Cooking Down Under - The Blog

Anzac biscuits

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:31:00 +0000

On Anzac Day, April 25, we remember our war dead. I have undertaken a lot of family history research over the years and it's always been a sad task when I reach my grandparents' generation and see the number of young men cut down when they were sometimes barely out of their childhood.

It's interesting looking at the attestation papers which they filled out when they were enlisting. They weren't strapping young athletes. So often they were only around 5ft6 tall and often weighing not much more than 10 stone. Quite a few of them needed their teeth fixed before they could be declared fit for service.

My paternal grandmother lost her brother and several cousins in that war. My maternal grandmother's brother travelled from New Zealand to Australia, enlisted in the army here and was never heard from again. It wasn't until online records made the genealogist's job easier that I was able to solve the mystery of what had happened to him.

Anzac biscuits find their origin in biscuits that were baked in homes throughout New Zealand and Australia and sent by ship to the young men fighting overseas in World War 1. Because of the long sea voyage, the biscuits had to remain palatable until they reached their destination.

Professor Helen Leach, Professor of Anthropology at Otago University and a note food researcher, has traced the evolution of the Anzac biscuit. In a speech given in 2006 she noted:

"The first use of the name Anzac in a recipe was in an advertisement for Anzac Cakes in the 7th edition of the St Andrew's Cookery Book, published in Dunedin in 1915, the year of the landing at Gallipoli. These cakes may have been like rock cakes; however the recipe left out the mixing instructions. They were not a form of Anzac Biscuit.

"In 1917, The War Chest Cookery Book published in Sydney included a recipe for Anzac Biscuits. However the recipe was for another type of biscuit altogether (using eggs, cinnamon and mixed spice, and rice flour). The prototype of today's Anzac Biscuit appears in The War Chest Cookery Book under the name Rolled Oats Biscuits.

"In 1917 or 1918, exactly the same situation can be found in the Southland Red Cross Cookery Book. It contained a recipe for Anzac Pudding, while what we know as Anzac biscuits appeared under the name Rolled Oat Biscuits.

Then in the 9th edition of the St Andrew's Cookery Book, published in Dunedinin 1921, we find Anzac Crispies with the ingredients and method that we recognize in modern Anzac biscuits.

"From The Australian National Dictionary we learn that the first correct recipe for biscuits called 'Anzacs' appeared in 1923 in Mrs H. W. Shaw's Six Hundred Tested Recipes, 9th ed. This 1923 recipe is very similar to our 1921 Anzac Crispies," said Helen Leach.

The recipe I use came from the hand-written recipe book given to my mother when she was 14 - see my last two blogs. The only changes I've made are to use a metric measure for the butter and expand on the brief method.

Anzac Biscuits

1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup coconut
3/4 cup sugar
120g butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons boiling water
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Mix dry ingredients. Melt together butter and golden syrup. Pour boiling water over soda and add to butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients and stir in the liquid. Form the mix into mounds on a soup spoon and slide onto baking paper on a baking sheet. Cook till golden - about 15 minutes at 170C.

70-year-old pikelets

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:49:00 +0000

In my last blog I mentioned a small notebook of handwritten recipes that my mother was given more than 70 years ago when she first started work, aged 14.

It was written in pencil but at some stage Mum had gone over some of the fading recipes in ink. The first entry was for pikelets so I decided to try it out on a recent Sunday morning.

It was a little difficult to read but I discovered Mum had transcribed it into the new recipe book she’d got to replace her old one which was completely full.

It turned out the name of the woman who had shared her recipes with the young teenager was Kitty Roddick.

It’s a fairly regular pikelet recipe. I guess there’s not much you can do to improve on something that has withstood the test of time. I noticed chocolate chip hot cross buns at the supermarket the other day. Oh, dear, some people don't know when to stop...

Kitty Roddick’s pikelets

1 heaped cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 dessertspoon melted butter

1 tablespoon sugar

1 egg

milk

Beat egg and sugar together then add melted butter, mix well together then flour and BP. Add milk last. Sift flour and baking powder.

Mum used to have a wonderful contraption called a “girdle”. It was a rectangular slab of cast iron with rounded corners. It had a half-hoop iron handle. It was well seasoned from years of pikelets, pancakes and girdle scones. Girdle is the Scots name for griddle.

The girdle was heated up on the stove element and cooking got underway. I’m sorry the girdle was discarded at some stage – probably when Mum acquired a electric non-stick frypan. It was easier to use than a frying pan as it was flat, making it easier to flip the pikelets once bubbles had formed and popped on the uncooked side.

You’ll note the recipe does not state the quantity of milk, but it should be added gradually till the batter is still a fairly stiff consistency. The cooked pikelets are usually placed in a clean teatowel to keep them warm and soft.

Some pikelet recipes use baking soda and cream of tartar as the leavening agent instead of baking powder or self-raising flour. Others add a little vinegar to sour the milk. Some include a small amount of golden syrup. There are only slight variations in the finished product.

Margarine doesn’t do it for me when it comes to eating scones and pikelets. This is one time I break out and use butter. Raspberry jam and cream are another excellent alternative.

A lifetime of recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:45:00 +0000

During Easter 2009 my sister Lynne and I cleared out our late mother’s house. We’ve both been battling to declutter our own lives and there was little we could re-house ourselves. But we couldn’t resist some little reminders of The Fossil, as we called her.

I’ve got the little crystal lidded bowl that was on her dressing table for as long as I can remember, her gem irons, the watch that ticked away her last year, her dinner set. Lord knows why she kept my old whistle and lanyard from when I was 14 and used to help run Brownies on the air force base where we lived. As pack leader I had to have a brown lanyard for my Girl Guide uniform but all we could find were white ones. Dad suggested we soak it in the dregs of the coffee percolator. It worked like a charm.

And there was another souvenir from that same period – The Fossil’s precious recipe book.

It was written in a foolscap RNZAF exercise book and contains recipes she collected from as far back as her first job at 14. She kept the books at a local garage and the boss’s wife gave her a small notebook of handwritten recipes. I have that, too. It’s more than 70 years old.

Mum must have got tired of the growing pile of recipes scribbled on bits of paper, old greeting cards and envelopes. It was time to find them a more permanent home.

She began:

1. Sponge Roll

I like that. Orderly numbering and an intention to index.

The book had plenty of pages but she wasn’t going to waste them. This first recipe followed the style of post-war cookbooks and the ingredients weren’t in a list but just ran on.

3 eggs, 3oz flour, 1 teaspoon Bak Pdr, 4oz sugar, 1 1/2oz melted butter

The method was fairly verbose for Mum – it ran over nine lines. As I read them I can see her beating the eggs and sugar over a basin of hot water until thick and light, adding the dry ingredients and the melted butter and pouring the batter into a greased and paper-lined sponge roll tin.

The sponge roll was baked in a “quick oven”. Ovens were very slow, slow, moderate, quick or hot. No thermostats in those days. The sponge roll took only eight or nine minutes to cook. She’d turn it out on paper sprinkled with icing sugar, later spread it with jam or jam and cream then roll it up. Good for an afternoon tea by the fire in winter.

Mum often made one of her neighbours lemon honey. He always returned the jar to ensure the supply continued.

Many of the recipes in her book took only three lines of her neat writing. They came from friends and relatives. A recipe for little tea cakes would probably leave the novice cook totally bewildered but this was all The Fossil needed to know:

3. Alva’s Cakes

2 tabs butter, 2 tabs sugar, 1 egg, 3 tabs flour, 1 teasp BP, vanilla ess, tab milk

I became an accomplice in the cookbook and was occasionally roped in to enter the latest acquisition. Sometimes it would be one of my favourites transcribed from her Edmonds Cookbook which was getting a bit raggedy round the edges. I used my fountain pen and my best writing for 22. Caroline Cake.

Go home. I've got baking to do.

We had recently moved near Dunedin and new neighbours’ names cropped up among the recipes. Pat C shared her fruit cake. A couple of pages over it was my turn to add her Ginger Bread. But I couldn’t bring myself to call her Pat C. I politely attributed the recipe to Mrs Cattermole.

I see by then my slanting writing had suddenly turned straight up and down. Oh, yes. Graeme, the boy next door. He wrote like that. He used to take me to the pictures. He wore after shave, black jeans and fluorescent socks and his hair was slicked down. I was smitten. My handwriting remains schizophrenic to this day.

Shortly after, Dad died suddenly at the age of 37 and we shifted back to Wellington. Mum saw old friends and made new ones and their recipes were added – Sally’s Pavlova, Phyl’s Brown Steamed Pudding., Lorna’s Chinese Casserole. That casserole was a surprise. Until then the recipes had all been for cakes and biscuits. A bit further over a fish dish slipped in, then Curried Crayfish. The Fossil was branching out.

Some recipes were very short - others a little more detailed

She took up golf and new names appeared. Mum stopped numbering the recipes but still kept adding more. Occasionally we’d go to Dad’s sister Betty’s farm and there’d be a run of my aunt’s recipes. She was a few miles from market gardens and gherkins were all the rage. Betty’s first gherkin recipe involved steeping the little cucumbers in hot brine and then giving them a few minutes next day in boiling spiced vinegar. Not brilliant, I recall. Too soft. But a few pages later – probably the following summer – there was Betty’s Crisp Pickles recipe. “VG”, I wrote beside it.

Gradually the ingredients changed from imperial to metric measures and were more precise than the old teacup, breakfast cup, “scant cup” and "good tablespoon" of yesteryear. Mum began snipping recipes out of newspapers and collecting recipe leaflets and cards at the supermarket and pasting them in. I’d started food writing myself along the way and often my newspaper columns were added. About 30 years after starting her recipe book, she had filled it.

A few years ago I borrowed it because I wanted to try some of the old family favourites. I kept forgetting to return it. Then I couldn’t find it. I was in deep strife. She’d asked me several times for it because it was like losing her right arm. She loved baking and I’d stolen her beloved recipe collection.

Fortunately it turned up and I took it back to her. “Well that’s a relief,” she said, and could hardly send me on my way quickly enough.

“Go home,” she urged, “I’ve got baking to do”.

Adding an avo

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:05:00 +0000

Hands up those who are inventive with avocados in the kitchen. Let’s see – I make guacamole, I do a nice well seasoned sliced avocado and tomato salad with a lime chilli dressing and torn basil. I’ve made avocado soup. And let’s not forget a perfect avocado half with a little oil and lemon juice. Oh, and those retro prawn entrees served in avocado halves. That’s about it, really.

Australian Avocados thinks it’s time we lifted our game and in addition to running their “Add an avo” campaign they’ve been conducting masterclasses for food service professionals. I was lucky enough to sit in on the Melbourne gathering at Matteo’s restaurant in North Fitzroy this afternoon where the restaurant’s executive chef Brendan McQueen and guest chef Raymond Capaldi showed us just how avocados could feature in a variety of courses on a restaurant menu.

Avocado aficionado Victor Pisapia set the ball rolling by introducing a tasting plate of the Shepard variety. It’s that green one currently in season with the smoothish skin. He told us the Aztec word for avocado was “ahuacatl” which means “testicle tree”. Yes, we got the picture when he held two avocados up side by side.

Pisapia said the Shepard is a creamy fruit. It was served plain, then with sugar and then with salt, demonstrating its affinity for pairing with other flavours. We were offered a shooter where it was mingled with parsley and coconut (lovely combo). Finally there was a piece of sautéed avo with chilli, garlic and rocket.

Avocado is a bit like chicken – a blank canvas that lends itself to splashes of colour and flavour.

It was Capaldi’s turn and he produced a ballsy “Ahuacatl” in a golden almond broth (10kg of almonds with three litres of water plus salt) and an accompanying oyster and chunks of fig. His intention, he said, was to make the avocado shine. The oyster was there for the salt – “I didn’t want to add more salt.” It was an attractive dish that I would make – but maybe with my lemongrass broth. His original thought had been a fig consomme, but he changed his mind.

McQueen’s first production was a Japanese plate. There was a king prawn and avocado tempura with grated daikon; a steamed avocado “chawan mushi” custard - a routine custard of “eggs, milk, bits and pieces” - with yabby tail and sweet dashi sauce; a semi-cured confit Petuna ocean trout disk with avocado and shiso-spiced panko with chives and seaweed. Many of the chefs present picked the trout dish as the stand-out with its contrast of flavours and textures.

Capaldi’s next dish was simply described as pork jowl, avocado, chocolate, orange jus vin. We couldn’t imagine what the result would be, given such a bald description.

He’d wanted to serve the dish on pork sweetbreads “but it was hard enough to get the jowls, let alone the sweetbreads”. The avocado in this case was dusted in chocolate and the pork was meltingly soft from long cooking.

McQueen produced harissa-spiced lamb cutlet with a definitely cross-cultural “chimichurri” of spiced avocado and crushed peas in a wrap of soya bean and shiso batter. They sat on top of a slice of grilled haloumi. Personally I will play with the avocado and pea combination at some stage.

The finale was Capaldi’s avocado, banana, buttermilk and licorice dessert with lime ash, the latter concocted out of lime oil, something seemingly involving chargrilled eggplant given an overnight treatment (the skins I think being the end product) and further alchemy with lactose powder and maltodextrin. (Yes, he lost me there somewhere…) It was a toothsome end to an interesting avo showcasing that will possibly springboard the chefs present into some experiments of their own.

Most feature avocado only spasmodically on their menus, it seems. The occasional veloute or a brunchy avo on toast.

I wasn’t in great need of dinner at night, but I did manage to grill some herby breadcrumbed chicken drumsticks and whip up a regulation guacamole spiked with finger lime caviar and a good chilli hit washed down with a Mad Fish Gold Turtle Chardonnay. And I have some lovely Shepards to play with tomorrow.

Avocados Australia CEO Antony Allen told me weather affected supplies earlier in the season but the good news is prices should be dropping over the next couple of weeks. I'm ready.

A handful of avocado facts

Avocados don’t start ripening until they are picked.
Once picked they will take 7-10 days to ripen.
You can speed up the process by putting them in a paper bag with an apple or a banana. Some say immersing them in flour will also work.
The Aztec word for avocado was “ahuacatl” which means “testicle tree”.
Avocados contain more potassium than bananas. They are sodium and cholesterol-free.
They are a fruit, not a vegetable.
Avocados contain a major boost of vitamin E and are good for your skin.
Avocados are members of the Laurel family which also includes the bay laurel.
Avocados are a good source of both soluble and insoluble fibre.
They are also a good first solid food for babies.

Why we blog

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:29:00 +0000

I spent last Sunday at the inaugural Australian Food Bloggers' Conference, #EatDrinkBlog. The first minutes of the day were spent staring at strangers' chests - for their name and blog name. There were lots of "Aha!" moments as we put faces to Twitter names and blogs.

Naturally there was plenty of eating and drinking along the way and much food and drink talk. Now everyone is settling back into blog mode and posting their own take on proceedings.

One of the conference topics was why we blog. It seems most of us do it because we just can't help ourselves. Words like obsession, passion, addiction, self-expression were all used.

There are several genres of food blogging.

Some people are reviewers. They dissect every restaurant and cafe meal they eat. They photograph all the dishes and share them with their readers.

Others are cooks. Some specialise in baking - anything from bread to cupcakes. Some are vegans, others vegetarians, others dedicated carnivores. They cook a wide variety of ethnic dishes from Middle Eastern to Asian, Caribbean to African. They cook local and seasonal. They cook for kids, for housemates, for one, for a dozen.

Some visit food-related gatherings and destinations, everything from farmers' markets to food warehouses, farm gates to food and wine festivals.

There are recipe-driven blogs, theme blogs (bento boxes, Meatless Mondays, pies, cookbook challenges).

The food blogging community is a gregarious and generous one. Bloggers are always sharing ideas, responding to requests for restaurant recommendations, digging out recipes, helping source ingredients.

One of the better known food bloggers, Pim Techamuanvivit from California (left) joins us for dinner at St Ali. Also pictured, Melbourne bloggers Claire and Jackie

My first foray into food blogging was in 2000 when I joined the food and drink section of an online writing community, Suite101.com and on September 9, 2000 contributed my first Kiwi Kitchen article. For several years I wrote about food and cooking in New Zealand and included a recipe I'd cooked during the week. I wrote about the food markets, market gardens and specialist food outlets I visited in search of ingredients as well as an informal journal about some of the week's activities. Later on, when I came across the word "blog" I realised that was what I had been doing all along.

In the early Kiwi Kitchen days I had a small portable webcam I could take into the kitchen and take digital photos to transfer online. They were small and grainy but at least they were instantly available. Then The Spouse bought a proper digital camera and the illustrations moved up a notch. [I bought a Ricoh Caplio R4 about four years ago because I wanted a small camera to slip in my handbag. I was fortunate to get a Canon EOS 50D for Christmas and I am currently learning to master that - "read the manual" the photography gurus at the conference told us.]

Shortly after we moved Australia in 2005, Suite101.com wanted me to change my writing topic and contribute several posts a week. I prefer to call the tune. I decided it was time to start my own website and www.cookingdownunder.com was born. I migrated my Kiwi Kitchen articles to the new website, broadened the scope to Down Under and continued on. I've written newspaper food columns since the mid-70s and continue to do so today. I started posting my columns on my site after they'd been published.

Hardly a work of art - an early Webcam photo of a pork and rhubarb dish I made from a Jamie Oliver book

In 2007 Ed Charles (tomatom.com) was updating a list of food blogs (further updated here). Someone suggested my site and there was a bit of discussion about whether or not it was actually a blog. Because a lot of my newspaper columns were filed there, it wasn't as informal as my earlier writing. Always up for a new challenge, I decided to start a true blog spin-off, covering "food, wine, this and that" - leaving the door open to stray occasionally from a strictly "food" theme.

Having worked as a journalist since I was 18, I've always had an irresistible urge to write, even when my day job shifted into the corporate side of the newspaper world. The marvellous thing about blogging is the freedom to choose the topics - and set one's own deadline!

Sometimes inspiration can come from mundane things like trying to push a recalcitrant trolley around the supermarket. Or it might be joining in a fun blogger activity like the Omnivore's Hundred or attending a food festival event, going to hear a celebrity chef or grappling with a challenging ingredient. I've gone through the various gadgets that came with my food processor, thumbed through vintage recipe books, eaten some truly amazing food at incredible places . I've even pondered the reason for pyjama pockets. And 145 posts later I haven't lost any enthusiasm.

I blog because I enjoy it. And with more than a hundred people clamouring for the 45 seats at this first Australian food bloggers' conference, it's clear I am in good company.

More about #eatdrinkblog here

Up the garden path

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:17:00 +0000

On a 30C day in Melbourne, it's great to find a leafy retreat in the asphalt, brick and concrete of the central city. I found my oasis in City Square where an edible garden has sprung up for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

After four years of living in rented houses where gardening wasn't an option, we've bought our own home here and I recently planted a herb garden in four large pots on our main balcony. I love getting a bit of dirt on my hands once more. As the annual herbs die off I am planning my next round of planting. I was keen to see what the experts had been up to.

The Diggers Club has certainly shown us how even a small corner can be turned into a lush collection of goodies for the table. In the herb patch there were planter boxes of beautiful basil plants in glowing colours, parsley, sage, mints, rosemary, vigorous chives. Edible flowers peeped our from the green - black-eyed Susans, a beautiful Ipomea lobata vine with its distinctive leaves and delicate flowers and Empress of India nasturtiums in gold and scarlet.

I loved the bean tunnel and the bush beans. The bright collection of lettuce varieties and the colourful silverbeet and spinach plants showed our "greens" can come in a variety of colours.

Even I have managed to grow some dwarf tomato and pepper plants in my little patch and it was great to see cayennes, black pearl peppers and heirloom eggplants nestled among the leaves. It was the first time I had seen soya bean plants (pictured above). For those with more room, there were espaliered fruit trees, babacos and other fruit trees.

All the plants, in sturdy wooden planter boxes looked healthy and vital. Nearby compost bins and a water tank told more of the home garden story.

During the week a number of chefs spread the good word on how to make the most our fresh local produce and there were a number of garden demos

I'm inspired and I am sure many of the visitors were, too. Join me for a walk through the edible garden...

Good fortune shines on Longest Lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:22:00 +0000

When I first came to live in Melbourne, locals told me how fickle the weather was. "You can get four seasons in one day."

Little girls peer through the water wall at the NGV at the gathering lunch crowd

Fortunately yesterday Melbourne was concentrating on summer. After the hail-lashing we experienced last weekend the city turned on a glorious day for The World's Longest Lunch 2010, part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Nearly one thousand gathered at the long table under the trees outside the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road. Several other longest lunches were held throughout the state.

Four seasons in one dumpling

This year the Melbourne theme was Chinese and the first course was Three Emperors featuring crispy soft shell crab with black beans, chilli spiced duck salad and the only taste of those other seasons we were to get on the day - a delicate dumpling creation of four pockets representing the four seasons.

A wandering musician treats us to some dining music

Scotchmans Hill wines were selected for the even, beginning with NV The Hill Cuvee Brut on arrivals, the 2008 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir during the first two courses and the 2009 Swan Bay Late Harvest Riesling with dessert. As the sun beat down the wine quickly warmed up and the James Boag beers and mineral waters were in demand.

Main course was superbly tender braised lamb with soy, star anise and Shaoxing wine. It was served with a sweet potato puree, crunchy wok tossed peas, whispers of fried leeks and a scattering of pomegranate seeds. The lamb had been cooked in master stock and while maybe it was a dish more suited to a winter's day, it was extremely tasty.

The dessert was a plate of pure drama. Poached peach in a puddle of raspberry coulis and topped with a sesame tuile, was served with a mango brulee with lychees. A coconut sorbet was served on the upturned lid of a little teapot while a stream of dry ice vapour issued from the spout.

Fortune cookies

The peach is often enjoyed in China as a symbol of how sweet life is. It certainly was yesterday as we enjoyed Peter Rowland Catering's food and service. All that was needed to top off the event was a nice cup of tea - Chinese tea - and a fortune cookie promising more good things ahead.

Savoury men come to the party

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:21:00 +0000

It's time for a dip into another vintage cookbook. Here's a Melbourne one I found in Mum's collection - Party Cocktail and Buffet Recipes. It was No 5 of a Home Cooking For All series published by Colorgravure. It sold for two shillings and sixpence.

"Everything for the modern hostess," the cover boasts. "More that two hundred appetising savories and entrees, tempting sweets and other delicacies." Unfortunately the book is not dated but I like a bit of detective work and I've managed to put the book somewhere in the mid 1950s. There were several clues in the advertisements. The phone numbers consist of two letters and four numbers. I believe these were phased out round 1960. And on checking out Cookwell Self-Raising Flour I discovered it was made between, 1920 and 1960, according to the Powerhouse Museum.

There's a full page ad for the Semak Vitamizer and readers are invited to write for a recipe book featuring 400 tested recipes using the appliance. I found that particular recipe book featured on the Monash University Library website. It was issued sometime in the 1950s and the library description notes the vitamiser was seen on Bob Dyer's Pick-a-Box.

Another advertiser, Wollomba River Oyster Leases contributed a number of oyster recipes. There was a petition to wind up the company in 1957 and this was done the following year so I'm confident the book was published prior to 1957.

It was edited, compiled and tested by Wynwode Reid and the recipes were "approved by Sarah Dunne, cookery expert to the Melbourne Herald".

There's a stunning variation on the cheese and onion toothpicks stuck in an orange. It's a savoury man that looks a bit like a snowman but is made of two grapefruit and a lemon. He has raffia hair and plasticine arms and is stabbed in various places with little titbits on toothpicks.

"Half a dozen savory men, each with differently colour hair, make an effective decoration scattered over your party table. " Maybe...

Another suggested eye-catcher is a rainbow plate of stuffed hardboiled eggs. The peeled eggs are pre-soaked in water tinted with various food colourings.

Round crackers become "flower canapés" when spread with meat or anchovy paste and decorated with a ring of radish "petals" and a slice of pickled cucumber in the centre.

A lot of food has a fairly regimented look with items arranged on a plate like numbers on a clock face. Food styling was yet to come.

"Season sharply but with discretion, and don't confine your garnishes to parsley. Be colourful with watercress, radish roses, beetroot shapes, celery curls and all the edible adornments at your command."

Aspic was a favourite. "Buried treasure : Eggs in Aspic" says the caption. Half a hard-boiled egg, its yolk mashed with minced ham, mustard and mayonnaise, is set in beef stock jelly in a ramekin. The photo (above) doesn't make it look any more appetising.

Salmon rarebit, oyster rarebit, steamed chicken crowned with oyster sauce, crayfish pie, a baked chicken ring, the centre filled with mushrooms or chopped ham in a white sauce, kidney stew, macaroni cheese laced with oysters, baked liver patties encircled in bacon, toasted ham and banana sandwiches, passionfruit pavlova, orange baked Alaska, zabaglione.

Something to wash it all down is a must. How about a lime cordial, tinted to a fair deep green, ice, lemonade and a spoonful of strawberry ice cream? Chocolate egg fluff or a ginger fruit punch? All are mostly alcohol-free. However, the claret cup for 50 is made of 10 bottles of lemonade, four of soda water, 4 bottles of claret, a cup of sherry, peel and juice of two lemons, sugar to taste, orange slices and cracked ice. That will put you on your ear.

Tucked down the back of the book are half a dozen boozy cocktails bearing the tail note -Advt- though it's not clear what is being advertised as there are no brand names.

The pictures are mainly black and white but there's a very colourful basket of heavily decorated cakes in the centrespread.

It is a fascinating glimpse of what my parents' generation would serve at their parties.

Season sharply but with discretion

One of the more interesting advertisements is for Otto Wurth continental sausages manufactured at premises then located in Johnston Street, Fitzroy. There's quite a list on offer.

Wurth arrived in Australia in the 1930s and in 1958 bought Watson and Paterson's Bacon Factory in Preston from two Scotsman. The premises were bought by KR Castlemaine Foods in 1991 and run by them until 2006 when they closed it down and moved to Castlemaine. Wurth's name continues today on in a range of quality smallgoods.

There is little in the way of "exotic" food from other lands. There's wiener schnitzel, a fairly typical tame 50s "Indian" curry (with crystallised ginger, sugar removed!) and a couple of recipes with Creole or Hawaiian in the name. The influence is American, if anything, with St Valentine's Day cake and Hallowe'en cake decorated with marzipan pumpkins. I don't think Australasians were celebrating either in the 50s.

It certainly serves to emphasise what an impact immigrants eventually made on our Down Under eating habits - and for the better.

Cooking the books

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:09:00 +0000

It's great to see Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion has been shortlisted in the general category in the IACP cookbook awards. Luke Nguyen's The Songs of Sapa is a finalist in the international section and New Zealand's Al Brown, co-owner of Logan Brown restaurant in Wellington, is in the single subject finals for his book Go Fish.

In spite of various predictions about the fate of the cookbook, they keep coming out in their hundreds.

Search engine Yahoo! recently launched a survey looking at how much our lives have changed since the Web took hold. Once interesting fact emerged - 75 percent of respondents said the Web had replaced or partially replaced using cookbooks.

Another survey, taken a couple of years ago, revealed a typical British family owns 1000 recipes but the average person will try making only 35 of them. Of the 171 million cookbooks in British homes, apparently a third are never opened.

That has to be disconcerting news for cookbook writers. Why do people buy the books and not use them?

I have several hundred cookbooks and food-related books collected over four decades. That's a lot of them pictured above in my study. Some of them are well thumbed, well used, well loved, well spotted with errant kitchen matter.

During a job relocation few years back, I was faced with having to leave the majority of them in our Wellington home for the duration of our posting. I went through the collection putting red stickers on the ones I would take with me - the books I couldn't bear to be without. Some were frequently consulted reference books, others were books I cook from often.

And the ones I left behind? Several featured some fad diet or another that had never delivered what was promised. (Surprise, surprise!) Others were dated. Others were too heavy to hold for bedtime reading. More were dated, boring or featured food I wouldn't want to eat.

What makes a cookbook that will endure? No doubt we all wish we had that formula. Elizabeth David's books have stood the test of time. They first appeared in post-War Britain where tastebuds had become jaded from rationing and "making do". Read those books and recipes today and they still entice you to cook - Italian, French country, Mediterranean food. All hot items but, in essence, really just good fresh honest country produce cooked where it is grown.

When I buy a cookbook it has to satisfy several criteria. Are the recipes clearly written? Do they sound appetising? Do the photographed dishes look like they have been made from the recipes? Or are they merely a showcase for the food stylist's art and show ingredients and garnishes not mentioned in the recipes? Does the method explain what to do with each ingredient? You'd be surprised how often a cook gets left with an orphan egg or a second measure of flour that is never referred to again. Do the recipes sound like they will work? I recall judging a fish recipe competition some years ago. One entry had a couple of dozen scallops subjected to a lengthy cooking procedure both on the hob and in the oven that would have left them like chunks of truck tyre.

Another thing that is often overlooked in cookbook design is that when cooking from a book the user generally has to read the recipe from a greater distance so the type size, particularly for ingredients, should allow for that. Some cookbooks I've reviewed have fallen down badly on that score.

If I flip through a book and find there are at least six or eight recipes I am eager to try straightaway, this will invariably lead to a purchase. If there is an interesting narrative accompanying each recipe, that also appeals to me. This is particularly so in the case of ethnic fare where I like to be educated as well as introduced to new foods. While I was living with my whittled down collection, I met Sophie Grigson, TV cook and cookbook writer herself. We were discussing favourite cookbooks and I was able to assure her that hers and those written by her mother Jane Grigson were among the favourites that I'd taken with me. Both women have produced books that are a good read, as well as worth cooking from.

Eight out of 10 of the British people surveyed said they were put off trying a recipe that looked too complicated. Once they started making a recipe, many failed to stick to it. Seven out of 10 said they abandoned a recipe because they didn't have the right ingredients.

Sometimes a seemingly complicated recipe is just a matter of a long list of ingredients which, when broken down, isn't so daunting. A curry often looks long and tricky but frequently is quite straightforward once everything is assembled. It may includes several spices already in the pantry. Once one learns the various steps in putting a curry together, it's fairly plain sailing and all those exciting individual flavours add to the pleasure of eating as one bites on a seed, a piece of chilli, a fresh coriander leaf.

If a recipe contains minute amounts of ingredients one may never use again, then it can be off-putting. Sometimes these ingredients aren't vital to the finished product and can be omitted, though the flavour of the finished dish may have less depth. Others - like baking powder - are vital and can't be left out.

Once a person is confident in the kitchen, the need to follow a recipe slavishly becomes less important. Substitutions and omissions come easily. But for the novice cook, a recipe should guide the user through each stage with no mystery or ambiguity - no "I wonder what they mean when they say 'julienne' the carrots."

Other "complicated" looking recipes might merely be the author talking a less experienced cook through some basic kitchen techniques. Julia Child was a great one for holding one's hand and explaining each stage of a dish, often in minute detail.

Sometimes in this busy world it's easier to throw together an old favourite that doesn't need prompting from a recipe book. But I think it is a good idea to pull one of those cookbooks off the shelf at least once a week and try something new. Or to go out and find a challenging ingredient and search for a recipe. My recent escapade with a pig's head is the sort of thing I'm talking about. Let's keep the cookbook industry going!

How often do you use a cookbook? Who is your favourite cookbook author and why? Please share your thoughts.

Cooking with gas

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:12:00 +0000

Today I received a letter from our gas supplier telling me the meter reader has been unable to access our gas meter so our bills have been an estimate based on the amount of gas used here before.

A bit mystifying. The area where the meter is located is about 3.5 x 2.5 meters. It's not exactly a grand country estate. The house is part of a larger complex and all the meters are located in the same position on each section. Anyone with a modicum of nous could find our meter in 10 seconds.

Certainly it has a small plant in front of it but access is easy. And it's visible from the other side of the fence. The reader would have had to walk past it to visit other properties in the complex.

I phone the retailer – let’s not be coy, it’s AGL – and for 20 minutes I listen to a song about “the world will be a better place, for you and me...”. It will indeed, if they answer my call. Eventually the human comes on the line. She’s friendly and efficient. Seems the meter hasn’t been read since August and we’ve been receiving estimates since then.

According to the letter, “As your gas retailer, we are required to issue you with an accurate bill based on your meter data.”

I don’t have a problem with that. We’ve had grossly exaggerated energy bills based on “estimates” in the past.

But then the customer services lady tells me we will have to pay $23 for the meter to be read.

I don’t think so. That's about 18 days' worth of gas at current rates. I decline.

I’ve already checked the meter myself and their estimate is higher than our actual use, so I don’t think we’re in for any nasty surprises.

If they are required to base their bills on actual readings, then I think it’s up to them to make sure their meter readers do what they are supposed to do and not charge us twice to get the job done.

I suggest, “Next time the meter reader comes around, tell them to knock on the door and I will show them where the meter is.” She says she will note that on the file. I hope she did.

I am happy to read the meter for them. It's not exactly rocket science. But it will cost them $23…

Food porn? I don't think so...

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:35:00 +0000

I don't think the Chianti will do much to pep up this dish

I have a plan to catalogue my cookbooks one of these days. I’ve been collecting them for more than 40 years, so I have a fair few.

It’s a task I’ve attempted before. When I first got a Mac there was an application called Hypercard and I learned enough of the programming language to start my cookbook database. However, along the way I changed computers, floppy disks became museum items and my database probably ended up at the tip.

I had a shot at labelling and sorting the books via the Dewey decimal system. Unfortunately cookbooks come in a wide range of shapes and sizes so that wasn’t very successful. Now that my books have a permanent home and have all come out of their cartons, I will give it another go – once I’ve worked out a logical filing system that means I will no longer have to stand scanning many shelves for a single volume. Yes, my current system is based on size alone and has NO logic. Anyone with a brilliant system – please let me know!

The fish is triumphantly crowned with a prawn

During the uncartoning I came across Quick & Easy Cook Cards – the Continental Favourites edition. These sets of cards were put out by Paul Hamlyn during the late 60s. I remember making the Duckling a l’orange but clearly the rest can’t have spurred me on because they are pristine.

The pictures serve to emphasise how food styling and photography have changed over the years. While the ubiquitous Chiani battle has appeared, the photos aren’t crowded with as much impedimenta as later ones where the main dish often played second fiddle to a lavish arrangement of scattered fruit, vegetables, Grandma’s silver, flowers, nuts, cane baskets, candles, table napkins. Nevertheless there’s nothing of today’s “food porn” and the dishes don’t shout “Cook me!”

A bad day on My Kitchen Rules?

Four forelorn sausages lie stranded on a mound of sauerkraut interspersed with fatty wodges of streaky bacon. A piped border of instant potato holds the rolled up fish fillets and their sea of creamy spinach sauce in place. Confrontational flat poached eggs settle in on a bed of frozen spinach underpinned by a lot of spaghetti in Eggs Florentine. All a bit depressing, really.

On the back of the Andalusian Chicken card, the quick tip suggest adding a few drops of yellow food colouring to deepen the colour of the saffron rice. “Do not omit the powdered saffron altogether or the rice will not have the characteristic delicate flavour.”

The card sets sold for 5/- in the UK when they were first released. I paid $NZ2.50 for mine. They often appear on eBay but they don’t appear to be top sellers.

A taste of what's to come

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:35:00 +0000

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so this will be brief. Today Beechworth’s Michael Ryan from Provenance (The Age Good Food Guide best new country restaurant) and Nicolas Poelaert from Embrasse (The Age young chef of the year) prepared a veritable feast in celebration of the forthcoming Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Their inspiration was the beautiful local food, which was matched with wines from Coldstream Hills and Scotchman’s Hill for the media launch at Abbotsford Convent.

Raw zucchini, goats curd, zucchini confiture, parmesan gel, olive and tomato sauces, thyme (Provenance)

Heirloom tomatoes (olive-brined, dried, fresh and slow roasted), chilli, cucumber, gazapcho, sourdough croutons (Provenance)

John Dory cooked with squid, Daylesford beetroots, burnt carrot puree, rice paddy herb, glory spinach (Embrasse)

Confit chicken wings, dashi-braised eggplant, daikon, spring onion, konbu no tsukudani (Provenance)

Mr Donati’s pork belly, Warrandyte cherries, QV Market fresh mustard, Embrasse’s own white carrots rolled in very starchy potato, stuffed capsicum from Albert in Sunbury (Embrasse)

Hazelnut parfait, meringue, honey/chocolate, sorrel mint granita (Embrasse)

Yes, it tasted every bit as good as it looked. No, I don't need dinner tonight...

Mmmm... mussels

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:11:00 +0000

There have been plenty of tomatoes to choose from lately and the flavour has definitely improved from the sad watery winter ones we were buying a few months back.

I like the smaller firm ones from Doncaster and Adelaide, calyxes still attached. They are not all a uniform red but still have patches of green and yellow and continue ripening quite happily in a basket on the bench. They're great in sandwiches or in a salad.

I'm not quite so picky when it comes to tomatoes that are going to be cooked so I was quick to bag myself some ripe but still firm 99 cents a kilo ones at the market on the weekend for a pot of mussels that night.

I've just planted a herb garden in large pot on the balcony and it's good to be able to grab and handful of fresh herbs when I want them. Along with the common basil, I've put in some Greek basil. The leaves are smaller and the flavour more intense and that's what I wanted for this dish.

These were Tasmanian mussels, $9.95 for a 1kg bag

Mussels with tomatoes and fennel

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion
1 medium head of fennel
2 cloves garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
8 tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 cup white wine
1 teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper
handful chopped basil - Greek basil if you have it
1kg mussels
1 small bunch flat leaf parsley

Pick over the mussels, removing any beards.

Slice the onion. Remove the root end and stalks from the fennel and save any feathery bits for garnish. Thinly slice the bulb.

Cut a cross in the bottom of each tomato and pour boiling water over them. Let stand for a minute then slip off the skins and remove the cores.

Heat the olive oil and sauté the onion, fennel and garlic over a gentle heat until tender. Turn the heat up to medium and add the fennel seeds and chilli flakes. Cook for a minute then add the wine and stir for a further minute. Add quartered tomatoes and the sugar, stir then cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Check the seasoning and add salt and freshly ground pepper as necessary. Add a handful of chopped basil.

Tip in the mussels, cover and steam for five minutes. The mussels are ready when the shells open. Discard any that remain closed. Give the mussels a stir, sprinkle over the parsley (and chopped fennel fronds if using) and serve immediately in deep bowls with crusty bread.

Mussel eating tip: Use an empty hinged mussel shell like pincers to pull cooked mussels from the shell.

Pigging out

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:03:00 +0000

This is a pig tale. Actually it's more of a tale about a pig's head. If you're squeamish, stop reading now and go and watch your Andre Rieu DVD.

The story started on Australia Day when I went to watch some Pommy friends taking part in their citizenship ceremony. We continued on to their home for breakfast and over a glass of bubbly another reveller and I were talking food, as you do. He was reminiscing fondly of the brawn his Irish granny used to make. I wistfully recalled the brawn my mother served up. He decided he would like to make some and asked if I could search out a recipe for him.

I emailed him a selection and suddenly I had a whim to try making some myself. I'm a veteran of dismantling rabbits, pressed tongue, chicken liver pate, terrines and so on. Why not a new challenge?

Brine the head first 2get blood & umphga out - Podchef

First find your pig's head. I got a couple of leads from the folks at egullet.com. I live near the South Melbourne Market so thought I'd start there. Sure, said one of the butchers at Tony's. "We can order one in. It will be a week."

Meanwhile I did my homework. I turned first to net friend, Podchef Neal Foley, who farms on an island in Washington state, rears pigs and is a head-to-tail consumer of pork. Yes, he made brawn. He advised me to brine the head first "2get blood & umphga out". Eww. I didn't bother asking what "umphga" was. I didn't need to know.

Fellow blogger Ed Charles posted a photo of three pig's heads via Twitter and reality set in. This could be a messy business.

I consulted various books. "Remove hair." Oh. I wondered if I could use The Spouse's electric razor. Probably not a good idea. A scraper one would be better. Would I need shaving cream?

In another book I saw teeth and gums mentioned and I was starting to get nervous. I checked YouTube and found a couple of relevant videos. The sight of someone cleaning out a pig's auditory canal gave me another tense moment. It was all getting very intimate.

Had my pig's head arrived at Tony's?

"Stop being a wuss," I told myself and bravely fronted up at Tony's on Friday. "Did my pig's head come in?" (One last chance to chicken out?) Yes, it was there. The deed had to be done.

Not having any serious body dismantling tools in my batterie de cuisine, I asked the butcher if he could cut the tête de porc in half for me. I'd jettisoned my large preserving pan during a move and the head wasn't going to fit into my pasta pot. I would have to cook it in the oven and it would ideally need to be in two pieces to do that.

As I pulled my granny trolley down the bluestone cobbles I was mentally chanting the old nursery rhyme as we jiggety-jigged home.

I placed my purchase on the bench. One ear was poking out of the bag waving at me. I had to give the pig a name. Petunia. It may well have been a Percival but from this end that was purely academic.

A forelorn ear poked out of the bag

The business side - teeth, gums, lymph glands but hopefully no "umphga"

Petunia was remarkably clean. In fact I was pretty sure she'd been brined and a quick lick of her ear confirmed it. The ear canal was clean, too. There wasn't much hair in sight and my kitchen blowtorch soon got rid of that.

No need for shaving cream when you shave with a blowtorch

My $1 bag of chicken carcasses went in the pasta pot with celery, carrots, onions, seasoning and a large bunch of herbs to make some stock for cooking Petunia, plus some for the risotto that night.

A pot full of the good stuff for stock

Petunia was placed in the roasting pan and into the fridge for the night.

Goodnight, Petunia

Next day I dropped some cloves and peppercorns in the pan and added the stock. Petunia spent the next four hours in a 175C oven.

Outa the fridge and into the oven

Then it was time to carve her up. I salvaged all the bits that looked like real meat. I think I successfully avoided lymph glands, gums, and other nasty bits. But I did use the tongue.

The fat has been stripped off - now for the meat

I know there will be brawn purists who will say I am wasteful, but I'm one of those people who cuts all the fat off meat so very little made it into the brawn. And as there are only two of us here to eat it, I didn't want it on the menu for days. And yes, I probably could have rendered down the fat but then I am not a regular lard user, either.

Meaty chunks, including the tongue

I reheated the cooking liquid, strained it through blue kitchen cloth and added a sheet of soaked gelatine just in case it was needed. I administered a little more seasoning and some freshly ground nutmeg to the diced meat, placed it in a bowl and poured on the liquid. A saucer and weight went on top down before putting the brawn in the fridge to set.

The solids are strained from the stock

The diced meat is seasoned again and the stock poured on

The brawn is weighted down with a can on a saucer

The big reveal - the unmoulding - was completely lacking in drama. Obligingly, out it popped, a pretty mix of porky bits shining through the jelly.

Petunia, you did me proud.

Last night we sliced into the brawn and had it with potato salad, some cooled cooked asparagus, and a tomato and cucumber salad with red wine vinegar dressing. It was very tasty, perhaps denser and meatier than the brawn of my youth.

Would I make it again? If I had a large enough pot to simmer the head in, probably. But I think next time I might opt for a mix of pigs' trotters, some ox tongue and maybe a chunk of pork shoulder instead of the head. I was fairly generous with the seasoning and I still could have been heavier-handed.

Leftovers for a lunchtime sandwich

Various forms of brawn exist in many culinary cultures throughout the world. For more reading check out Wikipedia

Definition of brawn
Chiefly British
a. A boar's or swine's flesh, esp when boiled and pickled
b. Headcheese

Origin of word:
1275–1325; ME brawne < OF braon slice of flesh (Pr bradon) < Gmc; cf. G Braten joint of meat, akin to OE brǣd flesh

Passengers from hell

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:02:00 +0000

Mother's little angel at home, but on a flight he can turn into a right little devil

Taking a commercial flight is a bit like being held hostage for a few hours. You are at the mercy of those around you.

Your fellow passengers can make your flight pleasant or sheer hell. And the length of the journey certainly has a lot to do with how bearable the experience is.

One trip, mercifully a short one, found me sitting behind a large man who clearly hadn’t been near a shower for days. He had atrocious BO, the sort that remained in my nostrils long after he had heaved his body out of the seat, readjusted the cap on his lank hair, and waddled off the plane.

Where possible, I like to have an aisle seat, leaving me with at least one free elbow when it comes to meal times. It’s usually my luck to get sandwiched between a couple of lanky man with long arms who flap them like wings as they dive into the airline food. I don’t exclude The Spouse from this category. In fact, The Spouse can be an occasional burden. He’s very tall and usually starts complaining about the lack of leg space from the moment the seat numbers are assigned.

The incessant talker is another burden. On one flight last year the chap next to me had almost related his entire marital history by the time the plane had taken off. I was losing track of which wife he was talking about. Mercifully the flight attendant offered me a seat up the pointy end once the seatbelt sign was switched off.

My last flight across the Tasman earlier this month turned into another nightmare. We were in the first row behind business class so The Spouse had plenty of leg room. Minutes into the flight and I could feel a regular pushing from the seat behind me. It was abundantly apparent there was a small crotchety human behind me with its parents. Mother was trying desperately to humour little angel. I had a mental picture of child struggling on mother’s lap, incessantly kicking the back of my seat.

Once we were free to adjust our seat backs, I sent mine back a notch to make the kicking more of a challenge for the kid. Not much joy so I pushed it back further, hoping Mother would pass Angel over to Father. Father seemed to be one of the non-functioning variety – he was probably wearing noise-cancelling headphones judging from his lack of involvement.

Anyway, my second seat adjustment caused Mother to lean forward and say “Could you put your seat back up - I have a child back here!”

“Well,” I said as politely as I could, “Would you mind asking him to stop kicking my seat?”

The 'oblivious parent' is the worst offender

The seat assault continued unabated. It wasn’t until some time later when I went to use the bathroom I discovered Angel wasn’t sitting on Mother’s lap – he was stuffed down in the space in front of her, his head just emerging above her knees. No wonder he was struggling and sniffling.. Yep, some kids do ‘ave ‘em.

But I’ve also sat next to mothers who are at great pains to make sure their kids don’t worry fellow passengers and I’ve gladly held babies and toddlers while Mum has her own meal.

According to a “passenger from hell” survey of 155,000 members of tripadvisor.com, 39% of voters chose the “oblivious parent” as the worst offender – ones like Mother above who let their kids annoy other passenger. “Their kids kick your seat from takeoff to touchdown. But these parents might as well be miles away.”

Next on the list was the space intruder, followed by the bio-hazard – the person whop sneezes, sniffles and sweats the journey. The chatterbox and the smelly snacker were ahead of the carryall passenger who fills nearby overhead lockers and the space in front of your seat with her stuff. Seventh was the passenger with the itchy trigger-finger forever pressing the call button to gain attention.

Next was the seat swapper trolling the cabin “trying to trade up, or give you their best puppy eyes and plead, ‘Can you let us sit together?’ “ Fortunately I’ve not encountered those.

Then there’s the nervous wreck, white-knuckling it the whole journey. I’ve found you can really get these ones going, if you ask them “Any idea what time we land in Adelaide?” when in fact you’re en route to Sydney.

Finally there’s the “entertainment director” who is blasting his tunes or watching car chase movies on his laptop. I had one sitting next to me on that recent flight, with the sound up to max on his headphones. Still, it could have been worse - I could have been flying to the UK...

Shooting star

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:06:00 +0000

I’m very fond of the food at ezard in Melbourne's Flinders Lane so last year I bought a copy of Teage Ezard’s lovely cookbook, ezard.

It’s an elegant collection of his contemporary Australia recipes and what I particularly like about it is that it’s a great resource for inspiration. You don’t have to make complete dishes – you can borrow a dressing from one, a salad from another, a sauce from somewhere else.

When I was looking for something special to serve as a starter for the family Christmas dinner, I remembered ezard’s oyster shooters. Teage Ezard says this is one of the most successful dishes he has ever created. In fact it’s the dish that prompted me to buy the cookbook.

“It features on every menu and is always in demand,” he says.

I certainly go for it whenever I dine there. I think he might tweak the dish occasionally. One Valentine’s Day he substituted swordfish for the molluscs in this Japanese-inspired signature dish.

The chef said he invented the dish after reading that Japanese wine tastes better once the alcohol has been burnt off.

“I tried it out and then started to experiment with the addition of extra flavours.”

It’s a dish that needs to be started at least couple of days ahead of time, but that’s never a bad thing when it means less to do on the big day, whatever the occasion.

It’s easy to make. Just take care when igniting the sake mix – use a long match. It took quite a while for the alcohol to burn off.

You can find wasabi powder at Asian grocery suppliers. It’s a useful condiment to have in the pantry.

Teage Ezard’s Japanese-inspired oyster shooters

Shooter mix
(Make 2 days ahead of time)

1 litre mirin
250ml sake
75ml Japanese rice wine vinegar
50ml light soy sauce
2 tablesspoons wasabi powder

Oysters

18 oysters, freshly shucked
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
1 teaspoon pickled ginger

Shooter mix: Put the mirin and sake in a non-reactive saucepan and bring to the boil. Once the wines reach boiling point, light a match and burn off the alcohol fumes. Be careful! Once the flames have subsided, remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Pour into a glass jug or decanter and then add the rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and wasabi powder and stir until the wasabi has completely dissolved. Keep upright in the fridge for 24-48 hours, which allows the wasabi sediment to sink to the bottom. Strain off the clear liquid, being careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator (it will keep for up to 1 week).

Oysters: Gently rinse each oyster in cold water and remove any grit from the shell. Cover with a damp cloth and refrigerate until needed.

To serve: Place an oyster in each chilled shot glass and fill with shooter mix. Use a teaspoon to carefully bring the oyster to the top – it should float. Top each oyster with a small blob of wasabi paste and some pickled ginger and serve immediate for maximum impact. Makes 18 shooters.

It features on every menu and is always in demand - Teage Ezard

An ill wind in the old home town

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:56:00 +0000

Wellington flags fly proudly horizontal

We’ve just been back to the old home town – Wellington, New Zealand.

The Spouse and I were both born there, met and married there, worked there, bought our first home there, raised our sons there.

We’ve always been loyal to Wellington. We’ve defended its blustery winds that push pedestrians all over the footpath in a kind of merry square dance.

“It’s so gorgeous on a calm sunny day,” we’d assure visitors.

We’ve been philosophical about cancelled ferry sailings. We’ve been optimistic enough to front up at the airport for a holiday flight when the terminal is losing parts of the roof thanks to a 150 km/h gale. Of course, our flight was cancelled – but probably only because no planes were able to land and therefore there were none available to fly us anywhere.

In the days before political correctness and health and safety issues put a stop to the celebration of Guy Fawkes night, we spent many a November 5 battling the chilly winds to light the fire crackers for the kids. Errant sky rockets kept the city’s firemen busy extinguishing scrub fires on the surrounding hills.

Carols by candlelight at a harbourside park meant windbreakers, blankets and vacuum flasks of hot drinks.

No one seriously contemplated a barbecue on Christmas Day. It was always too cold and windy. In fact the Christmas school holidays could come and go with little change in the level of the sunscreen bottle’s contents. It was only when the kids went back to school in late January that the weather would become “more settled” – a euphemism for less wind.

Intrepid anglers relish the stiff breeze at Makara

A summer’s day at the beach meant sand in the sandwiches, kids shivering at the water’s edge. runny noses and woolly jumpers. Everyone would be irritated though we’d try to be cheerful. It was seriously hard work even for me, an incurable optimist.

The annual pilgrimage to a rented beach house at Waikanae, an hour’s drive north of the city, was usually a game of Russian roulette with the weather we prayed wouldn't follow us up the coast. Mostly it didn't except for 1991 when we spend far too much time watching the Gulf War unfold on TV. Even board games did little to cheer anyone up as we waited for a break in the weather. But we always went prepared for a game of beach cricket.

Our lads played cricket from the time they were able to wield a bat. Wellington has the greatest collection of windswept sportsgrounds and I reckon I’ve spent a chilly Saturday at most of them. Both boys became highly competent bowlers. They could compensate for a head wind, a tail wind, a crosswind and still maintain accuracy.

Now I might be exaggerating just a little – but certainly not very much. Living in another city for the past four years has meant we have become accustomed to more settled weather. Even though Melbourne boasts four seasons in one day, a seven-day weather forecast is not constantly revised with the hopeful golden suns vanishing behind clouds and projected maximum temperatures being revised downwards. We can plan ahead for a barbecue and know it will be a calm warm night with no need for a Plan B.

And so we headed back across the ditch last weekend to visit family, not expecting any sort of climatic miracle. There wasn’t one. The temperature never lifted above 20C. The harbour was full of white caps, the usual winds contributed a generous chill factor and 20C “felt like” 16.

This surfer is also unfazed by a wind that literally took my breath away

As we drove around our old haunts, reality struck. Why bother making excuses? We no longer felt compelled to be loyal. We looked at each other and agreed - Wellington’s summer weather is pathetic, it’s crap, it’s rubbish. The truth is gusts of more than 60 km per hour blast the city 173 days a year and summer is not exempt. This year is no exception, residents report sadly.

If you're visiting Wellington, don’t let all those “silly season” stories in the local newspaper about mythical hot summers fool you. They’re tourist propaganda written by people with vivid imaginations and long-term memory loss.

Most old Wellington journos can tell you about the real summer stories they wrote – interviews with unhappy campers sitting dejectedly round caravan parks in ankle deep mud, people hanging about Wellington’s airline and ferry terminals waiting for the wind to stop and the sun to start, Wellington Cup punters bravely trying to keep their hats on, big audiences at the movies, all those Christmas bikes, skates and sporting gear stored in the garage for that clear, calm day. Even kites aren't much good - they can be stripped to shreds in minutes.

Well, at least there’s one addition to the Wellington skyline that shows the locals are perhaps getting the message – a wind farm has sprung up on the Makara hills to take advantage of an abundant natural resource…

There's no shortage of that vital resource at the windfarm on the Makara hills

An earlier blog about Wellington's wind plus some dramatic photos >>

Preserved fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:57:00 +0000

Some years ago I bought a couple of lidded terracotta containers for storing onions and potatoes in the pantry. Six months back we moved house and the new kitchen had slide-out wire vegetable baskets and no real space for the terracotta pots. I thought they might do as plant containers once I got my proposed balcony garden growing and set them aside.

Several new planters with plants were installed this week and the landscaper pointed out the old vegetable pots sitting in the garage. We went to look inside them to see if they had drainage holes and were both rather surprised with what we found.

I thought I’d emptied the pots prior to shifting. However, inside the onion pot an orange was resting on an oven mitt (which was in turn resting on decaying onions). But the amazing thing was the orange was still much as it must have been when placed in the pot. After six months it didn’t appear to have undergone any deterioration aside from losing a slight amount of moisture from the skin. I cut it in half and it was still juicy.

It hadn’t gone the least bit mouldy and I am now wondering about the preserving properties of terracotta pots. True, the onions were a bit past it. But I am wondering if something from them might have stopped mould from developing on the orange, as I would have expected.

One of life’s little mysteries…

What a pearler!

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:47:00 +0000

I had a minor moment of trepidation last week. I received a letter from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. It was an OMG moment as I pondered what I'd done wrong.

I've had dealings with these people when shifting countries four years ago. I'd gone online and read all their rules and regulations. The contents of my pantry, including all the herbs and spices were jettisoned or given to charity. My car was steam-cleaned from front bumper to back. Anything organic among our belongings that might possibly contain pests or diseases and be a threat to Australia were dumped. My conscience was clear.

Once our belongings hit Australian soil, AQIS was there checking them out. There was a little scarecrow my youngest had given me one birthday. It just happened to have a couple of sticks of straw I'd overlooked. The AQIS crew sniffed it out of the container and passed the death sentence. Actually, I think they said it could be fumigated at a cost, but I thought it was past its use-by date anyway.

My car had to be steam-cleaned again and it that would cost me round $150 - or they could destroy it for $27! I wondered how they arrived at that precise amount. No point in arguing or they might do the $27 deed. I coughed up for the auto sauna. The car mechanic who did the roadworthiness check a few days later wryly observed the cleaner had missed the dead bird resting in the engine compartment.

I've travelled back and forth to New Zealand numerous times since shifting here and I've always been super-diligent about not carrying anything that might compromise biosecurity either side of the Tasman. It's easier to ditch all the goodie bags from a food writers' conference than have to declare anything.

There's usually an alert official somewhere who'll look at my entry document and say "Oh, a food writer. Are you carrying any food, any samples?" Not me. I've watched fellow travellers having their clothing, herbal teas, plant-based medicines, animal products and general dirty linen aired in public and I wouldn't dare. I'm the sort of person who fears the breath-freshening mint in my handbag might be deemed "food" and I am well aware of the consequences of introducing exotic pests and diseases.

So the official envelope gave me a shock. It was a "Notice of intention to seize goods." A package addressed to me had been inspected at the Melbourne Gateway Facility and, in accordance with sub-section 68(3) of the Quarantine Act 1908, was going to be seized and destroyed or "otherwise disposed of in any way that the Director of Quarantine thinks appropriate", unless it was exported from Australia within 30 days.

Who had done this to me? What had they posted me?

Question 1 remains unanswered. AQIS wasn't naming names. As for Question 2, there was the answer in black and white. The offending shipment was a 760g package of "fresh baby perlas". Potatoes, no less. I suppose some eager beaver PR person wasn't paying attention to destination when they posted out samples to food writers.

Thanks to omniscient Google New Zealand, I discovered Perlas are a tiny new season potato, newcomers to the market. They are grown in New Zealand by A S Wilcox and Sons Ltd. They are sold cleaned and ready for the pot so if the Director of Quarantine thinks death by boiling would be a good way of disposing of the illicit spuds, I suggest he makes the Melbourne Gateway team some Greek style Perlas with Lemon Dressing for a job well done.

Oh, look, why don't I just post the recipe for him - one I've grabbed from the Wilcox website. Here in Oz we can use little cocktail spuds and pretend.

Greek Style Perlas Potatoes and Lemon Dressing

500g Perlas potatoes, cut in half
2 small red onions, thinly sliced
400g can chickpeas, drained & washed
175g cherry tomatoes, halved
175g sliced capsicum
50g black olives, pitted and chopped
small handful of flat leaved parsley, shredded
salt and freshly ground pepper

Dressing:
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 Tsp grated lemon zest
1 Tsp Dijon mustard

Place Perlas in a saucepan of cold water. Bring to the boil then simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender, then drain.

Place the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl, season with a little salt and freshly ground pepper, then whisk together.

Put the potatoes into a bowl and whilst still warm pour over half of the dressing, leave to cool. Add the onion, chickpeas, capsicum, tomatoes, olives and parsley, then the remaining dressing, toss together.

Serve at room temperature. Serves 4-6

Recipe and photo © A S Wilcox and Sons Ltd

Cabs rank poorly

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:46:00 +0000

Victoria's taxi industry is in the headlights again with the Department of Transport's annual report showing the customer satisfaction index at 60.3 out of 100 for 2008-09 and falling short of the 64.4 target. At least it's a slight improvement on last year when only 58 out of every 100 passengers were happy with their cab ride.

There may be more taxis in Melbourne, but there are also more passengers angry with drivers' lack of knowledge and the poor state of some cabs. An inspection of all cabs showed only 72 percent met quality standards.

Two years ago New York city instigated a crackdown on taxi drivers for rule violations, particularly the rule that passengers must be able to pay by credit card in certain cabs. They sent out 60 to 100 undercover agents each day as part of an ongoing sting operation, called Operation Secret Rider.

Agents boarded cabs posing as normal riders and instructed the cabbie to take a trip of about 10 blocks. Afterwards, the agents insisted on paying with a credit card. If the drivers refused to allow the credit card payment, they could be fined up to $350. Agents also fined drivers who broke the rules including being discourteous (a $150 fine) or talking on a cellphone while driving (a $200 fine).

At first the cab drivers were up in arms, particularly on the credit card issue. Many lied to passengers for months that the new credit card machines weren't working. But now, according to Ryan Sager writing at Smart Money, NY cab drivers are making more money because of the credit card machines - people are more generous with their plastic that with cold cash.

"New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission reports that revenues are up 13% from the end of last year, despite a recession which is hitting the taxi industry hard in other cities. Tips, meanwhile, have risen to an average of 22% on credit-card transactions, up from around 10% under the old, cash-only system," Sager writes.

Maybe it's time for Melbourne to implement its own sting.

Clearly some cab drivers take water saving to an extreme and fail to shower and apply deodorant before going on duty. It's no use spraying the car with some nasty deodoriser that only magnifies driver-pong. If it's a long hot shift, drivers should also freshen up when they take a toilet break. Local taxi driver rights and responsibilities state: "Passengers have a right to expect taxi drivers to be neat, clean and tidy in appearance and without offensive body odour."

We had to cut short a cab ride one night because the driver's BO was nauseatingly unbearable. I complained to the cab company concerned but received absolutely no acknowledgement from them.

From 1936 - one way of avoiding driver body odour?

I think a few undercover agents would soon flush out those taxi drivers who haven't the vaguest idea where they are going. Why should I be held to ransom by a cabbie eyeballing the map in his lap and not the traffic, or programming his GPS as he drives?

Victoria cab drivers are "expected to know of major destinations within their zone, including airports, major railway stations, major hotels and sporting and cultural facilities". Often they don't, making it very difficult for out-of-town passengers.

One night we hailed a cab but when the driver established we were going only as far as the next suburb, he refused to take us. Clearly not a profitable enough journey. Undercover boys would have had his number on their pad PDQ and reminded him "once hailed, a driver cannot refuse a fare that is too short or inconvenient".

I watched several drivers on a cab rank refuse to take one young (sober) woman on board one night because she wanted to go just a couple of blocks. As others in the queue started remonstrating with the cabbies, one grudgingly let her into his car. Some cities allow patrons the upper hand and they can choose any taxi on the rank, a great idea if you have a preferred taxi company that offers proper service.

Sure, a cab driver's job is a hard one. They have to deal with drunken passengers, rude passengers, belligerent passengers, vomiting passengers. They're poorly paid. Some of them are struggling students. But if I want to be a hairdresser, I have to know how to cut and tint hair. If I want to be a brain surgeon, I have to acquire the qualifications and skills. If I want to be a taxi driver, I should know the geography of my city.

The latest silliness in cab world is the capsule installed in some cars to protect the driver from attack by passengers. Yes, I appreciate drivers are entitled to be safe from potentially dangerous passengers. It's the design of these protective capsules that's the issue. I've travelled in three cabs recently that have been fitted with them and there has barely been enough room behind the driver for a passenger of my height (155cm) let alone anyone nudging 180cm. Maybe it's part of a conspiracy to make taxis passenger-free. We're such a nuisance.

Julia's omelet

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:12:00 +0000

I was flicking through Twitter and noticed @stickifingers had posted a YouTube link to a video showing Julia Child making an omelet.

It was just on lunchtime so I headed for the kitchen, grabbed a couple of eggs laid by a chook living the good life and got cooking. I usually make a fork-assisted omelet, pouring in the lightly mixed eggs and pushing the omelet’s edges towards the middle to allow uncooked egg to spill over round the edge of the pan.

Child’s method is to lightly beat the seasoned eggs with a little water, place a tablespoon of butter in a deep pan on high heat, swirling the pan so the butter coats the bottom and sides. When the butter is bubbling, the eggs are poured in. The pan is then shaken fairly enthusiastically until the egg is cooked and flicked a couple of times so the omelet slides to one edge of the pan. The pan is then held over a plate and slowly inverted until the omelet slides out onto the plate.

I could have done with a slightly deeper pan than my crepe pan but it was all relatively painless. No drama. A beautiful omelet which I finished with a scattering of cress.

Saucy surprise

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:28:00 +0000

I was browsing through an old cookbook this morning - Lady Maclean's Book of Sauces and Surprises.

The book failed to survive a purge at Wellington Library about 10 years ago and I picked it up, along with a few others, for a mere dollar. It emerged from a carton after a recent shift. Time to read it.

The title intrigued me. I like surprises.

The book starts with the basics and covers the traditional stocks, before detouring through the busy cooks' cheats using tinned soups, bouillon cubes, tinned clam juice and the like. A mild surprise, perhaps.

The usual suspects are there, too. The classic French sauces, the emulsion sauces, traditional English and American sauces.

Admiral Ross's Indian Devil Mixture attracted my attention but it was a fairly tame mix of cold gravy, ketchup, English mustard, butter, curry paste, vinegar and salt mixed smoothly on a soup plate then used as the stewing medium for some cold meat.

Victorian Cockle Sauce sounded a little exhausting with 100 cockles to diligently clean before cooking was even considered.

A Good Sauce for Prawn Cocktails (this book was first published in 1978) was a more refined version of the ubiquitous mayo/tomato sauce/lemon juice concoction that did the dinner party rounds of the time.

Goodness knows what President Jimmy Carter did with his special sauce: "Puree 4 or 5 bananas with about 75g/3 oz peanut butter. Pass through a fine sieve and mix with mayonnaise" but Veronica Maclean's verdict was, "Not as strange as it sounds. In fact a new and interesting flavour."

There are some store cupboard sauces for thrifty cooks to make for themselves instead of buying the commercial versions. These include Worcestershire Sauce, Harvey's Sauce and the scary-sounding Government Sauce which was flagged as "the universal tomato ketchup at its best: it comes from Washington DC". I wonder if President Obama has latched onto that?

Elizabeth Arden's Special Dressing didn't contain any face cream but it did have Worcestershire Sauce, tarragon vinegar, onion, oil, egg yolks, horseradish, parsley, watercress, Veg-e-sal ("vital to the recipe") and a teaspoon of monosodium glutamate. She must have liked it - it made three cups of the stuff.

I was nearing the end of the book and still no great surprises. In fact, some of the 600 recipes sounded worth trying.

Then among the cold sauces "from all over" I spotted one from Australia, specifically from Melbourne.

"This sounds peculiar but tastes good with a cold chicken or a cold duck salad." And the recipe "Simply fold about 75g/3 oz sieved marmalade into the mayonnaise." Well, well, well.

I've looked in various older Australian cookbooks for this "Marmalade Mayonnaise" without success. Was it really a Melbourne specialty? No word in Stephanie Alexander's magnum opus The Cook's Companion.

Google couldn't throw any light on the subject. 1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die didn't mention it. I trawled through my sauce books and cooking textbooks. Naught. I was beginning to think some Aussie joker must have pulled Lady M's leg.

Then I came upon Ambrose Heath's 1948 work, The Book of Sauces. There it was - another recipe for Marmalade Mayonnaise Sauce, though used slightly differently.

"To a teacupful of mayonnaise sauce add two tablespoonfuls of orange marmalade and serve with fruit salad." And the origin? "American."

Surprise, surprise!

This sounds peculiar but tastes good with a cold chicken or a cold duck salad

Footnote: Veronica, Lady Maclean was a diplomat's wife and socialite who wrote several books, including cookbooks. Her first husband died young and she then married Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean who was later created a baronet.

They travelled widely during their 50 years together and her cookbooks contain recipes from many people she encountered along the way. Another I have in my library, Second Helpings and More Diplomatic Dishes features recipes from many diplomatic gastronomes, augmented with others "begged, borrowed or stolen from good cooks and cookery writers".

She died in 2005 aged 85.

In Julia's kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:47:00 +0000

As last I’ve joined the rest of the food-writing world and seen Julie and Julia, an enjoyable two-hour journey that made me remember what an influence she had on my own cooking.

I first became acquainted with Julia Child in the 1970s when her TV programmes were shown in New Zealand. I’d been cooking enthusiastically for years, ever since I discovered Elizabeth David’s cookbooks and slowly widened my own gastronomic horizons.

Certainly one of the most glorious reasons to master French puff pastry is the Pithiviers

Alas, many of the ingredients in David’s books had not reached New Zealand shores. The “ethnic” food of the early 1960s was largely Cantonese fare that seemed more chicken skin and cabbage than even vaguely exotic. And our “curries” made with mince, curry powder, sultanas and rice, with an occasional side of sliced banana.

Gradually all this changed. In the late 60s I invested in the Cordon Bleu Cookery Course that came in weekly parts for about two years. I never missed an issue and I still have the complete set. I happily cooked my way through many recipes, from chicken Veronique to beef Stroganoff. I grappled with choux pastry, was introduced to avocados and made hamantaschen.

Then Robert Carrier became my new best friend and The Robert Carrier Cookbook and its companion Great Dishes of the World got me into serious cooking mode as those “foreign” ingredients became more readily available. The former continues as part of my cookbook library thanks only to the holding power of some seriously industrial black tape.

Folded down page corners (yes, I am a library vandal) chart my course in the kitchen as I travelled the world vicariously through Carrier’s recipes.

Then came Julia Child. I loved how this gangly woman lurched through her recipes, handing on her knowledge, passing off mistakes as experience – there was no re-shooting scenes then. In fact, her occasional onscreen mishaps made her all the more endearing. Her books though, as I soon discovered, were something else.

I bought both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The French Chef Cookbook plus Julia Child and Company and Julia Child and More Company. But the book that really struck a chord with me was From Julia Child’s Kitchen.

This was first published in 1975 although my edition is the 1981 Penguin printing. This book didn’t waste time sitting round on the kitchen bookshelf. It was regularly out on the bench. By then I was married with two young sons and a mortgage. There wasn’t a lot of spare cash for going out wining and dining. My career was on hold while I stayed at home looking after babies and free-lancing for a few treats like new kitchen gadgets.

If we wanted to eat fancy meals, I had to make them, so I did most weekends. We also held quite a few dinner parties and many of the recipes were literally From Julia Child’s Kitchen.

The instructions were precise and unambiguous. She knew which bits an inexperienced cook might find tricky and a recipe could run over several pages. Photos and line drawings demystified procedures like disjointing chickens and making pastry.

Oh, the pastry!

There was one ambitious dinner I cooked for two well travelled artistic friends. We started with a frothy watercress soup, “misted with chives” as I had read in a novel. This was followed by carefully skinned and sliced avocado “leaves” with a “rose” fashioned out of thin smoked salmon slices. (This was the early 80s!)

Friends in the diplomatic corps had put me on to a very good butcher who had a nicely prepared veal rib roast ready for me when I called. By then I had mastered my microwave oven and produced twee little bundles of carrot matchsticks tied with chives. The béarnaise sauce was perfect. The broccoli with toasted pinenuts was bright and green. The pommes duchesse were works of art.

But then Julia and I pulled off the triumph of the night. I had decided I would make Le Pithiviers for dessert.

“Certainly one of the most glorious reasons to master French puff pastry is the Pithiviers, a rum-flavoured almond cream baked between that buttery wonder dough, pâte feuilletée, known variously as flaky pastry and thousand-leaf dough as well as French puff pastry,” Mrs Child said. I was enticed.

During the previous day I quietly worked my way through the pastry making exercise. All went to plan and it was looking good. Butter and dough were married together, turned, rolled and chilled, turned, rolled and chilled. Julia held my hand through five pages of instruction and made sure I had a perfect product. The four-page almond cream was made in between and next day I set to assembling Le Pithiviers.

“The usual pattern for a Pithiviers is a wheel of swirling spokes starting at the steam hole and curving gracefully out to the edge where they spread out 1/2in apart.” I managed that without mishap and the egg-glazed masterpiece was committed to the oven.

I could barely comprehend the absolute beauty of the dessert that emerged. Perfectly risen layers of the butteriest lightest pastry. What a shame we didn’t run round photographing all our food in those days!

From Julia Child’s Kitchen is now a book of many parts. The glue down the spine has crumbled with age. So has the sticky tape that was holding the cover on. Even robust insulating tape won’t rescue it.

Unfortunately pages 353-356 are missing. That was the recipe for Pate en croute – a free-form pate I made as the centrepiece for a Christmas party buffet three or four years later. Another triumph thanks to Julia.

I certainly didn’t cook every recipe in the book, but there are many smears and splodges of evidence that I cooked a good few. The $13.50 I paid for it was clearly a good investment. Maybe it’s time I bought a replacement. Ummm, maybe not – it’s currently listed on Amazon for up to $US450.

Fusion, profusion, confusion

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:56:00 +0000

Last weekend I had a very surreal food experience. So surreal I’m still wondering if it really happened.

A group of us were staying at Mercure’s Balgownie Estate Vineyard Resort in the Yarra Valley for the annual Opera in the Vineyards.

Friday night and it was time to dine. It was a long time since my modest fruit and yoghurt lunch and I was ready to enjoy a good meal at the resort’s restaurant, Rae’s.

The first item on the menu seemed a trifle strange – cream of peas and Granny Smith apple with candied beetroot and a smoked paprika twist. Was that a soup? Maybe. But I fancied prawns anyway.

They were listed as pan-fried in spicy sumac with creamy coriander polenta and a drizzle of red capsicum and coconut. That fusion of Middle Eastern, Italian, tropical and Asian flavours going on round the prawns should have sounded warning bells. However, I didn’t think I could tackle crispy scallop ravioli with cream of spinach, walnut, thyme and parmesan oil or a parfait of chicken livers cooked in kiwifruit wine with pear chutney. And the idea of lillypilly Chantilly mixing with the limes, capers and parsley oil on the cured trout sounded similarly odd.

Hey, I thought they said their food was simple. In fact the starters all looked fairly complicated. I know menu descriptions can sometimes look overly complicated and a couple of green dots on a plate can turn out to be the “broad bean puree” or the “capsicum reduction” on what initially looked like a shopping list. We ordered.

I could have done with more of the prawns and a lot less of the polenta.

One friend wasn’t paying attention and missed the “crispy” adjective in the ravioli and so was expecting regular ravioli, not fried ones.

Another’s air-dried wagyu fillet sat in infused orange and cracked pepper, crowned with witlof salad and hummus.

I’d chosen a ballottine of chicken breast for my main and was starting to get a bit nervous about the portobello mushroom and feta filling and the accompanying puree of cocoa beans and green tea. It arrived with additional garnishes not even mentioned on the menu. The sad thing was all this busyness was total overkill. The chicken itself was delightful but the other trimmings defeated me and confused my palate

The slow-cooked duck leg in pineapple next to me came on a bed of broad beans, onion jam and bergamot orange sauce. Too many things going on there spoiled what he said was a great piece of duck. And so on round the table – a reduction of coffee milk fought it out with celeriac mash, chorizo, baby tomatoes and marinated chickpeas round the lamb. A caramel and wasabi sauce finished the seared tuna with its muesli crust, carrots and cumin. The lottery of flavours left what was generally agreed was nicely cooked meat or fish struggling to assert itself.

The food, which should have been a highlight of the weekend, was very disappointing. Obviously a lot of work had gone into it but there was just too much happening on the plate. Perhaps the tapas and degustation culture has made us lean more towards savouring one taste sensation at a time.

I believe the restaurant has its own newly established vegetable garden. Hopefully the produce will be allowed to speak for itself in the future.

[Sorry about the quality of the photos. The restaurant was dimly lit and I dislike using a flash at the table.]

Kiwi accent sux (Oz 13)

noreply@blogger.com (Pat Churchill) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:19:00 +0000

I’ve lived in Australia now for four years and I’ve grown very fond of the place, particularly Melbourne.

I’m not a complete foreigner. My maternal grandfather was born in Footscray in 1891 and worked there as a butcher. He used to travel to New Zealand to work in the freezing works at Waitara, Taranaki during the local killing season. It was there he met and married my grandmother and stayed on. I ended up with relatives both sides of the Tasman.

Melbourne now feels like home, particularly since we recently bought a home here. OK. There are a few things I still find strange - sliced bread is too thick. Sandwich slice is what Kiwis call toast slice. And the zucchini are allowed to grow too large before being sent to market.

People are frequently surprised when we say we’re Kiwis. “You don’t sound like Kiwis,” they say. Only very occasionally will someone pick up on a phrase or word and ask where we’re from.

At college we had an ex-Thespian, Daphne Knight, who tried to teach the “gels” to speak prrrrroperly, rolling our rrrs and polishing our vowels. Perhaps I had been paying attention for once?

I doubt it. I can remember reciting T S Elliot ad nauseum “The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, are proud and implacable passionate foes…” long before Cats was written. But I think I left Miss Knight’s lessons in the classroom.

On recent trips back across the ditch I started listening closely to my countrymen to see if I could identify the Kiwi accent I apparently didn’t have.

Kiwis frequently have a rising inflection at the end of their sentences which makes them sound like they are posing a question or seeking affirmation or approval, rather than making a statement – “And then we’re going down to the shops? And we’re going to buy some groceries?”

Then I started noticing “halth” for health, alectricity, moolk for milk. My home city had become Wullington, And all this was from television reporters.

I was watching the food channel one night when I realised I was listing to a pure, unadulterated Kiwi accent. TV chef Richard Till was in full flight. “Chucken”, “fush”, “diluscious”,“rilly”, “muxer”, “trup”, “frutters”. Hooh!

Ah, but someone likes the Kiwi accent. It was recently rated the most attractive and prestigious form of English outside the UK, according to a BBC survey.

It was the sixth most socially attractive accent, placed above the Queen's English (seventh) and well ahead of Australian (13th) and American English (15th).

Seexth, would you beloyve! We’ve boyten Aussies at sometheeng at last. Darl!