On the week­end I promised Ange I’d cook some­time dur­ing the week. Her only real stip­u­la­tion was that it had to be healthy. With Ange run­ning late last night it was the per­fect time for me to cut loose in the kitchen.

It’d been a while since I cooked an entire meal myself (usu­ally I’m on fry­ing or grilling duty) and I’d for­got­ten how car­thetic cook­ing really is. It’s amaz­ing how much joy can be extracted from such a sim­ple thing like invent­ing your own stirfry.

Why am I so excited you ask? Because this is one of the few things I’ve cooked that Ange has eaten and enjoyed. And that makes it one for the record books.

Trav’s Stir­fry
one packet pad thai noo­dles
one car­rot, sliced
two hand­fuls of snow­peas
one bushel of broc­coli, chopped
one chicken fil­let, sliced
one onion, sliced
peanut oil

sauce
4 table­spoons oys­ter sauce
4 table­spoons soy sauce
half a chilli, crushed
one gar­lic clove, crushed

For the sauce, mix all ingre­di­ents together in a bowl. Set aside.
Pre­pare noo­dles as per instruc­tions on packet.
Blanch the broc­coli and snow­peas.
Heat peanut oil in a wok. Cook chicken for a cou­ple of min­utes, turn­ing often. Sea­son with salt and pep­per at the halfway point. Remove chicken and cover. Add more oil and cook veg­eta­bles for 2 – 3 min­utes. Once onion goes translu­cent return the the chicken to the wok. Add sauce and stir through.
Add noo­dles. Using tongs fold the veg­eta­bles and chicken into the noo­dles until cov­ered in sauce.

Kobe Jones is not the eas­i­est restau­rant to get to. It’s tucked away in a sec­ond storey nook of New Quay. The infor­ma­tion board at the begin­ning of the board­walk doesn’t even list it. It took almost a full cir­cuit of New Quay before we spot­ted it and found our way inside.

Kobe Jones is good Japan­ese food. But it’s food that’s been pushed through the fine sieve of west­ern civil­i­sa­tion. The same goes for the inte­rior design and even the menu.

Entrees start with a plate of Lolly Pop Sushi ($26). A very west­ern ideal of how small foods should be eaten, impaled on small sticks. Thin cir­cles of seafood, roe and aspara­gus held in shape by a strip of shaved cucum­ber and skew­ered with a tooth­pick. They tasted great, but they would break part when we lifted them off the plate. The driz­zled vine­garette had a hand in this I’m sure. The Crab Cro­quettes ($8.50) with their dark brown crust held their shape just fine. The first bite resulted in the gooey, cheesy inside spilling on to my lip and burn­ing it. I still went back for another bite, and another though. Third degree burns be damned.
The final entree was the Chicken Kara Age ($12.50). This was a last minute addi­tion to the menu, but i’m glad I ordered it. In keep­ing with the theme these were a Japan­ese ver­sion of the Colonel’s best. Smaller and more efficient.

After a wait that was too long by anyone’s stan­dards, our mains arrived. Shal­low Soft Shell Crab ($18), Tuna Tataki Kobe Jones Style ($20) and what I think was the Seafood Papaya Motoy­aki ($18) for the girls. I chose the Cala­mari Fritto Kobe Jones Style ($12.50). We joked about the por­tion size of the cala­mari plate, but we stopped when the tuna arrived. It was five or six small, thinly cut pieces of fish lay­ered in the mid­dle of the plate and not much else. The papaya dish was reported as “not that great”. The soft shell crab and cala­mari dishes how­ever were both excel­lent, despite their size.

All in all it was a great expe­ri­ence. But I do ques­tion why, in a mul­ti­cu­tural city like Mel­bourne, they felt the need to west­ern­ise their dishes.

As I had last night all to myself, I decided to check out the Vic­to­rian Micro­brew­eries Show­case at Fed­er­a­tion Square. At $20 for 20 sam­ples of the beer on offer, it really was fan­tas­tic value. Even moreso because the stall own­ers kept for­get­ting to ask for a ticket after fill­ing my glass.

Even though it’s the mid­dle of win­ter, and I should be drink­ing heav­ier (and hop­pier) brews such as lagers, I still can’t go past a good ale.
High­lights were the Har­g­reaves Hill Brew­ing Com­pany’s Hefeweizen, the Mil­dura Brew­ery’s Storm (a cloudy ale) and Red Hill Brew­ery’s Scotch Ale. Also top marks to the Bridge Road Brewery’s Aus­tralian Ale and the purple-haired Ger­man bar girl who cor­rectly guessed the loca­tion of my grade six camp: The Old Pri­ory.

I have to men­tion my favourite brew­house of the moment, Moun­tain Goat. I’ve tried all their beers before, the High­tail, the Pale and the IPA, but I’ve been very reluc­tant to try the Sure­foot Stout. In the spirit of the evening I handed over a ticket and gave it a go. The deep oaky colour­ing of it wasn’t very appeal­ing, but I was sur­prised by just how good it was. In fact I was impressed with just about every beer I tried there. Bar­ring a few bevvies like the 3 Ravens Brew­ing Com­pany’s Black. But like I said ear­lier I was there for the ales and I enjoyed those immensely. And that’s not just the booze talking.

Inter­est­ing post­script time: When I left I grabbed a cup of water off a table just out­side the door, guarded by an incred­i­bly bored look­ing blonde girl. It was only after see­ing the look on the girl’s face, and the bags stacked behind her, that I fig­ured out the table was a refresh­ment stand for some sort of marathon. Why they thought putting a table full of water out­side a beer expo was a good idea I’ll never understand.

As any­one who lives in Mel­bourne will tell you: It’s been a very cold Win­ter here. Freez­ing even, and we’re only just get­ting to the halfway point of the sea­son. (Those of a more druidic bent will tell us that Win­ter only started a cou­ple of weeks ago).

Ange and I have done our best to keep warm at home; stock­pil­ing blan­kets, crank­ing the ducted heat­ing up and walk­ing around in lay­ers of cloth­ing. Every­thing short of set­ting the cof­fee table on fire really. On those nights where the warmth is ripped right out of our bod­ies while we’re hud­dled together on the couch, I’m for­get­ting one thing, well four really: my herb plants.

Even in this bit­ter, bit­ter cold I’ve left the herbs sit­ting just out­side the back door. Great for things like sun­light and fresh air. Bad for things like frost. Of the four, only the Bay tree and pars­ley are still thriv­ing. I’d even go so far as to say that the pars­ley is enjoy­ing the cold. The masochist.

The oregano and basil are, much like myself, not huge fans of this hor­ri­ble weather. Strangely enough, the basil bush looks like it’s been hit by frost­bite. A good two-thirds of the pot is now black and crum­bling away and what’s left is not well at all. The oregano has fared slightly bet­ter. Some of the leaves are dis­coloured and there’s at least two small branches com­pletely stripped of their leaves. Includ­ing one that had started to wind its way out of the pot. Proof that my repot­ting antics hadn’t killed it.

I’ve per­formed a bit of “emer­gency surgery” on all the plants, so I’ll see what hap­pens over the next few days. If we keep hav­ing these sub­zero nights then I’ll do what I should’ve done to begin with: turn them into indoor plants.

Even though we live about 10 kilo­me­tres from Mel­bourne it’s very rare that Ange and I will come into the city on a week­end. After spend­ing five days of the week there, it has to be a very spe­cial event that drags us back in.

On this occa­sion it was the Pixar: 20 Years of Ani­ma­tion exhibit at ACMI that called to us (well, mostly me). I’ve been a big fan of Pixar even since I first heard of them, some 13 years ago. Even a ver­bal descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal Toy Story trailer blew me away. So of course when I dis­cov­ered, dur­ing last week’s pho­tog­ra­phy trek, that Pixar would be in Mel­bourne I was ecstatic.

Before head­ing inside ACMI we made a bee­line for Choco­late Bud­dha. I won’t go into too much detail, suf­fice to say that both our meals were excel­lent; the Nabeyaki Udon was espe­cially magic.

I don’t want to spoil any of the Pixar exhibit, but if you’re a fan of their work and any ani­ma­tion really, you could do worse than spend a cou­ple of hours immersed in the art­work, sculp­tures and ren­der­ings of these most cre­ative of cre­atives. Even Ange, who was a bit reluc­tant to spend time look­ing at “half-finished car­toons” came away smil­ing. We both agreed that give the oppor­tu­nity we’d jump at the chance to work for Pixar.