2012 in review - don't bang the door on your way out

I’m ready to slam the door on 2012. Really, it’s been a c*nt of a year.

They’ve been three deaths: my mother, my cat (truly my familiar) and an old friend. I rail against the creep of cancer into the lives of peers. It feels like a sniper is picking off so many wonderful women in their forties, leaving behind bewildered men and children whose lives are forever altered.

But back to food.

I think I lost my appetite this year. The paucity of recipes posted would suggest so. My return to the Northern Hemisphere, after over half my lifetime away, smashed the barrier between me and the world and I started seeing again.  But tasting? It took until I got to Russia, the place I feared I’d starve for a week due to my pernickety food intolerances, to wake up my tastebuds. It was a country that brings your senses to life but perhaps that’s partially due to the reptilian brain being activated, so much strangeness in a strange land.

Pleased to report that I’m fully tasting again and loving:

• Watermelon, even it’s sticky juices dribbling down my chin (which is a big deal for a Virgo).
• Watermelon and strawberry juice. What’s not to love about a cheery pink juice?
• Homemade vegan iced chocolate, made with a spicy Aztec powder, spiked with a stick of cassia bark.
• Juiced apple, cucumber, lemon and mint – transformed into oh-my-goddess-these-are-amazing icy poles. Perfect coolers on a hot day.
• And wondering what apple, sorrel and cucumber icy poles would be like?
• Carnival cookies.
• Smoked tofu, vegetable, chilli and garlic stir fries – my go to meal this season. An oldie but a goodie.
• So too Asian style coleslaws.

Mourning the end of my last batches of homemade:

• Vanilla extract (in my grief fog I forget to continue to replenish what I’d believed was an endless jar of vodka soaked vanilla beans)
• Red chilli preserved in vinegar
• Mauritian pickles
• Kimchi

Food trends 

Twelve months ago I looked into my culinary crystal ball and channelled the rise of coconut, macaroons (not macarons for a change) and local honey, with middling degrees of accuracy.

For 2013 – I don’t like what I see. I fear the gourmet-ising of junk food will continue. There’s been hot dogs, burgers and silly little sliders dominating dinning landscape from food trucks and corner pubs, to restaurants that could do so much better.

Why I dislike this trend is that it’s a cheap cop out. The punter fills up on bread, there’s varying degrees of quality and quantity of protein and paltry vegetable content. It requires minimum skill and gains maximum profit.

George Calombaris vows that the ''souvlaki is the new burger” and I don’t doubt it. Sadly I predict the trend will continue ‘til chefs (and their accountants) run out of cheap junk food to glamourize.

Perhaps all this meaty stuff (don’t get me started on the rise of meatballs, schnitzel and other carnivorous old favourites) is a reaction against the increasing vegetarian presence in one food-laden corner of the city. Brunswick Street and environs is becoming a veritable Golden Triangle for those who eschew the flesh (or just want a break from it between burgers). With Madame K, Yong Green, Lord of the Fries and the perennially packed Vegie Bar expanding their eco terrain in the main part of the strip, within spitting distance of Mr Natural, The Moroccan Soup Bar and Trippy Taco. There’s talk of South veganizing Collingwood and already a new vegan café within the Golden Triangle that promises Vegusto toasties in the New Year.

There will be more food trucks, I promise you there will, but will they be slaughtering their own pigs or fermenting their own nut cheese? I don't know.

During 2013 I fear even greater polarization between those who choose either the flesh or the bean. And both will come out victorious in their own sweet way.

How’s your year been? What are you loving at the moment? Do you agree with my food predictions (just between you and me I hope I’m wrong)? Have you got any of your own?

Goodbye 2012 – don’t slam the door on your way out.

vignettes

What you need comes to you

I tripped off to the new(ish) Fitzroy market on Saturday before Armageddon hit. It reminded me of Glebe market when I first went there twenty-something years ago. Smaller. But Has Promise.

The rent from the stalls at the market goes to Fitzroy School’s Kitchen Garden project. That’s reason enough to support it.

A couple of days before I’d made a batch of marinated olives. Carbon dating the original recipe*, I scribbled it down and first made them in the mid ‘80s. It’s a simple concoction – a few herbs, good Kalamata olives, a decent olive oil. I’d assembled the marinade bar one vital ingredient – a couple of bay leaves. Too bad I thought, I'm sure it will be ok without it. And forgot about it.

At the Fitzroy market my eyes fell upon a big tub of laurel branches, a generous stallholder giving them away. Take two they urged. No one’s enough there’s so many leaves on the branch. A nice chat, then off home with the lush foliage peeking out of my bag.

The missing bay leaves, fresh and vibrant, now added to the marinated olives.





Follow your instincts

Before I skipped out the door in the last of the sunlight, I’d put the tagine in the laundry tub to soak. The terracotta pot, when not used every day, needs a bit of a dip, time to dry and then a rub with oil to season it before cooking.

At lunchtime I whipped up a simple vegetable tagine with a big dob of harissa from my freshly harvested chillies, threw in some left over green olives and gently put it in a cold oven. The plan was to cook it all afternoon on very low (about 125C) and forget about it til dinner.

With the sun still high in the sky but feeling a little lazy after my morning wander, I drove rather than walked the kilometre or so up the road and submitted myself to a much needed massage.

Relaxed and a little dazed I stumbled out onto the darkened street and wondered where I was. Had I been transported to a winter’s afternoon in London? Not even 3 and the sky was so dark, every car had its lights on. Coming back to my senses, I was full of foreboding and started driving home. In the short trip the sky opened and pelted me with hail. It was a storm on monolithic proportions.

Safely inside, the house was infused with the aroma of the slow cooking tagine, locals tweeted amazing images of impromptu rivers running down city streets, hail stones the size of lemons and general chaos.

It was quite a storm.

And quite a tagine!


veggie tagine ready for a long slow cook: eggplant, pumpkin, leeks, fennel, green olives, parsnip, homegrown cherry tomatoes and harissa

Seasons

I don’t need a calendar to know when autumn has arrived. Nor look for fallen leaves to crunch under my feet. Autumn officially begins the morning I awake craving porridge (oatmeal) and when I get the urge to make a big pot of soup.

Today is the day. Goodbye summer. Farewell asparagus. See you later berries. Bring on the pumpkin!

Porridge for breakfast (with crushed nuts and maple syrup) and a pot of autumn vegetables and bean soup cooking on the stove.

I'm ready!


*Marinated olives


The original recipe
(Source unknown)
2 c Kalamata olives
1 c olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2-3 dried red chillies, crushed
2 bay leaves

Mix ingredients in a bowl then transfer to a sterilized jar. Marinate for 1 week, stirring occaisionally. Use the marinade for salad dressings etc or reuse.

My version
In a clean jar combine fresh chillies, black pepper corns, bay leaves and lots of garlic with the best quality olives and olive oil you can find. Keep out of direct light, at room temperature and try to resist eating them for at least a week. Shake the jar daily.

arepas

It began with a bag of P.A.N.

I found myself in Casa Iberica. One of those iconic, Melbourne stores that’s been serving the community for decades. In this case it is all things Spanish and Latin American. Just walking across the threshold is a cause for celebration. Although their opening hours appear respectable, it always seems to be shut when I stroll past it.

Each shelf is crammed with exotic flours, dried herbs, chillies in every form, tins of heart of palms and hominy. Overhead giant sized paella pans are stung, large chunks of cured meats, more chillies on a thread, kitsch decorations. The language spoken is Spanish, tired women pile kilo’s of yerba mate into their baskets, well padded men can be found loitering at the counter waiting for their custard tarts. It’s that kind of place.

So the first packet I see before is masa harina. The bright yellow package immediately recognisable from this great post on making arepas, over at Gluten Free Girl. Months ago it was. I coveted them, then filed the magic ingredient away in the too hard basket. Til this moment when it all came together.

Without hesitation in went the packet of P.A.N. I saved my indecision for standing in front of the dried Mexican chillies (it would take a second trip to the store days later before I could really commit to one). My hand quivered over the solid blocks of 100% cocoa for real hot chocolate. I coveted the tortilla press. But on this visit it was just me and the P.A.N. that made it home together.

Arepas are a South American staple, especially in Venezuela and Columbia. The flour is made from pre-cooked corn, making it both smooth and gritty in the same instance. The basic recipe seems to revolve around the masa harina, warm water and a touch each of salt and oil. Some people pour the flour into the water, others do the opposite. There is little mixing. With no gluten there is no need to work the mixture or even let it rest. Cooking falls into a choice of frying, baking or a combination of both. You can stuff them with cheese before cooking, or make them plain. Once cooked you can use them to scoop beans or fill them like a roll. So simple you can make them every day.

Following the method demonstrated by Shauna’s friend Karen I started with a bowl with 200 mls of warm water. Tossing in a pinch of salt and a scant tsp of vegetables oil, a just started pouring in the flour with one hand, the other in the water doing the mixing. Daring, I know, using no measurements but very swiftly the dough, came together. Literally in seconds the masa harina thickened in my hand. It took about a minute or so from start to finish to get a while ball of damp dough that stuck together without leaving bits behind on my fingers.

Shaping the little darlings is the more challenging part and I am still on my L Plates but it is a good excuse to keep practicing. About the size of a crumpet is about right.

Continuing with Karen’s method, I used my well seasoned cast iron pan, wiped a tiny amount of oil over it with a paper towel and put in on a medium flame. After cooking each disc for a few minutes on each side to make a decent crust, they went on a baking tray in to the oven for 20 minutes at 175 c. Tap them to see if they are cooked, they should have that telltale hollow sound like bread.


ok I need a little more shaping practice but you get the idea

We ate our arepas two ways. A batch at night was used to scoop up some great chilli beans, flavoured with the slow smoky heat of chipotles. Splitting the hot arepas in half it seemed slightly damp in the middle but didn’t taste at all doughy. A lick of butter, a trial run with some Greek Fasting (milk free) fetta and a dollop of the bean and vegetable mixture on top. We were in heaven.

I’d reserved some of the dough to play with the next day. This time I baked some eggs with mushrooms, garlic, spring onion, ‘fetta’ and zataar with the fresh batch of arepas in the oven. I think the first ones were better but still the tasted the same – not heavy, not too light, ah just right!



More info to feed a new arepas addiction

A great story about PAN and arepas under Chavez at Papaya Pate.

A search on Youtube will show you more demos of making arepas than you can poke a stick at. This one proves that food is the international language.

Casa Iberica is at 25 Johnston St Fitzroy 3065
(03) 9417 7106

The alleged trading hours are:
Monday to Thursday: 9am to 5pm
Friday: 9am to 6pm
Saturday: 9am to 1pm
Sunday: closed.

Note: There are more gluten-free flours in this shop than your average supermarket – PAN, chestnut, chickpea, manioc … to name but a few. You can even buy pre-cooked arepas, stuffed with cheese. Just steer clear of the Portuguese custard tarts.

the dating game

Unusually for me, it has been over four years since I last had a first date. I’m not one of those creatures who pair for life and lets just say, in the dating department there has been a fair amount of H20 under the bridge.

Now as much as I am free to “date” (the SE and I are hot on honesty and cool on ownership) its been months since I've met a new soul that has made my heart flutter. We were in a group, sharing a lunch and chatting our little heads off. I knew something was up when I struggled to get through even half the food on my plate.

What struck me most, when I read this piece in The Observer’s last food magazine about what to eat on a first date, was the bits that Jan Moir left out.

I was amused when it covered all the things that could go wrong in selecting your venue, with the conclusion that you leave the choice of restaurant to your date so they can take the heat if it is a bad choice. Rubbish! One of the things I’ve always enjoyed is trying to match a person to a restaurant. Perhaps on a first date the lack of knowledge about the fellow dinner can be a bit of a challenge but surely it breaks the ice a little in the pre-date chat to talk about food and what kinds of places you most enjoy eating in. For me my radar would go off if anyone came in with a strong preference on either end of the scale – from ‘I never eat out, restaurants make me feel uncomfortable’ (oops I should have listened to that one when it happened) to someone who names only the current top hot spots (trying too hard to impress).

Years ago I had a first date at the Vegie Bar. It had just opened in a little corner restaurant, before it expanded to the current barn-like space next door. We’d bought a bottle of plonk (in the days where the only places in a student price range were BYO) but it hadn't got its liquor license yet. The owner colluded to hide the bottle and we drank it out of teacups. Far from being a disaster it bought about conspiratorial closeness, a story to tell and a memory that has lasted much longer than the accompanying night of smooching.

Moir advises against ordering oysters (too obvious), sushi (chopstick embarrassment making you look like some kind of uncoordinated, messy fool) and strong smells like garlic or coffee. It sounds like a very boring date to me! Even worse, she advises against getting plastered, which we all know is the only way to survive some of the more hideous first dates. Well maybe total inebriation will only lead to tears but I disagree with the advise on ordering a type of beer based on sophistication. Order what you usually drink so as not create a false impression, would be my advice.

One of my most memorable first dates involved being taken on a picnic in my hometown. It was a spot I’d never been to before, a cliff top from where you could see the South Island. He’d cooked and I bought a thermos of orange juice laced with brandy. Fortunately we had met before, otherwise such a remote location may have been tinged with palpitations of fear rather than excitement.

So what are Melbourne’s best first date restaurants? If I am meeting someone I really don’t know, I prefer a coffee in daylight, or a glass of wine somewhere low key. A meal implies a longer period of time spent together and it is much harder to leave half way through. Much worse would be lust at first sight, ordering a fabulous meal and not being able to stomach more than a mouthful or two. Sadly the first flutter of attraction is about the only thing, bar illness, that makes me loose my appetite.

My last first date was to meet for casual drinks at dusk on a Sunday. There was no assumption that it would turn into dinner or more, just meeting up when he was going to be near my neighbourhood. There was a glass of wine at a good first date pub – comfortable chairs, a fireplace, pleasantly full of people but not too noisy you can’t hear each other. A couple of hours later dinner seemed the natural progression and we headed down the road for Spanish (lots of garlic!), a glass of sherry and paella to share (the not eating much being less obvious with a shared dish) and then not ready to say goodbye – we strolled back up the street to a swish intimate bar for a nightcap.

Some dates work best when you break all the rules!

Provincial Hotel
299 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
Enough light to see what the date looks like but not too bright to show all your flaws. Avoid the Friday night crush though.


De los Santos
175 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
For first date garlic breath.

Polly
401 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
Low lights, plush velvet, great cocktails.


First date tips and disasters - the comments section eagerly awaits your response!