This market was one of the first, possibly the trailblazer, of many farmers’ markets in Perth. Before food miles and the word locavore became part of the popular mindset, this is where you came to get biodynamic meat, organic veg and fruit straight from the orchard. I’d go as far to say these markets are the pick of the bunch of Perth’s markets and are even worth the 30 minute drive to get here.

Years of establishment have resulted in an unparalleled variety of stalls. For a fairly small area, there’s a lot packed in. This is a market that knows its customers very well. Apart from produce and bakery stands, there are a few gourmet and ready-to-eat options available, just in case you don’t feel like cooking. Plus all the stalls are very food focused – for example, there are no stalls selling ponchos and other crap. Instead, an astounding number of small produce stands, all decently priced – mostly actual growers and not re-sellers – take up residence in the school’s quadrangle.

The Lettuce Truck. (They sell potatoes too.)

Orchard fresh stone fruit.

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Like most banana bread recipes, this one consumes three bananas. But truth be told, in our house there are always more than three overripe bananas. The first time I made this, I (smartly) thought I could squeeze another couple of bananas into the loaf by cutting them up, dusting them in flour (this stops fruit sinking to the bottom) and popping them into the finished batter.

The end result was a slightly squishy, but fairly attractive stained glass effect. It wasn’t too bad an idea, except that the bananas reacted to the bicarb and slowly changed into the spookiest blue-green colour. It was edible, but startling. Never doing that again.

Otherwise, the recipe was gold, producing a bouncy banana bread with a slightly dense texture. There’s nothing ground breaking about it, except for the addition of instant coffee. Much to the same effect as combining coffee and chocolate, coffee’s bitterness reins in the sweetness and I love its faint, earthy taste for breakfast.

I like to chuck in a few chocolate chips (as you can see above) (yay, chocolate for breakfast) but walnuts or macadamias would be pretty fab in it too.

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Banana Bread

The sugar can be increased to 150 grams if you have a sweet tooth. Tip: Measure out the bicarb soda accurately, or you’ll get green banana bread. Not cool.

3 medium. overripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla paste
pinch of salt
150 ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
125 gm caster sugar 
3  tsp instant coffee powder
175 gm flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line your favourite loaf tin with baking paper.

Mash the bananas along with the vanilla paste and salt. Add the oil and whisk to combine (the mixture will emulsify and look a bit like mayonnaise).

Beat in the eggs, then the sugar and coffee.

Sift in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Combine until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 60 minutes (do check it at 50 minutes, it’s often done at this point). Leave to cool slightly before turning it out.

Slice into really thick slices and eat with a pat of butter.

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Lion dance on Little Bourke Street.

I have very few actual memories of celebrating Chinese New Year in Malaysia (we migrated to Perth when I was five), so coming to Melbourne and witnessing firecrackers, everyone wishing Happy Chinese New Year and so, so many lion dances was a fabulous kind of shock and awe. On the first day of the new year, Melbourne was a riot of red, the ground peppered with papery firecracker shells and delicious smoke beckoned us to street markets. The day ended quite perfectly, with a spectacle of fireworks on the Yarra.

Anyway, I’m going to try and keep this post brief as the blog is already overloaded with Melbourne. I’m trying to get all my vacation posts out and I better hurry up – because we’ll be in Japan in a few days. (And we’re already back! Damn.)

Salmon, salmon roe and coconut salad at Gingerboy.

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Out of all the pies out there, this pecan pie is hands down my favourite. The key to this pie is the vanilla bean: it is literally deep fried in butter. This goes on until the butter is nut brown and the tiny vanilla seeds are dispersed like dark stars in a golden galaxy. There’s some dark chocolate sprinkled in, which along with the aforementioned butter plus three eggs, turns into a soft layer of pudding beneath the plank of crispy pecans.

Pecan pie can be expensive to make, so I usually source pecans from bulk buy places. (I get mine from Kakulas Sisters. The corn syrup I get from the local Korean grocer.) This pie doesn’t have to be topped with whole pecans – in fact, it’s a really vain thing to do because whole nuts make the pie incredibly hard to cut into clean portions. So if you want an easy-to-cut pie, go chopped pecans all the way. However if you want a good looking pie, the hardest part about the pie is actually arranging the nuts in a pattern that may or may not stay in place when the syrup is poured in. (I am screaming inside when the nuts float out of place. Drives me crazy. I need to learn to LET IT GO.)

I like to serve creme fraiche alongside. It sounds weird to eat pie with soured cream, but it is ridiculously good as the tang cuts through the sweetness, resulting in the able consumption of even more pie.

Apart from the pastry (and arranging those nuts) this one’s easy as (pie! Sorry couldn’t resist.). So much so, I do not eat those dingy stale pies from cafes no more. I’ll be on the couch, in my pyjamas, eating this pie thank you very much.

Recipe after the jump »

Housemade waffles.

I came across Canvas through a rather roundabout way: a new year’s resolution. Sometime last year, in a fit of Christmas optimism, I resolved to learn pottery wheelwork. And that’s how I ended up at the Fremantle Arts Centre, home to Canvas and possibly, a few ghosts.

The Arts Centre’s church-like facade looks gorgeous from the outside, belying the fact it was colony’s very first insane asylum. Conditions in the asylum were bad, with misunderstood persons being thrown in with the criminally insane. That, plus the lack of hygiene and overcrowding led to the eventual closing of the asylum (and opening of the Claremont Hospital for the Insane, near Graylands). The building was a women’s home for some time, following that a technical school and then the arts centre. The facility now hosts art exhibitions, concerts, markets and of course, art courses. And like all cool places it has an awesome cafe, tucked into a lush courtyard with garden seating beneath the trees.

The front facade of Fremantle Arts Centre.

(There’s also an great gift shop too, Found, selling locally made stationary and arty things.)

(And if you’re wondering, this building is thought to be one of the most haunted in Perth. But don’t let that put you off, the cafe’s great, not spooky at all.)

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