite bits and pieces, even Chez Wayville was built in the period.

So it is with much pleasure to promote an event organized by the Art Deco & Modernism Society of SA this Sunday afternoon (July 28) at La Boheme, in Grote St.

 

The society is publicising City Streets – the wonderful book by writer Lance Campbell and photographer Mick Bradley that celebrates the streetscape of our town in words and pictures by the authors themselves.

In 1936, when South Australia was 100 years old, photographer Gustav Hermann Baring took the streets to capture the state and its capital in images. His huge publication, Progressive Adelaide – As it Stands Today “was both a catalogue of commerce and a labour of love”.

Inspired by that book, Campbell and Bradley set out in Baring’s footsteps to capture the city’s progression.

The even this Sunday will include a performance of Memories of Australia, a song in the book that was recently revived at a City Streets presentation in the Barossa.

Starting at 3pm, tickets are just $20, which will go towards the Deco Society’s fighting fund to “help save 20th century Adelaide”.

If you feel like coming along, email alison.oloughlin@gmail.com or phone 0408850234.

Wakefield Press will have books for sale including City Streets, which Campbell describes as “a brass-bottomed, copper-plated, silver-lined, gold-embossed local bestseller of which everyone involved is very proud”.

The extraordinary photos of Hugh Hartshorne

An exhibition has opened in Melbourne celebrating the stage and screen career of actor Geoffrey Rush.

Geoffrey Rush as King Berenger in Exit the King , 2009.  Photograph by Hugh Hartshorne.

Geoffrey Rush as King Berenger in Exit the King, 2009.  Photograph by Hugh Hartshorne.

What’s the Adelaide link?

Many of the photographs appearing in the exhibition were taken by former Adelaide photographer Hugh Hartshorne.

He’s become Rush’s favourite portrait photographer.

I first worked with Hugh back in the 1980s at Messenger Newspapers – I think it was a first job for both of us. At the time, he was already a better photographer than I was a cadet reporter. After time working with the fabulous Milton Wordley, at Southlight Studios, Hugh eventually went out on his own which included moving to New York, where he has been successfully based for about 15 years.

He now co-locates between there and Sydney. 

So if you’re in Melbourne before September 29, be sure to head to the Melbourne Arts Centre, just down St Kilda Rd, and check out The Extraordinary Shapes of Geoffrey Rush.

 

What were we wearing in the ‘80s?

1980s Cherry Lane advertisement   

Sportsgirl ad from the 1980s

In the early 1980s, my mother had a hot pink, silk, after-five dress from the Australian label Covers.

It was the pink of Marilyn Monroe’s evening dress in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but it had the sleeve-shape and tight skirt of Krystal Carrington in Dynasty.

It shared equal status with her pale blue Prue Acton maxi from the mid-1970s as my favourites in her wardrobe. She wore the pink Covers dress with multi-coloured carnival glass beads hat shimmered blue, green, purple or pink depending on the light.

I coveted that Covers dress. My sister got to wear once in the late ‘80s. Alas, it never fitted me.

Why am I thinking about ‘80s fashions? The Victoria & Albert Museum, in London, has just opened an exhibition called Club to Catwalk  showcasing London's clubbing and fashion scene in the ‘80s.

A picture gallery from the exhibition by The Guardian got me reminiscing about what I wore here to the likes of Toucan Two and Limbo’s, in the West End, to Leon’s, on the Parade, and Doug Govan’s My Place, in Hyde St, Le Rox, in Light Square and later the Venue, in Hindley St.

Although I lived in London at the end of the ‘80s, and even went to some of the clubs captioned in The Guardian, it’s not the mainsteam ‘80s fashions I mostly remember wearing. It’s styling straight out of the era’s video clips.

When I think of ‘80s fashions, I think of high-waisted Corfu jeans, made right here in Adelaide. And Canterbury rugby tops.

Yes, I had leg warmers but never stirrup pants.

I loved my dusty pink thick cord jodhpurs – Stuart Membery from memory. Or were they Jag? A white lacey shirt worn with a grey-striped taffeta skirt from Cream, on Unley Rd; and shopping across the road at Naffine’s with my mother.

What about the giant Cherry Lane store in Rundle Mall that you had to ride an escalator down to? Most of my work clothes came from there during 1986-88. And the funny-shaped Sportsgirl store at Burnside – was it a hexagon or a pentagon? Oh, and Demasius.

K-K-Katies seemed so much more stylish back then, although it’s the reverse with Witchery. Did you follow the advertising call to action that jingled “this goes with that at Sussan’s”? Now that’s an excuse to watch this blast from the past.

This goes with that....relive the jingle   here

This goes with that....relive the jingle  here

I’d love to hear what were your favourite outfits and labels from the 1980s. Maybe this slideshow below with jog the memory (click to open full gallery with captions).

 

FermentAsian ….. finally finding what all the fuss is about

“Haven’t you been there yet?” seemed the repeated response when ever I mentioned Monsieur D was taking me to FermentAsian, in Tanunda, for my birthday.

It seems we are way down the foodie chain when it comes to dining at this establishment, which has been opened for a couple of years.

Our booking was made three weeks out and closer to the day, I did come across a lot more people who, like us, were yet to go and even others who had never heard of it.

Post-dinner, my suggestion is do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get there for lunch or dinner.

Fresh betel leaves with sticky caramelised pork and incendiary components.

“Divine, sublime, delicious” is my refrain whenever I really, really enjoy something: a bit like Kath & Kim’s “noice, different, unusual” – except I'm not joking.

The DSD came out this night.

I had remembered John Lathlean, in The Australian, had written previously that chef and co-owner Tuoi Do “cooks with the hand of an angel”. That almost reverential tone stuck in my memory; here’s the original review and re-reading it after our visit, it totally sums up our experience.

My reasons for recommending FermentAsian?

This is cooking with harmony. Everything is delicately flavoured and in proportion.

Quality of ingredients.

The crackling on the pork belly. The broth on the warm mushroom salad. 

It’s in the middle of Tanunda.

The service is considered with the right amount of attention.

The smart, modern and comfortable interior.

The menu. The wine list.

It’s probably the best South East Asian food you’ll eat anywhere. Yes, really.

At our lovely young waitress' suggestion, we shared two entrees and two mains but opted for a mushroom salad instead of a side of seasonal vegetables stir-fried.

You can read more about FermentAsian here – and check out the menu and wine list. Click in the arrows below to scroll through photos of what we ate.

Our choices:

Thit lon cuon la lot
 Fresh betel leaves with sticky caramelised pork and incendiary components (4) $14

Nen Ha Noi 
Hanoi spring rolls with salad of fresh herbs and 
classic Vietnamese dipping sauce (2) $14

Tom sao ot 
Stir fried SA squid with chilli jam and Thai basil $26

Lon voi gung va cam
 Barossa Berkshire pork belly with ginger and orange sauce $26

Goi nam 
Warm mixed mushroom salad with galangal dressing $22

Bru lee chanh 
Lime brûlée $12

Meat-free Mondays: Black Pepper Mushrooms

This recipe comes from the Qantas inflight magazine, November 2008 edition, and unfortunately the tear sheet doesn’t show whom it should be attributed to.

Beef fillet was used in the original but Monsieur D substituted mushrooms (white and/or brown, Swiss: whatever was available) and it soon became a signature dish in Chez Wayville.

Being a stir-fry, I don’t think the quantities of ingredients such as oyster and soy, kecap manis (Indonesian syrupy soy) matter – it’s about personal taste. Start with less, you can always add more but you can’t take away.

As the original recipe also says, this dish relies on the freshness of the peppercorns, so buy them in small amounts regularly and crush them. This goes well with or without rice and a side dish of steamed greens. Serves 2

 

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Aspiring architecture in the city of spires

Today (July 18) marks the official start of a competition process to find a design for the current Royal Adelaide Hospital site. I am officially excited.

In five months time, when the winner is revealed - not that it will necessarily ever be built, we now learn - I want to be shocked, surprised, dazzled and enthralled. 

Anything less and I will feel it's been a pointless exercise. We can do mediocrity in Adelaide quite well. This is a time for modernity.  

The RAH site, given its location, deserves to be treated with a development that is inspiring, culturally enriching and a structure that becomes an instant iconic landmark in Adelaide. If regional or provincial cities such as East Lansing, Michigan; Baku, Azerbaijan; Guangzhou, China; Glasgow, Scotland; Zaragoza and Bilbao, Spain, and Wolfsburg, Germany can appreciate and live with groundbreaking contemporary architecture, surely we can?

 

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Candace Bushnell here, SATC’s 15th anniversary

Carrie Bradshaw (aka Sarah-Jessica Parker) in Season 5 with that haircut. Picture: Into the Gloss

Carrie Bradshaw (aka Sarah-Jessica Parker) in Season 5 with that haircut. Picture: Into the Gloss

So I ran my finger along the Bs on the second shelf in our study and there it was: my 12-year-old copy of the novel Sex and The City by Candace Bushnell.

It looks like it was only read once. Unlike the box set DVDs that were watched endlessly – although not so much since Monsieur D returned to Adelaide a few years ago and Foxtel put SATC on semi-permanent rotation.

Thanks to the series’ Season 5, I’ve even had my hair cut short twice in the hope of replicating Carrie’s look for her Vogue job. 

My copy of the original book carries a cover quote endorsement from Helen Fielding, she of Bridget Jones’ Diary, saying “Intriguing and highly entertaining”.

A kinda limp assessment, don’t you think, given we know what SATC became.

I’ll be taking along my copy this Friday in the hope of having it signed by Candace Bushnell, who is guest speaker at the Adelaide Business Chicks lunch on July 19, at the Convention Centre; the date just happens to be my birthday. Talk about lucking out.


 

It’s a sort of timely visit by CB; last month (June) was the 15th anniversary since the pilot episode of SATC first aired in the US on the HBO cable network (the book was first published in 1997 and reissued in 2001).

I just happened to be in Bali in June 1998; our hotel had US satellite TV and I saw that pilot and the second episode the following week, while my poor cousin S was becoming acquainted with the porcelain thanks to Bali Belly.

Needless to say I was hooked but had to wait until September 6, 1999, for Channel 9 here to start broadcasting it. No downloading or streaming in back then.

Anyway, if you loved Carrie’s clothes (thanks Patricia Field) in SATC – you’ll love this anniversary slideshow on one of my favourite blogs, Into the Gloss.

The important moments are all covered, the only noticeable missing for me was the slinky pink fluro dress Carrie wore to lunch with Big when he told her he was getting married (Season 2 episode 18: Ex and the City). Shaken, she trips over a chair in her haste to leave the restaurant.

The slideshow includes another favourite; the navy dress she’s wearing while stuck on a day cruise with the loved-up Charlotte and Trey when she runs into the married Big (Season 3, Episode 8: The Big Time). Actually, I think I love her magazine-clutch bag more than the dress (see screen grab shot below).

Screen Shot 2013-07-01 at 8.34.00 PM.png

What’s your favourite? Love to know.

The original 1997 edition cover. 

The original 1997 edition cover. 

Imagining Frida Kahlo in Adelaide

Part of a portrait photograph of Friday Khalo by photographer (and lover) Nickolas Muray. Called Frida Khalo on White Bench. 

Part of a portrait photograph of Friday Khalo by photographer (and lover) Nickolas Muray. Called Frida Khalo on White Bench. 

This is a sort of memo (and appeal) to Nick Mitzevich, director of the Art Gallery of SA.

Word has it the next blockbuster for 2014 at the AGSA is going to be another dead white male, after this year’s (fabulous) Turner exhibition, although probably French.

Now given Talking Adelaide is obsessed with all things French, that wouldn’t be too bad – especially, for example, if it was a visit from the collection of the Musee Matisse, in Nice.

However, TA would like to put forward its own suggestion – a dead (non-white) female instead. One Frida Kahlo.

 

As much as I enjoyed the Turner, imagine if our Art Gallery could secure an extraordinary exhibition such as this one which opened earlier this year, Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe, at the Museo Frida Kahlo, in Mexico City.

Reading about it is enough to make me want to fly straight to Mex City before November (when the exhibition ends).

For the past decade, the Museo Frida Kahlo has been cataloguing some 300 pieces of clothing, jewellery and accessories plus documents, photographs and artworks all belonging to Frida, that were locked away after her death, in 1954, by her husband and artist Diego Rivera in a bathroom in the Blue House, the famous home they shared in Mexico City. Frida’s legacy wasn’t unlocked until 2002.

I’m linking (below right) to this long but compelling interview with the curator about the background to the exhibition that finally presents Kahlo’s “attire through the lens of disability and female empowerment, as well as her continued influence on fashion. The exhibition focuses on the ways Kahlo used her iconic style, often composed of traditional Tehuana garments, to project her feminist and socialist beliefs while also masking her debilitating injuries.”

Don’t you think this exhibition would push all the buttons: it’s 20th century, modern, has fashion/textile overtones, is about a culture so different from our own, has disability themes (so topical here) female empowerment and given that Mexican food is so popular now, we’d get all those hip and groovy types from Melbourne and Sydney to travel here. People do travel for art – the Turner attracted heaps from Perth apparently.

Oh, and the curator is now based in Singapore – so lots of publicity there, handy marketing link to Singapore Airlines? And also Vogue, as the Mexican  edition had a hand in mounting the exhibit. 

As always, let me know what you think – this is the kind of “blockbuster” I’d love to see here.

(See links at right). 

Frida Kahlo in New York City. Picture by Nickolas Muray 1938

Frida Kahlo in New York City. Picture by Nickolas Muray 1938

Classic Frida by Nickolas Muray.

Classic Frida by Nickolas Muray.

Meat-free Mondays: Eggplant Brinjal

This Indian recipe owes attribution to chef Ben O’Donoghue who originally cooked this on The Best in Australia, on Foxtel's Lifestyle Food channel.

It’s normally a side dish to go with Ben’s harissa-crusted leg of lamb cooked tandoor-style but on a Meat-Free Monday it’s the hero dish. It could be served with any kind of greens, bok choy, beans or broccoli, for example, and a bit of rice.

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Chic happens on Bastille Day

It’s Bastille Day on Sunday. And the Francophile Talking Adelaide will be celebrating (all weekend).

Perhaps a glass or three of Premier Cru Chablis (William Fevre of course), croissants and baguettes from Mulots Patissserie on King William Rd, home-made brioche, perhaps a cassoulet given our weather. And some Crème Anglais with roasted rhubard to finish.

Voila.

 

Talking Adelaide's home-made brioche.

Talking Adelaide's home-made brioche.

Mulots delicious croissants.

Mulots delicious croissants.

Meanwhile, one of my favourite fashion blogs – the weekly Fifi Report – has a totally French theme today. Check it out for yourself and be inspired. And enjoy Talking Gallery's own gallery of chic (oui, it is a bit of a homage to Ines de la Fressange). C'est magnifique!

 

Catch ‘national treasure’ Ross Hannaford this weekend in Adelaide

Ross Hannaford at work. Photo: www.theaureview.com

Ross Hannaford at work. Photo: www.theaureview.com

This Sunday afternoon in Adelaide sees the performance of a dead-set Oz rock legend.

My mate Chris Crago, a fellow Cancerian, has brought guitarist Ross Hannaford over from Melbourne to play a gig for her birthday. The private party is on Saturday but Sunday arvo is an open gig for just $15 at the door.

That's not much coin to see true rock royalty. Fellow Seventies kids probably remember their parents grooving to Eagle Rock by Daddy Cool, the band Hannaford formed with mate Ross Wilson.

While Wilson was out the front, you’d remember Hannaford to the side in his kooky helicopter cap.

And if you ever spent time in Melbourne and headed to the Espy Hotel, on the St Kilda foreshore, before it became synonymous with RocKwiz, you might have caught Hannaford’s later band Dianna Kiss, which had a regular gig there in the 1990s.

To get a feel for what you can expect on Sunday, read this promo for Hannaford’s next gig at Melbourne’s hip Caravan Club, Oakleigh: “Fabulous 3rd Sunday of the month residency. He’s a national treasure. He’s a unique guitar player, is considered as one of the greatest guitarists in the world, he’s quirky and he’s right at our doorstep in Oakleigh. Book now to avoid disappointment!!’’ (www.melbournegigs.com.au)

There’s no excuse not to head to the Gaslight Tavern, 36 Chief St, Brompton, 3pm-6pm. You can even catch the tram. You can grab a bite at the Gaslight – it’s old-fashioned pub grub. Check out the menu here. Check out the gig poster Chris designed below. 

Or why not grab a bite to eat at Plant 13 first? 13 Park Tce, Bowden; Or head to Suzy Wong’s Room afterwards? 120 Port Rd, Hindmarsh. They're both within walking distance.

 

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Making a spectacle at the Salopian Inn, McLaren Vale

It was the out-there wishful thinking of Adelaide designer Peter Coombs to use an old bowling alley for the “gin bar” inside the newly renovated Salopian Inn, McLaren Vale.

The salvaged wood has gone into the main bar top as well as four others dotted around the Salopian, together measuring 17m in length.

Coombs was also integral to another inspired piece of recycling, choosing old Fowler Vacola glass jars for the restaurant’s interior lighting.

The Salopian restaurant and bar is a partnership involving well-known McLaren Vale chef Karena Armstrong and her husband Michael; along with wine-making couple Elena and Zar Brooks, of Heirloom Wines.

 

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Meat-free Mondays

Rustic Tortilla Soup

Mexican is so on-trend at present so this should go down a treat.

This should probably be credited to Jamie Oliver; my clipping is ripped from an English newspaper and doesn’t show who the chef is but it sounds like Jamie. It uses tortilla chips the way the French use croutons. The chips are meant to slightly soften in the soup by serving.

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