(We’ve been married for almost four months, but thought we’d better finally post about the big day. What better time to do it than Valentine’s Day!)

We had an amazing and beautiful wedding on the beach at Cutter’s Reserve, Point Lookout on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland on October 25, 2009. We had 70 guests including our parents, most of Lakshmi’s aunts and uncles, and many of our great friends from around the globe.

We made it a whole weekend of fun activities including a surf lesson on Friday (unfortunately the surf was flat that day!), barefoot bowls on Saturday, and our wedding and reception on Sunday afternoon.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather, as you can see in the photos. Our guests told us that they even saw dolphins and a manta Ray swim behind us during the ceremony!

We had a delicious reception dinner at Amis Restaurant, and our delectable cake was made by our talented friend Krista.

Thanks to everyone who came and made it an unforgettable day. Click the link to see all the photos!
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I just made these Greek-style roast potatoes to accompany Lakshmi’s famous (to me) buttermilk-thyme fried kalamari. I recommend you try the potatoes — so yummy!  The kalamari recipe is simple: clean and slice up the squid, marinate in buttermilk, batter in flour, thyme, salt and pepper, and fry. Yum!   Serve with a nice greek salad.

Reminds me of a great taverna in Patmos… (images after the break) Continue reading…

For our Earth Hour party this weekend I made something I haven’t made in years: North Carolina barbecue.  Barbecue in the United States varies widely across regions.  In North Carolina, when you say “barbecue”, by definition you mean pork (unless you qualify it by naming another kind of meat).  Typically this is slow-roasted and smoked pork with a vinegar-based sauce.   Note that in NC the word “barbecue” never refers to the apparatus you use to cook the meat like it does here in Australia (although the word my have its origins in the apparatus).  It is also seldom used as a verb.

When I was living in Chapel Hill, NC, my friends and I had a tradition of having an annual “Pig Pickin’” every autumn. We only actually roasted a whole pig once.  After that we learned that it’s much easier to just roast pork shoulders.  It’s a little more expensive, but you get a lot more meat of higher quality and you don’t have to deal with the remains of the carcass.

This year I only cooked for about 10-15 people, so I only needed two boneless pork shoulders, each about 1.1 Kg (2.4 lbs).  I smoke-roasted the shoulders one at a time on our Weber charcoal grill using a technique that my mom developed.  The resulting barbecue is smoky and succulent.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to find pork whose provenance was known and transparent, so I have no idea if these pigs were ethically raised or raised in a factory farm.  I’ve made a vow recently to only buy meat for which I know these details (we already eat only free-range chicken and eggs), so the next time will be different.

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On Wednesday night we said goodbye to my parents after a great two-week visit. [See below for a big selection of photos from our visit to my grandparents house in Barnesville and the engagement party that my mom and dad threw for us at their house in Columbus last Sunday]. We boarded a Greyhound bus at the Columbus terminal, bound for Cincinnati two hours to the southwest. The bus ride to Cincinnati was uneventful. We had over two hours to kill in Cinci, so luckily Union Station, where our train ride began, is a bit of an art deco masterpiece that has recently been restored and made into museums. Continue reading…

It’s funny how you grow into food. As a kid I reviled squash in all its incarnations, but now Laksh and I eat it often. A tender, sweet butternut squash (often just called pumpkin in the UK) is excellent in soups and curries, or even roasted and served as the center of a meal as in this recipe from The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater. Incidentally, The Kitchen Diaries is one of our absolute favorites; Nigel’s recipes are simple, seasonal, delicious, and inspiring. While he pitches this as a warming winter dish, to me tomatoes are the epitome of summer, and with the weather we’ve been having we were pleased to find both in our organic box delivery this week.

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Laksh and I are relocating from England to Australia this September. Lately we’ve been planning our move, and as things start to fall into place it’s becoming less stressful and more exciting. We decided to make a vacation of the move, to give us a chance to visit my family and friends in the US. We’ll depart Leeds on August 13th, and resurface in Brisbane September 16th. In between, we’ll see a lot of the US, and a lot of friends and family. Continue reading…

In June I attended ICS 2008 in Kos, Greece. This was a good launching-off point for a short holiday so Lakshi came with me and we spent a week in Kos and on the much lovelier and less touristy island of Patmos. Patmos and Kos are in the Eastern Aegean in the Dodecanese group of Islands.

We had a wonderful time in Patmos. We stayed in a nice apartment and rented a scooter to get around the small island. We ate fresh food every day at the local Tavernas and swam in the crystal clear Mediterranean.

Click “continue reading” below to see our photos from the trip.
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This is the first post on GastroGusto.com, the weblog of Lakshmi Kerr and Mark Harris. We’re going to use this blog to keep in touch with our friends and family around the world as we travel (and relocate from the UK to Australia), and especially to post about the things that we cook and eat (hence the name of this website).

PS: Thanks Derek for hosting our site!