A beautiful New Year’s Day. An opportune moment to rediscover the art of couch-potato-ing, and the perfect time for recovery. Not from the excesses of the night before, but from lack of sleep, due to the fire alarms going off at 4-5 o’clock throughout the whole of our apartment building this early morning. It’s cause remains a mystery still. All I know is that one alarm went off, and the other felt lonely so it started screeching too. Just like a koel.

Foggy mind notwithstanding, you can’t possibly go wrong when putting together these Cheddar biscuits. The recipe comes from Baking with Passion by Dan Lepard and Richard Whittington; a cookbook from an artisanal bakery in London. I spied this book several months ago in a discount bookstore and bought it on a whim. The Benedict Bar and Oatmeal and Raisin Cookie recipes alone, have made the purchase worthwhile. These cheese biscuits, originally Parmesan (but mature Cheddar is an acceptable substitute), are delicious : crispy, buttery, lightly salty. The food processor virtually does all the necessary work and all you need to do after that is pour yourself a glass of tipple (Port, in this case, if it’s not too “last year” for your tastes).

Cheddar Biscuits:

335g plain flour
300g mature Cheddar, freshly grated
300g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons Maldon salt, ground fine
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1-2 Tablespoons cold bottled spring water

1 egg, lightly beaten
2 Tablespoons white sesame seeds
2 Tablespoons black sesame seeds

Put the flour, freshly grated Cheddar and chilled diced butter in a food processor with the cayenne, salt and black pepper. Whiz to a crumb, then slowly add the cold water through the feeder tube until the dough forms into a ball.

Scrape out on to a lightly floured surface and roll into a cylinder. You will cut the biscuits from this, so size the roll accordingly. Cling-wrap tightly and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Brush the cylinder with beaten egg and roll in the mixed sesame seeds to coat all over. Wrap and chill for a further hour.

Preheat the oven to 180’C. Cut the cylinder into 5mm slices and lay these on non-stick baking trays, leaving at least 2cm space around them. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I will always remember 2006 as the year I started my little blog. It doesn’t matter that no one reads it and that I often don’t have much time for it. It has proven to be a good inspiration for me to utilise the many cookbooks I own (and an excuse to acquire even more hefty tomes, much to the dismay of our barely-coping bookshelves!), as well as an outlet for me to play with taking photos. One of the toys I used to love as a kid was the ViewMaster, and now I’m happily clicking away with my current toy of choice : a digital camera.

2006 will also be remembered as the year of hard work, experiencing new things, eating well (London was an especially big highlight) and the year my balcony turned green. Other favourites I have discovered or rediscovered in the past year include (in no particular order):

Australian Cookbooks:

1. Wild Weed Pie by Janni Kyritsis
2. Let It Simmer by Sean Moran
3. The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander
4. Two’s Cooking by Jane and Jeremy Strode
5. French by Damien Pignolet
6. Recipes and Stories by Kylie Kwong
7. My Vue by Shannon Bennett
8. Danks Street Depot by Jared Ingersoll
9. Old Food by Jill Dupleix

Music:

1. Le Fil – Camille
2. I am a bird now – Antony & the Johnsons
3. The Cost – The Frames
4. Sultans of Ping
5. Living with War – Neil Young
6. Iron and Wine
7. Sigur Ros
8. Birds – Bic Runga
9. Sufjan Stevens
10. RJD2

Films of 2006:

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. The Prestige
3. A Scanner Darkly
4. V for Vendetta
5. Tsotsi
6. Cars
7. Candy
8. The Libertine
9. Brick
10. Children of Men

Books I loved:

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. History of Love – Nicole Krauss
3. Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time – Mark Haddon
4. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
5. Saturday – Ian McEwan
6. Eucalyptus – Murray Bail
7. The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Stead
8. The Rabbits – John Marsden and Shaun Tan
9. Stitch ‘n’ Bitch : The Knitter’s Handbook – Debbie Stoller
10. Powers Vol. 1-9 – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

In 2007, B and I will be celebrating our “10th anniversary”. Normally anniversaries just come and go without so much as the bat of an eyelid, but I think a decade is something I’d like to raise the glass to. If we were to celebrate like the Marrieds, the ten year mark is traditionally associated with “tin or aluminium” (bah humbug), but apparently, B, the modern gemstone for ten years is also the ahemdiamondahem.

A very Happy New Year to one and all!

Christmas was especially good this year. We were gifted with the return of relatives who had been away for a long time. After the obligatory group cracker pull, we settled down to a meal of cold seafood, crisp salads, and ham. The best thing about Christmas ham is that even while I’m rolled and stuffed like a turkey from all that eating, I can still be thinking about what to do with the ham leftovers. Hamwiches, ham salads, ham omelette, endless endless possibilities..

For dessert, I sauted off some cherries, allowed them to cool to room temperature, and piled them into a glass along with quarters of fresh lychee, young coconut flesh and coconut and moscato jelly. Young coconuts are fabulous because they taste so refreshing and don’t have too strong a flavour like the old coconuts (from which you get coconut cream and milk). The flesh of the young coconut is almost like a jelly itself; slippery, translucent and melt-in-your-mouth. After all that, would you believe, we also managed to have Christmas pudding with calvados custard.

And as it turns out, the “some computer thing” my mom got my brother for Christmas, was a Nintendo Wii. So that was our entertainment organised for the rest of the day!

On Boxing Day, we joined other family for a picnic at Lavender Bay. The weather was so beautiful that some chose later to adjourn to nearby Luna Park for a scream or two, while the rest of us lazed about on picnic rugs and later took a walk to have a peek at Wendy Whiteley’s secret garden.