So on Sunday night, N. and D.M. took me to Osteria Dei Poeti in Glebe for dinner - honestly, the birthday is now officially over. I promise. Anyway, I've been to O.D.G. once before but it was a staff function and a set menu so I was looking forward to seeing the restaurant on its own terms. It really impressed. The setting is warm, intimate and relaxed; we noted that they chose to sit all customers out on the back, semi-enclosed verandah to take advantage of the breeze and the lovely evening although this made the restaurant look completely empty from the street. We really appreciated it. Despite being trapped between two wedding obsessed tables, we had a lot of fun and some wonderful food. For entree we just shared fresh bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a plate of fried white-bait. The white-bait really tasted as though you were eating it beside the sea, on a pier and the bread was strong and fresh. I then had a baked pasta dish - this was completely unsubtle and fantastic; rustic and filling. Meat ragu was combined with eggplant, raisins and pine-nuts amongst other things. I would not have thought of putting dried fruit into this context but it made the sauce irresistibly rich and I should have stopped long before I did. N. had an elegantly presented dish of large, graceful spinach and ricotta ravioli with a sauce of cream, saffron and black truffle. This seems a little over the top, but N. assured us that it was actually well-balanced and reasonably subtle. Dave had a wonderful concoction of polenta on fresh spinach - it was like scrambled egg suspended in time - fluffy and light and golden. Dessert was not as interesting as the mains but still tasty. N. and D. shared cannoli with chocolate ice-cream and I had roasted pears stuffed with amaretti and served with almond gelato and biscotti. The serving was extremely generous - probably too generous if the truth be told, especially with the rich, dangerous tasting almond filling of the pears, but that's a pretty churlish complaint!
Speaking of desserts, I tried out the ice-cream maker. My first lot didn't set solidly in the machine, but after some time in the freezer it behaved correctly. The recipe (it came with the machine) was called vanilla but it was one of those vanilla = no flavour, so I added some generous spoons of milo. I'm taking the manufacturer's advice to store the cannister in the freezer for future experiments. Today I also made some impromptu banana bread - motivated by guilt about over-ripe bananas. This was Margaret Fulton's no-fuss, simple recipe. I really appreciate her straightforward approach for things like this. The cake is nice but again the oven is giving me grief - it doesn't seem to distribute heat very effectively so the bottom is a bit leathery even though I took it out early.
Tomorrow - back to the real world. Sigh.
1 comment:
I suggest that the mistake you made with dessert is ordering a dessert containing fruit in anything more than a garnishing capacity. Aside from the fact that restaurant desserts are never as good as the ones you can make yourself - self-saucing chocolate pudding anyone?
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