In case you missed the news, Charleville was mostly under water about a month ago. The rain started about a week before the wedding date, and didn’t let up. We were due to drive the 900km or so from Brisbane the day before the wedding, but by then the roads were well and truly cut, and we ended up flying. Along with one other wedding guest, we were the only passengers on the tiny plane who weren’t disaster relief workers of some kind. In fact, the little Dash-8 was so full of the Red Cross’ medical supplies that there wasn’t room for our luggage, and we arrived in Charleville with only the clothes on our backs and a small suitcase full of smoked salmon.

The floodwaters had peaked the day before our arrival, putting several metres of water through most of Charleville’s ground floors. Fortunately, the wedding venue was on a hill, and while beset by sandflies, mosquitoes, equatorial humidity and an actual biblical plague of locusts, remained dry. The wedding went to plan, although the festivities were cut a little short by the need to strip the contents (and carpets) of the family home for an insurance assessment.

The following weekend was Steph and Joel’s wedding, at a surf life-saving club in the beachside village of Copacabana. Hannah, Dad and I flew into Sydney late on Friday night and drove a hired car up the coast, finally arriving at the beach house sometime after midnight. The wedding was the following afternoon. It was almost the opposite of Mum’s – large, loud, and with a mariachi band instead of SES personnel. It was the first chance I’d had to see some members of my extended family since before I went backpacking, and was a lot of fun. I also finally got to meet little Vincent, which was awesome. All in all, a lovely wedding. There was a wedding photographer focused on the couple, so I mostly just took shots of the crowd.

In other news, I got into a clinical experience program at the Mater hospital. Had my first shift on Friday – lots of blood, broken bones and finally, the chance to get good at injections.

Moroccan poached eggs. Serves two.

• 1½ tsp whole cumin seeds
• virgin olive oil
• 4-6 shoots green onion, sliced
• 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• 4 large, ripe tomatoes, chopped, or one 400g can
• 1 cup stock or water
• 1½ tsp sugar
• 4 large eggs
• handful each of fresh continental parsley and chives, roughly chopped
• grilled ciabatta or sourdough, to serve

Heat a heavy skillet or sauté pan over medium flame, and dry roast the cumin seeds for a minute, until they’re beautifully fragrant. Add green onions and garlic, and sauté in olive oil until soft and beginning to brown. Add tomato, sugar and stock, and simmer for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomato is beginning to break down and the mixture has thickened a little. Season. Make a few depressions in the surface of the tomato sauce, and break the eggs onto them. Poach for another few minutes, until eggs are done to your liking. You might need to add a little more stock, if things are in danger of burning. Top generously with parsley and chives, and serve with grilled bread and a drizzle of olive oil. Yum.

Edit: just remembered that this recipe is mostly inspired by a breakfast in Casa Moro: the second cookbook, by Sam & Sam Clark.

The food went down well. We made rice paper rolls,  baba ganoush, hummous and a carrot dip, served with with grilled Turkish bread and crudités.

Carrot and cumin dip

This dip is is fragrant, sweet, and smooth.

• 6 large carrots (about 750g)
• ½ cup virgin olive oil
• 4 large cloves garlic, or to taste, peeled
• 3 tsp whole cumin seeds, and extra to garnish

Peel and roughly chop the carrots, and steam or microwave, covered, until very soft (about ten minutes at 800W). Meanwhile, add garlic cloves and oil to a small skillet and fry over medium heat until fragrant. Add cumin to hot oil and cook for a further minute. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes before adding contents to food processor. Add steamed carrot, and blend until smooth. Season well and garnish with a pinch of whole cumin. Serve warm with grilled bread.

Hummous with parsley

An easy improvisation on a familiar and delicious theme.

• 400g can of chickpeas, drained
• 1½ tbsp unhulled tahini
• handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• ½ cup virgin olive oil
• juice of one lime

Combine all ingredients in food processor and blend until combined. Smooth or a little chunky – completely up to you. Season and serve with a drizzle of good olive oil and crudités.

Baba ganoush

• 2 medium aubergines/eggplant (about 1 kg)
• 1 tbsp unhulled tahini
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• ¼ cup virgin olive oil
• juice of one (juicy) lime

Grill or barbeque aubergines, whole, until skin is black, blistered and crisp, and the whole fruit is very soft. Carefully peel, discarding skin, and add flesh to food processor with remaining ingredients. Blend until combined, and season well. Serve warm with Turkish bread.

Tea eggs are super easy to make – as simple as boiling eggs, cracking the shells, and re-boiling them in a darkly-stained broth.

Chinese tea eggs

• ½ doz. free-range eggs
• 1 tbsp black tea leaves
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice

Hard-boil eggs in a medium-sized saucepan. They should be ready five or six minutes after the water comes to the boil. Remove eggs from water and leave until cool enough to handle (or run them under cold water). Once you can touch the eggs, gently crack them all over by rolling on your benchtop or tapping with a teaspoon. Return the eggs to the saucepan of water, along with tea, soy, rice wine and five-spice powder. Simmer gently for half an hour, then allow to cool. Refrigerate eggs in the broth for at least 24 hours before serving.

I spent last weekend in Townsville, partly to see Dad, and partly so that I’d make it to Althea’s 21^st. It’d been raining for quite a few days before I got there, but on my last day, just before I was due at the airport, we drove to the top of Castle Hill and enjoyed the sunshine.

Back in Brisbane, I’ve been renovating furniture, repairing my bicycle and shooting headshots with Anna:

… and in the biggest and best news, my cousin Mary and her husband Andrew had a beautiful baby boy, Vincent. I can’t wait to meet him!

Almond Pesto

• 1½ cups raw almond kernels
• 1 cup virgin olive oil
• 150g parmesan reggiano, chopped or grated
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• armful of fresh basil – I used a fairly even mix of Greek, Genovese and Thai.
• salt and course-milled black pepper to season

Wash and shake dry basil. Pluck leaves and add to a food processor with parmesan and half the oil, and process until just combined. Toast almonds until fragrant, then add to food processor. Sauté coarsely chopped garlic in remaining oil until just soft. Add oil and garlic to food processor and process until well mixed – you may need more oil to get sufficient smoothness. I like mine fairly chunky, although biting into a large piece of almost-raw garlic can ruin your date. Serve warm on grilled ciabatta, mixed with pasta for alla genovese, or store under oil in the refrigerator.

We did lots of the usual couple things we’ve been unable to do for the ten months since I moved to Brisbane: dates, movies, falling over in the snow. We’ve built snowmen, cooked meals together and gone hiking. We even made it to London for a long weekend in the big city:

Britain isn’t getting any warmer. I left Edinburgh at five in the morning, trudging through half a foot of snow and -10°C temperatures. Thirty-eight hours later (via Dublin, Abu Dhabi and Singapore) I emerged into a balmy 30°C Brisbane morning, still wearing thermals and a coat. Oops.

I’ll miss the snowmen:

(and the snow in general, I guess),

I’ll miss my beautiful city:

But most of all, I’ll miss my Hannah:

Five weeks and counting ’til she’s home.

I was a little nervous about Belfast after lasts month’s attempted bombings. I arrived after dark, and having spent all day travelling, settled in for an early night. I woke early and spent several quiet hours walking around the city centre. Sunday morning is a quiet time for Belfast – the only other person I saw was a German tourist following a similar route. Even the 24 hour Tesco is closed until one in the afternoon.

It’s a bizarre feeling walking though a city that has such a violent recent history. It reminds me a little of Sarajevo, but with fresher wounds. The “peace line”, a three-mile wall dividing the Falls Road and Shankill neighbourhoods, still stands, though the tanks guarding the gates have been gone a decade. The police stations are heavily fortified and shelter a legion of armoured cars. Republican and Unionist propaganda and graffiti covers the walls of the working class suburbs, and there’s barely a city block that doesn’t fly at least one Union Jack, Tricolour or St. George Cross.

Still, the people are as cheerful and friendly as anywhere else on this island, with accents equal parts entertaining and unintelligible.

Just don’t talk religion or politics.

The Ulster photoset is here.

Days without getting soaked to the bone: zero.

Wednesday saw me on a bus through County Clare and the Burren, bound towards the Cliffs of Moher, towering more than a hundred metres over the Atlantic ocean. I’ve gotten used to forecasts like “Maximum of 0ºC, humidity at 100%,” but the wind off the Atlantic was still a surprise. It was strong enough to drag spray up the cliff face and onto us poor, shivering tourists. Still, a beautiful sight, and it was lovely to reacquaint myself with the Atlantic.

The Burren is a limestone karst landscape covering a few hundred square kilometres of Co. Clare, packed full of neolithic tombs, livestock and little else. According to Edmund Ludlow the Burren is “country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”

Photoset for Galway and Co. Clare is here.

Buttermilk scones

Makes about eight medium sized scones.

• 2 cups plain flour
• 3 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 40g butter, cubed
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ¼ cup water
• jam and whipped cream, to serve

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Sift together flour, sugar and baking soda. Add butter, rubbing into mixture with fingertips until crumbly consistency. Add buttermilk and water, and stir until just combined. Spoon onto a greased tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until firm and just crisp on the outside. Serve with whipped Irish cream and strawberry jam.

I would have taken photos, but we ate them too quickly.