Philips Birthday Week

It was hubby's 67th birthday on the 22nd January and as NuNu Restaurant here in Palm Cove was having a Chinese New Year Banquet I reserved a table for us and our friends Kate and Mike.  The day was a little rainy but that didn't stop us at all, I mean who doesn't love a tropical downpour.  We were a little early for our lunch reservation so we dropped into Chill Portofino for some cool drinks while we waited for NuNu's to open. Chill is one of our favourite places in Palm Cove.  You can drop in for a cool drink or settle in for a meal.  They do some pretty darn good pizza's too.

Once we had finished our drinks we headed directly across the road to NuNu's where we were shown to our table.  The service in this restaurant is exceptional and within moments of seating we were handed the drinks menu and a copy of the banquet menu we were about to enjoy.  Our drinks (cocktails for the ladies and beer for the men) arrived shortly after ordering and we had only had a couple of sips before the first of five courses was laid in the centre of the table.  The food was to die for and the only photo I remembered to take was dessert! The courses were:

1.  Crispy Chilli and fish dumpling, Reef Bug and Pork dumpling, Sweet and Sour Tiger Prawns

2.  Tea smoke Eel and Hot Sauce, Pickled Mushrooms

3.  Cucumber and Garlic Salad, Tofu and Black Bean, Lotus Rice Shiitake and Lup Cheong, Spanner Crab and Egg Fried Rice

4. Coral Trout Ginger and Green Onion Relish, Drunken Duck Davidson Plum and Spiced Sat

5. Lychee, Pandam, coconut Sorbet and Dragon Ice

NuNu can be a bit of hit and miss when it comes to meals but this meal was outstanding and Nick Holloway and his team deserve accolades for this one.

One Tuesday morning we picked up Kate and Mike and drove them to the airport where they boarded their Brisbane bound plane.  At Brisbane they boarded the P & O Pacific Encounter for a 13 day cruise to Singapore stopping at Airlie Beach, Darwin, Bali and Lombok.  I have been tracking their voyage on cruisemapper.com and it is getting me rather excited for our upcoming cruise in April.  I have been chatting to Kate on and off and they seem to be having a great time.

After we dropped the team at the airport, Philip and I decided to walk the Yellow/Red Arrow track that starts opposite the airport at the Mount Whitfield Conservation Park.  The 4.2km circular track climbs around 155m and is considered moderately challenging. It took us around an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the walk.  We very much enjoyed it particularly as it is shaded for the majority of the walk.  In Cairns at this time of the year that is very much appreciated!

My copy of RecipeTin Eats arrived in the mail this week and I have been devouring the book and cooking quite a few recipes from the book.  Nagi is my all time favourite cook and everyone of her recipes are truly great.  You may remember me cooking Festive Salmon for New Years Eve.  That is one of her recipes.  The cookbook is well worth purchasing if you are as passionate about food as I am.  Some of the other recipes I have made from the cookbook this week have been Teriyaki Beef Bowls and Magic Baked Chicken Fried Rice.  Both bloody delicious!

I had some leftover chicken from the fried rice so I pulled out the pie maker and made us some Chicken and Leek Pies with salad for another lunch meal.  Gee I've missed my piemaker and will give it a good work-out before our next holiday.  Shame it is just a bit too heavy to carry in the van, but then again, maybe........

After Christmas I had leftover mini store-bought meringues and a sponge roll and was thinking of what I could make using them.  I also had a whole lot of passionfruit that my friend Kate had kindly given me so I made a Passionfruit Curd, whipped up some cream and added yoghurt, thawed out some frozen blueberries and along with a sliced banana, assembled the lot in a glass bowl.  It was a very decadent sweet dish but Philip and I have been enjoying a small quantity of it each afternoon.  I froze the majority of it so that we can enjoy this dessert over several weeks.

Today we woke to another wet day so to do something different (and inside) we drove into Cairns to the Cairns Aquarium.  It is something we have been talking about doing for quite a long time but never seemed to get around to it.  We had no idea on what we were missing out on.  It was fantastic.  We spent a couple of hours wandering around the two floors that told the story of aquatic life from the rainforest to the reef.  It is beautifully presented and every half hour the staff give talks in various areas of the aquarium.  There is also a Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital Tour that we would like to have visited but it was booked out.  We will return another day for that.  The Aquarium was well worth the drive into town.

Well that is our week in a nutshell.  We have been fairly busy but each afternoon we either go for a walk along the beach or if it is raining (as it has been for the majority of this week) we pull out the boardgames.  Sequence is our favourite board game but yesterday, for a change, we pulled out the Jenga Blocks.  Philip and I had fun building this tower and I, unfortunately, was the one to topple it.......