I’m not usually given to endorsing products but one of my best kitchen finds in recent times is the Wiltshire Bend’n’Bake silicone bakeware pack containing six cupcake moulds.

While I am not into cupcakes, I often whip up a batch of muffins and freeze half of them for later use.  However, my “non-stick” muffin pans frequently stick, even when liberally greased and the paper muffin pan liners, even when sprayed with oil, also stick to the muffins and are very difficult to peel off. No point in baking then having to throw out liners with a fair slab of muffin still attached. Besides, the finished muffins look a mess.

I once owned a silicone muffin pan but I thought it was too floppy to put in and out of the oven without risking spillage or burns. However, in more recent times, these have been made with a rigid frame and I was on a mission to buy one when I came across the individual silicone cupcake moulds and bought a six-pack to give them a try.

They worked like a charm. I now have two dozen and can continue using my muffin pans without fear of the dough sticking to anything.

They cook evenly and the muffins spill out easily onto the cake rack. A real test were the little crustless mini quiches I make for The Spouse’s breakfasts. These are made from spinach, cheese, onion, eggs, capsicum and random other ingredients, like mushrooms or asparagus – depending on what’s in the vegetable bin

I freeze them and he can heat up a couple in the microwave for a quick start to the day. However, I was getting a little bit irritated with his constant whining about them sticking to the paper liners. No more. The new moulds work a treat and there’s no wastage – or moaning.

They sell at around $6.95 per pack of six. I’ve used them as stand-alone moulds and they work OK, although I prefer to put them in the old muffin pans.

Being silicone, they don’t need much washing. In fact, they can be put in the top shelf of the dishwasher. There are also mini-muffin versions, perfect for little cocktail bites. They’re available from kitchenware stores and supermarkets.

Here’s the recipe for the muffins pictured. A couple of these make a nourishing little breakfast.

The recipe contains buttermilk. If you don’t have any on hand just add a 1 1/2 tablespoons of white vinegar or lemon juice to low fat milk and let it stand for a few minutes to curdle. The baking soda reacts with the acid in the buttermilk or soured milk and causes the muffins to rise. Because it starts working as soon as the two are mixed, the batter should be baked immediately.

Oat muffins

1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons fried shallots (available from Asian food stores)
1 cup grated reduced fat cheese
3/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, lightly beaten4 tablespoons rice bran oil or grapeseed oil

Preheat the oven to 180C. Spray a 12-compartment muffin pan with oil or line them with silicone patty pans and spray these.

Put the rolled oats in a small bowl and pour on half the buttermilk and set aside for 10 minutes to soften.

Place the wholemeal flour in a large bowl with the baking soda, salt, herbs and cayenne, fried shallots and cheese.

Add the egg and oil to the remaining buttermilk, whisk together then stir into the flour mix along with the soaked oat mixture. Do not overmix.

Spoon evenly into the prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes until an inserted toothpick emerges clean. Turn onto a cake rack to cool.

If you’re planning to use these for quick breakfasts or snacks, pack into freezer bags when cool and freeze. Zap on high in the microwave for about 50 seconds to defrost and reheat two muffins.

Share/Bookmark

As an avid cookbook reader, reviewer and collector, I have witnessed amazing fashion swings in the styling , presentation and photographing of food over the past few decades. Once photos were crammed with table settings, candles, sprinklings of petals, glasses of sherry, kitchen utensils. Sometimes it was hard to find the actual food. In recent times they’ve become a bit more minimalist, leaving the food to speak for itself.

Recently I have been going through some of the vintage cookbooks I’ve collected. Early ones, of course, had no illustrations. Gradually, with advances in the printing world, some appeared with line drawings. Later there were coloured plates interspersed among the printed recipe pages.

Imagine the effort required to make Mrs Beeton’s Milanese timbale in the centre.

I have an 1870 edition of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (first published in 1861.) Isabella Beeton had passed away in 1865 but this new edition includes a note penned by her husband and publisher, S O Beeton, who said only the slightest alterations and corrections were needed. This edition includes not only numerous black line drawings, but also 12 coloured engravings. Some of these dishes are veritable monuments.

Apples a la Parisienne might have been created by a 19th century Adriano Zumbo

Even with the development of photography in the 19th century, it was a long while before photos of finished dishes were included. However, these served mainly to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about how the finished dish might look rather than encourage replication in the kitchen.

Eventually coloured photographs were introduced. However, looking at some of these early efforts, it’s apparent what a hit and miss business food photography was in those days. Food styling was non-existent. Printing vagaries often led to bizarre colours in the printed book.

One of the sadder examples I came across during the week was the 1948 book, Cooking the Modern Way! – the exclamation mark is the publisher’s which was a firm in the cooking oil business.

They promised 129 ways to better meals, home-tested and proved “each using a secret of famous chefs.” Famous anonymous chefs, it would seem – not a moniker in sight.

The sad part was the photos. I realised I was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to match them up with recipes in the book. Alas, some truly defeated identification.

I did my best to identify this one. I suspect it could be minted pear salad.

Obviously a moulded jelly salad, studded with a few peas. No recipe, however.

Waffles. The recipe suggests various toppings, but I guess the cupboard was bare

Food photographed for cookbooks and magazines is sometimes doctored to the point where it is no longer edible. There are lots of tricks of the trade that make dishes look gorgeous but destroy the food. But these 1948 photos were undoctored truthful representations where the food started off looking inedible – and remained that way.

Share/Bookmark

We’ve all seen those “Who is going to pay for your funeral?” ads on television. I’ll bet that really wasn’t on the mind of the Lady Katherine Howard (right), wife of the Duke of Norfolk, when she died in 1465.

I recently came across the shopping list for the banquet served on the day of her funeral.

2 great boars
24 capons
12 great oxen
140 chickens
40 sheep
30 does
12 hogs
48 partridges
70 pigs
14 pheasants
12 swans
7 peacocks
80 geese
36 mallards
200 rabbits
36 plovers
800 eggs
30 gallons of milk
3 gallons of honey
13 bushells of flour

All these were cooked with “all manner of spices as much as cost fifty-three shillings and elevenpence.” Upper class households of the time purchased numerous spices to flavour their food – pepper, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, mace, cloves – so the spice spend was obviously worth a mention..

A chicken cost a penny, a goose sevenpence and a sheep one shilling and sixpence.

It was all washed down with “three hundred gallons of wine and thirty-two barrels of beer.”

One of the dishes that might well have been served was the cockentryce. This was an impressive bit of legerdemain involving the sewing together of the scalded front of a pig (sliced through at the waist) and the scalded back part of a capon – or front of capon and back of pig if that was your choice…  A gap was left to insert the stuffing.

The cavity was was stuffed with a concoction made of grated bread, salt and pepper, sheep suet, saffron, ginger and beaten eggs and the sewing up completed.

The hybrid beast was then put on a spit and roasted then glazed with egg yolks, ginger, saffron and parsley or mallow juice (juice from the mucilage of leaves and flowers from the mallow species).

• Read more about this 21st century re-creation of the famous dish
• See more photos
• Heston Blumenthal’s take on the dish, using four different creatures

Share/Bookmark

You’re sitting in a restaurant and suddenly you realise you’ve become invisible. You’ve politely tried to beckon a waiter – and then another. You think you’ve caught someone’s eye at last, but though they are looking your way, they seem to be seeing right through you.

Short of being a total tosser and rudely calling out “I say, garçon! Service!!” across the restaurant, frightening the polite people, and offending the tut-tut brigade, about all you can do is wait until the miracle happens. Or maybe get out your mobile, phone the restaurant and quietly request a bit of service on table 22.

Epitaph for a dead waiter: God finally caught his eye
– George S Kaufman

Sometimes extreme situations call for extreme measures. According to Daniel Rogov writing in Haaretz in 2001, service seeker Buffalo Bill fired six shots into the ceiling at London’s Goring Hotel in 1912 while Jack Kerouac set fire to the tablecloth at a Greenwich Village establishment.

Creating  a disturbance like that might get the waiter’s attention – or it might traumatise the whole staff.

Overt attempts to summon a waiter’s attention usually end up attracting everyone else’s instead. One then becomes even more invisible to wait staff.

Nearly 100 years ago, a metropolitan restaurant in the USA came up with a reasonably subtle attention-seeking device for their diners. It provided each table with a small ornamental lighthouse.

To gain attention patrons had only to turn the button on top of the lighthouse and a red light would show in the window, indicating service was desired.

Reporting on the invention, the August 1917 issue of Popular Mechanics noted there were holders for matches at either side of the lighthouse base. The bottom of the tower was “fashioned and suitably coloured to represent a portion of a cliff or a reef”.

Hindsight reveals this invention didn’t catch on and become a part of standard restaurant equipment.

However, one US inventor, Brian Darby, has dreamed up his wireless TMS100 restaurant table management system whereby diners can push a tabletop button to request service whenever they choose, and be served with the correct priority. There’s no sitting fretting over being ignored.

At the end of the day, restaurant satisfaction invariably boils down to service. No matter how brilliant the food, if the service is patchy, disorganised or just plain non-existent, that is how the business will be remembered.

Share/Bookmark

During my recent trip to Hong Kong my fellow travellers and I decided to join the queue waiting to enjoy traditional high tea at the feted Peninsula Hotel. This is held daily from 2pm-6pm in the grand lobby, a beautiful area with its neo-classical arches and smart colours.

Waiting was no great hardship as we were entertained by The Lobby Strings and had plenty of time for people-watching in this pleasant space, enjoying the air-conditioning after a hard slog sightseeing in the 37C temperature.

It took about 40 minutes to secure a seat and then we were sipping our tea and making up our minds where to start on the three-tier afternoon tea stands. It was like turning back the clock to a time when such a gentle, leisurely afternoon tea wasn’t such a novelty.

Check out the small slideshow of the goodies on offer – scones, savouries, sandwiches, cakes, macarons…

We won!

Share/Bookmark

Fortunately a couple of days before we flew to Hong Kong, I bought some Stegmann slip-on shoes. I knew the minute I put them on that I’d made a good choice. They were extremely comfortable and light, didn’t need breaking in and the punched leather uppers gave good ventilation. We walked a lot during our holiday and these shoes were seldom off my feet. I was glad I’d taken them rather than my trainers.

After our stroll round the food market in Kowloon our guide Jackie led us to the Mongkok markets. Our first stop was in Flower Market Road where there were at least 50 different flower stalls selling fresh flowers, pot plants, seedlings, shrubs and garden plants.

The place was a riot of colour, both blooms and foliage. Delicate rose buds were individually encased in little stretch net hoods so they didn’t open too soon and there were some gorgeous flower arrangements and posies waiting to make someone’s day.

Nearby we visited Yuen Po Street, famous for its bird garden. Locals gather in the courtyards with their songbirds and there are quite a number of stalls selling colourful birds, cages, bird food, feeders and other accessories. It was very relaxing strolling along with other Sunday amblers, admiring the flowers and birds, enjoying the heat and not missing Melbourne’s 10C temperatures one bit.

Share/Bookmark

It’s about a dozen years since I last visited Hong Kong so when Jess, daughter-in-law-to-be, suggested I go there with her and meet up with her parents who were on their way home from a holiday in China, I thought “Why not?”

We had a week there – with a two-day side trip to Macau – and it’s certainly one of the most action-packed holidays I’ve had in a long time.

My earlier memories of Hong Kong were of constant jostle and and pushing in busy streets. But that was not the impression I brought back this time. However, as The Spouse pointed out, last time I visited I was living in Christchurch, hardly one of the world’s busy cities. Now I’m in Melbourne and I’ve got used to sharing the footpaths with plenty of people and making sure I get myself on the tram when it comes along.

We hit the ground running. Our Saturday flight arrived in the evening and it was about 11pm before we were ensconced in our hotel. Jess had arranged with Kiwi tour guide Jackie Peers from Walk Hong Kong to meet the four of us at 9am next day for a walking tour of Kowloon markets and other points of interest and on the Monday to take us on another four-hour walk of Hong Kong Island to get an appreciation of the place’s history

Jackie learned of my food interests and included a visit to the dried goods market in the second day’s sightseeing. She has lived in Hong Kong for the past eight years and knows the place well. We couldn’t have had a better escort. She was knowledgeable  about its history and people and had plenty of suggestion for further activities and eating places when we were on our own. I can certainly recommend her.

With her guidance, we soon mastered Hong Kong’s public transport. We’d bought Octopus cards at the airport. Most of the trams, trains, buses and ferries we used during our stay accepted these pre-paid cards and it was easy to top them up at 7-Eleven stores along the way. Plus we were able to surrender our cards for a refund at the airport when we left for home.

Join us for a wander round the fresh produce, meat and fish stalls at Kowloon market and then have a brief look at the dried goods market on Hong Kong Island. A pity I didn’t have a kitchen at my disposal…

Chook eggs, quail eggs, duck eggs

Durian - some love 'em, some loathe 'em

Big bruiser carrots

Gooseberries and plums

Longans and dragon fruit

Noodles galore

Pomegranates

Cat among the bananas

Rose apples

Stone fruit

Sesame cakes

Butchering

Snacks to go

Ready-to-eat poultry

Assorted poultry

Beautiful porkiness

Nose-to-tail eating definitely catered for

Various meat cuts

Innards

Assorted fish

Dried fish maw - a source of collagen

Dried fish

Assorted dried seafood

Fresh fish

These fish were still swimming

Swim bladders also called fish maw

Dried fish products at the dried goods market, Hong Kong Island

Mushrooms and other dried goods

Birds' nests

Dried lizards

Large fungi

Head of security

An ox gallstones business

Dried sea horses - these are under threat from over-fishing

Share/Bookmark

The 1990s included some very good years and we had a chance to try them all at the Decade of Grange dinner at The Point restaurant at Albert Park Lake last night.

This is the third dinner The Point has staged to showcase a decade of Penfolds’ famed Grange wines. Last year we sampled the 80s vintages and the inaugural dinner a couple of years before examined the 70s wines.

Penfolds’ senior red wine maker Steve Lienert, who was directly responsible for the 1990s Grange vintages, talked us through this evening of sheer indulgence and associate winemaker Stephanie Dutton was also on hand to share her knowledge.

To whet our appetites – and palates – Penfolds recently released 2009 Yattarna chardonnay was served. This multi-regional wine will continue to age over the next five to 10 years, Lienert said. It was beautifully matched with two clever appetisers. There was a Port Campbell crayfish, foie gras and Ceylon spinach medley, then a Mooloolaba prawn number with Buddha’s hand nestled in a little sea urchin reduction.

Time to sit down for our five-course dinner, each dish matched with two consecutive vintages of Grange.  The Point’s executive chef Justin Wise was set the task of preparing food to match the wines. This was no easy task as he didn’t have bottles of the expensive wine to play with but had to rely on tasting notes.

All the wines served were from predominantly Barossa Valley fruit, with the kick-off 1990 wine probably the most famous. It was voted red wine of the year by the Wine Spectator magazine in 1995. Lienert said both it and the 1991 vintage had 5% Cabernet Sauvignon grapes added. “If 85% or more is Shiraz, you don’t have to put it on the label.”

He said the 1990 was sweet and opulent, the 91 “a little bit tighter and more fruit driven. Both are drinking well now and for the next 10-15 years.”

Justin Wise took the risk and served Chatham Island blue cod with a parmesan crust, truffled pork hock and beetroot consommé.  The crust and the pork successfully made the dish hold its own with the red wine.

The ‘92 and ‘93 wines were quite different. “There is a step-up in the amount of Cabernet. ‘92 was a cooler year with nice fruit character. ‘93 was a wetter growing season.” The latter had 14% Cabernet.

Food match was Yarra Valley quail, salsify, mushrooms and pancetta stuffing.

Along the way we learned where the name Grange came from. It seems Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold’s wife Mary’s home in England was called The Grange and so the original vineyard’s founder gave their cottage the same name.

Lienert said the 1994 vintage was still quite youthful with dark berry fruits and 10% Cabernet. “With time it will be right up there with the best in the ‘90s.”

He described the ’95  as still very good, stylistically different with some Shiraz from the Magill vineyard and not as concentrated as the ’94 and with around 6% Cabernet.

These accompanied Flinders Island pasture-fed lamb with a sweetbread farce and baby turnips and greens.

“Remember the sixes,” Lienert told us. The vintage years ending in six have produced very appealing wines, it seems.

The 1996 had rich concentrated dark fruits and was predominantly Barossa with some Magill Shiraz – “a classic Grange.” He said it was a good ripening year. The wine was drinking well now “and will last 50 years.”

1997 was a bit cooler – “nice fruit character but different in concentration. A bit more on the elegant side.”

Elegant, too, was the accompanying plate of New Zealand Red Cervena venison with a delicate little leek pithivier and beautiful Griottine cherries.

And so to the last two of the decade. Lienert described the 1998 and 1999 as both sensational and both still very very young. Dark and with good red colour, both were classic Granges.

The year 1998 was the year of a heatwave and the wine was “rich, dark and generous. Very big.” He said it still seemed very young and had years of life. The 1999 was a classic Grange but 100% Shiraz.

The meat match was Cape Grim pasture-fed 40 days dry-aged porterhouse with little shreds of oxtail, a scattering of broad beans and some artfully presented whipped potato.

Our amazing meal ended with some Cropwell Bishop Stilton accompanied by Penfolds’ Great Grandfather Rare Tawny Port from South Eastern Australia.

Justin Wise said it had been a massive challenge to match 10 iconic wines and from the reception he received, he certainly pulled it off.

Share/Bookmark

During our recent trip to our hometown Wellington I woke up to hear someone playing music nearby. I looked out of the hotel window and discovered that while we were sleeping, the city’s Sunday Harbourside Market had been set up in the carpark adjacent to Te Papa museum. They must have accomplished that very quietly because I didn’t hear a thing.

This was our third calm, sunny day in a city better known for its wind so we thought we’d better get out and enjoy it and pick up some breakfast while we were about it.

There were plenty of choices with market stallholders selling a range of hot offerings. It’s a while since I’ve enjoyed New Zealand venison and one stall was selling Bambi sammies. We bought a couple of substantial $5 venison sausage sandwiches topped with onions and chunks of barbecued venison and they were terrific.

The sunshine had lured plenty of customers to the market which is open every Sunday from 7.30am to 2pm. There were tourists and local, Mums and Dads, kids on foot and in buggies, apartment dwellers from the neighbourhood, the weary, the bleary and last night’s life-of-the-party in search of a hangover antidote.

In addition to hot food, there was plenty of fresh produce and I was tempted by the locally grown tamarillos, one of my favourite fruit. While I can buy them in Melbourne, they’re not exactly cheap.

The Spouse’s eyes glazed over when he saw the beautiful pink New Zealand yams. These are quite different from the vegetables sold as yams or sweet potatoes in Australia (and which we Kiwis call kumara).

These pink yams belong to the oxalis family. They appear in yellow, orange, and a couple of shades of pink and are popular for roasting. They need a chilly, frosty climate to grow well. Unfortunately we weren’t cooking on this trip so had to pass them by.

We were about to visit relatives in the Wairarapa in the afternoon so picked up some flowers for my Aunt and a delicious cake from one of the stall holders. She had a table groaning with preserves, cakes, fruit loaves, biscuits and other baked goods and told me she’d made them all. I wondered aloud if she managed to find time for anything else and she assured me she did.

There are numerous markets round the Wellington area, including the Saturday morning market at Porirua which opens at midnight and closes at 10am. A friend and I used to be regulars there when I lived in Wellington..

• Harbourside Market
• Wellington City Markets
• Underground Market
• Porirua Market

Share/Bookmark

One thing I couldn’t resist on a recent visit to my home town, Wellington, was the sight of plastic pottles of New Zealand’s finest Bluff oysters in the supermarket near our hotel. I was fearful we might have missed the season but I think we just squeaked in. The season was due to end on August 1 or whenever the 9.5 million oyster quota was reached.

The oysters were $NZ24.95 a dozen – a bit under $AU20 – but, as it turned out, worth every cent.

The server behind the fish counter popped the pot of oysters in a larger container and spooned in some ice. After a short detour via the wine aisle, we were back in our room at the Museum hotel, uncapping the wine and the oysters were nestling on a plate of ice.

Oh, those delicious molluscs. Cream and beautiful, just the right amount of sweetness, chewiness and salty sea flavours. Simple, unadorned and ably assisted on their last journey by a Church Road chardonnay.

Share/Bookmark