the flavours of australia and the sun rising

arrived at work just in time to snag the tail end of breakfast: a quiche of leeks and dandelion greens, and an omelette stuffed with linguica and crabmeat. for lunch, we went to charlie's for the first time in months. the channa and urad dal cooked with garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes, turmeric, whole chili, cilantro, arugula was deeply-flavoured as usual, and liberally dusted with chopped cilantro. there was also a guy behind the cutting board fileting large whole-roasted red snappers. the flesh was moist, flaky, and meaty, and they served it with a chutney of mint and coconut. the procurers must have had a field day with the fish since snapper filets were also on offer in slice (grilled with a grapefruit, blood orange, and thyme sauce, they tasted somehow australian -- bright and with a zingy flavour), served alongside a barley pilaf cooked with red savoy cabbage, pears, fried carrot chips, and sage. the barley had been slightly overcooked and it would probably have been better to use pearl barley instead, but the flavour was interestingly sweet.

then, for dinner a thai young coconut filled with sweet liquid but with flesh that had hardened out of the almost liquid gel that you can get if you knock a green coconut off the tree in your yard. the salad of black beans, dried roma tomatoes, onions, mozzarella, tarragon, thyme, rosemary was meaty and satisfying, though the addition of tarragon and thyme was inexplicable and gave the whole thing a strange flavour better suited to a sauce to accompany fish. the successful salad of the night was one that tasted of sunrises and mist burning off the sea: golden beets, dried blueberries, red onion, olive oil, orange juice, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and agave. it makes me happy that our chefs experiment.