Culture Vulture

I feel a bit of a fraud at the moment, because I'm not actually the Glenquarry Goddess at the moment, we are taking a sabbatical in the city of Sydney ( for various social and work reasons, but don't worry we will return to GG central in the future) so in the meantime think of me more like the Sydney Siren!

One of the things we have really taken advantage of being in the thick of things is to take a subscription to the Sydney Theatre Company for 2016. We always used to come up and see plays now and then but for this year at least we are seeing about 75% of the entire season.

Last Saturday we had the pleasure of seeing King Charles III. I remember seeing the posters for this play when I was in London a couple of years ago but never got to see it there. I must say it was very enjoyable and though provoking. The basic premise is that QEII has "passed on" and Charles is now the king, but his first royal duty to sign a bill that is designed to limit the power of the press to invade people's privacy. Charles refuses and a constitutional crises ensues. The playwright has paid homage to Shakespeare in referencing some of his more famous characters such as Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet and large parts of the dialogue are in blank verse.

It also address the issue of celebrity with Kate and William ( you know who!) who are considered "better" for the throne given their popularity.

The whole scenario played out quite realistically  in the and I could imagine that something like this could very well happen in the future.

One thing I have observed is the audience demographic at all of the plays we have been to so far, and I ask.....


"Where are the young people?"

The audiences are predominantly middle aged men and women and the absence of younger people is quite obvious, I asked the Significant Other about this and we pondered why is this so?

Is it the cost?
Are young(er) people not interested in the theatre?
Are the plays not of relevance to them?
Can they not leave their technology for long enough to see a play?

Just a thought.

Cooking up a storm

I finally managed to have a weekend at home and what's my favourite thing to do? Well if you know me well you would have guessed correctly......

cooking!

After a night in Sydney on Friday and a fabulous dinner at Neil Perry's Spice Temple  (where the great man himself was having dinner with his 2 girls) it was good to get back to the country and after a foray at Harris Farm markets for some ingredients it was time to hit the kitchen and make..........

Chicken, Fetta, Rocket and Pistachio ravioli with a truffle butter white wine cream sauce.

(what a mouthful, if I say so myself) anyway here's the steps in case you would like to try this at home.

What you need to make the pasta

400 grams of Plain Flour
2 eggs
Water  about 100 ml
15 ml of Olive Oil

I put all this into my Thermomix but if you don't have one you can do it with a food processor, kitchen aid or with your hands. I 'm not really good on measuring things, I sort of go with the flow and the feel, so you might need a bit more flour or a bit more or less of the old water, you want it to be a solid dough consistency, see pic below

my pasta dough after a couple of minutes kneading

Now if you have a pasta machine you can put it through that, but if you don't it's not an issue you can use the old fashioned method of rolling it out with a rolling pin 

rolling out the old fashioned way

My pasta machine (shush, its from Aldi, don't tell anyone!)

So once you get it rolled out to about the thickness of a sheet of prepared lasagna then you can put it all together...

I love my gadgets.. and I got this fancy ancy pasta hanging thingy from our local cookshop with a voucher my lovely mother in law gave me for my birthday! In the old days I used to hang the pasta on our indoor drying rack, so it's ok anyway you do it!

so now to quote Heston this is where the magic happens!

I bet you thought I was going to make the filling from scratch ? Well I'm here to tell you that although I love to cook there are somethings that you can take advantage of, like using lovely prepared sausages for your fillings! And the beauty of it is that your fillings are only limited by your imagination (or what you can find in sausages!)

so this is what I used this time

I got these from my local Harris Farm Markets. I really love sausages and it's on my list to do a sausage making course.

Anyway open the sausages and get the filling out, discard the cases.

Whack it in the frypan and cook it off.

while its doing that ( keep an eye on it, you don't want it to be overcooked or burnt) you can make your ravioli.

After you have rolled out the pasta, you have to have two flat pieces of dough one for the bottom and the filling and the top one to seal it.

I've have this little roller thing but you can just use a knife to cut them into shape.

Here is my finished product!

I made enough pasta dough for 5 meals plus 3 lasagnas

Put into a saucepan of boiling water and when they rise to the top they are cooked!

Here they are waiting for their sauce!

start with a  bit of butter in a saucepan, if you want to use flavoured butter like Lurpack garlic butter it's good. I'm using  both Lurpack and my own truffle butter
then I add some white wine, dried porcini mushrooms and then some cream

 and then you have your dinner, it might seem complicated but believe me, its really easy to make your own pasta, and its great fun! Especially with some great music on and some wine to help the creative juices flow!

So this is Christmas?

I'm watching Dr Who Christmas special on TV, well, not watching it so much as I'm writing is post at the same time.

Just wanted to say Hi! , Merry Christmas, hope you spent the day with family and friends and had a lovely time.

I got a bit annoyed by the news tonight, the second lead story was the post Christmas sales in Sydney, I don't know about you but I feel this over consumption thing is getting really bad. Here we are the day after Christmas and people were lining up at 2-3 am (YES AM) to be the first into a department store to spend more money on things they probably don't need (I'm making a judgement call here).

What do you think? Do you think we should have at least a couple of days where we can't (or need to?)  shop?


Merry Christmas!