Do you ever come home from a trip away and find that there’s nothing to eat – nothing ready at least – and then you scramble around for whatever you can quickly throw together as an offering to the hunger gods? Today was one of those days. My fridge had one large taro in it, as well as a jar of mustard. Ever since embracing the Paleo diet, I keep a variety of root vegetables in my  fridge: sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes and taro. Taro is not as enticing as sweet potato; its flavour is somewhat bland and texturally it’s certainly on the starchy side, which might explain why it was the only tuber left in my fridge.

Despite it not being the most exciting tuber, we Lebanese love taro and call it kolkas, a name related to the tuber’s Latin name, colocasia. We usually prepare taro by boiling it in water or frying it it, and then covering it with tarator, a sauce of tahini, garlic, lemon juice and salt. Prepared that way, taro is super-delicious. Today though, I felt like chips (or fries, depending on where you live) and mustard. Taro cooks quickly. If you slice it thinly, it’s extra crunchy. If it’s thick, it has more of a comfort food chewiness. Using a mandolin is useful for achieving a consistent slice width. I personally used a knife tonight because I couldn’t be bothered washing up the mandolin.

Taro Chips with Dijon Mustard Recipe

I fry most things with coconut oil because I am a fan of saturated fats. If coconut oil is not available, I would suggest frying the taro with duck or goose fat, ghee, lard or tallow. Heat your fat of choice to 160c and add the slices in batches that suit the amount of fat you have available. Fry until the taro turns golden (approx 4 minutes). Sprinkle the chips with salt and dip them into a good quality dijon that has a bit of heat to it. This is awesome stuff – filling and delicious – so be careful as you might get addicted (not that there’s anything wrong with that). In Sydney, you can find taro at any  Asian or Italian green grocer and should cost you just a bit more than your average potato. Try it and let me know how you like it!

I don’t usually do giveaways on the blog, but here’s one I thought The Food Blog’s readers would enjoy. The fine people at TM Publicity have provided our readers the chance to win one of 5 double passes to see what seems to be a beautifully made French foodie film: Haute Cuisine. You can see the trailer for Haute Cuisine here.

Entry to the giveaway is simple. All you need to do is like our facebook page (click here) and leave a comment on this post telling me what your favourite French dish is. We’d also love it if you could share this page on facebook or Twitter so that you can help spread the word on The Food Blog. It’s that simple. Winners will be picked at random and will be announced on April 21st; each winner will receive a double pass to use after the main release on April 25th. The giveaway is open to Australians only.

Here’s more information on the movie:

Haute Cuisine, (French title, Les Saveurs du Palais)

Hortense Laborie, a renowned chef from the Périgord, is astonished when the President of the Republic appoints her his personal cook, responsible for creating all his meals at the Élysée Palace. Despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, Hortense quickly establishes herself, thanks to her indomitable spirit. The authenticity of her cooking soon seduces the President, but the corridors of power are littered with traps…

Haute Cuisine is a delicious drama with a generous pinch of comedy, based on the extraordinary true story of President François Mitterand’s private cook, Daniele Delpeuch.

It’s filmed on location at the Élysée Palace, in regional France and Antartica, and full of mouth watering dishes and incredible foodie imagery.

The film is directed by French film director and screenwriter, Christian Vincent and stars Catherine Frot (nominated for a Cesar Award for Best Actress), Jean D’Ormesson and Hippolyte Girardot.

Can you guess what the difference between the two types of butter in the photo is? I asked that question on The Food Blog’s facebook page and one of my readers commented that “one has colour added”. Though it made me chuckle a bit, it was a fair comment; since we hardly see butter with such a deep yellow color, one can assume that the butter has somehow been messed with.

In fact, both butters are completely unadulterated and are handmade butters given to me by my favourite butter man, Pepe Saya. The butter on the left is Pepe’s famous cultured butter. The other one is an experiment he did with cream sourced from a commercially available milk. Pepe’s usual milk comes from Country Valley, a local dairy based in Picton. The cream he receives from Country Valley has a rich yellow colour similar to what you see in the photo. However, when Pepe looked at the commercial cream, he saw a pasty-white cream so different from what he was used to seeing from Country Valley. A bit of digging around and the reason for the lack of colour became obvious. As opposed to Country Valley cream which comes from 100% grass-fed cows, the commercial cream comes from grain-fed cows. Grass-fed cream is pigmented by beta-carotene, an anti-oxidant and a pre-cursor for vitamin A. Grain-fed cows get no beta-carotene in their diet (beta-carotene is contained in grass).

To make a fair comparison, Pepe made both butters in the exact same way. He added cultures to the two batches of cream until they became sour, and then churned them into butter. We tried both the cream and the butter, and differences more than just colour were obvious. Where the grass-fed butter tasted complex (I swear you can taste the pasturelands), the grain-fed butter fell flat. There was little flavour, with almost a synthetic taste and an odd mouthfeel.

Grass-fed dairy is far superior to grain-fed dairy. Here’s a list of why I think you should always go for grass-fed dairy:

1. It tastes better
2. It’s so much better for health
3. You will be supporting real farmers, ones interested in the health and sustainability of their land, just like we saw in the video link above.
4. You will be discouraging feed lots, inhumane practices and mass production
5. You will be paying more for milk. That sounds like a bad thing, but milk should never cost $1. Real food costs real money and if you buy from farmers markets, more money will be going to the producer.
6. Cows and other herbivores are fantastic at transforming solar energy into food. The cycle is simple: sun > grass > milk. Grain feeding changes this cycle: Fossil fuels > chemical fertilisers> grains > milk (and arid land). The importance of grass-feeding is paramount to future sustainability and supply of food.
7. Grass-fed cows are healthier than grain-fed cows. Cows can not digest grains well and it makes them sick.
8. Sick, grain-fed cows require much more medication and antibiotics which make their way to the milk (and meat).

There are great grass-fed products on the market that you should be going for when choosing your dairy products. I personally buy Country Valley milk. In supermarkets you can find Parmalat unhomogenised organic milk (which the producer has told me is around 95% grass-fed with a 5% supplement of hay and organic, non-genetically modified grain). Do remember that organic does not mean grass-fed since you can still feed cows 100% organic grains and hay and they might never see a blade of grass. Also, I’ve noticed that the Macro organic milk at Woolworth’s contains ultra-heat treated milk, which I personally avoid.

What brand of milk do you buy and why? Can you share what the deciding factor for you when it comes to choosing dairy products is? Can you think of other reasons why grass-feeding is better than grain-feeding? Or do you perhaps you believe grain-feeding is a better alternative? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment and let me know.

To those of you who aren’t expecting sleepless nights and are instead having a good old regular Christmas, here are some food-related ideas for Christmas presents. They’re highlights from my year- books that I’ve received and loved, food that I’ve enjoyed and things that I’d like to have but cannot afford – one can only dream…

For full disclosure, please note that both books I mention below were sent to me by the respective publishing houses. I have both bought and received many books throughout the year, and these are my top two picks. I would happily spend my own money on buying them.

Every Grain of Rice

Every Grain of Rice – photo from amazon.com

If you’re after an easy argument for keeping print publications alive, Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice will do the trick nicely. There’s a tactile experience that comes with this book – weight, design and texture – as well as a rich visual experience. I’ve never been to China; its cuisine is one that I find daunting but Dunlop’s recipes are so elegant in their simplicity and so beautifully photographed that they really motivate you to get cooking. Her eggs with tomato recipe has revolutionised my breakfast (and sometimes dinner). This has become one of my all-time favourite recipe books and I recommend it wholeheartedly. I saw Dunlop speak at the Sydney International Food Festival a couple of years back, and her immersion in Chinese cookery is inspirational. You can also follow her blog at http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com and at @fuchsiadunlop. Get the book for $36.34AUD here.

Pepe Saya Butter

Pepe Saya Butter – image from theage.com.au

Pepe Saya butter has probably formed around 30% of my calories over the past year. If you haven’t heard about it, you must be hiding under a rock that’s covered by a couple of other rocks. This European-style cultured butter that is handmade in Sydney by Mr Pierre Issa (Pepe Saya is his alter ego). It is simply one of the best butters I’ve ever had. The cream comes from cows that have been pasture-fed; live culture is then added and the cream is left to sour; this gives the butter depth and character. The flavour of the butter has been different every time I’ve had it, as you would expect from a seasonal, hand-made product. I met Pepe almost a year ago and we found out that we went to the same school in Lebanon. We hit it off immediately and have become really great friends. I was lucky enough to go on an excursion with him to Country Valley, a dairy in Picton where he sources the cream for the butter. There, I got to see the cows grazing on lush grass, outdoors and happy. As far as I’m concerned, only cows that happy and butter-makers as dedicated as Pepe can make butter this awesome. You can find Pepe Saya butter at most quality food stores, as well as several Sydney markets for around $8 for 225 grams. Follow Pepe at @pepesaya.

Japanese Knife from Chef’s Armoury

Saji Ironwood 210mm Gyuto from Chef’s Armoury – image from www.chefsarmoury.com

I often visit the Chef’s Armoury website to day dream about one day having a complete collection of their knives. Everything on that website is an item of beauty. This knife is just one example. Just look at that stunning damascus pattern. These guys are not cheap ($549.95AUD for this one), so maybe putting a dollar away each day is a good strategy for Christmas 2014. If you’re thinking about buying me a Christmas gift, here’s one big hint! Day dream at www.chefsarmoury.com and tweet at @chefsarmoury

Love & Hunger

Love & Hunger – photo from loveandhunger.com

I’m a sucker for good narratives, especially when they are food related. Written by Sydney’s own Charlotte Wood, Love & Hunger is my kind of book. Here you have a collection of food-centric, non-fiction short stories from Wood’s life. Wood is neither a celebrity chef nor a winner of a reality TV show; she is a serious writer with several titles to her name, and Love & Hunger is her first book on food. She’s also a normal person who “gets it” and her stories emanate with love and humanity with none of the fake glamour and decorative glorification that food writers usually dedicate to their topic. When I received a review copy of this book, I was unable to read it because my wife was hooked on it (she said that it completely changed her perspective on cooking, for which I am eternally grateful). Of course, I have since read it, and totally recommend this to anyone interested in great story telling as well as good recipes and tricks in the kitchen. Follow Charlotte’s lovely blog here and at @charlotteshucks.

Homemade Macadamia Butter

Roasted Macadamia Butter

I can’t finish this post without talking about gifting food that you can make yourself. Don’t worry, I’ve made this one simple: roasted macadamia butter. This Australian nut is my absolute favourite and to turn it into luscious macadamia butter couldn’t be easier. Roast the nuts at 200 c for 15 minutes, turning every 4 minutes or so to avoid burning them. Let them cool and then put them in a food processor along with some good quality salt. Blitz until the nuts turn into butter, approx 1 minute. Make enough for 2 jars at least: one for you and one for the Christmas tree.

I’ve learned so much about Mexican food that go far beyond recipes and dishes simply be hearing Travis talk about how the food interplays with the culture. But I’ve also learned about the large variety of chilis used in Mexican cuisine, the variance in their uses and flavour profiles; I’ve learned how to make a real mole in a way that a book could never teach me; I’ve learned about amazing ingredients like an out of this world goat’s milk caramel; how to use a comal to bring the best flavours out of ingredients; how tortilla dough should feel like in order to turn out the good stuff; how boiled and grilled sweet corn with chili and parmesan can rock your world… However, I don’t want this post to be an account of the class itself, because that would be pointless. You have to see it to believe it. I can not encourage you enough to go visit Travis and learn from him. The food is amazing and the class is educational while also being a whole lot of fun (you finish up by eating what you cooked along with some great wine). I promise you, you will want to go back over and over again. Do it! For information on classes at The Essential Ingredient, click here.

With The Food Blog nearing its seventh year, it’s almost impossible to believe that I have never written a post about chocolate. Having deprived you guys from chocolate recipes, I’m amazed I have a readership at all. I hope this might make up for it, but excuse the health-oriented take on chocolate. Most of you know that I have been off sugar for well over a year now, in an attempt to regain my health. With abstinence from sugar, chocolate consumption declines drastically. I’ve looked for sugar-free/insulin-friendly chocolates, but most of them are made with aspartame (or some other artificial sweetener) or maltitol and emulsified with soy lecithin, and I try to stay away from these things. Of course, there are agave-sweetened chocolates, but health-wise, that stuff is the worst sweetener ever. Agave is higher in fructose than high-fructose corn syrup, and if you want to see why too much fructose is bad, do yourself a favour and listen to this.

My sweetener of choice is xylitol, but when it comes to home-made chocolate, xylitol doesn’t do the trick since it is not fat-soluble (does not dissolve in fat). I’ve found that the best sweetener to use is yacon. Yacon is a sweetener derived from a south-American tuber. The syrup is a sweet-tasting fructooligosaccharide, which is a prebiotic fermentable fiber and seems to have little/no effect on blood sugar (my blood sugars went from 4.3 to 4.8 on one of the tests I did to see if yacon affects me, which is pretty okay). It has a rich, caramel flavour and a buttery mouthfeel, and it also works wonders in chocolate. Now, yacon isn’t cheap (340ml for $22.40AUD from iherb.com), but for special occasions, it’s worth it. I’m a huge fan of hazelnuts and chocolate, and macadamia is by far my favourite nut, so to make my home-made chocolate a bit more of a treat, a few handfuls of roasted hazelnuts and Australian macadamias are perfect. One last thing. I recently bought a Thermomix and have used it to make the chocolate at home. The recipe below is a Thermomix recipe based on Quirky Cooking’s recipe (thanks Jo) but can easily be adapted if you don’t have a Thermomix. My guess is that you can melt the cacoa butter in a bain-marie, making sure the temperature doesn’t go over 50degrees C.

Yacon-Sweetened Macadamia & Hazelnut Chocolate Recipe

Ingredients

•  100 grams cacoa butter, chopped in small pieces (I bought mine here)
• 35 grams cocoa powder (I bought mine here)
• 70 grams yacon (or 40 grams yacon and 30 grams xylitol. The yacon will allow the xylitol to melt through)
• A pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla syrup (the real stuff)
• 1/3 cup roasted hazelnuts
• 1/3 cup roasted macadamia (or raw, if you prefer)

Method

1. Line a banana bread tin with baking paper
2. Evenly distribute the macadamias and hazelnuts inside
3. Melt cocoa butter in Thermomix on speed 1 at 50c for 6 minutes. Make sure it’s all melted.
4. Add cocoa powder and mix on speed 5 at 50c for 3 minutes
5. Add yacon (and xylitol if using), salt and vanilla syrup and mix on speed 5 at 50c for 3 minutes
6. Pour over the nuts
7. Refrigerate overnight. You can eat it as soon as it sets, but it will have a lower melting point and will feel as though it is melting instantly on your fingers.

Makes 1 large chocolate bar

There is hardly a cut of pork that suits this style of cooking as well as ribs do. Within 2 hours of cooking, what starts off as tough pork ribs boiling away in a thin soup ends up being a brilliantly tender braise with a thick, sweet sauce. Really, with soy, mirin (sweet cooking sake), garlic and ginger, you can’t go wrong. Start off by browning 1.5 kilos of pork ribs in a heavy cast iron pot. I used leftover lard for the browning and browned the meat in 2 batches. Tip off any rendered fat, add 100 ml of soy sauce (I used gluten-free tamari), 100 ml of mirin, 400ml pork of beef stock, 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, 5 star anise (optional) and 2 tablespoons of grated ginger. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a gentle simmer and cover for 2.5 hours. You are looking for the pork to be falling from the bone and for the sauce to have thickened. If the pork is still not tender enough and the sauce already looks too thick, add a little water and cook covered until the pork is done. If the opposite happens and the pork is already done while the sauce is too thin, uncover the pot and take the heat up, stirring often until the sauce thickens. Stir the pork to glaze it with the sauce. I ate this dish as is, with no accompaniment, since I rarely eat grains; but for those of you who do, rice would go perfectly well.

Some fantastic news for those of you who are fans of sauerkraut: my experiment with vacuum bag sauerkraut was a success! Forget all about those recipes that call for jars and sauerkraut pressing. Vacuum bag sauerkraut is a set and forget method: shred some cabbage, salt it, put it in a vacuum bag and vacuum seal it. Two or three weeks later, and the kraut is made! And once you do make it, there’s no turning back to store-bought sauerkraut. Let me know if you decide to make sauerkraut and how it turned out.

For many, the flavour of sauerkraut is a bit too much like vinegar and is off-putting. I happen to like vinegar and therefore sauerkraut, but I also like a bit of variety, so I’ve come up with a recipe to turn my sauerkraut into a delicious salad. Drain some sauerkraut and dress it with olive oil, a few drops of sesame seed oil and sprinkle it with isot pepper (or any chili you like) and sesame seeds. This sauerkraut salad is the bomb. I like eating it on its own but it goes brilliantly with roasted meats.

Above is a collage of photos from the dinner I planned and executed for Omani Tourism. We had the dinner at the beautiful Embers Mezze Bar in Darlinghurst. My main man was head chef Simon Zalloua – a brilliant Lebanese-Australian chef who trained at Rockpool and who brings much needed discipline, skill and technique to Sydney’s Middle-Eastern scene. I totally encourage you to go try out Simon’s food. It’s contemporary and clever without being pretentious. I included some of Simon’s dishes for the event and they worked perfectly with mine.

From top left:

• Baba Ghanouj with Green Chili Pistachio Relish and Pomegranates
• Puy Lentil Salad with Hazelnuts, Roast Pumpkin, Thyme and Isot Pepper
• Shanklish Sambousek with Preserved Lemon Salsa (Simon’s Recipe)
• Lentil Salad
• Scallops
• Scallop Moghrabieh with Chickpeas and Caraway Jus
• Spatchcocked Poussin with Shish Tawook Spices (Simon’s Recipe) & Muhammara (my recipe)
• Chef Simon dishing out the Slow-cooked Lamb Shoulder with Cardamom and Cinnamon Pilaf, topped with Crisp Onions, Barberries and Almonds
• Embers’ Trifle: Sumac Strawberries, Rose and Lychee Jelly with Peanut Brittle (Simon’s recipe and one hell of a dessert)

I’ve been commissioned to organise a Middle-Eastern feast for a cool PR event and this dish is one of the first on the menu. I always attempt to use ingredients that are typical in the Middle East but rarely seen in restaurants. I feel people get a sense of authenticity, despite any contemporary take on the ingredient. This dish, for instance, is not one you would find anywhere in the Middle East. The ingredients are eclectic and not singularly regional. But they work.

This salad is all about balance, freshness and texture. The lentils need to be cooked just after the al dente stage, the pumpkin needs to be creamy, and roasted hazelnuts add crunch and nuttiness. Oven-dried tomatoes are a great alternative to fresh tomatoes: they’re sweet and not overly moist. Preserved lemons and fresh thyme contribute that “je ne sais quoi” element, where the flavour is somewhat fleeting and exotic, only identifiable by an experienced palate. The real kicker here is isot pepper – one of my favourite all time chilis, second only to Maras chili. I went crazy for isot in Turkey and am always well stocked. Find a Turkish shop and buy some. That smoky sweet flavour of isot pepper goes with anything.

Puy Lentil Salad with Hazelnuts, Preserved Lemons, Thyme and Isot Pepper – Recipe

Since this is a salad, quantities and proportions are up to you. Want a bit more kick? Add some more isot pepper. Love preserved lemons? Go crazy!

Mix the following ingredients together:

• 2 cups puy lentils, boiled until just after al dente. I added a bouquet garni in there but you can omit. Also, I couldn’t find puy lentils, so I bought something labeled “french lentils” which are brown in colour but tastes like puy.
• 1/2 cup roast pumpkins, cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup oven-dried tomatoes – Make your own or use good quality semi-dried tomatoes – coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp preserved lemon peel – rinsed and finely chopped
• A handful or two of roasted hazelnuts, peeled
• 1 tbsp isot pepper
• 1 tsp allspice
• olive oil and salt – to taste

In effort to further learn how to make specialty foods from scratch, I gave sauerkraut a go around 2 weeks ago. I’ve been eating sauerkraut in serious quantities ever since I switched to a Paleolithic diet. It ticks many boxes – sauerkraut is very low in carbohydrates, its acidity helps when eating copious amounts of butter and meat, and it’s full of beneficial bacteria that are supposed to help with gut flora population and all that. My go-to brand was a German-style sauerkraut from my local supermarket, but then I read somewhere that most, if not all, supermarket sauerkraut are actually pasteurised. In essence, my sauerkraut was dead, killed by heat. The beneficial bacteria I thought I was consuming were no longer there.

That upset me for a while, but then I decided to look on the bright side and that it was a chance to have a go at making it myself. I bought half an organic cabbage from Eveleigh markets and took it home. My experience with fermented food had so far been limited to yoghurt and beer, both of which need the bacteria/yeast to be introduced from an external source. Sauerkraut is somewhat magical: its starter bacteria grow on the cabbage leaves while the cabbage is still in the field. Sauerkraut can be made flavoured by using caraway seeds, juniper berries or the like, but for my first go I decided to stick with plain sauerkraut. I tried the traditional method of fermenting the cabbage in a jar, and I also came up with a different approach and fermented the cabbage in vacuum bags. I’m yet to taste the vacuum bag patch (if that works, I’ll certainly be doing that from now on), but have tucked into the jar and it’s unlike any other sauerkraut I’ve ever tasted. There’s a delicate flavour of vinegar, but overall the flavour is earthy and somehow malty, similar to a beer. It’s delicious and the leaves are still crunchy and crisp. Making sauerkraut is easy and recipes abound on the Internet, so I won’t give detailed instructions. Find a recipe that appeals to you and try it (here’s the one I followed). But at a high level, you simply chop up the cabbage leaves and rub them with salt. Then, you put them in a clean jar, press them down and close the jar. A few weeks later, you have sauerkraut – healthy, living sauerkraut. And you become the god of millions, if not billions, of beneficial bacteria. It might be useful for you to know that my sauerkraut did not develop a bloom or scum like the recipe suggested would happen. I’m not sure if that is due to winter temperatures or anything else. In any case, the recipe worked really well is and is worth following.

Got any tips to share on making your own sauerkraut? Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

I started watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” yesterday. I know I’m a few years late on this, and yes, I am completely aware that Season 1, Episode 1 of No Reservations does not classify as hot off the press, but hey, let me have this one.

Episode 1 kicks off in Paris – and what better place to start a food show than in Paris, really? Let me say, seeing that man leave a blazing trail of smoke around the city makes me want to have a cigarette myself. I’m no smoker, but there’s something deeply attractive about wandering around ancient Parisian walkways with a pack of Gauloises Blondes.

The show took me back to the time when I visited Paris a few year back and it reminded of what I loved about that city. You guessed it – the food. Man, the French know how to eat. Twenty minutes into the show and I was depressed. I wanted to have what these people posses in such abundant surplus. I wanted to trade Sydney for Paris. I yearned for a food culture. A real one. Still now, I am aching for a local, unpretentious bistro, somewhere where I can be a regular, where I can grow old eating the same dish for 60 years, week in, week out. Somehow, I don’t think the local chicken stir-fry with cashew nuts will meet my requirements. Please, find me a pot of coq au vin made with a proper rooster or suitably old chicken. And also, while you’re there, some potatoes cooked in duck fat and a big glass of red would be great, too.

We have good food in Sydney, but it’s not always around the corner and not always budget-friendly. With food being so trendy here, a good feed almost always comes served with a big dose of celebrity chef ego and a side of the ensuing foodie crowd. Honesty is out the window. Another gripe of mine is the quality of food. In the city, I struggle to find anyone serving chicken that is not intensively farmed and it’s nearly impossible to get grass-fed meat (unless you’re willing to pay through the nose). Has anyone else noticed that pubs and restaurants try to make grain-fed beef sound like it’s a good thing? Are we that susceptible to marketing?

To avoid disappointment, I now mostly eat at home. For a slice of Paris, cheese and wine are a good, easy go-to option. Australian wine is world-class and I’m lucky I have access to a great cheese. Small Cow Farm is a local family business making cheese out in the Southern Highlands and they produce a bloody awesome blue – one of the best I’ve had. The milk is locally sourced from happy, grass-fed cows from Country Valley in Picton (Country Valley also provides the cream that makes the unbelievable @pepesaya butter, and their milk is worth seeking out, too). Get yours from Eveleigh Market on Saturday from Ester Winbourne (@DairyGoodness) and tell her I sent you. I might get a discount next time I’m there.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to share some of my favourite food findings on The Food Blog with my readers. I wasn’t sure what the best way to do so was. Today, I came up with the idea of doing a weekly post that highlights a product that I love and think is worth sharing. The recommendations I make are my independent views – I haven’t been paid to namedrop (see here) and, unless otherwise stated, have fully paid for the product myself. I follow an ethical code of complete disclosure.

The inaugural Awesome Food of The Week is Booza, a high-quality Levantine ice cream made locally in Tempe. The Levant is the region that covers Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel, as well as parts of Cyprus and Turkey, and “booza” is the Arabic word for ice cream. The distinctive thing about Levantine ice cream is its stretchy texture, achieved by the addition of salep, a thickener from wild Turkish orchid tubers. This is the ice cream I grew up with, and it’s such a treat to have access to a premium version (made with high quality ingredients) right here in Sydney. I first tried Booza a few months back and was extremely impressed, and have since visited and revisited the owners factory in Tempe so many times that they’re probably sick of me. I really love the halewe (sesame halva) booza, but I have also used the pistachio praline booza as well as my favourite, fig and walnut booza as dessert in my latest pop-up dinner and it went down a treat. You can find more details on Booza including where to buy it from at http://www.booza.com.au.

Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald included this month’s copy of the(sydney)magazine, and I’m extremely excited to see my own contribution in there. The article is a short story on a trip I took to Gaziantep, a city in south-eastern Anatolia in Turkey. I talk of my journey through the city streets in search of kebabs and pistachio desserts, and the interesting encounters I had during my brief stay there. Click on the image above to have a read and let me know what you think.

It took me a few months to get around to read Mezze to Milk Tart, the latest book by Sydney’s own Cecile Yazbek. Now that I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and go through it, I’ll tell you upfront, it’s wonderful. Yazbek, a Lebanese who grew up in the old South Africa (hence the Mezze to Milk Tart), ran a vegetarian cookery school in Sydney and is the author of Olive Trees Around My Table, her memoire about growing up in South Africa under apartheid. Yazbek became a vegetarian early in her youth for political reasons; she couldn’t justify eating meat as the cost of a meal for her family could feed a poor South African family for a month on a plant-based diet. Mezze to Milk Tart is her vegetarian cook book, full of a lifetime of vegetarian recipes.

Regular readers of my blog probably know where I stand with regards to meat eating (I’m for it). So, a book on vegetarian cooking might not seem like the ideal subject for me to be reviewing, given my bias toward an animal-based diet. But Yazbek’s book really appeals to me, for several reasons.

Last October I ran a series of secret dinners, one of which was a vegetarian event. One of the main challenges I wanted to overcome was to showcase the role of “vegetables” in a vegetarian diet, since, as much as I am a supporter of an animal-based diet, I am equally in complete opposition to a grain-based diet. My food had to focus on real vegetables, nuts and plant-based fats, and I believe I did so successfully. Focusing on grains (disregarding their detrimental effects on health) is an easy way out for the vegetarian cook. There are so many wonderful dishes one can make with vegetables without relying on grains, and Yazbek seems to agree. Yazbek’s book is an example of real generosity in vegetarian cookery and for the most part focuses on true vegetables. Think okra, artichokes and eggplants, with recipes so deliciously simple that often the list of ingredients is longer than the cooking method itself. I quite like that. Also, her cooking is richer in legumes than it is in grains, and that makes me happy.

There are also stories between chapters where Yazbek tells us about her life and her food. Read about her journey out to Sydney’s west in search of mafrouki, a traditional Lebanese dessert of semolina, clotted cream and candied orange blossoms. Lebanese story-telling genes are evident. Her stories are almost timeless and folkloric, with wonderfully stereotypical characters described with the skill of a writer, not a celebrity chef.

The book itself is slightly different to what we’ve come to expect from a cookbook. It is in paperback, has more photos of people and places than of food, which makes it lack the glamour people look for in a cook book. But I feel that what it lacks in glamour, it more than makes up for in honesty and content. The writing is wonderful and the recipes are rich. The cuisines Yazbek borrows from are perfect for her topic, where the dishes are not simply trying to replace meat, they are wholeheartedly and generously vegetarian. You can find Mezze and Milk Tart on the Wakefield Press website.

I’m certain a mathematician can work this into a formula, perhaps a beautifully plotted graph that demonstrates in didactic elegance the relation one experiences with recipes and ingredients, with passing time as a factor. Like the rest of my generation, following from milk, I started out eating nothing but Cerelac, a simple, bland sort of food that my mother used to get me onto solids. Soon after came fruit, then rice dishes, vegetables, yoghurt, cheese, meat and the rest. And there was no stopping progress. Retrospectively, Cerelac was my Big Bang moment, a taste experience before which there was nothing, but after which nothing would be the same. Unknown molecules start forming and binding to each other into new recipes and dishes, pushing my personal Food Universe into an ever-expanding state in both breadth and height, giving rise to new experiences.

When you start cooking for yourself, and if you have that kind of obsessive grain within you, you might throw yourself at it whole-heartedly. What was ultimately a nutritional exercise quickly transcends the Get-It-In-Ya experience as you discover that so-called Joy of Cooking. Your one bedroom studio closes in as more and more recipe books pack against the wall and more and more utensils are stacked above the kitchen bench. Your fridge will almost certainly contain foods with exceedingly exotic origins, superbly interesting qualities and utterly unpronounceable names. (While we’re on the subject, how DO you pronounce galangal?). With the ammunition well-stocked, experimentation ensues and with it, the inevitable successes and failures.

To me, that seems to be the era of chaos that precedes universal order. At one point in time, not too long ago, a cookbook mutiny threatened to over-throw my sanity; I had over 50 ingredients in my fridge, the same amount in my pantry and more pots and pans than you can poke a slotted, wooden dessert spoon at. But gradually, things changed. I stopped buying utensils and use a frying pan and a cast iron pot for most of my cooking. Instead of purchasing more cookbooks, I rely on 2 or 3 that I own already and love the most. I make stir-fries with 4 or 5 ingredients instead of 10. My fridge stocks a limited variety of food. It seems my Food Universe has reversed and is now shrinking. And I love it that way. My dinner might be a pastured steak fried in good butter with some hot English mustard on the side. If I am feeling adventurous, some glazed carrots might find their way to the plate. Good quality eggs make a meal, with need for little else. Some good cream mixed in there, and a just-set, custardy omelet is a decidedly brilliant dinner. Dessert need be nothing more than Pepe Saya’s phenomenal mascarpone with some berries on top. Or a slice of good cheese. If the ingredients are of high quality, there’s no need to diversify. Focus on the singular and you will find happiness, that’s my new mantra. Sure, I might not be heading straight back to Cerelac, and perhaps the universe is getting more focused rather than shrinking. Order. There’s a quiet enjoyment to be found in minimalizing a repertoire; a kind of meditative calm, an asserted certainty; and if you look closely enough, an infinity of choice.

How about you? Are you eating more variety than you did a few years ago? Do you find you are happier with more food choice or with less?

In keeping with yesterday’s theme, here’s another great ingredient, full of fat’s goodness: bone marrow. I saw a documentary a few days ago which showed that eating bone marrow was one of those factors that guarded man’s ancestors from extinction. You see, when food was scarce, and when fierce predators would get all the meat around, our ancestors had an advantage. The lion would go home and leave nothing but bone. Our ancestors were unique among mammals in that they knew how to smash a rock against those bones and extract the nutritious bone marrow. Smashing rocks, a unique evolutionary trait…

As you have probably guessed from the photo, I didn’t smash a rock against the bones. Mine were cut in half by my butcher’s vertical saw. A much more elegant, though less stress-relieving approach, wouldn’t you agree?

The following recipe is my creation. I smoked some eggplants under the grill, mixed in some butter, walnuts, cumin, salt and lemon juice. I topped that with roasted bone marrow, more lemon juice and some olive oil infused with garlic and rosemary. The dish came together beautifully, mostly soft, but with the occasional crunch from the walnuts and fried garlic. I’ll be cooking more bone marrow and trying a few different recipes with it. How about you? Do you eat much bone marrow? What do you think of it?

Roast Bone Marrow with Smoked Eggplants Recipe

For the Garlic and Rosemary Oil: Add 3 tbsp olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic and a sprig of rosemary (de-stemmed) into a pan and heat until it sizzles nicely. Remove from heat and leave aside. The garlic should be come golden and crunchy

For the Eggplants: cut 1 large eggplant in half and roast for half an hour under a hot grill. Make sure it blisters, but doesn’t burn. Scoop out the flesh into a bowl. Add 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp butter and salt and lemon juice to taste. Add a handful or two of chopped walnuts. Taste and adjust seasoning. Keep warm.

For the Bone Marrow: preheat the oven to 170c and roast the bone marrow for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove marrow from bone and keep warm. You can use the bones in stock.

Putting it All Together: In a bowl, spoon some eggplant, top with some bone marrow, squeeze a bit of lemon and add some of the olive oil you prepared earlier, along with some garlic flakes and rosemary sprigs. Enjoy.

One of the most revered traditional breakfasts in Lebanon is a platter of raw liver, raw lamb muscle meat and raw liyyeh, sheep tail fat. Middle-Eastern sheep are a particular breed with tails that grow to a massive size. I’ve heard it said that up to one quarter of the sheep’s weight could come from its tail. The tail is pure, soft, white fat. For breakfast, along with the raw meat and liver, the liyyeh is sprinkled with salt and pimento and eaten with bread. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially the liver, but the initial reaction subsides when you take the plunge and eat some. I personally find that the flavour of liver, or anything for that matter, is milder when the food is raw.

Raw sheep tail fat is delicious, but, I also really like it barbecued on charcoal. The outside caramelises beautifully, and a bit of salt brings out a sweetness in the fat. It’s not greasy or oily, but rather creamy with a round, buttery mouthfeel. Here in Australia, sheep tail fat isn’t something you can find. My Lebanese butcher tells me that they tried, but failed, to raise Middle-Eastern breeds of sheep in Australia. Something to do with the weather and humidity causes the sheep to get sick… Don’t quote me on that.

So a few days ago, I find myself at AC Butchery in Leichhardt looking at a piece of lardo: cured pig fat. The fat is subcutaneous, which is the soft fat from underneath the skin of the pig (as opposed to visceral fat, which is intramuscular). The fat gets cured with salt. It’s  sometimes flavoured with herbs and sometimes it’s also smoked. I couldn’t resist buying it – $15 a kilo for fat from a free range pig sounded like a financially wise investment. Today, I had a craving for the good old days back in Lebanon. No tail fat for me unfortunately, but the lardo did the trick. The Italians slice the fat thinly and eat it for antipasti, or use it as a topping for bruschetta, among other uses. I tried something else with the fat: seared on a hot pan until it goes slightly crisp and golden, flipped and then served with sauerkraut and hot english mustard. Delicious, and so nutrient and energy dense, I probably won’t have to eat anything else until winter arrives. Maybe I’ll hibernate for the afternoon…

You have most probably seen this study that just came out showing that eating red meat is going to kill you, eventually. Having read the numerous alarmist articles published on the topic, I thought it is my duty to say something, since so many media outlets have started going crazy for this piece of news. Here’s the link to the article by The Telegraph.

I don’t know how this rubbish is even considered a study. What the researchers did was survey 100,000 people over a period of 28 years, asking them every 4 years about their diet and lifestyle. Asking them? So, the study wasn’t a double blind, laboratory based study? Already, I’m skeptical. Many issues are known to happen with survey studies. Namely, people lie in surveys. They do! I know I have…

OK, but putting that aside. Let’s look at this line from the Telegraph: