Around The World In 80 Dinners Part 2

[image] FOUR S SEASONS R RESORT www.fourseasons.com/sayan Sayan, Ubud 62-361-977-577.

The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

[image] AMANDARI www.amanresorts.com Kedewatan, Ubud 62-361-975-333.

The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

[image] IBU O OKA Jln. Suweta Across from the Tourist Office and Palace, central Ubud (no reservations) Serves lunch only until the roasted pig is gone.

Fish Sate Lilit MAKES ABOUT 2 2 DOZEN SATE DOZEN SATE.

Lemongra.s.s stalks, enough to make 2 dozen 6-to 8-inch skewers, plus 1 longer stalk to use as a basting brush3 medium shallots2 to 4 fiery small fresh red or green chiles, such as Thai chiles, seeds removed, or 1 fresh red or green serrano chile6 plump macadamia nuts3 fresh ginger "coins," sliced inch thick2 teaspoons sesame seeds1 tablespoon palm sugar, turbinado sugar, or dark brown sugar2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper1 teaspoons Southeast Asian shrimp paste or fish sauce1 teaspoon ground coriander teaspoon ground white pepper teaspoon ground c.u.min teaspoon ground nutmeg teaspoon salt1 kaffir lime leaf, finely chopped or crumbled pound mild-flavored but somewhat firm white fish fillets, such as snapper pound peeled shrimp1 tablespoon coconut oil or vegetable oil1 tablespoon fresh lime juice to cup coconut milkA few additional tablespoons of coconut oil or vegetable oil Cut about a half-dozen -inch deep notches into the top 3 inches of each lemongra.s.s skewer to help the fish mixture absorb the herb's flavor. Make a basting brush from the longer lemongra.s.s stalk, first cutting off about inch of the hard fibrous k.n.o.b end of the stalk. Discard the k.n.o.bby end. Give the sliced end of the stalk a few whacks with the side of a chef 's knife or meat mallet, just enough that the fibers fray at least a half inch. Reserve.

Chop together in a food processor the shallots, chiles, nuts, ginger, sesame seeds, sugar, black pepper, shrimp paste, coriander, white pepper, c.u.min, nutmeg, salt, and lime leaf until finely minced. Sc.r.a.pe out into a medium bowl.

Without washing the food processor, plop the fish and shrimp into it. If either the fish or shrimp has been frozen and thawed, blot well on paper towels to remove lingering moisture before putting in the processor. Using quick pulses, mince the mixture evenly, but do not let it turn into a paste. Sc.r.a.pe into the bowl of spice paste. Stir together thoroughly, then mix in the coconut oil and lime juice. Add enough coconut milk to make a very moist but not soupy mixture. Switch to your fingers and knead the sate mixture for about 30 seconds. (The mixture can be made to this point up to a day ahead, then covered and refrigerated.) Fire up a grill to medium-high heat.

Wrap the fish mixture around the lemongra.s.s skewers shortly before you plan to grill the sate. (It may split and fall off if formed more than a hour before grilling.) Wet your hands with cold water, then form a ball with a rounded tablespoon of the fish mixture. Holding a skewer with the notched portion upright, balance the ball on top of the skewer, then start pulling the mixture down the skewer, using your thumb and the two fingers closest to it. Turn the skewer slowly as you pull the mixture down, winding it around the top 3 to 4 inches of the skewer and tapering it as you reach the lower handle portion of the skewer. It should look in shape a bit like a miniature corn dog. Place on an oiled plastic-wrap- or Silpat-covered baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining fish mixture and skewers, wetting your fingers again before forming each one, to avoid sticking. Cover and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

Transfer each of the sates to a well-oiled cooking grate with their lemongra.s.s handles away from, or off of, the heat. Grill for 4 to 5 minutes, turning the sate on all sides. Using the lemongra.s.s brush, baste each skewer lightly with oil on all sides, and grill for about two minutes more, until cooked through with some nicely browned edges. Serve immediately.

AUSTRALIA.

THE ALARM CLOCK JARS US AWAKE RUDELY EARLY ON our first full day in Australia. It's a Sat.u.r.day, the only day of the week when the Barossa Valley farmers market opens its stalls for trade in the small town of Angaston, near the center of the famed wine region. An expat American couple active in the market, Thala.s.sa Skinner and Tony Bogar, tell Bill, "As long as you don't encounter any problems on the highway, you can get here from your Adelaide hotel in just over an hour." Bill laughs, because there's an obvious problem before we even leave our room: Australians are lefties, ignoring the consensus among most of the world's population that cars belong on the right side of the road. our first full day in Australia. It's a Sat.u.r.day, the only day of the week when the Barossa Valley farmers market opens its stalls for trade in the small town of Angaston, near the center of the famed wine region. An expat American couple active in the market, Thala.s.sa Skinner and Tony Bogar, tell Bill, "As long as you don't encounter any problems on the highway, you can get here from your Adelaide hotel in just over an hour." Bill laughs, because there's an obvious problem before we even leave our room: Australians are lefties, ignoring the consensus among most of the world's population that cars belong on the right side of the road.

The quaint custom, inherited from the idiosyncratic British, requires us to allow more than ample time for the trip. Bill takes the wheel because he has experience driving on the left, even when perfectly sober. He only dimly remembers the last occasion, however, and in every instance in the past the cars felt American because the driver's seat was on the left. Not so in our rental car here, where the wheel is on the locally proper and (for most people) safer right side. He takes off slowly, looking for a quiet street to practice shifting the manual transmission with his left hand. When that proves possible, Bill hits the highway, where the difficulties begin. He keeps reflexively flicking the lever on the left of the steering column to indicate lane changes, as you would in an American car, but instead turns on the windshield wipers, as though he's battling a private rainstorm on this sunny spring day. Despite the frenzied flapping of blades at the worst possible moments, he avoids mishaps and we arrive safely and on time. Cheryl emerges from her imaginary hiding place on the floor of the backseat, where she mentally placed herself for the past hour, and we go into the large wine-storage shed that houses the market.

An Illinois girl from agrarian stock and the former chair of the volunteers' fund-raising board for the Santa Fe Farmers Market, Cheryl loves farmers, at least the ones who raise crops in sustainable ways to sell at local markets. Before we left home, she e-mailed so many people for information about the Barossa Valley market that eventually word of her interest reached Thala.s.sa and Tony. They offered to show us around, and Cheryl eagerly accepted.

Thala.s.sa finds us instantly, as soon as we open our mouths at the information booth. "You must be the Americans we're expecting. We don't get many accents like that around here."

"You pegged us," Cheryl acknowledges.

"Well, let me give you some background on the market, then we'll round up Tony and look around. This is modeled in many ways on the kind of farmers' markets that have become so popular in the United States in recent years. Local growers raise everything they sell, from the top-notch produce to the chickens that lay the eggs and the livestock that gives milk for the dairy products. Everyone in the Barossa Valley lives in easy driving distance of each other and the market, so many vendors and buyers show up each week, year-round. We all know one another in the valley, so it's like a community gathering spot."

"How did you and Tony get involved?" Bill asks.

"We moved here from California several years ago, about the time that people began talking about a local market. We already knew many Barossa residents because my father grew up in South Australia before emigrating to the States. So they asked us about California markets, and we quickly got drawn into the planning. Here's Tony now. He can start showing you around, and I'll catch up in a minute when I finish some business at the booth."

As soon as she introduces us to Tony, he spots and stops a friend heading outside with a cigarette and lighter in his hand. "Peter, I won't keep you from your smoke, but I want you to meet these Americans."

"More of your kind, eh? Are we being invaded?"

"The wisecracker," Tony says to us, "is Peter Lehmann, the one we all fondly call 'the Baron of Barossa.'"

Thrilled to run into the legendary winemaker, Bill says, "We're coming to your winery this afternoon. Will you be there?"

"Nope, going fishing. But I'll ask Margaret, my wife, if she can give you a few nips of the good stuff."

"Wow," Bill tells Tony when Lehmann leaves, "that's like b.u.mping into Robert Mondavi at the Oakville Grocery and being invited to a private tasting at the estate. Barossa really is a small and laid-back world, isn't it?"

"Yep, it's nothing at all like Napa."

Thala.s.sa joins us again and the couple gives us a guided tour of the forty stalls, introducing us to most of the vendors and telling us about their goods, which include spring fruits and vegetables, pastries and breads baked as much as possible with local products, and lots of Germanic pickles of green tomatoes, onions, cuc.u.mbers, figs, grapes, horseradish, and more. Tony says, "German farmers settled much of the Barossa, and their food and wine traditions still flourish. They planted the original vineyards just to make wine for themselves. Nothing changed substantially until recent decades, when wine became a big business here and elsewhere. Even today, many of the Barossa farms and vineyards remain small-scale operations."

"Oh, look," Thala.s.sa interrupts, "there's Maggie Beer. Would you like to meet her?"

"Of course we would," Cheryl says. "She's the Alice Waters of Australia," referring to the founder of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, who helped stimulate American interests in fresh, local produce. "We're going to Maggie's restaurant for lunch." Thala.s.sa handles the introductions while Cheryl gropes into her purse for the camera and Flat Stanley, handing him to Bill while shoving both toward Maggie for a photo of the three of them together. It's now barely 9:00 A.M. A.M. and already, it feels, we've met half of the valley and had a week's worth of adventure. and already, it feels, we've met half of the valley and had a week's worth of adventure.

"Speaking of lunch," Tony asks us, "have you eaten breakfast?"

"No," Bill answers. "We thought there might be some food around here."

"Allow me, then, to make one final introduction, to the best breakfast sandwich in the world. Follow me." He leads us to a stand in the corner of a second room where volunteers sell coffee, other drinks, and snacks as a fund-raising activity for the market. He tells us what to get and we follow his orders, right down to the cups of hot chocolate concocted with rich Jersey milk from a neighborhood dairy "to take the chill off of the morning air." For the sandwich, the cooks start with a roll from a local bakery, then layer in it bacon produced in the valley, a fried egg fresh from the hen, pickled onions, and a tangy chutney from one of the vendors. Even though we've written a cookbook on breakfast with a whole chapter of great sandwiches, this gem tops them all, in part because of the ingredients' sterling freshness.

After thanking Thala.s.sa and Tony profusely for their help and offering them room and board if they're ever in Santa Fe, we head off to explore some of the back roads of the Barossa. Bill gets lost immediately in the parking lot, going to the wrong front door of the car, pretending he's there just to let Cheryl in, and finally getting behind the wheel again on the other side. He takes us through gently rolling hills awhile and then down into the valley, where fields of intensely yellow rapeseed and splashes of other wildflowers pop out of the lovely, manicured landscape. A canopy of eucalyptus branches overhangs some of the byways and sheep graze in the meadows. Scattered stone houses in shades ranging from cream to light gray flaunt beds of fiery poppies and rosemary bushes budding blue. Except for a few too-cute B&Bs, little looks overly precious or tarted up for tourists, an affliction of many prominent wine areas.

Along the way, we stop at Yalumba, Australia's oldest family-owned winery. Dru Thomas greets us at the long bar of the cellar door (Aussie-speak for "tasting room") and pours samples of a range of wines, starting with a 2004 Chardonnay fermented with wild yeast from the vineyards and concluding with a just maturing 2000 c.o.o.nawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. Many of the choices surprise us with their superb balance between fruit and acid. Bill tells Dru, "Most Australian reds we've purchased at home tend to be sweet, sometimes dreadfully so, but there's no hint of that in these bottles."

"You blokes have helped to make that the reigning international style, you know. Some Australian wineries add sugar for export sales." If so, that's a shame for everyone.

Our drive eventually leads to Maggie Beer's Farm Shop. It's still a little before noon, the time of our reservation, so we wander over to another wine tasting in progress, not realizing at first that the pourer is Maggie's husband, Colin, handing out samples of his Beer Bros. Wines. The couple began raising pheasants on their farm in the 1970s and opened the award-winning Pheasant Farm Restaurant, which they ran for fifteen years before tiring of the toil. They then focused on making pantry products, such as verjuice, an acidic liquid based on unfermented grapes that Maggie champions in cooking. Today, the Beers sell their goods, and serve food as well, at the Farm Shop.

The dining room conveys a casual, country mood, but there's nothing casual about the kitchen's att.i.tude toward food preparation. All diners start with a serving of Maggie's signature pheasant pate-magnificently b.u.t.tery and fleshy-with caramelized onions and brioche flecked with orange zest. Cheryl follows with Berkshire Gold pork and fennel sausages with French du Puy lentils, verjuice-glazed apples, and wilted spinach, a masterpiece of meat and produce. Bill opts for an equally tasty game pie with roasted carrots and fennel and a cabernet sauce, saying as he savors the last bite, "I don't know why more places in the States can't offer this kind of affordable but refined food in such a relaxed setting."

A short drive brings us to the winery founded by and named for Peter Lehmann. From the fifth generation of a German immigrant family, he began his winemaking career at Yalumba at the age of seventeen and progressed to the top vintner's job at Saltram thirteen years later. Crisis struck the Barossa in 1978, when the supply of grapes greatly exceeded the needs of wineries. Lehmann's bosses ordered him to break standing agreements with vineyard owners, but he refused, knowing the farmers might face financial ruin from their unsold surplus. Instead, he formed a new company, named Masterson after the Damon Runyon character Sky Masterson, a gambler, and adopted the Queen of Clubs as the logo. Through the firm, he bought the grapes himself and started making his own wine, soon rechristened under his name. He gambled on an uptick in the fortunes of the Barossa and raked in a big pot, for himself and the whole valley.

At the cellar-door bar, we tell the lady in charge about our chance encounter with Peter this morning and his suggestion of the possibility of a tasting with Margaret. "Oh, yes," she says. "Let me get her." Margaret comes out and proposes that we join her in the private tasting room, where we can all sit down. The baroness, who has been widely quoted as stating that the Barossa was the original Garden of Eden, gives us her perspective on the valley. She says, "The terrain encompa.s.ses an incredible range of microclimates and soil types, conditions that promote a rich diversity in types of grapes that grow well. Our winery alone works with 190 growers and 900 patches of grapes, allowing the company to produce a variety of premium wines." Margaret mentions that Peter jokes about how boring it would be to wake up each day and only be able to make Chateau Lafitte.

To ill.u.s.trate the bounty, she grabs a few bottles to sample. First, she pours the 2004 Eden Valley Riesling, nimbly mineral in character. "Consider this as a base," she says, opening another bottle, "and then try the 2001 vintage of the Reserve Riesling, a four-time winner of an award for the world's best dry Riesling."

Both of us sip in awe, with Cheryl finally breaking the silence. "It's easily the best Riesling I've ever tasted. Just magnificent."

"I know," Margaret confidently concurs. "Take the rest of it back to your hotel for later."

Next Margaret uncorks two vintages of Shiraz, the 2001 Eight Songs and the 1999 Stonewell, the former soft, rich, and ready to drink, the latter still young and brooding but well balanced and long in the finish. "The Stonewell has serious guts," Bill says. "In a few years, it's going to rival the finest of French Syrahs."

Thanking Margaret as we leave for being such a charming and generous hostess, Bill asks, "Would you consider coming home with us to be our fairy G.o.dmother?"

"Sorry," she declines. "I've got to cook Peter's fish for dinner."

What a day, we agree on the drive back to Adelaide. "Certainly the best of our trip so far," Cheryl declares.

"I love the strong sense of community there and the easygoing way of life," Bill says. "It's a place I could live." Just at that moment, he starts to change lanes and flicks on the windshield wipers once again. "As soon as they switch over to the right side of the road."

Neither of us really grasped the vastness of Australia before we began planning our visit. In a week to ten days, we a.s.sumed naively, it should be possible to see Sydney, our main priority, and get a good glimpse of several other places, including maybe the Adelaide area, Melbourne, Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Outback. Fat chance. The country is so huge it const.i.tutes a continent, one of those miscellaneous facts from fourth-grade geography that our brains inconveniently misplaced.

In the end, Bill pushed to limit ourselves to Sydney and one other destination, so we didn't waste half our time in planes and airports. For him, the natural choices for the second spot on a food adventure seemed to be Melbourne, a worldly city many Aussies prefer to Sydney, or Adelaide and its nearby wine regions, or possibly Tasmania, an island growing quickly in international culinary renown. Cheryl settled the matter firmly. "I'm going where we've got the best chance of finding kangaroos and koalas in the wild. That's been a dream of mine since childhood. If one of your three places offers the opportunity, sign me up. If not, keep looking."

Her best hope, it turns out, is Adelaide, which serves as the gateway to nearby Kangaroo Island, a ninety-mile-long oasis in the ocean set aside in large part as a nature reserve for Down Under species. Eager to enjoy the South Australian wines, Bill cheerfully accepted the provincial city as a stop and booked both of us to Kangaroo Island on a nonrefundable day-trip package with airfares included. Unhappily for him, when the appointed day arrives, he wakes up with a horrible cold, the result, he suspects, of the overnight ordeal of getting here from Bali two nights earlier on a sleepless red-eye flight involving an extended 4:00 A.M. A.M. stopover in Darwin. Bill decides that Cheryl should go alone on her wildlife quest. "I don't want to risk eardrum damage on a plane"-a close friend of ours went deaf in one ear from that-"and I should probably rest and conserve my strength." stopover in Darwin. Bill decides that Cheryl should go alone on her wildlife quest. "I don't want to risk eardrum damage on a plane"-a close friend of ours went deaf in one ear from that-"and I should probably rest and conserve my strength."

Bill stays true to his word, leaving bed only to hand-wash his laundry and to seek out a pharmacy and fast-food lunch near our small downtown business hotel, the Rockford. Cheryl has a much more exciting time with Ron and Phil of Adventure Charters, who take her and six other people in an all-terrain Laingley to explore the middle third of Kangaroo Island. The outing fulfills all her lifelong aspirations, as she indicates to Bill repeatedly over the next few days in stories filled with exclamation points.

The tour guides, who refer to the rest of the country as "the northern island," focus in the morning on the marvels of the eucalyptus forests, which flaunt eight hundred varieties of the stately native tree and such splendid birds as glossy black c.o.c.katoos and the scarlet parakeets called rosellas. When Cheryl brags about spotting three koalas in the branches, Bill teases her about the feat. "Aren't there thirty thousand koalas on the island-so many, the authorities are sterilizing them and may start culling the herd?"

"Yes, that's true, but seeing three is good because they are solitary animals that avoid people! So phooey on you."

Kangaroos, as you might expect, abound on the island named for them. As they drive around, the group comes across some hopping through open fields and even more grazing in the bush, leaning back on their tails between bites. "Once," Cheryl tells Bill, "when we rounded a corner, there was a big 'roo standing upright beside the road, just like he was. .h.i.tchhiking!"

"Probably trying to get away from the swarming koalas."

For lunch, Ron and Phil prepare a cookout picnic for their charges, frying fillets of freshly caught whiting over a propane fire to serve with crusty potato wedges, a green salad, and a selection of local cheeses and wine. Cheryl uses the break to get acquainted with the only other Americans on the excursion, a couple who happen to live part-time in our hometown. She makes plans to get together with them during the December holidays, right after our return from the trip.

In the afternoon the tour continues to Seal Bay, populated by sea lions rather than fur seals. To remain un.o.btrusive, everyone crawls across a stretch of beach to watch the animals lolling on the sand and playing in the water. "Guess what they eat," Cheryl says to Bill.

"Tuna-fish sandwiches?"

"No, smart-a.s.s. They gobble whole crustaceans, sh.e.l.l and all. After munching on a lobster or similar creature, they chew rocks to break up the sh.e.l.l they swallowed and then regurgitate the stones!"

"Now that would have been a sight worth seeing."

Bill thinks the same, and Cheryl agrees, about the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale wine regions, both in different directions from Adelaide than the Barossa Valley and even closer to the city. In the heart of the Hills, the large Petaluma winery owns the historic Bridgewater Mill, where the company produces some of its wines, provides tastings of all its labels at a cellar door, and operates the most famous lunch-only restaurant in Australia. The enticing combination of treats lures us to the old mill and ultimately detains us for most of an afternoon.

In the cellar door, we meet a couple of enthusiastic employees, Kate Wall and Mike Mudge, who take turns pouring us samples of various wines, including superb examples of a sparkler (named Croser after founder and winemaker Brian Croser), a Riesling, and a Shiraz. After lunch, when the tasting room slows down substantially, the two give us a tour of the building, showing us the huge nineteenth-century waterwheel and the up-to-date processing facilities for the champagne-style sparklers.

As amiable and eager to please as Kate and Mike are, the man who makes our day is Chef Le Tu Thai. A Vietnam boat refugee, born of Chinese parents, he came to Australia in traumatic circ.u.mstances at the age of sixteen, beginning his career in the culinary field by taking a job as a dishwasher in a French restaurant. With pluck, luck, and lots of talent, he rose from tender of the suds to the top of his profession, gradually honing one of the most respected repertoires in the country for contemporary Australian cooking, often called "Mod Oz" cuisine.

Le's constantly changing menu offers superlative ingredients from the area in cla.s.sic preparations frequently brightened with Asian accents. Appetizer choices might include quail sausage wrapped in prosciutto with white bean tortellini, soybeans, and black cabbage, or maybe seared yellowfin tuna with tempura oysters, soba noodles, and baby leeks. Today, Cheryl begins with a beautifully balanced dish featuring a gorgonzola and caramelized onion tart with apple, celery, and pickled-walnut dressing. Bill orders one of the regular starter specialties, dazzling grilled Kangaroo Island marrons (giant crayfish) with crustacean mousseline, sh.e.l.lfish essence, truffle cream, and a salted duck egg, which he follows with a hearty, rare steak dressed with meaty oxtail samosas and robust Moroccan chile jam. For her main course, Cheryl opts for roasted Kangaroo Island chicken with scampi and Armagnac sauce, perfectly prepared and wonderfully flavored.

It's a magnificent introduction to the sophisticated tastes of Mod Oz food, even to Bill with his deepening cold, but at the time we fail to grasp anything much about the essence and significance of the style. Until we gain more experience with the cooking in Sydney, the lunch is merely an outstanding meal, easily the most elegantly delightful yet on the trip. Within a few days, it becomes part of a revelation.

The drive to McLaren Vale yields surprises more immediately. Bill maneuvers deftly through Adelaide's morning rush-hour traffic, gaining confidence in his left-of-the-road skills, and gets onto an expressway heading south. After a few miles, Cheryl notices something peculiar about the highway we're barreling down: an abundance of traffic signs face the opposite direction than Bill is headed. "Could we be going the wrong way?" she asks.

"If so, we've got lots of company. There could be a h.e.l.luva pileup ahead."

Later, after our arrival in McLaren Vale, locals tell us the highway department ran out of money to purchase land, so it only built half of the projected road. Traffic flows south in the morning, then access shuts down for two hours, and after that, it runs north for the rest of the day. At least the strange arrangement solves Bill's problem about driving on the appropriate side of the street.

A smaller area than Barossa, composed of one village and the surrounding hills, McLaren Vale enjoys a similar kind of bucolic allure. At the head of Main Road, the only street in the valley with any red lights or commercial activity, Bill pulls into a wine information center to get a map. It's not open yet, but Mary Hamilton, chair of the McLaren Vale Wine Marketing Committee, shows up to drop off some paperwork. Cheryl asks her about special places to visit, and Mary invites us to join her for a cup of coffee downtown. "I handle sales for my parents' business, Hugh Hamilton Wines," she tells us, "and that takes me regularly to the United States, where we export much of our production." She shows us one of their labels, pointing out the black sheep logo and the slogan "Every family has one." "That's my father, our black sheep," Mary says with pride. "You should meet him for sure."

Following directions she provides, we drive up to the winery's cellar door, perched on a hilltop offering panoramic views over the Vale. Hugh and Mary's mother, Pam, are both in the tasting room, chatting and laughing with guests. Several open bottles sit on the bar: Loose Cannon Viognier, Scallywag Un-wooded Chardonnay, Mongrel Sangiovese Blend, Jekyll & Hyde Shiraz-Viognier, Ratbag Merlot. When Hugh comes over to pour us our first choice among the wines, Bill says, "Looks like you keep some pretty shady company."

"I do indeed. The wines are named after different good friends."

"Ratbag?"

"In Aussie slang, that's an affable rascal. May need to change that label. It scares off American buyers for some reason."

Pam offers us some olives from the estate, which she has laced with rosemary, garlic, and a hint of chile, and also pieces of bread with the Hamiltons' olive oil and dukkah, a Mideastern mixture of nuts, seeds, and spices that's popular locally because of a profusion of almond trees. The snacks go pertly with the wines, particularly the unoaked Chardonnay ("Just ran out of barrels one day and discovered the pure grape flavor for the first time") and the Merlot, which boasts vigorous structure, backbone, and tannin.

As we drink and nibble, Hugh tells us about the winery. "I'm the fifth generation of a family that planted vineyards here in 1837, less than a year after the first European settlers came to South Australia. When I grew up in the 1950s, my parents distilled much of their grape juice because so few people in Australia cared at all for dry wine. I've seen the whole progression in interest since then, a seismic shift in my lifetime."

Nearby at Coriole, the Lloyd family got into the wine business more recently, in 1967, but their estate dates back to 1860 and some of their Shiraz vines first budded in 1919. The cellar door, in an old stone barn building, sits astride a hill along with a cottage garden, a plot of Flanders poppies, and an amphitheater for Shakespeare in the Vines performances. The lady at the bar offers us gla.s.ses of Chenin Blanc, Sangiovese, and Shiraz wines, all well crafted, along with samples of olives and cheeses for sale in the tasting room. The Lloyds raise the olives on their property and also own Woodside Cheese Wrights, a respected maker of artisa.n.a.l goat cheeses. In lieu of a lunch stop, we buy stocks of both products for a picnic.

If Bill had been feeling well, we would have eaten instead at d'Arrys Verandah Restaurant, located in the old family homestead at McLaren Vale's best-known winery, d'Arenberg. Perusing the posted menu near the entrance, Cheryl speculates about the choices. "Maybe I would get the warm cuttlefish salad with sugar snap peas, pine nuts, pea tendrils, and chard, or possibly the red-elk pie with glazed pot-roasted onions." Waiters whiz by us with some of the dishes, a sight sufficient to drive a sick man to drink.

The staff is pouring sips of most of the wines except the Extremely Rare Daddy Long Legs Tawny Port, priced in the same league as BMWs. The most impressive of the selections, predictably, are d'Arenberg's three iconic reds, the Dead Arm Shiraz, the Coppermine Road Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Ironstone Pressings Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre. The 2003 vintage of each is tannic and tight but showing brawny potential. On our way out, Cheryl spots a display of chocolates, d'Arry's truffles filled with fortified Shiraz, and decides promptly on a purchase. "I'm going to need a couple of these for a roadie dessert."

By the time of our afternoon return to Adelaide, the expressway has gone into reverse, sending us back on the same lanes of asphalt that brought us south hours earlier. Our original plan for dinner calls for trying one (or maybe even two) of the city's plain, value-priced Chinese restaurants that residents rave about for urbane fare-on nearby Gouger Street alone, Ying Chow wins plaudits for northern Chinese fare, the Mandarin House for its handmade noodles, and Ming's Palace for Peking duck. Bill feels worn down, however, so we sup instead at our hotel dining room, not expecting much from the food.

Each of us orders South Australian oysters to start, since it's their high season. Some come on the half sh.e.l.l and others are baked briefly in the locally popular Kilpatrick style, topped with bits of crispy bacon and a light brush of Worcestershire sauce. The oysters are plump and tasty-and briny enough to stand up to the Kilpatrick kick. Our main course, fresh whiting fillets fried in a tempura batter, shines as well. "Even better than the whiting I had on Kangaroo Island," Cheryl says.

"This may be more amazing than your three koalas. Here in a small, provincial city in rural Australia, a business-hotel kitchen wows us!"

The next day, with Bill tanked up to his hair roots in decongestants, we fly on to Sydney and check into the Russell Hotel. Despite being too much like a B&B in interminable quaintness and inadequate storage s.p.a.ce, the inn claims a prime location in The Rocks historic district just across a small park from Circular Quay, the transportation hub for the city, and provides grand views from a rooftop garden encompa.s.sing the harbor, Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House. Even acerbic Bill finally says, "The advantages probably outweigh the dangers of choking on the Victorian charm."

Our friend Liz Gray picks us up out front when she gets off work. The three of us met in France a year earlier, when she attended a culinary-adventure week that we lead annually in the Dordogne at a wonderful country retreat called La Combe en Perigord. Our planning for this trip by then already called for a definite stop in Sydney, and Liz volunteered to advise us on our visit and make restaurant reservations for us. This evening she's taking us to a couple of her favorite places in town and showing us, at our request, a Sydney inst.i.tution known as Harry's Cafe de Wheels.

Harry's opened at the end of World War II, originally as a street-food cart pushed into place every day to serve sailors working on the nearby wharfs. After it gained some fame among celebrities visiting Sydney and eventually acquired historic status, the cafe gave up its wheels and became a permanent fixture. It stays busy now eighteen hours a day, selling meat pies-such as the beefy "Tiger," the nickname of the founder, complete with mushy peas, mashed potatoes, and gravy-and chili hot dogs, the biggest of which contains the namesake ingredient along with garlic, onions, mushy peas, and cheese. It looks fun, but we pa.s.s on the chow.

Liz escorts us down the same block to the more posh surroundings of the lobby bar in the W Hotel, part of a sleek new residential development. After we've taken seats in cushy chairs around a low table and ordered wine, Liz leans over to Cheryl and whispers, "I've heard Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise maintain flats upstairs in the private wings."

"No kidding," Cheryl says, almost knocking over her gla.s.s trying to look in every direction at once.

The sightseeing turns out to be more successful on the drive to dinner. "I'll take you on a detour across the Harbour Bridge," Liz tells us, and accidentally makes the round-trip twice, giving us magnificent nighttime views of the city around us and the boats below, both aglow. "A lot of tourists," our guide mentions, "join organized groups to climb the built-in ladders to the very top of the structure."

"Good thing we're not joiners," Bill says.

Liz eventually parks on the waterfront near the end of the bridge and leads us into The Wharf, a restaurant operated by the Sydney Theatre Company, with spectacular harbor views from the end of the same pier that houses the stage. Among the three of us, we try almost half the items on the Mod Oz menu, including zucchini and ricotta "dumplings" (clouds of cheese dusted with flour and wrapped in thin zucchini strips), red bell pepper soup accompanied by a scrumptious Chinese steamed pork bun, salt-and-pepper-crusted calamari, and warm, luscious scallops folded in a thin omelet and topped with bok choy in a mirin vinaigrette.

"This is all fabulous," Cheryl says to Liz. "Tell us about Mod Oz cooking."

"The term is just a catchy nickname for today's leading-edge Australian cooking, which often blends European and Asian flavors, sometimes in pretty extraordinary ways. When I was growing up, Australians ate a lot of British-style meat pies, like those served at Harry's, and they are still comfort food for many people. But in the 1970s the country abandoned a century-old whites-only immigration policy, established back in British colonial days, and this led to an influx of Asian settlers. Since then, we've become a truly multicultural society, and the cooking reflects that, particularly in good restaurants like this one. Our top chefs are always trying to outdo each other in creative new dishes."