The Logde Goes 'Down Under'

As a resident of the Gorging Lodge, albeit an absent one, I felt obliged to contribute a share of my gastronomical adventures in exotic places. Let me begin with a short story about breadmaking.

Despite a different sky above, bread-making in Australia is more or less the same as anywhere else. However, two facts are worth relating. First, the supply of fresh yeast is scarce. In fact, so scarce that I have not yet managed to find a monger in Melbourne willing to trade an ounce for any amount of Australian dollars. For that reason, all my breads have been the product of dried yeast, which anyone passionate about their bread knows well to be of lesser merit.

Secondly, my oven is a charming artefact of the early twentieth century. Regrettably, although abundant in aesthetics, our piece of machinery falls short functionally. Yes, not only are its controls foul to master, it also lacks all means of thermometrics. Indeed, my first few baking attempts resembled my tragic efforts to get the better of certain fretless string instruments. However, once I had procured a remarkable little gizmo of oven thermometery, those obstacles became none of consequence whatsoever.

The result, a classic garlic bread ...



The wonderful wee gadget that brought it all about, an oven thermometer ...

Baking and raw meat

We're a bit behind in the posting game here, but I really wanted to post these three things before the next round of great stuff still to hit TGL. First, for Andri's farewell dinner, Laura cooked a meat-theme meal, the starter of which was this carpaccio. Elia and me (and I think the rest) agreed that it was almost perfect (except perhaps for a millilitre of too much lemon juice). We had it with the focaccia here as well.

Later that week, I rediscovered baking in tins, which is actually a great thing, although for many years I didn't do it. At this point, I still had some fresh yeast and I used a left-over of yogurt, which I always find makes the bread really nice. Andri taught me a trick of how to fold up the dough in a way so that when it gets baked in the tin it becomes really evenly shaped and gets this line at the top which one knows from the bakery shops. Great stuff, indeed.

Scones

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