Freshly Made Beetroot Fettucine with a Gorgonzola Sauce

Despite having had this pasta maker for over a decade, I've never made good pasta. Most of my rolled pieces looked like they'd been made love to by a small dog. As is often the case, we attribute this to some innate personal failing. This deficit could have been transferred as a credit to some kind of projected perfect noodly deity who for some reason is deservedly punishing me. The enlightened solution is that there are problems because I was doing it wrong. Michelle the sous chef, gave me a new task at work , asking if I could make pasta and I gave my standard response to these kinds of questions which is "erm ahm yes but I'm pretty crap so could you show me". My main problem was not enough flour on the dough. Any wet spots should be dusted throughout the rolling process. Also remember to dust the pasta roller and NEVER WASH IT EVER. A few finessing points like folding the pasta up the arm and a quick flick of the pile and clumsy, clumsy, success. No magic, just technique. I try and repeat whatever I learn on the weekend, so pasta it was last night, with beetroot for a bit of colour.

I found some "00" rated flour at the Boatshed Markets in Cottesloe. You can use plain flour. From here it's just making a circular dam of flour and breaking the eggs in the middle. Work the flour into the centre with a fork until it's combined and then start kneading, adding flour to keep it from being sticky. Knead, turn, knead, turn, for about five minutes until it's smooth, shiny, and bounces back when you poke it. At some stage you should have remembered to add the beetroot you finely grated. A bit of a thought about this. You could run it through a juicer or just grate it and then press it through a seive. I used a plastic oroshi grater. It's usually used for daikon or ginger but it gets a nice fine consistency with beetroot and leaves only one thing to wash up.

It's one of those read somewhere and can't verify things is you wrap the dough in glad wrap and put it in the fridge for half an hour. Is this necessary. Anyway you can keep it in the fridge or freeze it until you're ready. Rolling it just before the meal is a nice trick.

I cut the dough in half. Squashed it a little, dusted it with flour and ran it through the widest "1" setting twice. Then up to "3" and then one run at each setting up to "6", dusting as necessary. You cann fold the roll and rest it on your forearm, unfolding it as you go along. Then slice into appropriate lengths and run through the fettucine cutter. If you've used enough, there's no need to leave it hanging over chair backs, it'll sit happily in a pile and separate when put in boiling water. And there they are there.

The sauce was a simple cheese and cream sauce that used gorgonzola and cream. Slice up chicken breast and marinate in a few cloves of chopped garlic and half a red chilli, with some salt, pepper, chopped parsley and EVOO. Cook the chicken in a pan, set aside and keep warm, and deglaze the pan with a little chicken stock and white wine. Add a cup of cream and allow it to heat before adding a handful of cubed gorgonzola and strirring at a simmer for five minutes. Toss in a tablespoon of finely sliced basil and season and stir it in.

The pasta will only take a few minutes to cook in boiling salted water so keep a close eye on it. It's important to remember that it'll keep cooking after it's drained. Plate the pasta, pour the sauce over, and top with the chicken.

Sadly the pasta looks like it's drowning here, something to be careful of. The pasta isn't colourfast so it settled to a pale pink and the taste was very mild. You may wish to up the amount of beetroot from about a third of a cup to a half, if pastel is less your thing. The sauce was so rich it had a large country manor, a discreet but expensive watch, and a yacht that it would use to entertain clients on sunny days. Use moderation in serving size. Anyhoo, home made pasta-good, and as always, if I can do it you can do it. Impress your friends and yourself.


And: I noticed the Boatshed Markets has green banana leaves, which made me think of Reid's great summery series on lu'au. Follow the trail from Kalua Pig. Mmmmm butts.

A very special offer...

A plug. Spice magazine's first edition will be out at the end of November. This is not only a good thing for its four creators but a good thing for food here. Its slogan is a magazine celebrating the diversity of food and life in Western Australia and its emphasis is on local food producers. This might sound like an excessively foody concern but it's not. Unobtainable, exotic, and imported shouldn't be the pinnacle of food experience, nor should a constant stream of refrigeration trucks be the norm. Instead we should be making produce as available, as excellent, and as local as possible. Anyone who has been in WA for the past 5 to 10 years should be aware of the rate of change that is happening here and will continue to happen if people who have been making these changes through their own dedication are supported. We should look to becoming one of the premier food producing areas of the region, if not the world.

Sorry I'm getting all evangelical here, but I really think this is a great thing to get behind and there's a special get one get one free gift subscription offer on for Christmas. Ideal for self-interested generosity and alternative to the silicon oven mitt on the shopping list. Details become clear if you click on the photie for an enlarged view. Otherwise, any questions, see me.

---

Other things:
-Ni Hao/ Ni Hou Ma. As much as I'm enjoying my food bloggy dreams creeping into reality, what I've always really wanted was a TV show where it's me and three gorgeous women, they could solve crimes and I would make stuffed chicken with couscous. An article in the local Chinese newspaper will do fine for now. Many thanks MicheLLe.
-cheers to Craftapalooza for those nifty fridge magnets in the photo up top. I'll have to do a post on the great stuff she's given me.

IMBB #20 Pork Crackle and Asparagus Soufflé

Soufflé, for those who don't know, is the French word for breast. A fact I constantly marvel at. Who can look at these delicate treats without recalling Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People with Lady Liberty's soft orbs swelling out of their restrictions? Who indeed? And who also would have thought that me, a man of 36, had not yet mastered such delights. It is true.

Now I'm not going to tell you how to make one. You should have a cookbook that explains how to make a savoury one and if you don't, then I can't, in good faith, be an enabler.

The idea was to go to the grower's market and see what was fresh looking and use that as a base. In the mean time I'd bought some pork belly for the mains, and left with the skin, thought I could do something with it. What goes nicely with pork? Asparagus. Think of asparagus wrapped in bacon. Yes.

The skin gets scored and then covered with oil and salt and crisped to a crackle. Then it's chopped up into small pieces. I was thinking here of the nice Turkish Delight souffle they do at Jackson's but instead have little bits of crunchy porky interest. Marking, in a way, the transition of pub snacks, as a marker on the road of life.

Things to know about this base. Seven thick asparagus are trimmed at the tough end and peeled. I removed and set aside the top parts as a garnish . Boil the asparagus in salted water until soft without being soggy. Chop into small pieces. Cook further in butter and a splash of walnut oil. Add this to your base, which should be a well combined white sauce of butter, flour, milk and the eggs yolks. In the interests of time, this can be made earlier and reheated when needed. Season with salt and pepper.

Whisk the 5 egg whites. Lots of things can go wrong here. Make sure there's no yolk in there. Cracking the eggs into one container and then transferring to another will save you having to chuck out five eggs and starting again. Use a bowl that is immaculately clean. Ive heard talk of copper bowls preventing over-whisking but you have to ask yourself, treat the cause or treat the symptom? It should go nice and glossy and if there'e the slightest trace of graininess. Stop. Working quickly, mix a third in with the base to loosen it and then carefully fold in the rest of the whites to get a good mix without losing volume.

The ramekins need to be rubbed thoroughly with butter, refrigerated until hard, and then rub with more butter. Fill to within a finger's breadth of the top, drop some pieces of pork craackle in, and place in a 210C oven.

The recipe I had was for one large souffle and the total time for this would have been 30 minutes. I stopped at 20 but it was a little overdone. The bind is that if you open the oven too early to check, the souffle can collapse. I'd estimate around 15 minutes for single ramekins.

Rush to the table, save one for a super quick pic, and serve with the ends cooked in butter.

It was nice. Taste a little on the subtle side and maybe it needed a little something else. The porkiness of the crackle, provided localised interest, but didn't travel far. It was nice and airy but really, I'd enjoy well made scrambled eggs better.

The rest of the meal, for the visitation of his purpleness of Brisvegas, was a pork belly/pork-chop and cabbage braise served with celeriac-potato-sweet potato-jerusalem artichoke mash. Maybe I'll explain it all later. It was topped with deep fried strips of parsnip. A trick I nicked from work. To finish, Kate took time out to redeem herself of her murdacious evilness to make a deeelicious rhubarb and apple crumble.

Thank you hosty: Kitchen Chick: IMBB 20: Has my blog fallen?

IMBB # 20 + Souffle

Oysters and Everything You Need To Know About the Ethics of Contemporary Warfare

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

More skills and thrills. 50 oysters to clean and shuck. Hold the oyster in a folded tea towel and then fold the tea towel over your hand to avoid pointy repercussions. Using the oyster knife work down just to either side of the hinge point, it should just pop and then run the knife along the top to detatch. If you have to use force, you're doing it wrong, soft power, smartly.

Country Cooking - Poulet au Citron pour Mon et Wozza

As a child in the Eastern Wheatbelt, we would get up early to milk the cows, running home with the still warm cream on our lips, checking our geese for eggs on the way back. Walking to school we would greet the baker and, if we were lucky, he'd hand us some warm buns, fresh from the ovens, which we'd eat with hand-made sausage from the butcher. Mother would pick us up and we'd visit the market, offering our advice as to which were the ripest pears and the juiciest oranges.

Alright, alright that's crap. The Eastern Wheatbelt was pretty rubbish for food. I think the most exciting thing to come to town was pressed chicken. I'm sure things have picked up but when Mon (on the right in the middle at Lamonts with Wozza, someone called Toni, and a couple whose wedding I went to a few years back) asked me to do a hearty rural dinner for farmers wives that didn't involve lamb or potatoes, I imagined the worst case minimalist shopping scenario. As military strategist von Rumsfeld might have put it "you go to the kitchen with ingredients you have, not the ingredients you might want". So don't blame me if it all goes all pear shaped.

The first thing I'd do would be to get a bunch of plastic containers, make a bunch of stock and pop it all in the chest freezer. This is already culinary gold. Stock. Stock. Stock. Did I mention this before? Stock. Stock. Stock. Stock. Then I'd get some wine, great for cooking and it makes me happy. I'd have a herb garden. Lots of butter. Meats in the freezer. Ingredients that have a shelf life of more than a few days. And a copy of Richard Olney's Simple French Food (he bags the city a lot). What's for dinner? Provincial French cooking.

This is another recipe that takes a while but is reasonably straightforward. I'll explain what happens to each ingredient separately.

Chicken Stock- three chicken carcasses, a couple of chopped carrots and celery sticks, half a chopped leek (or a couple of onions), a handful of parsely, half a dozen peppercorns, a bay leaf, .and a glass of white fine. Cover with water and simmer for at least two hours. Strain, pressing out the solids and put the stock on the boil until it reaches the strength you like. Remove any fat on the top. You can use a paper towel but the easiest way is to let it chill and take the congealed fat off the top.

Garlic- peel 20 pieces of garlic, keep their shape. Cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove and then let them simmer for 40 minutes in chicken stock.

Chicken - the recipe uses the legs, which is the drumstick with the thigh attached. I got a whole free-range chicken. Removed the frame, which I used for the stock. And detatched the chicken legs and wings and put the breasts in the freezer for another time. You can cut the knobbly end off the drumstick and the tips off the wings.

Brown the wings and the legs in some butter, remove them and drain the pan, leaving two tablespoons of fat to make the roux.

Roux - add two tablespoons of plain flour to the leftover fat and stir in well over a low heat. Add a half a glass of wine* and stir over a high heat while scraping the bottom of the pan. Add 600ml of chicken stock. And then (this is the Richard Olney hint) - transfer it to a small saucepan as "the small surface permits a more rapid skimming and degreasing of the sauce while preventing an exaggerated reduction". Skim off any fat or particles with a paper towel for 15 minutes.

*The recipe recommends white wine but I had some light red wine handy so that would do. It says the French Catalan's use fortified wine like port so there's a bit of flexibilty.

Assembly-place the chicken pieces at the bottom of a casserole pot, add the garlic, and one peeled and finely sliced lemon, and the cover with the stock. Place in a 170C oven for 40 minutes and serve.

I served this on some pasta (rigatoni). Very enjoyable from ingredinets not very different to what you might use in a Sunday Roast. I'd like to try it again with white wine and one mistake was to place the lemon on top of the chicken rather than in the stock so it didn't blend as well as it could have (it should dissolve). The garlic is the best part, soft and creamy and not at all garlicky like you'd imagine. Oh and the garnish was done with a lemon zester. If you press hard and run it along the side you should get some nice lengths. Otherwise slice the peel thinly and put in ice cold water.

And there you go, hope this is what you're looking for. I'm actually a bit out of touch, not quite imagining everybody sits around making billy tea in akubra hats out of touch but well. A good chance to say hello in the comments lurking wheatbelt readers (yes you in Belka, and you in Hyden) and maybe suggest a fave.

Braised Speck and Leek Omlette

Was going to do the hicken chicken (erk! thanks Santos) post but busy busy busy so here's the egg one. Omlettes are the traditional food of the busy, yet are notoriously tricky to perfect. This is a shame as they're the gateway from worthlessness at Le Cordon Bleu. There was something about banging the handle or something that I can't work out, but I think I've done a reasonable job here. As it's mainly practice with these things, I thought it would be a nice idea to use my small crepe pan so I could make four instead of two. This is the fourth one.

Five free-range eggs, lightly beaten with freshly ground pepper added (you can add salt but the speck is quite salty already). Usually omlettes are just eggs but I had about 2tbs of double cream leftover so that went in too. It doesn't blend in particularly well but ah well.

Half a leek, finely sliced, about a handful of cubed speck (or bacon or pancetta), and a clove of local garlic. Sauteed in butter for a few minutes and then braise in half a glass of red wine until the wine is absorbed. Reserve.

Melt some butter in the pan, not allowing it to brown, and making sure it covers the pan well. Add a quarter of the mix and work the top with a fork. When it's still a little runny on top add a tablespoon of the leek and speck in the third closest to the handle. Lift up the pan. Work an egg slice under at the handle and fold over at the one/third point to the two third part. Add some more butter and allow it to run under the rest of the omlette. Put down the pan and flip the other third over and then flip the omlettes onto a plate. You can drizzle some extra melted butter over it if you wish.

Browned on the outside. Runny in the middle. All animal protein and fat, it's fantastically rich. My heartsie.

Spiceblog Weekend Digest - Jacksons! Cottesloe! OA! EoMEoTE! Cheese! Spicemag Picnic!

I pity the poor fool that doesn't start their weekend on Thursday. Backtracking from a glass of wine to finish the night at Jackson's, I've now been there approximately one week in total time, which isn't a bad way to look at where I am and what I've done. I'm still learning and also consolidating. I had another go at deboning a couple of quails, I made a mayonnaise and remembered to add the oil drop by drop raather than pour it in and ask "now what?". I can chop chop chop and peel peel peel. I'm still doing at least half a dozen things wrong in an evening but these are at least not in the things I've been taught to do. Mark, who just snared himself gold, bronze, gold in a local comp, has taken it upon himself to keep an eye on me for when I stray and quickly sets me straight- whether it's cleaning and flipping a board after chopping up garlic or the right way to segment an orange. Tanya gave me my first list of jobs, which I took as a sacred bond of trust, fields questions, and is going to teach me how to not sharpen knives like a "cocky". Krystin is starting to get dessert questions and Michelle talked me through how she organises and works through a night of service and set me straight on reducing stocks. Chef wasn't there , which is good because word has it I'm in the shit for my devasting review of the air-conditioning. It was a relatively quiet night so I took a few pics. I've organised a set on Flickr of pics you've seen but also some new ones. They're here: Jackson's Restaurant

Omnivoribus Australis - Edition IV is up and word has reached as far as San Francisco - home of bays, gays, and clam bisques. It's your monthly one-stop shop for austro-zealandian food and wine blog and gender clarification. Fans of eggs and 70's music, if they haven't yet, should get to the EoMEoTE#11---The Round-up before the drum solo finishes.

Barchetta in Cottesloe deftly evades the general rule on bars and restaurants named after vehicles being naff (although Cafe Kremenchug Auto Zavod KrAZ-260 would not be without its charms) and disappoints by actually having reet tasty tapas and thus not letting me call it Barfetta. Pity the frustrated food snark, maybe I will anyway, no that would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Bloody noisy though, a victim of its own ocean overlooking popularity. The beers at the OBH are still cold and writing is hard work.

Top tip: when taking some cheese along to a picnic, remove the plastic wrap and wrap it in greaseproof paper for that just cut from the cheese wheel look.

The Spice Magazine peoples had a picnic to try and capture the spirit of the summer and snag that elusive cover pic. So myself, Toni and the barge widow Kate went along to the Matilda Bay foreshore with my lambchops, asparagus, and eggplants as well as Holy Smoke Chicken pate, goats cheese, olives, bottle of champagne, a sixpack of Swan Stout and a bottle of lemonade. Mucho relaxation was had, freed from the pressures of the press room, time enough to sit in the sun, on the grass, and visualise the successful future that would bring a red and white Square Rigged Spice Yacht moored in the Swan River. I discovered I had a rare talent for making the ukelele a depressing instrument. Back to work, they've got three weeks left before it goes to the publishers and stay tuned for a remarkable subscription offer.

That's it. Sunday's good lookin' country cookin' will be up soon.




Stop the press Crafty tip-off: I know it's not about the stuff [cough] but how good does this look. Is it just me? Anyone actually used them? And why does one of them look like they've been stuffed with bin liner?

The Tart Heart of the Artichoke Folk

Before I was taught how at work, every time I've attempted to do anything with an artichoke, I've ended up with just a pile of leaves and bits. I imagined that they're a kind of bleak French existential joke for the rest of us. You know the one where at the end of our quest there is nothing. Not that socialist nihilism is doing them too badly according to Ahmed Bouzid [thanks Brian Bahnisch] . Although one has to ask if the assumptions are all wrong and France has insufficient teen pregnancy and too high maths skills to aspire to God's chosen free market. But I wander off. Artichokes are, in short, where one of the truck drivers in Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear reveals to us, just before he dies, that behind the fence was nothing. (Nearly the finest moment in cinema) And what was it that Kurtz saw before his death? What does one see in the darkness? And if we cannot see it, is it there? Let me light a candle, dressed like Dorothy Lamour, and show you where the centre lies.

First, make yourself a bowl of acidulted water with the juice of a lemon. This will stop the artichoke browning. Cut the stem of just as it begins to taper out to the base. Peel the stem back until the white is shown. Place it in the water.

Lop the top third off. A bread knife makes it easier.

Peel away some of the leaves and trim around the base to the white up to the part where it break up into individual leaves.

Slice the rest of the top off and use a teaspoon to to scrape out the fibrous centre that is the choke.

Trim the top. And tadah! Place it in the acidulated water and then do what you like with it. It's traditionally tasty boiled and the placed on a steak with a bernaise sauce.

Unrelated but quite important: Thanks to Sue and Saffy for pointing out I had a nice plug written for this blog in the Sydney Morning Herald. Hello if you've come from there. I'll share one part: "tempting recipes that go well beyond the basics" . Which is kind of true but I'd hate to think people had the impression that they were difficult. I suspect it may be a lack of clarity in the instructions - so if you aren't sure what I'm going on about, I'm always happy to explain further*. And cheers to whoever was responsible for the piece.

*assuming I know what I'm going on about.

EoMEoTE#11 - Scrambled Eggs

Are you ready Jeanne? Aha
Stephanie? Yeah!
Uma, Emma?
Alright girls lets go!

Oh it's getting oh so hard
Thinking of the things to do with eggs, aha
Oh once again it's carbohydrates
unspecified, but subjected to heat

I see a chilli in the crisper
Chopped up it's as hot as the sun
And the cream it was creamy
It thinks it's the buttery one

The eggs, they were free range, which isn't at all strange
The butter was danish, unsalted and delish.

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
And the chilli was deseeded
and soy sauce interceded
And it turned into the scrambled eggs
With the cream it was padded
And sugar was added
And it turned into the scrambled eggs
Scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs

It's it's scrambled eggs, It's it's scrambled eggs
It's it's scrambled eggs, yeah, it's scrambled eggs

Scrambled eggs.

Degustation Dinner at Jackson's

While most of you are able to pop and in deal with just one aspect of my life, Toni has had to put up with me for 15 years. So I thought a night out might be in order. Since she's sick of hearing about what I had to try in the kitchen at Jackson's and we had such a good time last time we went for our fifth wedding anniversary, I booked a table there for the 9 course dego menu. Upgrading to the matched glass of wine with each course "meal deal". Cutting to the chase, here's all you need to know:

Scallop Carpaccio with Carrot and Tumeric Sorbet (little bit of flying fish roe "tobiko" gave it some lovely crunch) Dukes Reisling 2004 WA;
Vietnamese Spring Rolls (salmon and foie gras, orange and mint - start at the angled cut end or it all falls out) Hugel et Fils Gewurtztraminer 2002 Alsace France;
Salmon Confit with Kiwi Fruit & Peanuts (this is interesting, it's poached in olive oil and the thin slice of beetroot sets it off with just a little sourness) St Clair Sav Blanc 2004 NZ;





Roast Honey Duck Breast & Pork Belly (the duck breast sat on fois gras and pickled daikon) Moorooduc Pinot Noir 2001 Vic;
Rabbit & Red Wine Risotto (just great with the shredded rabbit giving just the smallest amount of contemplative chew) Orenella "le Volte" 2002 Italy;
Venison ras el Hanout (very complex Moroccan spice mix caught in a ding dong battle with a very peppery red) Woody Nook CabSav 2002 WA;
Steak Chips and Peas (wagyu) Eight Songs Shiraz 2001 SA;
Blue Cheese Strudel & Pear Yalumba Botrytis Viogner 2004 SA (a very slight fizz lifted the sweetness of the sticky);
Turkish Delight Souffle & Rose Petal Ice Cream (joyous gooey rejig of my favourite chocolate bar) Lustau "San Emilio" Pedro Ximenez Jerez Spain.

There were a couple of other little treats snuck in there, including one of the most nicely cooked bit of lamb I've ever had the pleasure of eating as for the others...well maybe I've revealed too much already. Was it perfect? No. The wall mounted airconditioning units could have been replaced by more discreet ones and I could have chosen a less tapered shirt, otherwise three hours of flawless food and engaging wine choices. Beyond the instinctive muh of it all, it's three hours to think occupy your mind with food . In conclusion; with the well-executed good-humoured quirky eclecticism, the immaculately sourced referentiality, the endlessly disassemblable construction, and a measure of rejigged nostaligia, Neal Jackson is the Thomas Pynchon of the Perth restaurant scene.

And it would be back on the other side of the kitchen the next night. I'm really not fit to peel spuds here. Oh I am. Out the back? In a big bucket? Then put them in the water? Yeah yeah from the tap I know. Do you like my new peeler?

IMBB 19 Vegan Edition - Oven Roasted Mushroom with Walnuts and Garden Herbs

Viva Las Vegan with your neon flashin’
And your one armed bandits crashin’

Here's something quick and late for IMBB 19 that I tricked myself into eating by using my left hand and pretending someone else was cooking for me (old boarding school trick).

Very large field mushroom roasted in EVOO with parsley, sage, rosemary, and ermm thyme, sea salt and pepper. Chopped up walnuts, EVOO over it all and roasted, covered with foil, until soft and juicy. Served on a bed of steamed silverbeet from the garden.

Thank you hosty Sam.

Tagged with: IMBB # 19 + Vegan

Also: It's a busy dish and I think I fell into the overcompansating trap of making vegetarian dishes "noisy" to make up for the lack of meat. It'd be just as nice with just rosemary and some EVOO and there we come to the vorian-wide issue of paying attention to ingredients and where they came from. This is while I'll take a thoughtful vegan over a chop burning omnivore any day.

Vacation

Sorry, haven't posted for near on a week but I've been batching learning how to peel an artichoke taking team portraits for the Wembley footy club interviewing Curtis from Surfing the Menu for Spice Magazine faffing around with MySQL and movable type Perl stuff with the wrong manual catching up with a friend who went overseas with a partner and came back without one being the first person in 6 months to order a pepper vodka and tonic dancing badly making boozey black olive and sheep's cheese scrambled eggs with a garnish of rolled and sliced flat mountain bread practicing In My Head driving 350km to a fancy dinner in a shearing shed at a yabby farm blagging half a dozen bottles of wine meeting trout farmer and biodynamic wheat farmer judging a best comment post for Santos and all with Barracuda in my head. Might pop some more piccies here later.