hiatus

I had a dream last night that I hadn't cooked for so long that I didn't realise the kitchen had been renovated in my absence.

In my waking life I am cooking frequently and there has been no secret remodeling of my kitchen while I sleep (I checked just in case the fairies had snuck in overnight) but perhaps it is my repertoire that needs a makeover?

While I contemplate my mojo, feast your eyes on one of the pretty fruit trees (species anyone?) in Lucy’s country garden, that I had the pleasure to visit on my day off.




Pretty, aint it.

what the?

Please read What the? Part 2 to see what happened next!

But first, let's go back to the beginning of the story.

Hey I've got a great idea. How about I publish a magazine with a heap of cool content that I don't have to pay for, nor will I bother to ask permission to reprint it. Pure genius!

This little beauty just flapped its way into my inbox. I must admit I only open 1/4 of PR-looking emails.

FYI

XXX* magazine is Melbourne’s newest food and drink title - with a significant difference. It is the first to showcase independent local blogs and articles with a definitive focus on the city’s food culture. Effectively a printed portal, it features snippets of interesting, online material, with full reference and credit always given to the authors. And for the first time, using new smartphone technology, 2D codes printed in XXX provide a direct link to the original online article. A very similar premise to how a blogger might make reference to an external article they want to share - placing a link in their own blog and directing readers on. A product of Melbourne’s world-class food and drink industry, and the insightful contributions of the city’s bloggers and online authors, its debut will mark a progressive shift in contemporary publishing.

Never before have online authors been given such prominence in the print medium. Building on the passion of food enthusiasts, XXX’s publishers are undertaking this new initiative, hoping to promote what they believe is an outstanding standard of local blogging, and further establishing it as valid and valuable - as much so as traditional food writing. Moreover, with hundreds of articles posted online all the time, it can be hard for some people to come across information, news or reviews that they might enjoy and find helpful – especially those unfamiliar with the online forum, or still getting used to it. XXX makes it easier to sort through the vast catalogue of food stories by presenting those the editors find interesting and relevant, in a physical, familiar format.

Launching this December with a ‘Holiday Edition’, 20,000 audited copies will be circulated throughout more than 1,500 cafes, bars, restaurants and stores in the CBD and inner city suburbs. ‘Regular’ fortnightly editions will follow from January 2011. As a result, XXX’s featured bloggers will probably notice a marked increase in traffic to their sites, expanding the potential for those already advertising to capitalise on their work, and creating opportunities for those that yet don’t (through options like Google AdSense, Nuffnang and Foodbuzz).

In the interests of integrity, XXX doesn’t commission writers or works. Content isn’t product driven or based on any commercial directives. Instead it’s made up of positive, in-depth pieces with attractive photography, written by passionate and knowledgeable local ‘authorities’. XXX’s editors then scour the web, working to select and compile pieces relevant to particular topics and editions, covering subjects like restaurant reviews and recipes. Additionally, topics such as cafés, markets, new books, films, products, farming, events, health issues, legislation, and anything else food and drink related will be included. Put simply, the magazine is a reflection of food and drink culture, via the words and opinions of those that participate in Melbourne’s online publishing. It’s an independent and free publication, funded only through advertising.

XXX’s editorial policy ensures any authors who choose not to be included, for whatever reason, are respected, and won’t be featured. However, the publishers aim to benefit all facets of the food industry, including the independent writers. The hope is Melbourne’s online food community members are excited to be a part of it, support the idea, and simply continue to do what they love doing – taste, sip, snap, talk and write about food culture.

Sincerely
(etc etc)

* Name deleted

Can someone set me straight. It's a new publisher who wants to swipe our blog content, without seeking permission? An opt out not opt in kinda thing? And we should be flattered because " As a result, XXX’s featured bloggers will probably notice a marked increase in traffic to their sites".

Copyright issues anyone?

Update: the publisher assures me that they seek only to link to a blog post not the content. So it seems the punter will be flashing their smart phone at the code in the freebie if they see a reference to something they like the sound of? Interesting.

I have difficulty letting go

Now it's the height of spring, the winter vegetables and herbs have bolted with the return of the sun and plentiful rain.

Reluctantly I annex a runway down the centre of the 9 square metre of garden to plant tomatoes. One Grosse Lisse and two of my favourites, Tommy Toes.

This means pulling up yet more man-sized patches of nettles. The sting is still virulent months after the plant is removed from the soil. (Note to self: If I'm to insist on letting the nettles grow of their own accord I really must plant some dock).

The kale has gone to flower. I'm enjoying the splash of yellow out my backdoor too much to unearth them as yet. The coriander, I bargain, can stay til there are seeds to harvest. The parsley is still edible, though the flavour grows stronger and more bitter by the day.

But really, I just can't let go.

Gardening, even on such a miniscule scale is like having a living Buddhist parable on my doorstep. One moment it looks perfect. Young green leaves to eat in salad, plump grapes on the vine. Weeds banished. The next, the fruit is rotting. The weeds have taken over. The herbs have bolted.

Impermanence.

Despite knowing nothing stays the same, that there is no point holding onto the past, I'm not ready to pull out the spent winter plants yet.

Just another week of soaking in their soothing shades of green.

Or until the tomatoes have grown enough.

Sydney: it's flakier than you'd think

There are subtle differences to the dining cultures in Melbourne and Sydney. Years ago a cabbie said to me “Melbourne people eat out all the time, it excels in great quality, casual eating any night of the week. Sydneysiders go for the big bang, high budget places but eat out less frequently”. I’m not sure if that’s strictly true but Sydney wins the prize for the most exalted restaurants in the country, though also more limited operating hours.

Oscillating Wildly, Billy Kwong and most of the hatted restaurants in Surrey Hills all seem to open at night only. All those weekend lunches missed. I’m struggling to think of Melbourne big name eateries operating under those restrictions. Surely Sydney invented the long lunch? All that sunshine.

Oh well. The no reservations thing still stands for many, or reservation only months in advance for the others.

Fortunately being a Melbourne-phile I like a quirky bit of casual eating and had no trouble filling my face quite amply at any hour.

What Sydney does excellently is pastry. Flaky, glutinous pockets of joy, oh how the harbour city delivered this in spades.

From the casual meandering through the pastry filled stalls at the Summer Hill Breakfast Bazaar (the only Taste of Sydney event I made it too, the other ones planned for the weekend got a tad washed out with the spring showers).


pastry nests full of raw pistachios and honey, sticky but delicious

To being lucky enough to have Black Star Pastry as my local bakery. I can’t begin to extol the wonderment to just how good this place is. The Danishes rival those I ate in France and the tarts were ridiculously good. Their sourdough is worth a detour too (and IMHO much better than the exalted Sonama in Glebe).


mango danish, I'm in heaven

But the crispy, pastry with high production values award has to go to Mamak. This is a well known Malaysian eatery in Chinatown, equally famous for it’s roti as it is for the long queues outside. The roti making being the theatrical entertainment as hungry people wait for at least half an hour, pressing their faces against the glass like urchins to watch the production going on in the kitchen inside.

It was a 40 minute wait on a balmy Thursday evening. It’s amazing how relaxed I could be about such a thing, thank goodness for being in holiday mode. A bit of a chat to others in the line and curious tourists asking what we were waiting for and then finally, we were in, menus efficiently delivered, an order taken the moment we’d decided what we’d eat and our requests wirelessly transmitted to the kitchen by the waiter who returned less than 5 minutes later with the goods. This is a streamlined operation. I’ve been seated far quicker in Melbourne joints but had to wait an hour for the whole menu/order/food arriving routine. So the Mamak oiled machine certainly compensates for time spent queuing. And it’s cheap. Not as good value as downtown Malacca but $30 for two is not to be sniffed at.

We ate nasi lemak, roti (how could we not having watched the show in the window for all that time – best marketing strategy ever) and finished with a cendol that put a smile on our face. I just wished I could have fitted another visit in while I was there.


a quick iphone snap, about to guts down my nasi lemak with prawns and a big hunk of roti

...but there's always the next trip to look forward to.


Black Star Pastry
277 Australia St Newtown
Open seven days 7am-5pm
* wear elasticated waistband or a kaftan while gorging on the pastries for guilt-free eating :)

Mamak
15 Goulburn St, Haymarket
* on a warm night you don't mind the wait, honestly.

A tale of two English Christmases

Compare and contrast. Two New Zealanders adrift in Britain. Hurrah it’s Christmas! What’s on the menu?

My grandfather: New Zealand Rifle Brigade, Sling Camp, Salisbury Plain 1916

Breakfast fish, (unreadable) and bacon, fried onions and mashed potatoes. Dinner Turkey, Goose, cauliflower, potatoes and peas and stuffing, plum pudding and brandy sauce, nuts, fruit, oranges, apples, bananas. Tea roast pork, fruit salad and Devonshire cream, chocolate and bulls eyes, mince pies. Supper ham, cheese, biscuits.
More from my grandfather’s war diary - bully beef and biscuits at the front.

The granddaughter, London 1985

Christmas was nice. Never had a Lesbian xmas before but I suppose there is a first time for everything! Jac was stunning in a 3 piece suit, with pink bowtie to match the streak in her hair. Started off lounging around eating chocolates and drinking sherry, then got onto the port. Dinner was an avocado salad for starters, followed by a splendid nut roast, sauce, chestnut stuffing, roast spuds and other veggies – downed with bubbly. After there was pud with brandy butter, cake, pink triangle sweets and marzipan stuffed dates. Did I miss anything?
You can read more nostalgic twaddle about living in London the ‘80s if you really want to.

a little Langbein love

I’ve got a bit of a crush on Annabel Langbein at the moment. Maybe it’s a kiwi thing but I’m enjoying watching her new television program Free Range Cook. While I avert my eyes to the meat and dairy (featuring rather heavily, it is New Zealand after all) the landscape is an absolute winner. Though despite the thin cardigan and cotton shirts Otago still looks rather chilly.

Langbein is well known to New Zealanders. Her recipes have appeared in numerous print publications for years and there’s at least one of her cookbooks on most kiwi friend’s shelves. Her earlier (1998) edition of The Best of Annabel Langbein adorns my own.

Her recipes are simple and she shares ideas on how to adapt parts of the dish for leftovers. Her phrase “fridge fixings” (familiar to those of us who already own her books) is a personal favourite. She’ll often say “this is good for a week in the fridge or you can freeze it in portions”.

When you are tired and hugry, it’s virtually impossible to feel creative. You just want to eat right now, without having to think about how or what. Taking a little time each week to prepare flavour bases such as tasty pestos and enticing dressings greatly streamlines the cooking process and has a dramatic effect on the results”.

Langbein on Fridge Fixings, The Best of Annabel Langbein.

Of course her garden is to die for, belying her horticultural background. Though try as hard as I can, the slightly plummy accent makes it hard to imagine her jumping out of helicopters to recover deer shot for venison or living in a hippy commune as she did in her youth.

Thanks to the show I’ve dug out my old cookbook and am marking the pages to explore this summer.

• A fritter batter that uses soda water rather than milk.
• Thai prawn fritters, with coconut cream (instead of milk/soda).
• Smoked fish salad with aioli, cucumber and spring onions.

Some stand out, simple Langbein recipes from the web

Asparagus, Avocado & Almonds with Sesame Citrus Dressing - simplicity personified!

Caponata - not a unique dish but a good “fridge fixing” during the summer tomato glut.

Crisp cauliflower and cashew salad - the ultimate in raw food cuisine, this looks like my new detox dish du jour.

Her recipe for the Asian-style citrus dressing that I found intriguing – hadn’t thought of using orange, lemon and lime juice with the classic fish sauce and chilli but she swears it gives it more depth (will try it next time I make a smoked fish salad).

whitebait season

Despite living in the global food basket, there’s the odd treat from across the ditch that is challenging to source in Melbourne. Feijoas make a brief and often pricey visit in winter, tamarillos almost as fleeting and yams, the tiny red tubers that most kiwis love, haven’t been sighted for years. The aforementioned vegetable used to turn up at one stall at Vic market for two or three weeks each September, where homesick New Zealanders would inundate the bemused greengrocer. But no more.

The most illusive delicacy of all is a wriggly little sucker. Genuine, New Zealand whitebait. No not those chunky little fish that Aussies call by the same name. Nor the foul tasting variety of little ‘uns that arrive frozen from Thailand.

Even in the homeland whitebait has an expensive and short lived season. At $160 a kilo, this is a prized entrée, eeked out with egg to make the flavour go further. Though the first time I ate the wrigglers, I’d helped catch them myself in a mountain stream. Free, bar the cold I caught from a day spent too close to icy water.

On my last trip home I picked up 200 gms of whitebait as a treat for my parents. You can just beat an egg and toss through the fish if you like but I like a little more “hold” in my batter. It’s light, crunchy and very easy to make.

Kiwi whitebait fritters
(quantities per 100 gm of whitebait)

100 gm of whitebait

1 egg, separated
1 tab cornflour
salt and pepper

Vegetable oil
(knob of butter optional)
Lemon wedges to server

Place the whitebait in a sieve and strain. Separate the egg(s) and beat the whites to soft peaks. Take the yolk(s) and beat in the cornflour with a wooden spoon. Stir in the salt and pepper. Gently fold in the beaten eggwhites into the yolk mixture.

At this point you can either carefully add the whitebait, or if you want a less eggy fritter (if you’ve caught your own and have plenty, so you don’t need to eek out the precious produce) place the whitebait into another bowl and gently fold in the batter a spoonful at a time until the whitebait it just holds the fish together.

Heat up your frypan, add oil (if you want a more golden fritter the addition of animal fat, such as a knob of butter to the oil). Add about a tablespoon of mixture and fry the fritters til golden. Then turn over and cook the other side, about two minutes each. Traditional whitebait fritters are the size of a pikelet but these days fitters come in all shapes and sizes.

Serve with a wedge of lemon and eat immediately.


Excuse the poor quality picture, the light was fading and the natives were restless. For a clearer image check out this little beauty.

simply 'shrooms for breakfast

Dench olive and rosemary bread toasted with sautéed mushrooms.

Bog standard, cultivated Swiss Browns are fine as long as you treat them with respect. Cook over a low heat. Just a bit of butter and garlic, finished with parsley, salt and pepper.

hug a chef week

Back before it was fashionable, I had a relationship with a chef.

He worked in the kitchen of a starred hotel, part of an international chain. Each afternoon he’d iron his uniform, ready his knives and polish his boots. He’d leave the house smelling of Paco Rabanne, returning 11 or more hours later stinking of sweat, fat and god knows what else.

It wasn’t a glamorous job but it had its compensations. On the rare night off when he’d cook at home there’d always be the juiciest steaks or exotic delicacies like frogs legs, courtesy of the big hotel. Not that they knew.

The pay was lousy, despite being years out of his apprenticeship, made slightly better by penalty rates from working unsociable hours. Though I had a mate who worked nights as a rubbish collector at the time who was paid more and came home smelling a darn sight sweeter.

Knocking off late at night, when a city like Wellington was all but closed, he had three options to wind down - get pissed, stoned or fuck someone. Often all of the above. And at times I suspect all three before he left work.

From our liaison I got an appreciation for sharp knives, learnt how to make nifty little bundles of carrots held together by their own ring and became rather wary of sexually transmittable diseases.

And that was before Anthony Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential.

I’ve always felt a little troubled by the cult of the celebrity chef. Working split shifts in commercial kitchens are often dangerous, poorly paid and crap for your love life. When Jamie Oliver and Fifteen became popular, I queried the wisdom of putting damaged kids, often with a history of substance abuse, into such a dysfunctional work environment.

There’s little glamour in the kitchen for the average chef. Most don’t get to own an eponymous restaurant, flash their face on television or publish cookbooks. The cycle of sex, drugs and alcoholism in kitchen is apparently not a myth in this city. Of course not every chef, cook or dish pig has a raging habit and some do manage to balance healthy relationships with antisocial hours. Though I’ve got to say the healthiest and happiest chefs I’ve met are ones who’ve taken a back step from the relentless kitchen grind and diversified their skills.

Despite the sanitisation of the professional cook on television, it still looks like an adrenaline fuelled, dirty job to me.

But without them, no matter how skilled we are in our homely kitchens, eating would be a much less interesting sport.

So hug a chef today and tell them you appreciate them.

I’ve cyber stalked the long time ex to no avail. Last I’d heard he’d gone from working in prestigious kitchens to stints of cooking in Kalgoorlie and other gritty mining towns. Despite the pride he took in what he made and the exacting professionalism he once had, I get the feeling life hasn’t been easy for him since our paths last crossed.

Then again, he may have married, had kids, moved to the suburbs and become a respectable sales rep, for a pharmaceutical company.

And despite all the fancy things he could do with carrots, the ice sculpting and butter carving, I’ve not found a cookbook with his face on it yet.

horta with not so wild greens

Remember the patch of green outside my backdoor? All that bitter radicchio/chicory, the mass of nettles in desperate need of eating, the silver-green elegant fonds of kale and some good old fashioned chard cried out one thing to me. Horta!.

I’ve made this traditional Greek dish before with shop bought chicory. The method was passed down to me through a most circuitous route. The Significant Eater’s ex was of Irish/Greek decent, her mother taught her to cook this, she passed it onto the Italian/Aussie SE and years later this mantle was handed onto me. The “recipe” as such being – wash, chop, boil, strain and then add lemon juice and olive oil. This time I steered a little from the previous path and was happy with the lovely pile of cooked greens that came out of it.


Horta

Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
A large colander of washed greens – I used kale, nettles, chicory and chard from the garden
2 lemons
Salt

Wash the greens well in a cold water and then transfer in a colander. Then chop roughly into about 6-8 cm pieces.

Heat a little olive oil in the bottom of a pressure cooker (if you don’t have one, just use your biggest pot and cook for longer). Add the garlic and stir quickly til it softens but doesn’t brown. Add greens by the handful (wearing rubber gloves if you’ve picked nettles), stirring before adding more. When all the greens have wilted add a centimetre or two of water to cover the bottom of the pot (if not using a pressure cooker use a lot more water). Fit the lid and bring up to steam. Cook for about 15 minutes, then allow to depressurise.

Drain the water but don’t throw it out, it’s delicious to drink. Toss through the juice of two lemons, a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Serve hot, warm or cold.


For a more traditional version read Maria’s beautiful story about gathering wild greens and cooking horta in Wellington.