more than about eating

This weekend I want to be in the moment.

When I peel the mandarin I want to breath in the fine spray of oils as they fly off the skin.

I want to taste the rose water in the Turkish delight.

I want to meditate on the honey-like sweetness of the dates.

I want to be at one with the shocking bitterness of our homegrown radicchio and observe the fresh walnuts, orange and fennel mediate the harshness when I toss them in a salad.

If wine is to be drunk, I want it to be mellow and aged (like that wonderful 11 year old shiraz I drank last weekend), sipped slowly with respect.

I want to remember what it feels like for my stomach to be fully empty, awake and ready before I am fed.

I want to eat more slowly and laugh more deeply.



What are your plans for the weekend?

hello winter- a quickie

I’m off food at the moment (see last post), am now in second week of feeling NQR (not quite right) digestively speaking

The above point makes any attempts at blogging a tad boring

Despite that – things I am loving right now

• Golden Kiwi fruit – from my homeland (slight guilt re: food miles)
• Mandarins – at least they are local!
• Buying the above fruit from a fifth generation Vic Market stall. Not organic but some is home grown and spray-free. You know the one, the fourth generation trader is often hanging out the back smoking err “herbal cigarettes”.
• Herbal tea – my tummy tea du jour is mint, chamomile and liquorice, very soothing
• Autumn colours. Ok I know its winter but the colours are still fab.

What’s are you loving?

ANZAC biscuit-free zone

For the last few days we’ve been working our way through these ridiculously small but highly perfumed fruit. Home grown and picked by one of the guys at the market, last week I got a kilo of these under-sized feijoas for less than the price of a coffee. Each time I enter the kitchen, it’s like coming home. Literally. My olfactory senses tell me I’m back in New Zealand. The small, taste and texture is pure nostalgia.



This week I also made my first green curry paste from scratch, ridiculous considering how many other curries I make from first principles. I based it on this recipe throwing in more liberal quantities of most ingredients (including lots more green chillies) and omitting the coriander root, being the only herb I was out of. At first I was very disappointed. Yes the flavours had a vibrancy to them but the concoction didn't knock my socks off. Then I remembered the paste is only half of the flavour balance. After frying off the fresh paste and then simmering with coconut milk, I got out the fish sauce, palm sugar and split open a lime. A Thai curry is an alchemical process. The paste may be the base metal but it's the final three ingredients that create the magic.

Staring at me accusingly in the kitchen is also a bag of lemons, gifted from a visitor from over the border. I’ve been hanging out to make more lemonade, a perfect antidote to the unseasonably balmy weather of late.

No ANZAC biscuits for me, to commemorate the day instead I’ve a round up of old posts from my Grandfather’s WWI diary at my other blog, there’s also a post on what he ate at the front, in hospital and at Christmas while waiting to be shipped off from camp in my archives.

Enjoy the long weekend, take a leaf out of Princess Prissy Paws book and take it easy!

last days of summer

With days still spiking into the sticky mid-30s, I haven't wanted to turn the oven on much. Late summer is all about fruit. The cherries ended as abruptly as they arrived, apricots have had their day, peaches are still doing their thing and plums are stealing the scene.

When it comes to berries I'm a stickler for organics, in season. The local blue berries and strawberries have been spectacular this month - eaten within a day of purchase, at room temperature. Why would you want to trick up such stunning flavours?

There's a hint of autumn in the air, a whisper of cooler days to come. But for now there's a few weeks left of grazing the fruit bowl, lazy salads for dinner and sushi for lunch.

sardines

Vegans, avert your eyes right now.

I’m going to talk about the glories of flesh, food that stares back at you eyeball to eyeball and the smell of a once living creature caramelising on the grill.

I’m not really; I just needed to get those words out of my system. Despite abstaining from meat I love fresh fish, especially cooked whole on the bone. While I remember sharing with my brother the joys of a whole fish, deep fried and bathed in a Thai red curry sauce, for the rest of my family it has always been the anonymity of fillets with barely a hint of the creature that sacrificed itself for our pleasure. At Christmas when I barbecued a snapper, I knew I’d have to serve each of them the white flesh, free of any bones, with the eyes averted.

Such a thing is near impossible with sardines. Sure you can buy the dark fleshed, itty-bitty fillets. Tiny things that just take seconds to cook. But the fishmonger had the freshest looking sardines this week, just aching to be barbecued.

While on a moral level I understand that eating another being may be wrong, so I think it is important to be conscious when consuming them. I want to honour the noble fish, be cognizant of its unwitting sacrifice and fully respect its beauty.

The skin is glorious scale-free silver, with flashes of rainbow colours. It feels firm to the touch. The eyes are clear. Only a small slit is need to remove the organs from its belly, a quick wash in cool water, then pat dry. As you need at least half a dozen per person for a meal, it’s just as well the process is quick and easy.

Stephanie Alexander has a simple suggestion on how to cook this little fish, simply wrap in a vine leaf, secure it with a toothpick and grill over the coals. When I first made these years ago, not long after I became the owner of the aging grape vine, I cooked them on a hibachi. As much as I miss old fashioned barbecuing over glowing embers, the immediacy of the gas model means we cook outdoors more often.





A simple BBQ dinner for two

Scrub the skin of two big, organic potatoes and bake in a hot oven for about 25 minutes, til half cooked. Cut in thick slices then toss with olive oil, fresh rosemary, sea salt and black pepper.

Turn on the barbecue.

Cook the potatoes on a hot plate for a good 10 minutes a side til golden. Toss a bunch of asparagus in the remaining oil and cook for the last minute or too as well.

The fishmonger also had some dear little whiting, so fresh and inviting. I figured on 2 whiting for the SE, 1 for me plus 4-5 sardines each. (The cats got some sardine sashimi and were very happy – 14 little fish cost about $2.60 so slipping them the odd few is no luxury).

On a hot grill cook the whiting (gutted, rinsed and patted dry with a slice or two of lemon in its belly) for about 4 minutes aside, likewise the vine leaf wrapped sardines.

To eat the sardines, remove the toothpick and pull away the now charred leaf. Hold the fish with your hands and slide the fragrant flesh off with your teeth, a side at a time.




Thank you little fishies, you made two humans and a couple of felines very happy.

so why are there so many bad gluten-free products?

gluten-free biscuits (which no one really likes) opened jan 2010

The offending item was bought by the Significant Eater when we cruised the health food store near the Westgarth theatre, wanting to find something to munch on during a movie.

Too much vanilla essence and way too salty. The floury bits were fine. So why do they have to stuff it up with absolutely crap flavour balance?

..and a happy New Year

The temperature is in the sweat inducing high 30’s and I don’t dare look at the drooping plants in the garden. The good news for them is that a change is on its way. Something wet and cooler – the perfect gift to welcome in the New Year.

Before the barometric pressure drops I’ve got to rustle up a last meal for the year (something with kangkung, rice and tempeh considering the humidity) and do something else with half a smoked eel before I head off with some bottles of cold bubbles (Spanish cava and homemade ginger beer) and sit with my Melbourne clan on a rooftop, as is our tradition.

The last few weeks of the year have been intense for me, not helped by a lingering head full of mucus and fatigue. 2009 has had its fair share of twists and turns, though not the ones I had anticipated. There’s been far too much death around which has eclipsed everything, especially food.

So for 2010 I have no grand culinary plans. If anything – eat out less, grow a few more vegetables, use leftovers more and try to reduce food waste. Not out of any economic impetuous, more the perversity of having a food blog but finding our collective obsession with stuffing our faces a tad obscene. A growing theme in my life is simplicity and if I am to make any wishes for the coming year, it is to continue on that track.

Food highlights for 2009

Last winter the aim was to have more people around our kitchen table and the twice monthly soup nights were born – an open invitation to friends to drop by on their way from work, a bottle of wine, some good bread and a pot of soup on the stove. Each one was different (both the food, the people and the conversation) and equally as delightful.

The tomato glut in February/March – a stack of Tommy toes slowly roasted with garlic, slipped out of their skins and pureed, then frozen in batches made great winter meals. The last lot flavoured November’s dolmades.

Speaking of dolmades, I learnt that cos lettuce leaves plucked straight from the garden tasted even better than grape leaves.

The fresh tomato juice bloody Marys deserve a honourable mention. Maybe with the anticipated 2010 tomato glut there tomato (agar) jelly will be made, perhaps even a bloody Mary version!

Pretty much every mouthful I ate in Melaka was a highlight in itself. The Assam fish curry at Nancy’s blew my mouth and my mind, the simple laksa and chendol, the street food and the final meal in KL (which was actually Thai but like nothing else I have eaten before).

2008’s wish for a tagine finally came true and the slow cooked results made the wait worthwhile.

There were some great muffins in 2009 – cherry and chocolate got perfected.

The vegan truffles were pretty darn good too!


It’s too hot to write more (or even bother to hyperlink, just do a search and you shall find the recipes) and I’ve promised to write no full on resolutions for the New Year – so I'm leaving with best wishes to you and yours where ever you are and hoping you have a safe and sated 2010.




OK just one resolution. More time around the kitchen table in 2010

the one that got away

Having swamped you, poor reader, with all the Melaka posts a while ago, I never got around to my sharing my last meal in Malaysia. I have a bill from the restaurant, scribbled notes made the next day and a mere 2 pictures. Really I am not a restaurant food blogger (and how could I be after only one meal at the place?) but boy it blew my socks off.

Lonely Planet raved about a Thai restaurant in KL offering dishes rarely seen out of it's native land. It was a swanky place, in a 5 star hotel but we still had some ringgit in need of spending and we could eat til we were stuffed for less than $20 a head (drinks of all kinds could set you back an equal amount though).

On my other blog I'm having fun with Gwen Bell's the Best of 2009 Blog challenge, if you want a taste of the dish of the night, the one my scrawled notes describe as "extraordinary" then take a peak - #best09 2. meal

it’s a jungle out there

Another downpour last night! The garden is lush, a small forest of tomato plants, spring onions, cos lettuces and silverbeet.

But there are some people in this city who live in a different kind of jungle; under railway bridges or in temporary accommodation, sleeping with one eye open.

No crispy cos salad straight from the garden or delicious morsels at Bistro Flor for them.

A timely reminder that StreetSmart is in full swing in the eastern states, until December 24th. Support your favourite local restaurants supporting Street Smart – getting money to the grassroots organisation in your community that are helping those impacted by homelessness.

obsession and the "C" word

According to Stephen Fry the only people obsessed about food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. Unless I’m suffering from some blinding degree of body dysmorphia I’m pretty sure I suffer from neither of those conditions.

But the other day a good friend did mention my preoccupation in a kindly way, as in “you’re obsessed with food, I’m obsessed with food but there are some people who aren’t”. I’m guessing she wasn’t meaning it in the Fry sense.

The trigger for this remark was the surprise news that my family will be flying over from New Zealand to have Christmas with me. This has never happened before and is unlikely to happen again. I feel a mix of excitement and trepidation. It’s a small family but one with diverse emotional and culinary needs, so I’m bundling my anxiety and desire to please into meeting the latter category. What to feed them?

I’m focusing on a casual feast for the day itself but as Melbourne’s restaurants can be fickle and tend to be shut in that week between Christmas and New Year, I need to stock the larder and gather some thoughts for standby meals to tempt the different palates. We range from traditionalists to modern, fussy eaters.

I have been writing lists, further evidence of my food obsession, making plans more than a month in advance for possible meals. My shopping list will include iceberg lettuce, the only salad green my father will grudgingly eat. There will be a truckload of eggs, potatoes, garlic and onion. At odd moments of the day I remember things like the only fruits my father is not indifferent to are pineapple and strawberries, and that we all love corn fritters and dark chocolate (though perhaps not together).

As for the feast itself (I’m having difficulty calling it Christmas – my sister is a Buddhist, I’m more atheist than theist, my mother has always been indifferent and my father just wants a hot meal) it’s about creating a memorable day. There will be no turkey roasting for a start. Apart from that being a crazy notion at the best of times in this climate, there are only 4 of us, only 1.5 of them eat meat and the cook and her assistant are non-meat eaters. Fortunately we all like prawns and fish.

A few plans are forming. The rich, dairy-free family favourite chocolate mousse will be a feature. Thinking of other classics my mother made has lead to a desire to create a modern take on a prawn cocktail. Growing up in the 60’s/70’s this was the standard “special meal” starter. Decent prawns are hard enough to come across in NZ now, let alone then, so it starred canned shrimps. Who were we to know the difference? I recall a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce, shrimps and a tangy “mayonnaise” (in fact a salad dressing made from condensed milk and mixed with tomato sauce). What else was in a classic 70’s prawn cocktail and how would you concoct a modern version? I’ll be keeping the lettuce and using the best prawns I can find (of course they will triple in price for that week in December), there will be real mayonnaise with tomato sauce (or Gordon Ramsay’s marie rose sauce) in fact his whole recipe looks good. Does it require anything else? The trick is it needs to have enough familiar elements to cater for the traditional eaters but be fresh, luscious and utterly “blog-worthy”.



Rarely do I borrow other images but in case you never had prawn cocktail love growing up, I adore the look of this version from BBC GoodFood

Obsessed about food? Yes. Food is a way we share our love. But it’s good to know that I’m not alone in it.

Update
The final Christmas menu.
The prawn cocktail recipe.

getting my head around summer

At 2.30 in the early hours of Thursday morning the thermometer got stuck on 30c (86F). I’d had a delightful evening, going to a massive exhibition opening, catching up with many people I hadn’t seen for a year and then walking through the balmy streets in search of a cheap dinner with friends. The humidity reminded us of our recent holiday and at the suggestion of a Malaysian friend we wandered off to his favourite student haunt on Swanston St. At Norsiah’s Kitchen we sat outside and ate our nasi lemaks and tahu telurs, enjoying the tasty food and good company. Reluctantly we headed off to our respective homes, relaxed and laughing.

After a sticky sleep I headed off to the market an hour or two earlier than usual. The weather informed my choices. My favourite organic stall seemed to be offering specials on my favourite and usually most expensive fruits. I bought a few punnets of fragrant Victorian strawberries, unblemished mangoes, a big wedge of watermelon and some stinky papaya for the Significant Eater. It was harder to get my head around vegetables but figured wombok (don’t you just love the name) would get turned into an Asian coleslaw or smoked fish salad at some point in the week.

Inspired by watching the carnivores devour their nasi lemak the night before I sought out kangkung and tempeh for a less meaty version of the dish. My not-quite-vegetarian nasi lemak turned out a treat but it’s still a work in progress – coconut rice, crispy fried tempeh with a splash of kecap manis, my favourite kangkung dish with some extra sambal reserved to have on the side with the rice, boiled eggs and cucumber. I ran out of steam before I roasted the peanuts and or contemplated the ikan bilis. But you get the idea. Next time I’ll prepare most of the components in advance, so it’s more about assemblage at dinnertime rather than being driven wild by the aroma of the sambal that caused my brain to send a warning message “must eat now!”

We’re slowly getting into a summer routine. I’m making friends with dawn, not usually my most loved time of day. My inner alarm clock is waking me at 6am and after a couple of weeks of this I’m learning to laugh at the precision of the timing and head outside to the relative cool of the mid-20’s with my journal, a drink and attentive felines. I’ve reacquainted myself with the local pool and remembered the sheer joy of plunging into the water in the morning light.

It’s going to be an interesting summer.

so you need another good excuse to eat out?

StreetSmart is back for another year. From Monday through to Christmas you have yet another excuse to eat out. The twist is that by dining at any of the participating restaurants and donating a mere $2 (or more) to Street Smart when you pay the bill, the money goes directly to helping the homeless.

The organization supports grass roots charities, so the money goes straight to the people who need it, rather than getting gobbled up in administration and fundraising costs. Last year over $127,000 was raised in Victoria alone. Have a look at the grants to see how that money was spent.

I’m very excited that I now have another reason to go eat at Bistro Flor. That place is just too convenient to walk to and you have got to admire a place with such excellent food that keeps all its delicious wines by the glass to a mere $8 (or there abouts).

The food blogging community’s old friend The Commoner is participating and you can through in an extra couple of bucks when you rock up to Birdman Eating for some baked eggs for breakfast. Many of my old time haunts in the CBD have signed up. Maybe that’s enough to lure me back to Punch Lane for old times sake?

Let’s face it, if you live in Melbourne (or any of the other Eastern states) and read this blog you are likely to be asking yourself “Where should I eat tonight?” sometime in the coming weeks. Street Smart makes it just that much easier.

And don’t forget, the donation is not in lieu of your waiter’s tip. Many of them will be on an unpaid break through those quiet weeks in summer when every restaurant you want to go to is shut. So let’s keep them off the streets as well.

pet peeves - breakfast

I caught a little of Cam Smith waxing lyrical about breakfasts yesterday on “Eat It” on 3RRRFM. Being on the road I had to restrain myself from phoning in to add to the list of pet peeves about breakfast dining. But it got me thinking…

The Food Nazi’s top 10 breakfast peeves

1. Waiting. I don’t mind being turned away at the door if a café/restaurant is full but I do mind sitting ignored at a table or waiting forever to place or receive an order in an establishment that has more seats than it’s floor or kitchen staff can handle. Though I’d pass in some circles as a morning person, not everyone is at their best til they’ve had their first shot of caffeine or got their blood sugar levels up. Twenty minutes twiddling your thumbs, waiting to give or get an order is way too long.

2. Shit coffee. This is Melbourne – stale beans, burnt coffee or weak espresso just doesn’t make the grade.

3. Frozen bricks pretending to be hash browns. These greasy pieces of crap might be acceptable at the golden arches but we expect better than a drive-through when we eat out.

4. Fried dollops of leftover mashed potato pretending to be hash browns. Slightly less greasy than the maccas variety they tend to be sloppy and dairy ridden. Call them something else and serve them but they aint hash browns either.

5. Non-disclosure of meat in a vegetarian breakfast. Enough said. *shudders*

6. Minimalist servings. This is breakfast. We’re eating out. If we wanted 1 piece of toast and a single mushroom, we’d have stayed at home.

7. Imperfect avocado. Brown, stringy, over-ripe or plain bad fruit and vegetables should not be part of any dining experience, regardless of the time of day.

8. Poached eggs that are too raw, over cooked or dripping with water and make your toast go soggy. If my father can learn to poach a half-decent egg at the age of 82, you’d think a cook could do it right each time.

9. And while we are on the subject of eggs, in this country the term “free range” doesn’t really mean anything at the best of times. If you want to justify charging patrons more for their eggs invest in organic.

10. Supermarket bread, boring menus, tinned baked beans…

I could go on all day but I’d prefer to know what your breakfast peeves are.

quickie - dining in the clouds

Dinner last night at Cumulus Inc. Finally. Don’t know what took me so long? Oh yes I do, all the charcuterie on the menu. Loved the slow cooked octopus with aioli (where about 1:4 morsels packed a powerful chilli hit) and the mackerel and artichoke barigoule. That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the asparagus or the school prawns either. But the star of the meal was the baby carrots with almond cream and harissa. The sexiest carrot dish ever.

Best part of the night? The company. I have a ritual with one particularly busy friend. Twice a year we have a special dinner or lunch together for our birthdays. Friendship, ritual and connection always wins over the food and wine, though they come a close second.

Decided to google "barigoule". Let’s hope there was no bacon in it! (for some reason blogger doesn't want to encode the http://www.saffronrestauranttruro.co.uk/chef'_dictionary.htm)

The trick to snagging a table at Cumulus inc.? Skip lunch and meet at 5.30. Nursery dinner hours rule!

Still to post – a mild cauliflower curry I’ve been playing with. Made three versions so far, which one to post? It’s my new favourite vego meal at home.

Plus even more about Malaysia, including the blow-my-mouth-and-my-mind Thai meal in KL. But I figure you’re had enough of my holiday stories by now.

Am shocked by how much food is left in the fridge this week. Maybe I’d better read 50 Ways to Never Waste Food Again. Or perhaps eating at Ciccolina, Flor and Cumulus Inc all in the same week is a little too much.

The garden is thriving with the spring rain. Still have an outrageous crop of nettles, with self-seeded patches of green appearing everyday. Any Melbourne food friends want a bunch to experiment with? The upside is fresh nettle tea is great for hayfever, something both of us in this house have at the moment. Nature’s very clever sometimes.

Grapevine is bursting with leaves - must make dolmades next month!

choice

You might have noticed I like to eat. There have been a few twists and turns in finding the foods that make my body feel good. Meat and dairy headed the list of childhood favourites. In equal measures, there were the frequent trips to the doctor, blood tests, throat swabs and antibiotics. I’d top the class each year for the record number of sick days.

From babyhood til my early 20’s I ate my fill of fillet steak. I sucked the caramelised fat off the juicy lamb chop bones. Melted cheese on toast was my favourite snack, even better sprinkled with diced bacon. I would have lived on chocolate ice cream if my parents had let me.

Vegetables were a means to an end. I selected a narrow few staples and refused all others. If there was a 2:1 ratio of baked potatoes to boiled vegetables I could almost swallow them down. Fish was crumbed and fried in lard with a side of home made chips on the side.

My later omnivorous years saw me sample snails and frogs legs, develop a fondness for quail and consume the breasts of battery chooks at an alarming rate. The year before I turned my back on meat my favourite thing was homemade hamburgers, the best quality mince, lots of onion, garlic and crispy bacon, topped with a thick slice of cheddar grilled on the bun.

Do I miss it? Not really. I enjoy the lack of “tummy bugs” and never ending colds. Though I eat a much wider variety of foods now, I can feel a little short changed at restaurants. Too often my selection is between one fish dish and a vegetarian option, the later eliminated due to being riddled with dairy products. I hungrily peruse a big fat menu and feel bereft of choice.

Asian eateries tend to offer a vast array of mysterious dishes. While fish and vegetables are common ingredients, so too are meats like pork and chicken mixed in with the so called “vegetarian” delights. While avoiding dairy can be relatively easy, the addition of MSG becomes a harder bullet to dodge. It’s all swings and roundabouts.

I have fond memories of visiting Victoria Street (Richmond) in my earlier years in this city. Eating cheap Vietnamese food with friends, leaving cramped, noisy restaurants on hot summers nights, the air humid and peppered with foreign voices. But the safe options I chose so often tasted predominantly salty and unexciting, I’d crave the company and the atmosphere but not the food.

A few weeks ago, armed with a great review from The Age I decided to give Vietnamese food another go. After the vegetarian soup that made my heart sing I knew I wanted to try more dishes from this busy, new kid on the “Little Saigon” block. As we paid a pittance for the feast we’d eaten the manager (like most restaurants on the strip this is a family business, his mother is the cook) talked about the authenticity of the food and offered to let us put ourselves in his hands next time.

I felt so safe there, they don’t add MSG (there’s the risk of pre-made sauces being adulterated but this is food cooked by a woman whose family can’t tolerate the stuff either) and that “vegetarian” means no chicken stock or just a little bit of pork. I couldn’t wait to go back and share the experience with friends.

This weekend I booked a table, knowing the place would be full at lunchtime and half a dozen of us placed our hands in the lovely manager’s hands to be served a seafood and vegetarian experience. My request were that there be only one meat dish (I toss the odd bone to the carnivores) and I had to have the little “rice pancakes” again that I fell in love with on my first visit.

I can’t do justice to describing the meal we ate, other than saying there was some significant envy going on amongst the few Western diners sitting at nearby tables. The “pancakes” (a crispy seafood filled shell served with sweet chilli sauce and coconut cream) were as good as the previous visit, there was also a larger version of the shell filled with bean shoots and prawns, some (non-traditional but yummy) steamed prawn dumplings, an Asian coleslaw with an unknown green vegetable fit for a king that I could have munched on all day, eggplant stuffed with seafood, a rich soy based fish dish counterbalanced by a slowly steamed fish and vegetable soup made at the table. Finishing with a bowl of cleansing soup was a perfect way to restore us after a delicious few hours of eating. The Significant Eater commented the peppered beef dish was the least interesting, so I didn’t feel like I’d missed out on anything.

We ate like Kings and Queens for under $28/head (we bought our own champagne, with minimum corkage charged). Though the place was busy, the meal was well paced so we could leisurely savour each course, spending almost 3 hours to enjoy the food and the company. It's hard to find better value than that.

So now the reveal! What is the name of this place? If you promise to be adventurous and let this gorgeous man order for you then I’ll tell you. There is so much more to Vietnamese food than rice paper rolls.

Thanh Nga Nine
160 Victoria St, Richmond, Melbourne



(Image courtesy of Lucy@Nourish Me)
Fighting over the last of the rice pancakes!

The organic conundrum

Warning: a long, possibly biased rant with no pictures or recipes.

I trundle up the organic aisle not sure what I will find. I watch the seasons come and go by the availability and price of the produce. Cavolo nero, our new best friend has been looking a little weather-worn in recent weeks while the chard has stood proud and glossy. An easy segue from one leafy green to another, unique in flavour but close enough to substitute. This week my friend has picked up her frilly skirt and run, perhaps we won’t see cavolo nero til next winter.

I can live with that. Sure I get a little toey at this time of year when the Australian grown, organic garlic is hard to find and pricey when you do but I’m getting better at planning ahead for that seasonal eventuality.

This week’s market haul featured no new stars but a greater variety of affordable basics – broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, new season potatoes and leafy greens. Not quite a cornucopia but ten different types of vegetables plus an expensive local bulb of garlic and some fresh turmeric. Enough veg for two massive consumers to eat their way through over a week at a cost of $40. We’d easily get 5, often 7 plus, serves of vegetables a day. Sadly the Significant Eater consumes fruit at too higher rate for us to be completely organic at this time of year.

Australian Food News yesterday reported that an average basket of organic groceries costs 70% more than its conventional counterpart. This includes things I don’t eat such as meat and dairy (the former having the highest price difference and the latter being at the lower end) or buy (like biscuits, baked beans and sugar). Taking all this into account, the premium for organic fruit and vegetables alone, according to the report, is still a hefty 60%.

Before we plunge headlong into the latest organic debate regarding nutritional value. I’d suggest that any canny shopper doesn’t do the “standard basket” approach. We buy what is in season at a reasonable price, allowing for the odd weakness (garlic or fair trade organic chocolate). We make choices over what tastes better (organic strawberries) and what we don’t mind compromising on (Coff’s Harbour conventional but naturally ripened bananas and passionfruit). Heading off to shop with a flexible grocery list and to somewhere like Vic Market where there is some healthy competition, rather than an organic superstore (like Macro when it existed), certainly reduces the organic premium. Sometimes a particular organic fruit or vegetable is cheaper than the conventional but overall with savvy shopping I’d estimate it’s less than 30%.

So is it worth it, this sizable mark up at the cash register? Last month a British report stating that ”Organic has no health benefit” hit the headlines. While the independent study commissioned by the Food Standards Agency crunched the data and could not find any strong evidence to support the nutritional benefits of eating organic produce, there are some inherent flaws. The biggest problem is study size. The bigger the study the more it costs to fund. Oil companies, the manufacturers of conventional agricultural chemicals, have the money to potentially fund big research projects that can select limited nutritional criteria when comparing organic and non-organic produce. The organics industry however, cannot. Study size determines whether it can be included in the meta-analysis. The many smaller studies that overwhelming proved case for the nutritional benefits of eating organically were excluded.

But ignoring my paranoid ravings for a minute, The Organic Center has gone over the original report with a fine tooth comb and their analysis of the flaws in the FSA study make illuminating reading. Before you swallow the version the media has served up for you, read a little more deeply and make up your own mind.

Ironically, on the BBC news page that I linked above I noticed today’s top health story is “Primary liver cancers 'soaring'”. No link with eating conventional produce? Well, that hypothesis hasn’t been tested yet.

Buying organic produce is a luxury and it is about personal choice. But making an informed decision remains a vexed issue.


A few links to studies demonstrating the nutritional benefits of organics

Biological Farmers of Australia (I heard the fabulous BFA nutritionist, Shane Heaton, speak at the Organic Expo)

Organic Trade Association (USA)

The issues around the potential health risks of pesticides and herbicides touched on in the Food and cancer report included a suggestion that “a precautionary approach is wise for women of reproductive age”.

eating local

We almost came to blows over grapefruit once.

Not that I’d describe my relationship with the Significant Eater as violent. A little heated at times but nothing approaching physical harm.

But grapefruit. He has to have grapefruit and orange freshly juiced every morning. It’s a ritual that can’t be broken. While I was trying to get my head around eating local last year this became a sticking point. He didn’t take to seasonality in quite the same way as I did.

I thought of this recently while doing my weekly shop at Vic Market. Cherries! Cherries in the middle of winter, it just wasn’t right. But Aussie cherries – now that was even more extraordinary. Then I read the fine print and laughed.



“taste them! Aussie Cherries grown in upstate Washington Bing Cherries $15 kg”

Somehow I don’t think this inventive marketing strategy quite comes under the auspices of the “Put Victoria on your table” campaign. It was lovely to see some of their logos on fruit and vegetables on my shopping trip this week.



What I find confusing about many of the guides to seasonal food, is that while it lists fresh produce that is on offer in your local stores, it doesn’t take into account where the food comes from.

Melbourne farmers markets usually feature growers from around the state and provide a good guide to what is seasonal and local in Victoria. According to the Victorian Farmers’ Markets Association the following goodies are in season:

Fruit
cumquats, grapefruit, lemons, limes, mandarins, nashi, oranges, rhubarb, tamarillo, tangelos.

Nuts
Hazelnuts.

Vegetables
Asian greens, beetroot, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, carrots, celery, celeriac, fennel, Jerusalem artichoke, kale, kohlrabi (green), kohlrabi (red), leek, olives, onions, parsnips, pumpkins, silver beet, spinach, spring onions, swedes, turnips.

The SE will be pleased – grapefruit is in season!

Reasons I like to eat local:

• Fresher produce
• Less energy used/pollution created in transportation
• Supports the local community
• Anticipation, waiting for a food to come back into season, makes it taste all the sweeter!

How do you feel about eating in season?

Crisis what crisis?

I am an oddity in the Melbourne food blogging community. I rarely do high end, big name dining and I have what some would consider an abnormal penchant for beancurd. But after a frantic couple of weeks of eating out - all I want for dinner is tofu and vegetables, at home on a Saturday night.

The SE’s mother and uncle were in town recently from Sydney. As we trailed from breakfast to lunch to dinner in what felt like an endless haze of eating (and occasionally drinking) they’d keep saying “There’s no recession here!” followed by, “Do people do anything else in Melbourne other than eating?”.

While Sydney has its share of noteworthy restaurants, I’ve always found it hard to find mid-range, good value dinning in that town. A taxi driver once said that in Sydney people eat out less frequently but spend more. Perhaps that explains it, in Melbourne we want to eat out often but demand a decent bang for our buck whether it is a work night dinner at the local, or a Big Night.

A piece this week in The Age muses on the conundrum , why are so many of Melbourne’s restaurants booked out at a time when 80% of Australians say they are eating out less? The other weekend we slipped into Bistro Flor at 6.30, early on a Sunday evening. Fortunately we had a booking for even at this hour the place had few spare tables and was certainly at full capacity within a short time of arriving. Everyone appeared to be enjoying a slow meander through the menu. The staff were helpful, without being pushy. We worked our way through 3 delicious courses, a bottle of excellent wine plus a few extra reds by the glass, all for little over $60 a head. This is fine yet unfussy dinning in the shadow of a recession, making its patrons very happy indeed.

We had a weekend late lunch at a packed out Cookie. Prowled Rathdowne Street to find a Sunday brunch, resorting to a third choice of café after finding the first two full up. I snuck a midweek catch up with a friend at Movida Next Door to grab the last pair of barstools at 5.45 pm, watching all the hopefuls arriving after us being turned away. At an old favourite, De Los Santos, they were still taking walk ins on a Saturday night but the place was close to capacity, with a good turn over of tables. I enjoyed one of my best meals there ever, with a great batch of specials, two to three courses each plus alcohol for around $50 a head.

On the other side, I fortunately missed a cheap but decidedly not cheerful meal at an Italian chain pronounced the “worst pasta ever” by all three (you think we would have ended up eating there if I’d been around?). As for our local stand by, The Kent Hotel, our long serving waitress seemed unusually frazzled, mentioning the amount of complaints she’d been receiving from regulars as budgets got tightened. The food that had previously ranged from good to very good - was spectacularly unexciting. Not bad exactly, just didn’t compare favourably with all the other similarly priced meals of the week. In its current incarnation I think it would still stand out as a great neighbourhood eatery in most Sydney suburbs but Melbournians are decidedly fussier.

I have vague memories of big name Melbourne restaurants that I could never afford to eat in, closing in the early nineties. For someone on my budget it was a strangely positive turn of events, heralding a new era in better quality, mid-range dining. I suspect as prices and expectations have risen in the recent boom, a little pruning may not be a bad thing. Awful for the industry, yes, I’m sorry if my words sound flippant. But for the punters, it just ups the ante.

And as for the cheap eats – couldn’t get a table at The Abyssinian on the weekend, so its not just Cutler & Co or Movida as The Age had implied. Good food that is priced appropriately will continue to thrive in Melbourne but those whose food, staff or prices don’t meet expectations (or I’m guessing most of the restaurants at Crown), its going to be tough.

In the meantime, simple home cooking will never go out of style. The more great food I eat out, the greater I crave “clean food” – steamed vegetables, legumes and brown rice.

More recipes here soon - I promise!

Hellenic Republic and sweet anticipation

My journey to Hellenic Republic (HR) began months earlier, with a media generated yearning to find out what all the hype was about in this new eatery. Its massive popularity meant planning, rather than a chance seat being available when the whim took me. For a while it all seemed to hard until a special occasion came around.

At this point in our lives, most of my friends are Very Busy People, juggling fulltime work, parenting and post-graduate study. A particular dear friend has all three balls up in the air and one of the few times of the year we have one-on-one time is our birthday ritual. Twice a year, near each of our birthdays we find time for a lunch or dinner together. It is usually a long, slow event where we savour the company as much as, or more than, the food.

As these rare events are planned weeks in advance, finding a table at a popular restaurant is never a problem. In fact, it was the woman who took the booking that provided the next ingredient in the total experience that became dinning at HR. Her manner was welcoming and professional; there were no games about “squeezing us in” or mention of any fabled waiting list. But most of all we weren’t subjected to limited times to eat with rigid seating session, common to other busy restaurants. Then came the clincher when she politely enquired about any dietary restrictions. Never before has an a la carte restaurant asked me this. My dairy allergic heart (or rather belly) skipped a beat with excitement over that simple question. I felt included and welcomed, assured I would have sufficient choice of dishes.

As the weeks passed between booking and dinning, my anticipation grew. In a way it didn’t matter where we would be eating, what emerged was a forgotten ritual of looking forward to something new. I’ve eaten in many top restaurants over the last couple of decades but what has been lost in the intervening years is the wait. Good food and great dinning has become so accessible and so often immediate, that this crucial step of savouring has been all but lost.

So finally the day arrived. I arrived on the dot of 1 pm to find my friend seated beside the window welcoming me with a wave. The restaurant was packed, even the few seats at the bar had a couple of people merrily chowing down of plates of food.

Service was efficient and unpressured. We were given guidance when requested, in particular navigating the wine list where every bottle of wine was Greek. After describing the style of wine we were after (white, dry, crisp) a slightly floral, zesty Peloponnesian number was suggested with the bonus that is was the cheapest on the menu ($45). The wine was good and very drinkable, suiting our food choices well.

We selected four dishes. Of them were two whose reputation preceded them: the fried saganaki with spiced, caramelised figs and the hand cut potatoes (that my friend, a connoisseur of fries declared, “possibly the best chips I have ever eaten”). To balance the meal a grilled whole snapped and a bowl of horta was also ordered.

So did the experience live up to the hype? Once again I caution this is not a review, merely a reflection on a single dinning experience.

As mentioned the wine turned out fine but given it came with an old fashioned cork, I would have expected to be offered a taste. Unlike stelvin seals, up to 1:10 bottles have cork taint and therefore the traditional tasting should apply.

Saganaki: Not being able to tolerate cows milk, a little taste of sheep’s cheese went down a treat. Pairing the figs with the saganaki was ok but it didn’t blow my mind as everyone had promised. The small hair on the sizzling hot plate however was a greater disappointment.

The snapper was perfectly cooked and at around 400 gm just the right amount for two. The only curiosity was the presentation of the dressing to accompany the fish. This was basically a lemon/olive oil emulsion, served in a small bottle. However the said bottle arrived in a clear ice bucket with three carnations peeking out of the top. This didn’t bring back any dinning experiences I had in Greece but maybe it is a regional thing? I know everything old is new again but carnations? In the wine bucket? Odd, very odd.

Horta – I was wondering where they would get chicory at this time of year but given the traditional nature of the dish I was hoping some other wild greens would be on offer. Unfortunately it was silverbeet. As much as I like silverbeet I was hoping for something a little more exciting. It was a traditionally cooked lemony, leafy green served at room temperature but although the literal translation for horta is “grass” or “green vegetable” traditionally the greens were always wild.

We were rather full but wanted to linger a little longer and try one more dish. There are the usual Greek sweets on offer but the cheap and cheeky “spoon sweets” (GLYKO TOU KOUTALIO) caught our eye. A traditional bitter/sweet spoonful (or in this case small plate) of preserved fruit was on offer. We choose orange and cherries. The berries were deliciously tart and the thick swirls of orange rind held on to their innate bitterness balanced by the sweetness of the heavy syrup.

The restaurant is decorated with tasteful Greek touches but suffers from the hindrance created by too many hard surfaces, meaning when at capacity like it was, voices need to be raised to be heard. This makes feel instantly old by noting it, but it does get rather tiring after a while.

Overall, rogue hair and oddities aside I would certainly visit HR again. But the best lesson for me was reacquainting myself with the deliciousness of anticipation. It really did make the experience all the more sweeter. I thoroughly recommend you plan and savour your next big night out and see how it tastes.

Total price $116.50 (4 dishes, 1 bottle of wine, 2 small sweets, 1 bottle of mineral water)

I realised afterwards (though I didn’t check to see if the fish was floured before grilling) our meal was apparently gluten-free. The menu is omnivorous but contains options for most of the common food allergies and dietary choices – including Paleolithic, vegetarian, vegan, low GI and the likes.

Hellenic Republic
434 Lygon Street,
Brunswick East,
Melbourne.
Ph: 9381 1222
Breakfast: Sat/Sun
Lunch - Fri-Sun
Dinner: Tue-Sun

alert and alarmed

I was going to call this “The pig and I”, as some misguided tribute to Deborah Kerr but I digress, the topic of today’s post is no laughing matter.

Well, it may be to carnivores. In fact it is guaranteed to put a smile on the average meat-eater, in a schadenfreude kind of way.

So, I am at a café having a little breakfast. It’s been a while since I ate there but it was a ridiculously early hour to be up and walking on a Sunday morning, making the before 9 am eating choices in that neck of the woods limited.

The specials looked good, so I opted for “potato rosti with smoked salmon, poached egg and dill hollandaise”.

Service was prompt and friendly, the coffee just right.

I have a bit of a thing about potato for breakfast and a good rosti is an item of wonder. My mum used to make a great one from parboiled spuds, grated and fried in rounds. In Switzerland I almost rostied myself out, each one more fabulous than the last.

A rosti is not a hash brown, a latke or goddess forbid a “tater tot”. Gourmet’s version is pretty standard. What arrived was largely mashed potato shaped into a sizable disk and fried til brown. In other words, refried mash. Not a rosti. There was some cooked spinach on top that didn’t get a mention on the menu. Fortunately I like spinach.

What I don’t like in my piscaterian breakfast however is bacon. Yes halfway through, when I had a mouthful of “rosti” without the smoked salmon I realised there was another texture in the mix that felt suspiciously meaty. I stopped eating and flagged down a passing waiter and asked. “Oh the rosti has onion and bacon in it”, he nonchalantly answered.

What? Some people are allergic to onion. But we will leave that issue aside for now. Bacon avoidance includes a long list of reasons – religious, health and ethical, as well as life threatening reactions to preservatives.

I felt sick. Ok, this is the bit when the carnivores can have a good chuckle. I know it’s hilarious, isn’t it? However what hit me was two fold. One, when you stop eating meat you loose the enzymes you need to digest it (in most cases you can produce them again with repeated exposure to meat) causing the ingested flesh to trigger some short term gut err, discomfort. But what struck me on a much deeper level was my empathy for the pig. Just read Peter Singer if you need to know more about the way we treat this incredible creature, so genetically similar to humans we harvest their heart valves as spares for our own race.

I didn’t initially stop eating meat over 20 years ago over ethical issues, it was because I no longer desired it. In recent years, this decision has been reinforced by humanitarian reasons along with the carbon footprint.

Ethics, in other words.

So how did the café deal with the problem ethically?

They apologised and offered me a replacement breakfast.
They promised to amend the blackboard specials immediately.
When I decided I didn’t feel like eating and I just wanted to go, my bill came with another apology and was charged for only the coffee.

But the board did not change. Not in the 10 minutes I stayed for anyway.

I am not here to vilify a local business. They did the right thing money-wise, but how many other pig-averse customers ordered pseudo-rosti in the meantime?

Tin Pot Café - 248 St Georges Rd, North Fitzroy.

You decide!