Lake House Daylesford

Knowing my interest in fine dining, Gaz suggested we dine at the Lake House while at Daylesford. Fortunately we were able to make a reservation for lunch at 1pm the day before.

Lake House is a two Chefs Hat (The Age Good Food Guide) restaurant in Daylesford. The Executive Chef is Alla Wolf Tasker who opened the restaurant in 1984. To have been cooking and maintaining the prestige of the restaurant for such a long time is certainly no mean feat!

Lake House also offers hotel accomodation besides a fine dining experience. The pictures of the rooms on their website looked absolutely dreamy.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were immediately ushered to a window seat with glimpses of the famed lake. The seating and ambience was very comfortable.

There was only a 2 course lunch at $70 per person option but we got to choose what we wanted to eat from a comprehensive menu. Not a dessert person, I chose an entree of tempura prawns with radish salad and black beans (recommended as a special) and main of John Dory fish with squid ink.

Gaz chose a main of 12 hour suckling pig and dessert of assorted sorbets. The serveperson suggested we order a side dish of vegetables because there were not much veges on the dishes, the ones on the plate mostly serves as garnishing. So we ordered a dish of asparagus and brocollini.

Each table was provided a bowl of bread with unsalted butter, and some olives in oil and bread sticks. One of the parmesan bread sticks I had was very salty but there was also another one flavoured with cumin which was just right. I was not a fan of olives so Gaz had the whole lot to himself.

I liked the crispy nori and prawn but I have to say that my first bite of one of the prawns was NOT GOOD. I think the prawn in question must soaked up too much of the fermented black bean juice because the smell of something akin to preserved 1000 year old egg magnified by 100% + rotten egg immediately overwhelmed me on the first bite. Normally I'm OK with black beans, I even use it in my cooking, so it's all very strange.

Still, the salad on the side was very fresh and the prawn itself was tasty. I just steered clear of the black beans on the plate after the first bite though.


The side of asparagus and brocollini ($9).

Gaz's main of 12 hour suckling pig, tempura quail, blood pudding and asian funghi which was black fungus, lily bulb in a tangy sauce. We both loved the pork (hmm... can't get enough of the crackling) and the quail was nice too.

The funghi salad is tangy, meant to balance the fat of the pork I suppose. I have to say that the pork has a little boar taint even though it is a suckling. But I'm not deterred by this, crackling's the best!

John Dory, squid ink topped with foam. The foam is an apple sauce foam - I would never have guessed. Pardon me, but I don't like foams... they look like saliva on the plate! The black pieces on the plate are squid ink tuile which tasted a little salty. Doesn't the contrasting black and white on the plate look good?

Sorbet - Strawberry, pineapple and lime. My favourite one is the strawberry, it matches the colour of my top.

We waited a long time between the entree and the main, about 1/2 hour... Maybe we were supposed to talk and sip our wine patiently while the chef slaves over the little components on our elaborate mains.... I think we ate a little too quickly. The entree only lasted 1 minute on our table and the mains, maybe 2 1/2 minutes. We were hungry :)

With our bellies full (much help from the bowl of bread and butter), we made our drive back to Melbourne.

Daylesford

To recover from Christmas, we took a trip to Daylesford. It is only 2 hours away from our place, via the city. We only left the house around 2 pm so when we got there it was already 4 pm. Our first stop was The Albert Hotel where we were going to stay overnight.

The Albert is a really quaint heritage hotel. Although there were some bad reviews on Trip Advisor, we quite enjoyed our stay there. I had no complains at all about the cleanliness, amenities etc. We even received a bottle of wine and chocolates during our stay even though it was not mentioned on our booking sheet. For overpriced Daylesford, $110 is a reasonable price per night.

While in Daylesford, we visited Sailors Falls, a 30 metre waterfall which also has a stream nearby. The air was so fresh and crisp my hayfever deleviated substantially while there. There was also a stream nearby and I dipped my hand into the water. I hadn't expected the water to be tepid and gritty!!!


Natural mineral springs - Daylesford is widely recognised as a spa country because of the mineral springs which dots across the area.

There were three pumps at this place which one can use to pump mineral water to drink. We filled up our water bottle with the water and tried to drink it on the way back to Melbourne but the sulfur was too strong. It smelt like fart!! I couldn't drink it at all.

We still have the bottle of water, now chilling in the fridge for his consumption later!

The Convent Gallery was one of the 'must do' on our list. Admission is $5 per person, and the entrance ticket is valid for a couple of days after purchase.

Prior to being an art gallery, the building was a convent and boarding school for girls. The building consist of two floors of gallery, a museum of artefacts from its convent and boarding school days and a watchtower which was previously an infirmary for the convent.

I loved this little chapel within the building. It felt really cosy and close to God. The Convent Gallery also hosts weddings and receptions.

Wombat Hill Botanical Garden. We visited the Garden on our first day and spent a couple of hours exploring the hilly area (so steep!) and having a little picnic on the grounds. It was deserted because every one else had better things to do on Boxing Day so we had the whole place to ourselves.

Butterflies were everywhere in the garden. As we walked along, it felt like being chaperoned by the butterflies that flew alongside us all the time.

Outside of the hotel, we saw a lovely cat. If you looked closely you'll notice kitty has different coloured eyes, one blue and the other green.

The weather was perfect for our trip. We spent so much time outdoors in the warm and sunny weather and absolutely loved it. Lucky that the weather bureau was wrong in forecasting the weather to be cloudy and possible showers!

I really enjoyed Daylesford. It was rare that we did not plan too much to do on the trip but to go with the flow and enjoy the outdoors. We had such a good time!

Christmas Dinner 2011

Gaz managed to fix the oven in time for the big stars of our Christmas dinner - Roast Pork and Roast Whole Chicken with Roast Veges.

This is the first time I've made Christmas dinner, previously it was more relaxed lunches (as if!). This year's dishes:

Garden salad (with homegrown tomatoes)

Roast Chicken and Veges

Garlic and chilli prawns - nearly 1 kilo of prawns here - spent so much time peeling and deveining them without cutting them apart!

Seared sea scallops with asparagus sauce

Chinese Roast Pork - crunchy crackling!!!


Not pictured - pumpkin soup and watermelon sorbet, home made as well. I must say the sorbet turned out to be more like granita but Gaz loves it so much he's steadily polishing the container, especially since it has been rather warm lately.



I had over catered of course, too much food for 5 people but we only had enough leftovers for a couple of meals each afterwards, so it was a good outcome!

Peace to the Earth

The day before Christmas is when the oven buckles under the weight of expectation of a tantalising Christmas dinner fit for a panel of judges who are best friends with words such as sous-vide, mirepoix and veloute.

Time for Plan B. New ingredients, new cooking methods (no more appearing cool, calm and collected over a glass of chilled champagne while the food magically cooks in the oven. Think slaving over the stove and timing everything so that all dishes are ready before I sit down to entree), and new dishes.

So I made the trek to the overcrowded Coles where it was as much a hazard to dodge around the shopping trolleys as it is on the road with drivers who are in a hurry to the mall to get that last minute Christmas gift.

Two hours later, a very sweaty and grumpy me came home (30 deg for consecutive 3 days) to... no water. Water people replacing the mains was the last thing I needed.

No oven, no water, Christmas dinner on the line. I'm sure I can come up with something...

Suzuki Night Market

Gaz and I finally went to the Suzuki Night Market at the VicMart last Wednesday night. The Night Market is held on Wednesday nights every summer and from what I had heard, is worth a visit.

We spent nearly 2 hours on a trip that would normally have taken an hour. Half the time was spent being stuck on Victoria St leading up to VicMart on a snail's pace. We finally struck gold and parked 2 mins away from the market.

Then we got into the market and looked at the crowd of people waiting in line for their turn at each stall... Gaz was getting crankier by the second.

We had to queue about 20 minutes for this - food from the French stall. Mixed platter of tapenade, onion tart, chickpea chips and roasted capsicum. We also got a pork sausage baguette which is not pictured. Both dishes were $10 each.


While Gaz was queueing for the above, I went in search for paella. I soon found the Spanish stall about 4 stores away and waited for about 10 minutes for a plate of seafood paella. It was hot off the paella pan, and very very flavourful. Not bad for $10. It was my favourite dish of the night.


We also had a plate of cheese arepas from the Mexican store for $5 which was just corn bread with cheese. Not my cuppa, for sure. The $10 dish had beans and some pieces of meat but I didn't think it was worth $10 at all.

Our bellies full with food, we started browsing along the stalls. Some were selling recyclable home decorations, plates, glassware, clothes, chocolates, tea etc. There was a band playing at the end of one shed and people taking a breather from the humidity and the satay fumes stayed out in the open air around the band juggling their plates of food and drinks.

The atmosphere that night was just electric.. it was like one huge pasar malam, but much more robust with the band, the diversity of food and people. The weather was also a big plus, being about 28 deg and sunny. So much so that the cranky boy said that he would not mind going back again sometime before summer finishes.

Talk to the Hand

I think someone should invent a personal privacy bubble for those of us who have to work in open space offices. Whoever who came up with that concept should be hung upside down and water slowly dripped into their nose. An advantage of the open office plan is that it fosters communication. Too much communication, in my opinion. Not good for work at all! Imagine your boss rolling up to you in his chair and asking you to do something urgently and the ten seconds later asking whether you have done something else, followed by another request to do something else ten minutes later.

It all just gets too much.

Now, if there was such a thing as a personal bubble contraption, right after the first request I will be inflating this bubble till it completely encapsulates me within the bubble, putting a sound proof barrier and also maybe an electric fence which will zap anyone who dares knock on the bubble until the first task is finished. Then, the bubble is deflated around me and I will then be ready for the subsequent tasks.

If someone is wasting your time by asking the most mundane questions to which the answers are readily available if they would only take the time to check, there goes the bubble again.

If the team is telling a dirty joke you would rather not hear, the bubble goes up again.

I like the idea. Especially the electric fence.