MOST

The Marrickville Open Studio Trail (MOST) returns this Saturday 26 July 2008 as part of the 2008 Sydney Biennale, providing an opportunity to peek into the lives of over 100 artists, where they work and exhibit. Audiences will follow a trail of open studios across the Marrickville area and explore the world of local contemporary art.

MOST will run from 10am to 4pm, providing an important opportunity for local artists to promote their work, engage with new audiences, and discuss and sell their work.

Participating artists will be encouraged to provide artworks for sale and demonstrate how their studios works.

Studio Location Maps can be collected on the day at the Sandringham Hotel Art Market (387 King St, Newtown) from 10am or from any of the participating studios.

Participating studios include -

§ Addison Rd Gallery Upstairs Studios - My Le Thi, 1st Floor, Addison Road Gallery Upstairs Studios (end of 1st Floor) 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville

• Addison Rd Centre Artist Studios - 142 Addison Rd Centre Marrickville

• Alpha House Artist Co-operative - 226 Union St Erskineville

• Amy Jones - 6/1 Gladstone St Newtown

• Astrid Dahl Studio - 66 Railway Rd, Sydenham

• At The Vanishing Point - Contemporary Art - 565 King St Newtown

• Brett Hayes - 11/12-22 Newington Rd, Marrickville (Entrance located at back of building)

• Christopher Downie & Jeanette Landstedt - 36 Shepherd St Marrickville

• Crash Corporation - 4 Harnett Ave, Marrickville South

• Dimitri Kuznichenko - 28 Floss St Hurlstone Park

• Diamando Koutsellis - 1/5 Fairmount St Dulwich Hill

• Edith Artists - 9 & 10 Edith St St Peters

• Factory 49 Inc (Showroom) - 49 Shepherd St Marrickville

• Gallery 110 on Crystal St - 110 Crystal St Petersham 2049

• Gilbert Grace - 6/69 Constitution Rd Dulwich Hill

• Irminsul - 146 Edinburgh Rd Marrickville

• Jenny Kyng Studio - 39 Cook Rd, Marrickville

• Lennox Street Studios - 111 Lennox Street Newtown

• Maggie Stein - 11 Clara St Newtown

• Mary Street Studios - 75 Mary St St Peters

• Matthew Syres Photography - 8/10 Cambridge St Enmore

• Morna Molesworth - 803/31 Station St Newtown

• Mosaico Art & Design Studio - Ground Floor 111 Lennox St Newtown

• Painting the Roses - (Upstairs) Studio 3, 199a King St Newtown (cnr of King & Egan Sts - enter via Egan St)

• Preservation Australia - Unit 10A Level 3 32-60 Alice St Newtown

• Rosedale Street Gallery - 2A Rosedale St Dulwich Hil
  

• Shepherd Studio - 12 Shepherd St Marrickville

• Silver Street Studios - 114 Silver St Marrickville

• SNO Contemporary Arts Projects - 1st Floor, 175 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville

• Splinter Workshop - Building 1 Factory 1 Level 2 / 75 Mary St. St Peters

• Stone Villa Studios - 19 Railway Rd Sydenham

• Studio 109 - 109B Marrickville Rd Marrickville (Entrance Meeks Rd)

• Tooth Studios - 67 Sydenham Rd Marrickville

• Tortuga Studio - 31 Princess Highway St Peters

• Ultimo Project - Addison Rd Centre, Hut 24/ 142 Addison Rd Marrickville

Please ring 02 9335 2281 or coevent@marrickville.nsw.gov.au for more information.

Lebanese Feast - kib'be a'raahib

Here's the Lebanese feast I made on Saturday night. It was pretty spectacular and really full of flavour, especially the lemon soup and the mackdouse (this is the stuffed pickled eggplant you buy in a jar). As we were eating Ruby asked me how I liked it and I said "I love it, I just wish someone else had cooked it." So we'll have it again, definitely, but Richard will take it from here... Recipes & pictures below.

By the way, it's vegan.

Lebanese Lenten kib'be (kib'be a'raahib -monk's kibbe)
This is enough to feed 8 people so adjust as necessary


Filling
2x small-med brown onions, fine diced
1-2 small red chillies sliced
1 tsp Lebanese 7 spice (baharat)
1 cup finely diced pecans or walnuts
Olive oil, salt to taste
Golden sultanas optional

Sauté onions in generous quantity of olive oil until just starting to caramelize, then add chilli and spice, then pecans, fry another 2-3 minutes on med-low flame, set aside to cool.

Potato dough (for ‘crust’)
2x Med small onions
Generous handful fresh basil leaves
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder
7-8 Med-small potatoes boiled, drained and cooled
4-5 cups pre-soaked and washed burghul, (brown and fine - asmar ou nayaim)
Salt to taste

Process basil and onions in food processor until v. fine dice, not watery - smooth paste, but lumpy puree!!
No large pieces allowed!!
In mixer with batter attachment, mix potatoes, burghul, spices and onion mix together to make stiff dough. If too sticky, add more burghul.

Prepare large baking pan with light ‘oiling’. Divide ‘dough’ in 1/2. Fill small bowl with water and a pinch of salt. Wet hands with this water, and flatten handfuls of dough into large pancake discs across palm, and lay,( pat) into dish. Join these up one by one like putting together patchwork quilt, until they cover the bottom of the pan about 1/2” thick. Smooth seams with damp hand. Spread with filling, then use same procedure of patching together the top ‘crust’. Smooth seams, and gently score the surface with diamond pattern, to make easier to cut. Drizzle sparingly with olive oil.

Bake in mod-hot oven until golden brown.

Serve it with lemon lentil soup, green salad, pickled eggplant (mackdouse) and radish relish.

Lemon soup


Boil one generous cup of washed lentils till tender - skim water often, add 2 med diced potatoes, boil till tender, then top off with water and lemon juice to taste. (several lemons!, or supplement with citric acid- milleh leymun)
In mortar and pestle grind 2 garlic cloves and large tablespoon fresh chopped coriander, sauté in 2 tblspns olive oil, when almost golden tip on to soup, and add 2 bunches rough sliced spinach or equivalent silverbeet, stir and simmer till wilted.
Add salt to taste and serve.

Radish relish


2 bunches radish, well cleaned
Lemon juice
Salt

Fine dice radish in small food processor bowl. Do not Puree.
Transfer to serving bowl. Pour over juice of 1 – 2 lemons, salt to taste.
Add small tablespoon to top of each kibbe slice on serving platter or on individual plates

The Art of the Insult

Richard and I went to the Dendy Newtown last night to see the Borat movie. I was SO in need of a good laugh, it was wonderful. There was a woman in the row behind us braying like a donkey for much of the time, but I enjoyed that too. The movie is just so incredibly politically incorrect... potentially insulting to just about everyone. There was only one scene that worried me. At a Southern dinner party Borat declares that the women sitting either side of him (a heavily made-up redhead & a glamorous blonde) would be very popular in his home country. He then adds that the other woman at the table, a quiet person with short grey hair, would be popular not so much. There was a longish silence. For me, this was the one place in the movie where he went too far. Perhaps that's the key to this sort of very confronting comedy - always taking it too far for someone. George Saunders has written a brilliant "memo" in The New Yorker - I recommend it as an antidote to the movie if you're planning to see it.

The humble dinner

I've just read a great post by Laura over at Sarsparilla about, in part, dinner parties of the 1960s. They don't sound that different to the dinner parties we hold now - consisting of similar levels of stress about preparing something fancy, scrubbing the bathroom, looking nice, worrying about who will talk to whom, buying the right alcoholic beverage, etc etc... in short, usually resulting in a host or hostess too tired to enjoy their own party.

Last night we sort of did the opposite - my wonderful parents were visiting from Melbourne so we knew they'd be here for dinner. Richard just felt like cooking (actually, he always feels like cooking) so he spent the day preparing an Indian feast of sambal, rasadar aloo, chana masala & paratha... we also had rice & lots of condiments. Then Hugh asked if his friend Tristan could come for dinner... then Ruby announced her friend Jo would be here, then she added in Chris and Brendan and Deon. So there were ten of us! Amazingly, there was plenty of food for everyone, and then leftovers too (which we're having right now). And because of the way it unfolded there was absolutely no stress involved.

We went to Liverpool...

Where there isn't no trees, no scented breeze
no fields of waving corn.

Richard was looking for a mookudulu (or tawa) - one of those round flat iron things for cooking Indian breads - so yesterday we headed out to Sydney's Liverpool. The trip on the M5 and then the Hume didn't take long from Marrickville, about 25 minutes I think (I did fall asleep on the way back). After two scorching days in Sydney for Spring - mid 30s - it was relatively cool and we enjoyed the cloud cover. Liverpool was packed, with queues filling up some shops. Most people were Indian, the women all in saris. We had forgotten it is Festival of Light time so I suppose the crowds were much like our Christmas. I took lots of photos and was asked in one big grocery store by an Indian with a very distinguished set of moustaches what I was doing. I then felt like an inner-city dickhead for the rest of our outing.


On the M5


Yes, a Bollywood Chinese Restaurant.


Beautiful Gods - this statuette was thick plastic, about the size of my hand.


There were boxes of plastic fruit & veg (notice the potatoes?) and gorgeous real eggplants.


And piggies, hippos and elephants - some of my favourite creatures.

Reasons to be Cheerful

On the way home from work I stopped at the Coopers Arms on King St and had a brandy & soda. In Marrickville I bought avocadoes and red capsicums from my friend the greengrocer, and other bits & pieces from shops along Illawarra Rd. I made a big dish of nachos, some guacomale, a salad. We were all stuffed silly. It's a humid evening and the overhead fan is on. The kids are doing their things, playing on msn, talking on the phone - "so is everyone bringing their own case? Alcoholic not!" - "There are these two losers from my year" - "No wait, losers from your year?" - "No no, seriously..." and getting ready to go to a battle of the bands. And the best thing - once the kiddies are off Richard and I are going to watch the first episode of the fourth series of Six Feet Under. I can't wait to find out how Lisa died, and even if, indeed, she is dead at all. And I have new sandals, and in the morning I'm off to see me dears in Melbourne.