tristangled

City cat.

[tristangled]

I went a bit insane with loneliness while I was in New York over Christmas. So I did what anyone with a GoPro, a selfie stick and a *raging* obsession with the new Taylor Swift album would do.

This is BY FAR the most blindingly dumb thing I've ever done. I am so stupidly proud of it...

[working-at-thepyramids]

[tristangled]

Sausage party

[tristangled]

Check out what I voted for in triple j's Hottest 100 2012.

[buffaloplaid]

jurassic park.

[tristangled]

Recipe: Leftover Duck Dumplings (with mushrooms)

Last week I posted a duck recipe here and promised a further recipe for the unlikely leftovers.

Now, my sweat still smelling of duck every time I hit the treadmill, I give you leftover duck dumplings.

Dumplings are the choice for hipsters in Melbourne at the moment, a trend I'm only-too-thrilled to endorse and propagate. Around the city and its outskirts, restaurants such Dumplings Plus, HuTong Dumpling Bar and XiaoTing Box have queues running out the door, full of 'Twents' with tight pants, obtuse t-shirts and high hair desperate to get involved in some steamed and panfried bliss.

And with the exception of the tight pants and high hair (and twenties-ness), I'm one of them.

Like ravioli, dumplings are open to flavour experimentation. Just mix flavours you think will go well together in a bowl, spoon them into a wonton wrapper (which you can get from your supermarket), steam and... love!

Ingredients:

Duck meat, cooked & separated from the bone (I used the equivalent of half a duck, which would make enough dumplings for 4 people)

3 Golden shallots

5 whole water chestnuts (from a tin)

5 fresh shitake mushrooms

1 pack enoki mushrooms*

Chives

2 cloves garlic

A piece of fresh ginger, about the size of your thumb

1 red chilli, deseeded and with the white pith removed (that's where the heat is)

1tsp Chinese five-spice

1 tsp Sesame oil

1 1/2 tbspn Hoisin sauce (or leftover marinade from the previous duck recipe)

1 tbspn dark soy sauce

1 pack white wonton skins (available from most supermarkets now, in the fridge)

*- You could use any Asian mushrooms you find, like oyster. I chose shitake and enoki because they're stronger in flavour and have a really interesting textural difference

*

Start by heating the sesame oil in a small saucepan over a low heat, and lightly frying off the ginger, shallots and garlic, all grated or very finely chopped. You barely want to cook them- browning it will give the ingredients an overpoweringly nutty flavour, and leaving them uncooked will give the dumplings a harsh rawness.  

Finely chop the duck, mushrooms, chilli, chives and water chestnuts and mix in a bowl with the garlic, shallots, ginger and sesame oil.

Add the sauces and spices.

Everything is cooked, so give it a taste. It needs to be slightly over-seasoned, so the flavour cuts through the neutral dumpling skin when you bite into it. If in doubt, add some more dark soy. You should be able to taste every ingredient.

Lay out a wonton skin and spoon a small amount of the mixture into the centre. Try to get a mixture of everything in there.

Wet the skin around the edges, and fold it together as you see fit.

Grease a steamer (I use sprayable canola oil), and place the dumplings into it, spacing them so that they don't touch each other or the sides of the steamer).

Sit the steamer over a pot of boiling water. Once the skins are transparent and you're confident the contents are warm (remember, everything's already cooked, so it just needs to heat up), serve with soy sauce!

Leftover WIN!

Seriously, that's how easy it is to make dumplings. I've made lunches for people with a mix of dumplings with various fillings, including m

ince pork & prawn and s

callop & ginger.

There's a couple of different skins available, so try experimenting with them, and once you're happy with the flavour of the fillings in the steamed dumplings, give deep frying a go too!

-

Tristan Lutze, 2010

[variousjoysandmusings]

"Please stop patronizing those who are reading a book - The Da Vinci Code, maybe- because they are enjoying it. "For a start, none of us know what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction books exert on others. "And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing. I don’t mean we should all be reading chick lit or thrillers (although if that’s what you want to read, it’s fine by me, because here’s something no one else will tell you: if you don’t read the classics, or the novel that won this year’s Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud. "The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can’t, it might not be your inadequacy that’s to blame. “Good” books can be pretty awful sometimes."

— Nick Hornby (Housekeeping vs. The Dirt) (via variousjoysandmusings)

[tristangled]

Recipe: Duck for Jez

Thanks so much for the amazing comments on my previous recipe. I'm floored by the kindness, to be honest...

*

For me, cooking is cathartic, creative and fun. It's also something I think is even more enjoyable when I get to share it with people.

Cooking for my friends and family makes me happy, and fuels me with a dangerous desire to push myself just a little further every time. So to those who eat, or attempt to eat, my experiments, thank you (and sorry!). 

In what will hopefully be the first in a series, here is a recipe I created specifically for one of these tortured friends.

For the last few months Jez and I have made an almost-weekly habit of meeting on Victoria Street for a cheap Thai, Chinese or Vietnamese meal. We order too much, eat it all, drink a six-pack each (on a school night) and solve the problems of the world. You’re welcome, world…

Inspired by those dinners, and by Jez’s own multicultural heritage, here is my Chinese-influenced ‘Wet and Dry Duck’, aka ‘Duck for Jez’ (aka Asian food attempted by a German Aussie).

Of course, should you choose to make this dish, you are welcome to replace Jez’s name as you see fit. ‘Duck for Kevin’, ‘Duck for Kathy’ and ‘Duck for Phillip’ are all acceptable, while ‘Duck for the Cute Girl who has just started in Marketing and who I think is called Stephanie’ is less advisable, though might still work if you get the marinade right. 

Note: Once again, this one looks long and needlessly complicated, but it’s actually frighteningly easy. I'll make the next one simpler. Or the one after that...

Duck:

1 large free range duck (even if your supermarket, poultry shop or butcher doesn’t have ducks out on display, I find many of them have them out the back- just ask)

A couple of spring onions, shopped into a few big, rough pieces

Peel of ½ orange, and the rest of the orange cut into quarters

Small handful of star anise (4? 5?)

1x stick of cinnamon

6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

Fresh ginger, about the size of a thumb, bashed with a rolling pin a few times

Whole Szechuan peppercorns, bashed with the same aforementioned rolling pin

Around ¼ cup soy sauce (do not bash this with a rolling pin)

A ‘drizzle’ of sesame oil

A few shakes of Chinese 5-spice

Water

Marinade:

4 tablespoons hoisin sauce

3 tablespoons light soy sauce

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce (for equality)

2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine

1 tablespoons sesame oil

3 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon five-spice powder

3 cloves of garlic, minced or finely chopped

Red food dye- a few drops

Rice

1 cup of rice

1 spring onion, finely chopped

1 red chilli, seeds & pith removed, finely chopped

Sesame oil, finely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

Pickles

Two tablespoons rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon caster sugar

Pinch of salt

White peppercorns, ground

Combination of colourful capsicums (cool?)

Spring onions

*

Preparing Pickled Peppers…

You can do this bit a day or two before if you like.

Duck is a rich meat, and here we’re serving it with a sweet glaze and a flavoured rice, which would be pretty full-on without anything else on the plate. It needs an acid to break through the fat, and something to activate the tastebuds in your mouth that the rest of the dish isn't make love to.

Slice the capsicum and spring onions into thin batons. The thinner, the better.

You could also add the finely-chopped flesh of a cucumber here (seeds removed) or any other similar vegetable you might have lying around. Even an apple would be great.

Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper in a bowl until the sugar dissolves.

Taste it. It should be sharp on the tongue, but pleasant enough that it doesn’t make you cry. In fact, as a general rule, any food that makes you cry when you try it probably needs a bit of work…

Mix the chopped vegetables through the vinegar mix. The longer you leave this (up to three days or so, as I said), the better. 

*

Marry(nade) Me…

To make the glaze for the duck, combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Stir it until you can no longer distinguish the honey and the sugar in the liquid.

Refrigerate until you need it.

This marinade is my favourite in the whole world. I’ve used it to marinade chicken, pork and duck, I’ve used it as a dipping sauce for spring rolls, I’ve used it to flavour stir-fries… I love the treacly sweetness, and the way it makes everything shiny and red.

Leave it a day or two to let the flavours- particularly the garlic and the five-spice- intermingle. Marinade party!

*

Sink or swim…

It’s a duck, so it wants to be in water. But first, it has to get ready.

Cut the head and neck off (the closer to the body you trim the neck, the less fat you’ll end up with in the water), and trim out all the fat from the rear cavity. 

Put the duck in a large pot and fill it with water until Donald is just submerged. Add the rest of the ingredients listed under ‘Duck’ at the top of the page, except for the quartered orange, into the pot.

(In this photo, you'll sort-of see that I trussed up the duck before putting it into the pot. This was my third go at this dish, so I was trying something new. Didn't really do anything...)

Bring the water to the boil, then drop it to a gentle simmer and cover with a lid (or, in the case of my giant pot that has no lid, a baking tray).

The time it needs in the bath depends on how big the birdie is, but it’s roughly around 30 minutes for each 500grams. The aim is to gently cook the meat through so that you can blast it with heat in phase 2 without losing all the moisture

If you cook the duck too long, or on too hard a boil, the thin layer of meat on the wings and drumsticks will cook through and start to fall away from the bone.

You might need to scrape the crap off the top of the water a couple of times to stop skin of the duck discolouring.

When the bird is cooked through, take it out of the water and let it cool and dry on a cake rack placed over a baking tray. 

*

Taking Stock…

After you’ve taken the duck out of its torture-bath, place a sieve over a large bowl and pour the duck-juice into it.

Be careful, please. Duck stock all over your floor is slippery. And a waste.

You can throw out the crud that’s left in the strainer. 

Let the stock settle and cool as much as possible. You want to get the layer of fat off the top, and the cooler the liquid is, the easier this will be. 

You won’t need all this stock for the rice component of the dish, but don’t throw it out (or, as I mentioned, onto the floor)! Freeze it into leftover plastic Chinese food containers, then grab one of the containers out when you’re next making a risotto or soup. 

*

Sitting Duck…

The duck, now cooked, cooled and dried, looks like my legs in September; pale and unappetising. 

Luckily, you’ve got a sexy marinade and a pastry brush.

Paint the duck until it’s covered in glaze. After 10 minutes or so, much of the glaze will have run off into the baking tray, so give it another coating. Keep doing this every 15 minutes (or whatever…) until you’re ready to roast.

When you are ready, preheat your oven to 210. When it hits the temperature, in goes the duck (still on the cake rack/baking tray assembly).

Continue to glaze the duck every 10 minutes, cooking it until it is a deep, shiny red, and until extremities like the wing tips and ends of the drumsticks start to char slightly. This should take around half an hour.

Remove the duck from the oven and let it sit for around 5 minutes. Have the TV on if you’re worried it’ll get bored.

*

Rice about now...

Pour 1 cup of rice into a saucepan for which you have a lid. Add 1¾ cups of the duck stock, making sure to have removed as much of the fat as possible. Add a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of sesame oil.

Cook over a medium boil for 10 minutes, or until the liquid has been absorbed. Fluff up the rice with a fork and add in the finely chopped spring onion and red chilli.

*

Feeding Jez…

Cut the duck in half with a pair of kitchen secateurs, then cut into four. There’s not much meat on a duck, so one bird probably won’t go much further than an elaborate dinner for two.

A serve of rice, a garnish of the pickled capsicum and you’ve got yourself a Jez-approved Chinese-inspired duck.

*

Coda:

The only tricky thing in this recipe is planning out the elements. Here’s a suggestion on how to get things rolling smoothly…

Up to three days before: Make pickled capsicum, prepare marinade.

4 hours before serving: Start poaching duck

2.5 hours before serving: Take duck out to dry, strain stock

1 hour before serving: Start glazing duck (repeat 3 or 4 times)

Half an hour before serving: Put duck in oven, remove fat from top of duck stock

15 minutes before serving:  Cook rice

0 minutes before serving: Serve

In the next few days, I’ll post a short blog on what I did with the leftover duck (Hint: it isn’t not dumplings…).

(Tristan Lutze, 2010)

[tristangled]

50 photos I'm glad I took... part one.

I am not, I will never be a photographer.

I know a little bit about f-stops and ISO speeds thanks to taking photography at university, we have a lovely Canon EOS thanks to our generous wedding guests, and I've had a few jobs that required colour-balance adjustment skills on photoshop, but that's the extent of it.

What I am is a person who does whatever he can to hold onto a moment. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the more I'm enjoying a moment, the more photos I take (or want to take) of it. And it works.

When I look at a photo I've taken, I can see it well beyond its borders. I remember the time of day and weather, even if it's taken indoors or has no visible sky. I remember what happened in the hours before the photo. I remember what I was saying as I took the photo. But I need the photo to remember those details. The photo is my anchor.

These are my favourites so far (part one...).

Some aren't great photos, and they're not in order of love, but they all inspire in me the memories of a moment, captured either through luck, opportunity or composition, that means something special to me.

For around 8 years, I lived in my Grandmother's old house on the beach in Altona. Much of that was alone, but I was also lucky enough to live with two of my best friends, Kelvin and Kristy, at various times, as well as sharing a couple of wonderful years in the house with my now-wife. 

The house was old, dark and cold, but to have this as your front yard seems to make up for any other failings the house had. 

These are the real, unmodified colours. I also love the tiny flecks of seagulls on the water and in the sky. 

*

Sticking to the sunset theme for a moment.

We are lucky enough, through Christie's business partner, to have occasional access to accommodation on Hamilton Island. Blissfully, this has resulted in a visit once a year over the last three or so years.

Located as it is in the middle of the Whitsundays, it's obviously an incredibly beautiful place. Even in that perfection, there's nothing like dusk. The colours are unbelievable and the silhouettes are visual poetry. As you'll see, this is something I like taking photos of.

And then there's the girl.

When joyful, Christie is irrepressible. Sometimes this manifests itself in lunacy, sometimes in singing, but most often, it's a dance. 

The landscape is amazing, but it cannot compete with a dancing Christie.

*

Still on Hamilton Island, though on a subsequent trip, we took our traditional hike across the uninhabited majority of the island but this time chose to veer from the path. We followed a river bed, certain this would lead eventually to the sea, through a valley thick with butterflies and seemingly prehistoric flora. After a few hours, we emerged onto a pebbled beach, the only two people in the world.

Strewn across the beach were coconuts, one of which I smashed open on a rock releasing a stream of creamy white milk and shards of fresh coconut. As we sat on the beach, eating the delicious 'meat', I was struck with that wonderful feeling that this was one of those moments we would remember long after the coconut, long after the tropical climate, long after the butterflies.

And that's what this photo, messy in composition but rich in memories, does for me.

*

The majority of these photos were taken on holidays or during special events because, sadly, day-to-day doesn't seem to inspire the desire to reach for the camera.

This was a weekend away Christie and I took, in the middle of an epic heatwave, in Halls Gap. The days were actually far too hot to be enjoyable, but as dusk set and we felt safe enough to return to our tent, the kookaburras came out to greet us.

I like living in Australia, but it comes from an appreciation of our standard of living rather than from any specific patriotism. Sometimes, though, when I come across a field of kangaroos, or when I'm flying over the desert, standing in Sydney harbour or looking at a couple of kookaburras having a conversation on a light pole in a caravan park, I get that choir singing the Qantas commercial in my heart.

*

My friends (and not just those in this photo) are everything to me. As we get older, it gets harder to find mutually-available times to spend together, and although the things that take the place of these times together are wonderful, I do sometimes wish it was a little easier.

For a weekend in 2006, the stars aligned and a group of us pitched our tents in Marysville. It was a wonderful weekend, and although this photo makes me mourn both our availability and the town of Marysville, it makes me happy.

Incidentally, I set this one on automatic shutter, so it's the only one of these pictures I appear in.

*

When you know there's a camera on you, you change. You try to transform yourself into what you believe is the most beautiful version of yourself. That's why only a candid and usually unknown photo can capture you truly. Fully.

Christie is making a mermaid in the sand at Martha Cove on the Mornington Peninsula. She's slightly sunburnt, absolutely focussed on the task and doesn't know I'm taking this. 

I love the way Christie dives into everything with such passion- even making sand mermaids.

*

Here she is again, on a beach again. This was taken during a friend's beach wedding and is among my favourite photos of my beautiful wife (my absolute favourite is coming up...).

*

There's a couple of photographic styles I come back to again and again. Silhouette is one of them. It's not that I engineer the situations, it's that when the beautiful dusk light that creates these moments happens, I have to reach for the camera.

This one is a couple of my friends drinking beer in Warrnambool.

Here follow some others along similar lines...

*

The darkened lights of Fenway Park, Boston.

*

The view from our previous apartment in Richmond.

*Sigh*

Man, do I miss that place...

*

Hamilton Island Marina, in which floats the boat we're lucky enough to stay on from time to time.

*

Hamilton Island again.

It's funny- I don't really like dusk. It fills me with the same feeling Autumn does- a distant melancholy and the longing for time to stand still. I can't escape knowing that every dusk is the end of another day.

And yet, it's my favourite light.

*

Yep.

*

Last photo for part one. There is nothing special about this photo. Nothing extraordinary is happening, there's no magic light, I don't know the guy at the front of the shot and this street has no particular significance.

But it's New York City, my magnetic north, and the idea that away from the giant park, the copper statue and the flashy, neon crossroads there could be just a normal street with just a normal guy getting a cup of coffee astounds me. 

As it happens, this was taken in Soho on the day before I proposed to Christie. We spent it in Soho and the East Village clothes shopping so we'd have something nice to wear for Christmas Eve. 

And this guy was just getting his cup of coffee, as though it was just another day in just another city...

*

More of the 50 photos soon (but first, another recipe...).

T.

(Tristan Lutze, 2010)

[tristangled]

My first recipe: Slow-Cooked Lamb Ravioli with Roasted Balsamic Tomatoes

As I've mentioned, since I quit full-time work I've been working part-time as a food writer for a great store called The Essential Ingredient.

Reading, writing, tweeting and Facebooking for them has completely reignited my passion for cooking. Or, since it never really went away, taken my joy of playing with my food to a new level.

So here is the first proper recipe (beyond 2-minute noodles with chopped up leftover chicken and oyster sauce) that I've made up.

I don't want to say 'created', because it's been done plenty of times before... Actually, it's pretty-much an ancient Italian idea. Also, some credit needs to go to Jamie Oliver for inspiring the pasta recipe.

I've already started work on recipe #2 (Asian), so please let me know what you think of this one...

* * *

Slow-cooked Lamb Ravioli with Roasted Balsamic Tomatoes

Serves 6 very hungry people

Meat Ingredients:

2kg lamb forequarter pieces (don’t worry, it’s mostly bone…) Flour Cumin seeds, toasted then ground Ground ginger Dried sage leaves, ground Coriander seeds, toasted then ground Hungarian sweet paprika 1x cinnamon stick 400g tinned tomatoes 2 brown onions 4 cloves garlic 1 red chilli, finely chopped 500ml brown stock (beef, lamb, mushroom) Small handful dried porcini mushrooms 40g butter Extra Virgin olive oil (Cobram Estate Premiere) Black peppercorns, ground Salt flakes (Murray River pink) Baby carrots, washed (not peeled) Parmesan, very good extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped parsley to serve

Balsamic roast tomatoes Ingredients:

500g cherry tomatoes Good balsamic vinegar Extra Virgin Olive oil Salt Brown sugar Black peppercorns, ground

Pasta Ingredients:

500g ‘Type 00’ flour 5 eggs Salt

Plus an extra egg and some extra flour for later...

* * *

Merry is a little lamb…

Combine butter and an equal amount of olive oil in a large, heavy pot over a high heat. 

Roughly dust lamb pieces in flour (I put the flour on a plate and roll the lamb pieces through it. Sometimes I get two pieces and pretend they’re having a flour fight… The winner gets cooked last).

Brown the lamb, in several batches if you need to, on all sides. At this point, you’ll probably want to open a window; there can be a lot of smoke.

The closest you can get the meat to ‘burnt’ without actually reaching the point of ‘burnt’, the better. When the meat stews, the brown crunchy bits stay brown and crunchy. This is generally delicious. 

Remove the lamb from pot and set aside. Make sure, however, that you remember where you put it. You’re not finished with the lamb yet.

Add roughly-chopped onions and garlic to the pot, stirring with a wooden spoon to lift any meat/flour stuck to the bottom of the pot. If the pot is too hot, just remove it from the heat and keep stirring the onions and garlic- the residual heat in the pot and in the butter/oil will cook them.

When onions are translucent and starting to brown, add ground cumin seeds, ground coriander seeds, ground ginger, ground sage leaves, paprika, ground pepper, chopped red chilli, cinnamon stick and a small amount of salt. Prepare for sensory overload.

Combine and stir over heat for a minute. You’ll be glad you opened the window earlier, as the smell is incredible and for days your neighbours will ask what you were cooking. If you happen to be single, you could offer to ‘share’ your ‘slow-cooking’ with someone nice in your neighbourhood.

* Add tomatoes, stock and dried mushrooms and bring pretty-much to the boil.

Reduce heat, find lamb and add it back into the pot (and that liquid that’s collected on the plate under the lamb? You’ll want to add that too…). The pieces of meat should be almost covered by liquid. If not, add some additional beef stock. Or water, if you’ve run out of stock. Or some red wine if you didn’t finish the bottle last night.

Cover pot with lid (the heavier, the better) and move it into an oven preheated to 180 degrees. You’ve got 2 hours to kill now. You could get a start on the pasta, but I’m not here to tell you how to run your life…

After about 2 hours, throw the carrots into the pot. Baby carrots don’t need to be peeled- just run a knife over the skin a few times under running water. Move the meat around a bit (so the bits on top get a turn on the bottom…). Return pot to the oven.

Everybody kneads a little dough…

The first time you make pasta dough, if you're anything like me, it’ll basically be a disaster. It’ll be too thick, won’t go through the pasta machine properly and a good percentage of it will probably end up on the floor.

But that’s just the first time.

The second time, it’ll be easier. The third, even easier. Pretty soon, it’ll be quicker making your own pasta than cooking the instant stuff.

If you have a food processor with a dough hook, drop the flour, the eggs and the salt into the bowl (yep, that’s right- all the ingredients, all at the same time). Turn it on.

Mix it until it forms a dough ball. 

Knead it for a couple of seconds, until it’s totally together, then wrap it in plastic and throw it into the fridge. 

If you haven’t got a dough-hook-thingy, just do it by hand. Mix it in a bowl until you can’t, then start kneading. Same result, plus you get muscles.

Now you’ve got yourself an hour of free time. Again, far be it from me to tell you what to do, but you could put together the tomatoes…

Attacking the killer tomatoes…

Okay, pay attention, this bit’s tricky:

Chop up the cherry tomatoes. I went with quarters.

Throw them into a dish/tray/pan with some salt, pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, a drizzle of balsamic and a couple of pinches of brown sugar.

You’re done.

When the time comes, throw the dish/tray/pan into the oven at around 200 for about half an hour. For the first 25 minutes, it’ll turn all liquidy and stewy, but after that, the whole thing will turn into a rich, sweet caramel tomato thing. A-mazing.

(Okay, as you can see, I also added baby capsicums, but only because they were in the fridge.)

Finishing the meat…

Take the pot out of the oven and let it cool long enough so you can touch the meat.

When you can touch the meat, pull the it away from the bones. It should fall apart. Throw out the bones and any bits of gristle or fat. You can throw out the cinnamon stick too.

Throw the shredded meat back into the sauce, season with some more salt (to taste) and put it all back on the stove.

When the liquid has reduced and the whole thing looks like a thick stew, take it off the heat and let it cool (see, if it’s too hot when you put it inside the pasta, it’ll cook the pasta and go all soggy. This is high on the list of things you don’t want your ravioli to do…). 

That stuff you've got there now? That's gold. The mushrooms, carrots, onions and meat have become one, like a savoury swinger's party. Lay the mix on a baked potato, stick it in a jaffle, stuff a baked capsicum with it or make the dish we're here to make... 

Ravioli 101…

Do you have a pasta maker? Good.*

* No? It’ll cost you $40. I think you can even buy them from the supermarket now.

Cut off a quarter of your pasta dough. Flatten it  with your hands and rub some flour into both sides. Run it through the pasta maker on the highest (most ‘open’) setting.

If it breaks apart as you’re running it through, panic not. Fold it in half, lightly rub a bit of flour into both sides and run it through again. Do this a couple of times, and it’ll all gel together. After that, it’ll basically be impossible to break it.

Keep dropping the settings on the pasta maker until it’s as fine as you can get it.

Lay the sheet down on a floured bench. Drop a small spoonful of the cooled meat mixture onto the centre of the pasta, every 5 centimetres or so.

Brush an egg, lightly beaten, underneath and to the left and right of each blob of meat. Leave the top un-egged (so’s it can glue).

Fold the top of the pasta over the bottom of the pasta, making sure you get the air out of each meat-pocket (‘meat-pocket’ just sounds so… wrong…).

Cut ‘em out, leaving plenty of pasta around the edge of the meat. You don't want your meat slipping out when things get hot (oh God, I'm sorry. Italian food does this to me...).

You can cook them straight away or leave them sitting on a floured bench for a couple of hours.  

When you’re ready, drop them into heavily-salted, rapidly boiling water, no more than 10 at a time, for around 5 minutes. 

Drain and carefully transfer to a plate or bowl. Spoon a few caramalised tomatoes on top, then drizzle with good olive oil and sprinkle with very good shaved parmesan and finely chopped parsley.

Serve. Accept adoration.

* * *

Post-script:

Today, I had some leftover pasta dough and some meat that hadn’t made it into ravioli. I rolled out the pasta but instead of making ravioli, sliced it up roughly into pappardelle. I heated the meat sauce, dumped it on top with parmesan and parsley.

It was very, very nice. 

So, if the ravioli seems a bit, er, needlessly difficult or arrogantly showy, try it this way!

Other thoughts:

There's a whole lot of other things I'd like to try with this...

Replace half the beef stock with red wine

Or

Caramelise some onions separately and add them to each piece of ravioli

Or

Add some chopped kalamata olives to the meat sauce

Or

Use the meat mix as the 'sauce' on a pizza

(Tristan Lutze, 2010)

[tristangled]

Offering the ice cream $5 to climb back into the cone: a metaphor for Tristan.

[tristangled]

I'm suddenly afraid I've seen my primary narrative before. Recently. No idea where though. Did I dream it?

[tristangled]

If a genie appeared right now and told me I had one wish, she wouldn't have to do much...

[tristangled]

The Magic Shop

I don’t think there’s anywhere in Melbourne that holds more sentimental significance for me than Bernard’s Magic Shop on Elizabeth Street.

Founded there in 1937, it’s no doubt a curiosity to almost everybody that walks past. And as one of the only retail spaces in the CBD not occupied by a 7-11, Subway or JB Hifi, I’m sure it’s also dear to many a heart that reminisces some ideal of a ‘lost Melbourne’. To me, though, it’s more than that. There’s a bit of me in that store, and a bit of that store in me, but I’ll come to that.

The front window of Bernard’s Magic Shop folds in sharply, creating a small arcade from the street to the front door, like I’m sure so many other shops around it once did. From here, you get a great, lasting view of all the comical, mildly obscene, colourful oddities that are forever set up for passers-by, without getting in the way of the foot traffic.

On one side, filling the largest window as you make your way inside, terrible fake moustaches, fake dog crap, fake vomit, plastic spiders, adhesive windscreen ‘cracks’ and other showbag-fillers. This, presumably, is what stops people in the street. This is where the day-to-day money-making operation finds its basis. If Mad Magazine was a shop, that’s what that window would be. Need a plastic ‘ice cube’ with a fly trapped inside it (ha!)? You’ll have a selection to choose from.

But it’s not for this window that the shop is named, nor the reason for my affection. To me, this stuff is to this shop what those packing peanuts are to my mail-order bride.

For me, it’s all about the other window.

Bernard’s Magic Shop, as the name resolutely suggests, stocks magical equipment. From plastic magic trick sets for kids to professional magician supplies, if you want to make something vanish, cut someone in half or pull a rabbit from something, you come here. Like I used to.

My grandpa, and I’ve always felt like I’m endorsing a cliché here, was a magician. Truthfully, I only actually remember two or three tricks that he would pull from his pocket and entertain us with in the back of the car on the way home from church, but for a German immigrant who didn’t seem excited by the idea of showing affection or too much of himself, these tricks made me love him.

When he died, a whole box of tricks (literally…) was dragged from the top of a cupboard and handed down (again, literally) to me. Fake fingertips that red scarves came out of, vanishing cigarettes, mysterious pieces of metal and plastic whose secrets, without any instructions and without anybody ever having seen them used in any kind of trick, were lost forever.

The box was mine, and with only practice standing in my way, so was my fate as a magician and the opportunity to ensure my grandfather’s otherwise stoic legacy endured.

That’s when I first discovered Bernard’s. I was only 14 and been given license, under controlled circumstances, to catch the train from Altona into the city by myself. Luckily, all I needed to know was how to get from the station to the magic shop, and back again.

I may not have done much else in the city, but I still made the most of it. I would buy new tricks, watch demonstrations from the staff, stand back and see what the older magicians were buying; the whole experience was intoxicating. I didn’t have much money in my pocket, but there was still always something new for me to pick up. Even if it was only a book of card tricks.

Like so many things, the fantasy I would ‘conjure’ (…) in my mind while I was standing in the shop would end up being nothing like the reality. I didn’t have the patience to master slight-of-hand, on which so many tricks rely, and opt instead for gimmicky items that would reveal their own secrets after you’d shown your parents the trick any more than three times. So no matter what I bought would end up sitting abandoned a fortnight later. The magician’s graveyard.

After not too long, posters began to appear around the store for something called the ‘23rd International Convention of Magicians’, to be held that year in Melbourne. I begged mum and dad for the money, registered myself as a participant and entered the Under 18 competition.

The convention was, in hindsight (which is the only way you can judge these things), one of the highlights of my childhood. Constant performances, lectures that went far over my head, rooms of products for sale (which, gloriously, means product demonstrations), it was all unreal to a young teenager who fancied himself a budding magician.

Sadly, it became increasingly clear that I wasn’t ‘budding’ enough. While my passion was well-and-truly there, my discipline wasn’t. Magic needs a lot of practise, I was learning, and while you could cover a lot by connecting the tricks with a complex story featuring a colourful character with a flashy costume, it was never going to be a total substitute for magical content.

And that’s exactly what my post-competition judges’ critique said; ‘Too much acting, not enough magic’.

It wasn’t long after that convention that I discovered another shop in the city I would grow to love; Fine Music. Fine Music sells/sold (I suspect the latter…) play scripts.

Captivated by the store and the potential inherent in each script, I bought some from a discount table, went home and acted them out in my bedroom. It didn’t take me much longer to realise that what I had truly loved wasn’t the magic at all. It was the idea of performing; of standing up in front of people and being somebody else. Acting, I discovered, was a portal that could take both an audience and myself away. Magic was just the road I’d taken to get there.

I joined the local theatre before long. One day, bags and bags in hand, I traded most of my bigger tricks for cash at the magic shop then, in a symbolic act of transition worthy of a cinematic Rocky-style montage, walked straight into the play shop to spend all the money I’d just gotten.

While I get sentimental about that part of my life sometimes, particularly when I walk past Bernard’s, there’s no regret. The magic gave way to acting which would become, and remains, one of the biggest loves of my life. That, in turn, led to a joy of writing and ended up introducing me to 99% of the friends I have now. And while it wasn’t directly, and he never saw it, my grandfather gave me that.

Bernard’s is still there, as I said, and it still seems to catch the interest of people who walk past. This morning, it was my interest. I went inside for the first time in years. Part of me thought, maybe, that buying a little trick would be a nice way of igniting something creative inside me. But I didn’t buy anything. I didn’t need to. Instead, I left happily, knowing that who I am is tied to this city.

“Can I help you with anything?” the lady in the shop asked as I started to leave. “No, I was just reminiscing,” I told her, my head still swimming from the combination of the spirit gum, fart gas and playing cards smells that hung still in the air. “Let me guess,” she said, smiling, “your grandfather used to bring you in here.” I smiled back at her. “We get that a lot,” she added, almost sadly, as though she wouldn’t be able to say that in a generation’s time. “That’s exactly right,” I said. “Would we know him?” she asked. “No,” I said, “I don’t think he knew this place existed.”

(Tristan Lutze, 2010)

[tristangled]

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

Raymond Chandler

[tristangled]

...and the basket it goes in.

I've always liked the food. From even the youngest of ages, when I was finally able to cling to thoughts long enough for them to become memories, I remember defining places my parents took me by the food that would be available. One of our family friends ALWAYS had schnitzel. Platters of it. And when they didn't, I cried.

Now I'm older, food (and the preparation thereof) still bobs around the top of the list of my obsessions. And while it's easy to pretend that my tastes have developed and matured, I can't claim that with a totally clear conscience.

Yes, I love finding an exotic new ingredient or complex recipe and decoding it slowly, sometime attempting it three or four times before either proudly adding it to my limited 'repertoire', or abandoning it entirely. I like go out and order the goat or the snail or the brain or the foam and eat it like it's in my lunchbox every day. But the truth is, there's a whole other side. A Dr. Food-Jekyll to my Mr. Food-Hyde.

I love eating crap. Utter crap. Love it. The moment I have a night at home alone, a trip to the supermarket prefixes a meal of something microwaveable, something crumbed, something frozen and something self-saucing; the true food pyramid.

A bed of microwave 'pasta' 'alfredo' delicately topped with an Inghams frozen chicken kiev, followed by an Ice-Magic-laced bowl of vanilla ice cream. Michelin stars await.

This duality started when I was younger. My mum taught me quickly the rewards of being adventurous with food. I was the only 7 year old keen on sheep's brains with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, or to have ox tongue and horseradish in his sandwiches at school. And I loved it all. Mum was right- by taking risks, you could find something delicious that nobody else knew about- the Secret Smoked Eel Society.

But when the time came to eat out, to truly explore the world of food, there was only ever one option. One menu item to rule them all. The dark side...

I don't know where I first fell in love with the Fisherman's Basket, but I do know that it quickly became an obsession. Over-crumbed, over-salted, list on salad, I just couldn't wait to get into the calamari/prawn/fish bite/chip/seashell-full-of-tartare-sauce combination. 

Maybe it was the sheer size of the basket they came in. Or the simple fact that someone at the table was being served his dinner in wicker. Everyone else at the table would marvel at the size of the meal I'd been given, and would applaud when I finished it (I don't remember ever offering to share any...).

So enamoured was I, at around age 11 I convinced my parents that one day I would write a book comparing every Fisherman's Basket available in Australia. That book's still at the planning stage, I'm sorry to say.

In my defence, they seemed to be everywhere. Maybe my parents only took us to places that had it on the menu, but the 'basket' seemed omnipresent, like the 'parma' is today.

It's been a long time since I had a Fisherman's Basket. Diets and a predilection toward Asian restaurants have restricted my exposure to the crumbed masterpiece. But when I'm home alone, unable to get my hands on my former favourite and not required by others to create something with even a slight nutritional benefit, you can almost guarantee that my shopping bag will be filled with something equally appalling.

As we worry about oil filling our oceans, over-fishing, scarcity of fresh ingredients in an over-populated world, at least one things for certain; with nothing fresh or green, and very little connection to anything that's come out of the sea in the last 5 years, the world will one day see the revival of this classic Australian dish. 

And I'll be ready for it.

[tristangled]

Playing games

I haven’t been a gamer for long, certainly when compared to those people my age who have playing since NES, Atari, Gameboy... 

I bought my first console, an Xbox, about 8 years ago when, in the middle of my Buffy obsession, a Buffy game with most of the original cast made me need one. It was my first hit.

Now I’m an addict.

I play a lot. I moved on from the Xbox to the Xbox 360, then added a PS3, and finally a Wii. If there’s a day I don’t play anything, it’s worthy of mention. 

In my defense, games are good. Like I said, I don’t have a childhood of games to compare current releases to, but these days we’ve got HD graphics, motion-captured performances, A-grade actors doing the voices, Hans-freaking-Zimmer writing music. It makes sense, games are now a bigger industry than movies and TV, so it seems I’ve gotten in at the right time. 

Some of these games have been so good that I look back on the experiences as personal events. That sounds tragic, desperate and pitiful, but by actually being able to control the protagonist, and by spending so much time in such a vivid world, it gets inside you.

So, here, for my own benefit, I’ve listed the games that I’ve played in the order in which I’ve enjoyed them.

I’ve only included games with a narrative (so no Rock Band, no Burnout, no Guitar Hero), and I’ve only included games that I’ve finished (no Spiderman, no Overlord, no BioShock). Also, I’ve probably forgotten a few, but it’s safe to say they wouldn’t have been in the top 10.

Criteria is simply my enjoyment and my memories of the game. Some games have beaten technically superior buddies (Gears of War, for example, was robbed), but for whatever reasons, I liked things in this order:

Grand Theft Auto 4 Liberty City, a slight re-branding of New York City, in which you have free reign to misbehave, is my favourite game environment to date. There’s such life in the city- you can just stand and watch the people around you interacting, and it’s always unique. Plus, the acting is great, the swearing is intense and the sheer level of detail (a dozen radio stations you can listen to? Comedians you can go see in comedy club- one of which is a motion-captured Ricky Gervais? Brilliant!) make this my favourite world I’ve ever been in. Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Oblivion and Assassin’s Creed 2 are very, very close, however.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion A well-made game sucks you right into the world. Oblivion invades your thoughts while you’re away from the xbox and lures you back into its fantasy world, replete with swords, magic, awesome monsters, alchemy, shopping and ghosts. So much to explore, so many options, such a massive game. You get absolutely lost in this game, and that’s an amazing achievement (unlocked…).

Red Dead Redemption I’m hesitant to include brand new games this high on the list, but I’ve got no doubt this one will stand the test of time. Using the same engine as Grand Theft Auto 4, set in the ‘wild’ American west and setting a new benchmark in graphics, storytelling and immersion, this doesn’t just fulfill cowboy fantasies, it creates them. 

Fallout 3 The people that made Oblivion took the engine and made a game set in a post-apocalyptic Washington. A perfectly created world where every bullet counts, and every decision you make has an impact somewhere else. You can spend dozens of hours playing in this world without even starting the story. Epic. Really, this and the three titles that precede it all deserve equal top billing.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves So, so many games promote themselves as being a ‘cinematic experience’. Generally, though, that means lots of cut-scenes and endlessly annoying ‘quicktime events’ (‘press X to catch the sword that’s hurtling towards you’). This, though, deserves the description. This game is spectacular, and the constant action is perfectly intercut with well-scripted, well-acted dialogue that combines into an epic film-like experience. 

Assassin’s Creed 2 I hadn’t been to Florence, Venice, Sienna or any of the Italian locations painstakingly recreated within their renaissance context for this game. But after climbing up balconies, running along rooftops and exploring churches in this game, I made sure every one of the game locations (including the smallest of villages) was on our itinerary. And, having seen them in person, I am even more impressed by the game.

Halo: Combat Evolved The first game in the still-going series, Halo supposedly invented the modern shooter. But for me, as the second game I ever bought, this was what created my love of multiplayer gaming with my friends. Link four Xboxs and four TVs together, grab four copies of Halo and destroy your weekend (and each other).

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic The problem with Star Wars games- and most licenses- is that while in theory the idea of playing through a movie you love is exciting, the reality is it’s neither identical to the film (otherwise, what would there be to do?) or a surprising, thrilling enough adventure (or it’d be too distant from the film). Knight of the Old Republic is set in the Star Wars universe- lightsabers, space transporters, the Force- but thousands of years before the movies. Awesome.

Fable 2 Get a group of girls drunk. Invite two of them up to your room (Achievement unlocked…). Marry someone of the same gender. Burp/fart on cue. Fable 2 is overly stylized, cartoony and light-on with its script, but the encouragement you are given to experiment, and the scope of actions available to you make this a very fun, very silly, very addictive experience.   

Modern Warfare 2 This game includes the most controversial level I’ve ever played, and I frankly don’t agree that it should have been allowed. However, with its constant changes in gameplay, amazing animations and score by Hans Zimmer (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, etc.), it sucks you in and completely immerses you in the graphic world of contemporary war.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 The moment you’re starting to get even slightly bored with the action in this squad-based shooter, it flips itself around and gives you something completely different to do. The very fact that I liked this game surprised me, since I’ve never been ‘into’ ‘war’, but seeing it in this list alongside both modern Warfare games, I see that I clearly enjoy a bit of realistic shooting enemies in the face.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 Better than number one in many respects, but one of the rare instances where a game sequel didn’t leave me with an overall better feeling than its parent. 

Battle for Middle Earth 2 Even with Red Alert and Halo Wars commanding and conquering their way onto the Xbox, this is my favourite console Real-time Strategy game. Excellent handling of one of my favourite franchises, without interfering with the narrative or visual style of the films.

Halo 3 Said to be, at the time, the last Halo game (subsequently demonstrated to be untrue), this one ‘finished’ the story with a bang. Didn’t reach the originality heights of the first, but lots of action, a heap of multiplayer fun.

Mass Effect 2 In some ways, I’m surprised this isn’t higher. The story is immense. The characters are vivid and real, the writing is epic (and so much of it). I enjoyed both Mass Effect games but I feel like the balance between story and action is off. I don’t just need ‘more shooting’, but I want more to happen to me between gunfights than conversations.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer As mentioned, this game was the reason I bought a console. As a result of this being the first game I owned and played through, I had nothing to compare it to. Although, in hindsight, it wasn’t the greatest game, I loved being an interactive part of the Whedon world.

Mass Effect

Halo 2

Star Wars Battlefront

inFamous

The Simpsons Game

Halo Wars

Batman Arkham Asylum

Crackdown

Bully

Unchartered: Drake's Fortune

Saints Row 2

Just Cause

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Harry Potter and the Pris. Of Azkaban

Ghostbusters: The game

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

God of War 3

Lego Indiana Jones

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Stranglehold

Red Faction: Guerilla

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Gears of War

Lord of the Rings Conquest

(Tristan Lutze, 2010)