The Whole Five Acres

Beer Fish and a Greek dish adapted for lobsters

I keep shuffling this scrawled upon piece of paper around my desk and kitchen and know if I don't commit the recipes to some form of alternative storage space I'll lose what is now one of my most prized recipes, along with another idea for lobster. W

Yangshuo Beer Fish

Yangshuo is one of the most beautiful parts of china, which massive lime cast mountains and tropical weather creating lush, green valleys. This is also the town where my father became ill, and that is the reason we ended up there retracing his steps. 

We had this dish at a local restaurant in town one day. China was amazing for eating. With time on our hands and a love of great food we often found ourselves sitting down for a snack and then enjoying a gourmet 5 course meal. This Beer Fish was incredible. Unlike any other chinese dish I've ever had it almost borders on a mediterranean style dish. It's taken 3 year to get a recipe that is even remotely like what we had in Yangshuo, but it's damn close!

1 big fish (carp is traditional - we used barramundi)

2 tomatoes cubed

1 red pepper

2 green peppers

1 chilli

5 cloves garlic

10gm celery

1 green onion

10g ginger

salt o

oil

sugar

white pepper

cornflour

1/2tsp soy sauce

1 tsp oyster sauce

beer*

sesame oil

*I don't do beer at all, so I made my dish with champagne. Chances are champagne is probably more like the Chinese beer anyway.

Score flesh of the fish.

Heat oil in a large pan, and cook the fish until the outside is golden

Add beer or champagne to half cover the fish.

add peppers, garlic and ginger

increase heat then add salt, pepper, sugar, soy and oyster sauces.

Cook for 4 mins

Then add tomatoes and turn fish over.

Cook 3 minutes

Add green onions and cornflour.

Cook 1 minute and serve.

Next time I try this I'm going to grab some smaller fish and do individual pieces. Then once the sih is cooked, make the sauce and put it all back together in a casserole dish to bake away for a little while in the oven. 

Greek Style Lemon and Garlic Lobster

No time to write this up properly yet, so here is the ghist of how it came together. Definitely worth trying out. The sauce became an unctuous delicious embellishment for the lobster. The potatoes and the zukes gave a little starch to soak up some more sauce love, and by crikey if there is any leftover mop it up with bread.

Heat a good quantity of good extra virgin olive oil in a large saute pan

Add 5 cloves of chopped garlic, a large tbsp of white pepper, juice of two lemons.

Toss in a whole cut up raw lobster 

Toss in a handful of peeled potatoe cubes

Cover and simmer until the lobster is just cooked

Add in a handful of small zucchini chunks - or beans woudl be nice - just something for the green.

Cook a little longer and then serve

A dreamy creamy concoction

While we were taking in the sites of Bellingen last week, we stopped at the old Butter Factory for a little wander. The 100 year old buildings now house a hive of crafty type shops with all manner of gorgeous things to buy and fill your house with. MMMM...temptation...

After I finished drooling over all manner of nice knicky knacky trinkets, we decided to have a little snack in the cafe and check out what the locals eat, all in the name of research of course for our new vegie patch on the mid north coast.

Our research tells us that there is a huge interest in good wholesome food, and unusual ingredients, as well as a lot of people that sort of know what they are doing but don't sort of know what they are doing. I'm thinking that the future in food on the coast could be quite promising. Our research also indicated that some people don't know the difference between fresh and cooked - and while I was expecting some fresh vietnamese prawn rolls for my lunch, the waitstaff were giving me fresh, as in made in the kitchen sometime in the last few days, before they were cooked spring rolls. Not quite the same, but a learning curve.

We did have a winner food wise though. A pine, mint and coconut smoothie. Delish.

In my effort to recreate this before I totally forget what we had i bought a pineapple, a bunch of mint and a tin of coconut milk. Whizzed the first two ingredients through the juicer, stirred in the tin of coconut milk, and then shared with sonny for a very yummy breakfast drink. And now before you go getting all health freak on me re the coconut milk - I did read that this has some secret health giving properties akin to breast milk and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Now if only I could find that website again...

oh...look what i found here...

Pine Mint Smoothie

One large pineapple, skinned and chunked

One large bunch of mint

One 400ml tin of coconut cream/milk

Push the pinapple and mint through your fruit juicer.

Stir in coconut cream

Pour into large tumbler. A few ice cubes wouldn't go astray.

Drink!

Still waiting for news...

The mortgage process in Australia is sloooooow to say the least. Banks keep going yay...we'll give you a loan...and then once we start the ball rolling they move the goal posts. The last bank did exactly that, and then after being all nice decided we needed to find a 50% deposit. I'm not quite sure where they think we will find the additional funds to top up the deposit!

At the moment we have a mortgage broker who seems confident to get us the deal we want. Fingers crossed within a few days we should have some more news about our situation and hopefully be able to pull the lobster out of the freezer for a celebratory feast.

The upside of the delays has meant there has been more time for me to come to terms with the decision to move so far away. My eldest daughter is quite positively happy about us moving to the Coffs Coast. She delights in the fact that the area has so many beautiful places to go that she will be able to holiday with mum for many many years before she gets bored. My youngest is quite positively focussed on her own house purchase so only gives me the standard 'what will be will be' routine. At least there is nothing negative coming from her to ruin the moment.

Workwise, I'll get my chance to try out another form of internet connection. Having worked with dial up, adsl, cable, and wireless in the past, satellite for day to day communications looks set to be another little learning curve. If plans go well though, we should also be able to put our van near a beach (not far from our new home) and if satellite is not a lot of fun, then i'll be working beachside for some of my time. Doesn't seem like too much of a downside at all.

I've now stopped checking on the internet site to look at pictures of the house, just in case I jinx something! Mentally i'm still moving furniture in, and drawing up plans for an outdoor kitchen, but what goes on in my head is my business and won't affect murphy's law at all! 

As for the crabby days, I've somehow found the magic formula that has seen the niggly arguments stop. I'VE STOPPED BEING A CRABBY PIECE OF WORK!  It's not easy at the moment as there is so much not in my control (driving for one) and the stress of not being able to take control when clearly I SHOULD BE TAKING CONTROL, makes me a very unpleasant person to be around. Then again, when the only driver in the family likes to start the car and start moving down the road, BEFORE HE FINISHES TAKING HIS SHOES OFF, PUTTING HIS SEAT BELT ON, LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW, PICKING THINGS UP OFF THE BACK SEAT, who can blame me for being a little on the stressed side. I figure we spend about half our driving time either on the verge or the other side of the road, while he is attending to other duties! SHEESH!

The dream

If only i could add the photo...? sheesh, i thought i had downloaded it for show and tell.

Turns out we found the dream property. The Coffs Coast proved too much of a temptation for Sonny's farming lust and after only 24 hours in the region he was ready to sign on the dotted line for each and almost every one of the properties we saw.

We did though have a bid accepted on a 100 acre property in the nether regions of the coast. It may be 30 odd kilometres away from the coast, but boy, does it pack a wallop in every other way. 

Today has been spent negotiating mortgage deals and internet satellite connections. Tomorrow hopefully we get some joy on both. I'm not 100% comfortable doing all these deals during a mercury retrograde, but at least the initital discussions to buy were started before the crazy planet decided to go backwards.

While I'm stuck on the phone and the internet bargaining and researching, sonny is out in the field carving up his plot and finding people to fill his shoes. My belly is doing flip flops, but when i think about him and his solid forward motion to the idea that his body is happy with, then i sit back and think it will all be ok.

Oh dear, if only I could turn my butterflies for good rather than evil then we'd have a winning combination.

Speaking of winning combinations, it hasn't been so much winning of late, more whinging. I can't quite work it out to be honest. It could be to do with the fact I have no license at the moment and so spend most of my mobile life nervous as all get out. It could also be to do with the fact we are extra super busy and stressed out. I really don't like semi-marital hiccups, and hope it pans out for the better soon. Why can't times just stay simple? He's still the man I wish to spend the rest of my life with, why is it that we have to have this time where we argue more than is necessary?

Quandary

Already 2009, and like most other people around the world I'm still scratching my head wondering where 2008 disappeared to. Busy is an understatement! Yet January is nice so far. Slower paced and allowing us time to think about what we may get up to in the coming year.

Although hectic, 2008 was a mega year for us. We started markets in April, and have not stopped since, now with 3 weekly markets to keep us going. We've chopped and changed with our markets and finally think we have struck paydirt with the current list. It's fascinating how a shift of only a few kilometres to another location brings an entirely new breed of customer. 

We have our regular Sunday market which we started in April. It's generally massive with up to 400 stallholders on a busy day and over 6000 potential customers each week. These customers are the hardest to please. They want everything cheap, perfect and change their food eating preferences based on the seasons they remember from their homeland. In May and June we can't grow enough cabbage to keep up with demand. For the rest of the year we can't give the cabbage away! 

Our Saturday market, we thought would be our best, but the original operator of this market was a nightmare. He resorted to calling me a liar one day, and then when Sonny called him to take him to task over this, he then proceeded to call him a liar too. Hoo boy, we were out of there like a shot even though our stand was very popular. Amazingly though, principles are good to have. As soon as the operator resigned from the head chair, the council called and invited us back, so back we went with much success. At this market we find ourselves with 18sqm of prime inner city roadside shop space for a measly amount of money, and as it's the main thoroughfare of the town we have people streaming past our stall all day.

And now we also have a Weds market which constantly amazes us. Our customers at this market seem to have money to burn, and also spend a lot of time thinking about food. All of our unusual products walk off the shelves, and I spend most of my day discussing recipes with customers and learning what they did with something they bought the week before. The owner of this market didn't really want another vegetable producer when i enquired about a stall space, but after only three weeks he is now planning to give us a permanent position so that our customers can find us easily each week.

So what is this quandary we find ourselves in?

We've now got the opportunity to buy ourselves some farming land, but no where near to where we live now. Unless the lottery is good to me, we'll have to venture away from our market base and start again. We have one choice that is on the western side of the mountains which will allow us to do two of our usual markets. Come winter though we won't be able to grow a lot of the produce due to the frost which will mean our winter lines are greatly reduced. 

The other farmland choice is a good five hours drive north of sydney, so sydney markets will definitely be off the cards. There appears to be a reasonable selection of markets in this area too, so with some research we may find some more outlets but without research we can't bank on this as a way of making money from the farm. It could be back to the drawing board and getting creative with new ways of making money off the land - our geese are at the forefront of this thinking already.

So with one area allowing us to maintain some part of our current base, the other takes us to one of the most beautiful spots in the world with the opportunity to start all over again.

Is it time to turn our world completely on its head and start off in a new direction entirely?

We're heading north next week for a few days to check out the area and the local farms before we make a final decision. At least once the decision is made our brains may be able to rest, and perhaps only dwell on what has to be done to make the move possible.