Croissants!

Bash your butter into a perfect rectangle.

Roll out dough to be as wide as the butter, and three times as long.



Fold butter inside dough.
Refrigerate for 30 mins. Press down on ends to seal, roll out. Repeat. Refrigerate for 30 mins. Repeat.


Roll out sheet of dough and divide into long triangles.
Stretch pieces slightly and roll up, only handling the ends, not the middle.

Let rise for a couple of hours in a warm place. Keep damp.


Brush with beaten egg and cook around 20mins -- start at 200c then drop to 160c.
Eat! Croissants you haven't cooked can be frozen for up to a week--put them in before rising, then allow a few hours to rise and defrost when you take them out.

Birthday bashings

or what happens when you invite unsupervised minions to the pub...

Châteauneuf-upon-Hunter

Truth be told I had rather a good weekend away from the search for a viable homeland, and ended up accompanying the human to Conferenceville to discuss the finer points of a contradiction in terms.

He prattled on as usual about fiction that insists on telling you it's fiction, to an audience largely bent on explaining how and why every word of their memoirs should be believed even if things didn't actually happen that way. They all richly deserved each other; and possible fractiousness was staved off by a panel chair who saved the day with a can of shaving cream.

The welcome was warm, the natives were hospitable, the food was excellent and the couches were Chesterfield. No complaints save the fake fireplace: all flame and no heat, which led me to propose my patent cold remedy to a most ungrateful colleague:












My own ulterior motive for visiting Châteauneuf-upon-Hunter was of course to find a suitable châtelaine, but as usual, nothing doing. Sigh! They're getting hard to find on the CityRail network.

On the glorious path towards recognition of statehood!

Cod-brandade, or attempted baccalà

(with apologies for the callous, cold-blooded murder of a perfectly good Stefano di Pieri recipe)

2 fillets or about 500g smoked cod (Yes I know one usually uses dried salted cod, but I was feeling stingy and the human had already defrosted these).
Milk
Peppercorns
Bay leaf
Cream

Cook fillets in a mixture of half-water, half-milk, in a covered pan: bring to boil then let simmer for 15 minutes. Allow to cool in pan. Clean mess from stove top.
Strain, discarding liquid. Suggested uses for same are most welcome...
Flake fish into a large mortar or food processor bowl, removing skin and bones.
Pound, adding cream, until some of the mixture emulsifies - I prefer a mix of textures and the occasional intact flake.
Serve on toast, as a kind of winter antipasto.

Nostalgia

The human needed an outing last Sunday, so I took him along to visit his old local pub, among the smallest and certainly the most hidden in Sydney, named after a bloke who specialised in massacring native populations armed to the teeth with viciously sharp slices of mango. This fine hostelry was also the pre- and post-work watering-hole of one Neddy Smith, continuing in the fine tradition of a suburb named after the legal technicality on which its founder escaped a court-martial.

All these crimes pale into insignificance compared with the small-minded buffoons and other lowlife who revoked their licence to allow people to drink in the park outside a couple of years ago: there are promises, promises of a partial reprieve but I remain suspicious.

The humans seemed to enjoy themselves, though I was a little worried about being kidnapped by the imperious cockatiel that strutted up and down the bar and would share complimentary chips and peanuts with nobody. So much for my offer of a diplomatic posting.

No Dinner Ale to be had, sadly, on tap or in bottles. Another reason the worthless human has to find himself somewhere to move in and set to work brewing beer with bits in it!

With apologies to Baroness Emma Orczy

They seek him here, They seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in Brisbane?
—Is he in hell?
That dammed damnèd, elusive Pig Fidel!

Workers of the World Unite!

(Or from Red Square hopefully not to Green Square)

Fraternal May Day greetings, O human subalterns.

Someone needs to work I suppose, but quite frankly I'm quite happy to live off your toils and spout rhetoric from my armchair. Though the armchair situation is getting dire: I'm doing my best to found a viable microstate and establish diplomatic relations with like-minded life forms, the worthless human still hasn't managed to find a corner of Sydney real estate to occupy. Sigh. Who says capitalism works?

On that note, may I once again enquire as to the whereabouts of Fidel the Pig?

That will be all for today, comrades.