For all of you missing Masterchef, a little teaser, an ‘amuse bouche’. This is only a short film, but it shows Peter Gilmore creating & talking about a dish inspired by snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef. Gilmore is owner and chef of Quay, Australia’s top restaurant and voted in the world’s top 50 restaurants last year.
I was really taken with the use of the tweezers, the surgical precision used to create something of such temporary beauty and pleasure.
I celebrated my wedding anniversary here a couple of years ago and enjoyed a gorgeous lunch on a sparkling Sydney Spring day, overlooking the Opera House and Circular Quay .I still remember the warm, friendly service and the small details that created dishes that were delightful to look at as they were tenderly placed in front of us onto the crisp linen table clothes and the melt in your mouth, exquisiteness of the delicate flavours. A perfect lunch.
It comes courtesy of nowness.com, one of my favourite websites for art, fashion and the fusion of beauty and ideas.
I discovered some new music the other day. Well, new to me anyway. They’re a duo from Rockhampton, Busby Marou, and are fantastic. So I Youtubed & iTuned, happy to have some new music in my life.
It sent me on a bit of a nostalgia trip because it made me realise how little new music I actually listen to now. There was a time when I was listening to JJ, then JJJ , constantly being excited by music, visiting poky record shops down inner city Sydney alleyways checking out EP’s, the imports, looking for bands I’d never heard of, going to pubs a few times a week, just to listen to a particular band.
I ditched Abba and Countdown for The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Saints and The Laughing Clowns. I listened, on very high rotation to the Cocteau Twins, Simple Minds (only when no one, but me, had heard of them), The Suuny Boys, Prefab Sprout and XTC.
Some of the music I discovered back then has stayed with me. I’ve aged with the bands and mellowed as they have. Now I go and see them at The Vanguard or The Enmore or in caberet at the Opera House. Venues like the seedy hacienda wannabe, The San Miguel Tavern, have all been chewed up and spat out by the kerching of the pokies.
It was at The San Miguel that I first fell in love with Nick Cave. I’d gone there to hear The Sports, god how I loved The Sports, but they’d cancelled and some band no one had heard of, The Birthday Party, was playing instead. I wasn’t that interested. Until, on a tiny stage in a dark and dingy corner, the manic energy, the deep abrasive vocals of Nick Cave, grabbed me by the guts and haven’t let go since.
Stephen Cummings (at my wedding)
Life, like music, has its own rhythm. We develop and change, but some motif’s are recurring. And of all the music in my life, The Sports’, Stephen Cummings and Nick Cave’s have continued to be important at significant moments in my life. My youngest daughter is named Eliza because the song I sang to myself throughout her labour, was Where The Wild Roses Grow for no particular reason and definitely nothing to do with the lyrics. And Stephen Cummings, my teen crush and, quite frankly, my late 40’s crush, played at my second wedding.
This weekend, the menu on my iPod will be selecting some of the old as well as a high rotation playing of my new discovery, Busby Marou.
A Sampler 